Thursday, June 30, 2011

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.)

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

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.


Monday, June 27, 2011

Saturday, June 25, 2011

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?

Thursday, June 23, 2011

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.

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

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.



Monday, June 20, 2011

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!





Friday, June 17, 2011

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.



Wednesday, June 15, 2011

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




Monday, June 13, 2011

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.

Saturday, June 11, 2011

RIP, Patrick Leigh Fermor


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.


Wednesday, June 8, 2011

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.

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

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.

Sunday, June 5, 2011

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.


Friday, June 3, 2011

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




Thursday, June 2, 2011

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!
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