Reading: A Literal Looking Glass

7.30 in the morning light hard at work looking for something illuminating upon which to reflect.

(Photo courtesy of my inspiring inspired muse, my wife.)

Clozed, You Klutzes

You say____ know

A healthy____

Leads to a____ mind

And ____-versa but

I ask all you out

____clamoring to get in-

Doors____ of the driving rain,

Why

Would ____body

With an open____ choose

To exercise it

In a____gym?

[Please fill in the blanks and submit your answer via the comment stream.]

NB: For yearz this traffic sign in Megalopolis haz been diligently direkting all interested partiez headed towards Kalamata to stop by and check out their cool indoor stadium/gym—but seriously folks—why would anybody in their right mind chooze to do such a foolish thing if the gym in question waz forever klosed? It's a good thing the Health Center is right across the street from the gym, just in case such a vizit spelled dizaster for those die-hard exercize freaks waiting ad infinitum for the doorzzzzzzzzzz to open.

To One Who Still Thinks He's a Has-been

Friend,

We’ve been there before,

No longer—

No use to say no

Good as we used to

Any longer.

A Not So Simple Desultory Thought

Don’t even

Think about it

How many leaves

Did you see fall before

The one you were thinking of fell?

Rembetiko, Dead and Alive!

Rembetiko'dan by koxuz

One of the reasons why the Greek spirit will never go bankrupt.

(Set volume at full blast, please--loud enough to wake the dead!)

NB: It might take a while for the video to load but hang in there--after all, it's a long way to the netherworld and back.

Huuklyeand Cinquor on Why There Are So Many Bad Poems Out There

Too few poets know when

They’ve started one—

Still fewer know when

They should’ve stopped.

Moderator’s comments: Many poets might find themselves saying many things about this one but I for one am going to stop before I get carried away.

Dawn Finds the Poet on the Watchtower

restless at his post all the night

on the lookout waiting

for the herald the inner

fires burning the rosy fingers

turning in, ward to light.

Christian Van Limbergen in Meligalas

Well, there I was in Meligalas' upper square having an early afternoon tsipouro with one of my brothers-in-law when I looked across the street and saw what must be every elderly bicyclist's idol—the one-and-only Christian Van Limbergen slowly pedaling his way into the Guinness Book of Records but I didn't know who he was until I shouted out and invited him to take a seat and have something to drink. Twenty-two years of biking around Europe while picking up seven languages and racking up 600,000+ kilometers is no easy feat—my 9000 in four years seems pale in comparison. So, as we used to say back in the late 60s—keep on truckin', Christian!

Huuklyeand Cinquor on Living with Sleaze

Tut-tut, now no tacky

Remonstrations—

We all know 
Truth is words lie.

Like it or not,

It’s our one and only

Natural habit

Tat.

Moderator’s comments:  Whoever said punning was cheap and vulgar should take a closer look at how punningly Cinquor incorporates into this droll, little poem the British noun “tat” tastelessness by virtue of being cheap and vulgar, rather than its American counterpart “tackiness”—I say bloody good show, Cinq.

Two Haikus (in the Museum Garden)

1.

Empty chairs:

the statues have gone back

to the other museum

2.

No wonder

they had no business

being there

The Stars and Stripes Forever?

In his latest column on behalf of that fiery Promethean missile of intrepid internet journalism known as Weekly Hubris, we find our trusty reporter-poet investigating his adopted country’s long ongoing obsession with bad news, violence, guns, death, Hollywood starlets, unnatural beastly sex on farms run by human animals, Hitchcock’s incredulous cock-and-bull stories, booze, cinematic rage on four wheels, bland third-rate male movie stars transmogrified into bamboozling politicians, insipid television commercials, tobacco roads, Wrath against The Redman aka The Deflowering of Virginia West by Manny Feist Destiny and many more American themes parked down by the river of no return.

RIP, Patrick Leigh Fermor

Last Sentence

Fantasy

of the dance, day

breaks and waves

be light, this earth

that covers you,

father.

(from Sentences, 1976)

NB: A great man, a great writer, a great philhellene—

A great loss.

Nowhere to Go

still poems

impasse sings

Poems

Distracted by the unexpected

Arrival of cooing, nest building

Mourning doves in our twinned

Cypresses, I set down

An anthology of Poems Inspired

By the Life and Work

Of William Carlos Williams and try

Excitedly to capture

The moment that is about

To fly away until I hear

A soft whooshing sound

And turn to see that

One has landed and is now

Looking for twigs

A scant few feet away.

NB: A companion piece to this poem can be viewed here and the photograph which preceded the poems here.

Huuklyeand Cinquor on Poetic Ciphers

Arrogant to the letter, always

Telling us all his poems,

Even the easiest ones

Are made up simply of words, asking

Why do we not understand them, I can

Deal with that but when

Is this cipher ever going to tell us what

His poems are not then? 


Moderator's comments: No Cinquor--he's not.

Revulsion of the Open Eyesore

near wounded river

where once

I remember

women gathered

to wash

mounds of clothes,

so many mounds

of festering trash

one wants not

to forget to wash

one’s hands of it.

Robert Lax on Patmos

in

his

small

house,

filling

small

slender

note

book

after

note

book

with

small

slender

poems

so

large

nothing's

lacking

Huuklyeand Cinquor on Poetic Bankruptcy

Those precious

Plays on

Words you continue

To invest in,

When will you stop

Thinking they are all

When they are nothing?

Moderator’s comments: I never knew Cinquor invested in and/or produced plays, but this moronic little poem proves he thought he could make a big hit on Broadway by simply falling flat on his face!