Hello Frank,
            Hmm...this is not one of my favourites from your pen. Disregarding any of the points others have made in their comments as well as your sense of trepidation (I know you didn´t actually say quite that, but it´s a lovely worrd!) posting this after The-Works discussion of poetics, I found the subject matter lacking your usual zany and inimitable point of view. I found it rather ordinary, in short. All except `his onion staff unpeeled´ ho-ho, that´s a phallic image or I´m a banana. And who was the French painter who claimed that he painted with his penis? Renoir, or someone like that. Well, `reveal myself´ and `personalised glittering symbols´ eh? We won´t enquire too closely into how this shaman of Aspendale finds inspiration. I could almost forgive you the rest of the poem for these few lines. Couldn´t you extend the phallus and the she-moon imagery and clear out some of the singing and evening breezes and give us something really sexy? It´s just an idea, but I know that´s what I´d rather read.
Hope this helps, anyway.



Best wishes,    Mike



--- Alkuperäinen viesti ---

Don't think I've posted this here before, please forgive if I have.

Frnak

~~~~~~~~~~
april moon

all through the cooler nights of April
I wrote my songs and stories

pausing only
for moments taken
to gaze into
the pallid mystery
of a poets' moon
that shone
sometimes a feeble glow
sometimes hardly present
yet at other times
a gold balloon
abreast of the horizon
at first rising

I wrote down almost half
of everything I ever knew

penned to illuminate
and clarify
to obfuscate
and to destroy
I wielded this pen of mine
to make the necessary
private admissions
reveal myself in unguarded words
and personalised glittering symbols
the shaman of Aspendale
with his onion staff
unpeeled

and I sang and sang
while the moon went past

night after night
as it cooled
I sang slower
sang quietly
kept voice within the sound
until at last
it was hardly more
than a whisper
that could have been the breeze
I felt
ruffling the coat
that I wear long
as talisman
and to kiss this
the moon of poets
goodbye
for she is gone and I
am almost
done in
by the cool of April nights

the songs
and all the stories

are etched deep into the paper
no longer secret words
nor enigmatic
merely a kind of historical accounting
for the poet moon that was

I abhor the coming
silence

~

Frank