oil on canvas, Georgia O’Keeffe Museum,
gift of The Burnett Foundation
[says Nolcha, “looks like a coffee cup to me!”]
* * *
—Poetry by Nolcha Fox, Stephen Kingsnorth,
Caschwa, Sayani Mukherjee, and Joe Nolan
—Public Domain Visuals Courtesy
of Nolcha Fox, Stephen Kingsnorth,
Joe Nolan, and Medusa
O’KEEFE’S KITCHEN AND BAR
—Nolcha Fox, Buffalo, WY
O’Keeffe’s the place to wine and dine if you don’t mind a mess. Flowers, flowers everywhere, you’ll find them on your chair. They may stick to your good shoes, you’ll find them in you’re closet. They’re crunchy in the food you choose. They fall into your coffee. Instead of napkins, you may dab your chin with lotus petals.
I wouldn’t say
the meals are good,
but everything is fragrant.
—Nolcha Fox, Buffalo, WY
O’Keeffe’s the place to wine and dine if you don’t mind a mess. Flowers, flowers everywhere, you’ll find them on your chair. They may stick to your good shoes, you’ll find them in you’re closet. They’re crunchy in the food you choose. They fall into your coffee. Instead of napkins, you may dab your chin with lotus petals.
I wouldn’t say
the meals are good,
but everything is fragrant.
—Public Domain Photo Courtesy
of Stephen Kingsnorth
ETON MESS
—Stephen Kingsnorth, Coedpoeth, Wrexham, Wales
Here’s mess deck, yet well-ordered ship,
their coaster cargo, cheap tin trays;
class-conscious crew quite unaware,
their canteen pudding, Eton mess.
Established trad of private school—
mixed summer fruits, meringue and cream—
one corner of meal platter slopped,
beside onion and liver mains.
Upper crust compartmentalised,
new money, aristocracy,
partitioned by a stainless steel.
their only common, buds of taste.
—Public Domain Illustration Courtesy of Medusa
THINK BIG
—Caschwa, Sacramento, CA
Worked at a large Savings & Loan
lots of teller drawers holding lots of
currency, all neatly sorted by value
$1s, $5s, $10s, $20s, $50s, $100s
while my personal currency, which
all fit into one billfold with room to
spare, would have left several big
empty spaces if put in a teller drawer.
Some of the cars I bought over the
years were fleet cars before I bought
them, which means they were kept up
by teams of helpers such as mechanics,
car washers, painters, custodial, etc.,
and once it became my personal car,
all that organized help disappeared and
it depended on little old me, with much
smaller resources than those teams had.
It can be fun to gaze at magazines that
feature country homes with generous
porches, acres of open space, enough
rooms for storage so other rooms in the
house could be kept magnificently clear
and tidy, while by comparison the first
home I had on my own, a tiny bachelor
apartment, was such a mess!
—Public Domain Illustration Courtesy of Medusa
THE ELEVEN-WORD RELEVANCE TEST
—Caschwa
Let’s face it, little kids’ minds are already messed
up enough before they ever set foot in school, and
then along come “wise” educators who insist on
flooding their minds with all kinds of information
and data for which these kids may never find a
valid purpose.
So before you mess with the curriculum to force
the kids to absorb whole encyclopedias of data they
may never need to know, please preface your
lessons with this
Eleven-Word Relevance Test:
What
Possible
Good
Does
It
Do
A
Child
To
Know
This?
Do they really need to know what year Copernicus
was born?
Maybe it would be better for the lesson to focus on
what improvements have been made since
that time in the gathering
and reporting of accurate birth records…
—Public Domain Illustration
Courtesy of Medusa
INTOLERANT
—Caschwa
What better word to rob
the trochee of its vanguard
status, corn-off-the-cob
iambic less hard?
we build a thick skin
to shield us from harm
but then it gets thin
despite meds from Big Pharm
so we try to survive
with no Sisyphus push
while our stocks take a dive
and we land on our tush
our grand chief of staff
isn’t fit for a zoo
with a spine of decaf
inept through and through
so somehow we have to
change/swing voters’ minds
invoke reason that’s true
and swing open those blinds
—Public Domain Illustration Courtesy of Medusa
NOT READY YET
—Caschwa
(Another "Unexpected Guest" Response)
I had a wonderful relationship with
my lover for more than 40 years, and
now that she’s been gone more than
a year and a half, I am still in the
grieving stage and not ready to begin
a new relationship
So guess who steps into the picture?
Each day I receive offers via snail
mail and email from total strangers
from near and far who want to start
a relationship with me, with their main
purpose being to buy and flip my home,
which I have been using 100% as my
primary residence. And now they want
to turn it into an investment property
that potentially would yield a treasure .
trove of mortgage payments
No, no, a thousand time no! The emails
I file in the Junk or Spam folders, and
the snail mail I toss in the trash. These
are definitely not members of any group
of folks who would love to live with me
and tolerate my flaws. Not for even one
second.
HARROWING
—Caschwa
(Response to “a dark cave” Seed of the Week from the past)
He walked with a torch to guide him through the dark cave’s dank, narrow corridors, distant cousin of a corn maize, and quite beyond the reach of daylight. Did a sudden precipice await to steal his step and leave him stranded, perhaps with broken bones? His grip on the torch grew tighter and more fervent.
If only he’d known
more to begin with, such as
how to get it lit
—Public Domain Photo Courtesy of Joe Nolan
ARRIVAL
—Sayani Mukherjee, Chandannagar, W. Bengal, India
A little bit of halo
The rain comes again
Welcoming a second year
Tired and trusted hopes of secularism
The search for the infinite passion
Comes again welcoming the year
Umbrellas of dotted evenings
Jigsaw puzzle between life and death
A subtle change under the canopy
Truth seekers are roaming around
As the road gets springtime arrival.
—Public Domain Photo Courtesy of Joe Nolan
AUTUMN
—Sayani Mukherjee
Autumn passed over
My window blues
A cosmic palette of
Monographic silhouettes
A feathery carnival of
Hooded blasphemy
If you keep searching for
Answers
You fall down
Jugglers Metaphors Imagine
Just Imagine
Beyond the green above
A cosmic garden of
White-blue diamonds
That Rain over
And Create a mansion
Xanadu of my own fervent dreams
It's called mystical
A Rose-like luminous
Moon beamed white
Nemesis is necessary
You never grow
Until you discover your wings
A bright blue butterfly knife
Just imagination
Well keep on
Your blue ribbons
Your pink shoes
Attached scrapbooks of my
Kindergarten schemes
How fragile how beautiful
How magical place it is
Stars and shimmer
Sickness meant relief
You get Care you get Love
Still crossed a threshold
Surpassed the oceanic blaze
The hardness of mountains
The green monsoon wet
I was growing up
Could feel
The freshness the berries
The innuendos the forever
Opulence of your smile
How it hides behind
A rare diamond
We found
Finally
Crossed the threshold
And Autumn bid me a goodbye.
—Public Domain Photo Courtesy of Joe Nolan
SWEET MADONNA
—Joe Nolan, Stockton, CA
Sweet Madonna
Underlies you,
Maybe.
Sweet Madonna
Wants to have
Your baby.
Once she has your baby
Your baby is hers,
Hers and hers alone.
You might never get a glimpse.
You are on your own.
Please send your check
In on time—
Before the deadline
Or her attorneys
Will see you in court
To assess
Penalties and attorneys’ fees
Meant to suck you dry.
Madonna underlies
All your needs.
The way she makes you suffer
Is the way a vampire bleeds.
It’s the way men are bled dry
To liberate the inundate
Who make them want to die.
—Public Domain Photo Courtesy of Medusa
DULL SHEEN OF DUST
—Joe Nolan
A dull sheen of dust
Denies the light
By shades of gray and tan
To things that might just shine
If it were wiped away.
One eyeballs all those
So-covered objects
Planning for a day
For a Spring cleaning
To clean it all away
As though it were snow of Winter
But for now, we’ll let it stay
To spare the humble from light.
____________________
Today’s LittleNip:
Stupidity got us into this mess, then why can’t it get us out?
—Will Rogers
____________________
—Medusa, with thanks to today’s intrepid contributors for some fine work on the subject of (among others) our Seed of the Week, “What a Mess!”
Dancing Sandwiches?
—Public Domain Photo Courtesy of Joe Nolan
A reminder that
Poetic License meets
in Placerville today, 10:30am;
and Sacramento Poetry Center
presents its Youth Open Mic
tonight, 7:30pm.
For info about these and other
future poetry happenings in
Northern California and otherwheres,
click on
UPCOMING NORCAL EVENTS
(http://medusaskitchen.blogspot.com/p/wtf.html)
in the links at the top of this page—
and keep an eye on this link and on
the daily Kitchen for happenings
that might pop up
—or get changed!—
during the week.
Photos in this column can be enlarged by
clicking on them once, then clicking on the x
in the top right corner to come back to Medusa.
Poets’ bios appear on their first MK visit.
To find previous posts, type the name
of the poet (or poem) into the little
beige box at the top left-hand side
of this column. See also
Medusa’s Rapsheet at the bottom
of the blue column on the right
side of this column to find
any date you want.
Miss a post?
You can find our most recent ones by
scrolling down under this daily one.
Or there's an "Older Posts" button
at the bottom of this column.
(Please excuse typos in older posts!
Blogspot has been through a lot of
incarnations in 20 years!)
Would you like to be a SnakePal?
Guidelines are at the top of this page
at the Placating the Gorgon link;
send poetry and/or photos and artwork
to kathykieth@hotmail.com. We post
work from all over the world—including
that which was previously published—
and collaborations are welcome.
Just remember:
the snakes of Medusa are always hungry—
for poetry, of course!
LittleSnake, the de-messifer!
Poetic License meets
in Placerville today, 10:30am;
and Sacramento Poetry Center
presents its Youth Open Mic
tonight, 7:30pm.
For info about these and other
future poetry happenings in
Northern California and otherwheres,
click on
UPCOMING NORCAL EVENTS
(http://medusaskitchen.blogspot.com/p/wtf.html)
in the links at the top of this page—
and keep an eye on this link and on
the daily Kitchen for happenings
that might pop up
—or get changed!—
during the week.
Photos in this column can be enlarged by
clicking on them once, then clicking on the x
in the top right corner to come back to Medusa.
Poets’ bios appear on their first MK visit.
To find previous posts, type the name
of the poet (or poem) into the little
beige box at the top left-hand side
of this column. See also
Medusa’s Rapsheet at the bottom
of the blue column on the right
side of this column to find
any date you want.
Miss a post?
You can find our most recent ones by
scrolling down under this daily one.
Or there's an "Older Posts" button
at the bottom of this column.
(Please excuse typos in older posts!
Blogspot has been through a lot of
incarnations in 20 years!)
Would you like to be a SnakePal?
Guidelines are at the top of this page
at the Placating the Gorgon link;
send poetry and/or photos and artwork
to kathykieth@hotmail.com. We post
work from all over the world—including
that which was previously published—
and collaborations are welcome.
Just remember:
the snakes of Medusa are always hungry—
for poetry, of course!
