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.
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.
Prompts sometimes send me in a completely different direction than the prompter intended. For example, this week Brendan over at Earthweal came up with the following prompt/challenge
Honor an element and invite it to our poetry commons
and although I knew he actually meant sun, wind, rain etc, I immediately thought of The Periodic Table of Elements , yes Brendan’s prompt got me into an elemental mood
Elementals
When I think of Antimony
I think of acrimony
alimony
timpani
symphony
and Scott McTominay
who plays for Manchester United
and Scotland
then I think of carbon and oxygen
and their troublesome offspring
carbon dioxide
and I think it’s hard to write about chemistry
and not sound like a geek
then I think of copper and lithium
and how we need these elements
to make the batteries to power our electric cars
and how we will have to drag these elements from the earth
by means both fair and foul,
but mostly foul.
Then I think of the time I spent
in a copper smelter in southern Peru
trying to start a system for extracting sulfur dioxide
from the smelter off gas
ahh sulfur dioxide the product of a back alley encounter
between sulfur and oxygen
what is it about oxygen
it just won’t leave those other elements alone
geek on, geek on.
The operators of the smelter
were the descendants of the Incas and the conquistadores
and sometimes both
one night I spent a whole shift
with an operator who had the features
and head of an Easter Island statue
he spoke no English
my Spanish was poor
it was a long night
I wasn’t in my element.
In the mornings
after these night shifts
I would drive back to the fishing village
where we were staying
in a house the locals called Casa Gringo
I would drive past the huge pipe
discharging effluent into the blue ocean
and always there were vultures circling the outflow
and perched on the pipe.
I would drive past a patch of waste ground
the size of two football fields
covered in waste metal and other debris from the smelter,
(hello, arsenic, my old friend)
and always there were scavengers
combing through this mess
and what did I learn from all this
I learnt that the devil is always in the details
the devil is always in the details
and the footprint must be managed.
Breakfast
sometimes we travel
a long, hard road, to arrive
at the obvious:
the unbearable flatness
of pancakes in the morning.
Pronouncements
I am he
as you are he
as they are they
and we are all together.
(Jordan Peterson is an alt right lite, self styled intellectual, described by Maclean’s magazine as the “the stupid man’s smart person”. Naturally he has thing about pronouns)
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.
2023 and the Second Person Singular
2023 dawns
and you’re still writing
in the second person singular
you think of the Ukraine war
and you think
satire is the first casualty of war
then you think
maybe you should throw out glibness too
you think of evil
and you see Putin’s face
you think of heroism
and you see Zelensky’s face
you think of Ukraine
and you see
headscarves and overcoats hunched around a guttering candle
and you think
this second person singular thing
is not providing the distance
you expected.
Taking part in Open Link weekend over at earthweal,
Stepping Out
inside the mask
a faint whiff of grease
from this morning’s eggs
I find the outdoors
secure in its greatness
the sea still open
the sky limitless
the sky, the limit.
The challenge from Grace over at dverse is this:
“The challenge for today is to write zen poetry, with a focus on attaining moments of enlightment – or true clarity of mind — by emphasizing singular experiences.“
(This is an edit of a previous poem.)
The Stolen Reindeer
Last year, just before Christmas
someone stole a reindeer from our front yard
we took it hard
we took it hard.
We checked our neighbors’ security cameras
we drove around in our car
we shook our fists at random strangers
we took it hard
we took it hard.
Then Christmas morning dawned bright and clear
and when we looked out on our snow-blessed lawn
the reindeer it was there!
Naw, just kidding
this is not that kind of poem.
Lionel Messi
I saw him once at Camp Nou
playing for Barcelona against Girona
he looked..what’s the word…unprepossessing
like a clerk in a 1950’s black and white movie
with an office in the basement of a New York skyscraper
the one who tells the hero that the books don’t balance.
On the other hand
there was something otherworldly about him
it occurred to me
that he might be an extraterrestrial
a bit far-fetched I know
but for the first 15 minutes
he seemed detached
in the game but not in the game
the full back passed the ball to him
he passed it back
the full back passed the ball to him
he passed it back
then suddenly as if receiving a signal from somewhere
he passed the ball inside to the midfielder Busquets
took off on a diagonal run
took the return pass
laid the ball off to the striker, Suarez
took the return pass from Suarez
and then passed the ball with the inside of his foot into Girona’s goal.
It took a matter of seconds
It was poetry in motion
and ever since I’ve wondered
what signal did he get
what made him take off
did he sense some structural misalignment
in the opposing team’s defense
some lack of attention
was it a message from the mother ship
or was it just pure instinct
like a migratory bird
sensing the headwinds are just right
to start that journey south?
Game Day
the soccer dads
bark and pace
like chain-linked hounds
like dogs locked
in parked cars
on a sunny day,
while in the bushes,
Thwarted Ambition
waits to join them
on the long journey
home.
The English Midfield
Without being asked
I have just taken ten minutes
to explain to my wife
the problem with the English midfield
I used a salt shaker
a pepper grinder
and a fresh lemon
she will never get those ten minutes back.
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
Autumnal Sketch (haiku)
trees leaking colour
like a paint store catalogue
et tu, chlorophyll!
PUNK
Walking down Commercial
On a sunlit lunchtime
I see this guy talking to this girl –
She’s got tattoos, rings, black hair,
Blonde streaks – he is leaning forward
She is leaning back
And as I pass by, he says:” I have always thought
That punk and hip-hop have more in common
Than they have not.”
The peak of his baseball cap is flipped back
like he‘s caught in a wind tunnel.
Noise cancelling head phones circle his neck.
Is that an egg stain on his cardigan?
Did he play bass once in a band called Head Lice?
Or is he just another fan?
Who knows?
He looks disheveled, disinterred,
Pale as a Pogue*.
And I want to stop
And tell him
That I don’t know about hip hop
But I have always thought that punk
Is the sound
Of someone puking pints
Outside a pub at midnight
Without implying
That is necessarily a bad thing.
*Pale as a Pogue
I shared a plane once with The Pogues on a flight from Vancouver from Chicago . I got bumped up to business class (I was flying a lot at the time). The Pogues were also in business class, on the way to Vancouver for a gig. The year was 1991, I know this because Joe Strummer was with them and according to Wikipedia he joined the band for a short period in 1991 , Shane MacGowan had left due to drinking problems.
They were the palest, skinniest, sickest group of people I had ever seen. They looked like creatures who spent most of their time at the bottom of the ocean at a depth where the sun could not penetrate, or maybe they just got up late in the afternoon.
The only thing I remember from the trip is that Joe Strummer was ordering drinks as soon as the seat belt sign went off. Vodka and tonic was his drink of choice, I think. When the stewardess brought his first drink, she said:
“ I hope that’s not too strong for you, sir”
Joe replied: “Too strong? Too Strong?” and began to laugh hysterically and continued to laugh for quite some time. As the flight progressed he would turn every now and again to the other Pogues and shout “Too Strong?” and start laughing all over again. I guess he was taking the Shane MacGowan role seriously.
Graffiti Photo was taken in Getsemani, Cartagena, Colombia.
This poem was previously posted in Open Link Night over at dverse
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.
The Morning After
a forest fire haze turns the morning sun orange,
down in the Village square
dazed coffee drinkers nurse their hangovers
too many stayed too late at the Dublin Gate
here and there perky couples with dogs
take photos for their blogs,
jpegs spiral upwards into the cloud
which is not a cloud
it’s a bank of a billion hard drives
humming hard in flat roofed, air-conditioned buildings
somewhere I will always think of as Texas
no snow on the mountains
the glaciers have retreated
as if they’re afraid of something
leaving behind bare granite
over on the islands
there is talk of low water tables
and no water for the table
we fiddle while forests burn
Nero….. Nero has nothing on us.
This is a response to Lindi’s excellent challenge over at earthweal
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
Stopdraggingthepanda 