After Myron’s dog died he experienced what he would later come to call: A Failure of Optimism.
It wasn’t just the loss of his dog it was the pandemic, the anti-vaxxers, the placards, the protests, the rabid mobs. He began to think in movie titles, book titles: Dawn of the Dumb Ass The Age of Idiocy The Death of Logic.
And it wasn’t just the anti-vaxxers It was Texas and its abortion legislation Patriarchy’s Second Wind The Great White American Male coming up for air spouting an acidic spume of piss, vinegar and self-righteousness.
And it wasn’t just Texas it was Afghanistan the rise of the Taliban the fall of Kabul Welcome to The Fundament of Fundamentalism! Hey Mister Taliban Daylight comes and everybody wants to leave home.
And then one morning Myron woke up, walked out the door and got himself another dog. Some things can be fixed.
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?
Oscar’s wife, Anka,
declared: we need to procure a guard dog to make our home secure, a real dog not some mangy cur some obscure miniature some saliva dripping skinny impostor looking for a sinecure, a dog that barks at every knock on the door and when, Oscar asked, should this occur? Yesterday, she said, or before.
This is a poem from the days of The Daily Prompt. the prompt was the word “cur”.
Photo taken at the Takashi Murakami exhibition (The octopus eats its own leg) at the Vancouver Art Gallery.
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)
Ingrid Wilson of Experiments in Fiction has put together a collection of poems called The Athropocene Hymnal (63 poems in all, from 34 poets). Publication date is July 24th. Many of the poets, including myself are regular contributors to the blog earthweal. I have 2 poems in the collection (thanks, Ingrid, for including me!). All profits from the sale of the book will go to the World Wild Life Fund. So be sure to check out Ingrid’s blog on July 24th!
Brendan over at earthweal has published an interview with Ingrid and also more details about the publication, so check out Brendan’s post here.
The collage on the cover was contributed by the very talented Kerfe Roig.
In his earthweal prompt this week, Brendan says :
For this week’s challenge, let’s take up her (Ingrid’s) call and write a poem of the Anthropocene which does not compromise.
This is a poem I wrote a while back (it appeared before on earthweal) and previously published on this blog, but think it fits the challenge.
Fracking Song
You’re standing on the corner Watching the trucks go rolling past Pumping out their diesel fumes Pumping out that carbon gas
It’s the middle of winter And it’s twenty below And that gas just sits there With nowhere to go.
Something’s wrong in the valley Babies stillborn Ten in one year And they call that the norm
Something’s wrong in the valley Something toxic in the ground Something wrong in the valley Since the frackers came to town.
That rock’s been down forever With its hydrocarbon payload When they blow it all apart They can’t control where it goes
And that water that’s left standing Evaporating in the sun The residue will be with us Long after they are gone
Something’s wrong in the valley Babies stillborn Ten in one year And they call that the norm
Something’s wrong in the valley Something toxic in the ground Something wrong in the valley Since the frackers came to town.
You can blame the politicians The special interests groups Blame the fracking company They all don’t give a fuck
There’s only one thing they understand One thing that they know Keep riding that fossil fool train As far as it will go.
There’s something wrong in the valley Babies stillborn Placentas like ribbons And they call that the norm
Something’s wrong in the valley Something toxic in the ground Something wrong in the valley Since the frackers came to town
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
I’m standing in the liquor store staring at a bottle of Pinot Grigio when Wild Thing by the Troggs comes on the store speakers and I’m thinking, to quote Leonard, that song is a shining artifact of the past and just as I’m thinking that one of the Troggs launches into a bizarre ocarina solo and I turn around to find myself face to face with a large blue and yellow parrot perched on the leather-gloved hand of a lady who has seen hippier times never at a loss for words, I say, “that’s a nice parrot” and the lady says “I have three more at home one of them is a real man-hater but this one here is my favowite he’s a vewy, vewy, vewy nice pawwot” she says, nuzzling the parrot, nose to beak the parrot inflates its technicolor plumage let’s out an almighty squawk and displays its full wing span and I’m thinking “Wow, there’s a ocarina solo in the middle of Wild Thing, who’s that on ocarina I think it’s the lead singer what was his name, Reg Presley, I think, yeah, that’s it Reg Presley.”
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.
That poetic hum your ear always on the alert for the cadence in the everyday, that unconscious internal rhyme there’s a barber shop on Dunbar Street; or that line that requires a non sequitur she was a woman before her time and you say to everyone’s irritation in a town lost to time. Then when you find that seed that germ of a poem you are lost to all around – family, colleagues, friends your head in the clouds; and when you poke your head through the accumulated cumulus you come face to face with another poet who says that last line’s a bugger, eh? and you say it most certainly is it most certainly is.
Outside the Gates of Hades sits a cross-eyed toad beside a burnt-out serpent a broker and a phone.
Outside the Gates of Heaven sits an angel in disguise beside a corpulent bishop with ecstasy in his eyes
and the sign on the gate says:
Closed for Renovation no judgement today if you’re looking for accommodation clear off, go away.
God is on vacation taking a well-earned break there’s only so much suffering one true God can take
So, get your ass back down there be good to everyone drink lots of water and try to get along.
Brendan’s challenge this week over at Earthweal is to write of a voyage to the Otherworld. As he explains:
I have used the medium of Irish myth, but voyages to the Otherworld are universal. Journey there this week from inside your own story-cycle, and report on the news you find there.
I was born and educated in Ireland and that education did cover Irish (pagan/Christian) myths and legends but the dominant Otherworlds by that point had become Heaven and the everlasting fire of Hell. Irish Catholicism is indeed a rough beast . Somewhere in between these poles, the minor worlds of Purgatory and Limbo floated. So when I read Brendan’s quote I thought of this poem (previously posted)
Note on the title:
Thispoem title came about because, for a brief period, I was listening to prog metal. Brief because, like all things prog, the talent rarely matches the ambition, the concepts. An exception would be Pink Floyd ( Piper at the Gates of Dawn) who were a progressive band but they were successful because they could write songs and had one of the best lyricists in rock, the concepts were secondary. Prog metal players, from what I can tell , are accomplished musicians – the guitarists can play at incredible speeds and the drummers sound like they are descended from the octopus but the lyrics are banal at best and the melodies vestigial. The album titles, though, are always interesting and that’s where this poem started – I was playing around with making up titles for prog metal concept albums…the poem evolved from there.
