Yosemite (the poem)

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Yosemite

The sun is slowly leaving
the party that is the day,
things will not be the same.

When he finally tumbles into his room
at the Mariposa Lodge outside of Yosemite
which the Miwok Indians call Ahwahnee
meaning Large Mouth,
Myron turns on the television
to find Patrick Stewart
shouting into the camera in blank verse
and even though Kenneth Branagh is nowhere in sight
he quickly deduces that this is Shakespeare,
Macbeth, in fact, but a strange one,
there are soldiers in Soviet uniforms and a fridge
and of course bad things are happening, off stage.
Then the bottle of Salmon Creek Pinot Grigio
which he had at the Butterfly Café,
starts to take its toll
(‘butterfly’ is the English word for Mariposa),
and lulled by the convolutions of the language
Myron falls asleep and in his dream
Patrick Stewart is staring at him.

“ Brush thy teeth”, Patrick yells,
spittle spraying the inside of the screen.
“Brush thy teeth
lest thou rise
foul of breath
In the sulphurous morn.”

 

This poem appeared a little while back in The Galway Review 

(It’s open link night at dVerse, so thought I’d give this one a bit of exposure)

The Vancouver Folk Festival 2018 (Live From The Wisdom Tent)

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Back in mid-July, I attended the annual Vancouver Folk Festival at Jericho Beach Park. It was a beautiful sunny weekend, hot by Vancouver standards. The beach, adjacent to the park, was crowded; beyond the beach the bay was busy with paddle boarders, swimmers, yachts, kayaks and of course, tankers. The north shore mountains looked down on it all, a little miffed now that the ski season is long over and all the attention has moved to sea level.

Highlights of the festival for me were Ry Cooder (and the Hamiltones), Wallis Byrd, Darlingside, James Mc Murtry and Neko Case. The performances were less politically overt this year, there was a sense that enough had been said and the diversity and inclusiveness of the occasion and the creativity on display was sufficient response to the ugliness, racism and bigotry currently on the march in some parts of the world.

My friend, Slim, got a free weekend pass by volunteering at The Wisdom Tent. All he had to do was turn up once a day and dispense wisdom for an hour. Slim is not a man known for empathy, so his choice of volunteer job surprised me. He could, for example, have volunteered at the recycle stations explaining to people the complex and arcane choices available to them; or perhaps, he could have dressed up in a tutu and sold raffle tickets, all perfectly good options. But no, he had to sit in a hot tent, imposing his gnomic bromides on the defenceless public.

Live from the Wisdom Tent

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(I sat in on one of Slim’s sessions and secretly recorded it. The following is an edited transcript of the recording. Note: Slim sat behind a trestle table, his visitors approached one by one. I did not transcribe the sometimes withering and profane responses to his proffered wisdom.)

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
the secret is……..hang on, is that James McMurtry starting on stage 5?

(male voice) hey man, where are you going, you’re supposed to be here until 4?
(Slim)…you should get rid of those dreads, you’re not from Jamaica.
(male voice)…who was that pot-bellied old fart?

Excerpts From a Long Weekend

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Haiku (conversation overheard in a downtown bar)

he wants to retire
back where all the spires conspire
to show him the way.

Too much of a good thing

summer evening
the red sunset bleeds regret
maturity lost.

Why can’t I write like Rupi Kaur? (1)

my quinoa* quota
was far from quotidian
thanks! sunflower seeds!
*’keen-wah

Climate Change is Opening Windows

rumours dropping from the eaves
neighbours thick as thieves
singing off key at three

o’clock in the morning.

Haiku written while painting a room…

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Haiku written while painting a room…

haiku written while painting a room
searching for a transcendent metaphor
thinking someday maybe I could write
inspirational poetry like rupi kaur

you are
what you
are meant
to be

that kind of thing
do a book signing at Indigo
start a line of greeting cards
anything’s possible, really,
if once, just once I could resist
the impulse to be a smartass
……the haiku:

classic grey, cloud white
super eggshell for the walls
flat for the ceiling.

Collectives

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Collectives

A durante of toucans
A piety of soutanes
A woggle of scouts

A caveat of emptors
A torment of mentors
A loudness of louts

An agenda of schemers
A cumulus of dreamers
A Hamlet of doubts.
Note: Lines 1 and 3 are taken from Wiktionary, Glossary of Collective Nouns

…taking part in Open Link Night at dVerse, check it out here.

Four Lines That Kill Me Every Time (1)

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“There’s flies in the kitchen I can hear ’em there buzzing
And I ain’t done nothing since I woke up today.
How the hell can a person go to work in the morning
And come home in the evening and have nothing to say.”

This is from “Angel from Montgomery” by John Prine……a life in 4 lines, says more than some novels.
There are many versions of this song but one of the best is by Bonnie Raitt and John Prine.

 

The Daily Jolt Lives Another Day (but will England?)

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…..and the Daily Jolt word is “tumultaneous”, meaning “when two tumultuous events occur simultaneously”…

So, for example, if the Conservative government in England was to implode tomorrow over Brexit and at the same time, the English soccer team was to lose to Croatia in the World Cup, those two events would be considered to be “tumultaneous”.

Note: To date, The Daily Jolt (my cynical attempt to boost traffic on my blog) has not been a success that roars,  but still I am enjoying it because I appear to be inspiring myself, self-jolting, so to speak…..

If you are inspired by or use the jolt word, let me know through a comment or link.

 

Waiting for Slim/ Melania’s Cheekbones

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Waiting for Slim

Sunday afternoon in late June
I’m sitting outside The Post-Coital Beetle
watching the traffic on Broadway,
at the next table, four bearded guys
wearing flat caps and plaid shirts,
looking like the bastard sons of Mumford,
are downing pints of over-hopped pale ale.
At the traffic lights, an eighteen year old Asian kid
checks his hair in the rear view mirror
while his Lamborghini growls
like a panther on a leash.
And who is this slouching along Broadway
his bald head shining in the sun?
No, it is not an image out of Spiritus Mundi,
it’s not one of the boys of summer,
it’s Slim,
a man with all the charm of a pit bull with distemper;
his remaining hair is scrunched into an angry man-bun
he’s carrying a magazine
which he slams down on the table in front of me
“Look at this bullshit!” he whines.

Later, as the sun goes down over Point Grey
and automatic timers turn lights
on in empty Styrofoam mansions,
we settle in to a plate of nachos
and one pitcher follows another
until we find ourselves face to face
trading lines like Lennon and McCartney (well, not quite)
and driven by our shared admiration
of Melania Trump’s granite cheekbones
we compose this maudlin cri de couer

Melania
his megalomania
don’t let it stain ya
don’t let it restrain ya
don’t let it contain ya
and if he should fail ya
remember this:
you know the size
of his hands
and his……..

(the last line is drowned out
by the roar of a feral Ferrari
tearing down Broadway).

there is no stopping us…

Ivanka (a slimverse)

Ivanka
no offence
but your dad’s
a wanka.

there was more, but I can’t remember…..

Pigments of the Imagination

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Pigments (2)

Pigments of the Imagination

black crow, a
chunk of white
bread, becomes
an eagle,

pigments in
flight, flying
pigments, yes,
imagine.

….the return of slimverse* after a month of haiku.

* A verse form in which each line can contain only 3 syllables and each verse can contain only 4 lines. In its purest form, there is only one verse, a poetic morsel.

The Daily Jolt Returns for a Day

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The Daily Jolt Returns for a Day

And the Jolt word of the day is: “frumpet”.

This word comes courtesy of Eilene Lyon and is an actual word, she explains it all in her excellent post “La Concion es la Cosa” .

The challenge is to use the word in a post, make up a meaning for it if you like, for example:

A Soccer Hooligan’s Diary

11p.m., a pub somewhere in England

Kev says he fancies a bit of frumpet
says he’s tired of skinny fit girls
says they’re all angles, bone and gristle;
comfort is what Kev wants, comfort.

 

Daily Jolt Update

Response to the last jolt world, “brattitude”, did not exceed my expectations, although the incomparable Steve Simpson did inadvertently use it in a comment on the post. “Incomparable”, see that’s the kind of publicity you get if you participate in The Daily Jolt. So muster up a bit of brattitude and give it a go.

Link your post to this blog or post a comment  with a link to your post, if you like.

Waiting for Summer/Vincent Buckmaster

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Waiting for Summer

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Vincent Buckmaster

At school,
Vincent was known as either “Vince” or “Vinny”.
He does not currently like to be called either.

“Vince” is too rockabilly and rhymes with “wince”.
“Vinny” is too mobster and rhymes with “skinny”.
He is not even that sure about “Vincent”,

but the sonic collision appeals to him
– the chain saw screech of “Vincent”,
the Germanic boom of “Buckmaster” –

This is the way he thinks.

 

The Daily Prompt is dead, long live…..

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The Daily Prompt is dead, long live…..

Suddenly at the end of May, the Daily Prompt disappeared from the blogosphere just when I was getting to know it. Frankly, I miss it. I didn’t respond on a daily basis but every now and then, a prompt would fire my imagination (I can’t get no..) and I would write a poem that I would never have written without that prompt. So here is a haiku to lament the passing of the Daily Prompt.

In Memoriam: the Daily Prompt

left bereft, promptless
stalled and stumped and paralysed
how can we go on?

But all is not lost, I have noticed a few bloggers out there are trying to fill the gap, and I would like to throw my hat into that ring. The difference is I will be offering prompts that are not actual words, but words that I have made up. Today’s word is “brattitude”. As in…..

“The dress has that swaggering catwalk brattitude we have come to expect from a Karl Aufderfelt design.”

Since I do not want to sully the memory of the Daily Prompt, I have struggled to come up with an alternative name. I thought maybe, the Daily Prod, but some of my friends in Belfast might mistake it for a sectarian bulletin. I toyed with the Daily Prick but abandoned it for obvious reasons. I finally settled on the Daily Jolt, like a shot of caffeine, a creative laxative. (This post is like a bowling ball that keeps veering towards the gutter.)
So give it a go, hit me with your best shot, post something inspired by the jolt word “brattitude”, link back to this blog and I will list a link to your post here. Or simply post a comment here.

By the way, it’s very unlikely that I will have the imagination or application to do this on a daily basis, so the Daily Jolt will probably be occasional.