not the kind of place for revelations, then boom! awooga! there it is, the unbearable flatness of beige pancakes in the morning.
Over at dverse , Grace’s challenge is to write a wayra incorporating onomatopoeia. What’s a wayra? I’ll let Grace explain:
“The Wayra (Quechua – wind) is a popular verse form of Peru and Bolivia. It appears it originated in an indigenous Quechua language but has found its way into Spanish literature. It is a short syllabic verse form found at Vole Central and some other sites around the internet.
The elements of the Wayra are:
1.a pentastich, a poem in 5 lines. 2.syllabic, 5-7-7-6-8 3.unrhymed.”
Given the week that it is, I decided to bring this poem back from the dead…..
Thom Yorke takes a walk on Halloween Night
The dead move slowly
through the graveyard,
they are few at first
but as they pass
each row of headstones
grey fists punch
through mounds of earth
in a manic salute
and the throng grows
and the throng grows
and the night howls
and the fog curls
and a thin cloud
bisects the moon
and at the edge
of the graveyard
is an old well
and at the bottom
of that well
is a little boy
and that little boy
is crying for help
and that little boy
is Thom Yorke
it’s a name that you come across
in someone else’s bathroom
beside the shaving cream
the Tylenol
and those pills that people use
and suddenly
you’re soaked
in melancholy
from your head
down to your shoes
there ain’t no doubt about it
there ain’t no doubt about it
you’ve got those Estee Lauder blues.
that’s what Myron’s mother called him – a reasonable facsimile , of his brother, that is, in that his brother was preternaturally unreasonable if his brother was the weather his mother said he would be deemed unseasonable his actions were incomprehensible reprehensible, irredeemable so based on the principle that no praise is too faint Myron was amenable to being called a reasonable facsimile of his brother.
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 (?).
Sarah over at dverse asks us to write about things that creep and crawl, so I thought I would resurrect these two poems. (The one below was inspired by a fly that appeared on Mike Pence’s head during a vice presidential debate back in the glory days of demagoguery.)
The Fly on Top of Mike Pence’s Head Speaks
It’s so white up here. What’s that fragrance? Is it Rogaine? Is it piety? Is it Rogaine and piety? You seem a little nervous around the women folk, Mike. Can I recommend a good conditioner?
Listening to alt country on Spotify I begin to wonder….
who are all these country boys
with their cowboy hats, pickup trucks and beards
staring clint-eyed into the mythical distance
listening for the call of who knows what
a phantom cattle drive, perhaps,
anything at all to git them
back on the road again;
and who are all these country girls
left behind or waiting
and why the hell do they care
about these feckless drifters
who love their whiskey
as much as they dread commitment
and why does all this happen in Texas?
rhymes and tropes, folks
rhymes and tropes
and slowly through
a Spotify fog
a Spotify trance
in the distance
a song emerges…..
Five Miles Outside of Austin
I’m five miles outside of Austin
with a pounding in my head
full of yesterday’s whiskey
and wishing I was dead
I left a girl back there sleeping
as dawn began to break
I gave her all that I could give
and I took all I could take
and I wish I had done better
that I hadn’t stayed so long
now I’m five miles outside of Austin
and I’m stuck inside this song.
Five miles outside of Austin
and I’m stuck inside this song.
II
Down the road, a girl is waiting,
drinking beer and playing pool
waiting for deliverance
waiting for another fool
and I’ll dust the road off of my coat
and walk through that door
she’ll say “howdy stranger,
I ain’t seen you before”
but now my head is beating like a bass drum
there’s stubble on my tongue
I’m five miles outside of Austin
and I’m stuck inside this song
Five miles outside of Austin
and I’m stuck inside this song.
Photo (by Marie Feeney) of Lukas Nelson and Neil Young at Desert Trip
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.
Eat your heart out! Basho!
Victoria over at dverse asks us to write a soliloquy incorporating one or more poetic devices, this one is heavy on alliteration with a bit of internal rhyme. It was previously published here, mid- pandemic last year.
Back in the time before the time, the Poets’ Circle would hold a meeting every April to honor TS Eliot, the theme was always the same, “April just got crueler”. No alcohol was served. The last meeting, before the pandemic, took place at the house of The Accomplished Poet in West Point Grey. His wife, Cheryl served her asparagus quiche, by far the highlight of the evening. At the invitation of The Accomplished Poet, The Academic Poet read his 40 verse poem about the Canadian Constitution and afterwards spoke for an hour about the making of the poem and his creative process. He wore, as always, a Mountain Equipment Co-Op black fleece vest, a pale blue button down shirt, a pair of Khaki pants with more pockets than any normal human being could use, and a pair of Merrill hiking shoes. His creative process? He, apparently, decided at the outset on a six line verse with an ABABCC rhyming scheme and added the restriction that he would only use rhymes that had never been used before in an English language poem, a daunting task, as you can imagine. However, being a professor of literature at a local university, he had his resources and with the help of a few grants, he had a group of his students devise a computer program that would check all his rhymes for originality. This involved compiling a data bank of all the rhymes in English Literature, a process that took ten years and an ever changing band of students. In the end meaning and clarity had to take a back seat and the resulting poem turned out to be a real head scratcher, a masterpiece of obfuscation delivered in a dry monotone. Did I mention that there was no alcohol at the event? Slim and I got out of there as fast as we could and headed for The Post-Coital Beetle. Being April, both the hockey season and the European soccer competitions were reaching their climax, so the Beetle was crowded and raucous. All the screens were on and everyone was eager to take in the final stretch before the boredom and blandness of summer sports. Slim and I got a booth in the corner, ordered a plate of nachos and a pitcher of Blue Buck Ale and settled in. It was hot in the room, and Slim’s bald head was shining, he took off his jacket to reveal a white tee shirt with the following message on the front: U is at? Is u at? At issue? Is it u? The third and fourth lines of the message were on a different plane because of Slim’s stomach which is about the size of a regulation soccer ball. So the effect was almost cubist, images stealthily approaching the eye. “Slimverse at its minimalist best”, I say to Slim, “what a relief!” We both grin smugly and wax snide at The Academic Poet’s expense. The evening stretches before us like a drunk laid out on a pavement. Two pitchers in, our syllable count rises and we compose this haiku about the real estate bubble in Vancouver. The bubble is always either forming or bursting.
white Lexus on lease new suit, shoes, two day stubble bubble? What bubble?
Then cut free from the 12 syllable bonds of slimverse we write another:
cherry blossoms bloom well-dressed ladies from Beijing pose with hand on hip
The bar erupts, a goal has been scored. Is it hockey? Is it soccer? Slim and I don’t care, we are gorging on syllables. We expectorate another haiku
cherry blossoms bloom the air is sticky with greed houses, for sale, sold.
We pause. The nachos are gone, except for a few crumbs. The remains of the guacamole are slowly oxidizing in the bowl. The second pitcher is all but drained. In the hockey game, the goalie has been pulled. We manage a final push and the last haiku comes out screaming.
Then nothing, a guilty silence, the feeling that we had betrayed our mission, that the future of slimverse was threatened, in doubt. We drain our glasses, get up and head out into the spring night. I walk to the bus stop for the 99 express heading west. Slim walks to the bus stop for the 99 express heading east. It will be a number of months before we meet again.
Dried out cylinders of Canada goose shit dot the blond grass like discarded cigarillos sailboats scud across ruffled water gulls engage in glaucous caucus (Ok, that was a bit much) and the sand, the sand is busy stowing away in pockets, shoes, swimming trunks, ear drums boldly going where no sand has gone before and still the pandemic lingers like that unwanted house guest you thought had left but no, no, no, there he is drunk, snoring and flatulent stretched out on your basement floor.
Taking part in Open Link Weekend over at earthweal
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?”
“conjure an imaginary house of any size, any place, any age fill it with an imaginary person/people past or present, or ghosts, or leave it empty with its history make it literal but move into the metaphorical if you wish”
the bark of broken mufflers pickup trucks idle at the Starbuck’s drive through air con running a gang of bikers middle-aged and leather clad roar up the coastal highway
it’s been a long hot summer fun fun fun in the pandemic pause (is this the real life is this just fantasy?) and yes, it’s hot but it’s a guilty heat and there’s the nagging feeling that the future has arrived too early
that science fiction has become fact
smoke from forest fires silts the lungs of the town Daddy never did take the T Bird away.
(songs quoted and misquoted in the poem: “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen and “Fun! Fun! Fun! by the Beach Boys)
He weighs about 300 lbs is wearing a cowboy hat and an XXXL tee-shirt, made by an underpaid worker in a communist country.
This paragon of rugged individualism this zaftig freedom fighter this ersatz John Wayne is telling the interviewer he doesn’t believe in vaccination passports
because, you know, I mean it’s a threat to our personal freedom if we go down that road what’s next
and I’m thinking yes there are slopes out there and yes they are slippery what next indeed… driver’s licenses birth certificates visas to enter countries security checks in airports customs concealed weapons licenses
but most of all I’m thinking God help the horse God help the horse.
Taking part in Open Link Weekend over at earthweal
The other day I came across the word ‘runcible’ as in ‘runcible spoon’.
The word was invented by Edward Lear as in ‘The Owl and the Pussycat’.
There is something risible about the word ‘runcible’ as in ‘laughter provoking’ which is different than ‘laughable’, ‘laughable’ has connotations of contempt as in ‘derisible’ meaning ‘worthy of derision’, ‘derisible’ is almost an anagram of ‘desirable’ but back to ‘runcible’, there is a great bounce, a great versatility to the word:
he walked out the morning after humming a runcible tune
he had a runcible air about him an odour that lingered long after he had left the room.
the sun rose, red and runcible in a diffident sky
I once spent the best part of six hour plane journey trying to describe the sunrise. There was no inflight entertainment, I could have used the downloadable app but I couldn’t imagine watching out of date Jason Bateman movies for 6 hours on my phone, so I had picked up a Craig Johnson novel, The Cold Dish, to get me through the flight. This is the first novel in the Walt Longmire series. Walt is a sheriff in modern day Absaroka County, Wyoming. His wife has been dead 4 years and his life is a bit of a mess but there are various people looking out for him including his best friend, Henry Standing Bear. I know what you are thinking – an American law man with a Native American sidekick!! Anyway Craig Johnson navigates this well enough. There are a number of women in Walt’s life, including his daughter Cady, his dispatcher Ruby, a café owner Dorothy, Vic –his deputy, and Vonnie – a romantic interest. Vonnie is rich, beautiful, and troubled. They are all strong women and they don’t take no shit from Walt. Walt is at Henry’s bar talking to Vonnie when he gets a call from Vic that a body has been found in a gulley up in the mountains. Walt heads to the scene, the body is hard to get at and the crime scene is complicated by the fact that a herd of sheep has surrounded the body, shat upon it and chewed at the clothes. The body turns out to be Cody Pritchard, a local boy who was involved in the rape of a girl from the reservation and got off lightly. It’s early morning by the time the crime scene has been secured and there is this moment after a long night where Walt, the narrator, says : “I gazed back up to the patch of sage and scrub weed and watched the sun free itself from the red hills”. This is what amazes me about novelists, they have to handle character, plot, dialogue and create a world for characters to inhabit, for events to occur and they still find time to come up with lines like I have just quoted. So that was it for me, I spent the rest of the flight trying to come up with different ways to describe the sunrise.
As for the book, it’s well worth a read. Craig Johnson creates believable characters, characters to care about, to root for and the whole thing meanders along laconically with lots of witty banter and joshing – the kind of joshing you would find in a small town cafe at 10 in the morning, one of those cafes with gingham tables and a robust waitress with chemically damaged hair who won’t take any shit from the bunch of plaid shirted retired guys who turn up every morning to shoot the breeze.
the sun rose, red and runcible in a diffident sky .
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.
They’re taking photographs down by the water in front of the cubist whale float planes take off from the harbor the mountains slumber in the morning haze.
Inside the convention center paragraphs of opaque prose attempt to describe the genius of Vincent, Vincent van Gogh.
But if painting is the medium there is no need for go-betweens it’s all there on the canvas the painting is what the painting seems.
Stopdraggingthepanda 