The Unbearable Lightness of Verse 8
he was a tautology
an oxymoron
a figure of speech
an agnostic
an atheist
he beggared belief
he was terminally contradictory
though he would say
he was not
he was a man for all seasonings
but not paprika
not bergamot.
Taking part in OpenLinkNight over at dverse.
After the Queen’s Funeral
after 10 days of pomp, mourning
and celebrity tears
the evening news with alarming insouciance
reverts to reality
the high cost of bananas
the prices at the pump
the war in Ukraine
another climate change catastrophe
the door slams shut on a fairy tale world
of kings, queens, princes and princesses
palaces, country estates, horses, hounds, corgis
and armor that’s always shining.
Desire – what is it good for?
tender is the night
long is the day’s journey into night
it’s easier to name a street car
than it is to name one’s desire
never attempt a ménage in a glass menagerie
there is nothing less erotic than a red wheelbarrow
a thing of beauty is a joy for a fortnight.
This poem was originally written as a response to Anmol Arora’s prompt – Poetics: Desire and Sexuality in Poetry, at dverse
photo taken in Sitges, Catalonia.
Also taking part in Open Link over at earthweal: earthweal
Summer has left the building
is already in the limo
snorting white powder
drinking champagne
dupes, fall guys
we wait for the encore
ignoring the bouncer
pointing to the door .
Taking part in OpenLink over at dverse
walk past the writing on the wall
look neither left nor right
*************
always whistle past a graveyard
*************
today is the first day
of the rest of your life
tomorrow is the next
*************
walk towards the noise
walk towards the noise
*************
neither a floater
nor a settler be
*************
to find the person of your dreams
you must first fall asleep
**************
if you’re feeling abysmal
pepto bismol will do nothing
**************
talk softly
don’t carry sticks of any size
**************
be all you can be
then try harder
***************
like a frog down a well
we only know the walls.
***************
to leave no footprint
we must fly and never land.
***************
never drink anything blue
***************
life is waiting for the other shoe
Taking part in Open Link over at dverse, where the prompt is Aphorisms
“Hey Mister that’s me up on the juke box” is on James Taylor’s third album, “Mudslide Slim and the Blue Horizon”. I have always thought it is the best track on the album. James has a reputation as a soft rock crooner (You’ve Got a Friend) but his earlier stuff , like this one, could have an edge to it, e.g ….”I need your golden gated cities like a hole in the head”…..or these lines …”Let the doctor and the lawyer do as much as they can / let the springtime begin/ let the boy become a man”.
The musical structure of the song also has an unsettling quality to it. It starts with the chorus , followed by a verse , followed by another chorus , then a second verse . But the second verse has a completely different rhyme scheme and chord structure to the first, and it’s followed by a bridge, then the chorus then a coda to end the song. So the song has five distinct lyrical and musical sections.
Chorus (A), Verse 1 (B), Chorus, Verse 2 (C), Bridge (D), Chorus, Coda (E).
Combined with the elusive, conversational tone of the lyric this makes the song one to return to, again and again….there’s more to James than that aw shucks persona!
(It’s also an example of metasongwriting in the songwriter acknowledges that he’s in a song).
South of Bijou
Somewhere south of Bijou
they left themselves behind
the car smelt of stale coffee
they didn’t read the signs.
Somewhere north of Chamomile
they went their separate ways
peas split from a pod
buzzards circling the desert sky.
The Tide
tide way out, sand packed,
the kids, impressionist smears
at the water’s edge.
Todd and the Time Machine
I
Todd’s time machine
has three settings:
time was
time is
time will be.
II
Sometimes
the time travel sickness
hits him
like a five alarm flu.
III
Returning through the time hail,
through the accelerating centuries
he hears his wife yell
from the ever present
from the basement stairs:
I’m turning off that bloody time machine
your dinner’s getting cold!
This was originally written as a response to a dVerse prompt “Time and What if”.
The Evening News
a cheery fanfare
death, mayhem and disaster
dog befriends squirrel.
Pigeon
Early December,
downtown Vancouver
and it’s raining
more than the usual
cats and dogs,
it feels like the city
is trapped
in a giant car wash.
All year long the weather
has been acting like a child
that hasn’t been taught limits.
Three months of summer drought.
We woke up one morning
and white ash from forest fires
covered the deck,
and that evening down on the beach
we were treated to
a red ball sunset
worthy of Beijing or Mumbai.
The Indian guy in the coffee shop
told me it made him feel homesick.
Something’s happening to the frogs.
The Oregon spotted frog is Canada’s most threatened amphibian,
I saw that on TV program called
“Canada’s Most Threatened Amphibians”.
Also threatened is the northern leopard frog.
Sea stars have sea star wasting syndrome
We’re losing song birds, bats and bees
The world is an orchestra
and the string section is leaving
one by one.
Anthropocene
Anthropocene
Sixth Extinction,
soon there will only be us.
******
At the corner of Georgia and Granville
a pigeon waddles through a puddle
created by a blocked storm drain
and I’m thinking:
Who’d be a pigeon on a day like this?
Who’d be a pigeon at a time like this?
Trip Home
a Donnybrook walk
the Dodder’s brackish gargle
that long red brick dusk
ghosts, tall tales and memories
the walking and the wounded.
Taking part in earthweal open link weekend.
Beginnings
I have always thought
that Eve ate the apple
because she was bored
out of her tree
which is not to imply
that Eve lived in a tree
it’s just an expression
nor do I mean to imply
that boredom is a feminine condition
no far from it
far from it
but let’s face it
Adam seems more than a little boring
as does, let’s be honest, Paradise
as a kid that was what I thought
nothing much happening
trees and fruit
trees and fruit
a serpent
a bored Eve
and hapless Adam
and as we all know
boredom is the mother of destruction
just hand an empty glass bottle
to three ten year old boys
on a stony beach
on a wet day.
Brendan over at earthweal asks us to write about beginnings.
A Villain in a Villanelle
he was a villain in a villanelle
a doomed lover in a sonnet
he played his part , yes, he played it well
he once did a bit with Howie Mandel
he played Wallace, he played Gromit,
he was a villain in a villanelle
a costive mule for a drug cartel
‘tho he does not like to dwell upon it
he played his part, yes, he played it well
he shared an elevator once with Kristen Bell
she’s not available for comment
he was a villain in a villanelle
he had a career without parallel
no low point and no summit
he played his part, yes, he played it well
he liked a glass of zinfandel
ice cream with caramel on it
he was a villain in a villanelle
a doomed lover in a sonnet.
Verse Form Freeway
a derelict lai
an abandoned sestina
a rusting rubai
the iambic sun beats down
tarted-up tankas roll by
articulated sonnets
pantoums, tricked-out villanelles
a herd of haikai
a herd of haikai
The Vancouver Folk Festival returned last weekend (July 15, 16, 17) and it was great fun, some outstanding performances and some maybe not to my taste (a Korean folk ensemble with an interest in improvisational jazz sharing the stage with a Finnish folk group and an Ethiopian group was challenging). There was an absence of artists from England, Scotland and Ireland this year, and more emphasis on North American roots music and country and western, so at times it seemed a bit like The Grand Ol’ Oprey. That aside , it was good to be listening to live music again.
Highlights (for me)
Allison Russell, Robben Ford and the workshop “We are the Family”.
Allison Russell is a Grammy nominated song writer, has a great voice, plays electric banjo and alto sax and had a tight all female band with her (electric violin, acoustic guitar and electric guitar). They could play the soft stuff and then have head banging sonic meltdowns. She appeared on the Saturday night, in between Asleep at the Wheel and The New Pornographers and also shared the stage the following day with Frazey Ford and Clarel.
Robben Ford is an American blues , rock and jazz guitarist who has played with almost everyone including Miles Davis, Joni Mitchell and George Harrison. He looks like an older Jack White – dressed all in black with long jet black hair- and he can really play. His set was mostly electric blues and he had a great band with him but what I liked most about him is he knew when to stop. Yes he could do the long solos but mostly he chose to keep it tight and when the other band members were taking solos he was doing all this chording and inventive rhythm bits. Not folk, but hey variety is the spice.
The best part of the festival is often the afternoon workshops. These take place on smaller stages , this year there were three of them located on the east, west and south of the festival grounds. The idea is that three acts with some thematic connection share a stage; each act gets to sing three songs in a song by song rotation. The hope is that some synergy will occur and they will join in on each other’s songs. This does not always occur but when it does, it’s magic.
The We are the Family workshop was hosted by Joey Landreth of the The Bros. Landreth. Joining the brothers on stage were Haley Henderickx and a South Carolina duo, Shovels and Rope. It was all fairly low key until the band rehearsing on the main stage began to drown out Joey Landreth’s introduction to one of their songs. At which point he decided to change to an uptempo song, upped the volume and got the other perfomers to join in. That was it, they collaborated on the next three songs, Haley Henderickx’s Oom Sha La La was a standout. The video below doesn’t really do the live performance justice.
Worlds Colliding
On the Saturday night, Asleep at the Wheel – a bunch of good ‘ol boys from Texas who are really good musicians but sang songs that were old chestnuts or more exactly, fossilized chestnuts – opened their set with a song about falling in love with a Cherokee maiden. The site of the festival, Jericho Beach Park, is located on the west side of Vancouver in the unceded traditional territories of the Musqueam Indian Band, Squamish Nation and Tsleil-Waututh Nation. I dont know…….is it just me….
Special Mentions
A shout out to those 2 guys in the audience who danced solo all Friday evening to a different tune and yes, the bearded guy wearing a straw boater, a white business shirt and a pleated lime green dress.
The Fallen
Today I thought about Reince Priebus
not so much the man,
more the strange music of his name;
those slender vowels reversing
that echo of wince
the possible meanings
a salve, an ointment
put some Reince on that cut, son;
the Latinate portliness of Priebus
a writ to slap someone with – Habeas Priebus
a complicated skateboard manoeuvre
he executed a perfect reverse Priebus;
then I thought of Anthony, dear Anthony,
Scaramucci, Scaramucci
will you do the fandango,
you were not long with us
but still the smell of aftershave lingers
and it was you who let us know
about Steve Bannon’s auto fellatio,
alas, poor Steve
abandoned on the side of the road
like a rumpled sofa
a rumpled sofa smelling of yesterday’s sweat
and stale doctrine;
and what about Spicer and Huckabee
cartoon characters
Plucky and Angry
your souls will be in the repair shop
for some time to come.
They appear in waves,
the arrested –
Flynn, Cohen and Stone,
the ones who once were serious people –
McMaster, Kelly, Bolton.
In years to come when men and women gather
to talk of greatness
your names will be long forgotten.
The list of the fallen goes on and on
and still Humpty continues his slow and tortuous fall.
A different version of this poem appeared in Oddball Magazine
Juxtaposition (This is not a poem)
Flashback to 2021
Cop Out at Cop26
Coal will be phased down but not phased out
Down But Not Out
Semantic Antics
This late amendment was tabled by the USA, China and India but India took most of the flak.
India’s per capita greenhouse gas emissions are far lower than USA or China.
Canada’s per capita greenhouse gas emissions are higher than USA or China
But this is not a competition anyone wants to win.
Juxtaposition
This is not a poem.
November 12
Toxic air enveloped Delhi
making it the second most polluted city in the world.
According to 2020 average data
Hotan, China is the worst
Delhi is the 10th
so Delhi was having a bad day
50 percent of the pollution comes from vehicles.
If you go down the list
you have to get past the 200th most polluted city
to get out of India and China.
Juxtaposition
This is not a poem
The prosperity of the west was built on fossil fuels.
Carbon dioxide emissions are a subset of pollution
Pollution covers a multitude.
Imagine the human experiment as a black box emitting carbon dioxide. Reducing those emissions requires a collective approach. Is the human experiment capable of a collective approach. So far not so much.
Juxtaposition
This is not a poem
four years after the Great Smog of London
the Clean Air Act of 1956
prohibited the burning of coal in homes
change can happen
juxtaposition
we are beside ourselves
we have been burning fossil fuel
to stay warm
since the cave
old habits die hard
we need speed bumps not fist bumps
we need idealism and pragmatism
we need strategy
juxtaposition
this is not a poem
Sherry over at earthweal asks:
For your challenge: Express your thoughts and feelings about how humankind has brought Mother Earth to this critical point in time, and what you think and feel about where we go from here
This is a kind of rambling response.
Also taking part in Open Link over at dverse.
Heavy Metal Heaven
Slim plugs in his guitar
sets the dial on his amp
to “heavy metal”
hits an E minor seven
walks out of the room
makes a cup of coffee
drinks a cup of coffee
checks the football results
texts his brother in England:
what’s up, mate?
his brother doesn’t answer
he starts writing a novel:
The sun –
a red ball of anger on the horizon –
shouts through the brown chemical haze:
“that’s it, I’m outta here”.
Then, and only then, they hear a baby cry.
That’s all he’s got
He returns to the room
that E minor seven
is still going
but faint now
like a rustle of paper
like the distant chatter
of dead drummers
in heavy metal heaven
he picks up his guitar
hits an A minor seven
walks out of the room
starts his taxes……
Having a coffee
And reading Tom Wolfe
On Chomsky in Harper’s
Riding the express train of his prose
As he hurtles through Chomsky’s early life
Circling back all the time to linguists in the jungle
Linguists in the jungle some where
Until finally he pulls his linguist out of the jungle
To attack Chomsky’s theories of Universal grammar and Recursion
With news of the Piraha tribe in Brazil
Who have no time for Jesus or Crooked Head tales
And no concept of the future or the past
There is only today and the other day
And together they conspire
To chew up Chomsky
and spit him out.
The theme for this week over at earthweal is “Wild Language”
This poem first appeared in The Galway Review
A Hoedown for the Pronouns (Grammarama 2022)
This year for Grammarama
we attempted to organize
a hoedown for the pronouns
they, she, he
but we couldn’t get the verbs to agree.
Things got very tense
they kept dredging up the past
getting all conditional on us
every time we seemed close to a consensus
they would run off into corners
and conjugate.
Then it got melogrammatic
the pronouns them, her, him
announced they were tired
of being used as objects
and refused to participate.
In the end we threw up our hands
and gave up.
Give me a bunch of nouns any day.
Foraging with Farage
In his new television series
Foraging with Farage
coming soon to The Bollocks Network
Nigel laments
the influx of foreign fungi
to the hallowed fields and forests
of the Kingdom By The Sea
and the subsequent decline
of the Great English Mushroom.
In the final episode,
under the influence of psilocybin
Nigel takes a walk in the forest
and encounters a naked Boris Johnson
sitting on a giant toad stool
in a sunlit glade.
Boris, Nigel exclaims,
full of chagrin
and psilocybin,
I thought you were a natural blonde!
Has it all been a lie?
This is dream sequence, you fool,
Boris replies
The writers have run out of ideas.
He then tumbles off the toad stool
and bounds on all fours into the forest.
I tell you folks
if you miss one television series this year
make sure it’s this one.
The Doggerel Days of Summer Part 2
Oft on a still summer evening
I take my doggerel
for a long, long walk
looking for rhymes
in all the wrong places.
I bring with me
a small, beige, plastic bag;
when I finish the poem I’m composing
I place the poem in the plastic bag
and deposit the bag
in a trash can deep in the forest
a trash can known to all the local poets
a trash can where moon always rhymes with June
a trash can where clouds
are as fluffy as mashed potatoes.
The challenge over at earthweal is to write about ‘wild stillness”. So this is a poem about an attempt to write a poem. Check out earthweal here for poems that actually meet the challenge!
Stopdraggingthepanda 