Gaza by Candlelight

“And what is the use of poets in a mean-spirited time?”
 —Friedrich Hölderlin, “Bread and Wine” 


O enlightened ones, tell me 
Before the first dawn light, 

Of what use is poetry 
To ones that are to be 

Snuffed out during the night. 

Fait Accompli

Bewitching 

Burning black heartless 
Spell of wishful thinking— 

Stake your life on it.

Oracular

—for Huuklyeand Cinquor 
  il miglior fabbro. 


Convoluted his verse and so 
Vatic the meaning mind

 
You have to divine 
Which way it’s going by

 
The manner in which 
His feet and mouth perhaps

 
Even his entrails are twisted so

Haplessly entwined. 

 

 

Tottering Suicidal State of Emergency

This unerring 

Bullet securely homed in 
On the insecure 

Heart of America, 
How much longer do we have 
To wait 

Till it strikes home. 

Count Your Lucky Stars

If it were so 
Easy, you would have 

Done it plus a myriad 
Other things like it 

A million times— 
Just try 

Counting the times 
You tried. 

Bump on a Log

"If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” 


Don’t bother answering that— 
Whether in forest or not, 

Stand there long enough 
Doing nothing and sure 

Enough you’ll hear that 
Splitting cry of “Timber!” 

Definitely not whispering sweet 
Nothings in your ear. 

Spirit of the Stream

I love to hear 
Your voice so much 
I can’t stand still 

Over this body 
Of water and not speak 
A word of it—even 

To the mute reeds 
Bending with the current 
Against their will. 

In the Throes of Postmodern Delusion, Huuklyeand Cinquor Fancies Himself Addressing One of the Icons of 20th Century Poetry

My dearest Sylvia--
(May I call you that?)
 
Forgive me but I think 
It's high time you knew

Your pure peerless line
Of pears fattening keeps on

Thriving as never before,
Being ravenously consumed

By bookish little Buddha inchworms
Contemplating their navels

All the way down to a rotten core. 



Moderator's comments: I see no signs of any delusion in this missive but then again, too much language-oriented omphaloskepsis on my part makes it difficult for me to distinguish my umbilicus from my belly button.

Tree House

out of nowhere 
one mourning 
dove alighting, 

foraging, finding 
twig after twig 
on the carpet 

of bunched up needles, 
picking just what it needs 
for the finishing 

touches to its twiggy home
artfully hidden somewhere
in the no longer lonesome pine. 

Smuggler's Cove

floating 

in a secluded shallow 
sea of jade, 

listening
deeply

to the myriad 
pebbles tinkling, a few 

jeweled fathoms under me. 

Empty Rhetoric's Catastrophe

Apostrophic yes— 
And never failing 

To omit whatever’s left 
Of your dwindling devices, 

You end up vomiting 
The whole works. 

Inland Marina

No ordinary tree for us love but the drift 

wood craft we assembled for Christmas 
past and awaiting to rise 
phoenix-like for Christmas future 

lies presently moored in cob 
webs in corner of portico 
affording a splendiferous 

view of mountains floating 
in a deep blue sky in the balmiest calms 
of summer gifts we hope never run dry. 

Coaxing the Gentle Reader to Reveal Himself with Sweet Nothings

Not croaking, 
Sticking it out 

Silently, something 
Like a stoic 

Frog immobile, almost 
Imperceptibly moving now

And then to trap οne more 
Gullible fly at the end

Of a too, too gooey tongue. 

Bard Swept Away by Runaway Personification

No it wasn’t the singular multitudinous 
Seas incarnadine washing ashore 
On the headland of a rocky poetic 

Coastline that did him in,

 

It was the heart breaking 

News of the tsunami inside him 
That took him by surprise, 
Racing headlong as he was 
Towards a receding hairline. 

 

 

Huuklyeand Cinquor on Gnomic Verse

Savants who should know better 
Keep telling me it’s best 
To let things go; the next thing 
You know they’ll be underground 
Just like me, wishing they’d held on 
To whatever they cherished 
A wee bit more. 


Moderator’s comments: 
 “Less is more”— Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Letter and Spirit of the Law

Stay a while and muse on this 

Granite tombstone that’s stood its ground 
Steadfast over the years— 

Not like those chiseled letters long since spirited away 
By whatever it was deep down the words wanted to say. 

Goodbye to All That

Nothing ambiguous about it— 
Once the message arrives 

In no time at all 
You’ll understand why 

It took you so long to get here. 

Broken Heart

Leave it alone long enough 
And it will cure itself 

In the dark, returning 
To the light only to develop 

New scars that need 
New blood to nourish them. 

Antediluvian

shimmering 

on the very edge


of the fragile 

twig, one last trembling 


drop. 

A Little Learning Leads to One Being Dead in the Water

Buoyant at the depth of your skill 
While downing swill after swill 

From the Pierian Spring, keep this 
Swell thought afloat if you will— 

Deep thirst for undying fame leaves 
Many a poet bloated lying there still. 

Perspective Distance

--for Ed Baker 



the moon looks


to be fleeting 

yet staying


on intimate terms

an arm’s length away 

Regarding Warning Labels on Provocative Works of Literature

Be forewarned— 

These poems contain language 
That might be considered unsavory 
And thus unfit for public consumption 
By large portions of the hoi polloi. 

If you’ve been served 
Shit for brains, don’t 
Just stand there diddling about, 
Eat your fucking heart out.

Must Read: Electrifyingly Imperative Chinese Multi-Language Vispo Found Poem!

Please right click to open new window, thus letting in as many mosquitos as necessary to fully appreciate stunning power of poetic apparatus.

Tale of the Lonesome Pine

Been rooted here so long 
Listening to the wind, 
Don’t make much sense 
To get up and mosey on 
Further down the ridge. 

If I did, I’d be still 
There standing in line 
Looking up 
Waiting to see 
How much I missed. 

Huuklyeand Cinquor on Shelley's "Poets are the Unacknowledged Legislators of the World"

Gentlemen, have we all gone mad? 
In the Muse’s name, let us 
Proceed with all due haste! 
Clearly there are other things 
More crucial to our material 
And spiritual well-being, 
With examples so bountiful that 
Many of our disillusioned 
Noble riders believe 
Such romanticisms should be 
Summarily dismissed as being 
Inconsequential and irrelevant 
To the nightmarish issue that keeps 
Rearing its ugly head before us, to wit: 

Do we have a quorum? 
Or more to the point, 
Have we ever had one? 



Moderator’s comments: I think it’s high time Huuk dismounted his high horse and went to pasture. With the exception of the plague of stable boys and girls who keep grooming Pegasus for the next running of the MFA Perennial Win Place and Show Poetry Sweepstakes, who gives a flying Phaeton fuckaroo about poetry, anyway?

Going, Going, Gone

Never a get-up-and-goer you feel 
There’s nothing to keep you here, 
That you could slip away 

Any time now with nobody 
The wiser—or worse yet—nobody 
Giving a damn how your time was spent,

And oh with everybody who’s anybody 
Wishing you a long, safe journey 
To wherever it is you went. 

Huuklyeand Cinquor on Confrontational Vanguard Poetics

Are you reading this? Well,
Nailed to the wall of the derelict 
Latrine next to the yellowed stool, 
A rusty spike holds all 
The news from the rearguard 
That’s shit to print, you fool.


Moderator’s comments: A close reading of this poem reveals Cinquor’s forte, namely his en garde rapier-like wit deceptively hiding under the surface but always ready to leap forth and revel in exposing the foibles of contemporary verse theory. All well and welcome, of course, but permit me to have my reservations about the intentions behind his pressing yellow attacks on such an  august postmodern body of verse learning. A bit more to the point: Scuttlebutt on the blogosphere has it he’s preparing a tome of his apophthegmata and planning to use this blog as a launching pad. If this is indeed the case, I must impress on him the fact that copyright law dictates I be paid in full, if and when his coprolalia eventually hits the fan. 

Thinking Once More of Refuting Heraclitus, I Step into the Stream of My Consciousness Again

still wet behind 

the ears why is it all 


the while thinking 

you remain solidly fluid 


no matter how 

many times you try 


you always 

come out high and dry 

Gone to Pasture before You Know It

It’s when the few dazed village 
Old-timers left weave through 
The automobile-overrun streets 
Looking for the nearest 
Iron loop bolted to any building 
They used to tie their asses to. 

Reflect on It Like Wilde

Some say darkness is never complete, that 
It needs some light to make it into a whole. 

One could spend an entire lifetime 
Parsing this conundrum. 

It would be like putting yourself in a coma 
Most of the time and the rest trying 

To take yourself out. 

Lupine

A full moon. 

The call of wolfhounds 
Echoing in the night, waiting 

To hear the shadow 
Of their former selves 

Looming in the light. 

You Asked for It

When nothing keeps 
Coming through the door 

When least expected, 
Nothing more. 

In Passing, Simply Fantastic

A poem should be 
A medium, let’s say 
A vehicle 

To spirit us away 
To another world 
Without us knowing it, 

Just like a hearse. 

Survival of the Fittest

Some call it poetic justice— 
How fitting it is indeed that 

The most vocal of creatures remain 
Dumbstruck by the babbling of beasts. 

Testimony: Raymond's Early Years

The logging town’s main drag was once 
Planks supported on stilts above the mud- 
Flats where amongst the taverns and cat- 
Houses, drunks could be seen falling 
Through rotting boards or over the railings, 
While the upright citizenry kept voting 
In sheriffs who stood for whores galore 
And the inalienable rights of winos delirious
To bite off the heads of snakes at a nickel
A score offered by thrill-seeking urchins 
Who kept thirsting for more. 

Tell Us Your Life Story in about Fifteen Words

Bankruptcy— 

Whenever the sun came out, 
They’d tell me to save it 

For a rainy day. 

The Pursuit of Happiness

Precious 

Silver lines each separate cloud— 
All the same, everybody wants 

To be over the moon. 

Evensongs

The loudspeakers keep 
The message of the liturgy 
Resounding throughout 
The village and even if 
They should want, it is hard 
For those outside the church 
To ignore. Such urgency! 

But there’s more— 

If the wind should blow
Just right towards where 
You’re going about your work, 
With no effort at all you can 
Still hear the crystal-clear voice 
Of a lone shepherdess calling 
Her wayward flock home. 

Spiritual Cripple's Warped American Dream

Sometimes I dream I never left 
My poor miserable homeland, 
That I never went to the new world 
Where dollars were said to be 
Plentiful as leaves falling 
From trees and all you had 
To do was keep stooped over so 
You could pick them up with ease, 
And where now I dream 
I wake up rich and not deformed 
Beyond my wildest dreams. 

Color Blindness of Homeric Proportions

Talking their heads off on the beach 
Till they’re blue in the face, they do not see 

How the wine-dark sea is laughing at them. 


NB: http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/hoffman_01_13/

To My Precocious Granddaughter, All of Twenty Months

The only soul who speaks English to you, I wonder 
How much of it will stick in your little head— 

Precious, I hope it doesn’t end up Greek once 
You happen to read my poems after I’m dead. 

Rubberstamped

Come to think of it, 
I like my poems so much 
I don’t even have to read them. 

Brave New World, 1948

Maiden voyage making my way 
To the new world, so naïve 
At four I didn’t know what 
To make of an ice cream when 
It was handed to me on deck 
By the first black man I’d ever seen. 

Standing frozen there next to mom, 
I held on to it and her and watched 
It melting as I mustered the courage 
To move to the railing and throw it away— 
I still don’t know what flavor it was 
I was casting away. 

Poetries in Motion

From a distance I can see 

(The two brothers close 
To one another, the older 
One striding briskly, the younger 
Backwards, trying hard 
To keep pace, both 
Mouths animated, moving in 
What may or may not be) 

Unison. 

Throwback

I thought once I returned 
To the motherland, I’d remember 
Things I’d long forgotten— 

How silly to think one could 
Go back and fetch memories 
As if they were sticks 

To be retrieved and you 
A mere puppy playing 
At being a man. 

Carpe Diem (On a Sunny Spring Day)

From where I sit, here’s how 
It’s done, mate— 

Two cold-blooded conjugated 
Saurians getting their rocks off right 

Here and now on a hard bed 
Of warm slate. 

Belated World Poetry Day Poem

The first day of spring demands 
A poem second to none, Maestro— 

So let the music begin, 
And may the best song last 

Till one better comes along. 

Avian Flash Fiction

This is where I tell you how 
My whole life flew past me 

As I reeled 

Off one hundred stories 
In one fell swoop. 

Do You Read Me, Pinhead?

Don’t be surprised,
Dude— 

Up from the gutter right 
Up your alley 

After you, the king 
Pin's waiting

His turn to bowl 
Your world over— 

Where are you? 

Huuklyeand Cinquor on Poets Coming Clean with their Craft

I thought if I washed out my mouth with lots 
Of soap and water, my speech 
Would henceforth spume forth 
A fountainhead 

Of pure verse shining 
And smelling like a million bucks— 
But all that came up reeked 
Of a foul, wishy-washy tongue all 

Fucked up and too utterly bankrupt 
To strive towards any semblance of upkeep. 


Moderator’s comment: Huuk certainly knows his way around the poetic blogosphere— who would have thought he’d latch on to a catchy phrase from Conrad DiDiodato’s comment on a post over at ursprache and work it into a telling commentary on the modern poet’s coming to terms with his/her language predicament—whatever that may be.

NB:

In the event the ursprache link is broken, here’s Conrad’s comment on a Seferis quote (“Unimaginable how much patience is needed to see the simplest things. How much patience I need to write a single verse.”):

Borrowing phraseology from C.S.Lewis, I'd say you can start by wanting to write good verse (for which much patience is required) and in the end you may get Poetry; however, beginning with the "soap and water" of much contemporary poetry will get you nothing at all. Of that you can be certain