Saturday, July 24, 2010

seven beats while the metronome joked

You know the clock's not real
but still you ache its ticking
tricked to notice movement
when it is only painted still.

While a skull grins in icy clouds
leaves flip silver to wait for rain
if that's when low you look to see
the pink globe at sunset swollen,
ersatz precursor to a steady diet
of dry brown acorns easily plinked
and eventually served as charcoal
despite the awkward faux pas style
of clasping with fingerless gloves.

A concrete angel bows to the azure half-shell,
her dry lips foaming a pink V for wanting
on a granite stand trimmed green for sorrow,
after a limousine chase for the widow in black silk
and a rural hearse with no juice run down fresh
to a moist entrance dug from angled mounds.

A bebop version of circumstantial pomp
causes greedy tears to mark this turf
with clinging spray cleaved to flesh,
requiem high-notes by a monkey sung
hirsute y muy simpatico y mas,
the girl in plaid is walking beside
deep set eyes and squeaky wheels
under the rising limbs of linden:
it is not gold but cork that floats
safely lined for carriages of loss.

A monologue of normality
from a desiccated carcass
that simply loves the disco,
the soutane above the fray
if the legs had feet instead of glide
by the sacred sign disguised.

Under this sad hymn of high summer
(crickets strumming rhythm
led by cicadas syncopate)
only plain birds sit the sizzling wire,
the dotage that never blinked downhill
rolls from neon crying time's suspense,
the frozen bauble to never flash again.

For something to believe in pink
the pearly globe grows up in size-
we only die each time we notice.

14 comments:

  1. What a scenery you present us here...!!!
    Bravo!

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  2. This piece was so brilliant. I am still in awe. I wanted to thank you for such a lovely comment! I adore you, and your writing. Your prose is brilliant.

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  3. @Madison: Too kind, really. Just messing around with words. The struggle never ends in the search for meaning. My mantra comes from T.S. Eliot: "Every attempt is another kind of failure". Doesn't stop me from continuing to try though. Writing gives me great pleasure and I get great pleasure, too, when someone reads and even greater when they actually comment. So, thank you for your kind words.

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  4. I really enjoyed this poem in several 'attempts’,each attempt being so unique and pleasurable.Reading your poem is like wading through a stream (’the struggle never ends’),in a craft of words sometimes smooth and even, and at times unhinged like in a torrent, though; this is a very pleasant traversal, the buoyancy is perfect and whole.
    Please ‘continue with your try’ ‘every attempt giving us another kind of’ fulfillment.
    -Sasidharan Cheruvattath

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  5. @AnAestheticBard: Cheers Sasidharan. Glad you commented so I could track down your blog.

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  6. I enjoyed this too, Gerry. There's something Daliesque about your style for me.

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  7. A rural hearse with no juice. That's what I am in summer. Can't wait till I am born again in fall.

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  8. @Antonionioni: Flattered by the comparison.

    @willow: September come she will. ;-)

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  9. Great images and great sounds, Gerry. I read this over several times there was so much in it that each subsequent reading exposed.

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  10. @Gordon: I like to pack it in, huh? Value for the consumer!

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  11. I have to agree with the Dali comment; apropos.

    and I also love the sweep of images and the feelings that accompany them; nicely done.

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  12. Brilliant, this has got such a beat & a moderness running through it... (comment from Mr Stravener)

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