up on Dunbar Street the barber shops are empty a guy smokes a joint
and laughs hysterically at the blank screen of his phone
when asked if the melon is ripe the girl behind the counter at the Chinese-Canadian Deli sniffs the pale green globe, shakes her head and pointing to a small beige circle, says:
this is the melon’s bottom the melon is ripe, when the bottom smells sweet.
outside the traffic stalls on Dunbar Street
Sherry over at earthweal asks us: “Tell us about the places you hold most dear in the corner of the planet where you live. Share them with us; let us see them through your eyes and your words”.
I live just off Dunbar Street and to be honest, the street is more than a tad prosaic, even if the real estate pamphlets call it “bucolic”. But if I don’t put Dunbar in a poem, who’s going to? So these are two slices of Dunbar life. By the way, for some reason, there are more barber shops on Dunbar than the population could possibly need.
a raven rising above the trees seen from a boat on the swirling river leads the tracker to the bodies
**
avoid foliage excessive leafiness too many trees the reader needs to see the poem
** The leaves on the trees bordering the soccer field have abandoned that chlorophyll thing and are leaking yellows and red like a paint store catalogue
**
The sun drops behind the ridge of the house the wind goes crazy in the trees, the moth balls smell like halitosis on the warm neurotic breeze.
**
Paradise as advertised: a coral reef a bluebottle sea sting rays undulating pelicans plummeting palm trees swaying in the reggae breeze
**
Life’s like that from time to time you bark up the wrong one.
Brendan over at earthweal asks us to ” spend some time and thought in our hearts with trees, for nurture, communication, grace and grief. You decide.” I’m not much of a nature poet so I searched my blog for references to trees and came up with the above collage (?).
Ingrid Wilson of Experiments in Fiction has put together a collection of poems called The Athropocene Hymnal (63 poems in all, from 34 poets). Publication date is July 24th. Many of the poets, including myself are regular contributors to the blog earthweal. I have 2 poems in the collection (thanks, Ingrid, for including me!). All profits from the sale of the book will go to the World Wild Life Fund. So be sure to check out Ingrid’s blog on July 24th!
Brendan over at earthweal has published an interview with Ingrid and also more details about the publication, so check out Brendan’s post here.
The collage on the cover was contributed by the very talented Kerfe Roig.
In his earthweal prompt this week, Brendan says :
For this week’s challenge, let’s take up her (Ingrid’s) call and write a poem of the Anthropocene which does not compromise.
This is a poem I wrote a while back (it appeared before on earthweal) and previously published on this blog, but think it fits the challenge.
Fracking Song
You’re standing on the corner Watching the trucks go rolling past Pumping out their diesel fumes Pumping out that carbon gas
It’s the middle of winter And it’s twenty below And that gas just sits there With nowhere to go.
Something’s wrong in the valley Babies stillborn Ten in one year And they call that the norm
Something’s wrong in the valley Something toxic in the ground Something wrong in the valley Since the frackers came to town.
That rock’s been down forever With its hydrocarbon payload When they blow it all apart They can’t control where it goes
And that water that’s left standing Evaporating in the sun The residue will be with us Long after they are gone
Something’s wrong in the valley Babies stillborn Ten in one year And they call that the norm
Something’s wrong in the valley Something toxic in the ground Something wrong in the valley Since the frackers came to town.
You can blame the politicians The special interests groups Blame the fracking company They all don’t give a fuck
There’s only one thing they understand One thing that they know Keep riding that fossil fool train As far as it will go.
There’s something wrong in the valley Babies stillborn Placentas like ribbons And they call that the norm
Something’s wrong in the valley Something toxic in the ground Something wrong in the valley Since the frackers came to town
I’m standing in the liquor store staring at a bottle of Pinot Grigio when Wild Thing by the Troggs comes on the store speakers and I’m thinking, to quote Leonard, that song is a shining artifact of the past and just as I’m thinking that one of the Troggs launches into a bizarre ocarina solo and I turn around to find myself face to face with a large blue and yellow parrot perched on the leather-gloved hand of a lady who has seen hippier times never at a loss for words, I say, “that’s a nice parrot” and the lady says “I have three more at home one of them is a real man-hater but this one here is my favowite he’s a vewy, vewy, vewy nice pawwot” she says, nuzzling the parrot, nose to beak the parrot inflates its technicolor plumage let’s out an almighty squawk and displays its full wing span and I’m thinking “Wow, there’s a ocarina solo in the middle of Wild Thing, who’s that on ocarina I think it’s the lead singer what was his name, Reg Presley, I think, yeah, that’s it Reg Presley.”
Taking part in Open Link Weekend over at earthweal.
Write a dream poem using its language and rhetoric and dark sense. What moony light does it cast on the day? If you care, add to the poem or a note with any associations from waking life that the dream seems to be commenting on. If the dream is your unconscious speaking to you, what is it trying to help your waking writing mind to see?
My sister died recently after a very short illness. She was the eldest, there are six of us. I had the dream described in the above poem around the time she died. A family , particularly a large family is, in some ways, a collection of vantage points and we lost our top vantage point, the one who had seen it all. Now five seems like a very small number.
Hiram likes to drink water direct from the spigot on the front wall of his house; he hasn’t had to connect a hose to that darn spigot since he converted the lawn to artificial. Good times. In the evening, he sits on his porch staring out at the Christmas tree green of the lawn drinking lite beer and polishing his assault rifle, this gives him comfort.
Not that he’s afraid, he ain’t afraid of nuthin’, he ain’t afraid of AOC he ain’t afraid of Antifa he ain’t afraid of that girl from Sweden the one that never smiles he’s vigilant, that’s all; vigilance is of the essence. He likes the sound of that, maybe get a T shirt made put that on the front, ‘G.I. – God Incarnate’ on the back.
No, he ain’t afraid of nuthin’, but sometimes in the early hours of the morning he lies awake his gut gurgling like a drain as it processes the Outback appetizer of deep fried onion rings that the waitress piled high on his plate like a jumble sale of used Olympic symbols; he lies awake stalked by a fear he will not name the fear of being left behind, left in the dust, by the twenty first century.
This week I’m hosting the weekly challenge over at Earthweal (Title “Fiction? Don’t be a Stranger”). So head on over there and prepare to be challenged.
By the time religion got to me all the joy had been filtered out too many censorious priests, too many soporific sermons too many cavernous churches with names like St. Michael’s, St. Theresa’s, St Ann’s, too many saints. Why, even my white Y front underwear had a saint’s name on the tag, St. Bernard. His name was also on my vests, my shirts, my pajamas; I just couldn’t get St. Bernard off my back. Where I found my true congregation was on Sunday afternoons with my dad, my uncle, my brother, my older sister on the terraces at Milltown watching Shamrock Rovers play. There were binaries there too heaven was a victory and while defeat wasn’t exactly hell it cast a pall over Sunday tea, a pall that was quickly relieved by the sugar high from the flotilla of cakes my mother had been baking since Saturday afternoon. Now St. Bernard has been replaced by someone called Denver Hayes. I doubt if Denver is a saint and I’m fine with that underwear should be secular joy, unconfined.
The prompt from Brendan over at earthweal is to write a Michealmas Festival poem. This poemreally doesn’t do the prompt justice, but it’s the poem that the prompt prompted.
Also taking part in Open Link Night over at dverse
The signs along the highway
are leaking semiotic fluid
psychotic cacti strike a calculated pose
linguistic lizards parse the parched desert floor
Slim’s feeling demotic,
neurotic, anecdotal, over-used
he’s looking for a sanctuary
the fisherman and the shoes
he’s got those
needle in a haystack
peripatetic blues.
This is a response to Brendan’s challenge over at earthweal ……..The Perilous Chapel
“This week’s challenge is about finding that Chapel and a way through it. Where have you found it, what perils did you endure, how is it linked to the Grail you seek? What is that poetry? And what initiation is required to transform modernity into Earthdom?”
The poem above is an edit of a previous post, it’s more about the journey than the arrival…..here’s another take
The Road (re-mix)
the sun beats down like judgement
on the armor-plated road
you just called out God and the Devil
and neither of them showed
there’s a sour smell of whiskey sweat
on the air-conditioned air
sometimes you think you care too much
and sometimes you just don’t care
in a dream you see an angel
an angel with a gun
you’re five miles outside of nowhere
and you’re stuck inside a song.
Between the caucus and the carcass
between the chaos and the calm
between the fracas and the ruckus
between the righteous and the damned
Between the priest and the sermon
between the singer and the song
no one can determine
why we all can’t get along
Between the question and the answer
there is a life time of space
between the dance and the dancer
there is beauty and there is grace
Everyone’s
got something to bring
affect one thing
affect one thing
Everyone’s
got something to bring
affect one thing
affect one thing.
It’s Open Link Weekend over at earthweal, so I thought I would re-post this one. Be sure to check out earthweal, always something interesting going on there!
If it’s getting stormier
and it surely is
then we have to put a bit more work
into naming those storms
I mean to say, c’mon now,
Storm Dennis?
Dennis is a guy who wears cardigans
and washes his car every Sunday.
Margaret Thatcher’s husband
was called Dennis –
Storm Margaret
now there’s a storm,
a storm full of righteous certainty
levelling working class towns
circumnavigating domiciles of the rich.
How about Storm Boris
a tropical storm perhaps
full of hot air and bluster
a flatulent tail wind
or to switch professions and countries
Storm Janis
now there’s a storm to rip the roofs of houses
flatten whole trailer parks
transport cows to far off fields
or Storm Aretha
a storm that demands respect
sock it to me
anything but Dennis
side-parted, brilliantined, undershot Dennis.
How Myron found himself in the parking lot
of the Holiday Inn in Idabel, Oklahoma
looking out at the road
on a Saturday morning in April
– after a breakfast of brittle bacon,
sausages slick with grease,
dry fluorescent scrambled eggs –
is not important.
The road pauses, a skittish dog roams.
Myron’s eyes are drawn to a dead armadillo
upside down on the hard shoulder
an empty beer can in its claws:
Old Milwaukee, prehistoric drunk,
someone’s joke.
A pick up truck passes
a pick up truck passes
a pick up truck passes
over the fence a cow chews grass
and makes a meal of it.
Dogwoods bloom.
The cow moos like a reluctant foghorn.
Myron’s mood turns
he thinks about the cow,
Manifest Destiny,
the plight of the bison
our lust for red meat
while greenhouse gas
shimmies upwards
ice caps melt
glaciers retreat
and looking down
the road to Shreveport
buoyed by the prospect
of seeing Idabel
in his rear-view mirror
he quietly resolves
to recover what he was
before sadness lodged
like a wet sack
in the back
of his head.
This poem originally appeared in issue 38 of The SHOp poetry magazine (print) which was a fine magazine, unfortunately they closed up shop a few years ago.
Taking part in earthweal open link weekend, head over there and read Brendan’s very eloquent and comprehensive post on climate change.
This is my third in a series of climate change related posts, it wasn’t planned that way, but I guess that’s the way the wind is blowing this week!
What’s that?…….no, no, it’s all rubbish,
climate change is a Deep State hoax.
By the way, forgot to mention
I have some ocean front for sale in Florida,
are you interested?
I hear you’re a good swimmer.
Ha, that’s just a joke,
God controls the climate
the rivers, lakes and seas.
Look what he did for Moses.
Our local preacher has a direct line,
just send a donation
before he gets arrested.
Joking again! Those rumours
are just not true.
Besides, our supreme leader, Donald, says
we are going to have a great climate
the best climate ever.
Do you know any Dutch people?
They’re good at handling all this water stuff.
Another thing, does anyone else
really miss the dinosaurs?
I had this rubber brontosaurus
when I was kid, I kind of liked it,
a velociraptor too…where was I?
Yes, this oceanfront property in Florida
it comes with a row boat.
The word of the week over at earthweal is water. Got the idea for this poem while reading Sarahsouthwest’s poem “Water Again”.
Also participating in open link night over at dverse.
