improving our collective lives, one pandemic poem at a time...

<>

a stray-dog-thot that bites my ankle,
saying ouch, you see a poem here?

it’s 1:14AM on a Sunday and generally I see at this generalized
pre-dawn, can’t sleep pleistocene period, non-extinct poems
roaming everywhere.

but the pandemic on my mind and giving me pause to wonder
how much can I love, and a questioner-poet needs and desires an answer,
post haste, pre apocalyptic.

S. travels for two days by airplane to fulfill a promise
only to find out, upon arrival, the promise made is
pandemic cancelled.

but the-promise-I-made silently, to her, faraway, that she never heard,
for why, stir-up-the-ruckus, asking for a visit from the evil eye,
if she falls ill, coming back to me, is stone cold stolid, no cancellation policy,
I will:

nurse her, brush her hair, anticipate the achey need normal, before she can ask,
hold my body’s warmth full and frontal, a cooling blanket for heated times,
retrieve her ***** tissues from the floor and make lousy jokes about her lousy aim.

and what I wrote, “improving our collective lives, one poem at a time,”
is here institutionalized, organized, galvanized, mesmerized,

legitimized and lionized,

proving only that stray-dog-thots @nite, they  bite,
hard immediate, and that
later is never better

she would say,
“what would I do without you, my children so far away,”
my reply instanced, nuanced, instantaneously, non-Amazon delivered with a double frosted eye twinkle, no-extra-charge,
“hey! that why I get the big bucks, god’s love to deliver!”

she, a profound atheist, snorts with practiced derision, which is fine,
cause I see the welling, tear droplets, laced with viral virus communicators, smiling weakly, asking, instructing a cure:
“play for me some Janis and some Joni, some Mozart and Mahler, climb in beside me, my old man, let us, let us rock our gypsy souls, drinking a case of each other.”

who could refuse such a invitation... to become the plasma of the sun’s corona, if only for a moment

<>



1:38am Sunday March 15th, Twenty Twentyfold

These are the things often only heard in
Dreams, these are the unseen,
These are the songs of those who ride
On waves of wind without wings
I love you,
Love like there were never any stars.
when time was ours,
The tides of eager rushing
Blood pressing its way through
Our veins, oh oh they roar
The great stars name!
Oh what glorious light!
How it's holds the day
Like a beat in its heart.
I hope you know
I wanted you for life
Even though home,
is where, you won't come.
So now the days just die,
And life just falls from the clock,
The clouds grow thicker,
And it is my sickened heart
That withers under the pressure
of its own beating,
the quietus revealing an unfamiliar reasoning,
its pummeling force
tumbling down the vacant isles
behind my souls own cage,
of bones, of flesh,
soaked and staind with
time;
and the deep from the blue ,
wearily sleeps within
the storms womb waiting
to roar apart from the mind,
then it will be done,
i will only be
adrift, among embers and carcasses,
of steel and brick,
a city falling,
it's shattered windows,
awake where the end
goes forward with time,
windows give only
height to the sight of their reach;
a path as jagged and daunting as
its lightning's spine,
the fingertips, as well the vine,
outstretched

"THE BREAKDOWN COMES WHEN YOU STOP CONTROLLING YOURSELF / AND WANT THE RELEASE OF A BLOODBATH" - JENNY HOLZER

I. Vanitas Vanitatum
[The stage is set: a paper moon against a starless, greyscale sky. GINSBERG howls. He's nostalgic for all he'd assumed was forgotten; desperate to never recall it again. His numbered days are manufactured: ELIOT reclines, watching the world end.]

CHORUS OF PROPHETS:
In our own sins we trusted,
both in essence and in nature.
Hell was never an inferno:
it is an echo chamber.

We have nothing (-- we have nothing --)
but maxims and jumbled alphabets
and lightly-sparkling bitterness
when the cork pops feebly from the bottle;
(-- nothing! --) dripping saltine hate.

We've lived large and small, been tiny and tall;
always filling too much space in a too-big room
where our presence is ironically scarce.
There is nothing for you here,
bar vacant lungs and river water --
take a breath and join us
                               in sinking to
                                            (sinking!) the
                                               (sinking!) bottom
                                                  (sinking­,) of
                                                        (sinki­ng...) the
                                                             ­              Styx.

II. Et Omnia Vanitas
[Enter PLATH, SEXTON, WOOLF, BYRON, DICKINSON and VARIOUS PHARMACEUTICAL BRAND REPRESENTATIVES.]

You know not what you could be
but merely what you are
and that alone is traumatic enough.
Taste it, a slice at a time:

the disillusionment from having raised your hopes beyond rotting in the soil,
the anger upon realising this was your own fault and all you want to do is scream,
the bargaining, the denial, the scream (you were not born to live). The gradual processing. The scream!
Scream at the moon and scream at the walls and scream into pillows and howl and wail and hack away at the flesh and screech until plastic surroundings melt and it is only you and the void you willed upon yourself.

III. Epitaph (What Now?)
[A white-fur baby seal is camouflaged upon the ice
and, eyes closed, fools itself into thinking it survived.]

What happens next is no act of evil:
this is survival of the fittest.
We are bottom-rung of the food chain
and starving predators need to eat.

[We lick the ground and taste defeat.]

Ruby poppies reach heavenward --
small birds take their maiden flights.
I shrivel, putrid in the soil,
in the winter of my life.

Don’t weep
you cure the sick air
with a robust love
Passing out redemption
Like lollipops for broken dreams
You are the reluctant warrior
Here to mend torn casualties
from mankind’s cruelty
a new dawn has emerged
with every shift you take
You know who you are
In the trenches muddy
And sodden but moving
Steadily towards
A towering grace
Thank you.

Again
I'm making this

a federal production
about

a bowl of silver
apples

and how these pewter
pieces of fruit

that if I'm not careful
can become

the cold and scary
central characters

all their own
in what is supposed to be

my  life

Whit Howland © 2020