Survivors

 

                                                       Of the survivors there was only one

                                                      That spoke,  but he spoke as if whatever

                                                      Life there was hung on his telling all,

                                                      And he told all.   Of the three who stayed,

                                                      Hands gripped like children in a ring,  eyes

                                                      Floating in the space his wall had filled,

                                                      Of the three who stayed on till the end,

                                                      One leapt from the only rooftop that

                                                      Remained, the second stands gibbering

                                                      At a phantom wall,  and it’s feared the last,

                                                      The writer who had taken notes,  will

                                                      Never write another word.   He told all.


                                                                     



                                                                        Lucien Stryk    (  +   2013   )














.

one thing after another

5

thinking about successions ...
here comes a message from Aubrey Beardsley
(forwarded by EP) “Beauty so very difficult”
damn straight! as is the sublime, think of Mozart
they buried him sub lime
and when they told Maurice Ravel “your requiem
for the WW1 dead is too cheerful”
his comeback: “The dead are sad enough
in their eternal fire”
after Papa Doc came Baby Doc
now Baby Shrub is about to succeed Papa Shrub
and when the people no longer speak anything but teevee
and you don’t even have a set in your hut --
signed, Proud to Be An Aberration of the Sixties

---

“Baby Shrub is about to ...”: Do only the gods know what,
now that he has “succeeded” (!).

       -Anselm Hollo (Finnish American poet)  +01/29/2013











.

CONTRACT MINERS

Underground we fought the earth together.
For the hell of it, and Peacock copper.
From the womb she was no tender lover.
The stone-boat rocker wouldn’t budge
a crumb to a beggar’s cup,
or toss a meatless bone
to a blind man’s bitch. Until we made her.
Compressor moan and drill chatter
in her lamp-lit face
forced surrender form the stone.
Midwife to the mine he taught me how
to spit a round and slant a lifter.
He grinned greenhorn at my back
when I smelled fear curl thru the drift
and cling to shaky fingers
as each to each they lit spliced fuses
one by one. And then we ran,
down the cross-cut tunnel
Soon the shudder of ground
brought us back to witness birth.
The mice sat in the corner of our eyes.
They were wise. We watched them listen
to the timber groan beneath
gravid loins of working earth.
With care and art, mindful of the mice,
we imitated moles. We spilled thru mealy
low grade zones to court her frigid heart,
where once solutions boiled
and, dying darkly, cooled.

      Ed Lahey (Montana poet )    + 2011













.

for Fabrice Champion - deceased flying acrobat

                            







                            When the flower
                              Turns into liquor
                                Into heart
                                 No misfortune there
                                  But one weeps


 


Quand la fleur
Se transforme en li-coeur
Ce n'est pas un malheur
Mais on pleure





Eric Rugani








     -with the greatest of ease

the nature of entanglements

                                








                                             The Net

                                                       by



                                             Raymond Carver

 









 

         Toward evening the wind changes. Boats
         still out on the bay
         head for shore. A man with one arm
         sits on the keel of a rotting-away
         vessel, working on a glimmering net.
        He raises his eyes. Pulls at something
         with his teeth, and bites hard.
         I go past without a word.
        Reduced to confusion
        by the variableness of the weather,
        the importunities of my heart. I keep
        going. When I turn back to look
        I'm far enough away
        to see that man caught in a net.










.

weather or not

The earth around the sun does go,
and on its axis tilted.
And so in summers we must mow,
unless the grass be wilted.

The trees in autumn orange glow,
red and yellow quilted.
In winter comes the falling snow,
with gale winds unhilted.

The grass in spring again doth grow,
hell's King Hades jilted.
The earth around the sun does go,
and on its axis tilted.




     -Stu Kurtz  ...   the poet





.

by Craig of the INtenSe INaNe

It's January
So the weather here
Is hot and dry
As a laundromat
Every day until
The end of May.

The monsoon
Starts in June
With typhoons
Rolling through
Twice a week
Like bowling balls
That strike or spare
Through August
Or until the embers
End.





.

can a man steal from himself

winter banal

cold is coming
so i hear
ay canadian clipper
is whispering near
sir sun is shy
i squint to see
the shadowed darkness
of a winter tree

no twitter of bird
no scampering squirrel
cloth bundled humans
o'er ice skate and swirl

surprised as we are
at the certainty of snow
or an evening star











.jh

RESULTS OF A LIE DETECTOR TEST

                                        











                                         From the sleeping calendar I have stolen a month,
                                         I am afraid to look at it,  I don't want to know its name.
                                         Clenched in my fist I  can feel its frost,  its icy face.
                                         I cannot face the bewildered summer with a pocketful of snow.
                                         I imagine the accusing fingers of children who will never be born-
                                         How to shut out the cries of suffering death wishers,   awaiting
                                               the silent doors of winter tombs.    Deprived of cherished exits,
                                         I shall never again steal a month...or a day or an hour
                                             or a minute or a second,  unless  I   become desperate again.




                                                                         - Bob Kaufman

D.H. Lawrence

Trees in the Garden
Ah in the thunder air how still the trees are! And the lime-tree, lovely and tall, every leaf silent hardly looses even a last breath of perfume. And the ghostly, creamy coloured little tree of leaves white, ivory white among the rambling greens how evanescent, variegated elder, she hesitates on the green grass as if, in another moment, she would disappear with all her grace of foam! And the larch that is only a column, it goes up too tall to see: and the balsam-pines that are blue with the grey-blue blueness of             things from the sea, and the young copper beech, its leaves red-rosy at the ends how still they are together,  they stand so still in the thunder air, all strangers to one another as the green grass glows upwards, strangers in the silent garden. Lichtental .