The man had been posted, for the usual obscure reasons,to a small fishing village in the remote south. The prefect,stepping out of a closet full of women's shoes, greeted himwith the customary formalities. We are all in this together,
the prefect said, as he removed the man's genitals and
tossed them gently to the others who had gathered below
in the square, and were howling.
(First published in Sentences, 1976, this overtly "political" piece was written during the brutal seven-year reign of the Greek junta (1967-1974). It was 1973 and I was in the tiny fishing village of Kotronas in the Mani, that once so inaccessible and desolate region made famous by Sir Patrick Leigh-Fermor's book of the same name, asking myself why I had returned to Greece after twenty-five years of living in the US.)
disappeared—
the derelict walked right on up
the wind-
swept street round
the corner down
to where (he remembered)
the old man’s shoe-
shine stand
ran down.
caught
red-
handed
branching
yellow
bird-
like
twig
light's
song.
(First published in an untitled slightly different version in Shearsman #1, 1981.)
After the sun's checked out,
Go into the empty room
At twilight watch the light
That's left drain out
The windows open
To the sea before you
Sink into the darkness
When the cicadas have
Wound down completely,
Do not look back.
The "Milk and Honey House" in Meligalas has about five salamanders that can usually be seen popping their beady-eyed heads out of the stonework around early evening or so; they spend most of their nocturnal time motionless, glued to the ceiling waiting for moths or flies to come within range of their lightning-smart tongues and bam! no more stupidity till the next one's struck dumb. Somewhat like me when I found out some little red Salamander had one of my poems stuck on its tongue; thank you, anonymous little critter, and may you catch many more before the dawn comes.
The Golden Rule:
Pity the poor, precious
Ordinary reader, poet--
Easy on the effluent;
Don't suck him in.
My god every time He reached for the skyTo be saved, he was plumb Gone over the edge beforeHe knew what hit him.
Hell, we all know you
Cut a mean, wide swath but
Before you get carried away
With all that useless fodder,
Don't tell anybody anything
That can be used against you
Till your dying day.
This man smiles at the coming of autumn,
The silence of cicadas makes him laugh;
even the wind-scatter of leaves pleases him.
Tired of digging in, he is digging out
from under the ruins of his measured words,
while his ancestors, having escaped him,
turn round and smile at the distance between.
(from Sentences, 1976)
bending
meaning over
backwards
mongrels vow
to screw
the purebred language
bitches
bow
a posteriori
wow.
(from The Intricate Evasions of As)
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[deaf]
Yours for the asking,
But don't
Ask me how that is.
My thanks to Samantha Rose for following this blog; she has a blog with a catchy name here and likes words and Magritte, among other things. Check it out.
Light's here to capture,
And therein's the bind:
Delight is to enrapture,
As spell is to blind.
Toady one, do not prattle--
Go wash your hands clean
In this, my blessed hollow
Oak tree trunk filled with holy
Heavenly piddle and pray you
Do not return to tattle.
Lonesome old cow I hap-
Hazardly tethered loosely
To this tree, twisting
The rope taut all night in-
To a noose instead of snoozing
Contentedly like Elsie,
How could you
Be the death of me.
Descending river
Bank road, brushing
Scent of dew-
Moistened wild fennel
Flowering before
Sun ascends.
No, it's definitely not Friday the 13th but it is Definitely Not Lemmings #13; thank you Mairi.
So before you
Become just another
Statistic,
Carry your self over
To the next column
Waiting
To be tallied,
Mark off the cipher
No longer there.
You never knew Jean Genet had a twin brother, did you? Well, here he is, wearing horn-rimmed glasses and a genuine Madras shirt underneath a handmade Milk and Honey sweater knitted in 1964. I forget what brand of cigarettes he was smoking at that time (Luckies?) but I do remember reading somewhere in Genet's memoirs how cool his brother said his head felt. That was before Vietnam toasted a lot of his buddies, while he was lucky enough to sweat out most of his two-year hitch playing the role of Kool Kompany Klerk in Sandia Base, Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Momentarily, as
In the absence
Of something, say
It was just one
Of those things
That appeared simply
To fill the silence,
Then went on
Its way.
