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Three Titles from Genevieve

February 23, 2021
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It being Tuesday, I did my Title Tuesday feature for the Facebook group Poets All Call. This time round my fellow moderator Genevieve Lumbert offered three of her own titles as well:

The Great Falling Away
inertia
hope

My thanks to my lifelong friend. These titles helped me write some poetry that went beyond puzzle-solving and into exploration of matters of the heart.

Here is how I responded.

The Great Falling Away

A clumsy man heard surf
Felt love
Listened to a story about cowhide
Flung over a cliff
And kissed a woman soundly
And kissed a woman softly
And kissed an opportunity
Goodbye.

We don’t always fall down
Like Lucifer.
Sometimes we fall away
Like a vagabond
Or a brisk wind
That shifts direction.

Sometimes a man dies
With a private chamber of sound kisses
And tender sentiments
Still in him.

inertia

the clutter of a litterbug
a scattered realm of shame and love
a stutter step a tale of woe
of habits formed that won’t let go

the butter of another’s lust
unshuttered cluster’d stars unfussed
pull/cull the interstellar dust
and slowly come unwound

the mainspring of eternity
is neither wild nor full unfree
mere cutlery manipulating
flesh of roasts anticipating
guests to sink their teeth
and flee
or saunter through
infinity

hope

we are vertical
and we breathe.

so let us believe
life contains a goodness
our thirst to slake,
the warm embraces
we want to make,
the hikes and climbs and jousts
for whish we roustabouts roust,
the heldhands nightwhispered
plans d’evasions
we wish to conspiratorily make
and then unleash…

hope like a sprig of a sprouting bean
makes a fat man long to lean,
makes two journeys intersect
and lovelorn halves
at last
connect.


to kiss and not to tell (Blog Post #1801)

February 16, 2021
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[Friends, this is written in haste and may or may not be edited at leisure. Blog Post #2000, scores of posts hence, now has an ETA of December 2, 2022. These last 199 posts should see the conclusion on the n.e.s. series, the Rubáiyát in its entirety, and a dozen reworkings of the best of my drawings in acrylic paint form. Of course “L’homme propose mais Dieu dispose,” but also “Shoot for the moon, and if you miss, you still end up in the stars.” Meanwhile, this State of the Heart message, which I hope to obsolesce…]

to kiss and not to tell. ° “And the girls you offer champagne say Yes, ° And the girls you love say No, ° And your salary isn’t what it was, ° And you feel like the poet Poe.” ° Ogden Nash, “Elegy in a City Shambles” ° most people i know have been kissed ° at least a thousand times ° (less so lately due to pandemickal conditions) ° ° as for me i’m not telling ° but inferences may be drawn from this discussion ° ° the zap factor of some kisses is huge ° and blessed be those pairs who zap over decades ° for they are the fewly unusual zesters ° ° and woe and sympathy to those unwilling loners ° who receive and bestow kisses perfunctorily ° and scavenge memory lane for reminders ° that zappage has happened and might happen again ° ° modern suitors are often like…uh… ° auditioning actors ° who have much to offer but not ° in the eyes of the casting director ° who knows what she wants ° and sees what she doesn’t ° and is quick to thank ° and offer the faintest shred pf hope ° but even quicker to° upper-handedly call “Next!” ° ° the world is not alloronothing ° and scraps may be had while a feast is prepared ° but those kisses ° those electric kisses ° are the sirens of modern love ° and Romance ° is also defined ° as “falsehood” ° ° it is good to love ° but to love and not be loved back ° is an agonizing challenge ° ° hey though ° relax ° have a walk and a read and a workout ° use each day as a step toward true love ° and affirm and expect ° ° and you will be zapped ° and be eager to tell ° but it is more delicious o lover ° to kiss and not to tell

The Rubáiyát of Ghary Khayyáhowyádūn (Beginnings)

February 1, 2021
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On Facebook I have just finished the third of five takes of a series called “ah, humanness.” This two-word humdinger of a phrase showed up in a comment by my poet friend Susan Vespoli a few days ago. It has been stuck in my head ever since. Some of that is due to Eugene G. O’Neill, an American playwright of the 20th Century.

In Drama class in high school we were required to portray roles from classic plays of our choosing. At home were books of decades past bequeathed to my mother by our unrelated-by-blood Aunt Peg, and there were several plays by Eugene O’Neill among them. So in class I became both Driscoll and Yank for Yank’s death scene in Bound East for Cardiff, and I got a rave review from Miss Ornstein (later Mrs. Frye) for my Eben Cabot in Desire Under the Elms. But one of O’Neill’s Dramatis Personae that would have fit me like my skin was Richard, pretentious and melodramatic schoolboy son of newspaper publisher Nat Miller, in perhaps the only well-known comedy penned by O’Neill, a charming slice of Americana called…Ah, Wilderness!

The title is derived, of course, from the famous Quatrain XII by Hakim Omar Khayyám, as translated by Edward FitzGerald, poet and contemporary of William Makepeace Thackeray and Alfred, Lord Tennyson. It goes something like this:

A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
A Loaf of Bread, a Jug of Wine, and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness–
Ah, Wilderness were Paradise enow!

I say “something like this” because there were at least five editions of FitzGerald’s translation, and he fiddled with the translations between editions, and the one above seems to be the popular version. But you will find that the Jug is a Flask sometimes, and sometimes it precedes the Loaf of Bread. There’s also the fact that FitzGerald, partly to cleave to the Quatrain form with its rhyme scheme aaba, did a free translation, wandering from a direct translation for the sake of liveliness and pith. Here for comparison is a more literal translation done by Edward Heron-Allen, an English scholar who was born only two years before Edward FitzGerald died:

I desire a little ruby wine and a book of verses,
Just enough to keep me alive, and half a loaf is needful;
And then, that I and thou should sit in a desolate place
Is better than the kingdom of a sultan.

I’m going with FitzGerald, who for my money gives Khayyám more Zing, and yet retains his core content. Of course, it’s a stretch to turn a “desolate place” into a “wilderness.”

Ah, Wilderness. Ah, Desolate Place.

Ah, Humanness. Just a little free-translative twist…

The Poetry that springs from whence we’ve wended,
The Warp, the Woof, the Fabric rent and mended,
The words with friends, the text exchange, a phrase–
Ah, Humanness, this Poet I’ve befriended!

So I have resolved to write a Rubáiyát of my own. FitzGerald’s later editions contained more than 100, but fewer than 200, quatrains, a selection from the more than 1200 attributed to Khayyám. I will do at least 200. It may take a few days, but my confidence that I can do it at all is based on the send-up I did long ago on Algernon Swinburne’s “Garden of Proserpine” and its 112 lines; my “The Compost of Alginate Windburn” had 136 lines, among them these:

We are not sure of value
And zest is not demure
When winning a new pal, you
Must sell and grin and lure;
And lust, grown vaguely cryptic
Ensorcels us in diptych
Then stings our face with styptic
Once shaven shearly sure.

Swinburne’s form, with its penultimate-lines triplet, is more complex by far than Khayyám’s quatrains. I knocked off the “Ah, Humanness” quatrain in less than 10 minutes. I figure a 30-hour workweek will be sufficient for my Rubáiyát, but we’ll see.

As the title of this post indicates, I’ll be assuming the ridiculous nom de plume of Ghary Khayyáhowyadūn [Gary. Hi ya, how ya doin.] for this endeavor. If I stumble into something better than slapstick-whither-thou-goest for this thing–and I earnestly HOPE to, believe me–so much the better. Stay tuned, Friends!



quotidian lifecycle

January 21, 2021
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quotidian lifecycle

awakening is a form of birth
taskdoing growth
drowse senescence
death bed

so you were reborn mere hours ago
and into this new life
you may see to it that love is there
and hatred recognized and removed
you may graduate with honors
at scrubbing university
you may keep your troops provisioned
with your grocery requisition
or moldcast and bisquefire
another brick for your cathedral
ste bernardette the hardworker

or you may mope and sit
you may burn out that you not fade
you may build a spectral enemy
and stab and stab at mist

it is your day
it is your microlifetime

where to?

20210121_092459

the romance puppy

January 14, 2021
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here he is again / mister clumsybutt meanswell the romance puppy / and as usual he has made his entrance / right between really interested and fullblown smitten

on the plus side he is playful and joyous / and it’s fun to watch him caper about / and the longing look in his big eyes / which are exactly the color of mine / gives him sleeves to put his heart on

on the minus side he IS clumsy / and often unheeding of signals / and way too overeager / and he tends to chew on the shoes of a comfort zone / and crap on the carpet of possibility

mister meanswell has that look in his eyes again / and his friskiness is unbecoming to a man of mature years / and his pathetic speedfreak little tail is going blur-crazy

calm down pooch / you are going to get me in trouble

a woe a whoa

December 31, 2020
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20201231 a woe a shoa

a woe a whoa

fingers that are wrong
linger unerased

flinders make when burned
cinders gone untraced

robin’s doffed his hood
sob in grief o marian

for hys life so brief
gone to chieftain’s carrion

Friends, if you read this, you survived one of the strangest and most traumatic years of your life. May you have a glorious 2021, an end to fear, an easing of woe.

BPBTC and aftermath, 29 Nov 2020

November 29, 2020
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Today I had another Bad Pun Brain Teaser Contest on Facebook, thus:

Wow, it’s been forever since our last Bad Pun Brain Teaser Contest. This one here may be easier for anyone who’s been through a pregnancy.

A man and his pregnant companion are in the kitchen. “Wow, I’m hungry,” the man says. “I’m gonna make lunch. Want some?”His companion thinks about it, sniffs the air, makes a face, and says, “No thanks. I _______.”

Fill in the blank with a single seven-letter word that makes a truly wretched Bad Pun of this scenario, and if you’re the first one with the right answer, you win! Win what? We’ll see.Contest ends at one PM Mountain Standard Time, when I’ll disclose the answer, if there is no winner, or congratulate the winner and announce the prize, if someone has answered correctly.

Have fun, Friends!

Almost instantly I heard from Jessica Renee Ballantyne, a frequent flyer with my contests and the winner of the very first contest I had:

“No thanks I gestate.”
“No thanks I just ate”

This is, of course, the correct answer. Jessica went on to explain that she had independently invented, and employed, the Bad Pun when she herself was pregnant.

So I on-the-spotted her prize with this comment:

CONGRATULATIONS, Jess!!! Not only have you Won, you have Won Again! You are one Smart Cookie, with or without a Bun in the Oven!

We don’t have to wait till one PM. It’s my contest and I change rules at whim. So here’s your prize, if you choose to accept it, Jessica: If you provide me with a title, I will write three poems, using three different poetic forms, using the title you provide for each. If you specify a poetic form I will use it for one of the poems. (If you pick Ballade or Sestina it may take a couple of days!!)

If you don’t want to do this, that’s okay too. If that’s the case, your prize will be Bragging Rights.Again, congratulations!

Jess gave me the title “Starry Night” after the Van Gogh painting. So I first wrote a Sonnet.

****
Starry Night

Some see the stars as fixed but VVG
Lent vortices of motion with his paint:
Impasto in impassioned filigree
Illumes a humble town with unrestraint.

He saw stars in his brainstorms, some have said.
Photemic teeming of hallucination
Acquired in his lonely madman’s bed
With kinesthetic sight based on sensation.

But Truth is often found in an asylum,
Beatitude oft had with heart’s expression,
And metaphor turns blandness into ylem
The primal stuff we mix a batch of Fresh in.

The Starry Night sees Vincent’s flag unfurl:
Above a town, a tidal, Cosmic Whirl.
****

Next came a Senryu:

****
starry night

here i am says light
endlessly variable
in shifting array
****

Third and last was a Villanelle:

****
starry Night

“the stars are not above,” perceives the child.
“they full surround the sun, the earth, and me.
exploding, they birth elements gone wild.”

when chandrasekhar’s limit is defiled
massivity begets its potpourri.
“the stars are not above,” perceives the child.

“it’s sweet to think a kind Creator smiled
As pressure built and Chaos was set free–
Exploding, it loosed Elements, made wild.

“this starry Night, so temperately mild
includes some supernovae on a spree–
the stars more than ‘above,'” perceives the child.

“as gold is ringed and silicon is tiled,
as oxygen is tanked, we thank who be
exploring with those elements gone wild.”

the child descends the hill, her entry filed.
she spoke of starry Night, and Majesty.
the stars below, above, around the child
explode anew with meekness fused to Wild.
****

I was jazzed after finishing the poems, and thought I had enough juice left to do an illustration to the sonnet. It was true.

For Vincent’s face I used as source not one of his self-portraits, but rather one of the existing photographs of him. For the suggestion of his famous painting I found a photo of it in its frame at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, where it is part of their permanent collection.

Big thanks to Jessica, who kept me out of trouble and creatively productive all afternoon doing this project. I feel that this was the absolute best use of my time today, and I’m grateful to Jess for the inspiring title that made it so!

RBG, We Miss You

October 21, 2020
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Much of what is wrong with American politics is unfolding for view during the confirmation of a new Supreme Court Justice. I will not name the nominee here, because, according to the Republican Party of 2016, who are pushing this confirmation through as fast as they can, this confirmation shouldn’t even be taking place. This is an election year, GOP2016 said, and we must let the people decide. One of their number, Lindsey Graham,went so far as to say that if the Republicans were in power in 2020, and a vacancy for the court occurred before the election, there ought to be no NOMINATION, let alone Confirmation, until Inauguration. (Odd rhythm to that phrase!) “Use this against me!” he said. And now he’s betrayed his old self, and the country as well.

But it’s not all him, nor them. Why wasn’t a BIPARTISAN APPEAL made to honor the memory of Ruth Bader Ginsburg by a sincere attempt to select a candidate that both parties could live with–and THEN wait for the election to be over and the Inauguration to take place? RBG, who fought so valiantly for all of us, had stated as her dying wish that she did not want her replacement to be nominated until after the inauguration. Surely in all the land, there is at least ONE lady or gentleman who would have filled the bipartisan-acceptance bill, and then there would be no need for a pre-election rush. Alas, as far as I can tell, no such attempt was made.

2020 1021 rbg

Robbing graves, Republicans?
Reneging and then Blaming?
Retribution rears its head–
Repent, or there’ll be Shaming.

the power the diskie gie us

July 29, 2020
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Disks are not everywhere, but they are manywheres. Most coins are disk-shaped. Before solid-state storage came along, disks held all our computing data. Frisbees, 12-Step medallions, pupils, irises, the Sun and Moon from this distance…it’s Disk-O-Mania.

Long ago Robert Burns took his Scots dialect to this subjunctive couplet:

O wad the power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as others see us…

2020 0728 diskie

The dialog I have my sketched characters say in this images comprises two couplets, and they comprise a small poem. It goes like this, and though it’s untitled, it’s all about disks:

sing o muse of a held up earth
of memory and what it’s worth
of need and want that drive our dreams
of nothing being what it seems.

Anyone care to estimate the total number of disks in this image? Don’t forget the red corpuscles coursing through the circulatory systems of the characters, nor the follicles from which the wild-haired dude’s hair springs. 🙂

20200729_095145

Enigmatism

July 26, 2020
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(First published, sans illustration, on July 7 in Facebook group Poets All Call)

2020 0726 enigmatism2

Enigmatism
 
They ate me alive yet I live. It’s perplexing
To walk and draw breath though in stomachs digesting
I guess it’s a metaphor pho, sis, and flexing
Reality’s shape just for grins and for cresting.
 
Before ’53 I was nutmeg and veiling
Then half of me swam to the other half waiting
And storming the cellular castle assailing
Exploding within for the DNA mating.
 
I don’t guess I’ll be here in tangible form
A half century hence, and that gives me the shivers,
But the Universe leaves me to stray from the norm
And I eagerly wait to see what She delivers.