An Ode To Britain:
Kings, queens, princes, and princesses;
Castles, crowns and moats.
Thought they were of fairy tales like the
Billy Gruff and the goats
5 thoughts on “Thinking of Britain: A Poem for Sunday”
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An Ode To Britain:
Kings, queens, princes, and princesses;
Castles, crowns and moats.
Thought they were of fairy tales like the
Billy Gruff and the goats
Comments are closed.
Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
Some rhymes rhyme,
And some don’t.
Voodoo Fire in Haiti … Loederer . First edition . ’38 . Just sold that to Sacco last week .
Zora Neale Hurston wrote a book on Voodoo in Haiti . It is good . Like her stuff . Read it about ten years ago . She identified the top Hunan , Witch doctor , at the time and some time past on the island . He was a white man born and raised in France , a Frenchman . Found that remarkable . Speaks to the universality of the impulse to appeal to the spirits . O Lord , I am a voodoo child . Jimi Hendrix .
Beat the Dog in the Water
Iron shirted horsemen loose trotting lackeys.
Snarling, snapping, curs drive us into the sea.
The cold depths are our sanctuary.
Come dogs! Come!
Swim to us, our throats are bared.
Visions of the masters’ favor
lure them into deeper water.
Come dogs! Come!
Where we can stand, but, you cannot.
Strong hands will hold you beneath the waves.
Angry Templars stand upon the shore.
Plaintive whistling cannot bring back dead dogs.
The Believers are an ocean.
Invitation
pounding Rhade rhythms knock on many doors
spirits curl upon the world tree
open portal, Poteau Mitan
axis between worlds
access to the land behind the mirror
bodies gyrate, caper madly,
steeds of flesh, wild-eyed and flecked with foam
absent of self await the riders
tightened goat hides rumble forbidden prayers
summoned spirits mount the lucky
Legba, doorman, admits the few
stamping beasts
Ogun, warrior, tests with savage fury
strong hearts’ courage
Accompong, judge, gives the verdict
Who will be blessed?
Who will be ridden?
chalices gibber in the black
lolling tongues
whitened eyes
give evidence of favor
a gift of knowledge from the undead
people behind the mirror
I was struck by a hit and run wordsmith the
other night
whose word slinging left me breathless
in the sub zero temperatures of grandfather night
in the hallways of Eaton Mountain
Several millenia ago I contacted Albie Barden with an eye
towards doing a documentery about his
work building Russian – Finnish Masonry heaters.
A graduate of Brown University with a Masters in Divinity
from Yale this Episcopal priest sequed to working
in brick and mortar
see
https://mainewoodheat.com
One of the many memorable moments in my relationship
with Albie was spending a weekend with him in
NH helping him build a masonry heater for artist,sculptor
and dowser Marty Cain who holds an MFA from the Boston
Museum of Fine Arts.
She is known for her sculptures which she builds on the earth’s
ley lines.
She had a recent commission by Radcliffe College to build
a labyrinth on their campus
Two nights ago while googling her name I discovered
a second person named Marty Cain
now you know a little more of what I know……ugh!
see link for full poem
https://tarpaulinsky.com/2015/06/marty-cain/
MARTY CAIN, KIDS OF THE BLACK HOLE
Excerpts from Marty Cain’s poetry manuscript, Kids of the Black Hole, a finalist for the 2015 TS Book Prize.
this is my confessional poem
this is my poem which rises from the dead
this is my poem which eats lesser poems
this is my poem to exorcise myself, to save myself from myself
to satiate my hunger for my own flesh
my poem a mother bird
my poem who puffs out her body in pouring rain
my poem with its maw & its cawing babies
I have spent ample amounts of time trying to cover the young
my poem pissing on the body of business
this is my poem turning ink to blood
this is my poem which is buried alive
which sings through the holes of light in the soil
it is swarthy in here, the poem says
it is swarthy & I feel moisture through my flesh
my poem a worm halving itself
my poem informed of the life beneath
my poem which fell from an elm, was singing unconscious
with thump in the belly, which sprouteth wings
which discovered the self through bodily slaughter
which drains blood from the body hung up by its ankles
which stands up dizzy watching unhinged planets
my poem in a horse’s mouth with hilltop thunder
my poem of shaking panes & electric hunger
poem of blackness / of the ruptured cranium
poem like a copperhead eating air
poem which I saw in the tarn when I saw my face look back from the water
It’s easier inside, the face sang back
it sang in the half-hearted thump of iambs
it sang like the elderly making love
it sang to lambs surrounding your bed
this is the poem in which I dip splintered feet
in which I numb the sleeping sight of myself
this is my festering ink on endless whiteness
this is my poem banging its head on the door
this is my screw being yanked from decades of paint
this is my poisonous poem which lives in the lead
this is my poem gracing the ancient headboard
I dreamed of fucking
I dreamed of the dead
I heard the screaming sisters of the sacred well
I dreamed a child grew inside me
I woke to teethmarks & vomit in hedges
I woke with a murmuring woman in my chest
this is my summerpool poem with musclemen floating
the storm cloud throbbing like a promise in the dark
this is my storm beneath my nails
this is my poem pluckèd of feathers & blood
this is my last poem
this is my poem like a festering wall
this poem is the place where runaways stay
this poem comes from grass & is piss from the stars
this poem in the stairwell with buzzing fluorescents
this poem with the balcony over the plaza
how you close your eyes
I imagine your plummet
your body over seven stories staring down
your body testing the weight of inertia
the weight of the tethers that keep you blue
& in a body, you hear hot wind blow
you lean in with your ribcage on the railing
& see your true self escape your mouth
then the limbs all ragdoll down
the shoppers in the plaza look over their shoulders
it happens too fast for thoughts to form
& none of them see the force that leaves you
you’re a flurry of bats now whistling out
you leave your lips & join the air
in a wrangling sea of strewn-out clouds
& mosquitoes sucking in light of the moon
I’m with you in the homestead
I’m with you in the homestead
where we were in our sleeping bags
we were like slugs in the dark
you showed me hatchmarks on your arm
& one of us was drunk but it wasn’t me
I said, You need to see someone
you said, I already have
this is my last poem
you ran your hand along my leg
I fell asleep
I woke with you on top
you were breathing hard
Hold me, you said
you pressed my sternum
you pushed me down in the dirt
you tried to kiss me & I shoved you off
this poem is sap from broke branches sighing
this poem you read sad in the sideview mirror
when you drove one hundred miles an hour
for one hundred miles, for you drove to Boston
for these characters are closer than they’ve ever seemed
for this poem like ants in the hairline crack
this poem which sees cities make quilts of light
& the humming hills of green that are left
& the livestock whose brains are not yet mush
with the sheep so sure
Ms. Cain’s poem: too much anger and self-pity and negativity.. .for my blood
Here’s the poetry I prefer
I never saw a moor, I never saw the sea
Yet, know I how a heather looks, and what a wave must be
I never spoke with God, nor visited in heaven,
Yet, sure I am of the spot as if the chart were given
And Joyce Kilmer’s
Poems are made by fools like me
But only God can make a tree
And Yeats or was it Dylan Thomas
Bird sighs for the air
Thought for I know not where
For the womb the seed sighs
Now sinks the same rest
On thoughts, on nest, on trembling thighs
That his Love Song, now next is his Drinking Song (they are indistinguishable)
Wine comes in at the mouth
Love come in at the eye
That’s all we shall know of Truth
Before we grow old and die
I raise my cup to my lips
I look at you and I sigh
Of course Robert Frost can’t be beat: please read and ponder Nothing Gold Can Stay . . .and While Riding by the Woods on a Snowy Evening
And lastly . . .they say: Home is the place, that when you go there,they have to let you in.
Friday Night I saw Boston College’s Theater Arts Department put on Paul Sartre’s play “No Exit”: three freshman; one sophomore: Two young women; two young men . . . .It was an exquisite performance, superbly staged, superbly written (adapted) superbly directed and supremely acted . . .a big standing O
The song: Give me the simple life: You take the high road, I’ll take the low road, free from storm and strife; sounds corny and breezy, but yes indeedy, give me the simple life . . .
A man’s grasp should always exceed his reach, for why else is there a heaven
POETRY, YOU SAY : TRY “THE HOUND OF HEAVEN” :
He chased me down the labyrinthine ways of mine own mind; I hid from Him ‘neath running laughter . . .all who dravest thee; dravest me . . .SOMETHING LIKE THAT . . meaning all that you crave drives you away from that which you really crave . .peace . . .the Prince of Peace . . .the Hound of Heaven . . .
Now, I’ll stick with Yeats, Keats, Dylan Thomas, Frost, a little bit of Tangerine Man, Cohen, Alcott is it?, Invincible, Unconquerable, head is bloody but unbowed, do good by stealth and blush to find it fame, Milton on his Blindness “God doth not need man nor his works, his kingdom is stately, thousands at his bidding speed and post o’er land and sea with haste (with or without haste, instantaneously) . . .THEY ALSO SERVE WHO ONLY STAND AND WAIT
Which reminds me of the guards standing still at Buckingham Palace or standing still or pacing slowly before the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier . . . .from Flander’s Fields . . .for every more