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Snapshots, April 20 2005
out of touch
tout of ouch
out of town
tout of own
rainbow trout
rain blow out
tipple nibble
nibble nipple
oh oh oh that
bird'n'bach rag
Andrew Burke
18 April 2005
***
There are certain edges
In which the poem
Falls off the cliff.
Songs are not formed
By falling
But climbing:
The rungs on any ladder
Against a foreboding wall
On occasion
Charm the tongue
Call up the insides
In which the heart sweats
Vowel by vowel
An opening clears the throat
A rhythm is born
Cacophony is falling stone:
One turns to face
An audience below
An infinite horizon beyond.
Though itıs not cheap
Everyone gets the picture
And then you, or the poem
Or both slip
To where there is neither net
Nor hand
Just the falling
With neither ³take² nor ³leave²
One lets go interminably
Until something is something
Beyond itself
In which everything
Now comes up
As if a rising ocean
Whose surface
Is splintered by sparks
Under a rising sun
Liquid silver everywhere
Within, without
Entrenching everyone
Past & present
Some say
A baptism
Some say
Awash
Mineral & electric:
And thatıs it
You are there
For awhile
Gifted, as it were,
To take it back
To climb once more
Rung by rung
A new song
The rocks falling
Listen to it
Unfolding.
Stephen Vincent
***
all dog
my dog's a solid piece of dog
brown beyond all brownness
with a black silver-studded collar
wilful beyond anything that ever was
he is his own dog
a dog's dog; Scruffler get off that couch!
Robert Lane
***
TRIPWIRE
A child grows up in an airless apartment
and hears
screaming and shouting, relatives
visiting, long abandoned by their mother ship.
Sideshow.
My father hides behind a newspaper
defunct
The New York Journal American
while his sister stands, moans, keens,
cursed as she thinks by her marriage
by a life of badly dealt hands
inveighing against a God she cannot credence
and a fate unknown but malevolent.
Personal offense is everywhere.
My father, immured behind Walter Winchell,
tries not to speak.
Maybe they both had it right.
No words are innocuous.
All words are treacherous,
carry the venomous bite
without an antidote.
I learned that at home or I should have.
I am a slow study.
Now and again I get to audit
a refresher course in
The Dialectic of the Universe of Offense.
Every word throws you into No Man's Land
knowing only the mines are there
but not where they've buried the tripwires.
Step on a wire and you're likely to be blown up.
Sexual intercoursed without the sex.
Watch how grown-ups behave--feeling hit,
hitting back, kids in the playground,
"Teechur he sed a bad thing!"
"Mommy he start it!"
To be truly offensive you have to
stumble over a hidden wire and blow your
ass off before you know what happened.
Name your favorite offense.
Plant your tripwire.
Choose what you hate and seek it out.
Be patient, someone will come.
Just know that one day
it will be your turn
because whoever long ago dreamed up Fortune's Wheel
nailed it, the cycle,
and I--or someone--will be there
to be offended.
Kenneth Wolman
***
A Bereavement
Before the last days, the widow-to-be told a friend
how she had now to walk her dying husbandıs dog.
Park-walking, they were times when she felt free to weep.
The dog, however, whenever she began, would stop,
refuse to walk on with her, until the tears ceased.
After the burial, mourners drove on round to the family house,
stepping in the front door gingerly,
heading for the drinks and finger food,
stooping first to notice the pretty miniature collie.
It lounged on the carpet near the open door into the garden,
as if ready for the chattering crowd to move on,
and take up again its park-walking duty.
Max Richards
North Balwyn, Melbourne
Wednesday 20 April 2005
***
all of the earth to walk
and i end up here
darkness in the center of light
leaf litter
and always the bit of white bone
to remind me
that you really must watch
where you are going
the lap, lap, lap
of tiny disturbed waves
against the black mud
and swollen rocks
thankful that the sun
still reaches this far
thankful that the ripples
are the only sound
Peter Ciccariello
***
GARDEN PESTS
keenly reading
glass in hand
in his snug
leather armchair
his gardening
rhs magazine
it said control!
control garden pests!
greenfly- whitefly
red spider- mealy bugs
thrips slugs- vine weevil
and cats
then he heard
close by his ear
a gentle purring
and felt a
light warning claw
caress his cheek
pmcmanus 8am sunny
raynespark uk
n631
rhs -royal horticultural society
***
Hemolytic
I take a keen pleasure, if a guilty one, from our skyscraper Oslo office. So
much more to look down on than the river view back home. The Italian marble
slabs of an unfinished opera. The flinty whiteness of the Copenhagen ferry
whose gaping bow brings back to us (guiltily again) the Estonia, the
Scandinavian Star.
Morgan Stanley has some speculators curious about ownership structures in
the Norwegian market. The Oslo exchange is too transparent to those in the
know. Insider trading all around. Theyıd be willing to pay for a service to
tip the hand.
Bella calls in the fray. She finds a quiet spot at her library; I duck into
the designated phone meeting cubicle, invitations for next weekıs customer
do only partially designed. Global dimming has set in. A reduced total
energy from sunlight means reduced plant growth; but an increase in diffuse
illumination might just as well lead to rapid growth, further taxing water
supplies. The results from her blood test are in, but a triangulation of our
phone signals puts three hundred miles between us. Later, I take my brother
out to dinner; we end up getting drunk.
Knut Mork Skagen
***
I must say, Mr Wolman (Ken, is it?)
the implication that I -
and I assume you were speaking to me -
will take my "turn" in
causing offense is
deeply offensive to my
self-respect, my family &
very large circle of acquaintances,
none of whom ever "scream"
or "shout". Please keep
your "tripwires" to yourself
or I'll have your guts for garters.
"Offended", East Cheam.
Martin Walker
***
Frank's Home
lean out and look upon the open
shiny black roads bordering the sand
on the tips of my toes
pierce the horizon
*
a gray cat on the edge
of a birdbath in the desert
Signal Hill
a family photo
turned into wallpaper
"the longer human history petropglyphs suggest"
a printer, a poet, a lover
*
a roadrunner
round the mesquite
Palo Verde branches and thorns
sky
*
the world begins
in my mouth
the fierce clear light
between a caterpiller and a cloud
a printer, a poet, a lover
labors feathers and wax
where wind and birds
the heart attacks
Frank Parker
Tucson, AZ
April 20, 2005
***
xeroxing your 250 pp
of authoritative profundity in no
sweat the hot white room
last year a man made
lake
an accident two/too/to/
overflow/tow
a boy
on a jet
ski sad it was simple
he was
blown not away
apart
umpteenth inside/outside glass twists
no one saw him there
here the side-by-side pigeon
nest & shit
II.
gutter gurgle
your smoking
grad student coterie
sliding reflections of surfacing hours
for your unknown there is wind
sock variable
& the everyday empty
cabinet of brown envelopes
o, they are just wavy
reflections
of forms others & I
am one too, two, tow
we are full of faces
fulfilling hourglass
ands
& the thickening irises
III.
fattening a sealed
window
as light
dangles damage
completely out
of it
he was
your reach
machine
rhythm of no
place
mailboxes
slots
18th century slut
didactics of else & repeton
Pope (ambiguous)
citations
documented
dystopians talk
in the hall
IV
anonymous guides to hell
missing several teeth
mmmmms smeared
on another
jam
of paper, silly
canned
air
for cleaning
one sharp
corner a perfect
minute
fan
chris murray dallas, TX 20 Apr 05 11: 55
***
first bike ride of the season
the year
the streets jagged with
potholes bumps
to avoid
sun high
the light laid flat
across grey
occasional new black
how avoid
pedaling hard
swinging this way
& that
breeze new made
mind a void
20/04/05
Douglas Barbour
***
the night doesn't crumble
even with the heavy load
you're not a guitar
you only have corridors
after a meal
and only one leaf is lost
in the telling
harbour harbour
you're no that story either
there are other pains
old ones
you thought excised
they still ride you
so that water dark
can keep to its story
each day something missing
speech falls through holes
there's iodine, salt but
no, no
not the harbour
that's a crossing on creaky wheels
sky spins ever so slowly
paths pick out all the between-ness
that sings too holding
the cracks it doesn't crumble
city stares itself forever
all its fuzzy little points
the water's deep forget
the sharks are tomorrow's gamble
you're not a drum
you're alive
edged alive, called alive
underground gets the circle
vinyl blue, silvered steel
the wolves and cats ignore you
he picks a nose on the night line
can get bored
flesh can be entertaining
somehow you emerge
with the rail song
not crumpled
not particularly safe
but underway
Jill Jones
St Leonards to Central, 9-9.30pm, 20 April
***
A retouched photo.
Almost unpleasant to view with all the tricks.
No centre; no point of focus.
A hyperreal train is standing in an unreal station, the walls of which have
no thickness at all.
Land *covered by buildings, yet still predominantly green.
Sea moves towards the land from both sides of the world, till the lines of
the railway seem to be heading into tides.
Nearer, what may be our own beach, magnified, breaking into pixels and
marram grass; and, entering it, runs the railway, then lost in a heap of
enormous miscoloured soft fruit rolling out of the frame, towards the
viewer.
Below us, a gull sits on a lamppost illuminating a stretch of heath below
cliffs over which gravity might have been expected to pull the sea.
Lawrence Upton
***
I receive a visitation in the night
from John Paul. He is throwing off
his white robes. He is tap-dancing
in ruby shoes. These mornings
are cold, the color of steel. Fresh
snow in the mountains, little petaled
suns in the flowerbeds. Friends ghost
up from history, emerging through mist
like special effects. Here is Richard
Greene, blood at his temple, pistol
still smoking in his hand and here
JFK, Bobby, Martin Luther King,
the famous and the intimate all lost
together. Terry Schaivo floats past
on a cloud of pale parakeets. Judd
places his hand on my head. Squirrels
are ravenous with spring, trees
filled with complicated song. Joan,
with the certainty of the spiritual,
tells me to take my time.
Sharon Brogan
***
p(rose) snap
the day begins
with a meeting
back to back with another
meeting. somehow in the mix
i have misplaced
my glasses
i am useless
without them--on top of my head, dangling
from my blouse, always in search of them
the lack of vision
is what i am feeling
most keenly. i want to go home
and get my ocular perspective appliance
and i do
go home
get my camera
go immediately
to snap the peak
of the cherry blossoms
which are lovely for two weeks
in ways one never thinks about
as possible in this town
i snap
as many pictures as i can fit into
memory as thin as a postcard
i see a particular tree, pocked and scarred after winter
two centuries along this river by the mills
and, unexpectedly, a delicate as any other pink flower
seemingly hung from hard red beads and a green garnish
our dog plays nearby among white petals stirred up by wind
Deborah Humphreys
Branch Brook Park
20 April 2005 12:30 pm
***
Snapping the Cherry Blossoms in Branch Brook Park
(after Deborah Humphreys)
May 1999, I may not drive,
they will drive me
to Clara Maas Hospital, Belleville,
and we pass through the glory (truly)
I never knew was there--
Branch Brook Park
a flurry of cherry blossoms
but I am being chauffered
to have cataracts removed
(not the beam from my eye
but it's a start)
and like so much else
it all goes by too fast
I cannot really see them
Ken Wolman
***
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