A Man for all Seasonings
he was a tautology
an oxymoron
a figure of speech
a prognostic
an atheist
he beggared belief
he was terminally contradictory
though he would say
he was not
he was a man for all seasonings
except paprika
…bergamot.
For John D.
fecund, moribund, quincunx
fecund moribundity
moribund fecundity
rhizome, rissole, piss-hole in the snow
phenom, pheromone, genome
lissom, blossom, possum.
This poem is all about sound, association and perhaps, memory. The first three lines are an homage to the sound of ‘un’. The phrase -“fecund moribundity, moribund fecundity” – was uttered by my friend, John Damery (John D.) during a discussion about the music of Neil Diamond – his oeuvre, his place in the pantheon. This was some time ago but it has always stuck in my head, it has a brevity and clarity that could only have been brought on by the consumption of 5 or 6 pints and the ingestion of greasy chicken. After a long legal battle (not really) he has recently granted me permission to use it in a poem.
The fourth line is the workhorse of the poem, the engine, the poem’s midfield general. It inverts the ‘mo’ from the first 3 lines to create the ‘om’ that dominates the last two lines. it also introduces ‘iss’ which makes an appearance in the last line. As for “piss-hole in the snow”, I defy anyone to find a finer example of bathos . The fifth line is all about ‘om” but note the clever inversion back to ‘mo’ in ‘pheromone’.
The sixth and last line has a slick softness to it like blancmange. As promised the ‘iss’ from ‘rissole’ and ‘piss-hole’ makes an appearance before morphing into ‘oss’ and in a final stroke of nothing that remotely approaches genius, the transformation of ‘om’ into ‘um’.
Notes:
quincunx (a word that flirts with obscenity):
an arrangement of five objects with four at the corners of a square or rectangle and the fifth at its centre, used for the five on dice or playing cards, and in planting trees.
rhizome:
a continuously growing horizontal underground stem that puts out lateral shoots and adventitious roots at intervals.
Both words were used in an article in the Irish Times on the poetry of Seamus Heaney, sent to me by John D; ‘Cartesian dualism’ and ‘Binarism’ were also mentioned (and Jesus wept).
rissole:
a compressed mixture of meat and spices, coated in breadcrumbs and fried.
My mom used to make them, although I remember them as being more like a hamburger patty without the bun…thanks, mom!
Photo: English Bay, Vancouver, A-MAZE-ING LAUGHTER, by Yue Minjun.
Taking part in Open Link over at dverse.
This is also for Glenn Buttkus who passed away recently. Glenn was a regular contributor to dverse. He was an excellent poet and a man who liked edge.
Delilah
My friend, Slim Volume,
had a girlfriend once.
called Delilah.
The relationship did not last long
and it wasn’t exactly a passionate affair,
mostly they just liked to watch television together.
I’d say hey Slim, what are you up to this weekend?
and he’d reply with an I’m glad you asked grin
Samsung and Delilah, he’d say
Samsung and Delilah.
it came as a gift
now it sits in the corner
like a sulky child
demanding attention
later…
you learn that
on a trip to the Arctic
frost bit the tip
of Harry’s todger
making him a
not so jolly Roger
a less than artful dodger
when he’s an old codger
he will remember
the day he froze
his dingus, his dong
his John Thomas
his todger
but for now his royal cannon
is just, well,
tabloid fodder.
Oprah among the Chickens
As I watched Oprah, Harry and Meghen
standing among the chickens
standing at the epicenter of an event
that sent shock waves
throughout the free world
I asked myself this question:
Is a rescue chicken
a chicken that has been rescued by people
or is it a chicken that rescues people?
I then asked myself another question:
How many Royals does it take to change a light bulb?
and a voice answered:
It’s a journey.
They must first acknowledge
that the light bulb
was the source of the light
that previously flooded the room
then and only then
is change possible.
Porcelain, Puppy Chow and Prince Harry (or The Ginger Vision)
You’re walking through your kitchen
looking for some granol’
when you do a Prince Harry
and land on your dog’s feeding bowl.
You’re lying there in the porcelain and the Puppy Chow
bruised, confused and cursing your luck
when Prince Harry appears and says:
Hey, you could put this in a book.
Hurricane Donald
What mighty wind blows hard out of Mar-A-Lago
up-ending facts like trailers in a trailer park
ripping the roofs off reputations
revealing the gyrations in the bedrooms below
hailing down bombast and innuendo
on the corrugated tin of truth
a wind that makes Ian and Fiona
look like that nice Scottish couple across the road
(Is she Irish?), the ones you should invite over for dinner
or is it just a storm in a tumbler
is it just Donald raving
in the cocktail hour of his years.
Taking part in Open Link Weekend over at earthweal
Loose Thoughts About Change
doom has a harbinger
death has an angel
change has an agent;
if the winds of change are blowing,
staying inside is always an option;
to embrace change
put your hand in your pocket.
Goodbye Boris, Goodbye Liz, Hello Rishi!
I have to say
as an Irish person
how proud and honored I am
that the United Kingdom has appointed a prime minister
whose first name is an anagram of “Irish”;
I know we and the English have had our troubles in the past
Troubles with a capital T
(the Plantation of Ulster…don’t get me started)
but the English are subtle people
not given to public displays of emotion
and this gesture is quintessentially English in its subtlety
it’s as if they are saying thank you for Father Ted
it brings a tear to my eye
it takes the oatmeal biscuit
so “Hello Rishi”
as they say in Ireland
“buachaill inniu, fear amarach”
or loosely translated from the Gaelic
“I hope your politics change soon”.
Taking part in OpenLink over at dverse
Photo : statue of Oscar Wilde in Merrion Square, Dublin.
Repartee
Slim gets off the no.3 bus
at the corner of Hastings and Main
-the corner of Desperate and Lost-
having travelled east on the 99 express,
his nose stuck in the feral stink
of some guy’s armpit,
wishing, not for the first time,
that he was six inches taller.
A country lyric twangs in his head
something about “the losing side of town”.
He surveys the wreckage all around him:
a guy with a raw scabrous face
scratches frantically;
a bundle of rags twitches in a doorway;
people are scurrying back and forth
like they’ve received a message
from an alien dispatcher
that the mother ship has landed,
and they can’t find a toothbrush;
further on in a laneway that smells of piss
a man and a woman, both dressed in black
with sweating raddled faces
sway back and forth shouting:
Fuck you! No! Fuck you!
in a profane loop.
Repartee, Slim says,
to no one in particular,
what an unexpected bonus.
This poem first appeared in The Galway Review
Taking part in OpenLink over at dverse
The Reverend George Weeble
The Reverend George Weeble
liked to visit churches
in foreign lands,
his parishioners called him:
the steeplechaser.
When I’m old and feeble,
George Weeble said,
when I retire, George Weeble said,
I want to be
where the spires conspire
to show me the way.
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.
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
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.
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!
Relatives
Slim* has an aunt and uncle
who fight all the time
like Simon and Garfunkel
they have a son
who looks like
Russ Kunkel
the session drummer
who played with,
among others,
Joni Mitchell
and, yes,
Art Garfunkel.
Slim also has a cousin
who likes to snorkel,
at the local swimming pool.
She is constantly amazed
at how pale the human body looks
when viewed under water.
I’m amazed at how pale
the human body looks
when viewed under water
she says,
every time she returns
from the pool
her name is Rachel
Rachel, who likes to snorkel.
*aka Slim Volume, real name Reginald Dwight…..not really, think that’s Elton John’s real name. For more about Slim, see here.
Scenes from a Restaurant in the Time Between Variants
the guys from finance
hold their wine glasses by the stem
and every now and again
they do that swirl and sniff thing
the girl in the tight dress
is two drinks away
from feeling comfortable
a couple out on their first date
have discovered too late
that they have nothing to say to each other
the long evening yawns before them
the bathroom door bursts open
two bros wearing dark suits
and built like refrigerators
emerge, their eyes pulsing
with guilty energy
it’s happy hour
cocktails are fifty per cent off
and all the cocktails have jokey names
Insane Moose
Milantini
Rogue Zamboni
nothing on the menu escapes description
the Market Crashin’ IPA
has a dry hopped finish with a touch of citrus
the Failed Priest Sauvignon Blanc
is full bodied with gooseberry and melon grace notes
and that beet and feta salad we’ve ordered
just happens to be a personal favorite of our waitress
she loves that hint of sourness
the cheese brings to the dish
she’s a dancer, by the way,
lived for a while in Saskatoon.
Taking part in Open Link over at dverse.
Bucket List (a ghazal)
mountain climbing in County Meath
put it on my bucket list
fly fishing in the Sahara
put it on my bucket list
snow shoeing in the Serengeti
put it on my bucket list
surfing in Saskatchewan
put it on my bucket list
stop hiding behind a shield of sarcasm
Really? Put that on my bucket list?
write a ghazal about everlasting love
aw fuck it, put it on my bucket list
stop peppering my poems with profanity
that’s a prohibition, it has no place on the list.
NaPoWriMoan (Day 11)
NaPoWriMo
eleven days in
and I have nothing to show
last night I rummaged through abandoned shoeboxes
in the dusty attic of my mind
(I apologize for those last two lines)
and there’s nothing there, bro
there’s nothing there………bro
I’m moving in slow mo
I’ve lost my mojo
my get up and go
I have met my Alamo
or is it Waterloo?
I’m running on empty
no quid pro quo
NaPoWriMo
NaPoWriMo
nineteen days to go
nineteen days to go.
Couple rushing from a Parked Car carrying Yellow Yoga Mats
late for yoga class
I’m like, how stressful is that?
stop panting, breathe, breathe.
Animal Magnetism
he had no animal magnetism
he was the kind of guy
who would have a hard time
getting a dog to hump his leg
then one fall day it happened
in a leaf-strewn park
a cocker spaniel
love at first bark
they’ve been together ever since.
Poetic Ailments
irritable vowel syndrome
arrhythmia
pain in the assonance
acute enjambment
inflammation of the lower case
latinnittus
typographical dysfunction
fear of sonnets
halibunions
grammaroids
rhymetism
pundruff
the irrational fear
on entering a room
that someone is going to recite
The Lake Isle of Inisfree
in a plummy, orotund
stage Irish accent.
Taking part in Open Link Weekend over at earthweal.
The Ghost Of Hangovers Past
Your cell phone rings
but you’re not listening
because you left it
in The Fox and Vixen
behind the cistern
in the last stall on the left
next to the condom machine
and now it’s 4 am
your wife sleeps soundly beside you,
in the corner of the room
your hangover squats
sorting a tray of instruments.
It all began with a few beers,
some Christmas Cheer
so how did it get
from there to here?
Slowly you remember or think you remember….
Did you really poke your boss in the chest
and tell him that you know better
that you know best?
Did you really down three shots of scotch
grab Mark from marketing by the shoulders
and proclaim “I love you bro”
over and over ‘till he begged you to stop
to let go?
And why, why, why
did you call that shy Dutch girl from accounting
“sad-eyed lady of the lowlands”
again, over and over?
You groan inwardly
you groan outwardly
and just when you think
it could not get worse
your hangover stands up
and crosses the room
carrying what appears to be
a small mallet
Zooooosh,
he enters your head
and proceeds to knock on the inside of your skull
with that same mallet
all the time chanting this manic mantra
“deck the halls with human folly
Fa la la la la, la la la la”.
Four hours later your wife is shaking you
Up you get, she chimes
It’s time to do some Christmas shopping!
Joe Fresh opens at 9!
Taking part in Open Link over at dverse.
This poem first appeared in Sarah Connors advent calendar 2020. Check out Sarah’s 2021 calendar here,
A post from the time before the time.
We got off the train from Machu Picchu at the Ollantaytambo station, walked up the station road to the town square and came upon this: Mother’s Day in Ollantaytambo. It went on all day – entertainment, raffles, prizes, politicians’ speeches. The ladies seemed to enjoy themselves, although they never clapped once.
Later that evening, we had dinner in the restaurant down at the station and walking home we witnessed this haiku-worthy scene.
Station Road
I
Two black dogs humping
a puzzled white terrier
on the station road.
II
Puzzled about what?
about the expectations
of the dog in front.
photo by Marie Feeney
Taking part in Open Link over at dverse.
Hal The Halibunist Looks Back On His Long Career
halibuns about Haliburton
halibuns about halitosis
halibuns about Halle Berry
halibuns about Halley’s Comet
halibuns about Spiritus Mundi
halibuns about Rosamund Pike
halibuns about Solomon Grundy
halibuns just for the fun of it
halibuns at Sun Dance
halibuns in Halifax
halibuns about halibut
halibundance
halibundance
halibundance.
Taking part in Open Link over at dverse.
Stopdraggingthepanda 