As waters rise above your threshold,
dampen what work achieved,
washes away efforts of days.
All possessions beyond repair,
family photographs curl, float away,
only memories in your head,
only effort in sinew and bone,
beat of heart to help a neighbour
into a rescue boat. Hard to count blessings,
as if someone has died, anger at authority
who fail to see it, resignation at losses,
adamant determination shall not be beaten,
by sodding weather.
© 2017, Paul Brookes
The water understands
Civilization well;
It wets my foot, but prettily,
It chills my life, but wittily,
It is not disconcerted,
It is not broken-hearted:
Well used, it decketh joy,
Adorneth, doubleth joy:
Ill used, it will destroy,
In perect time and measure
With a face of golden pleasure
Elegantly destroy.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Excerpt from Poets of the English Language (Viking Press, 1950/editors W.H. Auden and Norman Holmes Pearson)
Rolling through the valley,
I passed the canal and mill towns,
the farms that string like
an antique necklace all the way
to Albany.
Near Dolgeville, I saw
a once-was farmhouse and barn,
empty of family and stock.
The barn’s roof rested
on the milking floor,
empty birds’ nests in
its beams and joists.
Yet the house still stood,
though canted toward the Mohawk.
It looked to be held up
by one window, which stood
almost plumb and middling strong
for the time being, staring
as it always did,
out at the path where
the cows once rumbled in
and lowed for their milking.
“Don’t blink” I said to myself
as I rushed by,
“because someday this
will all be gone.”
“Don’t blink,” I begged the house,
whose sad swirled-glass eye
looked out on one more hollow bead
in the necklace leading
all the way to Albany.
© 2017, Joseph Hesch
There’s something
to teach in the desert- holy words,
not simple words.
‘Tis about some thirst.
‘Tis about one huge desert,
which is always peopled by
a lot of walkers,
those moribund walkers with small, leaden eyes,
eyes like lost objects
and really not useful
at night.
At night,
many, tiny, miscellaneous stars start to shine
in that unique, leaden sky,
but even so,
it is hard to see around.
Those ancient stars become golden leaders
for those losers walking
and singing heavy songs,
but searching for new pools –
wherever they are elsewhere.
The teacher said, and he said once,
‘I’ll turn the desert into a pool of water.’
It is not only about the thirst.
Those dying people
still have a will, but maybe
they all will not lose
all their hope.
At least, they cannot die twice
and they think that they will lose everything
because
there is nothing left to save.
© 2017, Marieta Maglas
when the sun
forgets to rise
will men open
their closed eyes
just in time to see
their demise
© 2017, Charles W. Martin
carthage
uninhabited
angkor
uninhabited
tikal
uninhabited
petra
uninhabited
pompeii
uninhabited
the great zimbabwe
uninhabited
memphis
uninhabited
earth
© 2017, Charles W. Martin
the end
prolonged climate change dialogues
with rehearsed government denials
as earth dies
© 2017, Charles W. Martin
.
put your palm on the ground,
press it
until you feel the dirt filling
the space between your fingers,
your striations,
even your pores.
now take it away,
look at that print
and leave.
that print, filled with your gaze,
will have been,
in its (no matter how short) existence,
no less precious or important
than any random word
thrown to a random stranger
on a random day.
© 2017, Liliana Negoi
it used to be simple.
filiform roots spread gingerly,
conquering soil with a tender patience
and smoothing away the dust
grain by grain
in search for water veins.
earth breathed around them,
the odor of the jungle flowing thickly
through the vegetal fragility raking it –
bold filaments
meant to sagely braid themselves
into future wooden snakes
crossing the undergrounds of the forest.
above them eyes blinked,
growing faces and legs,
growing mouths,
hungry mouths and teeth,
perfect fangs,
to which foliage was but a place to lurch,
a momentary den.
sometimes, roots tasted blood,
earth became spongy and red
and satiated beasts catnapped on the bed of stained herbs –
but roots didn’t mind.
lately though,
what water carries with it
is the acid mind of the clay,
burning its path through fangs and eyes and roots
and coagulating life in its very amnios.
it’s not simple anymore.
© 2017, Liliana Negoi
and yet, what remains after a tree?
sometimes a root
sometimes a snag
sometimes the sorrow of the grass deprived of shade
sometimes more sky but less blue
sometimes more flight and less rest
sometimes just emptiness
© 2017, Liliana Negoi
I remember a farm where grasses grew
wild flowers scattered over their jewels
enriching the meadows where cattle grazed
and every August with horses we made hay.
The land was productive and the cattle thrived
and gentle the rain that watered the soil:
the summers were long and the children swam
in the waves lapping beaches of silvered sand,
for the cattle provided pure milk by the gallon
that was milked every morning and collected
in churns, it tasted so sweet fresh from the udder.
The grasses provided sweet hay for both horse cattle.
I remember the haymaking, pitching grass on the fork;
the haycocks rising their mounds on the fields
to dry in the long days of summer’s sure sun,
but that was before the farms turned to spreading
chemicals promising ever increasing production
the flowers vanished together with the bees and
the meadows no longer held cattle and horses,
for the cattle are housed in great lines of production
and their milk is pumped into vats for pasteurisation.
Its delivered in plastic that needs recycling or lands
in the sea we once swam in so freely but now is awash
with fish that are dying and fishermen’s catches grow
ever smaller as the boats that caught mackerel no longer
tie-up at the jetty we walked to on Sundays, to buy mackerel
for dinner – they’re gone with the summer and the pure spring
water we drank by the bucket from the clear mountain stream.
© 2017, Carolyn O’Connell
In Paradise we spend our mornings
straining toxins from the rivers,
our shirts in the currents to
catch a thousand years of plastic,
solvents, pesticides, debris.
Our bodies glisten with sweat as
we wring out the filth of industry to
incinerate with holy fire,
transmogrifying the corrupted past
into a radiance brighter than
our long dead sun.
We chose this work.
We clean these rivers singing
songs of praise and revelry.
We pitch camp around a fire,
share spiced wine and tales of
civilizations hidden under asphalt
we’ll break apart and melt down
to the oil men forged it from.
God joins us to break bread.
He shares wine and reminisces
the day he rose the Rockies,
painted purple hues of sunset to
inspire generations that followed.
He thanks us for the centuries
spent reclaiming strip-mine scars,
and planting grain for the
children of paradise.
He finishes his wine, wanders off
to visit other friends.
The flame dies and cicadas
climb the branches to sing.
We follow God into the forest to
plant rosewoods, oaks, conifers, corn,
bending our backs to
earth’s incline and bending
our wills to the wind.
© 2017, Phillip T. Stephens
For we are kings
and walk the land
with our long handled spades.
We are kings
and look at the day
with our eyes open.
For we are kings
and look to others
as they are the same.
We look at the day
with open eyes
and our heads held high.
we see all things
and walk the land
with our long handled spades.
And when people try
to demean us
and speak ill of us
we know the words of the psalm
we know the words of the king
who spoke to his God in despair.
“Blessed is he that considereth the poor
And he shall be blessed upon this earth.
And thou will not deliver him unto his enemies.
The Lord will preserve him alive,
And he shall be blessed upon the earth.
And thou will not deliver him unto the will of his enemies.”
Psalm 41.
© 2017, Rob Cullen
are those you cannot hold
in your mouth
make you want to retch
to clear your gob
and then eat something sweet
to take the taste away.
And knowing you need
to tell another a truth
they do not want to hear
makes you want to delay
the fetch, makes you consider
the depth of sweetness
you need to take the feeling
away
© Paul Brookes
Whatever you say
whatever you do
is wrong, wrong, wrong.
I have facts that directly contradict
your facts, because your facts are wrong.
If you can’t believe the facts
believe the truth.
© Paul Brookes
i
Murk clenches around the world—
solstice, yes; cruor, surely; necrosis,
possibly; apoptosis, likely. Trees pull
back, plants close for business,
even cockroaches go dormant,
or almost sleep through the long night.
Those few flowers on a windowsill
only admonish me in the name of the
painted flood that stained last summer.
ii
Dried herbs crumble, anamneses of the sun.
I stop, though, and talk to the feral cat
whose felicitations hiss out from iron bars
on top of a stone wall that divides civic
sidewalk from exclusive parking. I would
purr, unlike this ginger gamine cat,
if I had cause enough to lucubrate.
The thalassic truth of this spot sidesteps
my yearning to swim in the desert.
iii
Absinthian coffee wakes something
harsh, chlorophylloid, but not for long, and my
bleak, burnt bones creep forth on a nameless road.
The moon climbs, someone wants me to offer
straightaway. A ray penetrates the darkness
and lifts the crux to spheres surmounting
dictionaries and thesauri that spill
obfuscations, tangle moods and modes
into articulated modifications of noumena.
iv
The cat didn’t lie, so neither will the eye.
Clouds hid the moon. An uncanny aura
spilled down from a lunar eclipse. The trees
gamboled, lifting their roots and dropping them,
a geographic gamble. Stories stumbled down
cliffs. Nothing changed in the seething
and nothing persisted unchanged, which
I don’t really apprehend. The tongue does not
construe such spectacles or words unconstrained.
If you put the mouse cursor over the links and wait a moment, text will appear over (and appear to define) the linked words. This poem appeared originally on Meta/ Phor(e) /Play as Winter Poem. It has since been published in my chap book, Breakfast at the End of Capitalism (free PDF download). You can also purchase a print copy through locofo chaps.
I mention an image that for some days now has been mounting in the sky of the revolution…Chantal’s image is circulating in the streets. An image that resembles her and does not resemble her. She towers above the battles.
—The Envoy in Jean Genet’s The Balcony
Your lost lover becomes a martyr—
a new revolutionary cause—
as the judge, an abandoned father,
conceives the child’s anarchistic calls.
Balconies crack, begin to falter
while the white rose petals start to fall,
and the soft dust now rises up to
cloud our bishop’s visionary realms.
So you saunter down to the twelfth bar.
It’s not very far for you to go—
down the road to the mausoleum,
where knowledge no longer wants to flow,
and wisdom the police chiefs promised
evaporates in blue cloudiness.
My forlorn lovers take one last look,
executioners seal sacred books,
and we dream that time will return us
again to where Chantal’s dance began.
We slip on ice in larch swamps covered
by fog, which obscures the histories
unfolding Irma’s worn tapestries—
lies of the victors, lies of the lost.
We change the general’s blank dance card,
then drop three photographers’ needles
into a heavily falling snow.
Your martyr turns into a lover—
an evolutionary lost-cause.
An old father begins his judgement
with many anachronistic flaws.
And Carmen’s petals flake slowly off
like snow melting in a beggar’s tale
of the freed slave’s magic midnight sun
where my desire has never failed.
And the rose petals? The bruised petals
from the flowers you took the envoy
cover the gravel under your feet.
At first, people were fighting against illustrious and illusory tyrants, then for freedom. Tomorrow they’ll be ready to die for Chantal alone.
—The Envoy in Jean Genet’s The Balcony
Note: In each of the two days I have been working on the poem above, the ones just before I am posting it, exactly 18 people visited my blog, where this originally appeared as Chai equals eighteen (things have changed—yesterday 222 people visited, a more usual number since the beginning of 2017). The poem has four stanzas of 9 lines each, for 36 lines (double 18), not counting the epigrams from Genet. Each line has 9 syllables. The total number of syllables is 324, plus the 36 lines, equals 360—the number of degrees in a circle. Chai, חָי —Hebrew for life, equals 18 according to gematria. So, 36 lines, double 18, is double life. Or, perhaps, a double life. Jean Genet‘s The Balcony may offer a key element to this equation.
Double Life has since been published in my chap book, Breakfast at the End of Capitalism (free PDF download). You can also purchase a print copy through locofo chaps.
The BeZine 