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.