I Don't Believe in Silence

and in remembrance of Nov 2012 -

Because, tonight -

however I try - I cannot get downstairs

without waking my daughter

I do not believe in silence.

Because of the Warboys enquiry,

because of the two hundred-plus women he raped –

because of the policeman defending the findings

unable to utter the word -

“this (herrrrm) crime, this (ahem)

assault, this category (cough)

of offence” –

I do not believe in silence

because of the stairs and the banister’s crack;

the sound of the lock

and my hand on the door - the fifty-tone creak -

the magnificent echo of light-switch and click -

I do not believe in silence

Because of Neda - and everyone’s sister -

and the man who said ‘Don’t be afraid’;

for the sake of my daughter, because of the burkha,

because of the patter of rain;

because of two hundred-thousand years

of human history,

thirty-seven of them my own –

I do not believe in silence

for the sake of my arms, the wrists especially.

With respect to my legs

and my belly and chest

and the comfort long due to my throat

because of nightclubs at one am

and shouts in the street and feet in pursuit

and shops that don’t shut;

because of sirens and the dealers downstairs;

because of Levi and Akhmatova

because of the blue-lipped prisoner;

the itch and the scratch of my pen;

I believe in the word.

I believe in the scrabble of claws

on uncarpeted floors.

I believe in my daughter’s complaints.

I believe in the violin, the E-string,

the see-sawing bow; the cello

straining its throat.

I believe in the heart and its beat

and its beep and the dance of the trace

on the screen, I believe in the volume

of colour turned up, and my blood

which was always too loud.

Because of nights, and the sweats,

and the same rowdy thoughts;

because that one afternoon

when I nailed my own voice to the air

and because there was nobody listening

and through it all

birdsong

and the sound of cars passing -

I do not believe in silence.

Claire Shaw

Float

in remembrance of Nov 2008


He didn't leave he floated 
away as if he'd just done
a line of cocaine

(not that she would know
what a line does to gravity)

No sound of footsteps
only 

there she was
left floating too

(in Marilyn's favorite pool)

white fingers
stars pressed to a desert ceiling

My New Purchase! Also 'The City Never Sleeps'

City That Does Not Sleep

In the sky there is nobody asleep. Nobody, nobody.
Nobody is asleep.
The creatures of the moon sniff and prowl about their cabins.
The living iguanas will come and bite the men who do not dream,
and the man who rushes out with his spirit broken will meet on the
street corner
the unbelievable alligator quiet beneath the tender protest of the
stars.

Nobody is asleep on earth. Nobody, nobody.
Nobody is asleep.
In a graveyard far off there is a corpse
who has moaned for three years
because of a dry countryside on his knee;
and that boy they buried this morning cried so much
it was necessary to call out the dogs to keep him quiet.

Life is not a dream. Careful! Careful! Careful!
We fall down the stairs in order to eat the moist earth
or we climb to the knife edge of the snow with the voices of the dead
dahlias.
But forgetfulness does not exist, dreams do not exist;
flesh exists. Kisses tie our mouths
in a thicket of new veins,
and whoever his pain pains will feel that pain forever
and whoever is afraid of death will carry it on his shoulders.

One day
the horses will live in the saloons
and the enraged ants
will throw themselves on the yellow skies that take refuge in the
eyes of cows.

Another day
we will watch the preserved butterflies rise from the dead
and still walking through a country of gray sponges and silent boats
we will watch our ring flash and roses spring from our tongue.
Careful! Be careful! Be careful!
The men who still have marks of the claw and the thunderstorm,
and that boy who cries because he has never heard of the invention
of the bridge,
or that dead man who possesses now only his head and a shoe,
we must carry them to the wall where the iguanas and the snakes
are waiting,
where the bear's teeth are waiting,
where the mummified hand of the boy is waiting,
and the hair of the camel stands on end with a violent blue shudder.

Nobody is sleeping in the sky. Nobody, nobody.
Nobody is sleeping.
If someone does close his eyes,
a whip, boys, a whip!
Let there be a landscape of open eyes
and bitter wounds on fire.
No one is sleeping in this world. No one, no one.
I have said it before.

No one is sleeping.
But if someone grows too much moss on his temples during the
night,
open the stage trapdoors so he can see in the moonlight
the lying goblets, and the poison, and the skull of the theaters. 

Federico García Lorca

The History of Men
Jack Gilbert

It thrashes in the oaks and soughs in the elms.
Catches on innocence and soon dismantles that.
Sends children bewildered into life. Childhood
ends and is not buried. The young men ride out
and fall off, the horses wandering away. They get
on boats, are carried downstream, discover maidens.
They marry them without meaning to, meaning no harm,
the language beyond them. So everything ends.
Divorce gets them nowhere. They drift away from
the ruined women without noticing. See birds
high up and follow."Out of earshot," they think,
puzzled by earshot. History driving them forward,
making a noise like the wind in maples, of women
in their dresses. It stings their hearts finally.
It wakes them up, baffled in the middle of their lives
on a small bare island, the sea blue and empty,
the days stretching all the way to the horizon.

Not the End of The World

Not the End of The World
 
“Unhand her, vagabond,” was my one line
in the school play. I had the part of the cop,
a minor role compared to Beth Levine’s,
the heroine, or Billy Wiesenkopf’s,
the vagabond. Still, I took my part seriously.
So although he forgot to take her hand, right on cue
I yelled, “Unhand her, vagabond,” and it struck me
and everyone else, that my line made no sense. Then I knew:
this is the kind of mistake that will end the world;
a question of bad timing will hang in the air
like an empty trapeze swinging above the smoke
of that final disaster. Someone will utter a word
too late to take back, reach for a hand that’s not there,
and “It’s not the end of the world,” will not be spoken. 
 
Paul Hostovsky

“Silence makes idiots seem wise even for a minute.” 
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon, The Angel's Game

Boo

Now that she is dead to him he tosses and turns to the sound of sudden chains thudding in the deep night or awakens to the voice of a small bird that should only sing by day and as his buttons pop off his striped starched shirt he remembers her flying gummy bears popping from hurriedly wrapped paper and dancing across the airport floor rubbery evidence she is alive and well in the haunt

Happy Halloween - mwhahahaha

For Beebs

Where You Write

with your thumbs
unfold secrets until
they fly in your face 

open your mouth 
suck in deep 
seep become blood
become mucous

the grey in white bones
veins beneath mylar skin
absorb night until
day is abandoned

grow moons for eyes
be owl in the fir
trade skin for feather

swoop

Shipwrecked - Pat Boran

Shipwrecked

It used to be simple:
shipwrecked, you turned the boat over
and started from scratch,
your new home the nave
of a church, its prow pointing back
over the ocean
towards your previous life.
You lived with the loss,
did what you could, carried on.
You learned from mistakes,
your foolish belief
in the big talk of others;
you built things from bits
and from bones, what the sea offered up.
Now you're convinced
every sail is your saviour,
every noise is a plane
crossing the vastness of ocean
over and back, all these years later
still searching for you, the sole
survivor, waiting to tell them precisely
where it all went so wrong.

Pat Boran

The Next Life 

Friendship IXX

by Khalil Gibran

And a youth said, "Speak to us of Friendship."

Your friend is your needs answered.

He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving.

And he is your board and your fireside.

For you come to him with your hunger, and you seek him for peace.

When your friend speaks his mind you fear not the "nay" in your own mind, nor do you withhold the "ay."

And when he is silent your heart ceases not to listen to his heart;

For without words, in friendship, all thoughts, all desires, all expectations are born and shared, with joy that is unacclaimed.

When you part from your friend, you grieve not;

For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.

And let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit.

For love that seeks aught but the disclosure of its own mystery is not love but a net cast forth: and only the unprofitable is caught.

And let your best be for your friend.

If he must know the ebb of your tide, let him know its flood also.

For what is your friend that you should seek him with hours to kill?

Seek him always with hours to live.

For it is his to fill your need, but not your emptiness.

And in the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures.

For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.

A true friend stabs you in the front.

by Oscar Wilde

Players only love you when they're playing

-Fleetwood Mac

Some Form of Grace

He at the kitchen counter
carefully dices fresh tomatoes 
from our summer garden.
The simple things 
have kept us going-

and for that I finally
have to give someone
thanks.

Barbados, Here I Come........

A is for Anonymous

Don’t forget

her

metaphor

eyes

full of poetry

unwritten

wind

blown words

made from scratch.

You may be fooling

yourself:

life 

only appears

to change

"You're not the same as you were before," he said. You were much more... muchier... you've lost your muchness,"

The Mad Hatter - Alice in Wonderland

Abyss

If a good love poem requires a little darkness,
how far down can I go? Thousands of feet?
The coelacanth is near, but it's too easy—
the metaphor nettable and clear, the lost
link found, the beginnings of our own bones
in its pelvic fins—and I want to write about love
with depth to hold the unverifiable, the oarfish
that survives with half its body gone.
I want it to hold the giant squid no one has seen
alive, strong enough to scar sperm whales;
sailors have claimed its tentacles unfurl
from the night's water, taking down their mates.
But can such poems survive these confused witnesses?
Can they handle the scanty evidence that surfaces:
the mottled sick and dead, the night-feeding
viperfish impaling victims with fangs
at high speed, its first vertebra designed
to absorb the shock? And how much horror
can this poem sustain before you forbid me to say
some call this love, the hagfish that bores
into the unsuspecting body, rasping
its flesh from inside out? Am I making you
uncomfortable? The pressure at these depths
could crush a golf ball. Are you cold?
Or is it enough to be awed by the blue-
green photophores of the lantern fish, the brief
and brilliant light displays? What the lights say:
I want you. Not so close. I am moonlight;
I am not here. I would eat you raw—
tell me if you want me to stop.


Katrina Vandenberg

Bad Girl Singing - Mark Jarman

Bad Girl Singing

She took her roommate's cash,
walked out of a supermarché
without paying, lost her passport,
lifted another girl's and stole her boyfriend,
ditched class to see a boules tournament,
persuaded others to ditch with her,
so they could buy her lunch,
got sick drunk on Sundays,
arrested, threatened with deportation,
and finally, finally after her parents
were contacted in the States
and arrangements made to fly her home,
she went on our little tour
of historic sites and even there
pulled a typical stunt, distracting
everyone from the guide's good English.
Separated from our group, she stood
in the apse of the ancient church behind the altar,
singing with a voice that glowed
and brightened in the candlelit space.
She sang through her trouble and our trouble,
her lies and laziness, license and dishonesty,
our disapproval and distaste.
Unearthly at first but transmuting
the stoniness of the air, the flints
of stained-glass light, the chill,
her singing, like a lover's warmth,
entered our bodies and made us
recognize our desire was being offered back.
She sang her rejection of our rejection.
And we stood miracle-stricken, shame-blinded,
renewed by failure more than triumph.
No one excused her. She would have to leave.
But we yielded to her song.

MARK JARMAN

Flower

for my Grandmother - Irene Salay - 1917-2012

The garden gate is open - she halfway

across a ploughed field.
A man approaches, felt hat in hand
in his other, a brim of colour.

Movement slow, each step a memory
ageless, familiar.  Afloat
her voice, first bird of morning -

her smile wide
blue September sky;
dusk settles, pilgrim to land.

57 Shades of Orange

The Archer

Her eyes two slits, precise as arrow loops, turned parallel to earth and sky. The plain wide, horizon stretched elastic as the linen string pulled taut against her chest, her limbs as narrow as the precious longbow made of yew back to belly, sapwood to heart chin cupped as soft as Cupid’s iron adorned with Quail fletch bound with sinew as if to bone, ivory thumb-ring wrapped against pain of draw. She stands erect, width of foot to width of shoulder, left side to his, three fingers poised as if to pluck a delicate harp. She stands unconscious, blind to sight– there is no noise, save for sudden movement of their hidden song, warm tongue of fleshy pull whoosh of flight, an earthly thud. Her form collapsed around itself recoiled in the torment of her mark. Two bodies fall together,  soft as purple clovers  swathed black fields.

Sit down, says generous life, and stay awhile!
although it's irony that sets the table
and puts the meager food on broken dishes,
pours out the rancid wine, and walks away.

  - Robert Creeley
-excerpt from A Generous Life

Frightening Stuff

http://nplusonemag.com/leave-your-cellphone-at-home

Yum!

Oh oh... I've found a use for my plethora of garden tomatoes.....

Makes 1 drink

• 4 cherry tomatoes
• 3-4 fresh basil leaves, torn
• 1 lemon wedge
• 1 pinch sea salt
• ice
• 1 1/2 ounce gin
• basil sprig, for garnish

1. Muddle the whole cherry tomatoes, basil leaves, lemon juice from the lemon wedge, and pinch of sea salt in a shaker. (If you don't have a muddler, the handle of a wooden spoon works just fine.) Muddle until you get a good amount of juice from the tomatoes.
2. Add ice, and shake well. Strain through a fine sieve into a lowball cocktail glass.
3. Add gin, a little ice, and stir. Garnish with basil sprig, and enjoy!

The Bird Tree

In Spain, the birds arrived before dusk
to densify the solitary cedar
with their pre-coniferous apartment chatter.

Worlds and years away birds arrive 
before dusk, to fill the boughs
of my neighbor’s twin pines.

I wonder why they gather?
What is it they have to say?
They must know more than I.

They have taught me well to not heed
the selfish drone of men or women
to spend my time poeticizing

about the chatter of birds 
as they arrive one at a time
to let us know they’re home.

Autumn Lament

Every September I begin a poem this way:

The tree-tops are liquid gold

the sun is flying high, 

but not here, it is setting  long over 

stubbly fields.  The geese are calling

to the sky again.

I am caught in the perpetual motion

of life, seasons and words.   But who 

out there cares?  What significance 

do tree-tops hold, no matter the colour?

What does the sun care that it rises, sets

navigates a path? 

My cat’s claws are stuck 

in the screen door again - 

a clear sign the season is changing.  

Her claws don’t appear

anywhere near the screen door

between May and now.

And again, here am I

.

Princess Kiki

step forward

The Meantime

It's easy to overjoy a window with brilliant flowers 

but what if long-longed-for time suddenly bubbled
over the lip of the clock, as if each day doubled
due to a lost job or loved one slaughtered, leaving hours
to fill—how would you do it? Could you whittle
the Founding Fathers faces out of wood, or fold little
origami models of the same famous building?
With time, couldn't you master the craft of anything?
Maybe write precious verse or, worse, illuminate
the best of Aesop in needlepoint—someone ought to,
or maybe someone really oughtn't, so why, or why not you?
If time's a parking spot, life's what you do while you wait
for Mr. Whoever to get back in the car—a good hobby
to make this minute count like a droplet in the sea.

Craig Morgan Teicher

To Keep Love Blurry

Missing Cause - Paul Killebrew

Paul Killebrew

I was pulled

out of myself

through a leisurely

upheaval into

a dome of worry

so comprehensive

that every

splash of blue

in the air

was overlaid

with punctuation

and causality.

Facts on the floor,

an impossible less,

no answers for what

and all these

promises, these

door-knockers of rain,

this news

that gets less

symmetrical

all the time,

news about

living and falling

living, sweeps

of flavorful meaning

in the tournament

of night, or today

when I heard

bells outside,

a boat on the river,

some cars crocheting

the perilous

one-way streets

that rattle

the frame.

You founder

on permanence,

on necessary spaces,

empty months

cascading

through the year,

mood, eyesight, and

that which

comes into

the possession

of the mind.

You saw me—

you did—

across a crisp plane

in my decisions.

Then a hand

shot through

the grates

of your

terrifying disfigurement.

Gorillaz

Blue is Bluer

in August - everything green greener. If we could see the wind it would shimmer like the tulle of Yvette Chauviré's tutu as she pirouettes through paper summer leaves.

Happy Summer!