Sometimes, I think
I should text my dad
give him an update
tell him where I’m at.
Not that he would answer
he’s been gone a few years now
and even if he were alive
texting would hardly be his thing;
at the turn of the century
he was still approaching
what we now call a ‘landline’
with some trepidation.
Landline: a rope
uncoiling towards the shore.
He once told me
that when we have children
we begin to understand
our own parents better
so I think my text
would be an attempt
to let him know
that, yes, dad,
I am finding this
to be true.
The theme from Merrill over at dverse is “connections”, so thought I would add this one to the mix.
And your gravity fails and negativity don’t pull you through….Bob Dylan
On March 16, all community center gyms closed down in Vancouver, drastically altering my fitness level. This is the first in a series of gymcentric poems, looking back at a different time (3 months ago!). As that great gymgnostic , Slim Volume, once said; “Know your gym”.
Gravity, Don’t Fail Me Now.
two geezers
pink and steaming
towelling down
after a shower
discussing gravity
how it is not fixed
how it decreases
with distance from the earth’s core
how, if one was to climb to the top of Everest,
since weight is the product of mass and gravity,
one would weigh less at the top of Everest
and I’m thinking this is one fucking erudite conversation
and I want a piece of it
so I point out that
one would regain that weight
on returning to sea level
and one of the geezers replies yeah but you’d probably burn 10,000 calories climbing up and down the fucking mountain
and a nearby jock encased in breathable fabric
says, shit, I’d burn that in 40 minutes on the rowing machine
and I fire back wryly keep telling yourself that
and the locker room erupts in laughter
and in that moment
basking in the unbearable lightness of banter
I defy gravity and levitate
above the bacterial swamp
that is the locker room floor.
wind and fire
earthling, earthenware
is buried in
hearth, dearth, breath
can also be found in
don’t fear the reaper
clear the room
Neanderthal
the Lord’s Prayer;
David Bowie
was the man who fell to earth
Major Tom observed
that planet earth is blue.
Taking part in Open Link Weekend over at earthweal
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.
– the tow-headed carnival barker
leading us always to an empty tent?
– the pointy-headed tyrant
with skin as white as the frozen steppes?
– the lacquered mandarin,
with a talent for oppression?
heroes don’t communicate
through a medium that gets its name
from the sound a small bird makes
heroes don’t arrive in golf carts
heroes don’t arrive in limousine cavalcades
heroes ride in on steeds
metaphorically at least
and those steeds are trusty
that’s all, the colour doesn’t matter.
This is in response to Brendan’s prompt over at earthweal
The prompt is MODERNITY’S HERO QUEST, who will be the knight in shining armour to lead us out of this pandemic into the brave new world. I may have got the intent wrong but as Gilda Radner used to say “never mind”. Either way I encourage you to visit earthweal and take in Brendan’s informative, challenging and entertaining editorials. I know, I know, so many blogs to follow but this one is worth your while and hell, we need blogs that stretch a bit, sometimes haiku just does not cut it.
the sun is setting in the west (no surprises there)
that sundown breeze is blowing white petals like confetti
from the cherry tree into my beer
tap tap tap
behind my back a woodpecker does his nut
on the silver birch tree;
two weeks of sunshine
an indecent amount for Vancouver,
that low spring sun, long shadows,
everything over-lit
like in a David Lynch movie
or The Truman Show
or one of those movies
where humans are being turned into aliens
one by one, and no one knows who the real people are;
a black-capped chickadee hops along the deck rail
bush tits flit from bush to bush
a fat crow waddles across the lawn
like a cardinal across St. Peter’s Square
a blue jay watches from the roof of the garden shed,
and I wonder how do I know all these bird names
I mean, crows, fair enough, but bush tits?
black capped chickadees? Is this the movie
where I wake up and I’m a nature poet
wandering lonely as a cloud,
where I’m from, the clouds are never lonely where the clouds are never lonely
didn’t Bono write a song about that
or was it the streets that were never lonely
anyway, fuck this for a lark
hey, isn’t that a zebra finch?
aren’t they native to Australia?
Taking part in Open Link Weekend over at earthweal.
born identical twins,
they became indentured servants
to Lord Denton,
a wealthy landowner
who believed passionately
in the benefits
of dental care,
consequently
the identical twins
lived a long
indentured life
and never endured
the shining indignity of dentures.
This is one from the Daily Prompt years, the prompt was “identical” !
The mind wanders
I think of a word that rhymes with ‘banker’
and marvel at how
in the middle of a global crisis
my brain still tilts
towards the trivial, the juvenile.
I try a sound poem
panic, pandemic, pandemonium
but it’s missing something,
panache, perhaps.
I make up a joke involving Peter Pan
but decide now is not the time to share it.
I detect the late onset of maturity
and feel depressed.
I text some friends,
we try to out-snide each other
but after a while
we are all chewing on the same bone.
I’m besieged by an idiocy of idioms –
the whole nine yards
the whole kit and caboodle
and that’s only the tip of the iceberg.
I re-assess my relationship with surfaces
I can no longer count on
that counter to lean on,
and as someone inclined
to whistle past the graveyard
walk past the writing on the wall
I have to admit
that the object in the mirror
was a lot closer
than it first appeared.
I write a haiku
four in the morning moon shining on toilet bowl porcelain pathway.
Watch your back! Basho!
Taking part in open link weekend over at earthweal.
the stock markets bounce up and down
like a man who’s landed on a trampoline
landed on a trampoline
from the top of a tall building;
the analysts are nonplussed
nothing adds up
two plus two does not equal four,
only the postman comes to the door
we watch documentaries, comedy specials,
Scandinavian crime dramas cold as an autopsy table
we learn that Miles Davis was a creative genius
an addict and a hard man to live with;
we learn from a childhood friend of Joe Cocker
that as a young boy, Joe had two Weetabix every morning
we watch a Diane Keaton movie
she falls in love with an Irish tramp
and still anxiety crackles like static in the background.
Taking part in Open Link Weekend over at earthweal
the trees look guilty
the ocean is ill at ease
no one’s fault, but still…..
the courts are empty
no tennis ball pock pock pock
Canada geese honk
eagles isolate
my face itches like crazy
demands to be touched
and those ducks, they don’t know squat
about social distancing.
Photo “Social Distancing”
The weekly challenge over at earthweal is to write a poem around the subject: CONNECTING HUMANS, WILDLIFE AND THE CORONA VIRUS. So I thought I would throw in this one. Maybe it’s not the connection intended, but it’s still on subject, I think. Check out Sherry’s excellent post at earthweal
It’s National Poetry Month
and all across the internet
poets are dutifully posting a poem a day,
the blogosphere is loud with words
like babble, ripple, burble, unfurl
glow, glitter, shine, glisten
winds are blowing
suns are setting
dawns are breaking
waves are crashing
on every available shore
and birds, yes, birds
are chirping, trilling, twittering, even singing
nature is under siege
but I have to admit
I’m not up to it
I don’t have the diligence, the discipline
the creative bandwidth
all I want is one clear image
nailed to the page like a proclamation.
poster on the wall
Lennon at a piano
deconstructing Paul.
Perspective
imagine,
you, a frog
down a well,
above you
only sky.
Taking part in open link over at earthweal. This is obviously a re-post, I have not been inside a pub in Kitsilano or anywhere else for a few weeks. I was working on a few pandemic-related poems but it’s hard to keep pace with events.
The moon hung
like a searchlight
in the spangled sky
and we hung
out on
the deck.
A Whiter Shade of Pale
By the time ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’ was recorded in 1967, Bob Dylan had already raised the bar very high in terms of what the public expected from a song lyric; song writers were now expected to be poets. This was a heavy load to carry as few songwriters had Bob’s poetic gift; as a result, bathos was everywhere.
Bathos: “an effect of anticlimax created by an unintentional lapse in mood from the sublime to the trivial or ridiculous”.
There are, as I said, many examples from that era, but the one that always stands out in my mind is from the last four lines of the first verse of ” A Whiter Shade of Pale”:
The room was humming harder
as the ceiling flew away
when we called out for another drink
the waiter brought a tray.
I have to admit that when I first heard this song I had no idea what it was about. Why are sixteen vestal virgins leaving for the coast? What is a vestal virgin anyway? Who is the miller? I still don’t know, but I don’t think it really matters. It’s best to sit back, listen to the song and let your brain feed on the images and in no time at all the room will hum harder, the ceiling will fly away, you’ll think about maybe following the vestal virgins, you’ll skip a light fandango, turn cartwheels across the floor, all the time trying to avoid that waiter and his tray.
Notes:
The recorded version of the song has only two verses, but if you google the lyrics you will find four verses. Procol Harum sometimes included the extra verses in live performances but wisely left them out of the recording; they are not very good and diminish the song’s impact. As Bob Seger once sang:
Well those drifters days are past me now I’ve got so much more to think about Deadlines and commitments What to leave in, what to leave out
Bob Seger, ‘Against the Wind’
“What to leave in, what to leave out” – whether you are writing a song, poem, novel, short story, if you can solve that one you might be on the way to something good!
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.
Todd’s basement materialises
he sees the dark wood veneer panelling,
that tartan colonial sofa his uncle gave him,
the dark patch where his uncle rested his head
still glistening from the oil slick of his uncle’s hair,
in the corner, his wife is playing with an electrical cord.
“Don’t pull the cord, I’m not fully back yet!” Todd screams.
His wife’s voice comes back
a little garbled by the time lag
“I hope you’re going to clean up that damn dust this time”.
Todd returns to the present,
presents himself and sneezes into his sleeve
leaving a black smear on his plaid Mark’s Work Warehouse shirt.
Unknown ramifications
unforeseen outcomes,
that 21st century air
trapped in the time capsule
drops to a lower carbon dioxide concentration
as the capsule travels back in time
the surplus carbon dioxide
reverts to the original carbon
forming a black dust
which coats the inside of the capsule;
thing is, it’s a one way process
no one knows why
“You look like shit”, his wife says
“You look time-wasted, you look timed out,
what happened to your hair?”
Unknown ramifications
unforeseen outcomes
time travel messes with your hair
alters your DNA
deletes your vaccinations
the dangers of rushing a technology to market
too soon.
Todd’s wife grins
“I wasn’t really going to pull the cord”,
she hugs him, grinding slowly
“What did you bring back for me, this time?”
write long poems on short days
short poems on long days
you don’t need a drummer
but you do need rhythm
avoid melodrama
your head cannot explode all the time,
there is uncharted territory
between ecstasy and despair
look after your images
they should splash like cold water
on the reader’s face
observe, always observe.
In the café below
the locals talk about the old times
about Eve and the apple
about Paradise lost
about how all the bottles
washed up on the shore
carry the same message.
pelicans plummet into the bluebottle sea sting rays undulate
out on the coral reef
tiny organisms
fret about climate change
and that damn carbonic acid
I fink the pH is dropping, I really do
meanwhile, over in San Pedro
on the Redneck Riviera
hermetically sealed resorts
march north towards Mexico
and thin, blond soccer moms
mingle with sun-damaged matrons
dedicated to the preservation
of floral print muumuus.
in the café below, Bob Marley’s still jammin’.
This poem has had a few lives. Participating in open link over at earthweal. Head over and check out Brendan’s thought provoking and eloquent post .
