Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Stop Digging!

Being Polite

Trying to smile, with a coal burning in my mouth:
Not a pretty sight.
This is what I look like,
When I am being polite.

Gathering glances, and shooting them back:
Forever defending my right to attack.
A voice too loud,
A walk too slow,
I don’t want to be here,
But where else can I go?

Dragging my friends to the depths of the earth,
Forgetting that precious first rule,
For every man down a hole:
Stop digging.

Danza!!

For Angela
By Tony Danza

Hey-oh, oh-ey,
It is of love that I sing today.
You punched my heart in the face.
It was a one round KO.
My greatest disgrace.

I floated like a butterfly into your net.
You stung my heart like a bee.
Watch the Tony Danza show, afternoons on ABC
If you would like to know what has become of me.

Who’s the boss now?
You, my love.
You.

Saturday, July 28, 2007

Booze and Books!

Out of bars they barrell with a cough and a laugh.
Lizards in ballcaps.
Grins, backslaps, belt buckles, and a draft:
What more do they need than that?

Shuffle, shuffle, cough: the library.
The pages, the eyeglasses, the stares,
To the letter, to the point, to the contrary:
The words wordlessly hang in the air.

All in all, it is pretty scary
To be a drunk at the library.

Thursday, July 26, 2007

Yeesh!

Time alone, at the computer, in the dark basement.
Am I weaving myself into my ego?
Or am I breaking free?
The danger of the writing life, is the danger of being me, all day, to myself.
Charity looks small from up here.
Listening?
Why listen, when you can talk!?
To be in the presence of someone else, not to elbow their feelings aside, how does one live this way?
To know someone, not as an idea, or as a character in my life story, is to be in pain.
To do a dish,
To ask for forgiveness,
To invite someone to church:
I do not want to do these things,
Unless I have to.
And I do not fancy that I write well enough to excuse myself from these things.
Who am I doing good for down here?
Perhaps this is not the point.
I should start from trying to avoid evil, before I try to do good.
Who am I hurting down here, besides myself?
I want to say that all of man suffers, when one man fails to love.
But this is a dodge.
An attempt to turn poetic, or theological, when the question is quite simple.
There is someone, with a name, and a story of their own, and I am hurting them.

Too Much Time on The Freeway!

Why don’t we just cut to the chase,
And put the bumper stickers right on our face?

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

I Love You All!

To All of My Absent Friends

Every third thought is of you:
Two days in the tomb,
And then a quiet, sweet, life blows warm over the waters.

You are my saddest, deepest, lightest love:
Yours has been the easiest yoke,
You who I barely knew.
What a joy for me, to be known by you at all.

We have a relationship (that cold modern term).
But, praise God, it died to live in us.
I know that you love me.
The proof is that I cannot see you.

Lay Down Arms!

Lest we forget: there’s no need to recall.
God knows all that has been, and what will be.
The grave, our birth cave, sealed all with the Fall,
The day we hung ourselves on the first tree.
The night is like wine, from the dipper-cup poured;
Flowing warm from the dark eastern sky.
Forgetting is a begetting, therefore:
A new birth from the land of no lies.
Take to bed, take to trees, take to what comes,
Leave your cares to the watchers at their posts,
Just take this one night to lay down arms,
And make your peace with the hates you love most.
All of this, look!, it has been newly made
In the likeness of One, Whose light knows no shade.

Monday, July 23, 2007

Camp Weekend!!!

The Cross, Or the swan:
How you see the constellation
Is no matter.

What matters, is the dawn:
Peace in sorrow,
Joy after death.

Friday, July 20, 2007

We're Birds!

We’re Birds

We’re birds! We’re birds!
Have we a career, or do we careen, or neither?
To wing! Take to wing!
Head for the eye of foul weather!
A mile away, can you see the ground clear?
I see the clouds circling in a huff.
The calm in the storm is our target!
The going, though fun, will be rough.

One day, just one day!
It’s all we’ve been given. Or a moment if you like.
The oncoming night is an egg for the eagle.
The night, the night, the night!
The eternal day is a fire for the Phoenix,
A hell for the sinners down there.
One of us wrote a Gospel to save them,
The rest of us don’t give a care.

Hush, hush. The hunters are coming.
That crow, he gave us away.
Would you stop that chattering?
Who did we lose along the way?
Make a break! Make your break!
My wing has been torn!
I am lost. Carry our cry to the mountain!

Thursday, July 19, 2007

A Sunny Wonderful Day!

How like a child, in my prayers, am I.
When the thick, bored wall set around my doubts
Is breached by my heart’s simple cry:
“I want it, and I aint above a pout”.
How like an adult, when the day sets in,
To worry, and to pick at, my old scabs.
Better a fresh round of play to begin,
Than to take pride in my being a crab.
How like an artist, to never make art!
Just to twiddle with sweet words till I laugh,
To hope, in fun, there’s enough of a heart,
To beat doldrums and the devil at last.
How like this moment to hang in the air!
How great it is simply to be right here!

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

A Shot Across the Bow!

The Bumble Bee

Is it really all sex, Whitman, the bee’s roving search,
An insectual lust to deflower?
Or has a groining sting left you to swing in the lurch?
Your golden years spent in trysts in the bower?

Can we see the gold bands, in the midst of the black?
And remember the hive’s geometry?
When the bee sticks his stinger he dies for the lack.
And the sexagons sharply shape the honey.

We agree that droning is not Nature’s best way.
But your America likes to drone nowadays.
I wonder if you could see Her mowed parkways,
What would your lusty old beard have to say?

Daring! Foolish! Not a very good poem! Perhaps you fancy yourself brave, though you write anonymously. Are you trying to hide from the wrath of a dead poet scorned? This is wise. I took it upon myself in my earliest scribblings (193-), to take a few potent pot-shots at poets-in-arms. How I suffered for my daring diatribes! I too aimed a few too many lines at old Walt.
His curse is a bodily one. The morning after I sent my draft to the publisher, I awoke sprawled in my bed, on fire with a raging lust of a most peculiar kind. I craved the touch not of a woman, but of anything. My body was indeed Electric, though I had not the presence of mind to sing its praises. I spent an hour merely extricating myself from the caress of my velvet bedsheets. It was all I could do to maintain my chastity, which up until that point had been relatively safe! You can imagine how my day was spent, resisting the dread, clinging Eidolons of every object that came within my purview. Luckily I did not have the inclination to commune with my razor, for the only way to rid oneself of the curse, so my mentor told me, is to grow a strapping beard! Take heed! Don’t shave!

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

DANCE! DANCE!

About That Night At The Ballroom
By Clarence Bottums

The trappings of Trappists trip me up every time.
The ache of the atheist is no longer mine.
The eagle, the lion, the rose and the bee;
The platypus, the rhino, the emu and me;
Where you might fit, I haven’t a clue.
I get the feeling that neither do you.

Neither will I play a guessing game.
Or dote on the letters in your name.
The drinking, the smoking, the going nuts.
The samba, the tango, the waltz, the klutz.
I imagine we don’t have too much of a chance,
If this is how it goes when you learn I can’t dance.

Clarence, Clarence, O Clarence; perhaps it was inevitable that you would take a turn for the absurd. The gears of your watch-mending mind are slipping, and I can’t help but think that I am partly to blame. I shouldn’t have been so eager to skewer you with my wittified words. You might have been saved from dejection. If a man, or it looks like in this case a woman, has knocked you off of your game, the last thing a self respecting poet should do is grovel in it. You may not be able to dance like a fancy gentleman, but this is cause for rejoicing! They know the music, but can they be the music? You can, if you would just leave off with the self pity! As for your presumably doomed-from-the-start love affair with this dancing fairy: all of our love is doomed from the start. The sensible people don’t know this like you do, and they are better not to know it. You are not a sensible person, and so don’t bother with sensible scruples. It is your part in this play to play the fool. OWN IT MAN! For Pete’s sake, DANCE!

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Repost!

An Ocean Ode

All vast things, in concert, pulse in your pull
Excepting the moon, that sly orbing eye
That winks, and curls, as the months grow full,
Cycling swollen to bob in a mocking sky.

All views worship you, the type of their kind,
Begging freshets of your briny breath’s flow,
Which sing to the senses, “The true beyond winds
Beyond the eyes, but not too far to go”.

Man died in you, when sin sunk his mind
In the deep of the eon’s black womb.
The sun dives in you, the white pearl to find,
In the dredge of your silent floor’s tomb.


An Ode to the Daisy

Smiling, petite, and plain, such are your ways.
The storm frowns down, you smile all the same;
Though the wind whips your face, gladly you sway.
The days are for you. They gave you your name.

Broken, trampled, brown, betrayed in it’s trust.
No flower is such, to a gentle mind.
Your earthly aspect is a film of dust
Hiding much from the world’s cackling kind.

In the final battle, bloodily waged,
A warrior, prone on the field, drips his life.
The wound at his side, will close the age.
Your face will bloom: thus ends all of Man’s strife.


Clarity and beauty, beauty and clarity. If I can’t win you both, I will never be free! If neither will have me, I'll take lunacy!

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Woe is You!

Only in Dreams
By Malcolm

There is a garden, so the old ones say,
That but two of our race have ever seen.
We lost more than paradise that day,
When Eden lost its naked king and queen.
For we lost the way to where love first grew;
The pathway to that ever fertile plot
Where man’s flesh, once removed, God formed anew
Into that other which Adam long sought.
On nights when dreams, or perhaps memories,
Descend to the watchful heart from on high
An ancient longing is briefly appeased
When man’s lost lover visits the minds eye.
Love’s young hope dies as the morning light grows
And man’s dream fades back into the shadows.

You are writing like a Pagan, you pustulating carbuncle! You think you are writing about love, but you are merely infatuating about infatuation. Christ is risen, Eve is redeemed. We don’t need to wander, sighing, among weeping willows. Our love lives in us! It is greater than us. No earthly limitation, not time, not distance, not idiocy, can separate us from love, and so, you are not safe from love’s demands. Your nightly visitor is a demon, sent to distract you from the real work of love. Here’s an idea: go talk to a real woman, instead of falling in love with a figment! You will find that women are annoying, talkative, confused, prideful, argumentative, and that at times they smell bad. Hard to like, harder to love: but that is the fun of it! That is Life!

Monday, July 9, 2007

Look Away!

Last Sunday’s Storm
By Malcolm

Who whispers to you, the whispers you wave,
As your leaves, swishing, whip the horizon?
Whose face do you see, petals upturning,
As the storm mutes the song of orison?

Show Him to me! But hide me from truth!
Watch the artist, but follow the teacher.
Show the Artist to me, and I’ll follow the Muse
Whose silence bears the life of all creatures.

Who’s washing us, in the wish of water,
To be clean til we are purity’s crown?
Who’s asking us to lay in the river,
To drown, in the virgin-white shroud, unwound?

Pierce me, Truth! I don’t want You for my wife.
Split me, soften me, drain my poison.
I’ve eaten You, I’ve used You, I’ve betrayed You.
You’ve seen to my end, and made me a son.

Whose daughter is this, doubt’s kin, an orphan,
Who plucks at the daisies and weeps?
Whose clothes does she wear, so patched and threadbare,
As she sops up love’s crumbs in the streets?

Charity, small things, I have failed you!
The same One who inspires, thirsts too.
I, in thinking long, scorned thinking small.
I beg Mercy not to give me my due!


Not bad Malcolm! It has done you good to get away from the sonnet form for a little while. One question I have, though, is where this “virgin-white shroud” came from. It is not clear how one could drown in such a thing. Or, perhaps, you are likening the river to an unwound shroud? This image seems to be a departure from your usual clarity. This may not be a bad thing, given that all truly great poetry has an aspect of mystery. Beware, though, of obscurity for obscurity’s sake. Allow me to tell you a story.
Once, around the time of the War, the Muse descended on me like a giant glowing orb. Within that rarified air, I, the boy-poet in the bubble, could see all things with a clarity that, were you to taste even a crumb of it, would explode your head with it’s fulgurating beauty. I turned to my left, glanced at my canteen, and spontaneously erupted into such an ode to that water bearing artifact, that I heard the trees around me weep and beg for mercy. The canteen, vibrating in the etheric palpitations of my cascading waves of verse, was instantaneously absorbed into its archetype. I am told by my betters that it awaits me in heaven. But back to my story. In my rapturous state, I could have versified for hours, if not for a large black crow that sat, just out of my field of vision, cawing at me in the tree tops. I struggled in vain to pierce the mystery of that croaking maven. Just when it’s essence was within my mind’s grasp, it would fly to a further tree. I followed that flapping enigma for a fortnight and three quarters, to no avail. No verse quite captured what I saw, and what I saw never seemed to hold still. I was found by a troop-mate, wandering in a gibberfied state, babbling lines that, in their obscure obscenity, would make even a modern poet blush. In fact, the man who found me, and heard the worst of it, went on to become one of the most celebrated poets in the modern era. A delightful hack, to be sure!
I have told you this story as a warning. To become a poet, one must strive first for beauty, second for clarity. What, you may ask, of prophecy? Prophecy, my dear Malcolm, is the presence of obscurity in clarity, and this must never be sought! If it comes, it comes, but do not look at it! Let it look through you!
In addition, your image of the orphan in the streets is a bit maudlin. But then again, so are we!

Sunday, July 8, 2007

Clarence, You Old Cad!

Boredom
By Clarence Bottums

How to fill a day?
How to fill a day?
The day is full, you fool, already.

How to stop a watch?
How to stop a watch?
The hands move, you slug, as you sleep.

The day is a watchdog, the night is a sparrow.
The grave is a memory, the hill too steep.
Time washes all wounds, time waits for Noman.
Time plays the mute with the man who’s too deep.

Dear Clarence,
Too deep, you say? Not deep enough by half, I retort! And justly so, seeing as how you, lost in your great depth, have not seen fit to write me for a year and a half. We, and I use we in both the Royal and Commoner sense, have missed your half-scrambled scribblings. How is the watch-bob repair business going? Or have you moved on to greener pastures? One would think, if indeed watches are still your trade, that you would know it was high time for you to come see me. You see, I, in my dithering old age, still remember fondly the numerous times, too numerous to count, that I handed you a veritable verbal smackdown. And you, you old codswallop, you came back into the arena each time: bloodier, but none the wiser. My versification creates new nations, your tired old verse was dragged away in that hearse!
Now, not to beat the proverbial horse, but I sincerely hope you are pulling my leg with this drivel. You may be earning a decent living, but you have still not learned how to earn a metaphor. Where did this sparrow come from? Why not a crow or a partridge? “The night is a partridge”. Has a ring to it don’t you think? And who is this “Noman”? How would one know, given that he likes to pop in unannounced in the middle of a perfectly good cliché and then drop out, never to be heard from again? Reminds me of someone I once thought I knew.

P.S. Double space your submissions Sonneteers, my eyes are not what you think they used to be!

Of the Finest Vintage!!!

In each moment a fresh temptation,
A new falling, and the old fall are ingrained;
All good in us in borne by intention;
As the heart of a sad tune beats in the refrain,
So virtue lives in our will to abstain.

Joy, once found, once lost, now redeemed
Is alive in the innermost hearts’ grave;
Where, for a price paid in blood, we may read
The Name, on hard stone ever engraved
By the sacrifice of the One we betrayed.


Here we are, here we are. This is a poem for the ages. One of my own creations, pulled from the cellar of my aged and musty soul, uncorked, decanted and set before you for your gustatory pleasure. Drink it in, drink it in.
I still remember the day I wrote it. It was so sunny, so humid. I sat, wallowing in my brokenness. I was pining after a certain young lady, too fair for me by far. The pursuit of her was long. She was very sensible to resist me. My will, broken and haggard hung at my side like a dull, knicked sword. What a blessed fool, to be so young, so in love. And now, old, haunted by the memories of sins long past, dogged by the wheezing sins of decrepitude, I come back again to my utter powerlessness. What a fool I have been. I would not change it for the world.
We were married, yes, we were married. Oh, how she bore my wild drunken poetic frenzies, as I peered into my raging heart to extract the sweet distillation of authentic verse. Our children took the brunt of my foolishness, and would have taken more, if not for her. She holds me together still, all these long years in the grave, and she holds me still. All the betrayal, and she holds me still.

Friday, July 6, 2007

Malcolm Returns!!!

Through want of sense, I want to marry you,
Before we see too much of each other;
That love, born in secret, be ever new
As we always re-meet one another.
For who would guess that the fruit of love’s work
Is a union, not of two into one
But of two into three, Love’s childish quirk:
In between the two lovers, comes a son?
So given that nature aims to surprise
Who are we to pretend that we can know
Enough about loving to criticize
The little flaws a new lover may show?
Or perhaps you have deeper misgivings,
Than how I propose to make a living?

Bravo Malcolm!! A mere one day later, and you come back with a brilliant retort to my ill considered critical missive. How foolish of me to doubt the poetic credentials of so eminent a worthy as your very self. I am wrong, you are right.
Now, to be serious for a moment, and this is for your own good: this poem is not funny. What is much worse, it is a blight on the good name of our religion. Imagine a Christian in good standing wanting to marry a girl before he (A) Knew much about her and (B) Had any money or prospects.
I can only imagine that you have that peculiar sickness called being "in love", the chief symptom of which is a disregard for practical matters in favor of daydreaming about roses or angels or whatever you have found to compare your fair lady to. You might even begin to think that you have been "called" by God to love her, despite the cruel world that wants to keep you apart. I can only advise you to run, as fast as your flat poet's feet can carry you. The woman is right about you, you are flawed, and deeply. You see, good sir, despite your meagre talent, you have been called to be not a husband, but a poet.
"But what of all the married poets?" I can hear you pathetically whimpering. You, sir, are not man enough to lick their shoes. Pick one or the other: books or babies. Nothing is more at odds than verse and diapers.

Love? I Say Nay!

An Offer
By Allen Winters

I know too well my flaws.
You’ve a balance to your introspection.
Your goodness overawes
My dark brooding infection.

Still, I want you to look,
And look well, for our sake, through my lenses.
To reread your heart’s book
Without prudent defenses.

If you like what you see,
Then you will owe the sight to me
And no pride will darken your gaze.

If you find something wrong
Then to my eyes the fault belongs:
No need, then, to change your heart’s ways.

I just want you to know
That the world, hating Christ, does not love you.
But as far as love goes,
Through grace, I know that I do.

"Finally", I said to myself upon finding this oldie but goodie in a dusty tome at the local librarium, "poetry with a logical path of thought". "Or perhaps", I mused deliciously, "it is merely the poetry of the pathological? Hmm?". Well let us dissect this curious creature so that we may offer the author, though he is quite dead, a little post mortem analysis.

Premise A: I am but a depressive lump, reliant on you for the little bit of hope that pushes into my cloud addled stupor.

Premise B: Nevertheless, I think it incumbent on you to enter into my funk with me "without prudent defenses" so that I may show to you the view of yourself that I enjoy.

Premises C and D: You should thank me for this view of your resplendent self, thereby saving yourself from pride, which until you met me, wasn't a temptation for you. -or- You should heap scorn on me for daring to point out that you are not in fact the bee's knees, thereby courting, once again, the temptation of pride.

Premise E: Just so you know, everybody but me hates you. Incidentally, I would hate you too if God himself did not show me what everyone else fails to see.

What a wonderful way to woo! What woman would fail to swoon at the revelation of such an inspired love? Nobody likes you, everybody hates you, would you like to be with a sniveling worm? Fie on thee, miscreant, fine poet though you be! Your verse deserves to die with you. I, POEM MASTER 3000, have given it, and you, a fitting eulogy!

Coming Out Swinging!!!

Money troubles will be my lot in life,
Unless this lottery ticket comes through.
So I guess I’ll have a fool for a wife.
Is Hot Lotto at three million or two?
Debt, to my death, will dog me every day,
The phone ringing will ring in the days dread.
I’ll owe till I know the peculiar way
One acts when one wishes they were dead.
But, in the grave lying, no more lies are told.
And silence does not ask for its past dues.
No cold hard cash, when you’re hard and cold
Can get between free, easy, peace and you.
So next time you want me to pay you back,
Do both of us a favor and have a heart attack.

Why? Why would a Christian write a poem like this? Qua being a Christian, he would not. Unless he wrote it repentantly. Even then, don't Christians usually have a better sense of style than to write such sing-songy verse? That, friends, is where you are mistaken. The author of this little ditty belongs to a church where only the women dress well and everyone appreciates the rhymes found on those serious Hallmark cards you get for Father's Day. It is a good thing his church is traditional enough to have preserved the ancient liturgies and iconograpic forms that were handed down from back when people knew how to do art. Otherwise, this poet would have no hope of improvement. And what would we do then if he, discouraged beyond hope, stopped writing? We must not ask such questions, if we wish to remain at peace. Let's encourage him to continue writing, by not adding any comments we might wish to append, Then, what a glorious show we will watch as his poems inch slowly into the stratosphere under the influence of his chosen religious path. Keep them coming Malcolm. We are watching you!