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Volume One, Number Six March 2010
Wallpaper Olympic Harvest Leaves Inch by Inch Iona New Year's Eve (Part Two) Resurrection
Birth of a Sappho Savor Upon Entering a Late Night Coffeehouse
A Night of Madness and a Dream of Childhood Animus
A Song Mammon is their Father
Sarah Springer
Wallpaper Your Adonis-front, what walls did it mask? I ask what has my Narcissus hid?
In your testament I found self; a lie aligned with a vague and clandestine truth.
in your wit; it fit in my buttonhole, green petals.
But those coverings faded in brightness amiss in their weakening paper paste.
So I cleave to Ireland as brutal, futile as England destroys its gilt art.
Salome wanted your head silver plate, latent thing! You lay in Paris instead.
a battle that had all the pain, and little glory.
Olympic Harvest
Battalions of wind
forge forward,
Their armor glowed
and glistened,
Leaves
Their comrades have fallen While these cleave to failing posts As death marches on.
Inch by Inch
I will take this house and Inch by inch Kick in the cobwebbed walls Inch by inch Strip the faded filthy carpet Inch by inch Beat the broken bathroom tiles
(Those notes you left on them describing your little Rorschach test)
Inch by inch Rend the funereal green drapes Inch by inch Splinter the moldy floor Inch by inch Smash the pristine Blue Willow
(The only thing you ever bothered to love more than yourself)
I will take this house and Inch by inch Yank out the rusted plumbing Inch by inch Annihilate the green furniture Inch by inch Slice the idyllic dusty foxhunts
Between those bugling men and you)
I will take your hand and Inch by inch Sever your promises Inch by inch Eradicate your composure Inch by inch Remind you that you have failed
(And you did such a beautiful job)
John Stocks
Iona
There would always have been beauty A shared benefice An indiscriminating sunset Falling on the blood red tide The dismembered limbs, hacked heads At Martyrs bay Sensuous, sublime unknowing.
On the bronzed faces of tourists Clicking ‘Canon’s’ back toMulland Oban. Or the faces of the grieving mother’s With sons lost in the mud ofFlanders.
At twilight, pagan and pilgrim Would feel the same creeping sense of awe. The hermit frying sprats in his cave A pious monk; lost in cerebral prayer The witches knitting ‘popetts’ out of hair.
The roar from the Ocean’s mighty swell The majestic indifference Of Gannett, Sea Eagle or sonorous Whale Would resonate with all.
There will always be beauty here Long after the words have died And the cottages have crumbled into dust One morning from the edge of time A new, tempestuous sun will rise.
New Years Eve(Part Two)
Only the naïve will anticipate An end to war, a global harmony Or imagine that we can change our course And not press on to self destruction.
Let us focus on some private beauty The unique innocence of a small child
Or a love that can transcend anything The hope, if anything, is in the detail.
Presently we will try to hold a glass To the future, we know that it is out there A glass of champagne and an uneasy toast Our thoughts are random, indecisive.
Love has no politics or division Just an essence, an essential secret That prevails, in blizzards of destruction In any heaven, we wish to enter.
Resurrection
‘The Jews are not the men that will be blamed for nothing’
It was not the rain, but how and where it fell beating an insidious tattoo on tin splashing into east end pavement puddles the streets that once had a name as welcoming as the rippers’ kiss.
This is Limehouse this is death mythopoeic transcending eras.
It hangs in the air in codeless dislocation beyond the west winds soulless murmurings ‘Annie Chapman, Cathy Eddowes’ In the creeping gloom of twilight the coal back eyes, the leering smile.
On half lit streets the cobbles glisten a girl in a hoodie, leggings, hurries past a disembodied voice yells ‘Ere, over ere!’ (Someone screams-is anyone listening?)
All is disquiet, all elusive dread blank faces at the bus stop unclaimed bodies in the morgue the dizzy angst of resurrection.
Sonia Halbach
Birth of a Sappho
A martyr before I could walk on water or even walk at all; my baby blanket was threaded with unearned praise while those early days were glorified and warm. But had all those givers of myrrh and gold known of my later fate, they would have left me as I had entered, gay, naked and cold.
Savor
I like the smell of women,
not the store
purchased aroma
I want the hidden
fruit
and the aged wine
red bitter
Upon Entering a Late Night Coffeehouse
I’ve been drinking and I notice how hair lingers in midair - on those who haven't.
She whirls around and I'm amazed at how it avoids the gravitational pull of it all; settling back to shoulders on its own terms. Her brown curls contradicting the tightness of her clasping black shirt, hips swaying ever so slightly to music from hidden speakers.
She doesn't smile -
yet she stands on a table with this glow on her face.
I wanted that glow.
Una
Xoto
A Night of Madnessand a Dream of Childhood
It comes when you least expect to find it The dreams of childhood & the joy of the Sunday bell house To recall the rain against window & the pull of maternal hand rapt big 'round tiny bone finger child to feel warmth & know smile & father whiskers poke'd silly against face familiar vistas & pumkin'd terrain to feel the breath of memory lip the kiss of fortune To know the nest of safety & feel the softness of pacman jeans against leg & ankle A room, a table, a small lamp, basket tree of apples wormed brown alone with mirror alone with face cigarette death machine another push of whiskey in another room, narration of myth from formula The rise & fall of Icarus the vinyl hammer clicks the rocking horse to tremendous pause a half note of distance my throat bleeds out when wet or sickly Some where down the hall the tiny mirror another voice, another room a murmur...No, a choir for the mind to devise A divine Host shall glimmer the lunatic into patterns of recognition a host of stars burnt fast against my eyes & somewhere out there the two are laughing at the trace of shadow to lung or is that here? Is that now? I am not well. I may not ever see her well again to drown by thought is to drown by sea To erupt from the tree & to lust for the plum tongue licked sweet for something higher, something sacred my ears burn the worm & leave me with traces of the throat boat slowly burning Britannica volume by volume soundless an echo more akin to rust accumulating oil from tube then of howl from breath
there are fields out there Acres of memory which lay waste to harvest I am a shell fish greedy for the hook hungry for the worm I was once painted blue & whispered Golden raised above the hopes of all who came before me in the symphony of youth all tongues may recall the thought wheel of charity & the thickness of gravity The morning cock which stirred & crow'd us happy & sprite which pull'd back our hair & taught us delight the weekend sun who peeled away slumber & children's sleeping games to embrace & tumble down grassy hills into the arms & hearts of sisters who welcomed us home from trains & packed cars quick for leaving In my waking hours I knew only of promise & the gilded ceiling fans of possibility
Animus
Here we salute the onion the audience of stars & molecule bead to thrash the tussle of rushes which inhabit the framing hirsute node of skin between us last night the lunar landing was a bathing point motes do gloat the magnificence of our watery island the sour facade of milk to skin to basin gold relief sparks sativa, burning root, ashen oak the voice of Oz a moment of tinsel supremacy
in between the days of sun & conception we left the bed in disarray we painted our faces in flour & lead & ran through windows to the sea we reversed the twin turbine kaleidoscope reinvented order between our toes From our gowns, Jehovah by helicopter from our gowns, Stonewall & Gods promise delivered in a rainbow Ah from our gowns, we kissed ourselves thirsty & loose
Forgive me (Aegri Somnia) I have burned these shoes & been unfaithful to this disease worn mustache & pantyhose overSt Paul have skipped second meal in exchange for cheap labor (talk) Talk (talk) to other gods, other monSters, other creeds but only because they are not so jealous or paranoid found peace inChinatown11th & Vine Saturday 2:22 am Febuary 23, 2004 I wasn't there but I knew a few who were They glanced the moving wheel which spoke blue & mechanical under xeroxed reproduction Drew pictures of Mohammed in dirty washrooms under weak lighting Salaam, Salaam, he kinda looked like Don Rickles in drag (Salaam) Read hadiths beneath jubilant banners dancing naked & pure we stirred certain stars & quietly consumed the others within a soup of her own design
Shalom, the war waged the struggle waned Shalom, we turned our tulips toward the match & the stick all the while; sulfur burns Shalom, my love is an ocean salty from your jeans I was born from burning churches... shalom firebombed for the pity ofAmerica...shalom I was born from a lather'd bathroom stall Saturday 1:33 am 23, February 1974...shalom, shalom Born under fire within the brushstroke of the Minister Grandmother blockade
No more for the old iron horse we threw halos 'round the heads of the Great Mother & flipped chairs in the order of their exile
from the shore trees, gardens vines ripe from the mather From the yard ethos, dreams of trespass, open doors the taste of nicotine From fingers foreign teapots,petites Madeleines things once past, now modern Glass & the softness of form within the palm: Satori, Oh Trolleys into the sun within the belly: an unfolding naval without Vishnu's lotus twirled Nabhija, gave way to ebb'd flowing units of memory No not easy, never that only the shadow which falls softly upon us all Only the ovens of modernity which jitterbugs between days marching with the yellow captains of industry the revolution balloons were in turn considered hoax & slight of hand when held before the spectacle of vacuum tubes of pixilated reality
this is not enough this is never enough from the dawn tothe dust we have been promised something beyond the skin, beyond the words we were bathed within the vocabulary of thunder perfect mind we were cherished above all else pebble fish: the golden egg will crack plates spinning the cosmos and from withinJesus will tweet forth swirling tiny crackles of eggshells & a thousand million smilingJesus wings will implode into the cacophony of sound & vision Out of life, some breath... La petite Mort These sleeves, far from ordinary from your hearth bread of multitudes (love) fingers caked with snow wiping away any labors lost only hearts beating, eyelids stirring a bit of flatulence & the taste of whiskey on my fingers as I stroke sleeping hairs goodnight deep from the sidecar train
Amber Victoria Tudor
A Song
Standing With the shadow Of Orpheus He was Weaned on Muses milk
Let me be The Nymph That sways
To the Sweet sound Of Spheres
Surrounded by Celestial synesthesia
I could be The apparition
Saved
A captivated Eurydice
Graciously Salvaged With a lyric call
A Classic Delicacy
And
Through his Fingers
Touching Grace
Hades Would Let me go
Mammon is Their Father
I’ll name my daughter Silver My son, Gold
Eternity will shimmer
Like spectrums in summer
Dreams sparkling down White walls
Sparing any unnecessary End
Poetry will play in gardens Dazzled with raspberries And roses without thorns
The days of stopped time
Will stop
While whimsical air Spreads seeds In places never known
Uncertainty has been a Master Where slaves are rarely born
But
This will cease in Whispers
Hope is never found in pockets |
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Dark Lady Poetry, 2010. All Rights Reserved. ISSN 2152-8594