Coon cats are whispered snoring, into the capitalist abyss. listless, horrid, making humid gasps with tepid claws, cloaked in Darkness. Notched bones, stones skimmed in languid pools, cool with murk. Ambivalent, squalid, lack-luster prophecies of porridge, stored in caskets. Asked, petitioned, queried with preemptive spiderweb associations. Conclaves, covens, cabals, absinthe ridden withdrawals, hidden.
I retreat.
Unable to muster mastery of binoculars, i hold them wavy-gravy, willy-nilly, positioning posthumously, some meager attempt at monoculars. Myopic flies in my eyes, like sugar coated laser beams of bloodshot, bulging, swaying, a patchwork quilt of pirate sails, filled and flubbing, Trade Winds of nautical nausea. Jean Paul, first mate, shark bait, lost in translation, a damp and mottled cigarette bobs like a lazy lure as he speaks. Against a Wall. Who is not? Tongue-tied and graffitied, tattooed of nomenclature, amassed of puffer fish, confused, toxic, bulimic, suffering from Hoodoo of the Soul. A mole, neglected, once removed, returns, unscathed, harboring tales of El Dorado and the Hangings. Carved in stone caves, steeped in mud. A drip to drive you mad with wanton want. To drag back to your cave in pastel colors, Women, bare breasted, teats like Blimps, poised to sail to some Verdant, steamy Jungle. Appeased by scent, musky, musty, remnants of song to dance below your nostrils, and polka in your Brain. Untamed phosphorescence, swim in bacterial bays, bioluminescent, faux Carny-like and Cannibalistic, swarming in the wake of you, the ever present, effervescent, Thought of
You.
Flue. A place smoke rises. Immaterial. The haze of a dream, pleasant smelling but ungraspable, wavering, waving good-bye,
GONE….
Lost is the perpendicular, subversive want of Wonder. Thunder you can Sea. Touch with the long tall tails of morning, swaying in swamps, with the Cats. Baying in sylvan moonlight, intrepid eyes watch as harbingers of sound, spoken word dappled in periwinkle trust, parades flamboyantly, confidently, down horse cobbled streets. “Bring out your dead” a brass bell chimes, be All of us Dead, and Living. Soaked, poked in brine, keeping thyme with archaic beats of sorrow. Misplayed, repeated endlessly, a syncopated loop, swooped down like errant Vultures, tortured on the carrion of Hope. Living, sojourned falsely with sequined ambiance, the falsetto ravings of baritones in drag. Scared, Scarred beyond all reckoning, Dead Reckoning. Sounding. Whales head for obsidian depths in droves. Drones circling in mechanized imitation, immolation of extinct bees, nobel, honey-less, penny-less. Eating the Money of our Minds, crumpled notes of borrowed tender, green with nutritional surveillance. Grieved by bats, also gone, their leathery wings wearing coats of Despair. Shared. We share this, This, Dis ease of multicolored stones, bones of braille empathy, scream in silence. Unable we were, to grasp the sweaty matrix of Song. Dust-covered lattice of hands, standing in sand, quick sinking, Smiling. Wayward Truth beyond windward wisps of sorrow, Hope…
A panoramic view of Plain, grassy, swaying without coaxing. Billions of breath, interwoven, flaxen, bleached of memory, oblivious. Count….
How long before it’s gone?
This gazing, far off and distant-like, like a marlin on a manufactured line, just before the hook is set. Grazing…
Hazy, Apothecary of gnats, gaunt, taunt in the hum of iolite Nite. Neon, Bleeding, raped of thought, woven, washed out, without the allure of equality. Idolatry, Bestial and Warm, flowing like the sacrificial blood of Metal, clawed from crevices, still-born, in placental Magma. Sagas, elucidating hate, un-nurtured, turned sour by power, lust after adulterated stabbings of anonymity, unabated. Dominion over Winged Things. Alighting like Butterflies before the Fall. Stand tall Saul, thrown from your horse and blinded, rebuked by God, Lawd of Dominion. Beasts, the least of US, trussed by cords unseen, chords which might have played out, so differently.
In Light, in total Illumination, there is Nothing Discernible. What can you own, covet, want, but the destruction of your chains. Vain manacles forged of history, his story, that barely serves, instructs, self destructs, trickles down, diverting attention from the One River that might slake our Thirst. Many tributaries without need of Tribute, distributed evenly, unlocked, keyless, free lest we forsake our Love, kill Doves, fabricate the swords of insurrection, limp erections, oligarchical inventions. Disillusioned wards, of feudal lords, spouting futility, touting wars utility. Desperate, disparate, this Parrot squawks the same tune, monsoon, repeated, bleated, wing-clipped and cheated, A Siren Song of Separation, which can never
take us Home
Vinny, Vinny, Vinny, this is awesome! I read it in my mind and in that reading I loved the rhythm and rhyme and wordplay. Then I read it aloud and appreciated the cadence and sound s all the more. This is master poetry and my MFA wife agrees. I’m still reading it for all it’s deep meaning. I’d love to tear it apart and examine each and every nuance in light of the author’s eyes. Let’s do that sometime. Such beauty, my friend. Where does this soul come from?
Greg, mucho thanks for your kind words. As to where the soul comes from? maybe one part bayonne, one part bayou, and whole lotta late nite dinner food 🙂 I am always down to delve deep into good conversation, i might know a good used bookstore….. Thanks again bro.
Epic word-paint, Vinny! I feel like I’m standing before a surrealist mural in the middle of an indigenous village where resistance to empire remains strong. Much of the meaning eludes me, yet the colors and contours and music convey magic. I’m sure the feeling will be even stronger when these words are spoken by you, hopefully at Jupiter’s Books sometime soon.
It amazed me to learn, during a recent conversation, that this poem had it’s origin in an open letter you began writing to a Cannon Beach official after crossing paths near city hall. I think readers would be interested in hearing about your process. Bookshop talk has taught me that many people thirst for free-form communication. How can we pour life’s wild connections into writing?
Watt, thank you for your words, and for tilling the soil so that so many of us have some fertile Earth with which to sprinkle a few creative seeds. Yes, it actually started as an open letter concerned with local events. It acknowledged the weight and responsibility of public service, expressing both gratitude and discontent. I wished to speak for the Trees, to channel Salmon voices. I wanted to rail against pavement and surveys with compassion, yet not sacrifice conviction or common sense….. It got away from me bro. It just got Too Big!!!!! I had the Mongol Horde in there, and the Iroquois notion of 7 Generations. Dharma, Karma, and Big Pharma all made their appearances. It was heavy, weighty and pretty hard to handle, so i put it down…. Two weeks later i penned this piece, feverishly, without pause, in about 45 mins.( the exception being the last few lines, which needed a bit more cajoling) It is my hope that what needs to flow out of us, does. Forms may morph, words may shift and change, but the prayer is, the heart’s behind it, with love, care and conviction. A small testament for the curious passerby.
After the Post Beat gathering on Monday night, ( Thank you Watt, and Mark, and All the Amazing Souls who attended ) i was thinking about a poem i started writing when i was 23. Dedicated to Sylvia Plath, it was titled, “The shark in your Garden” and was born out of a story of a storm i had heard her mother relay during a documentary. I tied together the deep and tumultuous aspects of her life. The sharks who sometimes found her, or were circling. The fruitfulness and fecundity of her Garden, so ripe with words.
I have a title and about eight lines i really like, but 28 years later, it’s still not close to being finished. It sits in some notebook, somewhere, with a lot of other hopefuls, waiting. So yeah, sometimes wordplay happens in 45 minutes. Other times, 28 years later, with no sign of contractions, it remains a cool idea.