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Nigel Morgan May 2015
In a distant land, far beyond the time we know now, there lived an ancient people who knew in their bones of a past outside memory. Things happened over and over; as day became night night became day, spring followed winter, summer followed spring, autumn followed summer and then, and then as autumn came, at least the well-known ordered days passed full of preparation for the transhumance, that great movement of flocks and herds from the summer mountains to the winter pastures. But in the great oak woods of this region the leaves seemed reluctant to fall. Even after the first frosts when the trees glimmered with rime as the sun rose. Even when winter’s cousin, the great wind from the west, ravaged the conical roofs of the shepherds’ huts. The leaves did not fall.

For Lucila, searching for leaves as she climbed each day higher and higher through the parched undergrowth under the most ancient oaks, there were only acorns, slews of acorns at her feet. There were no leaves, or rather no leaves that might be gathered as newly fallen. Only the faint husks of leaves of the previous autumn, leaves of provenance already gathered before she left the mountains last year for the winter plains, leaves she had placed into her deep sleeves, into her voluminous apron, into the large pockets of her vlaterz, the ornate felt jacket of the married woman.

Since her childhood she had picked and pocketed these oaken leaves, felt their thin, veined, patterned forms, felt, followed, caressed them between her finger tips. It was as though her pockets were full of the hands of children, seven-fingered hands, stroking her fingers with their pointed tips when her fingers were pocketed.

She would find private places to lay out her gathered leaves. She wanted none to know or touch or speak of these her children of the oak forest. She had waited all summer, as she had done since a child, watching them bud and grow on the branch, and then, with the frosts and winds of autumn, fall, fall, fall to the ground, but best of all fall into her small hands, every leaf there to be caught, fallen into the bowl of her cupped hands. And for every leaf caught, a wish.

Her autumn days became full of wishes. She would lie awake on her straw mattress after Mikas had risen for the night milking, that time when the rustling bells of the goats had no accompaniment from the birds. She would assemble her lists of wishes, wishes ready for leaves not yet fallen into the bowl of her cupped hands. May the toes of my baby be perfectly formed? May his hair fall straight without a single curl? May I know only the pain I can bear when he comes? May the mother of Mikas love this child?

As the fine autumn days moved towards the feast day of St Anolysius, the traditional day of departure of the winter transhumance, there was, this season, an unspoken tension present in the still, dry air. Already preparations were being made for the long journey to the winter plains. There was soon to be a wedding now three days away, of the Phatos boy to the Tamosel girl. The boy was from an adjoining summer pasture and had travelled during the summer months with an itinerant uncle, a pedlar of sorts and beggar of repute. So he had seen something of the world beyond those of the herds and flocks can expect to see. He was rightly-made and fit to marry, although, of course, the girl was to be well-kept secret until the day itself.

Lucila remembered those wedding days, her wedding days, those anxious days of waiting when encased in her finery, in her seemingly impenetrable and voluminous wedding clothes she had remained all but hidden from view. While around her the revelling came and went, the drunkenness, the feasting, the riotous eruptions of noise and movement, the sudden visitations of relatives she did not know, the fierce instructions of women who spoke to her now as a woman no longer a young girl or a dear child, women she knew as silent, shy and respectful who were now loud and lewd, who told her things she could hardly believe, what a man might do, what a man might be, what a woman had to suffer - all these things happening at the same time. And then her soon-to-be husband’s drunk-beyond-reason friends had carried off the basket with her trousseau and dressed themselves riotously in her finest embroidered blouses, her intricate layered skirts, her petticoats, even the nightdress deemed the one to be worn when eventually, after three days revelry, she would be visited by a man, now more goat than man, sodden with drink, insensible to what little she understood as human passion beyond the coupling of goats. Of course Semisar had prepared the bright blood for the bridesbed sheet, the necessary evidence, and as Mikas lay sprawled unconscious at the foot of the marriage bed she had allowed herself to be dishevelled, to feign the aftermath of the act he was supposed to have committed upon her. That would, she knew, come later . . .

It was then, in those terrible days and after, she took comfort from her silent, private stitching into leaves, the darning of acorns, the spinning of skeins of goats’ wool she would walnut-dye and weave around stones and pieces of glass. She would bring together leaves bound into tiny books, volumes containing for her a language of leaves, the signs and symbols of nature she had named, that only she knew. She could not read the words of the priest’s book but was fluent in the script of veins and ribs and patterning that every leaf owned. When autumn came she could hardly move a step for picking up a fallen leaf, reading its story, learning of its history. But this autumn now, at the time of leaf fall, the fall of the leaf did not happen and those leaves of last year at her feet were ready to disintegrate at her touch. She was filled with dread. She knew she could not leave the mountains without a collection of leaves to stitch and weave through the shorter days and long, long winter nights. She had imagined sharing with her infant child this language she had learnt, had stitched into her daily life.

It was Semisar of course, who voiced it first. Semisar, the self-appointed weather ears and horizon eyes of the community, who followed her into the woods, who had forced Lucila against a tree holding one broad arm and her body’s weight like a bar from which Lucila could not escape, and with the other arm and hand rifled the broad pockets of Lucila’s apron. Semisar tossed the delicate chicken bone needles to the ground, unravelled the bobbins of walnut-stained yarn, crumpled the delicately folded and stitched, but yet to be finished, constructions of leaves . . . And spewed forth a torrent of terrible words. Already the men knew that the lack of leaf fall was peculiar only to the woods above and around their village. Over the other side of the mountain Telgatho had said this was not so. Was Lucila a Magnelz? Perhaps a Cutvlael? This baby she carried, a girl of course, was already making evil. Semisar placed her hand over and around the ripe hard form of the unborn child, feeling for its shape, its elbows and knees, the spine. And from there, with a vicelike grip on the wrist, Semisar dragged Lucila up and far into the woods to where the mountain with its caves and rocks touched the last trees, and from there to the cave where she seemed to know Lucila’s treasures lay, her treasures from childhood. Semisar would destroy everything, then the leaves would surely fall.

When Lucila did not return to prepare the evening meal Mikas was to learn all. Should he leave her be? He had been told women had these times of strange behaviour before childbirth. The wedding of the Phatos boy was almost upon them and the young men were already behaving like goats before the rut. The festive candles and tinselled wedding crowns had been fetched from the nearest town two days ride distant, the decoration of the tiny mountain basilica and the accommodation for the priest was in hand. The women were busy with the making of sweets and treats to be thrown at the wedding pair by guests and well-wishers. Later, the same women would prepare the dough for the millstones of bread that would be baked in the stone ovens. The men had already chosen the finest lambs to spit-roast for the feast.

She will return, Semisar had said after waiting by the fold where Mikas flocks, now gathered from the heights, awaited their journey south. All will be well, Mikas, never fear. The infant, a girl, may not last its birth, Semisar warned, but seeing the shocked face of Mikas, explained a still-birth might be providential for all. Know this time will pass, she said, and you can still be blessed with many sons. We are forever in the hands of the spirit, she said, leaving without the customary salutation of farewell.
                                               
However different the lives of man and woman may by tradition and circumstance become, those who share the ways and rites of marriage are inextricably linked by fate’s own hand and purpose. Mikas has come to know his once-bride, the child become woman in his clumsy embrace, the girl of perhaps fifteen summers fulfilling now his mother’s previous role, who speaks little but watches and listens, is unfailingly attentive to his needs and demands, and who now carries his child ( it can only be a boy), carries this boy high in her womb and with a confidence his family has already remarked upon.

After their wedding he had often returned home to Lucila at the time of the sun’s zenith when it is customary for the village women to seek the shade of their huts and sleep. It was an unwritten rite due to a newly-wed husband to feign the sudden need for a forgotten tool or seek to examine a sick animal in the home fold. After several fruitless visits when he found their hut empty he timed his visit earlier to see her black-scarfed figure disappear into the oak woods.  He followed her secretively, and had observed her seated beneath an ancient warrior of a tree, had watched over her intricate making. Furthermore and later he came to know where she hid the results of this often fevered stitching of things from nature’s store and stash, though an supernatural fear forbade him to enter the cleft between rocks into which she would disappear. He began to know how times and turns of the days affected her actions, but had left her be. She would usually return bright-eyed and with a quiet wonder, of what he did not know, but she carried something back within her that gave her a peculiar peace and beauty. It seemed akin to the well-being Mikas knew from handling a fine ewe from his flock . . .

And she would sometimes allow herself to be handled thus. She let him place his hands over her in that joyful ownership and command of a man whose life is wholly bound up with flocks and herds and the well-being of the female species. He would come from the evening watch with the ever-constant count of his flock still on his lips, and by a mixture of accident and stealth touch her wholly-clothed body, sometimes needing his fingers into the thick wool of her stockings, stroking the chestnut silken hairs that he found above her bare wrists, marvelling at her small hands with their perfect nails. He knew from the ribaldry of men that women were trained from childhood to display to men as little as possible of their intimate selves. But alone and apart all day on a remote hillside, alone save for several hundred sheep, brought to Mikas in his solitary state wild and conjured thoughts of feminine spirits, unencumbered by clothes, brighter and more various than any night-time dream. And he had succumbed to the pleasure of such thoughts times beyond reason, finding himself imagining Lucila as he knew she was unlikely ever to allow herself to be. But even in the single winter and summer of their life together there had been moments of surprise and revelation, and accompanied by these precious thoughts he went in search of her in the darkness of a three-quarter moon, into the stillness of the night-time wood.

Ah Lucilla. We might think that after the scourge of Semisar, the physical outrage of her baby’s forced examination, and finally the destruction of her treasures, this child-wife herself with child would be desolate with grief at what had come about. She had not been forced to follow Semisar into the small cave where wrapped in woven blankets her treasures lay between the thinnest sheets of impure and rejected parchment gleaned surreptitiously after shearing, but holding each and every treasure distinct and detached. There was enough light for Semisar to pause in wonder at the intricate constructions, bright with the aura of extreme fragility owned by many of the smaller makings. And not just the leaves of the oak were here, but of the mastic, the walnut, the flaky-barked strawberry and its smoothed barked cousin. There were leaves and sheaves of bark from lowland trees of the winter sojourn, there were dried fruits mysteriously arranged, constructions of acorns threaded with the dark madder-red yarn, even acorns cracked and damaged from their tree fall had been ‘mended’ with thread.

Semisar was to open some of the tiny books of leaved pages where she witnessed a form of writing she did not recognise (she could not read but had seen the priest’s writing and the print of the holy books). This she wondered at, as surely Lucila had only the education of the home? Such symbols must belong to the spirit world. Another sign that Lucila had infringed order and disturbed custom. It would take but a matter of minutes to turn such makings into little more than a layer of dust on the floor.

With her bare hands Semisar ground together these elaborate confections, these lovingly-made conjunctions of needle’s art with nature’s purpose and accidental beauty. She ground them together until they were dust.

When Semisar returned into the pale afternoon light it seemed Lucila had remained as she had been left: motionless, and without expression. If Semisar had known the phenomenon of shock, Lucila was in that condition. But, in the manner of a woman preparing to grieve for the dead she had removed her black scarf and unwound the long dark chestnut plaits that flowed down her back. But there were no tears. only a dumb silence but for the heavy exhalation of breath. It seemed that she looked beyond Semisar into the world of spirits invoking perhaps their aid, their comfort.

What happened had neither invoked sadness nor grief. It was as if it had been ordained in the elusive pattern of things. It felt like the clearing of the summer hut before the final departure for the long journey to the winter world. The hut, Lucila had been taught, was to be left spotless, every item put in its rightful place ready to be taken up again on the return to the summer life, exactly as if it had been undisturbed by absence . Not a crumb would remain before the rugs and coverings were rolled and removed, summer clothes hard washed and tightly mended, to be folded then wrapped between sprigs of aromatic herbs.

Lucila would go now and collect her precious but scattered needles from beneath the ancient oak. She would begin again - only to make and embroider garments for her daughter. It was as though, despite this ‘loss’, she had retained within her physical self the memory of every stitch driven into nature’s fabric.

Suddenly Lucila remembered that saints’ day which had sanctioned a winter’s walk with her mother, a day when her eyes had been drawn to a world of patterns and objects at her feet: the damaged acorn, the fractured leaf, the broken berried branch, the wisp of wool left impaled upon a stub of thorns. She had been five, maybe six summers old. She had already known the comforting action of the needle’s press again the felted cloth, but then, as if impelled by some force quite outside herself, had ‘borrowed’ one of her mother’s needles and begun her odyssey of darning, mending, stitching, enduring her mother’s censure - a waste of good thread, little one - until her skill became obvious and one of delight, but a private delight her mother hid from all and sundry, and then pressed upon her ‘proper’ work with needle and thread. But the damage had been done, the dye cast. She became nature’s needle slave and quartered those personal but often invisible
Nat Lipstadt Dec 2015
~~~
Disappearing Ink Thoughts:

"Nothing that involves the love of an honorable man"

~~~

One checks in
with the periodicity of
semi-regularity,
a
how ya doing?
sent off by mounted Messenger
to:

good friends,
fellow poets,
former lovers

yes,
it can be
either,
both,
and
even
one and the same...

her reply arrives -

"I am fabulous"

you twinge
with curiosity and whimsical,
mortal fantastical,
creaking regret

for it's from the one
you didn't keep closer
but
so easy was it,
it well might have been a

been

disappearing ink thoughts
start to pen themselves,
on both sides now
of your
two-sided containment chambers
of the heart

does it mean
she's found
another lover?

so you
dancingly
not-so-innocently,
add-on a moonshot probe,
a reply comes...

"nothing
that involves the love of
an honorable man"


are you so obvious,
you groan, forehead smack,
is everything that lies
between your simplistic but
not-so-cunning lines
so easy apparent,
in this game of
liar's poker?

disappearing ink thoughts
start to pen themselves
on both sides now of your
two-sided containment chambers
of the heart


a mixed bag evoking,
a whizzing admixture of
guilty and sad,
fond memories,
sutured together
by alternating slews of
"what ifs" and "what is"

maddening, your mad imbalances

the heart is divided-
left and right

what you have
left
behind,
the seen and the unknown

what you have checked off as
rightly acts of both
rare and well done,
simultaneously

and

you separate the darks
from the lights,
as you subdivide
this conflicted
second-place-derived
"honorable mention,'
the complimentary multiplicity,
of a most pleasant
yet withering assassination,
winning by losing,
by being called

an honorable man

something makes one uncomfortable,
as you write/lay this
epistle *** elegy down
when you are up,
beside your truly
"love the one you're with"

leaving one unsure of where to place
this particular, peculiar,
inscription

are you left or right
sided here?

hard pressed
to uncover honor here,
as shameful, don't-go-there's,
reddens the face
in a darkened
bedroom

but
there is some
softener within
all this disappearing ink

recalling that you knew yourself
well enough,
to give up,
when to walk away
so rightly so,
when you heart knew
what wasn't left,
wasn't just quite
meant
to be
ship-righted

meaning
fair superseeded implanted desire,
and you
left-leaving, left-leaning,
on
the right stuff

here you sign off,
almost forgiving certain sins
so flawed for being so
human,
such as contemplating,
the wonder of wonderment,
the fragility of frailty,
the knowing of never
perfectly knowing



~~~

Dec. 31, 2015
7:59 am
Flight  #1011
Seat 16C
Somewhere over the
human landscape
song shadows
soul and mirrors
will we ever see clearer
sweet life
oh the fragrance
the righteous mind
un-sees the danger
so many soldiers
so many women
are all of our fathers
really little children
move swiftly
into the windy recesses
the mind regresses
all the time
damp and wet
the owl cries
so long tomorrow
farewell goodbye
dunk your head
in liquid splendor
i am tender as the snow
pouring down from heaven’s fiefdom
morning's hunger is dissipated
by moonlight kisses and salty lovers
salves of calendula upon our skin
swim in juicy wonder
listen and dance with thunder
the fireflies swim through burning skies
making arcs and triumphant cries
what a silly blunder
all the noise and all the cover
hiding your heart in violet garments
streams of satin in your slumber
stroke the liberated arrow
weave the gardenia’s shadow
streams of consciousness and beauty
looking into eyes of human strategy
human shadows
start to suffocate us
instruct the timber
plundered
strumming humid arias
looms of butter start to melt
svelte and spelt
slews of wealth
heaven's belt is loosely tied
striated like the mind
grinding hind legs
selves neglect entry fees
sleeves of grass
embrace strands of ice
with a lover or two
on the side
Robert Zanfad Oct 2013
useless, this skyward nightblind stare
was it there, from lost flecks of  stardust
that God wrought
this species of heroes and heathens?
these eyes don't see much anymore

I've tired of my own sophic nonsense,
pretenses ****** to any screed that might buy words
to publish under slews of anonymous names...
real life is not vague
we chew it, hard crusty bread

before dinner, my own fingers rummaged deep
planted within loose root shards, chewed chicken thighs, other things
we've eaten,
ever since days as young children...

Our Father consumed simply

like a banged and dented '57 Chevy
adorned pretty with loose bananas and oranges
freed from paper cartons,
his rusty wrenches tucked in my toolbox
built solid, still colorful, if not as useful anymore;
a ***-stained carpet too good to throw away
left to rot in the driveway; I called a tow to haul it all
yesterday

Oh my Brother...

when it rains
I drown in his rolling wheelchair
and rubber-tipped canes, set out plastic buckets

... and I think to drink them in...

the stories of glory or warning,
conquests and war,
apple pies left to cool on a sill
awaiting harvest by the bravest soldier

today:
gifts of old shot glasses saved in the cellar
(I drink from the bottle)
a box of fine cedar from the back of the closet
(though odor not telling, for a decade at best)
more stories...

but still
we're both grown men now, and safer for past efforts,
the lawn neatly mowed if not always ****-free.

does it matter?
winter's soon coming.
what could it save me?

it's a cold wind -
in time enough, some men
newly minted, will gaze inward - outward, too
search for food left in the pantry
the paltry stocks I put up:
canned spaghetti, dollar store crackers, salty powdered soup mixes...

they'll wonder whether a father ever listened
cared enough to spout useful advice...
weigh one heathen,
the *** who wrote poems only for himself
Isn’t it strange that the same bloodlust
Which feeds the *** drive, drives
Deep into one’s Egyptian appetite,
Feeds deep, deep around the campfire at night,
Flames of carnal desire: and by carnal, I mean
Literally a yearning for rib-eye steaks,
Pork sirloin & Horse Meat.
Horse meatballs.
Horse sausage.
Horse stew.
Hi-** Silver & Trigger,
Fury & My Friend Flicka, &
Lest we forget:  The Famous Mr. Ed.
Oh Wilbur, I'm talking about Horse Cuisine!
(God Bless the French!)
Dartagnan & Brigitte, typical post war
Parisians with slim pickens
(No relation to the actor)
Survivors with little to choose from
Whatever scroungy edibles offered on the pushcart.
The one good thing about those years, you might ask?
It was a jubilee time, a precursor to
Lean Cuisine & Weight Watchers
Jenny Craig & Nutrisystem, & the lovely
Marie Osmond looking especially edible lately
Having dropped a dumb-bell 50 pounds, yet
Still crammed tightly in Spanx.
“Hey Marie, it’s good to be the King!”
I am Mel Brooks ******* you,
From behind, History of the World: Part I.
Marie is looking  tasty, n'est–ce pas?
France after WWI and WWII: a starving time,
Yet ironically a meat-eater's ****.
The French Cavalry, no longer needed,
It meant liquidation of the local Lipizzaners,
War-weary, would-be Man o’ Wars,
Secretariats, Seattle Slews, & California Chromes,
Shot twice in the head,
Carcasses hung & butchered.
But I digress. Or do I?
MEAT: gives the same ecstatic rush as ***,
Carnival Season, a pre-Lenten animal s’morgasm,
Identical, as nourishing as, perhaps as
A horse of a different color: ***?
SEE ME/FEEL ME: ****** cheeks, dripping jowls;
Shredded flesh betwixt my teeth—oh yes!
I confess that among my forebears,
(Not to be confused with The Three Bears,
Which would, of course, be a whole 'nother story)
Somewhere ‘long the spiral helix
Was a seriously carnivorous naked ape,
Some troglodyte Alley Oop, evolving over Time,
Into a reptilian, puffed-up, junior broker,
Impressing some ***** 21 year-old
In some Chichi Manhattan bistro, trumping
The waiter's or waitress’s shopworn query with:
******!
A fresh ****:
****** & still warm.
i am higher than the sun
a million miles above the one
who controls the sky
i am a record keeper
a handler of snakes
and retribution is my middle name
i am palmistry
i am sandalwood
i am a refuge and a grave
i am a paperweight
i am a slave

i see the dream space opening and closing
its talking to me
she makes faces at the fading light of the stars
do we trust our visions or are we prisoners of reason
the faceless, the voiceless wanderers
drifting in underwater color schemes
concupiscent dreams
the netherworlds beckon to us
we can't help but heed their liquid calling
i am boiling in my bathtub
joining hands and hearts
we rub away the stars from our bodies
and come clean to ******* whistling
the meandering echoes
of our fantasies
in lands of allegory and unstained wisdom
remnants of our ancestors
dancing their embodiment
with slews of musical instruments
and brews of medicine and healing herbs
we are finding the magic in our icons again
like diamonds drifting between realities
the coming satisfaction is becoming less and less attractive
so you suggest we take a deep breath
and get back to making love
Nat Lipstadt May 2016
(Return to Shelter Island)^^

~

"And even silence found a tongue,
To haunt me all the summer long;
The riddle nature could not prove
Was nothing else but secret love"^


   ~

the winter's quietude
slowly dissipates,
like a miser's reluctantanc to-part-even-with
unwanted, yet saved up tears,
now finally shed, 
tears easy ease on down to please,
morphing into spring rain  
creating a horn of plenty of
les amuse-bouches,
summer tastes,
hints of mint,
all to commence, orchestrate,
miniature, slews of budding teases
of what may yet come

t'is only summer peekings coming to refresh,
memorized friends, recalling a former full bosomed lover's
abundant bounty,
untying the quiescent, frozen tongue,
relieving it of its stale,
suffocating, whited, slushed crust,
issued a full pardon and
twenty bucks pocket money and
freedom
to see the
new full born poems,
without the interference
of grey baited, metallic bars,
poems, floating by, on summer breezes,
air borne for lovers

the same water vista,
under grayscale sky and
winter cloud cover,
is uncrackable and the
Hollow King of Words,
silently languishes, jailed alone,
wretched and deposed,
a wrecked winter's tale told,
an empty throne forlorn

no-way-out aperture extant,
no keyhole found to unlock,
all the songs
that to no avail,
the ineffectual poets impatiently
have prayed,
beseeching an unresponsive sky to rain forth
uniforms of pastel blues and whites

only summer sun-rays
seasonly ready now, fully ripened,
rays notably higher angled,
that can ***** and crack open
the skull and bones,
rejoice the soul's soil,
filling eyes with leafy canopy of green down,
while reheating the heart's chambers,
un-encoding the precise temperature formulae,
for the degree exacting,
where the words-wanting-for-extracting,
release and rouse themselves from a
deeper dreamless hibernating,
and even a last remaining,
napping, spring drowsiness

awaken to a symphony spoken
pitch perfect,
a woven rainbow color palate ensemble,
all full throated blooming

before and by my water view,
an old empty Adirondack throne has grown
one more winter-withered and wise and weary,
aging well,
if aging a well be,
and yet visibly poorly,
unable to speak,
bereft these so many months
of its human companion's conjoint, howling voice

chair asks him now plaintive,
not
where I've been,
knowing that any answer
immaterial

nor
does it inquire,
have I come to stay,
knowing any human answer
is always at best
an uncertain truth

only this it seeks ascertaining,
desiring a newly needed-seeded knowing

do I return
carrying with me,
a summer's secret love?

strong enough to make our single tongue
break the wet dog woeful silences,
to sing the praise of
those refreshed elements now blossoming surrounding,
that all come to enhance,
the secret purpose of the human

do I carry the tune
that will unlock,
at long last,
the somber silence,
that no winter's gale roar or
noisy, erratic spring chirping ,
however loud,
yet leaves nature, alone, clouded,
incapable of solving
the riddle of human nature,
that bring summers birthing to fruition

do I in my possess,
own the love,
that's strong enough to end
the silenced weeping
of the other season's mourning abscesses,
the absence of summer?

they say it is but the mechanical turning of
the hardware store's calendar, kitchen-walled hung,
that marks the man's semi-automatic returning,
yet the paper's crossed out, numerical dates,
cannot foretell,
if the necessary passion,
the requisite human love,
the provident kindling of summer's furnace
whose heat,
can provide life's
reasonings,
will arrive on timely so that


even silence will now have found the tongue
to haunt me all the summer long;
the riddle nature could not prove,
was nothing else, but secret love
5/23~28/16
^^written in anticipation
and completed
upon the return to
Shelter Island

^John Clare, English Poet
1793 - 1864
a follicle of light is falling from the house of our master
troubadours warp our imagination
with jasmine and other heady fragrances
gypsy eyes steal salt water from tides
and return them to our adjacent lives
slaves and slaveholders, slews of cattle
ranchers, and fathers battle
keep mustard seeds by the bedside
and burn irises like incense
hours fly by and leave us hurting
in piles of rusted shirts and clothing
her luck has begun to expand but man still demands his fate
so redecorate your cottages and receive the visitor's hate
make music burst throughout the garden
as lonely brushstrokes reach out to touch your bottom
i am moving, doing, and having faith only in the theater
she is carrying fetid water with feet bloodier
than the skyscrapers bound to her posterior
Left Foot Poet Aug 2016
none more than I,
surprised and wary,
that my all-my-life
urbanized body,
be so unnaturally well attuned
to a slight degree
temperature modification

I,
proud city dweller,
born and bred,
urban dust,
the sandblast used
to erode and etch-a-sketch
my body's skin pores hollows,
by definition, pride and myth,
a tough skin necessified
to survive where
plants cannot

the chill of fall,
and the follow up of
it's 'whiteout' afterwards,
faintly dimly but
remarkably present,
unmistakably different
from the chilling moisture
forming on the ice bucketed bottle
of dinner's colden, golden,
waiting white Sancerre

the lowest, coldest single note
any viola can exhale,
I,
hear coming from Itzhak Perlman's
so close, Shelter Island retreat,
a foghorn warning
clearly felt, smelling its deep fried heard mournful warning,
tonal hum, swelling from the outside in,
not despite, but to pointedly spite
the surrounding humidity condensation of August
on the air cooled window panes

the very same humidity
that makes humans
curse the blessing of sweating,
registering slews of
no-one-cares complaints to
no-ones-listening people,
about the drying out everywhere
wet dampness of the end of the
simmering season

a sliver, a musk,
a prophet's portent,
so subtly well entrenched,
secretly by nature sent,
a realtime single line of code,
message that winter is indeed coming,
but not to the Seven Kingdoms,
but to the Czar's literary summer palace

I,
the sole prosecution witness,
to winter's germination
as the evening cools,
testifying about the acorn droppings
felt beneath flip flops,
like hurtful peas
beneath a princess's ten deep mattresses,
reminders of too soon time to be mourned
as gone, gone, gone
the summer,
the peak of the foliage, the zenith, the crest
of this old and very peculiar man

but one?

how can this be,
one **** degree
of Fahrenheit
leads directly to
sniffles and endless
gesundheists?

one **** degree,
separates the operatic arias,
the shower sing-a-long songs of his summer soul's
contented tented revival,
which now, in these sultry days of  August,
he sings, so swell,
practiced with an artistic style of
summer lazy's 'doing nothing'
so, so well

soon to suffer the mysteries of
the longest day
of wintery night,
where silent snow falling,
beautifies but makes the man
put down his pen and
reread his summer poetry

tonite,
we fine and dine
dressed in summer attire,
sock-less, coolest linen with cotton blended,
only ******, good natured,
political discussions allowed,
some daring souls,
bare their left shoulders,
more tan skin out than in,
while others defend
the natural human right
of man to wear in tandem,
white socks and ugly cargo shorts

all the fabrics, all the friends,
crinkling wrinkling upon the tannins
of sweet brown sugar of caramelized skin

some wearing bright pastels
clean new white T's,
so eye brightening-whiting-delighting,
that they are legally required,
and illegal to wear anytime else,
except for this one abbreviated quarter
of the best days of his life

smell the snow,
hearing  the boots and parkas,
making tramping noises upon snow cleared paths
swimming unhappily across
slushy street corners, almost mountain pass impassable
all these molecules, wafting in the coolness
of the August shore breezes ,
fedex'd  up from the polar south winds
of wintertime Argentina

all of these hints,
present and accounted for
in the atmosphere,
but of them,
I,
do not speak
not out loudly anyway

why,
to be lost beneath,
under the munching noises of summer corn
summer fruits, tongue exploding,
clinking of happy glasses,
toasts of "what a great summer eve!"
the wisdom of silence loudly asserts

for who am I to
rob us the deceit,
the human natural conceit,
that the future is the identity of our
permanent press present

that the unpracticed pleasures
of lapping up breezes,
the genteel salted aroma of
heated sweated forehead beads and sea water,
the cocktail odors of barbecue sauce,
fishing boat's diesel, Campari,
root beer floats,
strawberry shortcake's speaking of its peaking,
little children laughing with carousel joy at
running unshod and free upon bunnies and frogs,
all words and thoughts somehow miracle rhyming with...
forever

soon to end in the
disenchantment of reruns on
a flickering black and white tv night,
once again, no longer obsolete,
unlike the man

the eyes glisten from held back tears,
all come to give me hugs, thinking
the old man, in his white apron is
joyous simply happy or simply,
grill smoke got in his eyes

but that one **** degree...
8-7-16     7:21am
_______________

The Cold Heaven
W. B. Yeats

Suddenly I saw the cold and rook-delighting heaven
That seemed as though ice burned and was but the more ice,
And thereupon imagination and heart were driven
So wild that every casual thought of that and this
Vanished, and left but memories, that should be out of season

--------------

DAY

84°HI
RealFeel® 91°
Precipitation 2%
Mostly sunny and less humid
WSW 6 mph
Gusts: 10 mph
Max UV Index: 7 (High)
Thunderstorms: 0%
Precipitation: 0 in
Rain: 0 in
Snow: 0 in
Ice: 0 in
Hours of Precipitation: 0 hrs
Hours of Rain: 0 hrs

NIGHT

65°LO
RealFeel® 64°
Precipitation 12%
Clear


all clear?
Jeremy Ducane Mar 2010
I walk in from the dark and wet  
The glass door sprung to slow me.
Find a chair.
Collapse.

Am I exhausted or
Not?

I don't know.

A friend of long ago and now is dying
The shadow of his place with gulls and shops
I leave on Albert Road.  
Broken arm across his short betraying breaths
With that inevitability grin
I know so well from school and later,
As little bitter fortunes

Unfurled their flags.

I walked in through his easy door
Words floundering till whisky hits
Then:
Of course we will! Sure we will!
- We fill the months and weeks with plans
Travel to the sights he wants for him.
Boats and Locos, Houses, Friends.
The evening slews in amber liquid,
Fades in fervent words.

Morning grey.
For me the stunned drive back to work
And England's ridges higher -  home to home.

Finally Southbank - monied words.
Their voices to the ceiling reach:
A gentle civilised hubub of the saved
Bathed in culture, purpose and the careful light.

And you are back there, purposing a
Fractured night
That counts each clock chime you restored.

Oh now, by all the alleys, faces, roads
And domes of London,

Would it were not so

Not so
Not so
Not so.
Kathryn Bowen Jan 2014
The moon is quiet and thoughtful.

Roads barren and damp with the sweat of horses and their riders.

Prints of disheveled hooves embedded in the ground.

The putrid smell of smog, hints of cobblestone and blithering drunks, waits in the distance.

London’s finest on Fleet Street, where the people live in fear.

Todd glares into the fiercely sparse street and mourns a farewell to a life of prosperity.

Lamps flicker as the oil barely lingers, while dawn silently but swiftly approaches.

The poets dream for slews of new and benevolent days, whilst their slumber is interrupted by the tower bell.

Six times the ringing and the brightest star reveals its radiant beauty o’er the steamy ledges of London.
surface attractions are magnetic insurrections
******/ecstatic fornication is aqueous neurotic
loquats departing markets feverishly
his emergence is magic
her carpets were made to be rolled upon
in naked ecstasy
hungry like diners at a restaurant
humid and loose like comets
seeking markets to sell goods and services to
humid like germany in the heat of summer
drums breaking the silence like it was a sheet of paper
staples faking their commitments
bound to paper like razor blades to tape
jump up and scream your health is a miracle
sting like a needle the record player skips a beat
i am shown musical images yet perhaps we are meant to sleep
his dream is real and thirty feelers adorn her skin
her hungry hands caress his legs
forever peeling away the cucumber’s skin
respect is resolving to love despite the fire that shoots up your spine
go and wash the mind in a pool of liquid nectar
amrit is her sweater the sweaty and the sweet serum
salty houses of gingerbread demand repair

fair thee well 2016
your edges are rusted, frustrated and melancholy
i seek the middle where white lilies lie
waiting for someone to hold them
speak “know” more and refrain from talking
her arms hold the world in waking defiance
science is borrowed from metaphysics
statistics weaken the faith of our future
shoot the researchers and drown them in tubes of acid
like they torture cats and vivisect their own families
stab them and then steep them in water but add no honey

song shadows
soul and mirrors
will we ever see clearer
sweet life oh the fragrance
the righteous mind
un-sees the danger
so many soldiers
so many women
are all our fathers really children
move swiftly into the windy recesses
the mind regresses
all the time
damp and wet
the owl cries
so long tomorrow
farewell goodbye
dunk your head in liquid splendor
i am tender as the snow
pouring down from heaven’s fiefdom
mornings hunger is dissipated
by moonlight kisses and salty lovers
salves of calendula upon our skin
swim in juicy wonder
listen and dance with thunder
the fireflies swim through burning skies
making arcs and triumphant cries
what a silly blunder
all the noise and all the cover
hiding your heart in violet garments
streams of satin in your slumber
stroke the liberated arrow
weave the gardenia’s shadow
streams of consciousness and beauty
looking into eyes of human strategy
human shadows
start to suffocate us
instruct the timber plundered
strumming humid arias
looms of butter start to melt
svelte and spelt
slews of wealth
heavens belt is loosely tied
striated like the mind
grinding hind legs
selves neglect entry fees
sleeves of grass
strands of ice
jump in the lake for a quick refreshment
stand back you are lucky to undertake the treatment
come here and steer clear of fear’s inner critic
sinister sisters jump at guys
in gyms baring turbans in tournaments of blindness
sentenced to life behind stars
score cards grieve their own boxes
scratch the lottery cards
show them your hearts
small and beautiful
throughout the luminescent sky
i sulk waiting for the humpback whales to fly
street lights brighter than souls
do what you can and lift up the whole
returning to our goals and values
salutations bless the next expectation
the desperation of the departed
his investigation
feet fade into feathers
streets are named after leather
longing for loops of string
rings dream in desert timing
first rhymes decency gone blind
so we must find our light inside
held in bed against its will
vintage bells dressed in music
goose feathers use it for pillows
the west winds find his lips
respect turns to trust and kisses your bones
in bird language i speak tones of glowing stones
roses freeze the afterglow of darkness
dressed in moans and loaning their hands to anyone that passes
the dancers resume amusing stances
chances are France is falling faster than a comet
soaring like moorings in Spain
hours invested in self selection
hesitation to understand beauty
like mushroom filaments stints of style in tiny islands
steeped in courage still considering this weapon
resend the message festering in a fast vesicle
i feasibly neglect my spectacles
guess who came to dinner and wished you a happy new year
we live in order for our features to disappear
in Diaspora spores of ecstasy, mutiny and insurrection
rebel against tyranny and become the tyrant’s offering
sacrifice is ritual both real and useful
humid as the dawn in swampy storms of vision
precision is clueless less the virtuous resolve it
resourceful yes but nonetheless tired of twirling in groovy dramas
sand storms and bottomless pits
groping for history, mystery and freedom

you are a dumpling dressed in the afterglow of sunlight
with melancholy nectar dripping from your elbows
Sean Yessayan Dec 2013
I've yet to forget,
slews of verses on paper
written just for you.
Timothy H May 2016
Today
Is simply
Too magnificent
And beauty-filled
To feel as low, as I do

Is it
That I viewed
Some flawed fool
Capable of holding my gold
Trust sold cheap, a painful rue

Or the
Simple truth
Perhaps, I am
The mercurial shift
Along with the sands and infinity too

Or that
I've been blind
To said beauty's bound
An ample and abundant spread
Amongst the slews of trivial miscues

Likely
I avoid
Freedom's siren ring
For familiar's amenity chains
Electing convenience over break-through
Susan Jacob Oct 2016
Your sound relapsed
as my mind elapsed.
When my lungs again gasped,
I couldn't be more harassed.

You held my hand one day,
as if I never dreamed a day.
I don't want a 'Hey',
I just want you to say.

You know what I want you to speak.
Please,don't make it too sleek,
I know you won't let it leak,
Hey,It's better if you'll speak.

I do know that love rules
and,hate slews
but,I do love to muse
that it's left too loose.

Loving is not an avocation,
it's beyond suffocation,
You don't know the fabrication
I don't intend to make a worse vacation.
when bored.......
Evan Stephens Mar 2021
I talk to myself
as the night arrives
in little caskets
slipping over
yellow rooftops.
Winter slithers
& rattles back
under the doors,
while spring slews in
on orange cloud.
I say your name
& a luster throbs
across the walls.
Late hours are
breach born,
full of bent bays
of lamp light,
I plead into the ceiling
until I fill
with sharp shapes
draped raw,
& my little speeches
perish in gloves of air.
Out of the window,
black ribbons streak
the riverbank face
to the moon etchings.
High tides blot me:
I still feel as I did
when I met you.
You're a heart shaker,
you wrest the lid
from the world,
your joy fills
my naked mouth.
But something
has gone wrong,
hasn't it?
Disordered,
melancholy -
you, too, see
the night-caskets,
don't you?  
Dublin facades
vanish beneath
rain scissor arms.
But it needn't be so -
come and lean on me.
I will remind you
that spring is come
with green armies
of blithe devotion,
trees flick
with leaf,
& you are loved.
I know you don't even
like me to call you babe,
not anymore, but
I'll live with that -
I'll tell the floorboards,
the starlings and magpies,
the unsealed horizontals
that report at dawn:
it will be alright,
it will be alright.
1                                  2                             ­ 3
I am the pawn              At first gait               Who I fight
Over I go                      I may go two            I must strafe
One by one                  But that move          Left or right
Is what I know              Is up to you             To be safe
I trudge the lawn          To seal the fate       (A lowly plight
But do it slow               Of those few            For a humble waif)
-----------------------------------------------------------­-----------------------
I am the rook                 Side to side
As much is said             Front to back
By the notches carved   I cross the board
In my stately head         For my attack
But flip and look,            In length my slide
A queen is bred             Does not lack
------------------------------------------------------------­----------------------
I am the knight              Two by three           The many views
A noble steed                Or three by two       Of my path are
Over the heads             One up, or down     Yours to choose.
Of comrades freed        Sideways through    I’ll leave a scar
A springing flight.          An L-shaped spree  Though my slews
The way I lead:              In ways not few.       Are not that far
-------------------------------------------------------------­---------------------
I am the bishop             A deep-set groove
Hand in hand                Alights my head
With royalty                   My path’s a straight
Is where I stand            Diagonal thread
In shape: closed tulip    A board-long move
In movement: grand      My opponents dread
-----------------------------------------------------------­-----------------------
I am the queen              I own the gamut    But don’t be rash
Tall with crown              Of every way         Remember, any
My ruinous pattern        And every length   Piece can clash
Makes all frown            You could play       Up against me
Wipe them clean!          I move with ut-      By inch or dash
Bring ‘em down!            ter death to pay    From routes aplenty
----------------------------------------------------------------­------------------
I am the king                 A cross on top
And also tall                  I stand by color
I cannot move               I am worth
That far at all                Your every dollar
My lacking fling             In ones, I hop
Is my downfall               In ways, I flower
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— The End —