Suggesting,
questing,
testing;
contesting,
besting,
resting.
*****
Humans, in any culture, seem naturally attracted to quests; often to more than one at a time, and contradictory. Maybe the universe is just a playground for questing…
Published this week in The Asses of Parnassus. Thanks, Brooke Clark!
Photo: “”The victorious knight” Berry Brothers hard oil finish vanquishes the field and receives the guerdon of merit. (front)” by Boston Public Library is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
The sun is always setting, always setting on your day;
you sense the dark approaching, wish that it would stay away.
Do you want a life unchanging? Wish to still be a newborn?
Don’t you know life’s not a rosebud, but has root and leaf and thorn?
The sun is always setting and the black drapes are unfurled;
but notice that the sun sets on your world, not on the world:
it’s rolling into brightness in another’s happy land,
and the dark is evanescent and the brightening is grand.
The sun is always setting on the dinosaurs, but birds
are flocking into being, as are Serengeti herds;
and the sun that lights humanity? Of course it’s going to set,
and elsewhere light new tales of which we’ll just be a vignette.
The sun is always setting, but that view is just your choice;
I say the world is turning and evolving; I rejoice.
*****
The winter solstice and the turning of the calendar drive a feeling of sunset that I can’t shake. I may be fit, still climbing trees and running on beaches, but at 74 there is both an awareness of gradual decline and a recognition that you can only hope for another 20 years with a fair amount of luck. “And of my three score years and ten, / None of them will come again…” as it were. That’s the personal bit.
Add to that the strongest country in (and quondam leader of) the world, breaking everything into pieces and throwing them all up in the air with no idea of how anything will land and what will be broken; taking all branches of the federal government (including unfortunately the Supreme Court) and those of half the states and just piling them up for a bonfire.
Add the possibility of runaway AI (such as concerns Harari) being jumpstarted by the Luciferic billionaire firestarter… and it feels like the End of the World.
But let’s be reasonable: it always feels like the end of the world, at least to those no longer in their youth. Because it is, for them. (For us. For me.) Jesus saying the end of the world would come within that generation… Last Days prophecies bubbling up in all religions… Preppers expecting nuclear war, ethnic uprising, climate catastrophe overnight… Doomsday is always imminent, and yet things keep going; just not as before… This is the End of the World as we know it, but will not be as we expected it. (And always the unfortunate eternal evils, regardless of era: Israelis committing genocide on Palestinians since the days of Deuteronomy, and so on.)
I swear there is a highly ambivalent poem in there somewhere, but I haven’t dug it out yet. But hey… Happy 2025!
Photo: Keith McInnes | City of Sydney
Dog-skinny, winter’s mangy sun
Slinks between clouds.
A West Indian dog – there are none such here in the UK ….
Nor, there, such mangy suns.
*****
Some people equate a good Christmas with a family walk in the snow, others with family time on a beach. It all depends on what you grow up with, doesn’t it? With my first twelve years being on islands with palm trees, it has remained difficult for me in my decades of climate exile to appreciate more than a month or two of bleaker weather at a time. ‘Home Thoughts from the North’ was originally published in Snakeskin – thanks, George Simmers!
Best wishes for an appropriately weathered Merry Christmas to all… and apologies to Eliza for subjecting her to non-Canadian winters for so many years!
Photo: “Skinny puppy in Udaipur” by Dey is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
I remember winter when it was only
Mostly too cold to swim –
The churning suck and drag of waves under the rock.
Yes, there are flowers – there are always flowers –
But, with the poinciana stripped of leaves,
Its pods like forearms thinned and bent with age,
The rattling of sticks, the hiss of wind,
The broken sea stuck futilely on Wash
With endless turning, churning, foaming pulse –
How long can waves beat on a rock before
The tired rock gives up?
Yes, I remember later northern winters –
The bitter satisfaction of a too-thin sun,
Beauty without the joy, light without heat.
Feet always cold, clothes never quite enough;
Skin drying back from fingernails, lips chapped, throat raw,
The smell of damp coats, never fully dry.
I dream of alternating south and north
And never having to be cold again,
Turning, returning, always in the sun –
Or settling in an equatorial land
And swimming year-round, mellowing on the sand
Flattening my temperature, my will,
Soaking up sun, and dreaming I’m asleep.
Bitter it is, the winter argument,
Betrayed by world that slices off the years,
I have no love of winter, and I feel
Trapped, and betrayer of true kids of mine –
But look – they love it, so I’m further trapped,
Bound to the year that crushes as it turns,
And has become their home – are they then kids of mine?
Ice – snow – the winding down of life and year.
And I’ve known other winters all too well –
Where years of spring gave way to years of warmth,
Blossoms to children sparkling in the light,
The wonders of the world’s sharp sense delight;
Then years of fruit, as independent seeds
Form their own thoughts and follow darkening paths
Falling away, on purpose shrivel up,
And days grow shorter, moods swing soft and harsh
Drizzle sets in for weeks, cold in the bones,
Cold in the head, and colder in the heart –
That’s how the years of endless winter start.
Bleakness to bleakness, blackness into black;
Lives dry and crack,
Sap gone from tree and house and bone.
Who knew that emptiness could weigh so much?
Give me the strength to last to Spring, or start my own.
*****
This poem is from decades ago, in one of those periods where life felt bleak. (But such seasons pass!) For a long time I was unsure of the poem because it always feels like sloppiness and cheating when my rants are low on rhythm and rhyme; but George Simmers liked it enough for inclusion in Snakeskin, and that’s more than good enough for me.
Photo: “Shack-Shacks” by Chris Hunkeler is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
Sew, sew, sew your coat
Gently down the seam;
Threadily, threadily, threadily, threadily,
Joseph wants a dream.
*****
A throwaway poem. For anyone unfamiliar with the references, it blends what is often sung as a round:
Row, row, row your boat
Gently down the stream;
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
Life is but a dream
with the idea behind the Andrew Lloyd Webber / Tim Rice musical ‘Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat‘.
The poem was published in Lighten Up Online (aka LUPO). Thanks, Jerome Betts!
Photo: “Benjamin School District 25 production of ‘Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat’. March 9th, 2013.” by old06cphotos is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
Easy to be young and sassy;
add experience, and it’s classy.
*****
I have absolutely no idea what inspired this couplet. Be that as it may, it was published in The Asses of Parnassus in October – thanks, Brooke Clark!
Photo: “Cece 220223 (1)” by ceciliajaner is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
The boy he’s always been still takes delight
In testing scabs on elbows, knees,
To see if fingernails can assert their right
To lift with satisfying ease
The lid from off the mystery healing box
And see the flesh beneath the skin
Where the wise body-mind slowly unlocks
Corpuscles and white pus within.
The hint of pain, like some itch that you scratch,
Is fun alongside look-and-see.
What does the boy do with that useless patch,
The scab? Easy: autophagy.
*****
Curiosity is a useful aspect of intelligence. This poem first published in Lighten Up Online (aka LUPO). Thanks, Jerome Betts!
Photo: “War Stories” by Noël Zia Lee is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
I love you with that love floppy and large,
As one of us a man – the other, dog;
Involved, detached, our life’s a travelogue
Of countrysides seen from a rented barge,
“Travels With You” along some river’s marge,
Failing at interspecies dialogue
Till tries at talk are lost in night and fog,
Drifting with batteries we can’t recharge.
Yet there’s no option but to travel on,
Each varied day no different than before,
Wondering if we’ll find some magic door
Which, risking entry, gives communion;
And if, by talking, love would be enhanced,
Or if we’d then destroy all we have chanced.
*****
Sonnet originally published in Candelabrum in 2007.
Photo: “Accordion player” by eltpics is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.
Trap and entangle it,
wrangle it, strangle it,
wrinkle it, rankle it,
manacle, mangle it!
Wrap it, unstrap it,
and rip it and strip it,
then pollard it, top it
and limb it and lop it,
and lift it and drop it
and turn it and flop it.
Then roll it out, slice it thin,
weave about, build it in,
spatter with sparkles and
sprinkle with glitter: you win!
*****
I started this poem in 2008 and abandoned it. Running across it a couple of months ago, I worked on it and sent it in to George Simmers who has just published it in this month’s Snakeskin. Keep your scraps – you may find a use for them in the future!
And by the way: December Snakeskin will be a book fair. Any poets who have published a book or pamphlet of verse over the past year are invited to contact George Simmers: editor@snakeskin.org.uk and if he thinks your book is suitable, he will ask you to send a sample poem, a short introduction and a link to where the book can be bought – and these will go online on December 1st – in time for Christmas shoppers.
Photo: from Snakeskin 322.
I feel good that you want it;
you know it’s under there;
it makes me feel important
but I don’t like your stare.
I wear enough to hide it
though all around is bare;
it’s treasure, ’cos you want it;
who you are, I don’t care.
*****
This poem was first published in Rat’s Ass Review (as are many politically incorrect poems), Fall/Winter 2024 – thanks, Roderick Bates!
Photo: “Lustful model teasing on a boat in a bikini.” by @yakobusan Jakob Montrasio is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
Form in Formless Times 