ether/or

   Coming Out of the Ether (1)                        

Every six months shove steel into me.
Use all the locals you want (please)
It’ll still unify me
By pinning my many in
Authentic selves to the single thing
They’re only shadows of.
Goodbye Piccadilly,
Farewell hysteria,
Everyone was singing the same song,
And it wasn’t in my dreams
Where I’ve been seeing you.
It’s like being told
I’m harboring a fatal disease,
But more so, much

And yet not at all, much
Better. It’s like real
Sex but not much like that either.
Just that it makes me sane.
Why bother adding that
Is only a feeling?
It’s like being Creeley
Or really any of those people
Turning eighteen during WW II,
Part of a giant Chance
Sink or swim so they swam.
Put their queer shoulder
To the general wheel.

The name of the foundering
Vessel’s ‘Leviathan.’
Captains of industry
In the lifeboats first,
And money is that industry,
Leaving us breathless.
You, me, & our friend M.
As for our particulars;
Send your blank checks
C/o Søren Kierkegaard,
101 The Deli; Walnut Creek.
We’ll be the view from his deck.
Scalpel.



                     David Bromige














....

reptilian verse

 Five Lizards                     

1. Benidorm 1966

It could let go its tail if caught.

Fat siesta sun full

on my back, I kept still, held

myself invisible, in love

with its dry archaeological scuttle

quicker than thought.

2. Silves 2001

Those two, geckos with the magic toes ––

guardians of our rented house

in Portugal. While we watched

the terrible loops of data on CNN ––

the towers turned

into blooming smoky candles again and again ––

they returned each night and set

under the porch light

short delicate shadows.

3. Malaga 2004

When you threw another log on the fire

something half-fell, half-

scrambled, smoking on the hearth.

Must have been asleep in the woodpile. For

a handful of heartbeats it froze

as if considering –– flagstones, open door

to the Andalusian stars ––

before skittering back to its bolt-hole, the core

raftered with blue-orange flame ––

safe as ashes, as clay,

already part of the same

sky we’d be vapouring into the following day.

4. Inis Mór 2005

Saw a sand lizard’s face poke

out of a slice

of blackness in a gryke

and was vouchsafed

something of the island’s discrete

micro-climates –– time zones

seeded between the old

carboniferous floors

shifting their plates:

elaborate flying buttress

of bramble and tiny, rare

nova-flowers that burn

in there with feathery tails

of scaly-male fern.

           Mark Granier

...

the worlds' greatest poet returns

Two egotists conversed one day,
Each in a quite contented way,
And each—the vain and happy elf—
Soliloquized about himself.


Speech is a bridge, from mind to mind,
For gainful interchange designed;
But when you meet a selfish man,
The bridge has lost its central span!








......anonymous


















....

Ashes of Roses

Soft on the sunset sky
Bright daylight closes,
Leaving, when light doth die,
Pale hues that mingling lie,-
Ashes of roses.

When love's warm sun is set,
Love's brightness closes;
Eyes with hot tears are wet,
In hearts there linger yet
Ashes of roses.






                          Elaine Goodale Eastman






















.......

the bold and failing spouse

      Mrs. Adam                                        


                                            

                                                                        

I have lately come to the conclusion that I am Eve,
alias Mrs. Adam. You know, there is no account
of her death in the Bible, and why am I not Eve?
Emily Dickinson in a letter,
12 January, 1846

Wake up,

you’ll need your wits about you.

This is not a dream,

but a woman who loves you, speaking.

She was there

when you cried out;

she brushed the terror away.

She knew

when it was time to sin.

You were wise

to let her handle it,

and leave that place.

We couldn’t speak at first

for the bitter knowledge,

the sweet taste of memory

on our tongues.

Listen, it’s time.

You were chosen too,

to put the world together.

                  Kathleen Norris

....

suffer the clouds

  Still Falls the Rain                                         

 (The Raids, 1940, Night and Dawn)








Still falls the Rain -
Dark as the world of man, black as our loss -
Blind as the nineteen hundred and forty nails
Upon the Cross
Still falls the Rain

 With a sound like the pulse of the heart that is changed to the hammer-beat
In the Potter's Field, and the sound of the impious feet
On the Tomb:
Still falls the rain
In the Field of Blood where the small hopes breed and the human brain
Nurtures its greed, that worm with the brow of Cain.
Still falls the Rain

 At the feet of the Starved Man hung upon the Cross.
Christ that each day, each night, nails there
have mercy on us -
On Dives and on Lazarus:
Under the Rain the sore and the gold are as one.
Still falls the Rain-

 Still falls the Blood from the Starved Man's wounded Side:
He bears in His Heart all wounds - those of the light that died
The last faint spark
In the self-murdered heart, the wounds of the sad, uncomprehending dark,
The wounds of the baited bear -
The blind and weeping bear whom the keepers beat
On his helpless flesh... the tears of the hunted hare.
Still falls the Rain -

 Then - O Ile leape up to my God: who pulles me doune -
See, see where Christ's blood streames in the firmament:
It flows from the Brow we nailed upon the tree
Deep to the dying, to the thirsting heart
That holds the fires of the world - dark-smirched with pain
As Caesar's laurel crown.
Then sounds the voice of One who like the heart of man
Was once a child who among beasts has lain -
'Still do I love, still shed my innocent light, my Blood for thee'.




                                            Edith Sitwell


















......

de gustibus indeed

Stolen Lines               

Of all I desire,
exhausted double –
other Aprils and Mays,
mushrooms,
some friends,
back to the bay,
dried roses,
Greyhound west,
haunts
(there are so many),
city lights,
Chinese restaurant,
much discussion,
(in desperate situations):
Once I was someone
who spoke,
not long enough,
and how much to tell you –
I have nothing else to say.
Humans, they taste a little salty.




                      Michael Rectenwald
















....

make that first line the title of the poem

The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The reader became the book; and summer night

Was like the conscious being of the book.
The house was quiet and the world was calm.

The words were spoken as if there was no book,
Except that the reader leaned above the page,

Wanted to lean, wanted much to be
The scholar to whom his book is true, to whom

The summer night is like a perfection of thought.
The house was quiet because it had to be.

The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind:
The access of perfection to the page.

And the world was calm. The truth in a calm world,
In which there is no other meaning, itself

Is calm, itself is summer and night, itself
Is the reader leaning late and reading there.

                                             Wallace Stevens

...