A little song for computer technology

TeKnowLAwGee

(21st Century Sonnet)

Soft flashy, cliques ‘n’ klatches, pulses thrum-

Ming dynasties of circuitries ‘n’ fits

Out of reality virtually mum,

Le machine shepherds us by bytes ‘n’ bits.

Escapist torpor drives le dawdling,

Doodling mécanisme, netted in its

Own web, site-unseen on-screen teeming

With each ‘n’ every monde of chips ‘n’ zips.

Multiple-universe drives A-C-D

In which lithe ratones run ‘n’ vise gate-

Keepers crash ‘n’ dive online to key

What mystifies ‘n’ throttles humanity –

Not brillo ‘n’ clamour, but tried, true bait:
Dissemination wide, spread geometrically.

2004

"TeKnowLAwGee" has not been published before, although it was collected in The Operose Hierodule of the Muse, an unpublished collection of poetry.  The persona of the sonnet tries to get at the fascination of the new global technology circulating on the World Wide Web.  One might say that it is a sequel to "The Computer's Psalm" written during a time of now obsolescent technology before PCs, wireless communication, and the Internet.

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another concurrence of paths

RED HAWK AT "THE BLUE MONSTER"



The flutter startled me;
Right before me perched,
Drawing in its red wings,
A golden-eyed hawk staring bravely at me,
Its eyes as sharp as its curved beaked.


The Cherokee in me saw it
As a messenger from the Manitou.
Did it have news about the path I was on?
Something to say about drive and focus?


The white Euro in me was confused to see
This “Natural Wonder” in the cityscape.
Was it after a green parrot
In the flock of exotic escapees
In the wind-waving eucalyptus?
Had it caught a mouse in the rough
Off fairway Nine? A baby carp
In Five’s water hazard? A lizard
In the sand trap on Six? It sat
Plump and strong and proud.
Had it already aced the hole
And fed on iguana
Or a stray rabbit curled on the green?


Then a flap – it rose, retracting
Its bladed talons, over me,
Having finished its round,
And soared, letting me know
That it could wing with me
Anytime, anywhere.


2003

When I lived near Doral, my running path took me by the golf course.  One day I had another serendipitous moment when a hawk, usually not found in cities, alighted on a fence in front of the route I was traveling.  I stopped because I didn't want to scare it away.  I found it extraordinarily, powerfully beautiful.  This poem was included in the unpublished collection Operose Hierodule, 2008.
 
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A polysyllogism about writing

THE WRITING SORITES

Faulkner reads Shakespeare, including Macbeth with its speech “Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

Faulkner writes his many books, including The Sound and the Fury.

Marquez and Rushdie read Faulkner.

Marquez and Rushdie are influenced by Faulkner.

Marquez and Rushdie write like Faulkner, including respectively the books One Hundred Years of Solitude and Midnight’s Children.

I read Marquez and Rushdie, staying up past midnight.

I am influenced by Marquez and Rushdie.

I am influenced by Faulkner.

I write like Marquez and Rushdie, spending much time in solitude.

I write like Faulkner, with much sound and fury.

I signify nothing.

I am an idiot.

2009
 
This is a humorous poem poking fun at me.
 
("Sorites Paradox"


First published Fri Jan 17, 1997; substantive revision Mon Aug 15, 2005

The sorites paradox is the name given to a class of paradoxical arguments, also known as little-by-little arguments, which arise as a result of the indeterminacy surrounding limits of application of the predicates involved. For example, the concept of a heap appears to lack sharp boundaries and, as a consequence of the subsequent indeterminacy surrounding the extension of the predicate ‘is a heap’, no one grain of wheat can be identified as making the difference between being a heap and not being a heap. Given then that one grain of wheat does not make a heap, it would seem to follow that two do not, thus three do not, and so on. In the end it would appear that no amount of wheat can make a heap. We are faced with paradox since from apparently true premises by seemingly uncontroversial reasoning we arrive at an apparently false conclusion.


This phenomenon at the heart of the paradox is now recognised as the phenomenon of vagueness (see the entry on vagueness). Once identified, vagueness can be seen to be a feature of syntactic categories other than predicates, nonetheless one speaks primarily of the vagueness of predicates. Names, adjectives, adverbs and so on are only susceptible to paradoxical sorites reasoning in a derivative sense.


Sorites arguments of the paradoxical form are to be distinguished from multi-premise syllogisms (polysyllogisms) which are sometimes also referred to as sorites arguments. Whilst both polysyllogisms and sorites paradoxes are chain-arguments, the former need not be paradoxical in nature and the latter need not be syllogistic in form. --Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sorites-paradox/)


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The meek shall inherit

ROYAL PALMS



Three storms in a month
And still you stand
Erect shafts against the glowing
Sky. So I bow
To you. During the storms
I saw how your tensile strength
Bent flexibly against
The winds that pushed
Down larger, stiffer trees and
Broke their limbs. You gave up
Fronds and seeds whipped
From your tractability,
But that is all. I imagine that
This is how the meek
Shall inherit, their bending and
Giving before the blows break them –
And their bounding back. The earth
Is yours, O, resilient palm,
Prescient of the supple
Saviors of the earth!

2006

"Royal Palms" was published first in the Ann Arbor Review, 2007;  it was included in the unpublished An Operose Hierodule of the Muse, 2008.
 
"[T]he meek shall inherit" is an allusion to "The Sermon on the Mount."  Historically, meek comes from the same Hebrew root word as reed.  Meek in that sense means "flexible and resilient," not the modern "docile, easily commanded."  Being flexible and resilient have always been the characteristics of winners.
 
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another story from the Apochrypha retold

Two oil paintings of Susanah

(APOCRYPHAL) SUSANAH



Daniel knew how to make
The evildoers pay,
Knew how to shake
The truth from what they say.


Susanah young and sweet
Like many a temptress
Walks on innocent feet
Into an evil fortress.


The two old satyrs
Have her in their reach
But their grasp splatters
Against her honest breach


Of what she did not know.
Repulsed, reviled, they vow
She free shall not go.
They conspire only now


They’ll go to council high,
Accuse of what they could not have
Say the flash of thigh
Drew their attention to a knave


With whom she lay
And saw her open to the beast
And let him have his way
To taste her carnal feast.


So the council drew her nigh
Laid the charges at her feet.
Aghast, she could just deny,
Say she was yet discreet.


The judges to their peers assent:
The accusers, respected men,
Not known to lie with sin;
The girl, voluptuous, then


To the eye if naught more
Could easily, they thought
Have tempted any poor
Youth who might have caught


Himself within her net
Of shapely nubile flesh
And her eyes and lips wet
With lust and all so fresh.


Then Daniel stepped forth,
Said he could solve the mess.
Take the accusers henceforth
To separate rooms to confess


How thus all came to be.
He groped for details not
Yet conspired. Let them see
A different scene hot


Beneath a tree. What’s this?
One says fruit; one says fir.
Let us these charges dismiss:
The old goats are one liar


Inside two cloaks. Here stands
An innocent blessed of the Lord.
The men were the evil hands
Caught by their own word.


[Not so fast. I think more
May appear if we look.
The girl was no whore
We can write in the book,



But even at her tender age
She had wiles enough
To know that in a stage
She could play a rough




And tumble kind of girl
To draw old men there
And make them a world
Un-thought of where




They trod so many years.
Maybe she wanted a small
Thing or money or appear
To be their desire’s thrall.




No matter. She played,
They hungered and grasped,
She drew back and prayed,
They angered and lashed.]

2006
 
"(Apochryphal) Susanah" was included in the unpublished An Operose Hierodule of the Muse, 2008.  This topic of the young girl seduced (or is it the old men seduced?) is controversial.  Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov most famously studies this theme, and he does it in such a way, so the reader is unsure of who is in charge, the older man or the girl. The recent movie An Education also delves into this theme.  Flash!  Just this morning I was listening to Miami's classical music station as I wrote, right after 6 a.m.Garrison Keillor comes on with a few moments of poetry and discusses events in literature that happened on this date.  It turns out that Lolita was published on this date in 1955; Graham Greene, the British writer, gave it a good review, but others condemned it as pornography.   In light of new research indicating that American girls are reaching puberty at an earlier age, this theme may be revisited. NOTE: I generally have a cup of coffee (it is in my hand now) with breakfast before I write. Keillor also told that Honoré de Blazac, the 19th century French fiction writer, died on this date; reportedly, Balzac drank 40-50 cups of black coffee every day.  His heart gave out at 51. Below are items related to this blog.

a story from the apocrypha reexamined

Judith Beheading Holofernes, Caravaggio

FOR APOCRYPHAL JUDITH

ON SAINT VALENTINE’S DAY


Holofernes, he waited
Filled with animal lust
He thought would be sated,
Waited as he must


For the comely widowed
Beauty bathed afresh,
Oiled her braids sowed
With scents, and meshed


Her bejeweled diadem
With her finest garments,
Flowed toward lustful him,
The man of armaments –


Already she had trapped
The General with her wiles:
Her flattery wrapped
Him around her smiles,


Her lips, her hair, her eye;
Her daily prayer so common,
Her holy food so nigh
And bundled – so human


Was he, so much a man,
That he could not fathom
His death at such a hand;
He saw only his bastion


That could not be breached.
He opened to her wide
And gave; she reached
Beyond his drunken side


And grasped his sword,
Prayed and slew him.
Beheaded him with a word
Carried his head in the dim,


Past unsuspecting guards:
To save her people
And revenge her Lord,
Her life: a temple.


[It’s not that simple.
She, after all, severed head,
Spilled blood and ample,
Deceived and left one dead.

 How many holy rules
Did she willing break?
Pride, contempt of fools,
Vanity, lies, all in wake

Of hatred--revenge God
Claims his sole right--
Flim-flam, seduction. Odd
She be deemed a light



To her own people, but
She had one final grace:
Instead of glorifying strut,
Penance, a hidden face.]

2006


"For Apocryphal Judith on St. Valentine's Day" was included in the unpublished collection Operose Hierodule of the Muse, 2008.  I've always found intriguing the stories left out of the official protestant canon of scripture.  What stories are being told?  Why weren't they included?  My poems about these stories are quests for the answers.  Below are items related to this blog.

the father of modern philosophy

The statue of Spinoza in the Hague

SPINOZA DICTA


“God is only Nature,”
Thought he in his eye lab.
“All things are one creature.”


Growing in a pasture
Viewed from a grassy tab,
God is only Nature.


Atomic essence immature
He ponders there to grab
All things are one creature.


Attributes essential, pure
Develop from one stab –
God is only Nature.

That god in us is sure;
Despite a genetic dab,
All things are one creature.


We can grow; such a lure
Rips us from paternal gab.
God is only Nature –
All things are one creature.

2008
 
"Spinoza Dicta" is a villanelle that was included in the unpublished work An Operose Hierodule of the Muse, 2008.  Spinoza is often labeled the first modern philosopher because he is the first to lose the idea of a separate God the Creator.  His idea is that we are all part of god.  He is my favorite because so much of what he thought has influenced all other philosophers after him, including the ideas of democracy adhered to by the founding fathers of the United States of America.
 
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My father's burial at Arlington Cemetary

A SUN FADES; THE SUN RISES



The air frosted my breath,
Which rose away like a spirit.
I wore four layers and was
As cold as I ever wanted to be.
Then I descended into the gorge
Of the city at Rosslyn.
Soon the subway rollicked away
With me and the somber bureaucrats
Who would not look at one another –
Another scandal, another day.
But I gazed hard, trying
To fathom the city through their tight lips
And averted eyes. The whole city seemed sad,
As if it had never fulfilled its heart’s desire.


I saw through the darkness
Many things which turned
As insubstantial as air
And slipped away like
Dimming lights: Fierce red
Dragon humps became the first
Rush of traffic dammed
By stop lights. Alhambresque
Arches expired into shadows
Formed by pedestrian lamps.
And objects unidentified and flying by
Disintegrated into street lamps
Coursing the curved glass
Through which I took in the city.


I rose again at Brookland-CUA.
Dawn had begun breaking apart
The city into red brick
And black tar and grey concrete
Overcast with a silver-blue veil.
Still cold, still alien.
At the home, old soldiers trooped
By Dad’s open coffin to say
Farewell and cry. An Irish-Catholic
Priest crossed himself, read scripture
And prayed over the protestant remains.


Dad’s hearse took the scenic route
Through Rock Creek Park to Arlington.
Behind him, we rejoiced
In the beauty of the final journey
Through steep hills quilted
With fallen leaves whose father trees
Reached their bare arms to the silver sky
Of mourning. His carriage cruised along
The Potomac, and just before the gate
Beyond the statues of Pegasus,
A V-formation of long-necked geese
Overflew the hearse – silent as angels
Beckoning him follow.

When the hearse stopped at the foot of the hill
Medallioned with white rows of the militant dead,
Soldiers in blue uniforms stepped forward crisply,
Straight and true as my father’s heart.
The coffin marched uphill in their strong hands
And was placed with a view across the river –
Of Lincoln, Jefferson and Washington.


We gathered around, the chill disappearing.
We stood for the crackling salute
Of the rifles and the cadenced "Taps"
Of the bugle. Then the chaplain
Read Father’s favorite passage
Which starts, “For God so loved the world ...”
And ends “... he that doeth truth cometh to the light,
That his deeds may be manifest,
That they are wrought in God.”
The flag was lifted off the coffin,
Folded tight and placed
Into my warming hands.
When I looked up,
The city was immersed in light.

1998

I never venture north from Florida during winter, but I had to when my father died in early January 1998, for he was to be buried in Arlington National Cemetary for his 26 years of service in the military, including World War Two and Korea.  For the first time, I bought a trenchcoat and took my gloves, woolcap, sweaters and muffler to a frosty climate.  The temperature that winter in D.C. was in the 20s at night and high 30s to low 40s during the day.  The day of the funeral was extraordinary for our purpose, and my poem is merely a description with emotional connotations.

My ex-wife's sister Norma let us stay at her place, for which we were very thankful.

Tomorrow is Dad's birthday.

"A Sun Fades; the Sun Rises" was collected in the unpublished An Operose Hierodule of the Muse, 2008.

What does a singer do when she loses her voice?

VOICELESS NO LONGER

About my age, the thin man-about-town in front
At the deli, ordered first, his index finger wiggling:
“Sliced pastrami and corned beef and provolone.”
The brunette clerk bent to her task. He glanced back at me.


I ordered a smoked turkey sandwich.
The clerk, a Botticelli woman,
Big round brown eyes and smooth white skin,
Whispered, “Sorry, I’ve lost my voice.”


The svelte man next to me,
By way of flirting, joked,
“Good thing she’s not a
Telemarketer!” He reached out,
Poked me on the shoulder.


The clerk winced, and I, sensing
More than I knew, gave no response,
Stood resolutely, mutely,
But smiled politely, surveyed the food.


Mr. Cosmopolitan explained as if
We were all a little dense, “You
See, she’d really need her voice then.”
He chuckled and winked. I grounded,
Plugged myself into the solid floor.


She folded and sliced the bread for me,
Filled the core with lettuce, tomato, cheese, meat,
Seasoned it, wrapped it, brought it to me
As lovingly as if she had been my mother.


The slick man gave up and slid away.
The clerk whispered, “I was alto-soprano. But
I’ve got to make a living.” Her eyes
Were soft, moist orbs; her lips, lush.


I said, “Will your voice come back?”
“No, but I’ve taken up the viola.”
“Oh, so you’ve found another voice.”
She smiled. “It’s music, and that’s
What I love. I’m still in music.”


I looked around for the skinny dude, but
He had skedaddled without knowing
That in the deli, a diva
Had served us an aria,
Had opened up worlds for us,
Like any true artist.

2007

"Voiceless No Longer"  was included in the unpublished poetry collection Operose Hierodule of the Muse, 2008.  I love the serendipitous moment when life presents us with some meaning in our everyday tasks.  Below are some CDs and books related to this blog.

A single mom and her kids

SOLO MAMÁ, THREE CABRIOLES*

The stalwart single mom will stay

Just, as around her the kids swirl

In a raucous dance that makes her sway.

Just as around her, the kids swirl

Over table, over floor, in furious play –

Twisting, dodging, dipping in a whirl.

The stalwart single mom will stay

Just as – around her – the kids swirl.

For Kena, Luciano, Nicole and Alan

*wild little goats

2007

"Solo Mamá, Three Cabrioles" is a triolet, a poem in which one line is repeated three times and one line is repeated twice.  The rhyme is abababab.  This was written for Kena and her children, whom I had the pleasure of meeting at Kena's initiation into the honor society. 

Kena immigrated from Chile years before I met her when she came into the lab for help with her English.  She didn't need a lot of help, just a bit of polishing because she was very intelligent and had taught herself English up to that point.  She was a single mom with three rowdy children that she loved immensely.  She's a strong person with her own concepts about what is good for her and the children.  I came to admire her eccentricities because behind them was a solid human being.

What makes people interesting is the little things that make them different from everyone else.  I know that raising three energetic children by oneself isn't easy.  One of the ironies of feminist liberation is that so many women wound up raising children by themselves.

My sister is one of those women, and her son turned out to be a productive, compassionate human being.  My hat is raised for all the single parents out there.  I wish you good luck and fortitude.

Below are three books related to this blog.

what effect does abuse have on a child? La Gringita of Nicaraugua

THE UNPROTECTED CHILD

(for “La Gringita” of Nicaragua)

She could have turned her affront

Into her own excuse for abuse;

She did not.

She could have made her scar

A keloidal cicatrix of barricades;

She did not.

She could have fused her anger

Into a spate of hate;

She did not.

She could have fixed her hurt

Like a dagger in her heart;

She did not.

She could have warped her anonymity

Into parental enmity;

She did not.

She could have dumped her violation

Onto maternal loathing;

She did not.

She could have meshed her wound

With a compassionate resolve;

That she did.

2007

"The Unprotected Child" was included in the unpublished poetry collection Operose Hierodule of the Muse, 2008.

Dora wanted help on a book she was attempting to write about child abuse in Nicaraugua.  She had been abused as a child.  One part of the book was to be her story.  Another part would be a general dissertation on child abuse in her country of birth; it would be based on research and field work. Several times she traveled to Nicaraugua.  Another part would be a search for her father, an American who had left her and her mother alone while he returned to the United States (She did eventually find his family, but they resisted her contacts for the sake of the father's legal wife).  I was her translator, editor and proofreader.  Of course, I learned quite a bit about her in the process.  We came to respect each other.  Unfortunately, before she could complete her research, she ran low on funds and had to pause until she could find a way to finance the book.  During our time working together, she never showed any bitterness (she was a mother with a teenage daughter by then), but she seemed to be driven to do something that would prevent abuse in her country of birth.  Thus came the poem.  I gave it to her, and she said she would add it to the book.

Her nickname in Nicaraugua was "La Gringita" (the little American), although she had been born there and Spanish was her first language.  However, her American father had been of Northern European extraction, so she had fairer skin and lighter hair than anyone else in her town--therefore the nickname.
Below are some books related to this blog:

a new bird species discovered in Asia

LIOCICHLA BUGUNORUM’s DEBUT


There you were,
Flitting your lives
From generation to generation
And we didn’t know
That you had alighted
With us on Earth.


How does it feel
To have the limelight
Shining on you,
So now we know
Your equipage –
Your black hat,
Your yellow rouge,
Your red and yellow sleeves
Ruffling in the wind,
Your black tail,
Your ivory boots –
And your song
That you sing
In the dawn?


Soon we’ll know
How you
Dip into the bowl,
Drink and swallow.
We’ll finally know
How you choose a mate,
And how you mate,
Hooking up for a frisson of desire.


Of course, why
You live and why
I write, why
These words, why
I cry, why
This world, wisely
Remain a mystery.

2007
 
This poem was first published in Ann Arbor Review in 2008.  It was included in the unpublished collection of poetry called The Operose Hierodule of the Muse, 2009.  Below is a book related to this blog.

acrostic poem

GREAT WHITE HERON



Glides he in, lands at the lip of the lake, steps in – folds cloaking white wings

Regally; he stretches his full length, his neck and head rising like a watchtower,

Eyes the finned shadows in the water, his beacon head turning left, then right,

And with deft feet moves stately, impelling no ripple to disturb the dawning peace.

The fish are feeding, gobbling and gilling, and see only reeds rising from surface.

Whiteness permeates – salty sand, blanched feathers, spackling sunlight.

Heroes stand as tall and proud as he, as a regent waiting to be served.

In intense observation, I watch him watching, taut interest strung tight.

The imperial bird holds still, his prey near, his auroral prayer answered.

Every muscled instinct compels him downward, descending cottony cloud.

His neck coils into an S, and he looks askance at his unwary breakfast.

Energy springs his beak into the liquid; it returns laden with flopping, wriggling life.

Repeatedly he dabs the water with his victim, inducing exhaustion and stillness.

Over his beak he flips his meal, so headfirst it plummets down his strait gullet.

Now he stretches, settles and glances about his realm, lord of the morning lake.


2008

"Great White Heron" is an acrostic poem.
This is another favorite poem in which I could never interest an editor, but it is after all just a picture in words. (Or, is there more?)  By the way, I wasn't standing on shore watching the heron; I had been swimming in the tidal pool off Biscayne National Park.  When I saw the heron land, I moved as gently as I could toward it as it hunted along the shore.  I got within twenty feet and stayed there with just my head above water, so I could watch the bird closely.  It saw me, but didn't perceive me as a threat.

When I was a teenager, my mother had gotten me a small version of John James Audubon's Birds of America.  Using watercolor paints, I copied several of the birds from the book, trying to reproduce Audubon's colors.  I got the form of the birds pretty well, but the colors I had weren't true matches to Audubon's.  In that book I first saw his print The Great White Heron.  Mother also got me a Peterson Field Guide to Birds of North America, to which I constantly referred whenever I encountered a bird I hadn't seen before. (I had a great mother.)  Below is Audubon's print.

"Audubon is credited with being the first to identify the Great White Heron as a separate species and gave it the name, Ardea occidentilis. The Great White Heron has recently been designated a morph or color form of the Great Blue Heron."--http://www.floridakeysbest.com/audubon/great_white_heron.htm

After college I read Robert Penn Warren's long beautiful poem Audubon: A Vision.  In the first verse, he describes Audubon seeing a great white heron for the first time.

                                      Saw
Eastward and over the cypress swamp, the dawn
Redder than meat, break;
And the large bird,
Long neck outthrust, wings crooked to scull air, moved
In a slow calligraphy, crank, flat, and black against
The color of God's blood spilt, as though
Pulled by a string.

Once teaching a creative writing class, I read my poem "Great White Heron" because the class wanted to hear some of my work.  Most of the class were 17 to 19 years old, but a few were in their 20s.  One of the older students blurted out there was no great white heron.  I was astonished, but I asked her why she thought so.  She said it was probably just a large egret.  But I was sure I had seen a great white heron.  I went to my office, researched the topic, and the next class I gave the students a slide show presentation.  I showed them Audubon's print and told how he was the first to document the bird, I read to them from Audubon: A Vision,  I showed them the website of the Great White Heron National Wildlife Refuge in Big Pine Key, and I showed them a range study of the great white heron, which stated that bird could be found as far north as Biscayne Bay.  The student who had attempted to ridicule my poem hung her head.

However, I also realized what an extraordinary event it was for me to have been where I was and had the rare bird alight so close to me--as if I were being blessed with a poetic vision.

Below are links to some of the books and prints mentioned in today's blog.








 
 
 
 
 

holocaust Sophie's Choice

The book by William Styron Sophie's Choice (Modern Library) ; the movie by Alan J. Pakula  Sophie's Choice 

SOPHIE’S VOICE: MIAMI BEACH

To see Styron’s plaint transformed on screen,

We were driven by impulse to the old 79th Street monoplex

Where Streep could be the conundrum for us.

And she was that choice character, losing as usual her self in the role,

Engulfing us in cellulose virtuosity,

Virtually dreaming us into the silvered holocaust.

And then began the sniffling, the weeping, the moaning –

But not from the flickering phantasma, not from our own catharsis,

But from the creaking seats, from the dense dark surrounding us –

From ancient voices, anguish welled up into a flood –

Hundreds of Sophies and their children.

So when the lights rose, we froze in our chairs to watch

The hoar survivors limp out into the night,

Scratch their weathered tattoos – their emblems

Of suffering – and stumble into the cool night air

Of America, free but for memory.

1981


This is one of my favorite poems created from a serendipitous moment.  I thought that it had been published previously, but I can't remember where I sent it (perhaps South Florida Poetry Institute), and it was not included in any of my books of poetry.  A friend and I had read the book Sophie's Choice and wanted to see the movie (both of which I highly recommend).  However, the movie was playing only on Miami Beach, which had many older Jews living there at the time.  Having decided to go only that evening, we arrived late and entered a darkened theater just in time for the opening of the movie.

After the movie when the lights came up, we realized that we had watched this movie about the holocaust in a theater filled with surviving victims of the holocaust, many of whom had the still-visible numbers on their arms tattooed by the Nazi death machine.  This realization added a poignancy to our enjoyment, twisting our guts and shortening our breaths.

a poem for a poet Gianna of the Yellow Jacket Press

SONGSTER BREEZE

(In rhymed iambic hexameter, a sestina for Gianna)

The air was soft that moved so slightly palms.

The thought was light that spurred a song of psalms.

The sun was bright that warmed so soon the sands.

The muse that sang then drew to mind the bands

That seemed to play as softly as the breeze

And made us start to shift as by degrees.

Our minds were gifted there to some degrees,

So under shady leaves of dulcet palms

Whose branches played and splayed beneath the breeze,

We heard the muses singing such sweet psalms

That we became in swift, concerted bands

The dancers gliding over warming sands.

And on those hot and deep and shifting sands

The temperature of which soon climbed degrees

As if to claim the heights of heated bands,

We danced beneath the canopy of palms

And sang the songs to us that were like psalms

Inside the sweet and cloying summer breeze.

It rose, it did, that ever-blowing breeze;

It picked the grains, it kicked the heated sands

And seemed to grab from breath our breathless psalms

That moaned from lips quite parched, and by degrees

That shadow strutted, under fronded palms

In febrile quiver, dancing with the bands.

And then it was that we became the bands

And held our sway under the ample breeze

Beneath the ever-swaying, scented palms

Over the burning grains of all those sands;

And so by effort we sure claimed degrees

That gifted minds like ours with Beauty’s psalms.

Thus Beauty gave us all her gifted psalms

As if the chosen muse had called our bands.

And we became angelic, bound degrees

Of bronzed young gods in thrall to summer breeze

That tossed and drove the blistering golden sands

Beside the waters near the arching palms.

We sang the psalms and so we blessed the palms

Whose fronds from bands of heat so saved the sands,

And we, by mused degrees, became the lofting breeze.

Gianna Russo was very young when I met her and became part of the Tampa Bay Poets.  Everyone in the group dedicated himself or herself to poetry.  We met weekly, shared poems, discussed and critiqued one another's work.  Once a month we would give public readings, usually at the Greenwich Village Cafe, which was a home turned into a restaurant.  Gianna loves the Tampa Bay area as much as she loves poetry, and was determined to stay there and make her mark.  She did so, as teacher and poet and mother, but her crowning achievement was establishing the Yellow Jacket Press, which has a reputation as a sponsor of good poetry and as an aid to poets and poetry.  Each year it publishes a chapbook of a Florida poet's work; the poet must submit the work (see The Yellow Jacket Press for submission guidelines) and win the submission contest. I have entered but never won.  Gianna wrote a sestina  about me and it was amazing; many years later for her I wrote this one about writing poetry in Tampa.

(A sestina is a highly structured poem consisting of 6 six-line stanzas followed by a tercet [envoy or tornada], for a total of 39 lines. The same set of six words ends the lines of each of the six-line stanzas, but in a different order each time; if we number the first stanza's lines 123456, then the words ending the second stanza's lines appear in the order 615243, then 364125, then 532614, then 451362, and finally 246531. This organization is referred to as retrogradatio cruciata ["retrograde cross"]. These six words then appear in the tercet as well, with the tercet's first line usually containing 6 and 2, its second 1 and 4, and its third 5 and 3. English sestinas are traditionally written in iambic pentameter or another decasyllabic meter.) --Wikipedia

A poem about a schizophrenic

From left to right above: Expectation, a painting by Gustav Klimt <Gustav Klimt (Expectation) Framed Art Poster Print - 11" X 17">; The French Lieutenant's Woman, a novel by John Fowles <The French Lieutenant's Woman>; the movie of the same name by Karel Reisz <The French Lieutenant's Woman>; Fullfilment, a painting by Gustav Klimt <Gustav Klimt Fulfillment Canvas Print>. 

R. A.: SCHIZOID

Haunting how many times I’ve thought of her

When our act together was so short like

The balancing act of blind justice. This is

The crux: I loved her normal person,

One with dainty hands and sweet lips

And large awareness and gift of words,

One who loved Gustav Klimt.

The other person scared me, one who

Got lost inside her mind and gifted no one,

Who shuddered like a block of ice and asked,

“Why did you come here?” when I visited her

In hospital in bare rooms with black windows,

Who lived inside Expectation, not Fulfillment. *

She was too honest for her own welfare.

She was The French Lieutenant’s Woman, **

The woman with two personas: the one

Who lived her life and desires,

Who would do anything to be;

And the one who didn’t recognize

Her reality, who shut out all others.

The honest one couldn’t go on

And finally killed the other one

Who hurt the ones she loved.

I can see her frail fingers picking

Up large pills one by one

And religiously swallowing

Each as the body of her redeemer.

Her final gift was this: Remember

One who loved all of you,

Not one who couldn’t;

One who wanted fulfillment,

Not just expectation;

One who cared deeply,

Not a shell.

* paintings by Gustav Klimt
** a novel by John Fowles
and a movie by Karel Reisz
 
 
This poem was first published in Creative Woman, Miami Dade College, 2008.  I wrote it a few years earlier after I learned that the subject had committed suicide.  It is about a writer I knew, who was a terrific writer, a mother, and a schizophrenic.  We dated for a couple weeks before she disappeared, and I subsequently discovered that she was in a hospital and being treated for schizophrenia, so I went to visit her. Months later after she was out of the hospital, she got in touch, but I told her I couldn't continue the relationship.  Her home was decorated with prints of Gustav Klimt paintings, and on our first date we had ironically gone to see the movie The French Lieutenant's Woman.  At the time, she was a better writer than I was.  She had waited until her child was grown before ending her life.

Frida Kahlo (Rivera)

Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo

Frida, the movie by Salma Hayek and Julie Taymor

FRIDA KAHLO (RIVERA)




Freed by her fractures, SHE, incising

Rivera’s otherness as his Aztec Santa,

Isis of Coyoacán, a lush jungle

Dadaed with open wounds and blood

Allas of butterbirds and lexicosex,

Kudzus of riveting red rios and cañons,

A vein to her bruised body and open

Heart of Mexico’s arta y misteria,

Lady of dry deserts and barren wombs,

Ortho-psychic in wondrous vias

(Reading her [he]art, the gargantuan feeder,

Insouciant breeder, was as a

Votary, her exceptional friend, so

Every pain belong her-belong him, and

Rode a budding Bodhi burr a tiempo to tun-

A) BLOOMED like herb cactus, plush and prickly.

 
 
This acrostic poem was first published in Creative Woman, Miami Dade College, 2008; and was subsequently published in the Ann Arbor Review, Fall 2009.  I highly recommend both the biography of Frida Kahlo by Hayden Herrera and the movie by Julie Taymor (one of the most imaginative and original directors in the world).