Damn Dreams

I had a dream last night
a great dream
there were lyrics and everything

I woke up singing something to do with
coming home to television

there was a tune and everything
unrecorded
I guess that's what dreams are

all about

- Debbie Calverley

For my Old Pal Steve Parker.

Five Moose Night

Wonderful, really, the way the full moon
casts an enormous shadow of a seemingly tiny
but in truth enormous moose across the meadow grasses
stroked by wind. Happy, too, the way the wind
in my face does not blow my scent to the moose.
The wonderful moose and the wonderful moose shadow,
the very possibilities of which I have never imagined
but the reasons nevertheless I walk in the woods at night.

His shadow dewlap's a yard long, his antlers vast
spatulate hands holding up the moonlight
and the brightest few barely visible stars.
Wonderful, the abundant chartreuse wolf lichens silvered,
the meadow grasses dimly flashing, the moss-filled
not uncomfortable depression of stone I have seated myself in.
Intermittently dark, the shadows under the trees,
into which the tiny moose, at last, herds the enormous shadow one.

Lonesome, the thirty more minutes I wait, the wind
wandering also away, and half-blind, my walking
into the woods myself, watchful, slow, straining for silence.
Wonderful, the silence and the shadows of the trees,
and wonderful, the light from the kitchen window,
a golden parallelogram illuminating both the bird bath
and the great bull moose lapping with its shadows,
one cast to the left by window light, one to the right by the moon.

ROBERT WRIGLEY

Crazyhorse
Fall 2014

Merry Christmas

How Beautiful.

Prior to Departure... I love my designers!

Ah, at last!!!

Star in My Eyes (*)

There's a star in my eyes

and although I rub and I rub

I can’t get it out -

next to the eyelash

due north of the orbit

never will my lens accept
the reasons for

this great divide.

Somewhere
a sparrow shudders
as it flies.

-Debbie Calverley

Weight

My father, ninety, is losing weight

Like the deer in lean winter

that forage for berries on his front lawn.

We both notice the ribs that form

a convex bowl around them
as if the body knows when to embrace.

-Debbie Calverley

Delivery

The new oven finally arrives

as do I
funny - all in the same day.'

- Debbie Calverley

Two Poems by Mary Oliver

The Wasp

Why the wasp was on my bed I didn't
know. Why I was in bed I did know. Why
there wasn't room for both of us I
didn't know. I watched it idly. Idleness
can be a form of dying, I did know that.

The wasp didn't communicate how it felt.
It did look confused on the white sheet,
as though it had landed somewhere in the
Arctic. And it did flick its wings when
I raised my legs, causing an upheaval.

I didn't want to be lying there. I didn't
want to be going in that direction. And
so I say it was a gift when it rose into
the air and, as wasps do, expressed itself
in a sudden and well-aimed motion.

Almost delicious was its deep, inflexible
sting. 

Little Crazy Love Song

I don't want eventual,
I want soon.
It's 5 a.m. It's noon.
It's dusk falling to dark.
I listen to music.
I eat up a few wild poems
while time creeps along
as though it's got all day.
This is what I have.
The dull hangover of waiting,
the blush of my heart on the damp grass,
the flower-faced moon.
A gull broods on the shore
where a moment ago there were two.
Softly my right hand fondles my left hand
as though it were you.

Mary Oliver

Happiness Is...

Sticking with the plan.
Staying loyal.
Working it out.
Staying the course.

Totally worth all of it.  Glad I stuck everything out!

Poem to Someone

Hello hello
stop:
I remember when we used to: stop
talk:
stop
you were hilarious
and adorable
stop:
I was feeling
always
feeling my way
stop:
a heart broken
is a heart that
stop:
is open
make it
stop:
stop:
stop:

-Debbie Calverley

Stumbling across all kinds of gems today!

http://lord-checa.blogspot.ca/2014_02_01_archive.html

Five Poems by Helwig Brunner translated by Monika Zobel

http://www.theadirondackreview.com/HelwigBrunner.html

Some good reading for you -

http://conjunctions.com/webcon/datta14.htm

The City - Helwig Brunner

The City 
Helwig Brunner
translated by Monika Zobel

The city simplified to lines,
makeup removed from your face.
Houses, footsteps, and thoughts
are made of the same material,
graphite dust and diamonds.
Time stalls, lowers your lids,
to be now for once in the midst of
a sleeping world, clear-sighted
turned toward the groping questions
of the somnambulists.

Poetry - Ed Ochester

Poetry

I too dislike it
the mystified truisms
the dusty puzzle-prunes
the theatrical exaggerations:
"the brutal crescendo of woodworms"—

yet I think of O'Hara's delight
in the endless pleasures
of quotidian life and Duhamel
throwing a dozen balls in the air
and juggling them all
Frank said only a few poems
are as good as the movies
but that was a long time ago
before a lot of bad movies
before background music before
there was almost no silence and
"the private life" is an insult to others.

Poetry is the most private art:
Li-Young remembering his father
combing his mother's hair,
Stern and Gilbert with their mouths open
walking down a street in Paris, Judith
writing the mysteries of Level Green
and her father's radioactive chambers.
Catullus registering his private ecstasies
and fears while the machine of the state
ground on. Kinnell saying "go so deep
into yourself you speak for everyone."

ED OCHESTER

Pablo Neruda - for a friend.

If I die, survive me with such sheer force
that you waken the furies of the pallid and the cold,
from south to south lift your indelible eyes,
from sun to sun dream through your singing mouth.
I don’t want your laughter or your steps to waver,
I don’t want my heritage of joy to die.
Don’t call up my person. I am absent.
Live in my absence as if in a house.
Absence is a house so vast
that inside you will pass through its walls
and hang pictures on the air
Absence is a house so transparent
that I, lifeless, will see you, living,
and if you suffer, my love, I will die again.

– Sonnet XCIV by Pablo Neruda

John McCrae Memorial Book - Flanders Fields

Pass The Torch (Hiss) - a dedication

There comes a time when

we have to do it

no matter

Life is too big too small

to consider

we fight the dying flame

lines forming maps

across once flawless skin

sheer from pure naivety

the not knowing

everything seems smooth

it's only after that we learn

have the 'aha' moment

that the bumps are either

worth it or not

we can play that hand out

with a smile or not

that's all

the snake was saying in that

pre-dawn

long long hiss.

Debbie Calverley

Splendor in the Grass

Though nothing can bring back the hour of splendor in the grass, glory in the flower, we will grieve not; rather find strength in what remains behind.

Poetics #2 - Jack Crimmins

POETICS #2

 the old cellist
 comes to grieve
 his mind is going
 wild lilac

the Dry Mountains
in sight of the Inyo Mountains

 language as the water

inlet

 knife blade

     dusk

one hundred miles from Alturas
double hummingbird and the early work

Jack Crimmins

Couldn't decide - blonde or red, so did both!

Bye Bye-Ku

You hug and cry
and then
you say goodbye

From "A Dream Book" by David Harsent

Deep reaches of sleep until the unforeseen

moment, like fugue, like petit mal, some kind of sign,

a touch from a joker’s finger, to let him know what’s right,

what’s wrong with the dream-within-a-dream. A sudden, slight

shift in the order of things and all the past undone.

He left what was left of himself in her care that night.

•

They went to the river and dropped their clothes on the bank.

She struck out. He followed in the long, slow vee of her wake.

She could sound and surface, bringing back with her what

other lovers had dumped: hotel bill, gimcrack ring, a four-square shot

from the photo booth. Later, they dipped their bottles and drank.

She looked at him and laughed. “You think you’re safe? You’re not.”

•

In this, her fool is deaf and dumb and twirling a pink parasol. In this

he’s doing a chicken dance. He turns away and puckers up for a kiss.

He’s their stalker, familiar, spy, his slippy grin is all

lipstick and green teeth. Words to the wise, or coffin-laugh, or catcall.

In this, he watches from cover, maestro of the deadfall.

He goose-steps them out of the tunnel of love and into the house of glass.

Maps - Origin of WORDS - fascinating (and orange made it in)

https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/fascinating-maps-show-origin-words-135610187.html

You Better Not Hit Me With That Truck

You can have it good for
a really long time
then the universe snaps
it's fingers, the lens distorts
the push becomes a shove.

Your mind turns backwards
to the day you knew about 
endings but never understood
them fully only a peripheral
sense that something was off.

It all comes down to blood
and how long it can circulate
uninfected and untouched.
Such a strong colour
such fragile liquid.

- Debbie Calverley

Nothing like a prairie sunset from a limo....

What a Tree - right next door to me. Autumn has not quite given up yet....

Soft Landing (He Never Loved You)

An inkling of him lands

flutters in the chest

chatters in her ear

pecks at her fingers

and toes until it nests

forms an eggshell

around fragments, words

until one day long before

first light comes a singing

an intonation a prayer

of sorts that offers

a glimpse into something

sacredly fragile a fraction

of what once was –

poem manifested
bright with feathers.

Debbie Calverley

And the true genius....

Last of the Leaves & the Summer Roses

Prelude

Overnight, the leaves turned

gold

they scratch against sky so

blue

every hue becomes a magic

realism

late autumn that time of

magnificent

colour:  last minute walks

clouds

scattered so high in the sky

touch

seems  endless, if not

impossible

as if we know the heart:

bursts.

-Debbie Calverley

Soft Tissue

There is something special

about meeting in the flesh.

Eye to eye, tooth to tooth

a blush of cheek. 

Laughter on the lips

sadness in the fine lines 

spin a complex orbit.

A swallow, then a nervous cough

fingers tug at a pressed collar

small wrinkle at the sleeve

- your brows so smooth. 

So much more

to at long last kiss away.

Debbie Calverley

From "The Desk"

Fair enough: you people have eaten me,

I—wrote you down.

They’ll lay you out on a dinner table,

me—on this desk.

I’ve been happy with little.

There are dishes I’ve never tried.

But you, you people eat slowly, and often;

You eat and eat.

Everything was decided for us

back in the ocean:

Our places of action,

our places of gratitude.

You—with belches, I—with books,

with truffles, you. With pencil, I,

you and your olives, me and my rhyme,

with pickles, you. I, with poems.

At your head—funeral candles

like thick-legged asparagus:

your road out of this world

a dessert table’s striped cloth.

They will smoke Havana cigars

on your left side and your right;

your body will be dressed

in the best Dutch linen.

And—not to waste such expensive cloth,

they will shake you out,

along with the crumbs and bits of food,

into the hole, the grave.

You—stuffed capon, I—pigeon.

Gunpowder, your soul, at the autopsy.

And I will be laid out bare

with only two wings to cover me.

BY MARINA TSVETAEVA

Late July 1933

Moths

A translator who has a phobia of moths
spent three years translating a book with a moth motif.
It’s ironic, she has said, that she knew more about the moths
than the author of the original, who was merely fascinated.
The translation contained a greater variety of moths than the original,
drawn from suggestions she had made, some of which were in fact
too perfect and changed back before it went to print.

Her moths, the ones that were too aptly named,
meant too much, her moths that she hated, where are they now?
The same place as all the versions of people
that have been undressed and slept with, in lieu of the people
themselves, by others. That must include a version
of almost everyone, lots of versions of some people,
some only a flutter, animated then decided against.

CALEB KLACES

Continual Conversation With A Silent Man

Continual Conversation With A Silent Man
Wallace Stevens
b. October 2, 1879 
The old brown hen and the old blue sky,
Between the two we live and die--
The broken cartwheel on the hill.

As if, in the presence of the sea,
We dried our nets and mended sail
And talked of never-ending things,

Of the never-ending storm of will,
One will and many wills, and the wind,
Of many meanings in the leaves,

Brought down to one below the eaves,
Link, of that tempest, to the farm,
The chain of the turquoise hen and sky

And the wheel that broke as the cart went by.
It is not a voice that is under the eaves.
It is not speech, the sound we hear

In this conversation, but the sound
Of things and their motion: the other man,
A turquoise monster moving round.

Wallace Stevens

Beauty is momentary in the mind —
The fitful tracing of a portal;
But in the flesh it is immortal.
     Wallace Stevens

Sky Blue

Sky blue as ice
bruise on her hand
summer has fallen

geese on the wind
their wings whoosh 
over her bent head 

yesterday her uncle passed
harvest in the once full fields
everything turns
Into something else

-Debbie Calverley

Way Too Funny

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2758725/Apple-introduces-new-iTunes-button-allow-customers-delete-latest-U2-album-accounts.html

They always show up uninvited don't they!  Haha!

Birthday

A birthday across the street
a little girl wearing a pink and white
striped dress. Balloons on the mailbox
children arrive, one by one
attached to their mothers, 
not a dad in sight. 

One by one, birthday bags
drop on the lawn, mermaids
ballerinas, some simple plastic
shopping bags. The mothers gather-
chat, the little girls and boys begin
to jump up and down anticipating cake.

High in my spruce tree, another 
pine cone drops, severed by a squirrel
determined to head into winter prepared.
I shiver and turn up the furnace
sadly putting away all of my summer dresses.

Later that evening
I see the birthday girl being carried
asleep in her mothers arms
dressed in a yellow princess dress
complete with wings.
My phone unwillingly updates.

Debbie Calverley

Joan Rivers

Every comedian is furious. Age makes me angry. I'm unhappy at not being able to open packages anymore. I'm angry that libraries have gone. I hate children on planes. I'm very shallow, so they tend to be little things. To be honest, I think I was probably angry the day I was born, you know, about diapers or something.

Joan Rivers

Cookie

He told her a story

about a cookie

that made him lose a day.

Later, they walked then ran

ducking and dodging as rain

erased time.

A homeless man yelled:

“Don’t be sad!!”

over and over.

-Debbie Calverley

RIP Robin Williams.....

So very sad, and so very tragic.  Depression is such a horrible thing.

Not So Easy

I watch my cat limp across the living room
try to jump on the once so easy chair

My mind leaps to an article I read
about a 6 year old child locked

in a basement for years
eating only junk food

and pissing on his mattress.
I wonder how many others 

aren't discovered at all and just
live out their lives that way.

I wonder how many people
and animals

are unnecessarily being
brutalized

Right now

And then  my mind leaps to Putin
and the Ukraine

Palestine and Israel.
The downing of planes.

The taking of lives.
The stopping of oil and gas.

And I wonder why
I haven't responded to my last

email.  Or text message
I watch my cat limp across the living room

try to jump on the chair
once so easy.

- Debbie Calverley

I Knew the Selfie was old news......

http://www.vivianmaier.com/gallery/self-portraits/

No compromise.  Love it.  Nothing is new under the sun and so more creative.

Cheers, Darling - Watermelon Vodka St. John's

St. John's Nfld - charming harbour homes

St. John's - Whale!

St. John's Nfld - sunset in harbour

Poem

Do I write about you?
Have you gone? Or

are you perched on your throne
in my head pocket full of
beeswax -

faintly humming
your favourite song.

Debbie Calverley

Pride (In the Name of Love) Cover

Allen Grossman - The Ballad of the Bone Boat

The Ballad of the Bone Boat
(Meditation Three)
Allen Grossman (1932-2014)

I dreamed I sailed alone
In a long boat, a white bone;
Like a strong thought, or a right name
The sail had no seam.

The mast, and its shadow on the sea,
Fled like one high lonely tree
Bent with the weight of the wind-fruit sown
By the cold storm.

It was a dream of dignity
When I steered on that plated sea
With a seamless sail, and a boat like a bone,
In a fair time of the moon.

There was no rudder in the long bone boat,
The compass was a stone –
The air was empty of the deep sea gull,
And gone was the cry of the loon.

The sea and the sky were one dark thing,
The eye and the hand as cold.
Unbound was my hair, unbound was my dress;
Nothing beckoned or called

But the words of a song
That had death in its tune
And death in its changes and close –
A song which I sang in the eye of the moon,
And a secret name that I chose.

And this is the song: “Straight is the way
When the compass is a stone,
And the sail has no seam, and the boat is a bone,
And the mast is bent like a tree that bears
The wind-fruit of the moon.”

And now I sing, O come with me,
And be at last alone;
For straight is the way in the dream of the boat
That is a long white bone.