August 31st

I don't usually date my poems,
(I prefer to date my girlfriend!)


August 31^st

I’ve greeted the hummingbird for years,
  I say ‘Hello,’ though naught she hears,
She looks a finger on the wing,
  An emerald the breezes bring,
She needlepoint’s each tatted flower,
  Then off she zips, magneto powered

Soon Autumns’ wind will brag and boast,
  Then tail wind her down the coast,
Flower petals will fall, broad trees will brown,
  And in orange hours earlier,
We’ll hold hands
  And watch our Sun go down 

Beans

Today, a love story… (queue music)
Where shall I begin…?


Beans

The day she reclaimed her old Spring nest
  We made no bold fanfare,
Just, from invisibility over that
  Straw grass mess,
Pop! That morning she was there

Those next few weeks I’ll not forget,
  I grew to think her like a pet,
As I stirred my morning eggs,
  So she turned hers,
Often would I talk to her,
  She being a good listener
She, of course, never spoke a word,
  She, who waited by my kitchen door,
Always poised, that demure bird,
  Had become the mourning dove that I adored

After her broodlings hatched,
  I dared only painfully, so quietly, to turn the latch
Then tip-toe, quiet as a cat, past the nest,
  Stealing my way, out my own kitchen door!
As they grew, I knew,
  Their time to fly would come around,
When I found, on my shoes and on the ground,
(this ‘ground’ here being the cement apron before the garage)
  That which under birds’ nests is commonly found,
Beans, little black beans, with white bird poop eyes,
  Imagine them the negative of black eyed peas

Then came the dawn, looked out the door,
And saw that they were there…
  No more,

Three days later with a broom and dust pan
  I swept up the beans,
And carried them around back,
  The Beans,
Beans, from which no magic stalk shall grow,
Beans, to dissolve into the Earth,
  Or for spare blanket, just the Winter snow,
Beans, upon old summers dead garden to throw,
Beans, though these were are all that I had left
  To console my pining heart, bereft,

I tossed them away…

The Sun Can See

I know, I’ve been going to an Episcopal Chruch since ‘06. 10 years? I like it. I call it Vitamin People! But, on the fear of Hell or the discernments of Heaven, there are just some old Buddhist weeds I haven’t pulled yet.
Maybe won’t.


The Sun Can See

The Sun, it sees no shadows
  As it’s glow enlightens Earth,
It does not cast our darker moods,
  By which we judge our worth

At times I’m crooked, sometimes ill bent,
  At times my lenten angel shows,
As I stand, lit, in enlightenment,
  My shadow shapes dance me below,

Say, what swallows catch our egos,
  As we rise proudly in rebirth?
The Sun but sees it’s radiance show,
  As it nurtures us on Earth

Nor a Cozy Hudson Valley House

Today, after a recent purchase on Amazon.com (not an endorsement) I wrote a review of H.G. Wells "First Men in the Moon." This is an exaggeration of that review;


Nor a Cozy Hudson Valley House

I and my friend Wells packed for
  A trip we’d planned for all alone,
Not on Fire Island,
  Nor a cozy Hudson river home,
But our three day stay weekend on the Moon!

We packed water biscuits and dry good triscuits,
  Cellophane saltines wherever they would fit,
Boxes of crackers in wax paper wrappers,
  And drove off in Wells Volkswagon stick,
On reflated helium tires pumped
  With little rubber stoppers

"This is Major Tom to Ground Control,
I’m driving in my camisole,
  It doesn’t cover everything
Leaves some to ‘magination,
  Despite all this thin air up here,
No problems with ignition!"

Nearing the moon Wells turned with a swoon,
  As we rumbled down off the gang plank,
And bless out Stars! We had made good time,
  And still had us half of a gas tank!

With his paring knife Wells cut a slice
  Just as pretty as you please,
Only to choke, and kinda half throw up,
  Exclaiming, "The moon, it’s not made of cheese!"

Still, though the tide was way out,
  We decided to romp in the dutch,
We’d been told this was a gay moon beach, but
  Found that all Moon Men are dead straight butch!

"This is ground control to Major Tom,
You’re getting "stares," and "how do you dares,"
  Is it something has gone wrong?
Better put your suit back on…
  Better put your suit back on…"

Thus were we taken prisoner by
  The Straight Men in the Moon,
Is wasn’t funny, with their Muffin Top Wives,
  Leading straight suburban lives,
And all their two-point-three Moon kids
  Strapped in their Moon baby buggy SUV’s

And that’s when Wells had THE idea, saying
  "Does anybody know some show tunes?"
And together we proceeded to do
  The musical we’d rehearsed together,
Called "Drag Race Banana Beach Riot!"

For which the moon people just wouldn’t stay quiet!
  Howling, like a pack of Moon Wolves at the Earth,
Waiving their arms (of which they had six),
  Up in the air like they just don’t care,
In a lunatic ecstasy of mirth
 
Now, you just won’t believe me,
  But that’s when we discovered
The Moon is really a kinky place, where
  The Moon Men wear makeup,
And Moon Women strap things
  Onto both of their hips,

But you didn’t hear that from my lips!

Get Fuzzy...

Today was Christines' Birthday. Got Foods from the 99, had prezzies on the porch. And she gave me this cartoon, from last Sundays' funnies.
When a girl gives a poet sumpin' like this, we lissens'!

Again! (For Our Athletes’ Return)

Seen enough of the Rio Olympics?
There'll be a vacuum when they're over...tomorrow.


Again! 
  (For Our Athletes’ Return)

When first you met an apparatus,
  The track, the beam, the mat,
Whose first poke prodded you ‘climb on?’
  Run down, climb up, jump over?
What bound enthrallment’s lock on you,
  That you went back
    Again?

Are there words for your intangible desire?
  Men and Women too often return to brutal lovers,
And you’ve been knocked down,
  Bruised, suffered ignoble injuries,
Breathless chasing the endless mile,
  Take the stand for another trial,
Does it really love you like none else.
  That you go back
    Again?

Your world is a stoic pyramid,
  Where athletes all, in teams and blocks,
Are but foundation stones, square cut and base,
  For others to step and climb above,
Or perhaps you step on them, to find,
  That you crush them like grapes to wine,
Feeling deserving, you’ve got the right
  To stand on Mt. Olympus heights,
Until, sic transit gloria mundi,
  You fall back down
    Again

Yes you, the naked challenger.
  With no triumph yet to bear,
And you, the just once honored,
  Having tasted the rarified air,
And you, Victor, with twenty-eight,
  Whom one would think no longer cares,
What straw boss whips you on to pare
  One tenth of a second, gain
One tenth of a point, set
  For the ten-thousandth time,
You’ve suited up, gotten rubbed down,
  Chalked it up, done your cool down,
And now has come the time 
  For you to claim your crown
   Again!

I loved you when a little child,
  I love you more today,
I’ll love you more next year, in four,
  When you return
    Again!

　

Not Knowing Dreams

When I was a Zen student, like 1984, a friend told me "I had a dream, in which before me was a big leather bound book."
"Seems like a Guttenberg Bible," I noted (not his words).
He went on, "I was told it had ‘All The Answers’ in it. But when I lifted the cover, and I opened it, I suddenly woke up. Why did I wake up just as I was about to see what was in it?"
"It’s likely because," I surmised, "You don’t know what ‘All The Answers’ are. You don’t know what ‘it’ looks like, therefore you can’t picture what it ‘would look like’ to see it in your dream."
 

Not Knowing Dreams

I really don’t need dreams,
I don’t even like dreams,
  Least of all my own

I’m asking someone
  "What’s in the portfolio?"
They bait me on,
  ‘Cause they don’t know

A fight begins and I’m pulled in,
  "What purpose this imbroglio?"
They can’t tell me
  ‘Cause I don’t know,
That’s typically
  How my dreams go


That Special Book
  The ‘Word’s’ writ in,
I open it,
  Nothing’s written,
Same as they end,
  My dreams begin,
What I don’t know,
  I can’t put in

I plea and quest and
  Struggle for, because…
If I understood, I’d speak the word,
  Thus knowing in dreams, I’d have no cause,
So happier, at peace within,
  I’d need no more dreams
   To begin

The Bowlers’ Beer Check

I haven't been bowling since like 2002, but yes, you go bowling with the guys, this is a real thing. 
PS: Sorry I couldn't find a better rhyme for 'Beer," but believe me - that is what we'll say.


The Bowlers’ Beer Check

At our local bowling alley
  All us real man drink beer!
And if it isn’t Budweiser,
  We'll all surely call you queer

    (Hey, don’t call me Shirley!)

‘Course all those bottles of beer,
  Each with the exact same label,
Make it hard to find your own,
  That is, assuming you are able

    (Guy, yuh hammuhd!)

So a man will scratch his nail
  In the wet condensated paper
There to make his mark, his nick,
  His check, his label shaper

    ("That’s my nick,"… "That’s my mark,"      
      … "That’s my, what the fuck?")

But me, I got a better plan
  To locate the beer I’ll pull,
I always look the table over,
  And then, there… see?
    That’s mine, the one that’s full!

Sortition

Friday, as a gift, my brother sent me a box of books. One, an old crispy well browned collection of Emerson, including poetry, had once been (we think) our Mothers’.
This isn’t really Emerson’s style (His was very 19^th century, lots of rhyming couplets), but for this tome I do blame him for the alchemy.
 

Sortition

Oligarch asked the Sortition;
"To serve you best, you wise men all,
 Say how may I state my position?"
The Sortition answered Oligarch;
"By pleasing us, you buy us all,
 What we ask is manumission"

Oligarch promised the Sortition;
"I can bring wealth, make rich you all,
  Space for your kin, from famine and rust"
The Sortition answered Oligarch;
"We are men of virtues’ parsimony,
  We work, we tithe, in God we trust"

Oligarch fought for the Sortition;
"I will protect you, your lives,
 Your homes, your lands, you’re rights!"
The Sortition answered Oligarch;
"We need no rights that come from you,
  You serve yourself in all you do" 

Oligarch begged of the Sortition;
"At least let me fund your charity"
The Sortition answered Oligarch;
"It’s not we delegates that choose you,
  But what we choose delegate to you"

The Sortition walked to the Oligarch’s gate,
Where they found a soul ill-treated by fate,
Her empty cup extended, asking,
Her feet most sore in need of washing,
Blindfolded and baring the scales
Of human justice’inflicted ails,
A beggar woman, a homelss bum,
Though untouchable they chose her, the shunned,
And told Oligarch;
"You want to serve?
  Serve us the least, to serve us best,
  You serve this one"

I & Cleo

Today's poem is dedicated to Mogie Kinosian, long time college friend, genius,

 who said "Let's call her Cleopatra."

Ok Mogie!


I & Cleo

"Hey Cleo, did the mail lady come?"
  Cleo doesn’t answer, but I know that she’s not dumb,
She’s a mourning dove,
  Who’s nesting on her second brood
Upon the driveway lamp
  In the garage alcove

We call her Cleo, because
  We thought she needed a name,
Something Royal, Queenly, Egyptian,
  And when a friend pointed out
The blue mascara about her onyx eyes,
  Cleo she was

"Those eggs must be hard boiled by now!"
  Through all this summer heat and drought
She’s been on the nest two weeks,
  She responds to me by staring,
Two eyes, thumbnail head, beak,
  She’s still doing it now

Tomorrow is my birthday,
  And I’m anticipating presents,
Cleo has been moving about,
  Turning, stirring, still again, content,
And yes I talk to her, staring eyes,
  I just enjoy her presence

Nothing in the mail box,
  No boxes by the door,
No fledglings poking peeking out,
  I & Cleo, we’ll wait more…

After a Night in Oak Bluffs

Another of my seasonal summer memories, here on MV, in Oak Bluffs,  where I recall a semi-conjured memory of meeting the ocean 'after hours'.


After a Night in Oak Bluffs
　
After a night in Oak Bluffs,
I’ve had three beers and a gin & tonic
On top the blue plate fish and corn,
Now looking out on the seas’ dark sights
My girlfriend calls it a ‘wash ashore,’
  Who parties extra chronic

After a night in Oak Bluffs,
The sea water does look an ink well,
Stretching out to the Cape Cod lights,
While trying to climb the beach wall heights,
& Jump in the sea of night ‘Bluff sites
  With every pounding swell

To have it’s own Oak Bluffs night,
To walk up the humid sweat streets,
Taste the oysters from it’s own beds,
Sip a Guinness or a deep red wine,
‘Fore the tides go out at closing time
  And ebb the night club beats,

So ‘good night’ says Oak Bluffs,
You waters go home to your beds,
To ours shall we point our own heads
Yet we’ll be back in the morning time,
To dive and swim in your wet sand bars
  ‘til the day tides turn their ebb

3 Poems Inspired by Jogging Girls on a Mid August Morning

I suppose with the heat and the drought, Christine and I have become prisoners to the A/C.
Yet everyday, at one or so, like mad dogs and Englishmen, High School and College age girls go jogging by. Bentley College is out this month, I really don’t know where they come from.
So here's three inspired by August jogging women　


Three Women in Couplets

Pretty girls with pony tails
  Jog on by with your hair all a flail,
Hope you don’t mind, I’ll watch from afar,
  I really don’t know who you are

Lovely Ladies with short docks,
  You primp your hair, show off trim locks,
As with a humming trilling sound,
  You’re sun smiles make our world go round

Now elderly, yet with more class,
  You let life to the younger pass,
Though when attending you still sing,
  As we turn in the way of all things


Mid August Jogger

The tower bell tolls endless noon,
  I think it just struck thirty-five,
I know I must get going soon
  But this August heat, I’m half alive

Under this drought no lawn needs mowing,
  While a girl runs by, her tied hair flowing,
Slow up a sec, I’ll run with you,
  From whence you came, where are you going?

And she’s gone…


The August Tan

She lies down upon the grass
  On a beach towel, in her bikini,
No Earth has ever moved such hills and valleys,
  Following the summer sun,
Like sunflowers do,
  Until the August month is done

She knows of how the sprinkling timer is set,
  As do the rolling knolls await dawns’ dew,
I wonder, when she hears it coming on,
  Then does she beg? Silently…?

As the spray rolls up her two foot soles,
  It causes twitching in her legs,
And over arms and up her back,
  Then on her hair completes its tack

Now to coolly dry, evaporation,
  Feeling the moist bread oven wind until
The sprinkler, on its next rotation

Friend, it’s not about the conquest,
  Or the thrilling chase for miles,
It’s the pleasing look she warmly makes,
  While in the sun she smiles

A Vineyard Cricket

It's that time of year again, Cricket season! To celebrate, here's a new one (I know, but I'll shorten it by next year) celebrating both the season and the year Christine I I stayed on MV later in August than usual.

 

 



A Vineyard Cricket

Our first night we were enchanted
  by her choirs of evensong crickets,
Her being Martha’s Vineyard, where we,
  freshly arrived for an August week,
Heard them, bred of the island’s thickets,
  large, black, otherwise much like pudgy
Grasshoppers, joyously musing all night,
Harping their wing shells in constant sound,
  they never needing to leave the ground.

I, wanting to make a strange new friend,
I, my ear put out, found I could hear
  each choir members’ choral banter,
The one on the tree, those in bushes,
  and here, by the corner of the garage door
Below the overhead driveway light,
  behind a petunia planter,
I ‘earwitnessed’ his hide out, while he
  bowed his soulful 'O Solo Mio's'
To his crickette friends out in the night,
  and whom I easily took hostage,
With a plastic cup and new postcard,
  and brought in swiftly to our cottage

   I had a plastic terrarium,
Brought on vacation with us, bespoke,
  set to let for such a summer guest,
Added island sticks, grass, leaves, gravel,
  with fresh lettuce hearts, to make his nest

  I saw trepidation in our friend,
Who neither sang nor panicked, but clung
  to a twig, watchful as an old folklore hob,
While we set about our dinner
  of grilled fish and foil corn on the cob.
Then after which my love and I played
  double rounds of X-rated scrabble,
Then commenced to another game called
  ‘Let’s play ‘this’ next now, here on the floor,’

After, when we retired for the night,
  a bed check noted, on the lettuce,
Was evidence of hungry munchin’,
   and after lights were out, about two,
We heard him chirping, from the kitchen!
  and were serenaded, and slept by,
His island circadian rhythms

In the mornings, or returning from
  island beaches, we would take him out, 
He seemed happy to crawl in our hands,
  we twisting our arms akimbo,
As he walked about in corkscrew paths,
  up our elbows to wherever he may go

He was natural at posing for
  close-ups, with a flash and macro lens,
Like a Rembrandt study of the day, 
  or in still life to mock a trompe l'oeil,
Excepting he’d no intention to 
  take direction as which way to look,
Yet the flash revealed a light in his
  polished onyx eyes, two star pupils,
Presenting us this true persona, 
  underneath two reaching antennae,

Time, such summer weeks accustom us,
  until when the fifth or sixth day comes
We’ve cleaved ourselves to the lifestyle
  we wish for, but cannot hope to keep,
So, just as we’d riddened and banished
  the trials of our work week and lives,
We began to prepare and accept 
  returning to them, packing to leave,
Released our cricket friend to scamper
  free, with a heartfelt but short adieu,
By the old petunia planter

As we’d borrowed the Landlords beach chairs,
   they’d asked I leave them in the garage,
Which I took out into the twilight,
  carried down the gravel driveway, and
Lifting the garage gate with a pull
  I set them in the space by the fuse box,
Flipped off the light switch and while leaving
  I pulled down the garage door, while I,
Looking under the driveway lamp saw, 
  happy as a puppy to his master,
Running to greet me, not disaster,
   while I cried "No! Cricket!" 
As he ran under the falling gate

   

Two Weddings and a Meadow

Yeah I know, this is just what the New Yorker wants to print.
;8^P


Two Weddings and a Meadow

My fiancé and I,
  Dining on the veranda,
Wending our thoughts through careless loves’ meander
  In the sun’s low afterglow,
Shared our views by a wanton and bucolic meadow,
  Where we agreed the food and staff were grand,
And while she fluttered her furtive hand,
  I silently prayed, that our check would not too be a grand,
When two frisky rabbits bolted by in a chase,
  Bounding zig and zag in the center of the space,
Where she, the doe, stopped sudden bowing with a ladies grace,
  While he, the buck, leaping, soared on high above her,

   "I didn’t know there would also be a show!"

We had observed this ritual three times
  Before we got the inkling
Of the shimmering golden droplets he let spray in the sunlight,
  And with which, every time he bound above her in flight,
Did he shower her, like a mid-summers’ garden sprinkler

Her: "This is a most unusual dance,"
Me: "I know what this is, this is loving Natures game of tag,
  Where in these open places, after the foreplay of their chases,
  He will grant her certain traces that are meant to be noticed,
  By other rabbits, who may be, ‘nosey’"
Her: "You call that dating?"
Me: "I call it… a rut,"
Her: "And you aspire to this?"
Me: "It may be, in comparison, it’s our lives whose are the hum-drum,
  We, who sit here, judging severe, these honest rabbits in their… scrum,
  For spying on them asks me, are we bereft of love’s natural lust,
  Never to pair in such delights, as they do in their pissy meadow love,
  With it’s warm golden showers, ‘fore the setting of the sun?"

And then, she held a round thing before me,
  Not gold, but the one thing we bound with, us, did I see,
Her: "I’m sorry, but I’m giving back your ring"

Chimney Swifts

Been reading a book Christine gave me for Xmas last year, titled "Ardennes," a history of the Battle of the Bulge. In the end, the towns of Houfallize and St Vith were so thoroughly carpet bombed by the Allies, primarily to prevent the Germans from retreating through them, that when the chimney swifts returned in Spring they were completely stunned and disoriented.


Chimney Swifts

They were carried home North,
  By warm Spring blowing forth,
In the midst of the first weeks of May,
  All of them little black crosses
Once some Men mistook for bats,
  Though they flew in the highlight of day

And they, gay, who were fledglings last year,
  Remembering their chimney crib crèches,
And they, gay, mature for roosting this year,
  Knowing each where they would build their nests,
Were all a chatter, singing for the river midge,
  And the home dew flies they’d soon eat with cheer

Until, as they circled, once around, and around,
  Where what once been their town,
They discovered the world had gone queer,
  For the houses they had known,
And the chimney’s where they kept,
  Like the men, they no longer were here

Naturally, as the Swallows fly in,
  And do homing pigeons,
All the Swifts had returned to their home,
  Just to find it all rubble,
They to scratch life from stubble,
  Without thought that they’d be forced to roam,

For all of the homes that they had known,
  All their town, it’s bricks and it’s stones
It’s streets, and it’s dogs and it’s trees,
  Had been ground down to bit gravel raw
Alone by Mans’ martial cacoethes,
  By soul to feed the craving juggernauts of war