a testimony of sorts

 

 

 

 

               Dostoevsky

 

 

 

 

against the wall, the firing squad ready.
then he got a reprieve.
suppose they had shot Dostoevsky?
before he wrote all that?
I suppose it wouldn't have
mattered
not directly.
there are billions of people who have
never read him and never
will.
but as a young man I know that he
got me through the factories,
past the whores,
lifted me high through the night
and put me down
in a better
place.
even while in the bar
drinking with the other
derelicts,
I was glad they gave Dostoevsky a
reprieve,
it gave me one,
allowed me to look directly at those
rancid faces
in my world,
death pointing its finger,
I held fast,
an immaculate drunk
sharing the stinking dark with
my
brothers.



                   Charles Bukowski









......

optimism is a choice of sorts

All the Meaningful Noise



      by Scott Owens






How can you be on this earth
            and not close your eyes on occasion
                         and listen to leaves give voice to wind,
                                                  hear the laugh of crow,
                          annunciation of blue jay,
               moan of mourning dove,
         all the meaningful noise
of another spring day?

Behind the finishing plant
                off the run-down road
                  between failing furniture towns,
                         a field is bursting with purple flowers.
                                            If you close your eyes
                                              you can hear the cosmos opening.




.....

life's little ironies

No One Cares Much What Happens to You






when Serbs get mad, they talk
about a small town like Grace

 Stop laughing; I’m serious
 Grace is all I can afford on my nursing home wages

  I pity her for the thankless job of building
  A nation of Americans conceived in petri dishes

   Whores are disposable.
   They get strangled, beaten, tortured, raped...

    on old motels, diners, train stations, or whatever,
    and I think about Capri Sun bags when it happens.

     As he unzips his pants I realize that I’m
     what happens to us when the curtain goes down

      no one cares much for the body parts
      murderer creeping up behind her

        Look, poetry, painting, writing. . .
        People don’t get it like they should.

        But it exists because it’s a link to what we can
        accomplish through our Academic Plan

         no matter how public it all seems
         there’s a forced casualness to this conversation

          I’ve been out here shooting long enough
          I know even a public toilet will net you jail time

           because when it comes to that word, “nigger,”
           — I know that this is illegal —

     it’s like the emergence of yet another guilty, white Southern male
        as the fat lady continues to sing,

                  “when they were first created the thing
               was to make them as white as possible”

             as long as we are laughing
           at Rush Limbaugh’s addiction

         remember that Mt. Rushmore was itself
the creation of an ardent member of the Ku Klux Klan




                                   Katie Degentesh

FOR ANYTHING

          











                BLOOD CULTURE: In Memoriam a Robert Kroetsch
                                          ( Alberta poet   +   2011)


Night comes quietly when you discover the simplest of light lifting its wings to block the carnage.


How do you manage these broken days? Can you believe what happened with the riot kiss?


You knew something got lost in the translation so you stole that language, that lexicon, the only life


Capable of proving none exists except as converts to some thing or other, lists magnificent or mundane,


Knew what lay in waiting for those western stars fading against the unforgiving intrusion of what happens


When comets or catastrophes somersault across the screen - Or, do we mean roaring? - all nor nothing, just like that.

Amen.


26 June 2011


      -Leonard Cohen












.........

as the metis learn to speak from the heart again

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   THE REPATRIATION OF MRS. IDA M. SCOFIELD

 

1.

 

 

(The Family Portrait: Portage la Prairie Manitoba c.1904‐1905)

 

 

 

It is all here unravelling

in black and white

the meaning of salvage, the last

sepia

‐toned remnant

of your gleaming white life,

the stiff likeness of yourself

appearing more the photographer’s prop,

the settee

holding the seized woman

whose hair is neatly piled,

pinned into place you waiting

to tear off the thick brocade dress

and throat pin, this presentation

of perfect ordinance

caught in tatters fraying apart

all in good black order.

It is all here, Ida:

you, the portrait in the portrait.

Knotted and carefully stitched,

nothing visible, nothing misplaced

except for the soft

‐shaping bones

inside, my grandfather’s

small body of exile, the bastard bones

of freedom freedom

from the tit

‐tat talk of town,

the man to your right

who is raging beneath his collar,

who is not my blood —

my blood name

that is not my grandfather’s name,

the name

given to our history.

And it is all here

in the eyes of the woman beside you,

grey and death

‐marching

her lips pocked with crucifixion

that I can see in black and white

the meaning of salvage,

this careful unbolting

of your life’s fabric,

although the drop behind you

is silk, such lovely silk

your eyes have cut past

the photographer’s vision

already gone away dear Ida,

from his composition.


          Gregory Scofield








....
     

just when you think you've heard it all

  

 

 

 

       It's All About Depth

 

Men would like to think that length is
What the ladies think their strength is.
That's enough for some, however,
I'd prefer my men be clever.

Length is good, but depth is better
If you want your woman wetter.
Kiss her lips , but stroke her mind.
Make her think, but treat her kind.

If you really want her aching,
And would like to stop her faking,
And you think you'd like to keep her,
Don't think longer, just think deeper.

 

 

 

 

 

 

......Sheryl Zettner  ( a texas poet one would concur)