Monday, August 23, 2010

a bolus of dried cranberries for coney

Bungee corded cargo caught between ditch and
the river drops into rubbery knocking rhythms
on a gravel path kicking red dust that coats
sharp oiled sprockets and chains to a province south
of brush strokes flat and grace notes rhyme:

the periwinkle glow flattened laughter
on the banks of newly sprouted fescue
calls and draws with fingers curled
hinting foreign ways in blown clouds
and thorny pink hedgerows close

near ash felled trunks mottled white,
poached giraffe hide on bank chopped
a fractal map of bark design mimicked
in bits and pieces and pieces and bits.

A gape faked for brickwork fades
and chipped red is just unpointed
mortared oil, anointing aromatic grief
with a grey feather flipping in the mulch-
scarlet leaves worm-eaten loose today
but not the sun whitened log noose hung
by denim fingers frayed in unskilled blue.

A recall of how few things are known but
to the common wise so obvious a nucleus
is small sun calico on a cool steel guardrail
and there's a perfect rock to break the black
and sink until blue under the foamy spillway:

a drowned name on a granite bench carved,
a bleached burst of plastic flowers timed
to mourn the rainbow that one arced breath-

the price of tossing that burden is somewhere
being shed enough for tears and laughter both.

Let the mind prattle to exhaustion
and you're left counting rabbits in a morphine haze-
look, there's one over there.

It's beige.

15 comments:

  1. Gerry, you make me want to grab my camera and illustrate. I want to hear this spoken. Ah Gerry. I would love it if my mind prattled to exhaustion. It never does. And never beige. Thank God. I hate beige.

    "plastic flowers timed to mourn the rainbow that once arced breath." Damn, that is both sad and beautiful...tears and laughter both. Does the sun sap color from things as fuel to it's own beauty? Sad that it hungers incessantly and that the moon cannot replace the daily banquet.

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  2. Indeed, this is beautiful imagery...bursting with emotion. Well done, Mr. B.

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  3. @W&W: Images and sounds make more sense to me than bald abstractions. Life is sad and beautiful. Saddest at its most beautiful because then I really sense mortality. I don't really know about the sun. I have been considering putting up some recordings. Just need to figure out how to do that. We'll see. Cheers.

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  4. @Akeith: Cheers. Always appreciate your reads because I know how well you write.

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  5. Fantastic images, Gerry. You really challenge the tongue of the reader when read out loud!

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  6. Kudos! I love the grand finale...

    Let the mind prattle to exhaustion
    and you're left counting rabbits in a morphine haze-

    look, there's one over there.

    It's beige.


    Delicious!

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  7. Okay. I'm reading along, keeping my eye out for your ubiquitous beige, thinking "gee, he didn't use it this time", every color, but. Then I fell off my chair in laughter at the end!!!

    (also enjoyed "in bits and pieces and pieces and bits")

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  8. @Gordon: Right. Hard for me unless I read it slow.

    @Tear Drop: Fireworks indeed.

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  9. Oh, when I read your profile, I thought you wrote poetry. How nice. But, you write POETRY. Very good writing. Oh gosh, you are going to make me think as I read your poetry. Bring it on!

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  10. @TechnoBabe: ha! that's pretty funny. not sure what the actual difference is between p and P. i dig all things p and/or P. there is only one p(P)oem. we all just keep writing imperfect copies of it. me, i'm just messin' around with words. cheers and thanks for stopping by.

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  11. Gerry,
    Yet another delightful read. Floaty lilt with colourful images.
    I particularly like:' A bleached burst of plastic flowers timed to mourn the rainbow'.

    A pleasure to find!
    Best wishes from home!
    Eileen

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  12. "there is only one p(P)oem. we all just keep writing imperfect copies of it."
    Demonstrating insight :P

    As for the piece, I absolutely love you reinterpreting this mundane landscape in an explosion of fractured meaning and color. There doesn't seem to be any 'space' in this poem; every cell is bursting and breeding image. It's very tight and compact but still seems to trail off into a sort of infinity.
    Like the little beige joke, too, very nice.

    Anyway, keep coming with the excellent work. I'm burgeoning into a fan very quickly.

    James.

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  13. @James(J. Kyle): Thanks for a deep comment James. The kind of comment that is most valuable to me because it raises issues upon which I can mull for days. My biggest struggle with myself in writing is trying (and mostly failing) to reduce the density. But, yes, fractured meaning and color. Like the LHC, I am trying to smash the language to understand its parts, I suppose. At least that's what I tell myself. Ha! I do know that poetry with completely rational sense does not really resonate with me. I am just not sure how far towards the irrational edge one can bend the semantic and aural sense without devolving into non-sense. But close to and over that edge is where the words sound and seem most like poetry to me. Cheers and thanks for the input. It has real value to me.

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  14. @Eileen: Glad you made it back safely dear. Ends of holidays are also filled with mixed emotions, aren't they? Glad you liked this. Cheers.

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