greenmountaineer's thread

November 1963

I recall that summer in the back seat of
our '59 Cats Eyes Chevy,
Dad driving through Ohio all night,
a thermos of coffee, no belts,

Mom humming On Wisconsin
where Grandma and Uncle Ken made
the best vanilla ice cream
in a cabin up in the Dells.

But there comes a time you no longer swim
in rivers so clean you can swallow
the water Dad pushed you in
while Mom in her Jantzen was sipping iced tea.

There's an inch of snow on the diamond tonight
which reminds me we never would have thought
the Yanks would have their heads up their ass
to be swept by L.A. in the Series

as if it was the baddest dream
of a teenage boy in Hempstead, Long Island
where bells of St. Mary's no longer ring,
and Donna Reed in her backyard is stoking

a barbecue pit next to Spot
that runs to the city park for Donna
to hunt and bring back a pig she roasts
we feast upon in a parking lot
in late November of ‘63.

The Fifth Element

Earth, Wind, Fire, and Water,
all the essentials for life.
Aristotle added aether.

Wu Xing added metal,
but it's much harder than that.

Try as we might to describe it,
it is not the wind in your hair,
a cup that runneth over,

the earthy musk of your smell,
or heart on fire with desire,

mere facsimiles of
the inexpressible
....

greenmountaineer said:

Earth, Wind, Fire, and Water,
all the essentials for life.
Aristotle added aether.

Wu Xing added metal,
but it's much hard than that.

Try as we might to describe it,
it is not the wind in your hair,
a cup that runneth over,

the earthy musk of your smell,
or heart on fire with desire,

mere facsimiles ov
the inexpressible
....

Click to expand...

So subtle, sexy, and very touching.

I might, possibly, change the 'we' in S3L1 to 'I' - the poem switches from a universal to a personal view as we read, and it feels as if it might work nicely to make the switch here - but it also works well the way it is written.

legerdemer said:

So subtle, sexy, and very touching.

I might, possibly, change the 'we' in S3L1 to 'I' - the poem switches from a universal to a personal view as we read, and it feels as if it might work nicely to make the switch here - but it also works well the way it is written.

Click to expand...

I think I'll keep the "we" because of its broader implication. I did, however, change the grammatical mistake in line 5 of the original you pm'd me about. Thanks for your comments on both.

The Ballad of Adrien and Julian

Each one of them had one good eye,
and one plus one made two,
although not much else added up
in nineteen forty-two

when both of them had tried to join
an almost holy war
denied to them. Instead they chose
to wear a uniform

of simple brown Franciscan cloth
unlike their smarter frères
who didn't dress like mendicants,
professing God's affairs

with eager seminarians
"to think therefore I am"
who joked that two novitiates
thought more like Sam I Am

because they couldn't comprehend
the Blessed Trinity
or Summa Theologica,
much less infinity,

since Adrian and Julian
who never earned degrees
spoke mostly monosyllables
like yes or no or please.

So one became chauffeur for them,
the other sacristan
when not the abbott's janitor,
valet, or handyman.

Nor would their abbot let them row
the boat they built for fun,
"for vows included poverty
until the battle's won"

he reprimanded both the twins
who knew obedience
and charity towards everyone
displaces arrogance

but vowed to have their pennies spent
on Sundays during Lent,
on other days their venial sin,
to buy banana splits

they ate when some came after church
to see the smiling grace
of simple joy in come what may
and syrup on each face,

but by the new millennium
they'd seen enough of life
that Julian succumbed one day
and Adrian that night.

Their other worldly colleagues came
to honor both the twins
a summer's day as dawn began
while two played violins

and two sang when the morning broke
as blackbird like first bird
first sang a monosyllable
of Love that was the Word.

The Ballad of Sister Kate

Sister Katherine, Lord have mercy!
in a state of panic
left from Dublin, All Aboard!
RMS Titanic,

fleeing from one Father John,
"that damn Dominican
tried to kiss me in the vestry.
Save me from that man!"

Well, we know what happened next,
passengers then frantic,
some of whom would soon be fished
by fish in the Atlantic.

Kathryn didn't worry though,
although just twenty-seven;
Bishop Burnes and Pope the Pius
said that there's a heaven.

And Poof!, well, there the young nun was
before the pearly gates
but then Alas! she lost her wings
and fell as did the cheats.

St. Peter picked up, seventh ring,
when Sister Katherine called:
"What in heaven's happening?
St. Peter, I'm appalled,

with all my prayer, my piety,
and Father John's foul drool;
as if you didn't know I wore
a sackcloth hair shirt too!"

"Now, Sister Katherine, don't despair,
bureaucracy, you know;
I'll ring you back by five, my Dear,
and have you good to go."

"Some devil's making eyes at me;
I wish you'd hurry, Sir;
He made me take my wimple off;
it's hot as heck down here.

St. Peter's office, what a mess!,
St. Gabe's horn doesn't blow,
the deus ex machina broke,
angels flying to and fro

looking for some virgin girls
so that there won't erupt
a second jihad by the gates.
Another cloud blows up.

"Enough of this!" she said at six,
"He must think I'm a fool;"
she got St. Peter on the line;
this time she kept her cool:

"Hey, Pete! It's Kate, the hair shirt's gone.
Red's asking would I like
to BBQ with him tonight.
I told him take a hike,

but if you don't get off your ass
and get my wings toot sweet,
I'm gonna raise some hell with Red
until you do so, Pete."

Überman's Wager

"Think nothing of it," Überman said,
"and live as if it mattered
for nothing. Odds are it did."

Yet when the darkest hour came,
he thought he heard a lullaby
and thought perhaps his waiting tomb
could well be another womb,

although he would not wager that,
and as he breathed his last, he laughed,
for, in effect, he did.

Angelina Rodriguez

Once en la Vida in Puerto Rico,
she worked the bars ten until three
with a razor blade tucked in her cheek,
and if a night's work meant only renta
to pay a landlord who looked like a priest,
she'd find some four o'clock graveyard
shifty eyes for a little con carne,
whatever the cheapest meat.

I'm four days from Christmas on South Street
the darkest day of the year
at five pm late for an office party,
paperwork stuffed in my pockets,
as Angelina, knowing what for,
signs her name in the form of a cross
"para la vagina," Angelina
repeats what the label reads

as we listen coincidentally
to the sound of a puta's mattress
springing to life in the ceiling
during an otherwise silent night,
not to mention the alley cats
on trash cans emptied once a week
that clang as I sign the voucher she'll take
"sí, sí, a la farmacía."

You lock your car and take your thermos
of Jameson's, coffee, sugar, and cream
for holiday politics cheer
when unemployed men all have the same
look no matter sun, snow, or rain,
almost as broken as was the wife
who left with the kids for Puerto Rico
to re-fry beans for the rest of her life.

"Un poco café, Doña Angelina?"
who smiles at the honorific
and primps her snow white hair before
she goes to her kitchen, one of four walls,
and opens a package of Twinkies
she puts on a tray with five and dime mugs
as if we were having Devonshire tea
in bone China cups of Nescafé.

greenmountaineer said:

"Think nothing of it," Überman said,
"and live as if it mattered
for nothing. Odds are it did."

Yet when the darkest hour came,
he thought he heard a lullaby
and thought perhaps his waiting tomb
could well be another womb,

although he would not wager that,
and as he breathed his last, he laughed,
for, in effect, he did.

Click to expand...

I know that one ought not to ask the poet to kiss and tell, but was this poem inspired by Pascal's Wager?

AlwaysHungry said:

I know that one ought not to ask the poet to kiss and tell, but was this poem inspired by Pascal's Wager?

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Yup. Good catch. Nietzsche too.

Migrant Farming

"Chop. Chop! Toot Sweet! Ándelé, ándelé,"
forgetting which language to use today,
yellow, black, or brown,
the boss's lackey red-face shouts,

"or oranges sure as hell freeze again,"
pulling from one of his pockets
what's left of his spiral of Tums.

But José, who likes his dólares fun,
no comprende, decides that he's done
with América for merely eight and a quarter
bucks an hour, and heads for the sun

that sets in the west south of Laredo
while Jean Paul dreams of his little Boubou
in Port Au Prince who plays in the mud

as dark as he is on a cold fruit night
when he sprays water that makes an icy
miracle for an orange's life
and that of Boubou, Jean Paul, and his wife.

Confessional Poet

Matthew submitted his modern thesis
to all the facultative aunts and uncles
for their apropos-approbation.

And furthermore, Matthew's inclined
to believe behind his psychotherapist
that licking Darjeeling tea leaves
up, down, and sideways from his teeth
isn't the same as a sign of the cross.

“Yes. Yes, I know.
Pale blossoms on the breast
amuse at best,
rhyme's better left to the radio,
and twang to the country heart.”

Trilogy

Lidice

Iowa read it with eggs and bacon
on the front page of The Register

while Britain's Houses of Parliament
vomited afternoon tea.

Do not trouble der Führer, little boys
of Europe and America.

Your women will be raped, your children
worked like slaves. Der Führer has his ways

for the best of Czechoslovakia,
shot in Horák's pasture and buried

from which their seeds in Lidice’s clay
grew sculpted children too frightened to say

J's for jablko, C for the chléb
packed in their lunch box every day

and R for the růže Maminska once grew
that wilts among weeds in her garden.


(In memoriam for the massacre on June 10, 1942)


http://www.lidice-memorial.cz/en/memorial/war-childrens-victims-monument/


Martha's Tour of Indelible Beaches

Martha recalled when you didn't ask why
D-Day would sometimes explode in Tom's sleep
as long as paychecks came on a Friday.

She stood by the shoreline thinking of Tom.
His nightmares had paratroops stuck in clay
near Omaha Beach like toy soldiers found
under a Levittown bedroom window.

She also recalled on Long Island Sound
a summer's day of fishhooks and minnows
and blood in a bucket near Oyster Bay
she'll visit again after please, Jesus,
Đà Nẵng where Sammy once walked its beaches.


Moshe's Number

“4 1 3 1 2,” she read
the tattoo on his arm again,
sitting on her zayde's lap,
as Moshe with a crayon drew
on poster paper right to left
what Sarah said "looked almost like
the grass that grew in Central Park
my Mama Sunday took me to,
but that was green and this is blue."

And when she asked her zayde what
the funny looking number was*
he said it was a secret one
that only God and Zayde knew,
which was the better half of truth
before he hugged her half to death.

*ארבעים ואחד אלפים שלוש-מאות שלושה-עשר



















.

Your trilogy is a beautiful tribute, gm. Art can help transcend the worst evils.

legerdemer said:

Your trilogy is a beautiful tribute, gm. Art can help transcend the worst evils.

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Thanks, Mer. As a babyboomer growing up in the 50's, the aftermath of WW II was very real to me, and then came Vietnam when I became a teenager in the 60's.

The "Martha" poem was inspired by a chance encounter with a widow I met on the course in my golf playing days during the early 70's. Over drinks at the clubhouse after, she was very appropriately affectionate with me, as a mother would be towards her son, who in this case was killed in action a year earlier in Vietnam and would been the same age as I.

Republic of Fishes

little fish
little pond

little fish
Big Pond

Big Fish
Big Pond

little fish
Big Pond

little fish
little pond

little fish
gone

greenmountaineer said:

little fish
little pond

little fish
Big Pond

Big Fish
Big Pond

little fish
Big Pond

little fish
little pond

little fish
gone

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LOL - I think I should be scouring the news for some cataclysmic political event I may have missed. Or should I not be smiling?

legerdemer said:

LOL - I think I should be scouring the news for some cataclysmic political event I may have missed. Or should I not be smiling?

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Just a ditty about our life span as sometimes big but mostly little fishes.

Last Call

and then the shots rang out.
Harvey was kissing Frank.
Who cares he didn't have too much
to drink? Who cares his nickname was Twink

whose mother, Alice, in the neighborhood
all the kids called "Auntie" because
she made the sweetest lemonade

on hot summer nights under the lights
after a game of Hide 'n Go Seek
with Jane, Suzy, and his best friend Gary

greenmountaineer said:

and then the shots rang out
<snip>.

Click to expand...

A moving, understated take on today's horrific news. Thank you for sharing it. Needs a little work around lines 5 and 8, but I know it's a first draft.

ETA: Edited so as not to keep a copy of your earlier draft!

Angeline said:

A moving, understated take on today's horrific news. Thank you for sharing it. Needs a little work around lines 5 and 8, but I know it's a first draft.

Click to expand...

Changed it; still working on it; I get impatient sometimes when something like this happens.

greenmountaineer said:

and then the shots rang out.

Click to expand...

This is lovely, and sweet, and sad. And horrible, but that's not a comment on the writing.

greenmountaineer said:

Changed it; still working on it; I get impatient sometimes when something like this happens.

Click to expand...

A good response while most of us are stunned and assault weapons still for sale at your neighborhood GUNSRUS

Annie's Shoebox of Photos

Annie's a sleepy-time ten year old
looking at Kodak photos
of a pure white lacy little girl
as if they were daguerreotypes

from an age of wrap around porches,
fine China teacups, saucers with doilies,
and maple trees on Maple Street.

But two flights down the walk-up tonight
are dog pack boys in an alley
howling for neighborhood bitches
who know how to beg for a bag of candy

as midnight raggedy Annie decides
to put a shoebox of thirty year old
photos down and turn off the light.

Seder

You shall tell your child a fleeing slave does not have time for bread to rise.