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