Dragons & Drunken Flies/Poets

RAIN
—Kenneth Fearing

Dragons love the world in rain.
They crawl among the watery feet
Of its sheered cliffs in coats of chain,
Catching glimpses of blazing scales
Through shifting pockets in the discreet
Grey rain. They love to stand and look
On Saracens locked in holy wars,
Waving crimson scimitars.
More do they love to twist their tails
And stare in through a window-pane
At a man bent over a printed book,
Drinking from a crystal flagon.
But nothing is like the dragon's joy
At seeing a portrait of a dragon
Crawling in rain, catching sight,
Through mist, of blazing scales that stain
The watery cliffs, watching the fray
Of Saracens with scimitars bleeding,
Staring, in ecstasies that pain,
Through blurred windows on a man reading,
On portraits of dragons who crawl away
Helpless with wonder in the rain.

________________________

Just a reminder to get signed up for the Sac. Poetry Center Writers Conference Oct. 7-8 (the weekend after this one!) at HQ, 25th & R Sts., Sac. Handy sign-up forms are available from Poetry Now Editor Robbie Grossklaus (dphunkt@mac.com). Sacramento does not have enough day-long workshops, to my way of thinking, and this is definitely a step in the right direction! Hopefully, we will have more of these in the future.

I don't know how many cyber-journals are based in Sacramento, but here's one: LitVision, "the free-range rooster of creative writing", edited by Patrick Simonelli. Lively, colorful, it's an interesting combination of prose and poetry from around the country. Check it out.


BRACELET
—Kenneth Fearing

Return to me now,
For I am a thousand arms
Spread out to you like an open fan;
A thousand gargoyles whose stone mouths
Will twist into shadowy smiles
When you return.
Walk in my night,
Far among the taut strings
Of my veins, that will tremble with sound.
And in my brain, panel'd with broad mirrors,
Be blood-red sparks by thousands
That walk and walk.

_______________________

THE DRUNKEN FLY
—Kenneth Fearing

Sounds at night
Are only bats that fly
Among the lofts of darkness
Through broken rooms
Where stars are chips of fallen lime,
Bleached and dry.
But sounds are nothing:
Old drowned boats
Crawl around the harbor bed
And go up the sky,
Barking, with throats
Choked by fog and dread.

Only silence lives at night,
Silence and fear,
With something warm as melody
Ringing through distant streets
I cannot go near.
Cannot, for the winds that play
Around and through and over me
As though I were a shred of straw
Blown down an alley-way.

Then there is nothing, any more
But rags and bits of glass in corners,
And the sound of dust
Softly raining on an iron door.
Then there is nothing, and no one,
The people are gone
Like an army that has rolled on
Over deep canyons choked with men.

________________________

BUSINESS AS USUAL
—Kenneth Fearing

This is the poet
Who wrote the sonnet
And was paid three dollars
And sixty-five cents.

This is the artist,
The man who has drawn it
(For twenty-five bucks)
A margin of nymphs—
The nymphs in the sonnet
That earned three dollars
And sixty-five cents.

Here is the printer
Who published the page
(Clearing upon it
A hundred or so)
Of nymphs, and the sonnet
That earned three dollars
And sixty-five cents.

This is the empty
Bottle of gin
That cost three dollars
And sixty-five cents
That enabled the poet
To write the sonnet
That earned three dollars
And sixty-five cents.

_________________________

—Medusa (who dearly wishes she could clear a hundred or so a page...)

Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their poetry and announcements of Northern California poetry events to kathykieth@hotmail.com for posting on this daily Snake blog. Rights remain with the poets.