greenmountaineer's thread

greenmountaineer

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Nov 28, 2008
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As others have done and Tess plans to do, I too have been thinking about a consolidated thread of poems submitted, mostly those posted in "New Poems" through the years. Actually, I had been thinking about it a lot during Tzara's "Weekly Challenge."

I'm surprised and sometimes a bit embarrassed when I re-visit a poem I thought was well constructed when I submitted it, only to discover what I should seen as a deficiency in the first place, whether it was forced diction, the wrong grammatical tense, or any number of other problems in the poem.

The poets I most respect on Literotica are the frequent posters in PF&D. Most of you have already commented on whatever poem I post here in the future, and in some cases your feedback contributed to the edited version. Don't feel it's necessary to comment further or even read additions to this thread for that matter, but if you do, constructive feedback is always welcome.
 
The Sin Eater

Gwyneth was his goat from Leviticus
whenever she bleached Father’s sheets
who wanted no peace at that stage of grief.

"Why hast Thou forsaken me?"
he would scream each night in his sleep,
more to a dead wife than God who had died

or a daughter who baked bara brith,
reminding him and old friends his spirit
never would rest without ale and bread,

the stale crumbs for which the birds in the yard
fought for a year she mentions each week
to a bearded man with a purple stole
who gives her a little something to eat.

She thinks it's a small piece of bara brith
they must have baked at assisted with living,
the place whose name she always forgets

where Gwyneth airs her dirty little linen
secrets she tells only him,
as in the time she pissed on the brith
during a night of Guinness in the kitchen.

Original Version
 
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So Little Freddie's Now a Hippie.

Anyway, as I was saying
we beat the hell outta Hitler, Fred,
saw skin on bones you'd wretch at,
dropped some bombs to save a million,
kissed all the girls in Manhattan.

Yeah I know, Times Square.

Wore 1 suit and a fedora,
day old socks and underwear,
worked my ass off, Jesus Christ!
Kitchen was all we had,
two bedrooms, bath, my '47 Chevy
and an iron for the Mrs.

Didn't give squat at the office,
although the Girl Scouts thought I did,
prayed for the furnace every September.
Jesus! Did I pray back then!

Finally did the patio,
not as big as yours is, Fred,
an outlet for the radio.
Bobby Thompson, remember him?
"Shot heard round the world?"
Jesus! Did I pray back then!
Lost to the Yanks in '51
but swept the Tribe in '54.

Frisco, you say? San Francisco!
Reminds me of the Presidio,
Saturday nights on Castro Street
and all those dainty little Jap girls
before they roped them in.


Original version
 
Dithyramb

Though I don't know why the universe spins
with science I know I'll always know how

to prove Pavlovian I and a Thou
and disprove angels dancing on pins.

I can make robots that play violins,
grow vast timberlands from twigs on a bough,

though I don't know why the universe spins.
With science I know I'll always know how,

so why would I make up devils or jinns,
why kill the buddha or follow the Tao?

Yes, there's no silk in the ear of a sow,
but I can make purses; I can clone twins.

With science I know I'll always know,
though I don't know why the universe spins.

Original Version
 
Emotional instability may be a prerequisite for sainthood!
;)
 
Whiffle Ball with Harvey Lauber

We never broke windows, the two of us
all of July and dog days of August.
You were the Mets Tuesday through Friday.
Three wiffs with the bat the inning was over.
Beefs were settled rock-paper-scissors.

We also agreed I would feed your dog
that bit me when you went on vacation.
Dad said to me don't do it again
but changed his mind when he saw you mow
lawns nearly brown that time of summer
to pay for the doctor and penicillin.

We swam with black boys in Rahway
Municipal Pool who peed in the water.
That's what Uncle Charley said.
"So what if they do? We all do too,"
you said in the waning days of summer
before you moved to Pennsylvania
by which time I was thinking anyhow
of girls in bikinis; Atlantic City.

Ira Goldfarb said four years later
you died in June from Hopkins Lymphoma.
So in so far I was old enough now
for part-time work and four letter words
I took the bus by myself out to Shea
and watched the Mets beat the shit outta Philly
but only saw there on the pitcher's mound
two boys from Jersey, rock-paper-scissors.


I've made only small changes to the original because I wanted everything about it to be true. It is. There is no poetic license or embellishment. Harvey was as real as the scuffed whiffle ball we hit all summer with his garage as backstop. So was Ira as was Uncle Charley. So was the dog who bit me.

This is an elegy, long overdue. Others may see this as melodramatic. I don't care. Harvey was 11. I was 12, and he was my best friend in 1959.

I truly loved you, Harvey.

Original Version

Note 1/13/14: Some poetic license after all. Mets didn't start playing until 1962 while Harvey had moved away before then. It wouldn't have been the Dodgers either because in '59 they were out in LA. (Never forgave them after they left Brooklyn). I shudder to think we pretended the Yankees (The Evil Empire) inasmuch as I'm Red Sox, but I wasn't back then and see no other explanation.
 
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I think it's a beautiful elegy and, for me, a very evocative poem, GM. I don't think of it as melodrama when it's heartfelt and besides, like you say, who cares if anyone else does? :)
 
Whiffle Ball with Harvey Lauber

We never broke windows, the two of us
all of July and dog days of August.
You were the Mets Tuesday through Friday.
Three wiffs with the bat the inning was over.
Beefs were settled rock-paper-scissors.

We also agreed I would feed your dog
that bit me when you went on vacation.
Dad said to me don't do it again
but changed his mind when he saw you mow
lawns nearly brown that time of summer
to pay for the doctor and penicillin.

We swam with black boys in Rahway
Municipal Pool who peed in the water.
That's what Uncle Charley said.
"So what if they do? We all do too,"
you said in the waning days of summer
before you moved to Pennsylvania
by which time I was thinking anyhow
of girls in bikinis; Atlantic City.

Ira Goldfarb said four years later
you died in June from Hopkins Lymphoma.
So in so far I was old enough now
for part-time work and four letter words
I took the bus by myself out to Shea
and watched the Mets beat the shit outta Philly
but only saw there on the pitcher's mound
two boys from Jersey, rock-paper-scissors.


I've made only small changes to the original because I wanted everything about it to be true. It is. There is no poetic license or embellishment. Harvey was as real as the scuffed whiffle ball we hit all summer with his garage as backstop. So was Ira as was Uncle Charley. So was the dog who bit me.

This is an elegy, long overdue. Others may see this as melodramatic. I don't care. Harvey was 11. I was 12, and he was my best friend in 1959.

I truly loved you, Harvey.

Original Version

Authenticity trumps melodrama.
Very nice.
 
Id and Ego Try to Trick Super Ego

Let's find pretty women, you, me, and Ego,
after dark on the beach,
but leave your prayer beads behind for the day.

Tonight we're 3 Teutonic Knights,
"das Es!" "das Ich!" and "das Über-Ich!"
swordsmen down on the beach

at the witching hour with a little honey,
not the kind the Baptist covered
crickets with to eat (wink, wink).

Remember Pharaohs caroused in the sand
as did their minions by the Red Sea.

Yes, we know, the one that Moses parted.


Original Version
 
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Let's find pretty women, you, me, and Ego,
after dark on the beach,
but leave your prayer beads behind for the day.

Tonight we're the 3 Musketeers,
"das Es!" "das Ich!" and "das Über-Ich!"
swordsmen down on the beach

at the witching hour with a little honey,
not the kind the Baptist covered
crickets with to eat (wink, wink).

Remember Pharaohs caroused in the sand
as did their minions by the Red Sea.

Yes, we know, the one that Moses parted.


Original Version

this is sensational!!!! the re-write vs the original comparison is such a stark contrast, your ability to mull over an idea and improve it, is so far beyond me that well, yeah.....

did I say this piece is Amazing yet? takes me back to being a teenager beaches are pretty much a way of life in Australia.

by taking out the reference to fort lauerdale you open the poem up to a broader readership to connect with on a personal level, just one of the cool things done in the edit
 
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this is sensational!!!! the re-write vs the original comparison is such a stark contrast, your ability to mull over an idea and improve it, is so far beyond me that well, yeah.....

did I say this piece is Amazing yet? takes me back to being a teenager beaches are pretty much a way of life in Australia.

by taking out the reference to fort lauerdale you open the poem up to a broader readership to connect with on a personal level, just one of the cool things done in the edit

Thanks, tod. I'm not sure the allusion to Frenchmen, immediately followed by their names in German works well, but that's what their father, Freud, named them (LOL. I seem to be very Freudian lately. Hmm.).
 
Up on the Roof

"What's so rare as a day in Junius?"
Sister Bea said when we last heard Latin
"Anno Domini, Patri, et Fili."
"Spiritu Sancti," Sister added

after a lapse of memory
before all the St. Ignatius tassels
dangled with pomp and circumstance,
some of which Mustang Sally

blew whose Daddy bought her a Rambler
to go back and forth to Brooklyn College
in September nineteen sixty-
six which hung my tongue like sex.

"Cuniculus is Latin," Sister Bea said,
"for rabbit and coney a derivative
the Brits called bunny rabbits
that overran the island in 1690."

where Sally's a bunny Saturday nights
while I with my transistor radio
go up on the roof in Jackson Heights
to howl at the moon with Wolfman Jack.


Original Version
 
The Cabbie's Villanelle Breaks Down on the Way Back to Philly.

Boss said don't worry about any Spanish,
just had to drive them to Allentown.
María nibbled her tunafish sandwich.

José who never spoke any language
sipped his sippy cup slurping facedown.
No, I didn't have to speak any Spanish.

White coat assistants brought an outlandish
gurney that turned him into a pronoun
assisted with living, Chrissakes, to languish

here like slag heaps from steel barons span this
sad part of town a scat dirty brown.
Shit! He's gonna be bedsores in diapers.

The tears of María I don't think will vanish
back home in Philly, nor will they until
a year from now when her welfare will manage

half a day's taxi, a Coke and a sandwich
picnic with José in Allentown.

Vomit explodes its visceral language,
sounding the same in English or Spanish.


Original Version
 
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Your elegy to Harvey is one of the most beautiful things I've ever read. Thank you for sharing it.

Subscribing. :)
 
Your elegy to Harvey is one of the most beautiful things I've ever read. Thank you for sharing it.

Subscribing. :)

I second Catharyn's sentiment : your tribute to Harvey is very moving , heartfelt & touching --A9
 
A Short Ballad on the Short Life of Billy Twice

The Lords entrenched in Parliament
and men of cash advance
drank white Bordeaux with Gruyère cheese.
The Kaiser swallowed France.

Young Billy Twice, he'd eat that horse
whose mane was full of lice
the Huns left dead in no man's land,
except there were the mice,

or maybe rats, God knows what else
he said behind his mask
he lifts to eat his tin man meat
Huns spiced with mustard gas.

Because his Dad was Billy too,
they call him Billy Twice
when in the trenches Billy sings
to God on silent nights

like some canary in a mine
preventing men from death
but here a sweet song won't forewarn
death's burn in lungs and flesh.

He knew the peril gas could be,
although a different kind,
beneath the colliers' hills in Wales,
the mines he left behind

to sow king's seeds of victory
at England's Battle Call.
Your chums are fighting. Why aren't you?
to prove your worth to all

be sure to eat more corn, more oats,
and rye to save the wheat
and anthracite as big as Sunday
dinner's cut of meat.

"The war to end all wars was just
another goddam lie"
said Billy Twice, when looking up,
he saw the last of life.


Original Version
 
The Lords entrenched in Parliament
and men of cash advance
drank white Bordeaux with Gruyère cheese.
The Kaiser swallowed France.

Young Billy Twice, he'd eat that horse
whose mane was full of lice
the Huns left dead in no man's land,
except there were the mice,

or maybe rats, God knows what else
he said behind his mask
he lifts to eat his tin man meat
Huns spiced with mustard gas.

Because his Dad was Billy too,
they call him Billy Twice
when in the trenches Billy sings
to God on silent nights

like some canary in a mine
preventing men from death
but here a sweet song won't forewarn
death's burn in lungs and flesh.

He knew the peril gas could be,
although a different kind,
beneath the colliers' hills in Wales,
the mines he left behind

to sow king's seeds of victory
at England's Battle Call.
Your chums are fighting. Why aren't you?
to prove your worth to all

be sure to eat more corn, more oats,
and rye to save the wheat
and anthracite as big as Sunday
dinner's cut of meat.

"The war to end all wars was just
another goddam lie"
said Billy Twice, when looking up,
he saw the last of life.


Original Version
ken follett's fall of giants was a great read. highly recommend it. your poem harnesses many elements of billy's character and, though inspired by the book, works in its own right. :rose:
 
Carpet Stains

Semen was but a lick and a promise
swallowed by the vacuum cleaner
happily every morning after.

The grown-up kids who often visit
often hear the purple grape juice
white lie they know as Merlot
caught in the twinkle of Mother's eye,

but never would she let them know
mascara laden tears fell too
when Larry wasn't home one night,
having pretended the car broke down.

Tears fell again at the blackest hour
a week ago when the ambulance man
said it was time for Father Mike
to anoint a diarrhetic body.

Today upon her hands and knees
recalling how his sperm fell there,
she thinks of love as sometimes thick
sometimes sticky, mostly white,

as she scrubs the recent brown
she knows won't ever really wash out
along with mascara and wine

and red from the lipstick stepped upon
inside their playroom walk-in closet
when passion used to leap from the bed
on to a colored magic carpet.

Original Version
 
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Whiffle Ball with Harvey Lauber

We never broke windows, the two of us
all of July and dog days of August.
You were the Mets Tuesday through Friday.
Three wiffs with the bat the inning was over.
Beefs were settled rock-paper-scissors.

We also agreed I would feed your dog
that bit me when you went on vacation.
Dad said to me don't do it again
but changed his mind when he saw you mow
lawns nearly brown that time of summer
to pay for the doctor and penicillin.

We swam with black boys in Rahway
Municipal Pool who peed in the water.
That's what Uncle Charley said.
"So what if they do? We all do too,"
you said in the waning days of summer
before you moved to Pennsylvania
by which time I was thinking anyhow
of girls in bikinis; Atlantic City.

Ira Goldfarb said four years later
you died in June from Hopkins Lymphoma.
So in so far I was old enough now
for part-time work and four letter words
I took the bus by myself out to Shea
and watched the Mets beat the shit outta Philly
but only saw there on the pitcher's mound
two boys from Jersey, rock-paper-scissors.


I've made only small changes to the original because I wanted everything about it to be true. It is. There is no poetic license or embellishment. Harvey was as real as the scuffed whiffle ball we hit all summer with his garage as backstop. So was Ira as was Uncle Charley. So was the dog who bit me.

This is an elegy, long overdue. Others may see this as melodramatic. I don't care. Harvey was 11. I was 12, and he was my best friend in 1959.

I truly loved you, Harvey.

Original Version

Note 1/13/14: Some poetic license after all. Mets didn't start playing until 1962 while Harvey had moved away before then. It wouldn't have been the Dodgers either because in '59 they were out in LA. (Never forgave them after they left Brooklyn). I shudder to think we pretended the Yankees (The Evil Empire) inasmuch as I'm Red Sox, but I wasn't back then and see no other explanation.

Been reading through this thread and really liked this one. One query though, Does the substitution of Hopkins for Hodgkins have a particular meaning?
 
Been reading through this thread and really liked this one. One query though, Does the substitution of Hopkins for Hodgkins have a particular meaning?

ishtat: it's a good thing that Literotica doesn't have Skype. You'd notice how red my face is right now, full of embarrassment. I usually do a better job of spell checking. Thanks for pointing it out.
 
How to Render Lard

After you disembowel the pig,

1. Pre-heat oven to two twenty-five.

2. Put the entrails in Pyrex.

3. Roast slowly, at least one hour.

4. Skim the protein particles.

5. Pour it through a colander.

6. Ann gets the lard for pastries and pies.

7. Make sure she thinks it's Crisco.

8. The chitlins mail to Desdemona.

9. Leave the rest for maggots and flies.


Original Version
 
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