Four Mid-Winter Poems

 

This is not a Pipe, This is a Curiosity

When you read these words, you must not speak aloud

The hidden reality, but don’t choke on the memory

That cannot be seen, only represented fear.

The artist calls whatever is seen a scene, a field

Of rhetorical diversity and contestation, where

Discourse turns into moral debate, fiction

Versus denial, faith versus affirmation

In the unspoken word, the incomplete metaphor

When too much is left unsaid. We do, we hear.

Too much being said makes for static. Where

People in distress do not make speeches, syntax

And synecdoche, burst out into ekphrasis,

While deadly implications scatter like sparks.

 

 

Dreams at the Edge of Thule

 

When Keats had fears of death, he wrote a sonnet,

and filled the lines with his moistened sighs; while Donne

spoke out against the haughty tyrant, upon it

heaped such scorn, that it was years before the sun

dared peep into the heart of Dylan Thomas

to tell him that the day was come to yield

—but he would not go gently, as others pass,

his campo santo a bloody battlefield.

Ulysses sailed into dreams at the edge of Thule

To fill with blood a hole, so he could hold converse

With heroic shades, and like a boy at school, he

Demands the secret formula in epic verse.

They mocked his anxious and fatuous naiveté—

“Do anything to stay alive in the light of the day.”

The Fountain of Youth

 

Yes, I hear it, Time’s wingëd chariot,

And the ferocious dogs snapping at my heels,

And all the fun-filled days with Ozzie and Harriet

Almost full; no time for Maggie and Jiggs, their spiels

Are ausgespielt, as well the Shadow knows;

Lurking behind the creaking door was Lamont

Never seen but always there, like flows

Below the surface, ebbing from the font

Ponce de Leon sought and never found

In Florida or Arcady. Like bubbles

Drawing us back down deeper in the sterile ground,

Beyond where water rats are rotting, troubles

Point the way we cannot avoid, the void

Of all oblivions and consciousness destroyed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Extra Limb

 

It was neither congenial nor congenital,

These markings on a grave with tortoise shells,

A feast event, a ritual of farewell,

And all seemed fine, until we simply fell

Over ourselves with this, an extra limb;

Of all the others in this rock-built burial place,

There are no missing legs. Did someone climb

And fall attempting to enter this sacred space

And leave behind his appendage? How odd,

How disconcerting! Or was this the shaman’s wand,

Her symbol of authority, her god

Displaced from deep in an underworld, below

Where spirits wander upside down to stand
inverted and walk with us, her paschal limp

In a holy choreography? But lamp

Or lump of incongruity, we’ll never know.

Three Horrible Poems

Riot, Pogrom and Razzia

You stare at me and what you see is horrible,

A thing shrivelled and covered with black layers of pain,

Ageless and not really alive, you are not even sure

I am animal or vegetable, maybe a stone shaped by time;

But when I look at you, my eyes are those of an infant,

Perhaps a foetus not fully born, something hidden

Before the first breath of humanity.

I was placed here out of fear, from the very beginning,

Told to be silent, not to wriggle, and to wait

Until we come for you. Then the second time,

They pushed my shadow aside, and said sh-sh, my love.

Outside the loud noises, the shuddering when the door

Was kicked, then the smack of a whip, the thud

Of bodies dragged down  the steps. Each season I crept

Further into myself, swallowed my fears and my hunger,

Adding layer on layer of apprehension, cold

In winter, hot in summer, year after year.

Now finally someone slides the panel, shines

A light into my face, but I cannot blink

Or move a finger, none of the many names

I once had animates my memory.

I am too afraid to recognize a voice that does not shout.

Weariness and Satiety

Long ago when life was less wearisome

My dreams always disappeared with a healthy

Awakening, all I could remember was I dreamed

And the day spread out with tasks and chores, as on

A menu, leaving many choices, some

Accepted, others disregarded, with stealthy

Options suddenly arising, as when sunshine beamed

Athwart the cloudy barrier to the unseen horizon.

My old-fashioned sentences and archaic hopes

Looped me through the months and years until

One illness and another tangled the trajectory,

And I came tumbling down the ragged slopes

Of time, injured and coldly humiliated.

There is nothing now to look forward to, yet still

After a dreadful sleepless night, I  begin to see

The plum tree laden with sparrows—for hours they’ve waited

For breakfast on the grass—now all are sated.

Nightmare

Are we to believe in succubae and sex

with lizards, demon foetuses and sips

of Lysol to be safe and happy, from mex-

ican rapists and vile viruses, whips

and  lashes from our guardians? No checks

and balances in the halls of power, no lips

to speak the truth. No little grey cells or flecks

of rationality, but only pips

of uncontrolled narcissism? Lex-

icons of incoherent badinage, like rips

in the holy veil across the altar of truth, or pecks

by hysterical parrots screeching news as fake,

or talons on the surface of a dark malignant lake.