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5927. NuPlanetOne - 9/2/2007 3:33:56 PM Crushed Hope
There is gravity
Or there is nothing
Everything combines
Eventually aligns
Is tugged
Into the center
Sometimes
The center collapses
Everything is crushed
Goes dark
Invisible
Only gravity remains
If you shook off
The water
And people
And put the earth
On a giant planet
It would sit
Like a pebble
In the desert
There should
Be a reason
Why everything
Must obey
This one force
Of course
Reasons
Are crushed
As well.
5928. Ulgine Barrows - 9/8/2007 10:45:41 AM Gasping in the afternoon sunlight
reaching for a drink of water
from my lover 5929. Seamus - 9/10/2007 9:41:55 PM Blenheim Palace, 1882
What I marshal are my tin marines and my
reserves. Within my arena and with my toys,
I captain energies to defend my home.
With a proper kiss, I doom each to follow its
orders—hopelessly posted to defend home's walls,
already stove in, breached, eaten alive.
I receive reports from the fronts as I cower here,
made captain to repel so many Zulus in waves.
Straight on come Zulus, like vomit, straight on in waves,
Then left, enfilade left, nothing's left on the right.
The reserves I commit to the fight—so poorly placed
at the battle's start—allowed surrounded and surrendered
without entering the fight would be a breach
of faith. Across the breadth of my command
I stride to know the degree of my defeat.
This loss, today, will be a great one. None will
be taken alive; none will be repatriated.
Already, the enemy mount the stairs at my feet.
I would wear the blue coat with gold epaulets
for my surrender, but they will not accord
me my sword—Zulus sweep through me, past and on.
Seamus
5930. NuPlanetOne - 9/16/2007 12:59:53 AM Seamus
I know little about English history or where exactly the historical allusions connect in that piece, but, that aside, the way you let the motion fall into the next stanza without interrupting the mood or current in the present stanza is exceptional. I’ve never been able to do that quite as well. I shy away from it, actually. And it is vivid. The tragedy is precise. Very nice.
5931. NuPlanetOne - 9/16/2007 1:00:18 AM Nutmeg
I feel I am the spice
On the lower shelf
Bought to make a pie
It was exiting
Out there on the counter
Surrounded by color
And whizzing whipping
Action amongst various
Important ingredients
All of us wide eyed
And part of the fun
I remember how it felt
To be grasped and held gently
As respectfully I was chosen
And not loosely like
The salt and pepper
Oh no, not like those harlots
And flashers. Those pedestrians
Always out in the open
Strutting, thinking they make
The dish. As if they were
A spice. A seasoning
As if they could do more
Than just heighten
Or diminish an actual affect
But oh the life they live
Always the finishing touch
Needed at every turn
It was like that once
My life, my world
So many pies were needed
Often I was put up on the sill
Even the salt was envious
I was part of everything
I never felt desolate or alone
Back on my shelf I would
Greet everyone and be congenial
Because I knew soon,
I would be out there
Amidst the din and shuffle
Of excitement and adventure
Where have they gone,
The pies?
I can barely see the cupboard.
5932. NuPlanetOne - 9/26/2007 2:09:47 PM At Minot Light
A small grouping of wispy clouds
Dark gray at first before the sun
Draws a golden line at the horizon
Move due north loitering just long
Enough to become a montage of
Colors I can’t describe or name
As with each passing half second
Of sun rise, yellowish orange red puffs
Appearing here and there along the
Wispiness and as focused chunks of
Polished bronze illuminated from behind
And at an angle relative to the air flow
Seem to be cautiously added as if an artist
In a sudden flurry of inspiration, dabbed
And Venus fades, the North Star, which before
This first light had sat abandoned, it seemed
With nothing in its vicinity except that
Eerie bluing darkness that reflects the scattered
Brightness in the lower hemisphere until
The trade of day to night is fully begun,
Because I didn’t realize until then
That Venus could appear without mars
Or some other heavenly body, but that is how
It happens, once the sun cracks the horizon
All the deeper thoughts and tranquility
Of the wait for dawn, vanish, as again
The explosion of light squeezing out of water
Focuses the iris with exiting contractions
And on this strange summer like fall morning
You sip it carefully like the hot coffee
And wish you could share it perfectly
Yet only once, long ago, did you share it
Perfectly, it seems, and until now
You thought you could describe it.
5933. wonkers2 - 10/2/2007 1:18:28 AM Calvin Trillin, Deadline Poet in The Nation
Blackwater, Blackwater
Blackwater, Blackwater,
You can attack.
Spray them away.
Whack whom you'd whack.
Forget all the people whose lights you've put out,
'Cause you've got Republican clout.
So shoot them,
Stonewall the hassle.
Remember
That it's all authorized.
don't worry: government brass'll
Explain that our killings been privatized.
Blackwater, Blackwater,
Don't mind the flak.
Kill whom you'd kill.
Cut them no slack.
Forget all the bodies left lying about,
'Cause you've got Republican clout. 5934. concerned - 10/4/2007 4:27:24 PM Wonkers wants all the good guys to go away. 5935. concerned - 10/4/2007 4:37:24 PM The 'Rats Rule
5936. NuPlanetOne - 10/6/2007 7:19:46 PM Still Afraid of Monsters
I bought a canvas
It’s under the bed
Eight years now
I’m gonna paint
That damn picture
I think I know
What the picture
Will be
I imagine, I will
Do a watercolor,
At times
Sometimes it is
Flowers and birds
Other times it swirls
Dark and murky
I imagine me sitting
In the big empty
Front room
Me, the stool, easel
Canvas and sun angled
Slanting past and behind
The painting
A few years back
I set up the easel
Sat on the stool
And stared intently
For hours
Two days later
It was back under the bed
An empty canvas
When I was little
I thought there were
Monsters under the bed
Now I know
There is nothing under there
To be scared of
Yet, I’m afraid
I will never paint
That damn picture.
5937. Seamus - 10/10/2007 7:33:42 PM I like this, Nu. These images are grainy, particulate, sharp with edge.
I like your ending, but wonder what something like this would do for you:
When I was little
I thought there were
Monsters under the bed
Now I know
There is nothing under there
To be scared of
except a picture
that won't get painted.
That's just me in a riff on your images, feel free to ignore.
Anyway, I like this. Thanks.
5938. TheWizardOfWhimsy - 10/10/2007 8:13:41 PM I don't know about poems, but I do know about paintings. The secret of painting is to forget one's "self" via the process and to NOT identify with your marks on the canvas. (I know, "Easier said than done!")
If your poem is about seeing your true self or being afraid of what you might find . . . like emptiness--or whatever, then like all monsters, there isn't anything to fear. If the self is an invented illusion (and I believe it is) then a "monster under the bed" is an illusion too, hence nothing to fear.
I suppose it would be the same for me if I had an empty poetry journal under my bed.
5939. Seamus - 10/10/2007 8:57:27 PM Love what you are saying here, Wiz: I don't know about poems, but I do know about paintings. The secret of painting is to forget one's "self" via the process and to NOT identify with your marks on the canvas. (I know, "Easier said than done!") I imagine it's precisely the same for writing poetry as well. Lose the self and don't identify with the scratches on the page (or the electrons in the mist). Hard to do, and particularly hard to do well.
I suppose it would be the same for me if I had an empty poetry journal under my bed. We could switch out--Nu's blank canvas for your empty journal. Death to all monsters!
5940. thoughtful - 10/10/2007 10:08:13 PM The monsters abandoned the space under my bed years ago and are now firmly lodged in my psyche and my experience. The monsters are the horrors of real life that we experience. For those of us on earth, the good news is that we have survived them....so far. For too many in my family, the monsters have won.
No illusion in my existence. Fate has made it all too real.
The monsters I live with are those still in seed pods, waiting to spring forth with their further suffocating terror...mother's death, hubby's dementia, my own body's abandonment of good health for slow, crippling deterioration that will too make me useless, dependent, and desperate.
Please, gentle people, enjoy your blank canvases and journals. May those monsters bring you a lifetime of pleasure and creative drive, and stave off the likes of mine. 5941. TheWizardOfWhimsy - 10/11/2007 3:50:27 AM I hear you Seamus!
tful- Every fear is a monstrous illusion.
Once, there was a man who was chased to the edge of a cliff by a pair of tigers — one tiger at the top and the other, waiting for him to fall at the bottom. Their would-be prey found himself clinging to a bush that kept him safe from both of his stalkers. He suddenly noticed that the bush had some suculent-looking berries on it. Having nothing to lose, he decided to eat one.
The story ends with him thinking that nothing in his entire life had ever tasted so sweet. 5942. thoughtful - 10/11/2007 2:38:49 PM Sorry wiz...i'm from the reality based community... 5943. TheWizardOfWhimsy - 10/11/2007 4:17:31 PM Bullshit, tful. When you and your husband showed up at my opening, you couldn't even tell me your "real" first name. Your fears are beyond "realistic" and border on the neurotic--so please, don't boast about your rational disposition, especially to me.
I was talking about the human heart, which has absolutely nothing to do with your compulsion for the practical. 5944. NuPlanetOne - 10/12/2007 2:49:12 AM Thank you Seamus. Well, I will say your approach is much more direct, specific. I actually totally agreed for a while. But then I thought, I think I felt uncertain, really, about what I was afraid of. Almost like I had always had that space under the bed from childhood that had been filled with those imagined monsters, all slayed, but the space kept as a pouch somewhere in the back brain to fill with uncertain or imagined fears, anxiety, if you will. I think my mind always kept that place alive under the bed, a sort of netherland to focus on until my adult mind could sort it all out. I think I actually feel secure in an odd way knowing it is under there, the space, the pouch, the gone monsters. Even though that poem just wrote itself rather quickly, I did pause several minutes before I chose the last few lines. Stating, as it were, a vague fear, and blaming that damn canvas. But what is it I am afraid of? You see my dilemma? 5945. alistairconnor - 10/12/2007 3:52:23 PM I don't think you're being fair, Wiz. At least, you're conflating two distinct questions. People have their own criteria for anonymity. Thoughtful is perhaps at one extreme, I'm perhaps at the other, but everyone is entitled to choose, and I don't think that indicates anything in particular about the psyche of the person. When I met Macnas last summer, I didn't say much about it on the Mote, because of my perception of his attitude to anonymity... Whatever. Hope to meet you some day. 5946. TheWizardOfWhimsy - 10/12/2007 5:21:53 PM Alistair, thanks for your imput and opinion, but I'm not sure what two questions you are referring to. Nevertheless, I trust my own perceptions about tful. She has a tendency to be a smug know-it-all--which I can usually tolerate, but I know exactly what she was implying in #5942. And it really had nothing to do with what I shared here. She was condensending and I felt justified in responding sincerely to her self-approving retort.
The arts were invented to express what's in humanity's heart and there is indeed fear in the human heart, but courage as well. The story I shared had to do with the courage to see beauty in spite of reality. In esssence, tful rolled her eyes and insulted the truth of the fable. So I feel I was being "fair" by calling he on her own shit. If she was a cherished and intimate friend (and not anonymous), I would have responded in the very same way.
And if you ever come to Connecticut, Alistair, you'll always have a place to stay.
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