23 July 2014

Belleville Rendez-vous (2003) The Triplets of Belleville

Grandmother notices her child’s dis-ease,

finds puppy-plus-tricycle cure in time,

and sets in motion a mountain journey—

from cabaret play through organized crime.

She couldn’t have planned it if she tried, not

Madame Souza with her young Champion.

Her egg beater massages his massive

thighs in training for his first Tour de France.

Voila! He’s ready! Excitement packs all:

he on his bike while her truck trails behind—

Madame Souza, Bruno, food and water—

The animation is simply divine.

I won’t spoil the tale while they’re on the trail

but leave you with this little rhyme: back rooms

hold gamblers who live on greed and control

so what looks free pays a terrible toll.

Les Triplettes de Belleville (2003) - Sylvain Chomet - Trailer

A tribute for my prompt

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Le Tour de France

22 July 2014

Naps' Role

Sleeping Princess: A 1926 painting by Victor Vasnetsov
from Wikipedia's Neuroscience of sleep

Scheduling self-time into my days twice—

in their waking and into their sleeping—

makes each round cycle a mini lifetime.

And naps thus double life’s awakenings.

My cats demonstrated this truth often

but since they did not nag at me, I wrote

while they slept and accepted affection

without empathizing with their lesson.

Nor did Shakespeare, my best teacher, praise sleep

for its loving and healing nature, but

pictured it needed, broken, horror full—

life’s final rest or its guilty unease.

I’m blessed with insights and I feel quite whole

since I allowed sleep to fully play its role.

Written to Mary's

Poetics – Time and Time Again

at dverse Poets Pub.

(More could be said, but not with tongue in cheek.)

21 July 2014

Friends of Truth

Truth, holding a mirror and a serpent (1896).
Olin Levi Warner, Library of Congress

Truing brings to exact

alignment. True is One

in Boolean logic:

a switch is either on

or off. True self

maintains no façade.

Truth is naked, holding

a mirror to look deep

into self and a snake

for wisdom and danger,

a lamp lit and a book

to vow and to record.

Truth is stereotyped

female, weak and fragile,

culture-bound and enslaved

to masters who profit

from its labor, who own

all the fruit of its womb.

But this is not true. Sex

carries no weight, gender

has no edge in truing

patterns and lines. Truth

plays better as a verb;

truing can’t be a noun.

And with twenty theories

of truth, what phrase is more

ironic than “true faith”?

“True religion” leads

no where. Truing religion

may lead somewhere.

20 July 2014

Pine

A mermaid wanted to be human to follow her bliss—

I wonder if a tree ever felt like this?

I know I have wished in reverse, the stolid mountain pine to be—

for my next incarnation, I'd be a tree.

If it's all the same, God, please plant my feet next time in earth

to witness when sapling, young and most mature.

And then let me hold another as cradle, crib and bed

then table, bowl, desk and pine box for the dead.

Finally, make of me grade-A paper for poetry

in verse pain-free and filled with fresh imagery.

In this way let me serve you, God, through near four hundred years—

and soften the blow when the earth disappears.

Pinus mugo

For the Open Link Monday Welcome to the Imaginary Garden...

a few lines I want to play with on another day.

19 July 2014

Closing the Poets Pub

I found the green pen right where you said it would be—

in a mug down the end of the bar under the Shamrock.

Seems like yesterday I sat in this corner to watch the moon walk …

No, a man named Armstrong walked on it. Someone’s wrote his name

over the bar mirror, see? The 20^th of July 1969—

because he changed the world, maybe, before your time.

I only had one.

Do you have a dry napkin?

I wrote poetry on napkins back then too, adolescent love poems,

all worried about how the moon wouldn't be romantic anymore

now men had walked on it and weren't in it,

now that we knew it wasn't made of cheese.

All worried we’d trash our moon

like we’d trashed spaceship earth.

Yes—even back then when

Bukowski quit his day job and—yes,

Woodstock, too, later—after Sharon Tate’s murder.

Let’s not go there.

Did you listen to the poets gathered in this graffiti-lined tavern?

You know, then, that classics did not die, the moon is beloved of women

and mythology is alive. Murder occurs as ever,

the oppressed turn around to oppress others

and victims are still children and poor and guileless—

But here poets live to write and write to live with ink for drink,

protein images, fruits and vegetable words and vitamin dashes

served between metaphor chips, simile dips and hyperbole icing

on layer cakes—what a meal! More potluck and multilingual than ever

with dialogue in session.

I loved the moment someone stepped up to the mic best:
The spot warming up. The sound check. The move toward center.

It's too early. I’ll join you later, promise.

I just need a moment alone

to finish something I started

with the wet napkin and green pen.

Thanks for the dry one.

Now then—

Written for Victoria's

Time to “Clean Up”–an After-Party Reflection

at d'Vverse Poets Pub.

Boomerang Weaponry

Boomerangs

Johanna

Stained glass

Sticks and stones will break my bones

but words will never hurt me.
Ha!

This poem is sticks and stones and words:

all three in poetic bombardments
which blast to pieces the secure
homes of three little pi-children. Sticks

break straw, stones batter sticks, words ig-
nore bricks and all three boomerang
to attack their weakened sources:

boomerang weaponry, all three.

This poem is sticks people use
to play fight when armies are away.
Through high jumps, spear throwing and base-
ball, sword practice and beatings, kids are
familiar with sticks. Israeli
and Palestinian both, we
build stretchers, tie on our white flags,
pull each other out from rubble.

This poem is stones to carve as art
carrying hieroglyphics and
ancient laws. It's corner stones in
buildings and cover stones for graves.
Stones roll markers of Biblical
boundaries and shepherds cross to
water sheep and fill their slingshots—
Stones build the strongest walls of all.

This poem is words that penetrate

walls built with or without true gates,

wherever three deaths point the way

one prepares to retaliate.

That's the thing about ingrained hate—

few pause to think and rarely wait.
And though new words don't palliate
they are our means to mediate.

This poem is sticks to straw

This poem is stones to sticks

This poem is words to bricks
This poem is tears to stone.
This poem is a proposal to lay aside
boomerang weaponry that bullies ride

Written for Hannah's prompt

Sunday's Mini-Challenge: Boomerang Metaphors

at Imaginary Garden with Real Toads.

Susan's Poetry

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