Laughter & glitter
Sunshining through straight white teeth – voice unheard of
With a smile to make any man slither over
Cutting soft stomachs open
Driving out with sticks and leaves and rocks
And leaving me with the tab
How like them to err for the sake of error
Terrible and true
Acuity bound
It’s feeding time at the zoo &
There’s no one to take this noose off around my neck
We were swimming in the gulf when she asked
Why create when there’s so much to destroy?
My hands their play things too
Toys ordained from disdain sustained
By tight men in tight suits
Watching us from Ivory Towers
What a relief
& the power trips of the circus beneath them
Reaching out with viral irony I scream
Out to the heavens heaven doesn’t take collect calls
& here she is connecting souls to mates
Correcting hate and abating disgrace worldwide
Webs intangible but thought to be hooked
To the hearts that spun them
Free flowing love & peace to cut my noose hung from
The sycamore tree
As for me what more could please
Disease eradicated
People educated
Our lives illustrated not by blood off a bayonet
But by regret eliminated
Fat cats in high homes with low self esteem would seem
Just as happy to see her redacted from the text books
Crooked lies straightened & the sad thing is they
Trick us fine serfs to mitigate others in their organized ignorance
Leaving us in the dark to elbow for clues
Groping the dust blind &
Hurting ourselves with ***** fingernails scratching
She shouts like a car crash &
Everyone’s at the scene drawn to attention
By flashing red & blue
Cashing their moral chips for a peepshow
Their smiles use less muscles than frowns but take twice the effort
Affecting deflections of accusations
People listen & how couldn’t they?
Her words lifting chins like a rope over a branch
But this time the tree’s on fire
The Tower’s burning & she’s cutting all the safety nets
Like she cut the rope off around my neck

A blind woman stared at me
no, that’s impossible
without eyes one can’t stare
maybe gaze,
graze my soul
feel me
know who I am,
without I even knowing, known
sitting alone in a corner
playing with pen and paper
she can hear me, she can see me
so she sits and stares in my direction
mouth closed, lips form smile.
At what does she smile?

The mad woman, rocking back and forth
to and fro, as if to music
as if she’s seen notes on paper
writings about her, her defects
deflections, that’s all they are
she cannot see that I stare at her
no,
lovingly watch, hopefully she knows
I swear she knows it.
Why else would she smile?


Glasses block her eyes,
thick, black as night,
blacker probably,
but who am I to compare?
I’ve never seen like her, never not seen
like her
she draws in my being, I can’t look away
I can’t, must feel her
touch her face,
tell her, “It’s going to be alright,”
let her know I love her,
that I need her.
Her smile never leaves,
she sees something I never will.

Soon,
she will walk over, strut
magnificently, majestically,
unperturbed by my probing eyes
feeling her way across aisles
on moving train,
she will hold me in her arms,
her untouched arms
soft, yet weathered
begging to be held,
to hold
me
and tell me,
just tell me,
“Don’t worry, child,
it’ll be alright.”

The morning dew settles
like tears on rose petals.
They cry out for time to return -
and beckon lost seasons
of God-given reasons
as sad notes on my guitar yearn.

You're queen of the givers.
It brings to me shivers
that I was so selfishly made.
Your name defines 'humble'
as my words now crumble
on flowers that I now invade.

Your hands were like Heaven,
unselfishly given,
beyond just the people you knew -
from city to country,
from wealthy to hungry -
and all of the rest of us too.

As butterflies flutter,
I still try to utter
some truth of your beautiful love.
But now, it is just us -
and words don't bring justice
as sunlight spills down from above.

Those simple deflections
of sunlight's reflections
now glimmer like diamonds at play -
in memories briefly
that I see routinely
as if they were just yesterday.

I am not deserving
of all I'm observing
in memories coming to mind -
surrounded by perfume
with roses in full bloom
recalling that you were most kind.

I'll always remember
that freezing December
when I erred and brought you to tears.
When you found me straying,
for me, you were praying -
and over the many long years.

Some mothers are brand new,
but none can compare to
my rose-petal mother, that's true.
While laughter was looming,
our smiles were blooming.
There's none other better than you.

I do so adore you -
shall always continue.
I'd never trade you for another.
Up deep from the earth-plow,
what words can I sing now?
I love you, my rose-petal mother.

Alive still, your caring,
through rose petal sharing.
So many, I can't see them all.
Afloat on the breezes,
each rose petal eases
the pain of the weak as they fall.

Your petals continue
to live on without you.
They float around ever so free.
Like soft downy feather,
I don't wonder whether
some petals will fall upon me.

It's not at all easy
to sing thoughts so deeply
when sung with my dusty guitar.
I find I've distorted
all good you're recorded.
My rose-petal mother, you are.

And it's not by my choice
I miss hearing your voice,
so moistness now covers my eyes.
With fingers still strumming
I hear myself humming
while words get choked up in my cries.

With eyes very blurry
I'm now in no hurry
to vacate this most sacred place.
I can't be more lonely.
I wish I could only
receive one more loving embrace.

I love you so deeply
that when I am sleepy
see rose petals filling the sky.
My rose-petal mother,
my rose-petal mother,
I'll see you in Heaven...  Bye bye.

©2017 louis gander - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
http://www.ganderpoems.org/

-------

I want to hear the words
that come out of your mouth.
I wish I could see them forming in your brain
then coming out a little south.
I would crawl into that cranium
and be surrounded by your deliriums.
I would stroll around your memories.
knock on doors that lead to your own realities;
the malleable perceptions that you resort to during deflections.
I want to see what you see
and hear sounds through your ears.
I want your nerves to be mine,
get familiar with your gears.
I want to know the back of your hand
like I know my own.
But I wont enter your heart.
No, I'll leave that alone.
The asylum for your darkest parts is not mine to rearrange.
Nor would I if I could, there's not a thing that I would change.

Dream your peace
Whilst the world rages
Go lie in your steel-walled sleep
Let the crueller men deceive
Let better men bleed

A sleeping mind for sleeping times

What’s another casualty?
Doesn’t affect me
So you let deflections become reflexes
Unknowingly

Happenstance you came to live
In first world palms, with first world eyes
Never looking back at second place
Least of all the third in line

Whatever gets you to sleep at night

With such birth rights,
With such languor
I will rule the world in my own mind
With such circumstantial, beneficial, superiority
I will turn a blind eye

To everybody’s suffering but mine

The ancient one thrusts down his staff
Determining the claim
That most good men throughout their time
Will not achieve their aim.
One in ten shall hit the mark
Just one in ten will score,
The rest, shall by the wayside fall,
To some degree or more.

One in ten shall realise
The prize their heart’s desire
To have the wherewithal to that,
to which they all aspire.
One in ten shall strive to make
That peak to which they climb
But most will reach a compromise
And rationalise their time.

The way to reach your aim in life
The ancients do agree
Is to practice all the things you preach
And be what, you want to be.
Carve deflections from your day,
Achieve the plans you set
And greet success with brother love
... Hail fellow man well met!

Wear promise as humility
Be humble in your praise,
Give credit to the lesser man
Who strives to meet his days
And when the crown of certainty
Ascends upon your head,
Smile the smile of modesty
To shade your gold crown red.


Marshalg
@ the coalface
Victoria Park Tunnel
14 December 2010

In the warm, dark morning
I wake up before you
Opening my eyes to your empty walls
Nearly forgetting your body breathing next to mine

I turn to watch you sleep
Warming your bare back with my gaze
Eyes like planes crossing an ocean of cold sheets between us
A chasm of desires met by deflections

I will you to dream of me
So you might wake up and say last night's words
With the still mind and even tongue of a Sunday
Let me know I'm not the only one losing this game

In my mind I shake you awake
Show you the urgency I feel to touch you
Because I already miss you in the future
Minutes slipping like your big shirt down my sad shoulders

In this tired, familiar bed
I stop waiting for you, shut my eyes again
And think how I could love you later
If you'd let me

If you could resist that warmth that reaches across states for you
From golden lights and people meant to absorb you,
And return to cold bones that I guess were always meant
To break under the weight of your exit

I wish I could have met myself
At this age
When I was a little girl
I wonder if I would
Have liked who I've become
Would I speak to this adult
And find a resilient strength
Or would I see through
The bulletproof glass
Straight to her insecurities
Would she laugh and
Find me funny
Or pity the deflections
Would I stand beside her
And think
This is who I want to be

i used to envision myself
gracing scenes of
your spotless minds
movie screens
in films wrapped in gold cellophane
directed in flickers of light
electrified by pain
enhanced by the vision of what
our love could be
switching to black & white projections
anytime i feel happy
to play onto the theme of
my own personal deflections
because even the actors know
i’m the happiest
when you’re without me

Emotional deflections
And refracting
With overt reactions ..
These things are not new to me......
What's new to me is in recognizing times when I'm doing these things.

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                           The Poets of Rapallo, a Review

The Poets of Rapallo, Lauren Arrington, Oxford University Press is a brilliant first draft; one looks forward to reading the completed work.

As it is, Dr. Arrington has accomplished brilliant research on the poets -  Yeats, Bunting, Pound, Aldington, MacGreevy, Zukofsky - and their acquaintances who happened to be in the Italian resort town Rapallo (they were not a coterie) in the 1920s and 1930s. The notes alone run to 54 pages of too-small type, and the bibliography to 8.

Unhappily, the text appears to have been rushed, possibly by an impatient publisher, and along with numerous small mistakes there are some serious failures in stereotyping, hasty generalizations predicated on little evidence, and a few condemnations more redolent of Dostoyevsky’s Grand Inquisitor than a scholar.

One of the best things about The Poets of Rapallo is the exposition explaining why a great many intellectuals were attracted to Italian Fascism as it was idealistically presented through propaganda early on and not as the moral and ethical disaster it soon proved to be.

Mussolini cleverly promoted his program as primarily cultural, a reach-back to the artistic and architectural unities of an imagined ancient Rome restored and enhanced with modern science and technology. He promoted the arts for his own purposes, of course, but deceptively. In almost any context the construction of schools, libraries, museums, theatres, and cinema studios would be perceived as a good, and absent any close examination accepted by everyone. But in Mussolini’s scheme these cultural artifacts, like Lady Macbeth’s “innocent flower,” concealed the lurking serpent: wars of conquest, poison gas, bombings of undefended cities, death camps, institutionalized racism, mass murders, and other enormities.

The Fascist sympathies of W. B. Yeats and other influencers (as we would say now) in the Irish Republic, including Eamon de Valera, are certainly revelatory. That the new nation came close to goose-stepping through The Celtic Twilight might help explain Ireland’s curious neutrality during the Second World War.

Professor Arrington explains all this very well, and initially is professionally objective. Most of the Rapallo set were not long in learning what Fascism was really about and quickly distanced themselves from it in some embarrassment.  Some were later even more of an embarrassment in their denials and deflections; few seemed to have been able to admit that, yes, they were suckered, as we all have been from time to time

But with the exception of the unrepentant and odious Pound, who was himself a metaphorical serpent to his death, Professor Arrington seems to lose her objectivity with the others.

And why Pound?

As with Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, it is difficult to take seriously someone who considers Pound’s pretentious, pompous, show-off word-soup Cantos to be literature. Pound is now famous only for being famous, and while Arrington appears to forgive Pound for his adamant and malevolent anti-Semitism and his pathetic subservience to Mussolini, in the end she is ruthless toward anyone else who, under Pound’s influence, in his or her naivete even once told an inappropriate joke, appreciated Graeco-Roman architecture, or perhaps saw Mussolini at a distance. This is inexplicable in a text that is otherwise professional and compassionate in avoiding what C. S. Lewis identifies as chronological snobbery.

One also wishes the author had discussed Pound’s post-war appeal as a fashionable prisoner adored or at least pitied by a new generation (Elizabeth Bishop, how could you?).

The book ends abruptly, as if the author were interrupted by a demand by the printers for it now, and so, yes, one hopes for a complete work to follow.

The Poets of Rapallo is not served well by the Oxford University Press, who appear to have been more interested in cutting costs than in presenting a work of scholarship to the world. The print is far too small, the garish spine lettering is more suited to a sale-table ****** mystery, and the retro-1930s holiday cover would be fine for an Agatha Christie yarn but not for a book of literary scholarship.

A question outside the scope of this book but more important is this: why, in a free nation, do so many people feel the desperate need almost to worship a leader? Yes, of course we have presidents and chiefs of police (some of whom love sport shiny admiral’s stars on their collars, and what’s that about?) and bosses and so on, and we depend upon their wise leadership. But why do people wear pictures of some Dear Leader or other on their clothing and chant his name?

I think the president or the famous movie star should wear YOUR name on his shirt and pay YOU for the privilege.

                                                      -30-

Everyone’s been looking
to be seen

Reflective deflections
attempted perfection
detecting surrections

I see
you
see me
through
and through

When shallow clouds poured
Gunnies of grey raindrops
When eclipse's darkness swinged over head
You wore your wide worn-out grin
That unbelievably ruined my picket fences
And I staggered at that omniscience
Even end of the eclipse and grey raindrops
Harshest stones and farthest skies
Bawled out
Momentary deflections waved in my heart
But the candles blew out
With a storm of wind
As you were nowhere to be seen

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
Dispatches for the Colonial Office


                “Choose You This Day Whom You Will Serve”


                    “…for whom war was a fresh terror and the corpses
                        of real people…”

            -Matti Friedman, Who by Fire: Leonard Cohen in the Sinai


A little child ripped from her dead mother’s arms
          Is not a petition for border adjustments
A grandfather murdered while waiting for the bus
          Is not a parliamentary point of order
Teenagers stripped, *****, beaten, tortured, and shot
          Are not cool chants in a university quad
A rotting fragment of a beheaded baby
          Is not someone’s tee-shirt slogan
An elderly woman still marked from Buchenwald
          Is a child of God, not a bargaining chip

No deflections
No whatabouts
No evasions
No excuses

No

Choose you this day whom you will serve

I was waiting and watching
Spying on your mood
You wandered directionless
I saw your script as boring
Was it hope that kept you around
Or just a whim in the sheets
Perhaps a novelty of notion
That snuck upon the mind
Aimless shots were used
With pointless games to all
I knew about it sooner
Than the later was my mistake
I’m sure it’s why you scurried
To other shores or floors
I saw through your muck
And the bovine night soil
That you fed to the masses
For insecurity you hide
Or the adopted bravado
Are obvious deflections
For the damaged soul inside

As covid-19 transforms
Question arise
What before and now
Sustained or deflected

If table tennis
at the senior center sustained
What is where it was?
Does it’s absence leave a hole
in the cup of my soul?
What is a cup ?
What is a sieve?
We’re all these things that
occupied my time merely deflections?
Ways of avoiding life’s sorrows, loses,
shadow side?

What happens on Sunday afternoon
if the Dallas Cowboys are out on the range
and not in the stadium?
Will millions of people drink dark beer
And stare at blank screen?
Perhaps something will call them
out of an NFL trance!
Finding themselves out on the range
with the Dallas Cowboy players
All of them sitting around a fire pit
Singing, “ Ghost Riders in the Sky”

No longer deflecting
Watching the sunset
Their  horse, bedroll, saddle,
campfire embers glow,
A lone cow ambles on the horizon
Awake, alive, sustained
Grateful the NFL season cancelled

we will go through a scenario that I think we can both agree is realistic, which i hope doesn't state anything you don't see as true, but if you do, feel free to contact our support team after the activity. as long as you feel it doesn't detract from the point of the exercise, please answer the prompt it sets up to answer before correcting specific instances.

Premise:
do you understand how sickening it feels,
when mourning is a familiar agony
when you can feel it approaching and understand exactly what you're about to go through
it never gets easier
do you empathise
do you sympathise
do you understand how much i needed to talk to you last night.
and how okay i was to leave it for you to sleep
just so i could spend time with your unconscious breathing
just so i could have something
to cushion me tonight
even less than i take most nights

Everything I thought you knew (tell me where i lost the plot here):
I let you know ive had a bad day, one i could never unpack in just five minutes. maybe i shouldnt have understated things, but i really didnt want to pressure you into a long call.
i had happily agreed to have a quick call even though it had been so much
because i desperately wanted to call you which i clearly expressed and you even mocked the nature of (proof of acknowledgement).
and suddenly, id rather hang up for good.
you find out I just lost someone very close to me and my mom, and I thought would clearly understand the past few minutes in perspective now.
you knew i had lost someone
you thought i was upset
you say sorry
you send me instagram post
you act like everything has been nbd this is a conversation light and playful enough to have a b-plot
i confirm that you upset me
you say sorry twice each time followed by explanations for you on the call, which i have a completely different issue i havent even opened yet because thats not what ive been talking to you about. i dont get how youre acting so casually after ive told you ive lost someone very close to me.
surely im misreading things
you say "ive been pretty stressed to so it wasnt a good time for a call ( dont pretend this and "i misunderstood" and "it was really a mistake believe me" arent deflections, i had acknowledged that i knew it was a mistake, but was appalled by your judgement subsequent, ESPECIALLY after we'd just had a fumble where you were told I was VERY SERIOUS when criticizing your inability to take accountability, deflecting is not taking accountability because accountability requires understanding and addressing the problem at hand, see later paragraph)
this blows me away because how are you using your stress levels right now as a deflection
looking ME dead in the eyes and saying that was the excuse for acting so inappropriately.
I could never imagine being so inconsiderate and emotionally brain dead as to not get this. The lana del ray song is playing at full volume.
I don't know how I could ever let someone go to sleep like that,
how i could end a conversation like that. but you need sleep. i understand.
i say, yea sure ill just go to sleep like this, clearly showing that this was something painful but necessary,
you act like i am on pause
you act like my pain is postponed
until we speak in the morning
you say, goodnight :)))
you didnt get it
you didnt get anything

you didnt even listen to me when i told you you werent getting it.
why cant you just respect my emotions
why cant you trust my anger
that it cannot be extinguished with "it was a mistake"
why do you not hear me in pain understanding you caused it and feel no compassion
you feel guilt, sure, you dont like to hurt me of course
but no, oh tov im so sorry -> for your loss
(besides one you followed up with a frowny face and an instagram post which i think we both want ignore right now)
no, oh gosh tov, this is a rough night, im so sorry to leave you like this but i have to sleep.
no im sorry to cut off your explanation of the intense feelings i can see you're going through right now, but Tov I do really have to sleep
you say, But I am sorry (I was insensitive (on the call))
I say ok, goodnight
you say can we agree to carry on this exact discussion tomorrow? as if you've placed my feelings on hold
you say, Love you, goodnight :)) as if you've placed my feelings on hold

lets go over that one more time
Love you, goodnight :)))
you did not empathise with me once tonight
after what ive been through lately, i know what its like to be having a stressful time,
i offered to call you just to hear your story about what went wrong today because i know when ***** rough you offer to hear them out, at least thats what i do no matter how sick tired and mourning
i offered you more support for your stressful day
than you did compassion when i told you
i lost someone very close to me today
sorry
maybe it was my fault
that you thought that was a bigger deal

I just don't understand what was different today.
why we couldn't call while you got ready for bed.
I knew i got to my laptop really late tonight though so i thought not to complain.

and then i got cut off mid statement, so you could bid me adue,
bonne nuit! mon cheri! i love you! goodnight! :)))

i hope you slept well last night
i didnt
i dont understand how you couldnt even offer sympathy on that
not even a crumb

what possible reason this time,
do you have to not take accountability. dont mistake my hopelessness for insult, i beg you prove me wrong, i wish you could explain this away, i just dont know how likely that is.

how many times in one night can you avoid facing what you did and owning up to it. do you not feel shame for the disrespect i had to feel as i listened to you ignore my very serious requests you stop joking about my mom. do you not understand how mad i have to be to hang up after wanting to call so bad. do you not understand it is not appropriate to send instagram jokes and smiley faces when i am shouting extreme hurt at you.

i think you do understand
somewhere
but you hope its not like that
because that would be easier,
and so you choose to walk on the maybe its not a problem path
on the side of the path of least resistence,
to avoid. hope dumb
i dont do it like that. i cannot forget so easily.
every fallacy drives me crazy
when i act against logic my skin crawls.
and dont tell me im being illogical.
dont attempt to tell me im irrational
you can have a rational explanation but this is a rational understanding

god i hope you're just really stupid but i know you're not
we know you avoid apologizing intentionally, weather you want to or not may be up for debate but it serves you to play dumb

dont you dare play dumb.

i cannot speak to someone who pretends to be so ignorant as to have missed even half of this
so either admit to playing dumb or admit to being dumb
because no one, sick, tired, or mourning, would say
Love you, goodnight :))) after understanding what was going on.
and nobody but a man, even sick, tired, or mourning could miss that

so please, show me how blind i am. save this quickly
because life is a nightmare right now
because you will care for me to the ends of the earth
until it requires you own up to a simple blunder! an easy fix!
a quick one before the eternal worm
i dont want to be going through this right now
im sure you dont either
sorry for making you read a novel
can we please make up now