POEM: ODE TO SCROTUM, 2006

I am the cock's scrotum sac,
Listen and hear my plea:
I am handsome to the ladies
Best aquainted with me!

Those that know me well,
Squirm in pleasure at our greeting!
And weep and cry, and moan with delight
Upon the occasion of our meeting!

September 22, 2006

POEM: NOMADS(1995)

NOMADS

In my grandmother’s

Twilight hours

Dreamt of

Dark dusty night:

A long journey

I walked alone.

I arrived

Cottage of my own sunset;

No light from the window,

No arms at the door.

Let myself in

Stirred ashes

Stoked fires

Made dinner.

Wept in silence

At the solitary hearth;

Shadow play

On my wrinkled hands

Reminded me

My body in youth:

Straight bones

Clean blood;

No stretch marks

No sag

Smooth skin.

Skyward curve

Of breasts and buttocks,

Before men

Before fear

Before (look away, say quickly in one breath)

Drugs, rape, pregnancies, pain.

Before a broken heart.

I had this dream

Before Nonny died.

Then a dawn came

My grandmother

Did not return from

Night.

I came back

From this Carnival

To this

Lush land (where silent snakes curve

deadly like

rivers

and my reflection lies

coiled in eyes

I’d rather forget;

I remembered why

I left

the moment I returned).

Here

I am a ghost;

I can remember

Before I was born.

Old Grandmothers,

I remember,

Walked Highlands at dawn,

Beaches at dusk.

I remember

A new country

A missionary’s life;

I remember

Boston streets

A wealthy Englishman’s wife;

I remember

White frame house

A poet and painter.

I must not forget

A candy maker

Whose hands

Lie folded

In my lap.

I remember

First Grandmother

Drank scotch,

Danced a jig,

Cursed First Grandfather.

I remember

What First Grandmother

Told her daughters;

I remember

First Grandfather

Never returned for long.

First Grandmother

Never told

Of lonely twilight

Lengthening

Into night,

And no fire kindled

At her last hearth.

My own grandmother

Whispered it sometimes

When she could find me;

And how rare that?

Me, whole,

Away from Circus;

I have wandered so far.

Her gnarled hands

Would grip mine

Like tree roots

Seeking earth;

“Time to stop these

Generations of roaming,”

She’d say;

“I have my

Hopes on you.”

Then she’d

Teach her crafts:

Candy-making and story-telling;

Different from those

Her grandmother taught her;

But, “Any craft will do,”

She’d warn me;

“Something to exchange for

Welcome at another hearth,

Even a Tinker’s campfire.”

I’d look away

Wondering

If she knew

How many

Gypsy boys

My body nourished

Before I trusted

My own crafts.

I know why

Never my children

Cradled my arms;

I know why

Never I lay

Wrapped warm

In Highland Shepherd’s plaid:

Nomads, we

Whose hearts

Became brittle

When men failed

Firelight vigil;

Unprotected,

We learned

To keep warm

Alone.

Nomads, we

Who chase hearth fires

Of others;

Refuse to use

Broken bits

Of our own

Unforgiving souls

To kindle a spark,

Bring Grandfather back.

I drink old scotch,

And dance a jig;

I know how

To keep warm;

Still, I cry out

For Grandfather’s son

To return

Without shame.

I sleep with a new dream:

A twilight croft,

Two grandparents

Well wrapped

Lie warm.

Dusk deepens

Fires fade

Soon enough

Without a curse.

Final draft 20 December 1995

copyright

CHANCE OPERATIONS

I went to Chance Operations.  It was JK Publishing night.  This is all local poets.  www.jkpublishing.org

They published Bob Reuter's new book. I really enjoyed hearing Bob!  He is a true Renaissance Man and is always doing something interesting. Photography, radio show, musician, poet.  He is also the subject of a movie!  He is a genuine St. Louis unique, nowhere else in the world, man. 

Chris Parr read from his new book.  Going to Find It. 

I read Seamus Heaney's "Undine".  I also read two poems of mine.  I posted them seperately.

The first was from my Holiday Greetings in 2004: Birds Of Prayer

And one I wrote with in the last week or so, mostly today.  (Chance Operations inspires me! :)

The Moonlight Tells Her Secrets.  I might be editing this one a bit.

As always, it was a great night!

POEM: THE MOONLIGHT TELLS HER SECRETS

I have shone upon you, and
upon all of your grandmothers,
every one.

I have lain among the fragrant
sandalwood forests with
dark-eyed men
and made romantic
the guilt edges
of their sharp scimitars.

I have caressed the breasts
and smooth thighs of
lush maidens on the floor of jungles,
and danced across the thorns of thistle
on moors
inhospitable and alien
without me.

I have touched the
rarest flower as she bloomed,
and also as her last petal withered and fell
to the ground.
I have ridden
the broad whale's back
as he spiraled above the ocean,
and as he disappeared into
the water again,
dove back down
far below
out of my reach

and left me to mourn on the surface
of the smooth sea,
for stormy weather and white capped waves.
You ask me
how can I love
such an ordinary place,
average people,
undistinguished streams and woods
without distinct character?

These few ragged weeds in an urban sidewalk
crack?
And ghetto palm trees,
their scent
blending with the stink of the sewage-runoff
wash that is pregnant with trash,
dry and stagnant,
rarely clear with stream--

How could I love such as this?

You ask me
because you think it would be better
if I had found you
gazing at me from the base of
the Taj Mahal
or beaches of Bora Bora.

Can you not see that
I love you all
equally?
The scimitar and the palm fronds
and the sea and the
dry wash, I love them all
the same.

I love you. And I love the kings,
and the sandalwood forests
and the soft bellies and backsides
of agile maidens. And I love
the sleeping larks,
swooping bats,
mating frogs, and

the drunk man ordering tacos at
jack in the box drive thru at 2 AM,
wondering if his wife will let him in
when he gets home. I love him and I love
the self-immolating monk
in Myanmar, lighting
the predawn capitol streets
with a glow that seems warm
and inviting,
from an ignorant distance.

I love the piles of rubbish,
and the empty lots,
and the ancient icebergs in the Arctic seas,
and the bloody battlefields
filled with fallen heroes.
I love the maggot and the murderer,
the wolf and the lamb,
the cockroach and the Kephri,
I love them all the same.

I love everything that you are,
and I illuminate everything
that you might choose your
path, and make your way.

I love you so much that I
would spend eternity
in the darkness,
my gaze mesmerized, turning,
undulating
over you as you stand beneath
those ordinary cottonwoods,
by that undistinguished creek,
in an uneventful city.

All have my blessing.
All are part of the night.
All may share the bounty
of my light.

I love and I find love.
I love and I find you.

I shine upon you,
and you shine upon the night.

Copyright 2012

POEM: BIRDS OF PRAYER

From Within and from Without, keep Christmas a cardinal bright,
Among the evergreen boughs of Hope, the stars crowning us with Light.

On Christmas Day in the morning
Send not sailing ships of three,
But Peace doves, a pair for mating,
East and West o'er the sunrise sea.

From the North and from the South
Let the Happiness bluebirds fly,
In mighty flocks, soaring forth
Across the innocent pink-dawn sky.

And if it were true as Above, so Below,
No more would the war crows find
A place to nest or a place to grow;
At first light Joy to earth would bind.

As in all Seasons Past, until Evermore,
Sweet sparrows and wrens sing Good Cheer!
Hear this, my prayer, on Christmas Day morn,
For the newborn sun, blessed babe, and New Year.

Copyright 2004

AUTUMN WEARS A RED DRESS

Tonight I went to Chance Operations. I heard two poets and I read three poems.

http://chanceoperationsstl.blogspot.com/

I bought a book by Drucilla Wall, and I already love it!!  The Geese at the Gates!  She invokes the genie locii of every place she visits- a true Shameness!!!!

Also hear a wonderful Frenchman expatriate, Marcel Toussaint.  Loved his poem about the lady driving the red car, and collecting speeding tickets!

The first poem I read was The Magi, by T.S. Eliot.  I gave "quite a different reading of it, than as is usual" and I knew where I was going with it, and "it was very good to hear it new," was the verdict.

And that is good because I love T.S. Eliot a lot, and in a way I cannot describe, short of loving him the way I love the colour green, or Venus shining in the twilight.  And when I read something great I want to be worthy of it, of course.

Moreover, along with all the other spirits- and right now it is every spirit that ever walked the earth!- T.S. Eliot is here and roaming the poeted and poetic haunts of his old home town. So it was wonderful to read some of his poetry so near to his birthplace.

And the poem, The Magi, is fitting for this period in history, when those of us that are shifting into the New Age, are indeed "no longer at ease here, in the old dispensations" and the "alien gods" are being clung to fiercely.

I also read Los Angeles poet, writer, and editor, Marie Lecrivain.  I read her great poem "Manifesto of a Sexy Librarian" last time I was there. Tonight I read one of her latest poems "Shamanic Dreams Via The Internet And Prolonged RNC Coverage".

I also read my own poem.  It takes me a long time to finish a poem.

Edit: This was originally written just after Katrina and dedicated to the annual Red Dress Run in New Orleans (which actually occurs in Spring.) This is a poem that seems born (or bourne) by hurricanes. I finished this and read it on October 29, 2012, as Hurricane Sandy was arriving in New York City.

EDIT EDIT: This poem, however, is NOT about hurricane Katrina or any other hurricane.  It is about both the season of Autumn in nature, Samhain, and also about women's bodies, if nature and the four seasons were the same woman.  
 

AUTUMN WEARS A RED DRESS

Autumn comes gaily clad,

Cooling the skin, but enflaming the eye;

She is the raucous harbinger of

Winter’s silent and unprotesting

Final death; the immodest,

Elderly grey,

Corpse to be concealed

Reverently beneath

Modest, white morgue sheets

Of snow and ice.

Autumn, she comes,

Crying and wailing;

Beating her chest,

Exposing her distress;

She can not be consoled,

Until that tantamont tango,

Naked and whole,

At last.

From the Debutante Spring

That grew like a wallflower;

Danced bare-legged and

Gawky limbed;

Rode her Papa's toes

Like an awkward colt.

Through to Summer ,

A Fine and Generous Lady

Ample bosomed,

Carnal and knowing,

Her skirts full and lush,

Fertile and green;
Her suitors, potent;

Her children, many.

Comes Autumn, then, finally,

Liberated from decorum and duty,

By the windsong echo of

Death-bone rattling drumbeats

Of thanks and praise;

Blessings.

Autumn hosts a feast! A party!

A festive Crescent City Wake,

Held just before the

Last rites will be given.

Autumn dons her gayest dress;

Flaunts her harlot fashions,

Taunting like a Hollywood starlet

The phantom that approaches

To claim her last dance.

Bare legged again,

But veined now, and thinner skinned;

Shedding her accessories

Coyly, one by one,

She boldly leads

Mourners dressed in riotous color;

And Dixieland bands,

Trumpets gleaming, toot sweet,

Through dream-soaked streets,

Announcing

The Year’s last breath.

Dressed in bold finery,

With nothing to celebrate

But certain death,

The Old Year is carried jubilantly

On the shoulders of the parade

To the Midnight of the Seasons.

On this Eve

The pyre is lit;

The uninvited and the dead

Feast with the living;

And the soul of

The unborn New Year

Runs mad with prophecy

And redemption in the streets.

The Old Year's breathe rattles

Like kindling,

And under a sickle moon sky

She lays to rest
Upon the dead wood crackling orange
Against the smokey black night.

And Autumn wears a red dress

To the funeral.

Copyright 2005 and 2012 

EDIT: You can hear me read all three of these: http://laladyrae.blogspot.com/2012/10/my-readings-of-poems-from-29-oct-2012.html 

IT'S A POEM. REALLY.

COWGIRL LOVESONG

Lie down;
Stay hard;
Shut up.