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Joseph S C Pope Feb 2013
I

Wonderlandia, torn off the submerged lung
of a daydream diary.                   Reoccurs
as she does with silver eyes, weary Alice
during tea time--bullets burning past her
                                     like flowing nations.
Everyday similar tsunamis fund
                                     the lack of 20/20.
Nose to tail--the surge of angry engines
splits the ends of her blonde strands.
    Each one the last witness to maddening hospitality
--utopia never sweats as it talks and withers.
Amnesia blots,
new aspirin machines
vaporize apples and ***
on the other end of spectrum,
                                                     trans-positional labels--

Guillotine gargling teapots
       have no patience
         to the bushes of Olympus opiates
                                      bound in yellow barrier tape,
                     five o' clock traffic
               welcomes her back to what we are facing.


II


Dreary weather of late fall                       and her beautiful,
              powdered face

great mouth of atomic hell,
         when she speaks--80,000 deficiencies boil alive
                                                   --Trinity's teething test
                                                           on the tired bones
                                                   of a story-teller's raspy cards--

"None the wiser," she speaks,
                                "during the transition of ships
                   vermin turn into krakens culturing
                               on the surface of a raindrop.
    Heroes, villains, animals frozen together
                 after now eating for four days.
     The transition of one genocide
                                                        ­  to the other,
                the delineation of cat-and-mouse,
   mingle too long
   with the dead
   and its necrophilia."

                 Blind Alice wanders off the highway,
leaves her brewed cup of steamy static
on top of the unimportant saucer, sticks pins in her *******,
             and enjoys the sound of Cleopatra
             rolling over in reincarnation.


III

      Dear Alice smells
sunbathing, studded tangerines
                      assimilating liquor within the vast,
       empty, glowing nausea that is--
                        the warm germ

Oil                                    and                 ­          water
               rippled glass too silly for skulls
              made humid by distant salt water,

blood, acid, enzymes,
cheating probability
that runners with drunk kids
have blood between their toes.
                                                      Death­ to the distillation within
                                                    --the chronic diamond too polished
                                                       in *** to see the roses in her *****
    She curses these wood songs,
             heritage patriots with the pelts of wild lions
             with antlers over their heads,
                                                  faces advertising war paint
                                                applied by gargoyle hands
                    --sad memoirs always drink people
                                                  that use God as a cookie jar.


IV


  Gorgeous names
  on graffiti institutions give her a home
                                                         a market
                                                         a nickname
           still                  Alice only accepts Alice.

Grace periods where she misses tyranny
                  rise and fall like endorsed breathing.
    Now Alice feels her dress fall off,
                                  extinct years message future occupancy
                                  about what to wear.
New era, this era, past eras plead guilty
in a      clinic museum
             of forcing demons
              down the medical
              throats
of first graders. Court adjourns at 9:01 PM, Saturday

             The populus can sleep now,
                          but not her.
                 No one gave her clothes
                 to cover up the drained monochrome.


V

Instead she celebrates her flesh,
                                        the broken glass,
   and quakes and leads off to expose
           others to its potential vital prosperity.

         Instead
                     headlines like bumper cars read
                     about the beheading of weeks,
                     failing rescue missions,
                     and debates on teenage tolerance.

Nicotine intoxication points Alice
to over-extended memories--wards of music
sequenced to point out the extinction of marble tigers.
                        Only 550 expected to understand
                         tethered to millions able to survive.

  Flood waters look at moral standards, a mean hurricane
                                   that collapses the death toll
     all patented 50 states
     have a dating service
     and huff paint as a way
                              to pray to art.
                                                      Double­-canvas faces
                                                      dyed in pixel     hope
                                                       that the media levees hold,
             but volunteer to herd sheep into poppy seed fields.
                                            She refuses to stay,
                    to watch the long night
                    of castration on men with mud-covered ankles.
                                      Television says eunuchs want
                                       to be prodigal's children,
                                       everyone wants to come back home
                                       to mom and dad, safe zones, away
                                       from themselves.
                                                     ­                 It says our ancestors want
                                                            ­          this for all of us. They worked
                                                          ­            so hard to tie up the hair
                                                            ­          out of Aphrodite's face.

                                     They treasure the silver eyes of Alice,
                                          but call them blue,
                                                  they issue her high cholesterol
                                          but pump sweet ****** into he stomach,
                                                  they tell her to put down the drill,
                                            so she can finish their orchestra--

her lightning
    is
     a
  string
     of
  souls



VI


     She decides to depart Sunday,
to discover the ordinary beginning,
                        painting WHY? on its delirium.
re-arrangeable viewers become
                      inserted sounds under percussion and piano.

       Caging various important charts
                                          undetermined
   ­                           as finished attention.
                                                      ­              Three movements in flux
open end the people                     vacuuming
                            craftsmanship blocks
                   from                                dogs and zen.

                                                 The
                                 suspended letter               is happening in 1951
   drenched in existential white                                            spacing
        ­                                                   the viewer
                        from integrated architecture.

Down
the
bell is a structure called
"the quarantined wheelchair."
                               Dead ignorance changes pattern
                               after six movements of the second hand.
Alice speaks, "To you all, know
                                       that this is an un-dramatic situation.
          Everyday windows with the same
           participants have girls drinking
                                                     orange juice, activate fluid,
                    both exist as objects
                    and caught propaganda."

                                                   ­                      Six tunnel
                                                          ­      audiences are watching
                                                        ­        drown in the plastic silk
   her                                                       built by the motorized collage
                                                         ­                                        spider.

          Alice, a kinetic mannequin pop star
                        is limp in the glass point.
             Rhythmic flux is objectified war torture
                         censored in fitness magazines
by simple toilet literature.

                                        Six tunnels worth of eyes
                                 latch to the *******
                                           as a way to bury **** protesting.
                                  A coat of pepper spray
                                   works in front of the exhibition.
This stage is shaded by moans.


VII


      Alice the female, has a door-to-door friend
                                                          ­    over the sea
of the cathedral's ceiling               who died of disemboweled
pulchritude             at the mutilated nuclear other-place.
                     Her friend was a synthesized example
                     of staged catastrophes. Her friend is her, silver-eyed
                                                     ­                                             Alice.

            ­                     She performs herself and herself
                                 but they are played by polished, scored poets.

Everyone of them incorporates the events
                                 of a dancing gunshot. Everything rests
                                                           ­ at an intermission

               but after fifty minutes of pondering,
          the lost audience remembers
         her name is Alice.
                   So it comes back on with a shower of sweat
                  and this clear
                                  substance
               ­                                 called
                         ­                              patience.
       This composing, peering vulnerability
                        psychologically destroys the flux tension
              like analog genocidal dictators.
                                   Ultimately this is dream liquor

     commentating war to the war tree
      using trauma and chairs as humor.



VIII


               Patience on the water level lives translucent
                                            on networks that brand flesh
                                            with displaced identity.
Alice convinces us all that pickled ***
                                                             ­               takes eight years
                     to ****** and we accuse it
                                         of being fake. Afterwards, her character dies
in confident silence.


IX


     Not majestic, but she does cough
                  to mock the earth.
        The seeds of Alice are ripe,
                        harvested early, and now her children come out and dine
        like speaking tongues on gibberish.
                          The room is fat with hair

and kindness. Feeble, mundane hands chew on each other,
                                                         feet stand proud.
We even call her Alice or "the beautiful *******,
                                             a black cloud feasting
                                             in orange."
                       Everyone feasts on the nectar
                                                         she has, but never the rye
which makes her round. Juice is squeaking and her children laugh
                         as in competition.

     It's a distinguishable game as the mixed
                                                           ­      couple up front
              begin to play whistles as
                                         everyone eats
                   the pride of the silver-eyed Alice's children.


X

                                                ­ The children's souls
                                                       bow and say
                                           "Thank you for barely growing."
                                                   and dissipate after five minutes.

          "Curiouser                                   ­                                      and
           Curiouser"                                                       ­                   they
           say                                                              ­                        as
           they                                                             ­                       leave
           this                                                             ­                         homage.
                  The decimal backbone
                     of each of sweet Alice's
                                   blonde strands
                   divorced by the gust/ of a green light's/ allowance.


XI Epilogue*


  The day crawls away
                   a vigilant pest
     of the nocturnal project
                   --suns beam down still, like
                  stomachs of grinning felines
                           at Valentine's day.

toxic-dyed fingers
                        soldered
to bodies pittering across rainy streets

--legionnaires with hearts on stones
                         we are waiting for her orders,

     thistled-teeth clench,
                                         but did she
                                          actually
          ­                                ever come?
Joseph S C Pope Mar 2013
Throwing the baggage onboard, I'm *****,
and straight forward with you. No games.
If I ******* like you,
I won't spin this web of ******* and pain.
I ******* like you that is that.

We'll work out the rest, we'll deal with it,
and these sorry *** lines later.

You're more than some walking-wet-bag for my ****,
You're you. And I like that ******* it. **** the rest.
That is the only straight forward part of my life right now,
you and writing. This is the best poetry you're gonna get,
because the rest of what was planned for this poem
             went into conversation and pre-emptive love. What ever the **** that means...

             But there will come a day when friends can't understand my poetry again,
              that's when you'll know what has happened to us.
       You'll know...
I

Oft have I seen at some cathedral door
  A laborer, pausing in the dust and heat,
  Lay down his burden, and with reverent feet
  Enter, and cross himself, and on the floor
Kneel to repeat his paternoster o’er;
  Far off the noises of the world retreat;
  The loud vociferations of the street
  Become an undistinguishable roar.
So, as I enter here from day to day,
  And leave my burden at this minster gate,
  Kneeling in prayer, and not ashamed to pray,
The tumult of the time disconsolate
  To inarticulate murmurs dies away,
  While the eternal ages watch and wait.

II

How strange the sculptures that adorn these towers!
  This crowd of statues, in whose folded sleeves
  Birds build their nests; while canopied with leaves
  Parvis and portal bloom like trellised bowers,
And the vast minster seems a cross of flowers!
  But fiends and dragons on the gargoyled eaves
  Watch the dead Christ between the living thieves,
  And, underneath, the traitor Judas lowers!
Ah! from what agonies of heart and brain,
  What exultations trampling on despair,
  What tenderness, what tears, what hate of wrong,
What passionate outcry of a soul in pain,
  Uprose this poem of the earth and air,
  This mediæval miracle of song!

III

I enter, and I see thee in the gloom
  Of the long aisles, O poet saturnine!
  And strive to make my steps keep pace with thine.
  The air is filled with some unknown perfume;
The congregation of the dead make room
  For thee to pass; the votive tapers shine;
  Like rooks that haunt Ravenna’s groves of pine
  The hovering echoes fly from tomb to tomb.
From the confessionals I hear arise
  Rehearsals of forgotten tragedies,
  And lamentations from the crypts below;
And then a voice celestial that begins
  With the pathetic words, “Although your sins
  As scarlet be,” and ends with “as the snow.”

IV

With snow-white veil and garments as of flame,
  She stands before thee, who so long ago
  Filled thy young heart with passion and the woe
  From which thy song and all its splendors came;
And while with stern rebuke she speaks thy name,
  The ice about thy heart melts as the snow
  On mountain heights, and in swift overflow
  Comes gushing from thy lips in sobs of shame.
Thou makest full confession; and a gleam,
  As of the dawn on some dark forest cast,
  Seems on thy lifted forehead to increase;
Lethe and Eunoë—the remembered dream
  And the forgotten sorrow—bring at last
  That perfect pardon which is perfect peace.

V

I lift mine eyes, and all the windows blaze
  With forms of Saints and holy men who died,
  Here martyred and hereafter glorified;
  And the great Rose upon its leaves displays
Christ’s Triumph, and the angelic roundelays,
  With splendor upon splendor multiplied;
  And Beatrice again at Dante’s side
  No more rebukes, but smiles her words of praise.
And then the ***** sounds, and unseen choirs
  Sing the old Latin hymns of peace and love
  And benedictions of the Holy Ghost;
And the melodious bells among the spires
  O’er all the house-tops and through heaven above
  Proclaim the elevation of the Host!

VI

O star of morning and of liberty!
  O bringer of the light, whose splendor shines
  Above the darkness of the Apennines,
  Forerunner of the day that is to be!
The voices of the city and the sea,
  The voices of the mountains and the pines,
  Repeat thy song, till the familiar lines
  Are footpaths for the thought of Italy!
Thy fame is blown abroad from all the heights,
  Through all the nations, and a sound is heard,
  As of a mighty wind, and men devout,
Strangers of Rome, and the new proselytes,
  In their own language hear thy wondrous word,
  And many are amazed and many doubt.
Jim Kleinhenz Feb 2010
I mean, it felt like I was a dead fish
Or something, left to rot out there in the sun,
Left there on purpose, you know, like it was
A threat—and Charles, it stinks—you know that?—
—the stench of all those old thoughts—
Yeah, thoughts…you know,
Like guppies maybe, sturgeon, or flounder.
You laugh? Why? Fish can think, can’t they? They flounder.
Suppose as we grow old the ancient thoughts
Appear as songs a child might sing—sotto voce.
Suppose they’re like the masks the actors wore
In some Commedia dell’Arte farce,
Or like the web a spider strings across
A road, hidden, dark, all subtle tension,
The strands still wet with the coagulate air…
Too wet to breath, Charles, way too wet.

There’s more. Suppose a face inside that mask
Looks back, looks out. Suppose the rings run circles round
The eyes, for fear. Suppose it’s an old face of yours,
Charles, smiling too, with all that sullen pride
You once were so capable of…so proud.
This is not the Lone Ranger, kimosabi.
Not Zorro either. Man is least himself
When he talks in his own person. So let’s
Try on that mask, shall we?
One for you and one for me.
Masks aplenty, masks abound,
Masks askance…
There, it fits. Welcome, Charles. Welcome back.

And welcome ghost.

…a ghost to prompt you in your mask, a ghost
off stage, and hoarse from shouting, diaphanous,
just like the real thing: for curiously,

at that moment while he is in you,
in situ, as it were, I will be left
au naturel—yeah, me—king for a day.
We were all meant to crawl away from the sea,
were we not?

…and I count the collective ghosts here too,
Charles…
… atavistic, frightened, unaneled,
and openly integumentary
(thus, open to the sea, but repellant
to air)
—owls, Orion, a star-scarred sky,
too cold to breath that night,
too cold not to, eh, Charles?
Like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza,
like Hamlet and Horatio,
out with the watch, in search
of ghosts and fathers…
ghosts and fathers, Charles.
You remember that?
Back then, when you used to listen to me
when I spoke. You did listen, then, Charles when
I said things, right?
All those old thoughts…
When I could sing…
Charles?
Si lo so, tutto è finito
non parlar, non dirmi niente
già da un pezzo l'** capito
che il finale era imminente.
Si lo so, tutto è finito
sei d'un altro innamorata
già da un pezzo l'** capito
questa scena l'** aspettata.

La commedia dell'amore
è finita finalmente
hai spezzato questo cuore
non parlar, non dirmi niente.
Un soir, dans le chemin je vis passer un homme
Vêtu d'un grand manteau comme un consul de Rome,
Et qui me semblait noir sur la clarté des cieux.
Ce passant s'arrêta, fixant sur moi ses yeux
Brillants, et si profonds, qu'ils en étaient sauvages,
Et me dit : « J'ai d'abord été, dans les vieux âges,
Une haute montagne emplissant l'horizon ;
Puis, âme encore aveugle et brisant ma prison,
Je montai d'un degré dans l'échelle des êtres,
Je fus un chêne, et j'eus des autels et des prêtres,
Et je jetai des bruits étranges dans les airs ;
Puis je fus un lion rêvant dans les déserts,
Parlant à la nuit sombre avec sa voix grondante ;
Maintenant, je suis homme, et je m'appelle Dante. »

Juillet 1843.
honey Mar 2020
trepidation peaks.
this might be the truman show.
a full crowd watches.
Duncan Brown May 2018
Our sweetest gifts are seldom on time
Interrupted by the tambourine of song
Thus it is that they arrive with rhyme

Out of dreams which are so unseen
Wander images of sweet loveliness
Delighting thought’s uttermost Eden

A vision held for one solitary moment
Transporting soul to rapturous heaven
Delivering us to our sweetest torment

A miraculous image of purest delight
Untouched of tears or shadow’s sorrow
Falls in veils of truth revealing insight

A smile writ upon the eternity above  
Descended in flows of written words
Inscribed itself upon soul’s earthly love

As unfolds the lotus on flowing water
Upon fire flamed in passion’s stillness
Unmoving it reveals itself everywhere

Hearts are filled with laughter’s comedy
As loving truth greets itself so tenderly
Sorrow’s banished to tears empty eternity

Eyes may sing like lips can tender smile
And sense abandon thought in reverie
Loving song thus sings sweet so versatile

To repose in slumbers outstretched cathedral
Labyrinth trespassing waking tiredness invites
Wandering in dreams unconscious ceremony

Vision is the key to the architectural mystery
Our sweetest dreams occur in sleep serene
Mystery invades somnambulant imagination

Waking we seldom see what we have seen
Thus thought denies revealing interpretation
Waking doth shake our dreaming sonnet

The sweetened wine of human ceremony
Invokes each moment so unforgotten
Forever held sacred in fondest memory

Tomorrow unfolds as the future drama
Today enfolds the past in present beauty
Love reveals to us our Commedia Divina

Each hearts journey to the soul of love
Travelling through the labyrinth of loss
Is drawn there by some unnamed above.
Night swells with the sweet soarings of tenors.
Beauty floats lightly across the airwaves.
Santa Croce looms as Spirit’s center.
Dante’s Commedia he gave away.
Today he reigns as Italy’s mentor.
Great art leads the way out of Plato’s cave.
Michelangelo falters and splinters
His sculptures. Bright poems to young men he saves.
David stands tall through the chills of winter.
With Goliath’s cold head in hand, he raves.
Florence ferments like wine from a vintner.
It tastes of an angelic chardonnay.
Remember the city’s ancient cantor.
He yodels and chants of its marbled fame.
Firenze is the Italian name for the city of Florence, home to Dante, Michelangelo and many other famous writers and artists. Along with his great sculptures, Michelangelo was also a poet of distinction. Santa Croce is the church where Dante, Michelangelo, Machiavelli and other Florentine notables are buried.
Si lo so, tutto è finito
non parlar, non dirmi niente
già da un pezzo l'** capito
che il finale era imminente.
Si lo so, tutto è finito
sei d'un altro innamorata
già da un pezzo l'** capito
questa scena l'** aspettata.

La commedia dell'amore
è finita finalmente
hai spezzato questo cuore
non parlar, non dirmi niente.
Si lo so, tutto è finito
non parlar, non dirmi niente
già da un pezzo l'** capito
che il finale era imminente.
Si lo so, tutto è finito
sei d'un altro innamorata
già da un pezzo l'** capito
questa scena l'** aspettata.

La commedia dell'amore
è finita finalmente
hai spezzato questo cuore
non parlar, non dirmi niente.
THE REST OF THE STORY


The dried up lake contrived to look both
surprised & embarrassed

like a lady in a bad dream wearing no clothes
whilst singing in church or doing the supermarket shop.

When I say 'lake' I mean the body of water
that lived up in the old quarry.

It always gave us kids nightmares.

Our parents always warned us not to
go there ...but go there

we always did 'cos it was dangerous.

And that was its attraction.
Danger barely tamed and still feral.

It would give us the creeps just looking at it in sunlight.

The police tape looked real pretty
fluttering in the slight breeze like an art installation

that everyone who was someone
deemed important without knowing its meaning

or if it had one.

But hey what do I know?

The lake wore its dead body
like a cheap glass ring pretending it was diamond.

When I say dead body I mean skeleton.

The skeleton wore concrete shoes
as if it had stepped straight from a corny gangster movie

riddled with cliché.

It just grinned at the police
flash photography as if it were a celebrity

famous for being a celebrity.

He still wore a heavy gold crucifix
on a thick chain around its neck

that shone in the sun.

The sun smiled down as if it were smiling down
on a picnic or an ordinary walk in the park

as if it were innocent of the things it seen.

'Hey, I'm Summer being Summer...! ' it seemed to say
'Dead guy eh...what a ******! '

The dead guy was alive in his death
as if he were soaking up being the centre of attention.

And yeah sure it was just another ordinary Summer
when I was 9 or ten or something like that

but this was just the beginning of the story...
...the rest of the story was somewhere else.


*


Guy told me this in Harry's Bar in Venice and all this just added up to how he came to finally live in Bethlehem in Pennsylvania. I was fascinated by the pre-story and his way of telling the story by interrupting his telling by a quirky "...when I say....I mean...." It was worth buying him a drink just to get drunk on that story.

The story was fuel'd by many a Bellini. The guy was a blend between Orson and Ernest as if they had both reincarnated at the same time and simultaneously tried to claim the one body. His name was Sinclair...I had never met anyone with the first name Sinclair before...he was better than a book. È tutto pepe indeed! Wot a guy! Che figata! Che figata!

He was highly energetic in both body and mind and telling stories about their times of being 4 or 7 and 11. This story came forth from man who at 90 was full of zip and zest. I only picked up bits here and there and never found out where his there was.

I was enjoying his speech movements and characteristic tics with that defining "When I say....I mean..." The story went by at a hundred miles ah hour but totally enthralled me and 50 years later still lives on in my mind.

I wish I could have captured his essence and this is only a pale imitation of how wonderful  he was. All the imagery is his too and I merely a Boswell to his Johnson.

Once saw THE MERCHANT OF VENICE...in Venice. It bobbed along with several different languages taking up the tale and done in a Commedia dell'Arte style. If that wasn't enough...gondolas glided by with their sixpence worth of kitsch touristy songs whilst a gangster movie blared out of a window and two floors up from that a couple made mad passionate ***....everything blended with everything else....real life and Shakespeare all sharing the same outdoor stage.

The best bit was when she( of the mad passionate *** bit )threw all his clothes outta de window and told him to 'cazzo nel culo!' The real life bit I'm afraid by then was beginning to eclipse the Shakespeare bit( sorry Will ). It was almost as unforgettable as Sinclair's rambling tale of "how we came to live in Bet-LE-ham!"

Venice was almost too luscious for words but Sinclair and his tale of how we got from here to there and then "that" production of TMOV was all just too much for this tiny little mind.

Went back again but nothing as spectacular as "that" ever happened again....guess I was in the right place at just the right on time. The mind going "Heeeeeeehaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!"

This be an experimental prose poem letting the prose ramble on in the voice and characteristic stops and starts of the speaker. The whole point of the poem is that you are going to get the whole prelude to the story and then not be told the story!

The danger is indeed very real....the adults know that...the kids know that....even the dead guy knows that! There was a broken worn down sign that you had to get near enough to read and possibly fall in! So the danger could be feral and turn on you with one little mistake or missed step. Hence the barely tamed! The narrator is very fallible!
Qualyxian Quest Dec 2020
The culture is corrupted
Confused and now careening

But there is no going back
And the politics is greening

It was always thus
But hope still springs eternal

The madness mixed within
The tenderness maternal

The commedia. And the infernal.
Qualyxian Quest Sep 2020
At JMU

Dante's Commedia
And Milton's Paradise Lost

Taught to me by a female Episcopalian priest.

I was too young to understand then.
But she left a poetic seed to blossom now.

— The End —