Star-Thrower
Star-Thrower's JournalStill
Still
It is still. It met with
death so slowly,
so gradually, so
barely noticeably.
Fading finally, out of its
necessary,right now
existence, there was
no one to be left behind.
There was no one
left to touch this grief.
We are alone.
We have no one, you know,
to share deep mourning with.
Velvet blackness cloaks
the funeral night, night which
grieves starless.
I'm just exhausted
with all of this political stuff. I have just decided to get under the bed covers and binge watch JAG. What climbed into my brain's memory was just a couple of words of a song I remotely remembered. She's come undone. Not only me coming undone, but us, America.
Hve we, are we undone? Here's the song I remembered:
This is
This is one of my favorite poems.
Prayer Of Pan Cogito – Traveller
Lord
Thank you for creating the world beautiful and of such variety
And also for allowing me in your inexhaustible goodness
To visit places which were not the scene of my daily torments
- for lying at night near a well in a square in Tarquinia while the swaying
bronze declared from the tower your wrath and forgiveness
and a little donkey on the island of Corcyra sang to me from
its incredible bellowing lungs the landscape’s melancholy
and in the very ugly city of Manchester I came across
very good and sensible people
nature reiterated her wise tautologies the forest was
forest the sea was sea and rock was rock
stars orbited and things were as they should be – Jovis omnia plena
- forgive me thinking only of myself when the life of
others cruel and irreversible turned round me like the huge
astrological clock in the church at Beauvais
for being too cowardly and stupid because I did not understand
so many things
and also forgive me for not fighting for the happiness of
poor and vanquished nations and for seeing only moonrise and museums
- thank you for the works created to glorify you which
have shared with me part of there mystery so that in gross conceit
I concluded that Duccio Van Eyck Bellini painted for me too
and likewise the Acropolis which I had never fully understood
patiently revealed to me its mutilated flesh
- I pray that you do not forget to reward the white-haired old
man who brought me fruit from his garden in the bay of the island of Ithaca
and also the teacher Miss Hellen on the isle of Mull whose
hospitality was Greek or Christian and who ordered light
to be placed in the window facing Holy Iona so that human
lights might greet one another
and furthermore all those who had shown me the way and said
kato kyrie kato
and that you should have in your care the Mother from Spoleto
Spiridion from Paxos and the good student from Berlin who
got me out of a tight spot and later, when I unexpectedly
ran into him in Arizona, drove me to Grand Canyon which
is like a hundred thousand cathedrals standing on their heads
- grant O Lord that I may forget my foolish and very weary
persecutors when the sun sets into the vast uncharted
Ionian sea
that I may comprehend other men other tongues other suffering
and that I be not stubborn because my limitations are
without limits
and above all that I be humble, that is, one who sees
one who drinks at the spring
thank you O Lord for creating a world very beautiful and varied
and if this is Your temptation I am tempted for ever
and without forgiveness
— Zbigniew Herbert poet
Dreariness
Dreariness
Oh the dreariness of twenty-two
years coming down that street,
summer, fall, winter and spring,
winter being the worst.
The potted plants
so carefully tended so
carelessly thrown. who cares
when one is enraged at the
futility of life?
My thoughts wandered
to another time and another
place. A place far removed
from dreariness. I remembered
the magazine images of the
ovens and skeletons left from
the burning of the Jews. the
smokestacks in the distance
spewing smoke reminded me
of those pictures as I trailed
the Puerto Ricans migrants
on my bicycle in albion.
Smitten I vowed
to follow him, that one
who stood out, handsome
and charming, laughing
after a day of labor in
a most foreign land,
to there, to Puerto Rico.
Children have no prejudice
or preconceived notions
you know. I thought of him
and the magical unknown
Puerto Rico often.
Mother and me
moved back to Pt. Breeze.
Back into the home on
Pt. Breeze road. I was twelve then,
and didn't understand stirrings
that begin in the heart and
traveled down to one's toes.
we were all carefree then
and innocent.
And in one early spring
the empty three story
mansion down the road
became filled and the
bunkhouse behind it filled with
single men, unattached and
looking for fun, in Pt. Breeze.
White migrants from Florida
coming with the Davis family.
There was Herman, the the eldest,
and his wife Kay and their three
year old daughter. And Roland,
single. There was old fella, Roland and
Herman's daddy. And their
momma, both too old to do
any picking.
I knew nothing of poverty
then. I knew nothing of hatred
or looking down upon others.
they called me wildcat. I loved them.
Their boss, Mr. Wilson owned the
fields they worked in and the
mansion they stayed in.
I joined them every summer
picking cherries, taking with me
a sandwich and a mason jar filled
with ice and kool-aid wrapped
in layers of newspaper. Fifty cents
for a half-bushel of cherries
was the pay.
When they went into town I'd
sneak into the bunkhouse, creep
into the mansion, play on the organ
and wander and wonder about these
people who worked their way up
north picking produce all the way
in order to make a living. They had
no thoughts of dreariness, instead
their faces were etched with sun
and weariness.
I flirted shamelessly with J. R.
in the bunkhouse. He, with his
sly crooked smile had other
thoughts. He picked up his banjo
and ignored this wildcat. He and the
bunkhouse boys all knew better
than to mess with a teenage wildcat
in a Yankee state where most
looked on these pickers
with disdain but eagerly took their
hard-earned cash.
As summer rolled into fall, the
apples heralded the end of
the season and the end of the
Davises and the bunkhouse boys.
There would be nothing left but the
empty mansion and bunkhouse
for me to wander through all winter
and to wait for the snow to stop
blowing in off Lake Ontario
and the return of the Davises.
I thought at the time that
Florida was closer and more
doable than Puerto Rico. And so
I asked, and when I asked,
mother thought and thought.
I begged and begged. please,
let me go to florida with the Davises.
But she thought and thought until
her silence told me all I had to know.
and all I didn't want to know
about dreariness.
Written in 1993
Waco
Little Waco is on the map of the
consciousness of america. Validated
by a wacko fanatic whose followers,
those lost sheep of humanity,
follow blindly he who is blinded,
but not by any light of god.
He is waiting for a sign from god,
say news reports each day, as we
hang on to every televised report,
wondering if guyana-like he leads
his flock away from light and into
the shadow of the prince of darkness.
And parting words of "god made me do
do it", do little to dispel the notion
that nobody believes in such a god.
not even in Waco, Texas.
And spectacle-like, the press surround
the tanks that circle a place that's
called the "compound". Said to have
food stockpiled to last a siege of months
and arms stong enough to embrace the
federal agents for just as long.
But strong enough to hold his gentle
flock from going over the edge of reason
and plunging downward onto printed pages,
forever spirits without rest,
historically speaking?
And the cult experts will postulate
the reasons for the cause and the
meaning of the effect. The folks in
Waco will speak of this for years to come,
long after the ruts in the dust
made by the tanks, fill in from rain and
dried from sun, are scattered
by the wind blowing bored
over the landscape.
Epic Fail
I tried to post a digital art from Flickr. But the image didn't show and I got a 404 This is not the page you’re looking for. So much for that. I guess I'll stick to the poetry group. Bummer.
Would I not rejoice
Would I Not Rejoice
Would I not
rejoice at the
death of spring,
if summer, born of
this death did not
immediately follow?
Would I not
drunkenly in
early hours,
toast to a fertile
soil, if a dream
of riper fruits
did not exist?
We shall tip
our glasses once more,
when she in her
declining beauty
surrenders to her
death and brings about
her fall.
She will fall softly in
the night to
await her shroud
of tardy snowflakes.
Still
Still
It is still.
It met with death
so slowly, so
gradually, so
barely noticeably.
Fading finally
out of its necessary,
right now existence,
there was no one
to be left behind.
There was no one
left to touch this grief.
We are alone, we have
no one, you know, to
share deep mourning with.
Velvet blackness cloaks
the funeral night, night,
which grieves starless.
I Heard The Roses Dying
I Heard The Roses Dying
I heard the roses dying.
I could not tell you this.
You would understand.
I could not say they
were a lost part of us.
Petals scattered
upon the soil, it will
look pretty for awhile.
Speak softly in their
presence, and have no
tear upon your cheek.
It was not our fault, their
dying, it was not us.
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Member since: Tue Mar 3, 2020, 08:01 PMNumber of posts: 309