greenmountaineer's thread

Excellent point, ishtat. Everything else is about body language. I haven't changed the original yet because I'm a number of possibilities through my mind. I'm also aware that there isn't an effective seque from women as plural to woman as singular.

I value your criticisms, even the "tiddly" ones, should you share them.

Trying to Say His Breviary

White is white, black is black;
God is good, sex is bad,
except for marriage, the sacrament,

is what I am supposed to keen
behind my daresay sliding screen
or in my homily.

But, oh my Gosh, Deacon Joe
is hotter than an altar boy
who's reached the age of majority.

Dear God, Dear God, I did not want
this cross I bear, but I am not
a monk in a monastery.

Reading the Decameron

No Dante's they, Bocaccio's bawdy tales:
Filippa dares guffaw
Rinaldo, cuckold, seventh tale,
who wails Filippa epithets,
no joie de vivre,
his dirge composed in minor scales of woe.

The Plague, I know, was rife,
but awe inspires.
Why mock wedlock's cruel demise?
Oh Dante, from that hellish life
of rat fleas, pox, and whoring wives,
pray take me to your paradise!!

Limerick for Ogden Nash

There once was a poet some thought fantastic
whose droll sense of humor wasn’t romantic.
And if I was a fly
by his bed by the by,
my ommatidia would see nothing drastic.

Trouble for Bucko

After that night with Ha.nh Phu'c in Saigon
I praised Jesus Christ, my Lord and Savior,
who showed me the way with penicillin
I like to joke with my leatherneck buddies,
Smitty and Jerry, down at Moe's Diner
who help me redo my man cave on weekends,

and I always make sure the little woman
who knows how to chop chop in bed and the kitchen
fries up some eggs, sausage, and bacon
so Smitty, Jerry, and yours truly
can work our Semper Fi asses off,
until after supper we all do our thing,

Smitty bridge and a beer with the Missus,
me on the prowl in the city,
and Jerry, well, whatever he's doing.

Black Mountain

Another buckeye fell yesterday.
I swear it feels like November
on Black Mountain in Kentucky,
no matter what the calendar says.

Today is September 13th deranged,
gaunt as a stick figure is.
That leafless maple might as well face
a photograph of the sun.

Two more catfish lie belly up
in a pond next to a heave-ho truck,
one among many coal chutes to

flat bed barges on the Ohio
whose waters look black when overcast
and brown at best under the sun.

And yet, there is something to be said
about providing for coal dust faces,
too often cold, too often grayish,

whose black ant fathers tuck them in
with bedtime stories of worker bees
that fly into holes to make honey
in black mountain veins of Kentucky.

greenmountaineer said:

Black Mountain

Another buckeye fell yesterday.
I swear it feels like November
on Black Mountain in Kentucky,
no matter what the calendar says.

Today is September 13th deranged,
gaunt as a stick figure is.
That leafless maple might as well face
a photograph of the sun.

Two more catfish lie belly up
in a pond next to a heave-ho truck,
one among many coal chutes to

flat bed barges on the Ohio
whose waters look black when overcast
and brown at best under the sun.

And yet, there is something to be said
about providing for coal dust faces,
too often cold, too often grayish,

whose black ant fathers tuck them in
with bedtime stories of worker bees
that fly into holes to make honey
in black mountain veins of Kentucky.

Click to expand...

I like this one, though I was uncertain about what kind of Buckeye fell and why. Maybe that's the good kind of uncertainty.

AlwaysHungry said:

I like this one, though I was uncertain about what kind of Buckeye fell and why. Maybe that's the good kind of uncertainty.

Click to expand...

The tree after which the football team from Ohio State is nicknamed.

The Children's Poet Laureate

So why do I write mostly rhymes
for five or six year olds to hear?

Because they love the sound of lines
that never mind but please the ear

instead of caca fricative
fingernails scratching a blackboard.

Did you ever hear the sound of two clapped
erasers in the schoolyard

softly for Mrs. Winston who laughs
at powder on laughing faces?

Disfigurement

Unaccustomed to strangers,
I didn't speak, although I knew who he was.

He looked at me. It felt deep,
as beautiful a look I ever did see.

My face would turn your bowels to water.
He chose instead to envelop me,

and my face flushed a great warmth.
We didn't speak, but I quivered.

Life taught me to always look down
where suddenly I thought I might find

the shoes of a fisherman.
Instead I found penny loafers

alongside two bony feet
with fungus on the nails of his toes

that were pale, cracked, and crooked
stained glass windows into his soul.

Parenting

She's 62. She baby talks.
"Meow's" a cat. She also walks
as if a toddling 2 year old
whose feet are small, whose legs are bowled,
who seldom balks

when told exactly what to do
because, who knows? A flea? Some flu?
attacked her brain soon after birth
who wakes each day to life as mirth,
each moment new.

Oh Mary Kate, you are the meek
inheritance all pilgrims seek,
already there, so gentle, fine
jewelry of a different kind.
I am yours. You are mine.


PF&D is a good place to practice writing. I think the regular visitors would agree with that. I only wish there were more. There's always something worth learning from someone else's writing. I'd like to acknowledge Tzara and his delightful poem that follows who got me thinking about meter and rhyme, neither of which I use much:

http://forum.literotica.com/showpost.php?p=83170244&postcount=1496

"Parenting" is a portrait of my sister-in-law, an homage really of someone who reminds me daily what I too often take for granted in life.

I really like Black Mountain, GM
Good flow and rhythm
Nice reflection

pensivepoet said:

I really like Black Mountain, GM
Good flow and rhythm
Nice reflection

Click to expand...

Thanks, pensive poet; much appreciated.

greenmountaineer said:

Parenting

She's 62. She baby talks.
"Meow's" a cat. She also walks
as if a toddling 2 year old
whose feet are small, whose legs are bowled,
who seldom balks

when told exactly what to do
because, who knows? A flea? Some flu?
attacked her brain soon after birth
who wakes each day to life as mirth,
each moment new.

Oh Mary Kate, you are the meek
inheritance all pilgrims seek,
already there, so gentle, fine
jewelry of a different kind.
I am yours. You are mine.


I'd like to acknowledge Tzara and his delightful poem ...

http://forum.literotica.com/showpost.php?p=83170244&postcount=1496

"Parenting" is a portrait of my sister-in-law, an homage really of someone who reminds me daily what I too often take for granted in life.

Click to expand...

This is lovely: sad and not sad. Quiet. Gentle like its subject.
My only very small quibble is to suggest you might consider the punctuation - I miss some in the second stanza, especially in its first two lines. I feel sort of silly mentioning it.

(And thank you for your nod to Tzara - that poem of his is a gem.)

legerdemer said:

This is lovely: sad and not sad. Quiet. Gentle like its subject.
My only very small quibble is to suggest you might consider the punctuation - I miss some in the second stanza, especially in its first two lines. I feel sort of silly mentioning it.

(And thank you for your nod to Tzara - that poem of his is a gem.)

Click to expand...

Thanks, mer. It's an accurate portrait of my sister-in-law. She indeed is gentle. It's also sad, but only from our perspective. I'd say she's as happy as anyone, maybe moreso. In a poignant coincidence this morning she asked my wife, "Why am I happy?" My wife who has heard this question many times before gave the scripted response, "I don't know, Mary Kate, why are you happy?" to which Mary Kate in fractured English always says, "because I have a birdbath!"

We bought her a birthbath last year. It's her job in the spring and summer to keep it filled with water.

Without knowing it, Mary Kate teaches me something about happiness every time she mentions her birdbath.

A Girl and her Dog on Skunk Hollow Road

Teats sagging for puppies not there,
the black bitch wags its mud crusted tail
and chases another thingamabob
Little Girl tosses next to the trailer
missing its skirt like a green-sleeves whore
still working the farmhands in November.

It's March the second on Skunk Hollow Road
where a rusted out lawn mower leans
against a rusted out snowmobile,
and the mercury's still at seventeen,
although it feels like twenty below

when the wind whips a tee shirt off the line
Queenie will fetch to take to the hole
she dug at noon when the sun was high
since mud on a rug is warmer than snow
another day down on Skunk Hollow Road.

You Took Me Back. I Tuck You In.

I should have realized then, my Dear,
how important pictures were,

our wedding portrait for example,
once face down upon the mantel

like a still life, I the apple bitten,
you the peach, emblem of virtue,

in time forgiver of more than hidden
French postcards found in the attic.

So after I make you toast and tea
and seat you in your wingback chair

whereby the view is south southeast,
I say the sun will rise again,

knowing my voice is just a sound
as if cascading in the shower

where tonight I'll scrub your skin,
dry you, dress you in pajamas,

the red silk ones I loved to strip
that matched the lips I loved to kiss

in bed where I will lay you down
and tuck you in until tomorrow.

Stone Age Trilogy

I. Homo Erectus

There upon the savanna
she had no thought of yesterday
nor would she think of tomorrow
who lays again with Ra tonight

while ebony heavens explode
the sight of rocket stars in the sky,
and a thousand fireflies glow

after which she opens her lips
to shine into midnight an ivory
smile as bright as a homo-sapiens
man in the moon she'll never know.

Ii. The Flower

Uma, I wish my flower could be
down in the meadow by the river
where Spirit Sun comes up
and takes away the cold smoke,

but Uma, see how Krah smears blood
on our flat rock by the fire
as Tunka plucks my flower
to burn for Spirit Moon tonight.

The pretty petals are dying there,
just as Manah died on the flat rock
before we placed her in the Great Pit,
wearing the hide we dyed with plums.

Soon my flower won't look as nice
when Tunka burns it in his cup
so Krah will not fear Zar anymore,
but, Uma, ssshh, come with me,

come to the river and see
wrapped in a tree leaf hidden there
behind the great rock of Zar,
Uma, I hid the seeds!

III. On the Origin of Language

Upon his cantilevered stone
he watched the morning fog
and heard a threat he knew as Roar!
and saw a Caw! fly by
before he turned to her and saw
smoke drifting from their fire
up to a sky when he looks there
he sees the Agh! that squints his eyes

but sets each night each time his tongue
repeats her name. He calls her Ummm,
the way she moans when they make love,
and when she cries his name, it's Ah!,
the sound he makes before he comes
to stare at stars that twinkle Oh!

John Donovan's Dream

His treat was a jigger of Beefeater gin,
ice cubes and tonic with a twist,
well, maybe two to help him sleep,
for hot summer nights with Maeve still seared
burning in him as she appeared
in a fog bottom night on Hallowe'en.

The trick may be a ghost or a dream.
"You'll find either way debauchery
is in my deep green eyes.” said she,
"since my quim needs a good foin."

Perhaps the mind coins words in a dream,
and maybe ghosts do or so it seems
when from above his wingback chair
John Donovan hears "Foin me, Dear."

Excerpt from Garrison Keillor's "Writer's Almanac" about Mickey Spillane:

"It's the birthday of a writer who called his books "the chewing gum of American literature." That's crime novelist Mickey Spillane, born Frank Morrison Spillane in Brooklyn (1918). His Irish father was a bartender, and Spillane grew up in a tough neighborhood in Elizabeth, New Jersey. He worked odd jobs, including as a lifeguard, circus performer, and salesman. He was selling ties at a department store when he met a coworker whose brother produced comic books, and he was convinced to try writing some himself. Spillane worked writing comic prose for a year, then left to join up with the Army Air Forces after Pearl Harbor. After the war, he returned to comics. He said, "I wanted to get away from the flying heroes and I had the prototype cop," so he invented a private eye hero named Mike Danger. Danger was a flop, so Spillane renamed him Mike Hammer and wrote a novel instead.

...............The critics panned Spillane, but he didn't care. He said, "Those big-shot writers could never dig the fact that there are more salted peanuts consumed than caviar." He said he never had a character who drank cognac or had a mustache, because he didn't know how to spell those words. He said: "I have no fans. You know what I got? Customers. And customers are your friends." Spillane was incredibly popular - his books have sold more than 225 million copies."




Ode to Micky Spillane

"More people eat peanuts than caviar,"
you said when you took on the eggheads
you'd like to get in the ring with
down at the Teaneck YMCA
or somewhere out in the Meadowlands
after they skewered Mike and you
in "Book Reviews" of the New York Times.

To hell with their ring stains from Chardonnay
and crumbs from their blue cheese or brie
on coffee tables from Copenhagen.
You like your spit polished barstool
at Benny's who slides you a free pint,
I swear, Jesus Christ, 15 feet
whenever Sims throws a TD.

And after another brew or two,
you'll figure out who the next doll will be
Mike is gonna screw, and which sicko vomits
when Mike cocks his hammer
that makes the jungle right once again
with "betch yer ass in Hackensack
another best seller, Ben."




.

The Awakening of Willy

He tells all the boys in the schoolyard
he just kissed Katherine in the closet
where Mrs. Silverstein asked them to get
the microscope and seed collection
next to a jar with a cool dead frog in it.

He knows what he says isn't true
since Katherine doesn't giggle at boys
and tells all the puzzled faces at school
about Phytophthora infestans,
the famine, and her Irish relations,

but his face is as red as Katherine's lips
when she says Phytophthora infestans
and he thinks about that alone in his bed
looking up at a deep purple night
and, try as he might, he doesn't know why
he can't get out of his head
Phytophthora infestans.

For What Shall It Profit a Man?

Maybe this is it after all:
not Monday morning's profit or loss,
rather you were a good camper
on a weekend in the forest,

dousing the fire before you left
your trash in a big plastic bag,
like the one the bum is dragging
who stops to ask for some of your silver

when starting your day in Manhattan
is as dark as the dark roast you clutch
in your Starbucks styrofoam cup,
the other hand in your pocket,

hiding the change from your latte,
and you wonder what the hell for,
when suddenly the fire dies out
on the way to your office war.

greenmountaineer said:

For What Shall It Profit a Man?

Maybe this is it after all:
not Monday morning's profit or loss,
rather you were a good camper
on a weekend in the forest,

dousing the fire before you left
your trash in a big plastic bag,
like the one the bum is dragging
who stops to ask for some of your silver

when starting your day in Manhattan
is as dark as the dark roast you clutch
in your Starbucks styrofoam cup,
the other hand in your pocket,

hiding the change from your latte,
and you wonder what the hell for,
when suddenly the fire dies out
on the way to your office war.

Click to expand...

It seems to me that the poem is well balanced and satisfying until you conclude with the word "war", which seems to open up a whole can of worms not addressed in your poem. Would you consider ending on "office"?

greenmountaineer said:

For What Shall It Profit a Man?

Maybe this is it after all:
not Monday morning's profit or loss,
rather you were a good camper
on a weekend in the forest,

dousing the fire before you left
your trash in a big plastic bag,
like the one the bum is dragging
who stops to ask for some of your silver

when starting your day in Manhattan
is as dark as the dark roast you clutch
in your Starbucks styrofoam cup,
the other hand in your pocket,

hiding the change from your latte,
and you wonder what the hell for,
when suddenly the fire dies out
on the way to your office war.

Click to expand...

AlwaysHungry said:

It seems to me that the poem is well balanced and satisfying until you conclude with the word "war", which seems to open up a whole can of worms not addressed in your poem. Would you consider ending on "office"?

Click to expand...

I like "war" in a metaphorical sense, AH, because in corporate America offices it often feels like "survival of the fittest." My uncle died years ago at age 53 in his office from a heart attack, which is what inspired the poem. However, given your comment, I think I need to tease it more to give it better context. It does seem rather abrupt as an ending.

Your comment also made me realize I'm ending with the wrong impression. I'm wanting a sense of redemption, more positive, ie, give it some thought before it's too late. It needs more work; thanks.