How About the Bees?

Pioneer Cemetery

—Poems and Photos by Taylor Graham, Placerville, CA

YOU LOVE THE MYSTERY
    pioneer cemetery

She’s roaming this old graveyard by day
dressed in blood-red, quite blind to a bright living world.

You read inscriptions, marvel at how
time and weather can scrub a lifetime’s details away.

She hovers—eyes wide saucers, intense
blank pupils; abandoned, drooping lids—then disappears.

Is she mourning a world of love lost
before she was gone too, dead too soon, only a girl?

Button your jacket against sudden
chill, and a mist that rises neither from fields nor swale.

Come back on a sunny day, look-see
if she’s there, when even cypress casts a pleasant shade.

 Fluter

INTERIORS

We enter through the back, the kitchen door.
Spaces open into the interior, dark inside
of window-light, door-frames not quite true,
an old house. Atop the wood-burning stove
rests a rusted Geneva hand-fluter, its memories
of crimped collars and ruffled trims. Heavy,
iron. The people who once lived here stare
framed from a wall beyond, couples paired by
buttons, tucks and flounces, or the worker’s
practical cut. Countenance unsmiling—fashion
of the time, a photograph almost as final
as a funeral. Expression the same, regardless
of social standing. We move on to the private
rooms. Flowers of a quilted bedspread, steamer
trunks with lids raised to show off linens,
intricate lacery, layers of dress. Boxes of secrets
left open and forever closed. A curtain
dances with air through a window someone
forgot to shut.

 Fungus 6

FLOWERS OF ROT

Thanksgiving’s over, its leftover abundance
just beginning to push up into daylight
through November-fresh blades of new grass
and a mat of decomposing oak leaves
on our hill above the pond, its morning
scrim of mist—
mushrooms and toadstools, I can’t tell
which. Not our common grocery-produce
white buttons. I won’t touch, much less taste.
I take their portraits: chubby pale infants
who never cry. Not when the squirrel nibbles
at their soft cheeks. Some nod as if sleepy
in their frilly night clothes. Ruffles and pleats
of fungus flesh.
They’re beautiful. They assume their place
in this dying world that comes to life—
even now, before the dead of winter. Clouds
pass over, only loosely rooted in sky.

 Fungus 3

SNOW SCULPTURE

But it hasn’t snowed yet
on this December pasture.

White as a Renaissance marble
in rising spiral out of earth—

yet it’s alive, it’s moving.
I’m driving by at 60

passing front to flank
almost too fast to focus on—

two white donkeys?
in a mating dance. Heat

of iced December
for the patience of such making—

in a windswept field, a year from now,
new life out of old earth.

 Sunup

HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS

This festive eve.
My dog leads the way along dark fringes
behind Motel 6. Travelers hoping

to get back together into family, to unwrap
the gift of dawn.
Behind a dumpster my dog

wags her tail, smiles,
and here’s a man’s face by reflected light.
I can’t tell, he might be

someone’s old high school teacher,
squatting beside a cardboard box
where I guess he’ll spend the night.

His breath haloes in the cold.
I don’t know him. My dog
licks him in the face as if she does.

Tomorrow is holiday.
Laden tables, warmth between the walls
greeting everyone by name.

 Landscape with Fence

 

WILD JOURNEYMAN

That man under knapsack has got a home
somewhere if he’d remember or imagine it
forward; camo’d in loden among the rags
of leaves unfenced by storm, winds of change.
He’s hunched against halt-greed short-
sightedness about communal weather. He’s
never lost the irony of his first language,
but the place he knew is gone. He goes on.
Miseries sag from every wire woven to imprison
space. He escaped the fiercest wall. The key?
He slips through any lock, never allowed
his heart to be stone mortared to stone. Heart
of clown, fool, clipper of strung wire to let
the free music out of concertina, a vagrant song
to the fiddle’s moan. Heart can rise from
floorboards or forest litter, seek out the next
new place. The sun has never set on him.
Not yet.

 Coyote Bush

Today’s LittleNip:

COYOTE TALE
Response to “Felony Fauna Faux Pas”
by Caschwa on Medusa, 11/27/17
—Taylor Graham

Remember that burst of white bloom
in a tiny triangle between canyon
road and vacant lot graded for development?
Coyote-bush as if decked with snow,
a dazzle before I drove down the grade.
Coyote-bush all in white for early-winter.
They say, bees come out
of hibernation for the nectar. Coyote-
bush otherwise non-descript,
chaparral-dull, you might not notice.
For me, a bit of doldrums-cheer
in winter-dark on the canyon grade.
You know the story. The road
was widened—safer, but somehow
the old one cheered my soul. And that
ready-graded lot got developed, wiping out
coyote-bush. How about the bees?

___________________

Our thanks to Taylor Graham for her fine photos and poems today, even managing to slip in a little red, our Seed of the Week. You’ve probably noticed, also, that she and Carl Schwartz (Caschwa) are having a conversation. Such co-creation is always encouraged in the Kitchen.

Head yourself across the Causeway tonight to hear Bill Gainer and Anna Marie (plus open mic) at Poetry in Davis, John Natsoulas Gallery, 8pm. Or, of course, there’s always Poetry Unplugged at Luna’s Cafe in Sacramento (features and open mic), also at 8pm. Scroll down to the blue column (under the green column at the right) for info about these and other upcoming poetry events in our area—and note that more may be added at the last minute.

—Medusa

 Outside looking in, or inside looking out? 

Celebrate the poetry of varied points of view!

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.

The Wind in Our Faces

Water Lilies, 1916

—Painting by Claude Monet

—Poems by Rainer Maria Wilke, 1875-1926

CHILD IN RED

Sometimes she walks through the village in her
little red dress
all absorbed in restraining herself,
and yet, despite herself, she seems to move
according to the rhythm of her life to come.

She runs a bit, hesitates, stops,
half-turns around...
and, all while dreaming, shakes her head
for or against.

Then she dances a few steps
that she invents and forgets,
no doubt finding out that life
moves on too fast.

It's not so much that she steps out
of the small body enclosing her,
but that all she carries in herself
frolics and ferments.

It's this dress that she'll remember
later in a sweet surrender;
when her whole life is full of risks,
the little red dress will always seem right. 

  —Anonymous Photo

BLACK CAT

A ghost, though invisible, still is like a place
your sight can knock on, echoing; but here
within this thick black pelt, your strongest gaze
will be absorbed and utterly disappear:

just as a raving madman, when nothing else
can ease him, charges into his dark night
howling, pounds on the padded wall, and feels
the rage being taken in and pacified.

She seems to hide all looks that have ever fallen
into her, so that, like an audience,
she can look them over, menacing and sullen,
and curl to sleep with them. But all at once

as if awakened, she turns her face to yours;
and with a shock, you see yourself, tiny,
inside the golden amber of her eyeballs
suspended, like a prehistoric fly. 

  —Anonymous Photo

THE WATER LILY

My whole life is mine, but whoever says so
will deprive me, for it is infinite.
The ripple of water, the shade of the sky
are mine; it is still the same, my life.

No desire opens me: I am full,
I never close myself with refusal-
in the rhythm of my daily soul
I do not desire—I am moved;

by being moved I exert my empire,
making the dreams of night real:
into my body at the bottom of the water
I attract the beyonds of mirrors...


(trans. by A. Poulin)

  —Anonymous Photo

BEHIND THE BLAMELESS TREES

Behind the blameless trees
old fate slowly builds
her mute countenance.
Wrinkles grow there . . .
What a bird shrieks here
springs there like a gasp of warning
from a soothsayer's hard mouth.

And the soon-to-be lovers
smile on each other, not yet knowing farewell,
and round about them, like a constellation,
their destiny casts
its nightly spell.
Still to come, it does not reach out to them,
it remains
a phantom
floating in its heavenly course. 

  —Anonymous Photo

WHAT BIRDS PLUNGE THROUGH IS NOT
THE ULTIMATE SPACE

What birds plunge through is not the intimate space,
in which you see all Forms intensified.
(In the Open, denied, you would lose yourself,
would disappear into that vastness.)

Space reaches from us and translates Things:
to become the very essence of a tree,
throw inner space around it, from that space
that lives in you. Encircle it with restraint.
It has no limits. For the first time, shaped
in your renouncing, it becomes fully tree.

 —Anonymous Photo

Today’s LittleNip:
 

A WALK

—Rainer Maria Rilke

My eyes already touch the sunny hill,
going far ahead of the road I have begun.
So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp;
it has inner light, even from a distance—

and charges us, even if we do not reach it,
into something else, which, hardly sensing it,
we already are; a gesture waves us on
answering our own wave...
but what we feel is the wind in our faces.


(trans. by Robert Bly)

_________________________

—Medusa

For more about Rilke, see www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/rainer-maria-rilke/. For lots of poems about the color of red (our Seed of the Week), go to www.poemhunter.com/poems/red/page-1/13422/.

 Rainer Maria Rilke

Celebrate poetry—and poets!

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.

Red Insists

The Vision

—Poems and Photos by Joyce Odam, Sacramento, CA

THE DRESS

Tomorrow I will wear the dress.
Oh, seamless thing.

It will be torn
where I have fought the sleeve

that tries to form
the shape of my life.

Its buttons will resist
the buttonholes.

I will not let its small stain rest
where my heart is—

making its memory too tight.
I do not like this dress.

 Sighings

TRYING ON HER RED DRESS

This is me in a long dress, full of wrinkles
from being packed for so long in a box.
It will never iron smooth.
It will never fit.

It is an endless dress
     of somebody else’s body.
I am a child in it.
     I should never wear red.

Red is a death color,
     said a whispering fortuneteller.
Red is a painful color,
     said a startled mirror.

Red will never
let you go once you wear it.
It will never stay boxed as it was.
Red must be seen and worn. Red insists.

 Prophecy

GLASS LADY
IN RED DRESS SONNET

In her red dress
she shimmers bright;
she’s made of glass.

The ceiling light,
turned by the fan,
directs our gaze,

for quicker than
her lowered eyes,
she glints a smile

beneath her hat,
with flowers piled—
light sees to that—

turning to keep
its light that deep.

 Dream of the Rose

I DREAMED YOU WERE WEARING
MY DRESS

I dreamed you were
pulling
my dress off
above your head.
You were
glaring at me.
I wanted you
to be
careful with the dress.
It was an old one.
Its sleeves
Were torn.
It was
faded and thin.
Almost a rag.

Why were you
wearing
my dress,
I wanted to ask.
but you were
so angry
standing
in front of me
with the dress caught
on the bind
of your shoulders.
Help me out of
this thing,
you said.
But before
I could help,
you had pulled
it off
and flung it
in a heap
between us
on the floor.

 Clarification

THE EYE THAT BETRAYS THE VISION  (I)
After Dettaglio (1875) by Wm. Adolphe Bougereau

Her eye, her earring, the silken drape of her scarf,
her blue dress buttoned at the shoulder...
her unbidden blush of skin.

Her eye is following your perusal—
does not blink—does not tear,
her eye is a judgment and a question.

She peers through the corner of the curtain.
Her earring brushes her scarf and makes
a small tinkle of movement.

She is the epithet of Beauty,
with no other reason but this—no other
purpose but this. Her artist loves her.

Her eye is both haughty and pleading—
never to be worthy for anything
beyond this. Dare she grow old...?

Dare she love another... ?
Dare she lose the intensity of her look…? 
Her eye darkens at the conjecture. 

Her eye possesses your eye—accepts the
vanity that is given her—forbids your look—
does not question past your curiosity.

 Commiseration

PERFECTION
After “The Beautiful Princess” costume
by Léon Bakst from Stravinsky’s The Firebird 

Attending women dress her in a flowing
paisley gown with glowing red buttons.

Hovering women comb her hair into
shining and perfect smoothness.

Whispering women advise her,
and warn her. She bends her head aside.

Silent women place her before
a glowing mirror of contemplation.

She holds a red orb of light in her hand.
She waits for the force of your admiration.

She looks at you demurely
and hands you the red globe.

The discreet mirror sees nothing.
You wonder why she loves you.

_________________

TIMELESS BEAUTY

She is here to tease :
the fan, the hanging silks,

the pearls around her throat—
that languid look,

her rumpled white dress
and

the cushion
that she leans against.

How young is she . . . ?
A century, perhaps.

A century
takes its time—

remembers as it will.
Though she

is many centuries gone,
she teases still.

__________________

Today’s LittleNip:

SUFFOCATIONS

—Joyce Odam

I am so cold. I pull on endless dresses. I pull on sleeves
and dark skirts and become small enough to fit in all of
them, until my closet is empty—and it shivers—and it is
only a naked room now, full of whispering.

I am still cold—slipping into dreams which wrap around
me in different textures and patterns—each night I wear
their costumes, and cannot get out of them. There are so
many, and I keep getting caught in all their folds.

_________________

Many thanks to Joyce Odam for her fine poetry about dresses and buttons (our Seed of the Week)—and about red! As she says, Red Insists. In fact, red is the December color, and even the signature of November, along with its yellows and golds. So our new Seed of the Week is Red. Send your poems, photos and artwork about this (or any other) subject to kathykieth@hotmail.com. No deadline on SOWs, though, and for a peek at our past ones, click on “Calliope’s Closet”, the link at the top of this column, for plenty of others to choose from.

And head up to El Dorado Hills tonight, 5pm, for the Poetry Off-the-Shelves read-around at the El Dorado Hills Library, 7455 Silva Valley Parkway. 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.

—Medusa

 Celebrate poetry!

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.

Losing One's Buttons

Anonymous Photos

—Poems by Caschwa, Sacramento, CA

ALL THOSE BUTTONS

(Following Joyce Odam’s reference

on Medusa Tuesday, Nov. 28, to a
daring skirt, “a bit too tight and
a bit too short.”)


My dad displayed to his sons
The official Navy pants
He had worn in WWII

The fly opened and closed
Using 13 separate buttons
One for each colony

Sparing graphic detail
The fly has only one job to do
No room for delays

That’s why they don’t put
13 safety buttons
On dueling pistols

Today my offspring can admire
My new cargo pants
One button, one zipper

Hung with a sturdy belt
None too tight, and
None too short

MUCH MORE THAN OIL

A better person makes
Border policies as a
Bonding process, not
Business profits

Black pride and
Birth pain raise
Blood pressure in
Body parts

Brain power sees it is
Bad politics to
Blue pencil
Bingo parlors

The bottom position of a
Billiards pocket was the
Best picture at a
Bachelor party

Big price
Beef products in
Butcher paper reach the
Back porch

A band promoter had
Baby powder and a
Breast pump in her
Back pack

NETHER

For some, whole lives are spent
In towns that get no snow
Letters to Santa remain unsent
There is no holiday glow

Oh relief, at last, a bit of frost!
Not enough to last the season
A salad dressed but not yet tossed
Some rhyme without the reason

Hit and run, car is bent
No answer to the call for a tow
There’s not enough money to pay the rent
Farmers have too little to hoe

Expectations soar, spare no cost
We’re due to get some pleasin’
Now it looks like all is lost
When high office is home to treason

Children’s holiday spirit is spent
Leaving toy soldiers with no APO
Your dog no longer finds the scent
And Rudolph’s nose doesn’t glow

____________________

Today’s LittleNip:

How did it get so late so soon?
It’s night before it’s afternoon.
December is here before it’s June.
My goodness how the time has flewn.
How did it get so late so soon?

—Dr. Seuss

____________________

Many thanks to Carl Bernard Schwartz (Caschwa) for today’s poetry about buttons (our Seed of the Week), B-words, and somethings about the season (we’re due to get some pleasin’).

Poetry events in our area begin tonight at Sac. Poetry Center with a reading by contributors to the American River Review from American River College, 7:30pm. On Tuesday, Poetry Off-the-Shelves meets in El Dorado Hills at the Library, 5-7pm. On Thursday, Anna Marie and Bill Gainer (plus open mic) read at Poetry in Davis, 8pm. Then on Saturday, Second Saturday Art Reception at Sac. Poetry Center presents Gone Wild, an art benefit for Sac. Wildlife Care Assoc., 5-8pm. Scroll down to the blue column (under the green column at the right) for info about these and other upcoming poetry events in our area—and note that more may be added at the last minute. 

—Medusa

 Celebrate poetry!

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.

The Religion of Snow

Stone Rabbit in Snow

—Photo by Katy Brown, Davis, CA

 

SHOVELING SNOW WITH BUDDHA
—Billy Collins
 
In the usual iconography of the temple or the local Wok
you would never see him doing such a thing,
tossing the dry snow over a mountain
of his bare, round shoulder,
his hair tied in a knot,
a model of concentration.

Sitting is more his speed, if that is the word
for what he does, or does not do.

Even the season is wrong for him.
In all his manifestations, is it not warm or slightly humid?
Is this not implied by his serene expression,
that smile so wide it wraps itself around the waist of the universe?

But here we are, working our way down the driveway,
one shovelful at a time.
We toss the light powder into the clear air.
We feel the cold mist on our faces.
And with every heave we disappear
and become lost to each other
in these sudden clouds of our own making,
these fountain-bursts of snow.

This is so much better than a sermon in church,
I say out loud, but Buddha keeps on shoveling.
This is the true religion, the religion of snow,
and sunlight and winter geese barking in the sky,
I say, but he is too busy to hear me.

He has thrown himself into shoveling snow
as if it were the purpose of existence,
as if the sign of a perfect life were a clear driveway
you could back the car down easily
and drive off into the vanities of the world
with a broken heater fan and a song on the radio.

All morning long we work side by side,
me with my commentary
and he inside his generous pocket of silence,
until the hour is nearly noon
and the snow is piled high all around us;
then, I hear him speak.

After this, he asks,
can we go inside and play cards?

Certainly, I reply, and I will heat some milk
and bring cups of hot chocolate to the table
while you shuffle the deck
and our boots stand dripping by the door.

Aaah, says the Buddha, lifting his eyes
and leaning for a moment on his shovel
before he drives the thin blade again
deep into the glittering white snow.

_____________________

—Medusa

Hello, December!

—Anonymous Photos

FIRST SIGHT
—Philip Larkin

Lambs that learn to walk in snow
When their bleating clouds the air
Meet a vast unwelcome, know
Nothing but a sunless glare.
Newly stumbling to and fro
All they find, outside the fold,
Is a wretched width of cold.

As they wait beside the ewe,
Her fleeces wetly caked, there lies
Hidden round them, waiting too,
Earth's immeasureable surprise.
They could not grasp it if they knew,
What so soon will wake and grow
Utterly unlike the snow.

It sifts from leaden sieves,


It powders all the wood,

It fills with alabaster wool


The wrinkles of the road.

It makes an even face


Of mountain and of plain, —


Unbroken forehead from the east


Unto the east again.

It reaches to the fence,


It wraps it, rail by rail,


Till it is lost in fleeces;


It flings a crystal veil

On stump and stack and stem, —


The summer’s empty room,


Acres of seams where harvests were,


Recordless, but for them.

It ruffles wrists of posts,


As ankles of a queen, —


Then stills its artisans like ghosts,
Denying they have been.

—Emily Dickinson

SNOW
—Louis MacNeice

The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was


Spawning snow and pink roses against it


Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:


World is suddener than we fancy it.

World is crazier and more of it than we think,


Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion


A tangerine and spit the pips and feel


The drunkenness of things being various.

And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world


Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes—


On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of one’s hands—
There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses.

DESERT PLACES
—Robert Frost

Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast
In a field I looked into going past,
And the ground almost covered smooth in snow,
But a few weeds and stubble showing last.

The woods around it have it—it is theirs.
All animals are smothered in their lairs.
I am too absent-spirited to count;
The loneliness includes me unawares.

And lonely as it is, that loneliness
Will be more lonely ere it will be less—
A blanker whiteness of benighted snow
With no expression, nothing to express.

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars—on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places. 

LINES FOR WINTER
—Mark Strand

Tell yourself
as it gets cold and gray falls from the air
that you will go on
walking, hearing
the same tune no matter where
you find yourself—
inside the dome of dark
or under the cracking white
of the moon's gaze in a valley of snow.
Tonight as it gets cold
tell yourself
what you know which is nothing
but the tune your bones play
as you keep going. And you will be able
for once to lie down under the small fire
of winter stars.
And if it happens that you cannot
go on or turn back and you find yourself
where you will be at the end,
tell yourself
in that final flowing of cold through your limbs
that you love what you are. 

Today’s LittleNip:

A PATCH OF OLD SNOW
—Robert Frost

There's a patch of old snow in a corner


That I should have guessed


Was a blow-away paper the rain


Had brought to rest.



It is speckled with grime as if


Small print overspread it,


The news of a day I've forgotten—


If I ever read it. 

 Hello, December!

____________

It’s not too late to submit artwork to Sac. Poetry Center for Gone Wild: An Art Show to Benefit Sacramento’s Wildlife Care Association; they’ll be accepting work from 10am-2pm today. 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.

—Medusa

Celebrate the poetry that is December!

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.

Hang Your Hat Upon the Stars

—Poems by Tom Goff, Carmichael, CA
—Anonymous Photos

HEAVY MY HEART

A Shakespeare dirge is called a dump.
Heavy my music now for you:
Dump must be my tune. This I construe
From miseries that sink and sag
Quite leaden within the heart’s red bag,
Nothing but lump.

Repeat the playing, dump and dump.
The heart’s now heavy-laboring pump
Can scarcely clear bilge from a ship.
No, no, what drags me downward, far
Below crass sewer line or sump,
Is nothing showy like a scar.

More bird: months dead on the window ledge.
Drowned man, clothes soaked, in grass and sedge.
No, they’re no source for dirge or dump.

This fall makes me stone drawn to a stone,
The Stone that makes up Earth’s heart’s core,
Gone cold, a dank magnetic clump.
Or if still white flame as before,
Ferocious lament, all fume and groan.  

MERE PRONOUNCEMENT

My irritable flaw
is to take umbrage at
pronunciations raw, revealing only that
you read by halt short sight,
not with the unerring ear.
Aversion to word-blight
scarce filters out this fear
of losing all I have.
When you pronounce “short-lǐved,”
linguistic glaciers calve.
Smug, I orate “short-līved,”
my Shakespeare player’s bray
my hedge against dismay
where vowels and labials shift,
distend apart our rift,
wedge rivermouth wide bay.
Eroding brain; late day.

DISQUIET

Disharmony flares all around us now.
So baffling, so disquieting all events,
all good smiles gutter out. The best intents
darken, sicken, fade upon the brow.
What rotten fruit grows instantly on the bough,
drops off and poisons soil already spent,
leaves a Chernobyl of most noisome scent
albeit bred song-sweet, nurtured to endow?

Will this discord turn soft again to touch
our ears with ripe sounds, plaintive yet controlled?
In swirling times on shifting grounds, can such
true chords, piquant suspensions, yet be rolled
out still silky rich? Or deathly faint?
Is the goddess, Grandmother Music, outmoded, quaint?   

THE SOUNDING OF THE MAROON
(11/11/1918)

A firework designed to make a single loud report 

like the noise of a cannon (often with a bright flash 

of light), used esp. as a warning or signal. 

                             —Oxford English Dictionary

 

Symphonic Variations: Bax is working
on the score when, plunged in the movement Play,
he learns the maroon has sounded its last bay,
the cannon’s mouth-howl, late harbinger of lurking
Zeppelins bomb-laden. Does the berserking
blank, rupturing air, reach him in broadest day,
acoustic shadow aim the Big Bertha bray,
clear from Hyde Park announce the war-god’s shirking

at long and bitter last? The cannon-blast,
named strangely maroon—the shade of Mars’s skin?—
jotted near letter GG, thirty-one bars past.
To mark no more friends lost to the world’s worst sin?
(And you, love of mine: days hence, maroon will be
the rich color of your ancestral land’s flag: free.)

 A Starry Night

—Painting by Vincent van Gogh

AGAINST POETIC IRONY

Tiresome silly intellectual jests
pepper our poems like an old coarse pepper.
Mingus at least had unerring Jimmy Knepper
to sound a comic trombone with manic zests
and yet still mournful smears and gobbets of moan.
But that is sincerest jazz: now what have we
to utter without forced guffaws through poetry?
If frivolous, let us at least revive the pun.
I want like Mark Antony just to speak right on.
Right on! with raised fist, went our smothered “ironic” joke
while that same burying-Caesar speech did cloak
true irony, lingering long past the last breath drawn.
I want to speak truth of a kind so plain it nailed
a man’s hands long ago; could still see one jailed. 

___________________

Today’s LittleNip:

I loved when I was young
The girls in all the bars.
And coming home I hung
My hat upon the stars.

—Anonymous (quoted by Arnold Bax in Farewell, My Youth:
“There is no doubt that we [music students] used the wheeling
constellations as our hatracks.”)

 

____________________

Be sure to get your wildlife artwork down to Sac. Poetry Center for the Gone Wild showing this month; submissions will be accepted today from 12-2pm, and tomorrow from 10am-2pm. 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.

Also on the calendar today: The Good Earth Movement in Placerville presents Taylor Graham plus a holiday open mic, 250 Main St., 6:30pm.

—Medusa

 Celebrate poetry!

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then click on the X in the top right corner to come back
to Medusa.