greenmountaineer's thread

The Mikveh

It was comparatively unadorned
layered with plain white tile,
although it was a gross of eggs deep
as in the Book of Jeremiah

the men had refused to heat
or filter the water therein
but the Rosh Yeshiva was insistent
that they keep it clean.

She mopped the floor
what? as a courtesy? to save her soul?
and when that was done, she relocked the door

and finished off by cleaning
a basin for dunking cooking
utensils made out of metal
the men forgot to wash yet again

but she thought in love you shouldn't schlep
assuming love would be tested once more
when in deep purple moonlight Sara
knows she will find the seat still up.
 
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Annie's a Lachrymose Ten Year Old

clutching a black and white photograph
of a pure white lacy two year old
as if it were a daguerreotype

from the Gilded Age of wrap around
porches with fine China tea sets
and maple trees on Maple Street
she once saw in a magazine.

But four flights down the walk-up tonight
prowling around on the street
are dog pack boys at midnight
looking for bitches forever in heat

as a hot August city breeze blows
and a midnight ragged Annie decides
it's time to put a thirty year old
photograph down and go to sleep.
 
Two Quaking Shakers

I like women too much, Ebenezer,
but don't you go think I don't believe
Mother Ann Lee's departure presaged
The Second Appearing as feminine.
She was, after all, the Holy Spirit
Incarnate, was she not?

And do I not, Ebenezer,
shake as much as Thaddeus does
when I dance at evening meeting?

Alas, Miss Pettibone's a fine piece of work,
who knows how to shake by the way,
though don’t you go tell her brother.

It's bad enough only five of us
remain and quibble because of the work,
what with the livestock needing more hay,

and Sisters Hortense and Emily are
(May Holy Mother Wisdom forgive me)
what World People call menopausal,

but Alas!, last night as the full moon rose
through the crescent hole of the privy,
Sarah Pettibone, corseted,
gave up her soul to sin, Ebenezer,
as did I with splinters therein,
but Oh! what glorious pain!
 
Peavine

I'm fond of the vine as much as its fruit
whose tamped upon seed below the hoarfrost
soon will be frond, uplifted and sheathed.

Lashing tendrils run seeking pollen
when blood red suns melt the horizon,
and vixens quiver at dusk for musk.

Pistol and stamen, begetting pulse,
like the tongue does for its woman,
makes my head swell when I think of it

but I know full well knee high in July,
wilted and hollow, the vine will not climb
the garden spade next to the fallow.
 
Growing Roses on Beacon Hill

Inmates down in the debtor's prison
said to the Congregational chaplain
the next time Sheriff Munt says to eat it
they'll cut no more stone for the Commonwealth.

Reverend Emerson said it was wholesome,
but no crustacean could ever be Vedic,
while all the dinner guests nodded agreement,
not really sure what the old man meant.

Meanwhile the butler served a la Russe
plum sherbet to cleanse the palate for quail
as Kate, a young wench, outside the scullery
quipped it was worse than Lord Boyle's pertater

soup she slurped before pleasing the Earl
while Bridgit and Maeve, holding their noses
to grow Madam's roses on Beacon Hill,
mixed horse shit and dirt inside a pot
to which they added their lobster tail.

Before

Lobster

circa 1850

The maids of Beacon Hill threatened to leave
when told they must eat it four times each week;
inmates at Charlestown remained in the yard,
warning their keepers, even the chaplain,
they'd piss in the chicory coffee urn
and cut no more stone for the Commonwealth.

The Brahmins of Boston said it was wholesome,
and if staff won't eat it the mousers will;
Mistress rang Margaret who at the bell
wheeled in chateaubriand with haricots verts
while outside the scullery lobster tail stank
in milk for mousers and horse shit for flowers.

(Lobster wasn't considered a delicacy until the mid-nineteenth century. Prior to then, it was commonly fed to prisoners in New England and was an affordable source of protein for the poor.)
 
Leon Witkowski, M.D.

Family Practice
Mon. - Fri. 9:00 - 5:00


Say hey Różycki, look at this!
Polish Furniture For Less.

I come for a simple flu shot, Róż,
and I have to put up with the likes of this

crap! What? Little Leo'd doesn't read
the mag before he tosses it on the table?

Ours is as good as anyone else's.
Jesus Christ!, 'xcuse my French, Mrs. C.

Uncle Stan made furniture, ya know,
nice beveled edges as I recall

and got a good price for it, too.
Poor Aunt Cecylia, God rest her soul.

This's the stuff Lec put up with
when the goddam Ruskies ran Gdansk.

What would His Holiness John Paul say?
Polish Furniture for Less my ass!

What's that? Two parts olive oil,
one part lemon, and a dry flannel cloth?

How was I s'pose to know?
Gimmee a break, Mrs. C.


(Dedicated tongue in cheek to my buddy, Steve)
 
Mary on a Quay in Inishmór

knits another Aran sweater
whose honeycomb stitch says O'Hanlon
fishing for sea trout,
herring, or salmon,

a live one having washed ashore
inside a sweater whose stitching bore
McManus barely a week ago,
gasping as much as lungs once did
flopping in the Atlantic.
 
Oh Mary!

on a Quay in Inishmór
knits another Aran sweater
whose honeycomb stitching says Ó Leannain
fishing for sea trout, herring, or salmon,

a fresh one having washed ashore
inside a sweater with stitching that bore
Ó Halloran who in a northern swell
shouted "Oh Mary, were I but trapping
for lobster no longer in Galway Bay!"

Mary who hastens to leave the quay
fishes the fish out of the sweater
she'll cook for Ó Leannain with stirabout
if O'Connagáin has oats in his store
for which she'll barter half a salmon,

and, God willing, he may throw in,
when she decides to smile at him,
some stinging nettle she'll drink as a tea
while knitting a sweater in Inishmór.



The Before version is immediately above this post, if anyone is interested. A special thanks to Tzara for the inspiration after he got me thinking more about "ing" words and their variant sounds with his tutorial about gerunds and participles.
 
A Poem Billy Collins May Have Written in High School

Mrs. Sipley, who lived in the big house next door,
and got a dollar to babysit,
said "Naughty naughty, Little Billy"
as she was doing the laundry
because I wanted to put my hands in
the wringer washer in the basement
when all of the suds in the great big tub
went round and round like a merry go round.

"Hands up, Pardner!" Mother would say
years later to check for chocolate chip stains
on ten year old playground dirty fingers
from the cookie jar up in the cupboard
for which there would have to be spanking
clean cuticles when we sat down to dinner,

and then there's Nancy who wanted yours truly
NOT! to pull her zipper down,
stuck in the front seat of
my father's Chevy after the prom

or Susan I took to the movies
whose popcorn I had to hold onto
who said excitedly, just as a Godzilla
stepped on a house in the Kōtō section of Tokyo,
she was going to go to Brooklyn College
and major in zoology.

OK. Forget about Susan.

At least, there's Genevieve, Mon Dieu!
that cute little foreign student,
who has a certain Je ne sais quoi
and wears a little white silk blouse
that's always unbuttoned on top

who's cuter than Nancy or Susan,
hands down, mon amí, hands down.
 
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i don't comment enough, sorry, but i do always read. and when i've read, it's always the same echo in my head of 'this is proper poetry'

write on, my friend :rose:


one thing, in peavine - pistil? maybe not, since pistol opens up to the entendre
 
Mrs. Sipley, who lived in the big house next door,
and got a dollar to babysit,
said "Naughty naughty, Little Billy"
as she was doing the laundry
because I wanted to put my hands in
the wringer washer in the basement
when all of the suds in the great big tub
went round and round like a merry go round.

"Hands up, Pardner!" Mother would say
years later to check for chocolate chip stains
on ten year old playground dirty fingers
from the cookie jar up in the cupboard
for which there would have to be spanking
clean cuticles when we sat down to dinner,

and then there's Nancy who wanted yours truly
NOT! to pull her zipper down,
stuck in the front seat of
my father's Chevy after the prom

or Susan I took to the movies
whose popcorn I had to hold onto
who said excitedly, just as a Godzilla
stepped on a house in the Kōtō section of Tokyo,
she was going to go to Brooklyn College
and major in zoology.

OK. Forget about Susan.

At least, there's Genevieve, Mon Dieu!
that cute little foreign student,
who has a certain Je ne sais quoi
and wears a little white silk blouse
that's always unbuttoned on top

who's cuter than Nancy or Susan,
hands down, mon amí, hands down.

No. Billy wouldn't have started every line so weakly. And it would've been Lehman. Just sayin'.
 
i don't comment enough, sorry, but i do always read. and when i've read, it's always the same echo in my head of 'this is proper poetry'

write on, my friend :rose:


one thing, in peavine - pistil? maybe not, since pistol opens up to the entendre

Thanks, butters. You may be right about "pistol." Only defense is pistil is the female part of the flower. Back to the drawing board.
 
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Perhaps in high school, I suppose. And congratulations on your publishing.
 
Thanks, butters. You may be right about "pistol." Only defense is pistil is the female part of the flower. Back to the drawing board.
to be clear, i would have expected to read pistil
since you used pistol, i assumed you must have other intentions to develop through the poem, the eroticism inherent in it. :)
 
War Games

Son, my grandfather's father
one Sunday in Manassas
thought that war was a picnic basket
packed with cider, bread, and sausage
until he heard the rebel yell
in rifle fog like a banshee's wail
and ran for the train to Baltimore
to bury his box of toy tin soldiers,

later dug up by spit polished boys
who left on the mud to make them swell
yellow men for three GI Joes
in Uncle Joey's fishing pail
while Harry carried string and saplings
to whittle as poles by the Chesapeake
eelgrass beds we bludgeoned instead
on a rock we christened "The Obelisk."
 
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Happy birthday, e. e.

Being Frank

Frank said of Joe Joe "Why oh, why?"
as Joe Joe goes to sell his wares
since, to be frank, he knew no guy
would buy such gizmo have-been-theres

because Frank knew he'd never woo
Tom, Dick, or Harry to be frank,
to buy a gizmo, old or new,

but being Frank, he doesn't know
why Joe Joe's gizmos sell so well
and his doohickeys never do.
 
Earrings and Armor

Enrique totes a basket of fish
and tortillas for compañeros
on the beach in San Diego
after he washes his body

of blood from a breastplate as red
as Padre Vicente's tonsure
who won't uncork his heavenly oil
although he will kneel in the sand

to pray for the souls of fishbone earrings
next to a sword Enrique swore
came from the best Pyrenees iron
bludgeoned on an anvil in Spain.
 
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What the What the Dervish Saw

Jerusalem
14 May 1948


I see a child whose yellow star
of David comes from Abraham,
escaping stones thrown from afar
upon that child and yellow star
by cousins' errant hurls that scar
the dome, the rock, and paschal lamb.
I see a child whose yellow star
of David comes from Abraham.
 
Little League Blues in the Dugout with Ben

Jimmy Dunda, Ben, Jimmy Dunda
threw some heat, chin music too.

I was taught to bunt by my father
rhymes with runt two weeks in the summer.

But Jimmy, Benjy, sonofabitch
threw as fast as Koufax did

before he went up to Providence
to play on a college scholarship.

Lost his game though, came back home,
pine tarred my old man's cummerbund
but wouldn't hit fungos down at the park.

Rhode Island was a red hen, he said.
Didn't know what he meant back then.

He smelled like Thunderbird, they said
who plucked him from the Turnpike dead,
Jimmy Dunda who went to Providence.
 
Edited Version

A Bad Habit

"Louise, go get a Kleenex for your head,"
Sister Mary Clemence said,
who gave to the other seventh grade girls
two bobby pins each for their chapel veils.

"So maybe then you'll remember yours.
Another example, listen up girls,
of sloth which is what forgetfulness is,
and don't forget to button up your blouse."

The tissue felt like a hair shirt to Lou
as did the booth she found herself in,
but try as she might, she couldn't find
a thing to say, for love of Christ!
except perhaps her venial sins
for John, Paul, George, and Ringo.


Original
 
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