Agent Orange Returns
Who would have thought it?
Trumpty is back on the wall
Ron de Santis is lost like Atlantis
and the others have no chance at all.
There will be no succession.
No, he’s not Logan Roy.
He’s Agent Orange, he’s Teflon Don
he’s the one and only Slogan Boy.
And there’ll be no tremblin’ in the Kremlin
when Donald takes control
and the Grand Old Party re-discovers
its Magaleptic soul.
The theme over at Desperate Poets is satire.
Parking
I have this memory.
I am walking across a field
a squelching field
a field that would suck your wellingtons off
the wind is a wet dish cloth
slapping my face
cow pats are dotted like landmines.
I love the countryside
but I don’t love this countryside
with its barbed wire fences
its ragged ditches
its baleful cows.
In the far corner of the field
I come across the rusty shell
of an old Mercedes
abandoned by the farmer
after one last muddy trip to the market,
and I’ve been thinking lately
I should take some ideas I have
some long held, unexamined beliefs
and park them in the far corner of a field,
top of the list being
the irrational notion
that somehow
against all odds,
we would all continue
to live, forever.
The ever eloquent Brendan over at Desperate Poets aks us to write an elegy. This is one from the past , I think it has perhaps an elegaic tone
It previously appeared on dverse (the prompt was “metaphors”)
This poem originally appeared in Cyphers Magazine.
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.
photo taken in Sitges, Catalonia.
Shay over at: Desperate Poets
asks us to write about desperate desire. This is a poem from a while back about desire, thought it might fit, and here’s one about a different kind of desire.
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,
my one desire
is to be
where the spires conspire
to show me the way.
Jericho Beach Mid May
out on the bay
kite surfers, tankers
no smoke haze yet
heat dome
early days
two Canada geese
pose for an Instagram shot
necks extended rod taut
at their feet a gosling
proud parents
they bob their heads
like ageing rock stars
Brendan and Sherry , the creators of the now defunct earthweal have a new website. It’s called Desparate Poets
Check them out!
This Sherry’s challenge:
What makes you feel desperate where you live? What is changing? What is being lost? How is “Progress” making inroads on your landscape, and how do you feel about it? Give us a snapshot. It can be as broad as a seascape, a desert, a teeming city. Or it can be the opposite: finding comfort in the beauty around us, whether it is as vast as the sky or as small as a dew-covered spider-web, on a cornstalk by the back fence in the early morning.
Barbeque
A meet and greet
with meat and grease.
Father’s Day
A low metronomic plash
waves flat-lining on the shore
sailboats tacking
kayakers kayaking,
someone talking loudly
about the cost of child care,
two blankets down.
It’s Father’s day
and all the dads and kids are out
throwing ball, kicking ball
building elaborate castles in the sand
and they are not alone,
the ghosts of fathers passed are here too,
including my own;
pale-bodied, they roam the beach
wearing old-fashioned swim trunks,
grinning widely
at the continuum
of dads, kids, sun, sand and sea.
Landline (for Dad)
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.
Father Bragg
he was a humble priest
until his altar ego
took over.
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.
Onomatopoeia (feel the noise)
oof
awooga
boom
chachalaca
bam a llama
Elvis has left
the room
toot ee fruiti
doof doof
rattle and hum
dik dik
tick tock
zoom.
The Town of High Dudgeon
In the town of High Dudgeon
at the corner of Grump Street and Curmudgeon
people talk about the old ways
about young people these days
with their smart phones, their social media
their Facebook, their Wikipedia
hell, in our day we had to know stuff.
Harrumph! They shout in unison.
Harrumph! They shout harrumphantly.
Outside the town limits
the future raises a middle finger
and data accumulates
about this moment
and the moment before
in cabinets that hum
a one note tune.
Indignatron B (as seen on TV)
Are you feeling indignant?
Do you feel the urge to rant?
Are you sick of the city, the government
sycophants, dilettantes, the cant;
are you bitter about the glitterati
the literati, the witeratti, the getfiteratti
that tosser on your street
with the Maserati or is it a Bugatti
always wittering on about his colonoscopy
his digestive tract?
Relax, help is on the way,
take one Indignatron B tablet daily
and you won’t give a shit about all that.
Warning:
Some users of Indignatron B have become so unbearably pleasant, that their friends can’t stand them anymore.
Do not mix Indignatron B with alcohol, some users, who have, experienced such a feeling of intense happiness that all they could think about was doing it again.
Day at the Beach
sand martins, low tide
mom’s new perm all blown to hell
a holiday wind
transistor blaring
Bobby Kennedy is dead
dad’s head turns slowly
Naming Things
The Neander Valley
outside of Dusseldorf
is named after
Joachim Neander
a German poet
who liked to wander
lonely as a German poet
through this now eponymous valley
unaware that beneath his feet
lay the numb skull and bones
of a species whose name
would become synonymous
with brute stupidity:
Neanderthal,
named after the valley
which was named after
Joachim Neander.
That’s what we get to do,
name things
and judge their worth
we even got to name ourselves:
Homo Sapiens
Wise Man
and if that’s not hubris….
This poem first appeared in The Galway Review.
It also appeared a while back in Open Link weekend over at earthweal
Faubourg Café (tanka)
there in a glass case
a black sesame cruffin
croissant meets muffin
in a tortured pastry swirl
French calories eh?……the best.
Bike Ride
a faint whiff of weed
that old Vancouver perfume
cherry blossoms bloom
Easter Monday Haiku
blue sky, scattered clouds
slow day at the pearly gates
not a soul in sight.
Check it out here https://www.rattle.com/ , it will be top of the scroll for two days and then make its way down. It’s accompanied by a recording, so you get to hear my nasal Dublin accent.
Thanks again to Timothy Green for publishing the poem. The print version of Issue 79 of Rattle literary Magazine is also available from the same website.
The Toddler King Part 5
5 a.m.
the toddler king
checks his twitter feed
access denied
it’s quiet now
but all last night
all he could hear
was the squeak and rustle
of rats leaving the ship
he stares out into the murky depths
Mitch McConnell swims by
an oxygen tank strapped to his back,
his lugubrious visage
fills the porthole
he removes his oxygen mask
a bubble escapes from his mouth
and floats upwards
his wattles sway like kelp
in the shifting currents
he has the detached look
of a man examining a museum exhibit
another bubble escapes upwards
he turns and kicks for the surface
his sagging buttocks
pale but somehow luminous
Am I dead?
The toddler king wonders
I can’t be dead
I’m absolutely not dead
If I say I’m not dead
I’m not dead.
Hey, what’s Ted Cruz doing out there
I thought this was a Cruz ship!
See, I made a joke
I can’t be dead!
Jack Grealish
your boy band hair
your debonair air
the hobbit who left the shire
the lion who left the lair
spitfire
antithesis of dour
man of the hour
A big thank you to Timothy Green for including my poem “Irish History” as part of their Tribute to Irish Poets in issue 79 of Rattle Magazine.
Read about the issue here: https://www.rattle.com/product/i79/
I encourage you all to pick up a copy, there’s some excellent poetry in there from a variety of poets, not just Irish poets.
Jim Feeney
Forest Fire
smoke obscures the dawn
there is no…no early light
oh say, can you see
the root cause, the root causes
and does it, does it give pause.
Another one for Brendan’s ekphrastic challenge over at Earthweal. Taking part in open link weekend over at earthwealhttps://earthweal.com/, since I’m late for the original prompt,
Stock Market Crash
a bear on the loose
the once priapic market
losing altitude
Angel on the Move.
always, yes, always
take your pedestal with you
with you when you go
Brendan’s challenge over at earthweal is to write an ekphrastic poem inspired by the images he provides or one of your own. This is one of my own but check out Brendan’s images, you will be inspired!
Also taking part in Open Link over at dverse.
Limbo Blues
today I remembered limbo
you can’t stand too far from the tracks
today I remembered limbo
you can’t stand too far from the tracks
some days you’re moving forward
some days you’re hanging back
Bob Dylan mentions Rimbaud
Van Morrison does too
Bob Dylan, mentions Rimbaud
Van Morrison does too
today I remembered limbo
Jean Paul Sartre, Albert Camus
existential boogie
do that existential thing
existential boogie
do that existential thing
you can do it in your armchair
summer, autumn, winter, spring
and if you’re looking for an answer
don’t ask Albert Camus
if you’re looking for an answer
don’t ask Albert Camus
that dude’s been dead a long time
he can’t tell you what to do
existential boogie
do that existential thing
existential boogie
do that existential thing
well, you can do it in your armchair
summer, autumn, winter, spring.
I was at a concert last night at the York Theatre on Commercial Drive in Vancouver . Walter Trout and his band were playing with David Gogo opening. Walter is a virtuoso electric blues guitarist, he’s played with pretty much everyone starting with Canned Heat and on through John Mayall. One of the best shows I’ve been to in a while, electric blues at its best. But not just blues, Walter is an excellent songwriter and his insights between songs into his professional and personal life were fascinating. Rock solid band too. Made me revisit the above effort at writing a blues song! If Walter is in your area , be sure to check him out!
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.
Stopdraggingthepanda 