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strange professions and true confessions from a lockdown town (4/17/20)
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not a great idea,
in the not-yet-dawn,
to write
a poem entitled
strange professions,
true confessions

dried stains of prior leakings
upon old ‘n yellowed linoleum,
no need for more friends,
for sure, for sure,
that’s the smart play

you see! right there
I’m professing age
old wisdom,
confessing my sorry face is
well acquainted with
floor coverings,
where even the
soles of my shoes
won’t admit they been polluted,

having stepped in rooms
of low and ill repute,
those them there,
right in here
poetry writing sites
where there ain’t no
guideposts, reminding
what’s in the heart
pretend stays in Vegas,
but what the heck,
since I’m here already,
might as well,
ready go and spill,
things you don’t
need to know but...

help the time pass
in this lockdown town,
where total silence is
the loudest sound around

wine, empty beery bottles,
bad rhymes give me up,
just before I start a hey look!
it’s a brand new
sunny rain afternoon

the governor pronounced
we all gotta be masked,
24/7 inside and out,
the women complain that it
musses hair, the men say,
who me? nah, got
nothing to say about that,
We, don’t make no con-cessions...

when you can’t see
my lips moving, or my
one good eye be winking,
means it’s likely that I’m lying

they say, I’m going
stir crazy,
not me says he,
unlike  some guy who
wanted to blow up the
Alice-in Wonderland statue in
Central Park, hell,
u could look it up!

guess I coulda call this
here epistle, official “Lockdown Blues,”
but I jes heard gotta stay inside
till June Seventeen
that’s the good news,
plenty o’time to set
my affairs in order,
burn the poems nobody
needs seeing, those them
there with weirdness galore,
say no more,

you can whine, it’s fine,
no caring, no hearing,
past way the point,
where running or returning
is an option viable for nut jobs

them, with strange professions
and true confessions...
https://patch.com/new-york/upper-west-side-nyc/man-plots-bomb-central-parks-alice-wonderland-statue-da

writ a month ago, and no end in sight for those who
die living in the epicenter of science and rationality,
we are still dying, no only a hundred per day,
that’s great, better than eight, or close enough
but seen the scenes, fever to drink, exchange words,
be sociable, but I’m old so kept under lock and key
ha! for my own protection and safety
Ellie Taylor Feb 2015
There's a hill
And I know what's on the other side.
It's a sweeping landscape of beautiful skies and mountains and wind through my hair, traveling a hundred miles an hour down the *****.
I want it
And it's been so long since my frayed ends have left my shoulders; since I've done anything but trudge this incline.
It's slow going
When this baggage is so heavy
And the sand beneath  my feet shifts and sags with every step.
I would cut these ties if I knew how.
But what if
I need something from somewhere in these pockets? I might miss them; I know nothing else.
Nothing else but my feet, this weight, and this ascent.
And no,
Miley Cyrus, it's not the ******* climb,
It's staying sane. Even though it's been so long, and it's such slow going, and it's so shifty, and so heavy, and there's no end in sight.
And you're just so, so tired.
At the peak,
I hope it's everything I dreamed it would be.
I hope there's a purpose for this baggage, and that the landscapes really are sweeping, that the skies and mountains really are beautiful as they say, that the wind really musses these sweaty strands.
Dear god,
Please don't let these bones break for nothing.
Ron Sanders Feb 2020
Black is the seed, and black, the fruit.

The blossom of light an affront:  wrought of nothing,
illuminating nothing, reverting to nothing, the blossom is—
Everything.
And a man contends, endures,
knowing, in his moment, that all that matters
matters not; that in the crowd
he is alone, that in the cosmos
he is lost, that in his writing
he is written. He is a coal, shot hot between voids.
Intense to evanescent,
each pass of a life has a spectrum.

Red is the womb.

Here, at riot’s eye, all bellows howl,
all fires bend to the harlot wind of becoming.
And the nub is a lump, and the lump accrues,
marbles dreamless, in liquor weightless, defining:
Liquid ruby, clinging vine, tallow flower in wine—
the little ogre, caught on a briar, kicks.
Comes a marvelous trophy, squirming and gory,
naked and pendent, blind and grotesque—
wound about the hollows and seams,
spat in a maelstrom:
one more shape in the window,
one more shadow exposed,
in the ****** triumph of light.

Out of the whirl, the faces gather round.
The boy has opened his eyes,
but the infant makes no sound.
Shapes loom to the sides, to the front and rear:
The faces grin, closing in…grow enormous fingers
to point, to pinch—to peel back the veil
and make his eyes scream.
In the dimness a nimbus, a prism, a pearl.
The faces part. The prism paints an image in the whirl.
The figure is a woman, whose seeming lips recite:
“Come sunder the night. Little ember, ignite.
I am mother, I am mother. I am life, I am light.”
But like oil on a rainy day,
the colors blend and wend their way
into the whirl, and there,
subdued, the voice is slurred,
the light, obscured,
and night
renewed.

Here on the lattice,
morning embroiders the tatters of night.
While tall beaded glasses
squeeze melody from melting ice,
the diced and slanting shafts of sun
checker the shadows with tangerine light.
On the sidewalks April’s children run,
but the eyes in the faces see
nephew on the august perch
of uncle’s wicker knee.
Graven in air, the faces shift,
their eyes a flickering stream.
Loosed features drift, expressions run
in subtle strokes of shade and sun.
The stream ***** him in:  swirls of abhorrence,
pools of disdain. Succumbing, drawn under,
he swallows his eyes. But the eyes in the faces remain
watching.

So scrawny it grieves, he eats too ****** much;
ever absent, he is always in the way.
Sickly, quiet, submissive, shy,
he hides when the faces quarrel,
cries when they crack his lie.
Craving love, he learns early to fast;
contriving a limp, he is weaned at last.
What hold wanders here—there are no bridges,
only walls. Every scribe is a master of cant.
The learned are jaundiced, the ignorant smug.
And those who would name his demons,
when maintaining “this will pass,”
fashion their webs of pap and straw.
This animal man is a thief.

Mother,
My world is a stranger.
My eyes are wounds on a mind that will not heal.
I saw more range, more warmth, more mother,
in the dance of sun on heather,
in a single kiss of dew.
Now your urn, blessed bowel, fouls the cedar
of father’s mantel, while he grows blacker,
blending bile with grief and gin.
Those lips that never tendered,
that heart I never knew—mother,
who were you?

Ubiquitous, the emerald **** lies splayed, exploding:
from her pores an eruption, on her belly a rank,
stinking moss. She bleeds life, vomits it,
into bud, into blade; sharing with a passing star
the silent scream of spring.
But here she dreams, perfumed,
a picture of grace, her verdure in groom.
Secluded, seduced, sedated. Churls put on her face
while zephyrs attend to the scent of her loom.
Time purls. The zephyrs flit sweetly,
chasing motes in fibers of light.
Playing tag in the sun, currents weave into one,
near a still-life of mourners and fatherless son.
The figures seem rooted, unreal.
As the gust musses trees, light leaps between leaves.
The greenery breathes. As if shaken,
the scene comes to life:  huddling in sync,
the faces incline, their eyes like slinking thieves.
The young man implodes. He reels.
The tension relents and he straightens. He wheels.
He limps off alone, wind hounding his heels,
the moment too eerie to bear. Sedans trickle by.
A raw widow grieves. But the faces continue to stare.
And the wind pirouettes, finds a wing,
has a plunge, brakes low on a rest,
makes a guarded descent. The breeze buffets markers,
losing vigor and bent, then slips thru the stones
toward the beckoning trees.
The draft riffles leaves, where its whisper is spent
and lost a sigh.

A stipend, a shack, a lessor in wait.
Such are the fruits of his father’s estate.
He breaks no bread, seeks no sweet;
strange dynamics govern his blood,
preclude his seed from the common fire.
Music of amity, refinement’s caress,
are brute concerns; abrasive, obscene.
In his quiet aching way he is whole.
Seasons burst and smolder, surrender and brood.
Their pageant revolves about him.
The years breathe, driving the crowd,
steeping its fevers in jasmine and sun.
Humanity brawls, exalting the flame.
But without him.
And he grays, sinking, certain his pain cannot,
could not possibly, be borne by another.
The silence condenses, sets.
At last even pain deserts him.
But near the brink he hears the nervous hum
of impermanence, feels the white pang of being’s wing
as day succumbs to the fist of night.
Dawn burns deeper, duller,
each beam towing a filament of dusk,
each round of the wheel a salvo
in the stunning of his eyes.

Now the years are mired in sameness.
The day wears on. Guests come unbidden:
Conscience, the despot. Sentiment, the leech.
Misgivings sojourn, transmigrate, return,
as Lonesomeness plumbs his moribund vein,
metastasizing.
Still he rooms with the wind, dies waking,
dreams sleepless. And it haunts him:
All this teeming while an instant, an irrelevancy,
a rube’s view of the pulse careening downstream,
working its rhyme into a billion like irrelevancies.
Here must be real, Now must be sound, and yet—
no sooner are the moments cast
than shape is shadow, and present, past.
Only the day wears on.
Blue is the evening begotten, the twilight of our lives.
Dark gathers, mooring its stain
where a dreamer weighs the deep,
his eyes in ruin, his color in vain.
Only ballast and mind, merely ego and rind,
growing blind as the day wears on.

Down this grim promenade,
a musty wind hustles gaunt silhouettes.
They are loth to be borne;
they are patiently measuring stones.
Eyes leap in their caverns, looks light and remain
on a smudge in the gloaming, a scarecrow with cane,
tapping out his tenure in a cold feeble rain.
And now the purple veins of near-night
thud sluggishly, almost grudgingly.
The black earth splits wetly, obscenely.
There:  something impatient stirs, exposed—
Limbless, sightless, the lamprey rises;
her breath unbearable, her length immeasurable,
her age—
impossible!
Preening *****, hypnotic.
In one vile kiss she is sieve and abyss.
Her bruised lips are splayed, her violet mouth, made,
and her churning, insatiable craw is
pitch.

Out of the whirl, the faces gather round.
Was he hurt? Can you hear me?
But the old man makes no sound.
Shapes loom to the sides, to the front and rear:
the faces glare, stealing air…grow enormous fingers
to ****, to pin—to pull down the veil
and make his eyes seize.
In the dimness a nimbus, a prism, a pearl.
The faces part. The prism paints an image in the whirl.
The figure is a woman, whose seeming lips recite:
“Come sunder the night. Waning fire, grow bright.
I am mother, I am mother. I am life, I am light.”
But like spectra from a dying sun,
the colors flare, are torn, are spun
into the whirl, and there,
subdued, the voice is hushed,
the blossom, crushed,
and night
renewed.

Thanks for reading Faces. NOW PLEASE CLICK ON THE LINK BELOW TO READ HERO, A SPRAWLING, GROUNDBREAKING FANTASY FOR GROWNUPS IN TWO PARTS, ABOUT THE FIRST HUMAN TO CIRCUMNAVIGATE THE PLANET. (BUT YOU MUST CLICK ON THE PROVIDED LINK AT THE CONCLUSION OF PART ONE TO ACCESS PART TWO! THAT’S WHERE THIS TALE’S AMAZING RESOLUTION LIES. But please...intelligent, readers only!)
NOW HERE’S THAT LINK:

https://allpoetry.com/poem/14922744-Hero---Part-One-by-Ron-Sanders


Copyright 2020 by Ron Sanders.

contact:
ronsandersartofprose@yahoo.com
How soulless are you people, anyway?
Mgboafor, my mothers name.
Names of seasons to live and love
Her mate Nkwo the market
Recognizable had no fight for Eke
As Oye lies around the corner.
Season, season and seasons

Seasons of exchange and banter
Exchange to cherish and savour
What is Eke for Afor musses
As Nkwo do no reject entreaties
And Oye mingles with joy
What Afor, Nkwo and Eke shares and offeres.

Mgboafor, Mgboafor Mgbafor
Your mate Nkwo has long gone
As it never done on us
Her sayings and fears lingers:
Monday has replaced her
And Tuesday supplanted Eke
Oye weeps its exit for Wednesday
As Thursday has usurp Afor.

Your children mourns and groans
In the weight of Friday
To celebrate your exist
And  Saturday swallowed  up
Your caked frozen body to
Mother earth, Thanking God on Sunday
As another Monday hovers around.
Exchange in rounds and rounds
Movements in circles and circles in rounds.

Afor, left without notice
To join Nkwo her mate
Turning deaf hear to Ekes entreaties
And Oye exists in  oblivion
Completing   defiance and disappearance
Of ego and a people’s prides
Voiding recognitions for your children.
Who have traveled far and away

They sojourned in lands and places
You only heard and dream of Yesterday.  
Today the children toiled and labor
In ways you never imagined.
The years pass by the days rolls in
Seasons craws in and out
Your children labors in pain and tremor
In fashions and factions  
They toiled in torn cloths
Crowded by not just the people from faraway land
But contents and ideas never known and sold in our market.
They are crowded with wears Eke, Oye, Nkwo and Afor
Never sold and will never sale.

Mgbo-afor, Mgbo-oye, Mgbo-eke and Mgbo-nkwo
The celebrated names of our markets
Depicts our seasons of beauty and time
The beauty of our women and their wares
Admirable wares that flaunts and flatters the men
Wares that puts us on our toes and gaggles our inside:

Okafor,Okoye,Okonkwo and Okeke
Your male version who clogs around
Peeping your substance dreaming
Making joy of  your swinging buttocks as you walk pass
Farting and panting from the labour the night before.
Celebrating their exploits and conquest
Taking pride you belong to them only.


Okonkwo keeps his name not your ideal
For Mgbonkwo long lost her ordeal.
Okafor strives without its full form - Mgboafor.
Speed has overtaken Mgboeke as Okeke now wears torn cloths
Working and walking in torn ideas and concepts.
Mgboye long lost the arguments to Okoye
A mirage of our time
Living life abridge ideas like carcass.

Our men…..?
They no longer have strengths that
Gaggles Mgboafor’s likes and climes.
As no Virtues chides and glitters the face of  Mgbeke
No Tickles to defines Mgboye’s and Mgbonkwo's personalities.
For we now live in season of pity and regrets
Rounds and rounds in formless circles
No fashionable logic in today’s changing sphere.
The truth of  our logicday
Is it just me or does the morning look a bit Monet?
there is or seems to be
a faint mist that musses over the colours and forms.

cue
things from the deep that keep you from sleep
or dreams that you make when awake.

all we need is a raven
and a scream from,
Edvard Munch.

— The End —