Today's poem - "One Second in Spring"

One Second in Spring

 

In her voice a million stars  

ride the cricket sizzle and beesong

lofted by breeze and chat of birds

in the overture of peace threading

sung nature-blent in om and chant

and spirit-hung in sun and shade

far from war memorial and concourse

 

Forever joins to a single breathing moment

an instant infinitely spreading

composed of anarchy and spring glades

hidden below rural melodic calm

as day moves standstill-slow upon the lea

 

Face to face he joins her embroidery

of meadow, tree, ground, and sky

Today's poem - "Mr. Natural"

Mr. Natural

As I knelt in the dirt to touch the hem of his garment, he said, Get up, brother.  What do you want?  I said I only want to be free. Free? From what? I said I didn’t know. Then know yourself to be free, and go and be free. As I looked up he headed down the path to the well.

gratuitous second poem - "Little Fellers from the Flying Saucer"

Little Fellers from the Flying Saucer

 

This is the story:

 

When the saucers came they took us all for a ride

It was a sad day, nobody the same after that day

because we all got the Flying Saucer PTSD

I realized how close to being just a monkey I was

 

It started with the steel saucer going over and over

then a two foot tall little feller in a black force

He made a really big sound, then waited, then another

I was thinking how bad this situation was and was shook

 

I yelled at the little feller, but he made me quiet

I guess it was with his brain – I couldn’t yell any more

My get up and go had got up and went – I got stiffened

They lifted us with air pockets into the Flying Saucer

 

Like coots in a cage we went riding around on board

while the little fellers put the hurt on our minds

and showed us spikey color things that sucked out thoughts

and pretty soon I must have been put to sleep, I can’t remember

 

When I woke up we were all outstanding in our field as before

listening to insect music and slowly working up to moving

Some of us could remember some of it some of us recalled other

and some of us couldn’t remember nothing at all like dopes

 

But now:

 

That was forty years ago, and now I think it was all just hooey

I can’t credit being flown around in a saucer anymore

even if Eddie and Marj and Del still talk about it on TV

I want to think we got hypnotized and bullshitted by scientists

 

Life slowly got better the less I thought about it

The Little Fellers seemed less real

The Flying Saucer seemed stupider

and I grew up and moved off to Nebraska

Today's poem - "Chaos in the Brass Section"

 

Chaos in the Brass Section

 

M. Comartin grimaces from the side of his mouth

The string scherzo ends at just the wrong moment

(stifled giggles ripple up and down the rows)

-he gestures a bit stiffly, turning a shade of green

 

I note a slight drag distressing the second movement

causing the conductor’s eyebrow to elevate

I see this as if a drawing, a police artist’s sketch

My embouchure starts to degrade, my lips rubberize

 

Faithful season subscribers shift in their plush seats

Hm, I think, this score sure looks blurry

Now the woodwinds go sour and slightly out of time

Well, I might as well improvise – this won’t sound bad

 

The Maestro looks distressed, twitches, grits his teeth

The other brasses sputter and splay erratically

Catcalls from the balcony and grumbles rumble throughout

I start to freewheel emote, chasing the woodwinds

 

My mind wanders to a funny un-funny middle school concert

     Now I think: Where the heck was I? I’ll drop in HERE!

But something is out of whack, we’re in different modes

-I’m looking forward to that after party at Jeannette’s

 

Pursuing the wayward strings, we blunder into novel spaces

Haphazardly it segues into a long, droning crescendo

It’s FUBAR: the audience is yelling and throwing things

Suddenly I’m in a full-tilt white tie riot- What a feeling!

 

Inferno Red Faced, M. Comartin issues steam jets from his ears

     The orchestra is bolting prematurely, not taking bows

Eyes like wild horses, my fellow artists are fleeing in panic

Patrons, clutching jewels and canes, rush the shocked stage

 

I shout, The greatest season finale in company history!

My succinct and cynical observation on awards and award season: "Lifetime Achievement Award"

Lifetime Achievement Award

 

the award for artistic expression

is to be disbursed in X equal payoffs

(to no one) devolving instead

to the artist’s corporate sponsor who takes

full credit for all intellectual properties

deposited, accrued, compounded in perpetuity

and no liability for personal, legal, or

fiduciary injuries redounding thereof

 

artistic merit being monetarily worthless

in and of itself

is left to the artist for sustenance

recompense for their innate inability

to shrewdly leverage tangible, salable assets

 

wise up kid, this is how the world works: don’t be so naive

 

today's poem - "Bird Brain #8"

Bird Brain #8

 

A man with a circle brain

spins his tires

as thirty birds roost

in the palladium

of his cranium

 

Clear the tower

Ring the bell

Let winged creatures

from the carillon

fly the pavilion

 

Lost in feelings

of images reversing

defluxions flux

the empty vale

flapping & revolving

 

out of his belfry

the bell in his crown

signals the town

a babbling story

slipping in the forked air

 

today's poem - "Edna"

Edna

 

Enamored with her otherworldly

eloquence in pursuit forever

of Edna

his love around they went

through time

and expression and Edna

for her part had a wandering heart

and still he worshipped

the Earth upon which she sat

 

when first they met feeling was paramount

he felt exalted

as a constant cross years

she was a Delphic oracle of pleasure

when first they met he remembered as if now

words like jewels like senses

 

mountains of the Earth stand distant

and every day shells itself to consume

till once at coffee

years like crags

she said you only love my array of pleasure

not me

as she presented papers of dissolution before him

mountains of the Earth stand near

 

away swirled every possibility

he said I will contest

this forever, even to the high courts

so strong is his lack of grasp

of Edna

Edna in days strung like ghosts

disappearing away into the mist

 

Yesterday's Missing Poem - "Have I Missed a Day?"

 

Have I Missed a Day?

 

I missed a day

sometime somewhere

as Henry Cow s l o w l y  

transitioned meanwhile

into the Art Bears

 

day I never get back

3 of 5 essentials

of a band re-banding

born again rebranded

equally to scuffle

 

telephone and dying vans

did the band lose a day

many long years ago

waiting to create amid

the dice rolls of life

 

on a Northern porch I sit

in the wrought-iron chair

serpentine flower cushion

on blue mismatched paint

wonder when my dog will bark

 

have I missed a day?

today's poem - "confidence"

 

confidence

 

if you get it right

there’s no end to it

there’s no start to it

if stars are bright

 

any way any day any how

you may say how and why

 

there’s nothing to stop it

and even if there is

there’s nothing to remember

and here’s nothing to forget

 

any day now can you say  

who how and why you are  

 

nothing stop nothing start

anything is and nothing not

nothing plus nothing ends

in everything that it’s not

 

today's poem - "gyrant"

gyrant

 

all the stars dimly retreat from galaxies of nostalgia

before dawn crops nuance from fine print

       in artist backdrops in line for final reproach

                     of sentences said in open emptiness

               and no one knew what would happen

   and no one even cared enough to think

sunsful of hybrid oxygen sparks clap                                                                                                       up inner glow ladders of climbing light

where climbing mystics tendril roadblocks

          full of cheer enduring a suavely cool ritual

                   they enfold in pure symbol coiled isms

                           where fowls upsweep to hiker birdcages                                                                                                                             fleeting nimrods autocorrect incorrectly                                                                                                                               restate the obvious to opaque scholars

  and no one named Marilyn, Marvin, Mick, or Mu                                                                                                                            chants chromatic incense cheers of adherence                                                                                                                             to false zealots cloistered in festering barns

 

                                             in time for the final tick tock

                              of the atomic clock winding down

               above the city’s aura vibrating

no one counts moments

                              and no one knows the difference                                                                                                                                                        nobody nowhere nothing

today's poem - "Refresh"

 

Refresh

I can’t remember the name of that memory drug, but it really works!

One could say that the need to remember is

 

Or, that the thing that we can’t do without is memory

Except, (I forget what I was going to say)

So maybe we can do without it

 

You know, when your mind fills so full it can’t hold any more

or the little retrieval machines work so hard to find anything

that they can’t possibly do it (can they?) then what?

 

Sometimes when I dream there are memories of prior dreams that I have been dreaming forever that I had forgotten – stairways into stairways of lost corridors

 

Where did I put that ukulele? Art suffers!

 

What’s in a name? What’s in a word or a memory or a memory of a name?

 

It could be that there isn’t anything important to say or that everything has been said so often that it doesn’t bear repeating (I can’t BEAR to say that again)?

 

When fishing in a deep lake and pulling up only old shoes – just enjoy the boating.

 

I was at the pharmacy looking for it but without the name and without remembering what I was looking for I just bought pretzels instead.  I remember when I was a kid and the pharmacy had a spinning rack of all the current comics – well, they could bring that back.  Perhaps I could be a paperboy again.

 

Could you repeat what you just said? Oh, all right then, never mind.

today's poem - "some else wise"

some else wise

each small giant a tall midget

in mountains of uncorked corks

with crumbs in high rock skies

and Plymouth keys in bupkus time

past future ice climates saying

a serious mysterious tuba word

today's poem - "Fade Away"

 

Fade Away

Open mic at Crown and Anchor – again

-a beat down bar suggesting a Sumerian Sunset

whilst I prefer a clean, sunlit festival stage

that squires up in memory as I get lost

massacring class like a cosmic axe-man

 

But all the guitar tricks I thieved are clichs:   

The knuckleheads pshaw and shrug at my riffs

ignore the excruciating soul faces I make

 

My 20,000 subscribers slowly dwindled to 12

-the Rocky Coleman Show’s not what it used to be

You boring son of a bitch you’re weightless now

festering in air like wisps of ammonia and yeast

 

So I mutter incoherently over Mu Gu Gai Pan

& muse upon better, salty day phantoms of now

today's poem - "Lycanthrope In Space"

 

Lycanthrope In Space

millions of moons sway

a scintilla of wolfbane

an astronaut transmutes

to bloody slaughter

 

oblivious rings of Saturn

a mayhem resultant crash

and werewolf space mission

expenditure chain reaction

 

today's poem - "A Midsummer Night's Moon Tide Samba"

 

A Midsummer Night’s Moon Tide Samba

It seems no night darkness and no horses are in the sport of the Cossacks in the rolling hills save for a flowing mane, and then strive to walk in a free service, to knock immeasurably, unaware of the powerful Folk brightly plowing

Heads of the other end backwards, the gestures and words of the standard of the horses, of the men of his city on the cloud lines end at night

I agree the same, and the mountain, the good, puts a hedge for your gray hair, whole silk, without charm, two of the ships they think in vain are the birds, a far different thing seen through the meadows, and on the horses, and they speak of the course of the fast

In her lips like the sound she makes chiropractor-impossible to pass or sing in a short sharp giggle senseless animals mixed with various insects, and includes immersive puffs of local hiccoughing bird-watchers who smile light to heavy, to be an "evil is who is not?" that is smoldering for a bird in strangely shaped leaf shadows

This is a kind of talking a lot, and making a nest, as far as words go, it is in addition to the rest, that seem murmured among the people, so that she herself came in anger, and also gently place all the youth who make beats when you cry, my lord, my horn, trombone, in the curious waggle cycle

This is not crystal, good daughter, let him deny that he would be, that the clash of cymbals is reaching new ads, from the fact that I do not like the fields of the moon tide to my door, which is hot and cold at night, which is equal to the blow of breezes, program extensions on the sidewalk, and scratching with the cards a song in my heart

We will mourn, among the metaphysicians of doubt, from thence it is clear that you will find that the usual practices which have arisen in the very presence, and the birds of every sound of the trumpet tear darkness into pieces

today's poem - "Pheasants"

 

Pheasants

 

A few more pheasants step a field

flown down at mad angles somewhere

tall in prairie grass under a short sky

searching, searching, before take off

 

Their famous colors, rings, feathers

and claws spread, making footnotes

squeak-squawk along pecking ground

grousing scalic insect and seed

 

walking festivals of feather they are

but at a sudden start they launch

glory wings spread low to the ground

and quickly, quickly beauty disappears

Today's poem - "Iron Bird Woman"

 

Iron Bird Woman

Mint swollen sky exiting

in fowl-happy grove downwhirls

a time-freed female colossus

flown next to squares who wince

at avant-garde trombone solos

enow smile seraphically

to witness her albatross control

as she rockets into splash mud

 

She makes sounds with her lips resembling

chirrups impossible to pass through or into

short sharp trombone songs of certain insects

senseless ceaseless immersive whistles

 

Local bird watchers hiccough laughter

as light worsens to say, “She’s ugly, isn’t she?”

furtively In odd-shaped shadows Iron Bird Woman

appears to escape as the Help Line lights up

 

Dark horses whose nightly frolics spread them  

numberlessly clop and whinny over rolling hills

to roam free ignorant of village life servitude

of ploughing, pulling, pushing, and labouring

 

Leaden horses rear to the high brassy sounds

shake their manes and gallop at a right angles

away from the misty night-time human village

into velvet gray hillsides into falling light

 

Two sightless folks sitting on a fence-rail

think nothing amiss in slightly-off birdsong

and talk about what it’s like to see or fly

or run free like horses over the meadows

 

Riled-up metaphysicians and doubtful alchemists

find nothing usual to abut this manifestation:

the birds all trombone, swoop, chatter, and nest

till their voices are still save for sleep’s murmuring

 

It seems now that she has come for prisoners

in her fury, not for our pleasure her warrior spirit

-to incarcerate all

whenever she falls

 

today's poem - "Expiration Date"

 

Expiration Date

We will be strong – residents, not savages nor coveters; and ever proceed

to pause each elliptic age and crawl each slow moment

We will be fire, water, and air – pervasive and unforgotten; ever present

exceeding brief avenues and shortcuts quickly traversed

We the people will inhabit streets, fields, oceans with our resilient spirits

 

today's poem - "Big Fish"

 

Big Fish

A kid down the street caught a Big Fish

-so big the guts fed birds and insects for a month

They toted it up on a land raft and log rollers to St Kevin’s Church

Brothers of Kevin dug a pit, chopped logs, and rubbed the fish with fistfuls of spice,

sank it in buckets of lime juice, covered it with fronds and waited for the coals to ready

At dusk, K-town came out and block-partied the street with festoons, petals, and lanterns

Musicians strummed two-steps pokily on ancient lutes and flutes amid laughter and noise

The Giant Fish roasted next to minor pits for a spitted suckling pig,  a lamb, a goat, and the days catch

Jimmy-Who-Caught-the-Fish and his pals kicked balls and wrestled on the blocked-off Church street

The other kids danced and twirled, sang songs upon the music and strew flowers on the pavement

The men and old timers sipped rum concoctions, chortled, and told the tale of the other Big Fish

The women and aunties danced folklorically, mixed colored punch and braided girls’ hair

The delicious Big Fish, pig, lamb, and goat were forked out on plates of beans, onions, and parsley

Everyone ate and drank then danced in the night lit by colorful lanterns

Young couples backed away together into the woods and churchyard for moonlit courtship

Men rode scooters and motorcycles in bibulous circles as children cheered, throwing streamers

Grandmothers played basketball with little girls in party dresses, bangles, and flower hats

All night festivities swirled till the musicians dozed and people arm-in-arm, slipped home to sleep

At dawn, the Brothers burned the festival jetsam in the fire pit’s dying coals, swept the streets,

helped the hungover home and rang the church bells as roosters crowed

 

A famous artist painted Jimmy-Who-Caught-the-Fish and the Big Fish on the town wall

After 100 years Jimmy was buried under St Kevin’s Church floor, a fish-brick marks his crypt

And somewhere - in the lake - another Big Fish longs to be caught as St. Kevin’s quietly waits

today's poem - "Taking Notes"

 

Taking Notes

 

How do common mysteries filter green air

flown in and out of the pond as children fish

and superimpose the sun’s unfolding heat

 

Summer light expands, feeling repairs thought

as day adjusts time, its own ironic inertia

slips beneath a conscious wake of bobbing ideas

 

Harmless if wrong, each guess is its own revision

of watery brief chances to unsay and undo

and distill a day of glancing hilltop angel voices

today's other poem - "Blue Collar UFO" (note, some werewolf content)

 

Blue Collar UFO

Outside, a festive terrorist motorcade is streaming  

A spaceman passes the ketchup at the diner counter

exemplar of 20^th Century urban industrial design

and an ugly duckling modulates the turning situation

The waitresses smile, reciting today’s specials

A silver glow from the alien calms the clientele

who laugh and banter - glad of a new day breaking

 

Country Elvis croons Moody Blue on the jukebox

Next to his coffee cup sits the spaceman’s Orb

radiant and mesmerizing it whirs, barely audible

Muh-muh-muh-Moody Blue, opines Elvis from the past

Ho-ho, those terrorists! I think. What’s next?

Diner aromas call tantalizingly to my empty stomach

 

By night, the saucer landed in the parking lot

its reassuring warmth draws appreciative customers

high school students, garden clubs and union reps

Terrorists pass and smile beneath their hate flags

Pilgrims and Werewolves have arrived on a tour bus

At a table, a paint crew orders hot cakes and coffee

I’m so glad I came to this planet says the spaceman

today's poem - "FOR CERTAIN"

FOR CERTAIN

the New Peoples are

 fleeting failing flea-ing flooding flagellating fleeing

 flatfootfloogling flotsamming floundering phlegming  

 floating flugelhorning flustering flimflamming fluoridating

 flintstoning Florida-ing flummoxing flabbergasting      flatlining

and the New Peoples are

 foolishly firstnationally footsoldierly formlessly foppishly foxily

 foofarawingly formally fondly fotomatically faultily

being

and the New Peoples are

 uncertain about the past present future up down sideways forward backward

and so am I

Amen, brother

today's poem - "grass"

 

grass

 

my labors bend to the grass

grown over

 

ah, the monotony

one person’s

is another’s meditation

another’s Zen practice

 

perhaps I don’t know

as I shovel, rake, and sweep

grass will uprise around me

-it is always so

growing taller to spread

colonize and crumble

this work

temporary intent thwarted

 

today's poem - "That Dull Look"

 

That Dull Look

 

Wipe that dull look off your multiplying face:

as your bare shouldered enemies finger falling leaves

see their jeweled claws sharpen in reflective eyes

 

Recognize the lyrical logic inpinging your safety

as agents elect enameled masks from wallspaces of spy craft

and enter a nurseryful of rare tree specimens like rats

 

Extol silence as embroidered prayers are knifed to the walls

when the armada of trumpeters bewielder brass fantasias

and stare into the neutral slough of despond that enveigles you

 

Helmets shield your brain beyond numbskull pertinence

with fingerling tears of sobriety, foil the labyrinth’s mud

dry-eyed and bushy-tailed and erupting with footfalls

 

Erase the dull look from your subdividing masked pain:

your stark-armed nemeses twinge cloth-shedding limbs

looking for a ruby to emerge quickly from the unseen