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)

the limits of logic precede the possibilities of poetry

                                         






         Geometry

 

                                     by David Henderson






 

Logic can only go so far

after that I must see-perceive-imagine

This geometry can help

I may reason logically thru theorem

and propositions galore,

but only what I perceive is real.

If after studying I am not changed

if after studying I still see the same

then all has gone for naught.

Geometry is to open up my mind

so I may see what has always been behind

the illusions that time

and space construct.

Space isn’t made of point and line

the points and lines are in the mind.

The physicists see space as curved

with particles that are quite blurred.

And, when I draw, everything is fat

there are no point and that is that.

The artists and the dreamer knows

that space is where an image grows.

For me it’s a sea in which I swim

a formless sea of hope and whim.

Thru my fear on Infinity and One

I structure space to confine

my imagination away from the idea

That all in One.

But, I can from this trap escape

I can see the geometry in which I wander

as but a structure I made to ponder.

I can dare to let fo the structures

and my fears

and look beyond

to see what is always there to see.

But, to let go, I must first grab on.

Geometry is both the grabbing on

and the letting go.

It is a logical structure

and a perceived meaning

Q.E.D.’s and “Oh! I see”’s

It is formal abstractions

and beautiful contraptions.

It is talking precisely about that

Which we know only fuzzily.

But, in the end, and, most of all,

it is seeing-perceiving

The meaning that

I AM.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Descartes would be so proud.....

.....

from:

   

       The   Room   Is   My   Refuge   From    Light









When can we go out to the fields,
Where light does not hurt, where birds do not shame?
We have lived too long in lots.
Cannot we, who have ruined his name,

Find a new place? cannot our justice
Go beyond?--They do not labor, he said,
Meaning the lilies. Must we,
Then, hold high the scribes and Pharisees?

Somehow, when ready, we shall pass
Under branches that touch the narrow gate;
And we, of single eye,
Shall see the pass, though we have come late.


As birds
  fly
from wires
  to roofs
to sky
  planes
go down
  behind
high buildings

Hurrying
home
  with
a new book:
its smell
mixing
   with
the cold air.

Not many on the streets.
Afternoon.
Late November.
Houses
Close
Together.
Sick.
Must get home.


My seeing is bad: things merge;
And I've come to darkness.
I've no wish to live. There are no birds
To sing, I fear, my going down to hell.
And, also, the dead,
There, who've sinned, too, will they ban me?

Now that I'm dying I see a
Path that bends toward a church door.
Once, when the sun struck
The nearby hills and fields,
I walked that path, where, to the right, under
Moving branches, on benches, nuns prayed.

I shall never again see the way.
Always, even among the damned,
I shall be sightless, and shall curse the Tree.
But, there, I thunk, I shall know
The past, as it pertains
To me, which is death.

An objective love,
Yes! but the mutability of
Man precludes Man from knowing God
Thru Man--and the psilan-
Thropic shepherd seared my mind.
So I think of the Well of Styx and cry.

And the peoples came down from the mountains--
And they built cities
For the rich--and the poor, who've
Suffered much, thought that if free from want,
They, too, would be gods--and the rich,
Who knew this, had laws made.

Go down, gladly, my soul.
Does it matter that I haven't long to live,
That there is none to weep for me?
No use, anyway,
I've lost the line that measures the mind,
I've failed to partake of being.

I'm done with it all--
So I'll kneel before the cross and pray:
How long, Lord? a week, two?




                         Frank Samperi











......

the secret language of conflict

From the Navajo Code Book

ARMOR besh-ye-ha-da-di-the
iron protector
BRITAIN toh-ta
between waters
CONVOY tkal-kah-o-nel
moving on water
DIVE BOMBER gini
chicken hawk
GERMANY besh-be-cha-he
iron hat
GRENADE ni-ma-si
potatoes
LIAISON da-a-he-gi-eneh
know other’s action
MINE SWEEPER cha
beaver
OBSERVATION PLANE ne-as-jah
owl
PYROTECHNIC coh-na-chanh
fancy fire


a poem devised from the found poem
this
excerpt from the famous code talkers of the Navajo

dedicated to Chester Nez
who noted before he died at age 93 the odd irony
of being wrenched from his language as a child
in american schools only to be asked to develop
a code tool which aided the american sea efforts
during  WW II....the code was navajo and then some












code talker poem


only
the odd dancer can move in and out
of the fancy fire without getting burnt
the way an owl can fly through thick forest
moving her wing  slightly to miss branches
or the beaver remains mindful of neighbors
and particular trees
there is the wisdom of all sentient life:
know the other's actions
be a liaison for your own survival
eat where you can
       and avoid death

exploding potatoes are percussions of war
thrown by germans and british alike
not even the iron hats protect
once the chicken hawks begin their assault

moving on water has its own peril-
in a sea-sick dream a code talker saw
that he was walking in Britain naked
save for the armour given him
gifts of a phantom convoy
delusions  of an iron protector


           -john hanson osb












......