—Anonymous Photos
—Poems by Tom Goff, Carmichael, CA
COMPOSER’S COMPARTMENTS
(Bax)
I’ve fallen for you as biographers do for subjects.
But just what is it you can tell me about?
I learn from your young face to scrutinize objects.
Objects in nature; new people, slender, stout:
all kinds of interest, especially if Irish.
Your old face has long absorbed Gaelic, with its mischief;
pipe-in-hand tavern photo: waggish, stylish
half-owl. Eyes laugh by blinks, half-disbelief.
But how did you love? I ponder how uncannily,
utterly, you kept loves like scented keepsakes,
each lover squeezed into a stanza of your life.
You even divided women pianistically,
awarded shares of performances, claimstakes.
You dealt out heart in thirds: Mistress One, Mistress Two, Wife.
EROS
To make love is to leave the partners whole,
yet ever after changed. At back of mind,
whatever disputes anon whose hot words coal
and spark like roasted logs, whatever the bind,
keen issue or calamity to grind
the strength of love to dust for wind to blow
and disperse, whatever tragedy to blind
red eyes near drought of saltwater to flow,
this rapt, suspended-cymbal silk on skin:
earth’s entry into earth, divine, ecstatic,
self spurting liquescent self into a stranger,
such soft invisible ligature no vatic
could augur it tied to bliss beyond all sin,
this white-hot risk that breeds both life and danger:
this virgin birth, no going back, aloof
from proving save beneath a private roof.
Gypsy Tambourine
BAX’S TAMBOURINE (II)
(In almost any orchestral piece by Sir Arnold Bax.
Apologies to a recent Nobel Laureate.)
Hey there, Mr. Tambourine Man,
Not The Right Honourable Bass Drum, not Señor Castanet,
you there, Mister, you with the tangerine tambourine, man;
Bax writes just for you. He’s not just Mister Composer,
but Mister Number One Tambourine Fan.
You with your circular rattle, you drive the drive,
you’re the secret agent of dance. You’re where
the rhythm’s origin beat goes to unbeehive.
No listener will ever get altitude brainsick,
long as you wave, shake, slap your miniaturized rainstick.
Ape the rattlesnake’s drumroll primeval
with forefinger and thumb. Hit with the heel,
not with your heel heel, with the hand heel.
You are the one horse-troop sergeant
spurring the amorphously gorgeous
to gallop alongside the gorgeously urgent.
Make like a big stack of porcupine quills
with your silvery zils: we freeze, you’re chill.
That’s you, Mister Tambourine Man:
half of any Bax opus is dream, the rest battle.
Or mythic procession. No bass drum: that just batters.
You’re not hanging back with the fauns,
you’re prancing ahead of the parade with the satyrs.
Oh, and what if it’s you, Ms. Tambourine Woman,
Percussioning Gal? Do what you do,
make musical pounce, jounce along in the saddle.
Set all drumbeats to rights when you rattle your loud rattle.
THESE PRETTY RINGS
The sonnet is my self-imposed straitjacket.
It tightens throat and lungs about like death.
Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote a great packet
of these, but she sang with a singer’s breath,
wrote gorgeous verse-fed stories like Renascence;
could do so many other poetic things.
I strangle my hopes in form: mid-life complacence,
carving these cherry-pits, these pretty rings.
Think rather, Charles and Mary Lamb, she mad
but graced to know her madness, if that’s grace,
them walking and weeping together to the asylum,
straitjacket in her one hand, his fingers laced
in her other. Or: sonnet-cactus, epiphyllum:
who cultivates this ephemeral old fad?
ANGLO-SAXON FIRE DRILL
I often remember hearing the words
Chinese fire drill: the phrase reeks prejudice.
I don’t think I need bother looking it up,
the crass cliché does so quickly connote a morass
of languages shouted against chaos: Mandarin, Cantonese,
pidgin, perhaps? All hands scrambling in that kind
of hyperbolic panic African-American actors
display in Thirties movies (because they
could do no other shtick and expect to get paid):
the air’s oppressive with Chinese characters,
inked stamps pressed cleanly upon the air of the film.
Cut to a scene of real Chinese railroad laborers:
exiting the blown tunnel calmly, shouldering
one another bleeding, still consoling.
Well, I’ve got news for you and me: when was
the last time you or I witnessed an Anglo-Saxon
fire drill? Red-faced men and matrons shoving,
flooding the November winds with outcries at privilege
suspended in this crisis? It could be the rush
into or out of a mall on Black Friday, trampling
as we go. It could be students in a college:
why do I have to leave the building now?
My stuff’s here, all my shit, all my homework.
Will the computer still be on, will my paper be saved,
will my semester be saved when I get back?
Yes, I have been that too-mad-to-reason student,
I have wanted my work, my semester, my life saved for me,
just as the evenly-spoken cop tries gentling me out:
your stuff’s secure, it’ll all be here when you
get back. I have wailed on and on, willing myself unhearing,
flooded the heavy air tear-eloquent, the last Anglo-Saxon.
___________________
Today’s LittleNip:
This is a day of celebration!
Today, we are divorcing the past
and marrying the present.
Dance,
and you will find God
in every room.
Today, we are divorcing resentment
and marrying forgiveness.
Sing,
and God will find you
in every tune.
Today, we are divorcing indifference
and marrying love.
Drink, and play that tambourine
against your thighs.
We have so much celebrating to do!
—Kamand Kojouri
__________________
Thanks, Tom! That was Medusa in her youth—“Percussioning Gal? Do what you do,/make musical pounce, jounce along in the saddle./Set all drumbeats to rights when you rattle your loud rattle.” Some of the best moments of my life were spent back in the percussion section in high school and CSUS, back when it was Sac State. My snakes did rattle indeed, “the rattlesnake’s drumroll primeval”.
Medusa in her Youth (before the snakes
got out of control...)
Speaking of wild things, drop by Sac. Poetry Center tonight between 5-8pm and take a look at the Gone Wild art benefit for Sac. Wildlife Care Association. Scroll down to the blue column (under the green column at the right) for info about this and other upcoming poetry events in our area—and note that more may be added at the last minute.
And here is a free event presented by Cal. Lawyers for the Arts on Tuesday morning, Dec. 19: Set Your Creative Intentions for the New Year, with guest speakers Michelle Alexander, Giola Fonda, Ianna Frisby. Check out the speakers and sign up (space limited to 50 people) at www.showclix.com/event/cla-2017-creative-intentions-sacramento for ways to increase and focus your artistic mojo for the new year! Better sign up early, since seating is limited.
—Medusa
Celebrate poetry, and make the music of your poetry
pounce, jounce along in the saddle!
Photos in this column can be enlarged by clicking on them once,
then click on the X in the top right corner to come back
to Medusa.