icy hot and crystalline
you fashion me
into the
molten dream

alive
awake
aware
in your furnace
blasted and
fused like metal

torrid winds sweep
your wraithlike
breath that
mists my
isinglass

how to be
you
tell
me
how
to be

I am amorphous


SoulSurvivor
Catherine Jarvis
(C) September 24, 2014

I'd rather be a poor shepherd

than a rich sheep.

©

These are the words and the actuality
that in conjunction,
drive mothers of young children
to depression and distraction

Poets to look inwards yet once more,
for sources of olden inspiration,
finding only
been there, done that

Warmongers to chop lick lips
in eager anticipation of
past and future smokey glories,
gun batteries sparking and
other men's children dying

Overcast and cast out is loveliness,
only words of ancient, somber lineage,
populate, pursue and expectorate,
sunny notions and love poetry none,
dried up, to fallen leave piles dispatched

For on this day of rest, the foggy sky
grants no permission slips to draft
smiley faces and upbeat tempos,
comforts foods perhaps, but nary a
comfort word to make us cheery

Enslaved to nature this day too,
my exteriors reflect inward and my
mirror'd observatory of starry images
no longer available on any
of my two thousand TV channels

I have checked each one in a
be-quiet-you're-too-noisy dismay groaning,
as well as my ordinary, toujours,
quiet desperation

The sun tantrum tantalizes for I see
it's bodacious attacks repelled
by cloud banks rich with deposits of gloom

Slip into a mystery, an old novella
of Stephen Kings, an homage to the
drama of the four seasons, but this old friend
is elementary ancient, for its tales
are deep sad, writ upon weary worn pages
and tho apropos, grant no comfort

The sailors all to bed have gone,
plowing pillows instead of waves

The squirrels and other homeowners,
in view of the absence human,
are cheek to chop, jowls acorn full,
doing "Storage Wars" of winter prep,
in HD, in broad daylight arrogance,
mocking the summer man, adding their
sauciness to his moody blues
meal of melancholia

Am I such a creature of nature,
that I am captive no matter
what the sky color be,
is there a moody madness the
psychiatrists have labelled
that best describes a nature slave
most unnaturally?

I repair to the couch and chips,
reruns to pretend distraction and
poetry to record my inaction

The weather lady, a fresh faced blonde,
smiles white and exclaims that
the work week commencing tomorrow
all sunny all unseasonable warm,
and my groans so loud,
I am banished to parts bedroom foreign,
where I am ordered to write
perfunctory odes to gloom,
in silenced doom

The Godfinger has not yet
colored-come this far south
from up in the North,
but soon inexorable, marchingly quietly
to finger paint reds and golds
that are calendar scheduled to arrive

the idea of them, their visual,
burrowed  but easily retrieved,
for in the poet's mind's eye
he foresees their forthcoming blaze,
smells them in the not-quite-autumn
sea breeze

colors welcome for many,
for they serve to awaken and ravish
inattentive-to-nature wooly brains,
distracted by new work projects
diluted multi-tacking senses,
back burnt by responsibilities,
**** deadlines,
term papers, too soon due

full well knowing fall colors incipient,
this summer man piety engorges on
the embering remains of his beloved season,
His Summer Surround Sound Environment,
reflecting on his insignificance,
the seasonality of life,
the sad-always finale for grownups
that is the year ending
December,
no longer a far away,
inconceivable concept

these robust leaf colors, product of
chlorophyll properly chilled,
signal mark
all hope lost for the summer warmth,
the life force of this
poet's body and soul's
his sun tan lotion ****** cleanser, restorative,
all sold out, no longer on the store's shelf,
and a new conceptual,
2015
low growling while on the prowl

but for now,
it's still land-greens and water-blues,
though tarnished are the hues,
the grass, an admixture of
ugly straw yellow and a sickly green,
the bay green blues darker, uninviting,
the surface sun glints duller, less charming,
but close enough to the
real thing
for him to embrace passionately

he thinks bemusedly, out loudly,
writes smilingly, out loudly,
for he is in his trademark chair,
adorned in summer garb,
t-shirt and shorts,
holding on for as long as he can,
grabbing errant sun rays,
breathing salted bay air that's
cleaner now, for the summers sailors
all gone ashore to dry dock ports

while his woman, sensible ever,
acknowledges the frosty wind that
necessitates blanket, a full dress uniform,
complete yoga outfit and anorak,
the dress code de rigeur for combat
against
the September brilliant and undeniable chill

Springsteen and Cassidy hum his
melancholy perfectly and he wonders
about the ifs and of's his chosen life,
about the why's and wherefore
of his poetry that he sometimes writes
under assumed names

these contradictions,
me, summer,
she, cloaked in wool,
these natural nature inconsistencies,
even though unrealized,
the inevitability clashing sounds of vibrant colors
overtaking greens wilting,
all to be winter-denuded,
mark the day,
mark the man,
his poem,
mark this moment of
inconsistent colorations