—Poetry by Jack D. Harvey, Delmar, NY
—Photos and Artwork Courtesy of Public Domain
ZAMA
Hannibal at Zama:
among the cannibals
an eye as fierce as any.
A quick revenge
proved slow as sand
in an hourglass;
the swamps, the lake,
like dreams
on the long marches
back and forth
across the Roman boot.
Elephants wonder
how many there were to
defeat, again and again;
so many legions,
beast against beast.
Then a pause.
Loss follows loss,
an old general
makes his last stand;
unfortunate palaver
at the end;
then slaughter
complete as a harvest.
Down the drain
goes Carthage,
gone for good,
and history can't tell
us what was
left among the ruins,
and what was not left.
We see Cato's fields of salt,
the old Greek
tells us a thing or two,
sharpening his point,
and then
blue skies
under which
Hannibal
paints with red paint.
The bodies glisten
at Zama
the bodies glisten;
and then zebras
and then the brimming sand.
Hannibal at Zama:
among the cannibals
an eye as fierce as any.
A quick revenge
proved slow as sand
in an hourglass;
the swamps, the lake,
like dreams
on the long marches
back and forth
across the Roman boot.
Elephants wonder
how many there were to
defeat, again and again;
so many legions,
beast against beast.
Then a pause.
Loss follows loss,
an old general
makes his last stand;
unfortunate palaver
at the end;
then slaughter
complete as a harvest.
Down the drain
goes Carthage,
gone for good,
and history can't tell
us what was
left among the ruins,
and what was not left.
We see Cato's fields of salt,
the old Greek
tells us a thing or two,
sharpening his point,
and then
blue skies
under which
Hannibal
paints with red paint.
The bodies glisten
at Zama
the bodies glisten;
and then zebras
and then the brimming sand.
PERIPATETICS
We have here to speak
of stone benches,
hard and uncomfortable,
mostly antiquarian,
of peculiar significance
in the lives of those citizens
of the world, those old Greeks
and the others,
scholars and vagrants,
walking and sitting, sitting and walking,
thoughtful heads, sensitive souls,
sore behinds;
philosophers all, of one
sort or another,
but a hard bench
is a hard bench.
The way in which they
won comfort from the hard stone
was by fortitude or willpower
or plain indifference,
standing the pain on its head,
or, for the less limber of mind
or more resourceful,
by collecting rags in the streets
or boughs fallen
from trees along the concourse.
Symbolizing the common rights
of noble-minded men they sit.
Their tired feet become
precious necessary relics,
delicate and easily broken.
Their thoughts collapse
on their own lives,
troubled by too much
time spent on the road;
the bleak consequences of
loneliness and deprivation
make them old
before they know it,
cold to the world
and even wisdom and
history have no comfort,
no good end.
Like the hero of the Odyssey
they return eventually,
but they return unrecognized
and leave again incognito.
Sitting alone, in the days,
in the nights, wayward
in their thoughts,
the history of Rome, eternal city,
compassed in blocks of
stone on the hills;
the tragic emperor's reign
no more than the life
of a precocious child.
We have here to speak
of stone benches,
hard and uncomfortable,
mostly antiquarian,
of peculiar significance
in the lives of those citizens
of the world, those old Greeks
and the others,
scholars and vagrants,
walking and sitting, sitting and walking,
thoughtful heads, sensitive souls,
sore behinds;
philosophers all, of one
sort or another,
but a hard bench
is a hard bench.
The way in which they
won comfort from the hard stone
was by fortitude or willpower
or plain indifference,
standing the pain on its head,
or, for the less limber of mind
or more resourceful,
by collecting rags in the streets
or boughs fallen
from trees along the concourse.
Symbolizing the common rights
of noble-minded men they sit.
Their tired feet become
precious necessary relics,
delicate and easily broken.
Their thoughts collapse
on their own lives,
troubled by too much
time spent on the road;
the bleak consequences of
loneliness and deprivation
make them old
before they know it,
cold to the world
and even wisdom and
history have no comfort,
no good end.
Like the hero of the Odyssey
they return eventually,
but they return unrecognized
and leave again incognito.
Sitting alone, in the days,
in the nights, wayward
in their thoughts,
the history of Rome, eternal city,
compassed in blocks of
stone on the hills;
the tragic emperor's reign
no more than the life
of a precocious child.
MICHAEL THE PAPHLAGONIAN
Michael’s fingers
were big as his arms,
riding in from
a good war;
sick as a dog,
he won acclaim.
A long disease does more
to our souls
than our bodies;
the fretful blood
and flesh accept.
God called,
Michael answered
at the last;
the crown of gold
exchanged for
the white robes
of the anointed,
the helmet of salvation.
At the sacred font,
omphalos of
God’s mother,
Michael stands;
dipped in the
watery hole
Michael emerges,
waiting on death
like a good servant.
The mystic waters
close again,
unbroken
as Christ’s belly.
Take, O take
these bleeding guts
away, whispers Michael
to his servants.
Tottering off,
he remembers Zoe
betrayed in her palace,
a moment’s pleasure repaid.
He has gone to
his reward,
they say,
looking skyward.
In a golden halo
he smiles from
his beautiful picture;
art for life.
Psellus told too much
and not enough about
those troubled times;
again and again
never to touch
the groping fingers
find the reins.
Michael’s fingers
were big as his arms,
riding in from
a good war;
sick as a dog,
he won acclaim.
A long disease does more
to our souls
than our bodies;
the fretful blood
and flesh accept.
God called,
Michael answered
at the last;
the crown of gold
exchanged for
the white robes
of the anointed,
the helmet of salvation.
At the sacred font,
omphalos of
God’s mother,
Michael stands;
dipped in the
watery hole
Michael emerges,
waiting on death
like a good servant.
The mystic waters
close again,
unbroken
as Christ’s belly.
Take, O take
these bleeding guts
away, whispers Michael
to his servants.
Tottering off,
he remembers Zoe
betrayed in her palace,
a moment’s pleasure repaid.
He has gone to
his reward,
they say,
looking skyward.
In a golden halo
he smiles from
his beautiful picture;
art for life.
Psellus told too much
and not enough about
those troubled times;
again and again
never to touch
the groping fingers
find the reins.
ON THE MARCH
It's a long high fly,
going, going,
the slow army,
elephants and all,
from the Alps descending,
going deep towards the belly button,
the breadbasket of Rome.
Along the Trebia flats,
the shores of the Trasimene,
Roman soldiers fell in droves,
legion by legion,
covering the ground
like the glittering leaves of autumn
or driven to drowning in the lake;
the silent uncaring water
swallowed them whole.
Fabius Cunctator, old and wily,
waiting in the wings,
patient for the reckoning;
but not his turn,
not his time;
Hannibal marches on.
It's a long high fly,
going, going,
the slow army,
elephants and all,
from the Alps descending,
going deep towards the belly button,
the breadbasket of Rome.
Along the Trebia flats,
the shores of the Trasimene,
Roman soldiers fell in droves,
legion by legion,
covering the ground
like the glittering leaves of autumn
or driven to drowning in the lake;
the silent uncaring water
swallowed them whole.
Fabius Cunctator, old and wily,
waiting in the wings,
patient for the reckoning;
but not his turn,
not his time;
Hannibal marches on.
Today’s LittleNip:
YOU’RE ONLY DEAD ONCE
(Odyssey Book XI- Nekuia)
Farming not at all
we like,
the pasture boggy and
the day dirt-long with toil.
In the kingdom of the dead
Achilles’ flap
about working a live sharecropper
than ruling the death-house—
he must have been kidding.
He was.
Toil is lady luck’s backside,
unfurnished and smelly;
give me ghosts and
the rest of eternity.
___________________
We have another new poet in the Kitchen, today! Jack D. Harvey’s poetry has appeared in Scrivener, The Comstock Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Typishly Literary Magazine, The Antioch Review, The Piedmont Poetry Journal and elsewhere. He has been a Pushcart nominee, and over the years has been published in a few anthologies. Of the poems he sent us today, “Zama” was previously published in Pyrokinection; “Peripatatics” in Sybil Journal; and “Michael the Paphlagonian” and “You're Only Dead Once” in Mediterranean Poetry.
Jack has been writing poetry since he was sixteen, and he lives in a small town near Albany, New York. He is retired from doing whatever he was doing before he retired. He once owned a cat who could whistle "Sweet Adeline", use a knife and fork and killed a postman. His book, Mark the Dwarf, is available on Kindle at https://www.amazon.com/Mark-Dwarf-Jack-D-Harvey-ebook/dp/B019KGW0F2/.
Jack’s book, alas, has not exactly set the world on fire, but competing against the likes of Harry Pothead and the Sorcerer's Behind and Strictly From Hunger Games is tough going for those of us old enough to have received an education in what is usually referred to as "the classics." Our literary endeavors, alas, are out of joint with the times.
Well, Jack, you’re not out of joint with Medusa’s Kitchen, so come back soon and don’t be a stranger!
__________________
—Medusa
YOU’RE ONLY DEAD ONCE
(Odyssey Book XI- Nekuia)
Farming not at all
we like,
the pasture boggy and
the day dirt-long with toil.
In the kingdom of the dead
Achilles’ flap
about working a live sharecropper
than ruling the death-house—
he must have been kidding.
He was.
Toil is lady luck’s backside,
unfurnished and smelly;
give me ghosts and
the rest of eternity.
___________________
We have another new poet in the Kitchen, today! Jack D. Harvey’s poetry has appeared in Scrivener, The Comstock Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Typishly Literary Magazine, The Antioch Review, The Piedmont Poetry Journal and elsewhere. He has been a Pushcart nominee, and over the years has been published in a few anthologies. Of the poems he sent us today, “Zama” was previously published in Pyrokinection; “Peripatatics” in Sybil Journal; and “Michael the Paphlagonian” and “You're Only Dead Once” in Mediterranean Poetry.
Jack has been writing poetry since he was sixteen, and he lives in a small town near Albany, New York. He is retired from doing whatever he was doing before he retired. He once owned a cat who could whistle "Sweet Adeline", use a knife and fork and killed a postman. His book, Mark the Dwarf, is available on Kindle at https://www.amazon.com/Mark-Dwarf-Jack-D-Harvey-ebook/dp/B019KGW0F2/.
Jack’s book, alas, has not exactly set the world on fire, but competing against the likes of Harry Pothead and the Sorcerer's Behind and Strictly From Hunger Games is tough going for those of us old enough to have received an education in what is usually referred to as "the classics." Our literary endeavors, alas, are out of joint with the times.
Well, Jack, you’re not out of joint with Medusa’s Kitchen, so come back soon and don’t be a stranger!
__________________
—Medusa
Jack Harvey
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.
Would you like to be a SnakePal?
All you have to do is 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.
Just remember:
the snakes of Medusa are always hungry—
for poetry, of course!
clicking on them once, then clicking on the x
in the top right corner to come back to Medusa.
Would you like to be a SnakePal?
All you have to do is 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.
Just remember:
the snakes of Medusa are always hungry—
for poetry, of course!
