A Carrie Retrospective

[champagne1982]

North Wind

Boreas, bitter elder, release
your gripping hold on the season
and rest now. Cease your howl
of angry blow and sleep.
The soft and gentle Zephyros blows
out of the west, to sooth
your knotted brow and ease
you into slumber. Sleep, Boreas.
Skiron will rouse you after harvest
with the rattle of the stubble
left dessicated in the fields.

Come ye then and howl your bitter
groans for an early waking. Join
your brothers in the cyclone spin
of escape out onto the eastern sea
for but a moment, then begin
your torments of a land abandoned
by the sweet Persephone and bathed
in Demeter's tears. Freeze them
on her cheeks until Hades relents
and grants her child a moment
in the sun. Today, though, blow away.

 

[champagne1982]

Naked Squirrels

Let's take a drive
you invited
don't wear your panties
you demanded

I want to see beneath
your skirt as you
rest your right foot
on the dash and splay
open, your left toes
wedged beneath my ass
you said. I listened

the only sound
that of tires humming
on the pavement
and pleasure hummed
as my finger probes
and you lick your lips.

Find a place to park
I requested
and take me from behind
I invited

I want to feel you drag
my hips back to meet
your thrusts that bounce
me off the fender and slap

my ass on your trousered
thighs to disturb curious
birds and make squirrels
drop pine cones on the car

 

[champagne1982]

November 2014

Freedom 55 is such a trite
way of saying I'm without you.
I've loved you all my life,
you see. I didn't start living
until I realized I loved you.

When we moved north
and our son began to exist
even he couldn't take your place
in my affections, in my life.

I simply moved over a bit
to make room in the you
that was our life.

Europe followed quickly,
and with that, a new exploration
of places we'd never been,
creating places we loved to see.

I remember loving and playing
out adventures in old haunted
castles and busy beer gardens
and driving too fast on twisted
roads through vineyards and hills.

When we sampled the menu
in an Amsterdam cafe I giggled
at the deft fingers of the bar
maid as she rolled a perfect spliff.

The tulip gardens were a shade
of rainbowed experience that paled
in the buzz of that smoky afternoon.

Paris was a whirlwind of must sees
and suddenly must dos of sex
where and when the notion struck
your libido and brought mine along.

Coming back to the north
my life was so amazing and I wanted
to give a new person a home inside
the love that was our family,
and she was perfect in that answer.

We stayed, we grew, we lived this love
you faltered, I brought our feet back
beneath us and we loved on for years
and ages that changed the way we looked

But never changed the way I felt but now
you're gone to where I must wait to follow
You've taken a spark that kept love hot.

I think about where I am right now
and where I had always planned on being.
Funny how that's turned out, I'd planned
a hundred anniversaries and a thousand more
memories but now, I guess, those are gone

I will cherish the ones we loved through
The births and failings of this life
and remember, we'll always have Paris.

 

[champagne1982]

I miss your presence

on my finger
the ring has left
a scar and I feel
the loss most often
when I'm looking
at the dark clouds
of a sudden storm

your exclamation of amazement
at a thunderbolt flash
across the skyscape
to boom us awake
is echoed by my realization
that you will never
be heard again

the shock of ozone
and the sting
of the downpour
that followed close
on the heels of the sky
breaking; nature's
editorial on the way
I feel the wetness
on my face.

 

[champagne1982]

Whispers To An Empty Pillow

Don't give me this memory
of wasted flesh and pain dripping
through tubes feeding a need
to breathe, to speak, to live
when all possibility of staying
has expired; and you just want
to brake and shudder to a halt,
stopping this graceless endurance
and droop, finished and drained;
and I remember despite all prayers
to forget how hard it is to be.

 

[champagne1982]

Maybe Now

I have a dream,
echoed across the square
as a pleased ghost stepped on stage
and whispered into hearts, of hope
and dreams fulfilled.

Yes I can,
as proud and defiant
as any other on the Earth
for once again the world
cloaks itself in America.

Once I stood and wept
as my neighbour gasped
despair and wounds bled
onto streets washed red
with hearts' blood.

Once more I stand
beside my friends
weeping for better
cause, for pride,

for hope; in expectation
that now peace and equality
are more than just sounds
dripped out of rhetoric;
now a possible reality.

 

[champagne1982]

Travels In The Far-World

The other day I lost my grip
on time and place. You'd pulled
and pushed my awareness

outside and beyond
sensation. Thankyou, thankyou.
I can't explain nirvana,

I don't know if I was there,
but I must have been nearby.
Heaven's not as good as this

when we start to flow together,
never knowing if our feet
will find purchase on the ground

after. Don't let there be an after.
I want to find the other day
once more and pull you into here,

outside and beyond.
This is eternity and there is where
we only exist, here I live

 

[champagne1982]

Thanks

Words might fill the silence
but I would rather hear your breath
as in comfort you sleep,
after we have whispered hopes
and longing against the pillow

we share. All those words spoken
as if these tongues are the broken host,
and my tears, the wine of communion,
taken at the altar of this union.
Love absolves us of sin

and sorrow. Strength renews
as kisses silence mouths
when we swallow the eucharist
and set down the empty cup
that defines redemption.

Dream in this after silence
as I whisper thanks and worship
each unspoken word you breathe.

 

[champagne1982]

Parkland Ridge

The glacial erratic sits like a blemish against expanses
of golden grasses hammered down by winter snow.

Red-barked twigs plump fecund with blooming pussy
willows, swollen to burst soft nubs of bitter taste

with such fine fuzz. The hare stands tall, alert whiskers
twitch to catch a whiff of fox or rambunctious domestic

dog, out on a walk with humans; kept confined too long
by frost and flu. Glad to be out; ready to run from rabbits.

The wind whips ice crystals into a glittered frost cloud.
Sparkling solids flow like water and silt out over everything,

changing straw to silvered scepters and rocks into lumps
of sugar and diamonds that adorn the path on either side.

I have heard the choir of raven, wolf, and magpie rasp
to Boreas and Chinook accompaniment through the reeds.

Felt the percussionist rattle of bullrush banging on the frozen
dugout while the world beats out the coldest moments slowly

and precisely. A dirge and a hymn to mourn another
year gone by
with the passage of seasons and suffocated by winter's snow.

This is the north! Arctic souvereign of the Earth, the sky, the very air
that cuts your throat until all you taste is the metallic scent of blood.

II
Photos of the aurora borealis cannot compare with the rosy
hue of an almost silent hum that you feel more than hear.

Long tendrils of ethereal glow snap across a milky spill of stars
so brightly clustered that solar phenomenae such as this dims

when placed against a galactic backdrop of spirals and nebulae.
The moon pale and gibbous can't outshine the astral beauty here.

It is a northern sky captured and held over a deceptively calm
layer until you walk, sniffing, looking and slowly placing footfalls

so as not to disturb the world's slumber too early. Forty winks
is a farmer's after dinner nap and he knows enough not to snore.

 

[champagne1982]

Glosa of an Epitaph

mote:
And with bowed head and heart abased
Strive hard to grasp the future gain in this sore loss.
For not one foot of this dank sod
But drank its surfeit of the blood of gallant men
Who for their Faith, their Hope, for Life and Liberty
Here made the sacrifice.
Here gave their lives, and right willingly for you and me.
John Oxenham

glos:
And with bowed head and heart abased
remember well the valiant men who lie
beneath the scars, edges softened by time
bear witness and do not forget the generation

who with courage born of stubborn bravery died.
Strive hard to grasp the future gain in this sore loss.
Lovers lonely look to the dawn and hear the songs
that only the dying sing as the ricochet rings loud.

The verdant growth blurs behind this veil of tears
shed in pain of broken hearts to imagine here,
the sacrifice. For not one foot of this dank sod
thirsted for a drink, nor was made mute with fear.

Instead the turf of the Maginot Line glutted and bloat,
had But drank its surfeit of the blood of gallant men
pushing through a wall of fire and stumbling puppets
lifeless landed to gain their foot of soil and hold it fast that day.

The glorious men of this new found land who answered,
Who for their Faith, their Hope, for Life and Liberty
drank the grog of forgetfulness and breathed their happiness
one last time before the letter home to Mum or their darling girl.

Here made the sacrifice.

Here gave their lives, and right willingly for you and me
despite the royal blood that won the privilege
to bleed the land they left behind dry of all those hopes,
stripped the faith out of the hearts of home and commanded

Here you die.

 

[champagne1982]

Known Unto God

And me, I know you
like the sister who watched
you take the welcoming
punch in the shoulder
from that handsome boy
you stood in the recruiting
line up behind and eagerly
pushed forward on a farm
boy's Grand Tour to storied
places you yearned to see.

I know you, like the girl
blowing kisses and chasing
the parade to the pier
to catch you up and tuck
her 'kerchief against
your neck while you smiled
and bravely hoped that today
the propaganda was true
and you'd be home in six months
having won glorious Freedom.

Known unto God and me.

I know you like the mother
who watched your toddling
steps across the dooryard
while it rained and you slipped,
falling into the mud, struggling
to stand on your own, never
imagining how you foundered
in the water at the bottom
of the shell hole, bleeding
and unable to stand
on your own, I know you.

A soldier boy, who never
knew the heat of sex,
the joy of owning an acre
to build a home wrapped
in a picket fence. You
fervently wished to believe
that fighting for your King
meant fighting for Truth,
Liberty and Justice
and that you would die
a hero's noble death

A Soldier of the Great War
Known Unto God.

 

[champagne1982]

The Named

You are the formless ones
who watch us stand, struck
dumb in our capacity
to see the number represented.
Carved into the stone
without a shell to protect
your bones, scattered to the winds.

Weary in your restless sleep
the hearts you stir with your name
a touch of chilling breeze
on upturned faces as you stroke
the tears wept on your behalf,
will take your message home.

You are the beloved ones
whose families have been denied
a place to connect memory
to a corporeal presence lain
beneath their feet. Instead
we walk gracelessly over soil
stained with your blood. If not we,
the ground remembers you.

 

[champagne1982]

The Summary Execution of Mary Surratt

"This is a precursor to the hell you'll burn in."
The priest whispering his incantations
for redemption, my instructions for my
child to buy me heaven from purgatory,
paying for the last rites and rosary clicks.
I hope the mourners keen loudly in protest
of this wrongful killing. I understand retribution.

I ate that bitter meal every day after the trial.
The loneliness of jail a small change
from the way my husband kept me isolated
my entire marriage. Rest his soul and let me forgive
so that I can find peace too. Those broken wooden
boxes stink of gun oil, I wish my children didn't
need to see this ugliness, a masquerade of decency
of the state. Oh how shallow that grave looks
as it gapes for my flesh. It proves how close
to living, hell really is. Forgive me!

And it's hot today, and only gets hotter
when they put that hood over my head
and only hotter when they wrap the bands
around my knees and tie my legs together
the hangman pressing his nose against my privates
and inhaling. His whisper barely reaches my ears,

"You smell like damnation." And my heart bangs
against my breast as if through its strength alone,
I can be saved. My breath gasps in gulped
breaths of sackcloth stink and vomit, I don't
know how I've found the courage to ask them
to hold me straight. It's too late to protest;
my innocence left on the platform as the drop
door falls out from under ...

 

[champagne1982]

This Is How

When you find that piece of jigsawed
squiggles and unusual pattern
to complete the puzzle of living
it's like sitting in a bathtub and realizing
displacement is a thing. Eureka! It all makes
sense. You are whole. A complete entity
that once stumbled around chaos.
No direction, no purpose, no hope
until you glimpsed the perfect bit
to settle into the void near your heart
You are satisfied. No more bitter moue
twisting your mouth into a frown.
A smile graces your lips, the outer
corner of your eye so that laughter
and delight shape the face of animation
This is what forever looks like.


Tomorrow when you wake
and understand complete is spelled
with your lover's name, sharing
is larger than an idea. It is a life
sustained by giving more. taking
less and offering all. Your blood
sings anthems to love, a melody
exquisite, the touch of harmony
a shiver over those places embraced
by truth. No more doubt since you
moved past this and found trust
in the way you look to one another.
Such deep care and understanding
carries your hymn through sleep
and tomorrow begins fulfilled,
happy, and rested. Woken
to a richer passage of time.
This is how forever love feels.

 

[champagne1982]

Pygmalion Revisited

1. I love you.
Your heart must stop beating
so that your corpse will know
how much I love you.

I love the delicacy of your brow
the finest silken thread cannot compare
with the lightness of those wisps
that form such a beautiful arch
above the blue depths of your eyes

I love the porcelain glow of your skn
your face so white I feel the heat
off the contrast of red blood flowing
in your lips, you are lovely in life

2. Will you love me?
Your heart must stop beating
so that your corpse will know
how much I love you.

Your breath must cease its disruption
of the lace at your throat and leave
you so still that I might work the magic
to spark your eternal youth and vigor

One jolt of power
One vial of humours
One taste of living blood
One kiss of love
One touch of longing

3. Please forgive me.
When you rise I fear the strength of your hate
your immortality a source of resentment at waking.
Your blackened lips and fingertips a sullen reminder
that I have returned you to life's ugliness; to eternal
pain, infinite hunger and insatiable need. I love you.

 

[champagne1982]

The Madness of Isaiah

I walk on a stone bruise right where plantar
becomes arch and my cracked heels
testify to the dry clay I stumble over
to breathe out the words of shame nudity
brings the wanderer. Sackcloth may chafe
but the grit blown in the wind scours clean
my brow and exfoliates better
than skin rejuvenation could ever claim,
both leave me red and tender.

My enervated face struggles to remain stoic
in the blind dark of a moonless night,
when silence seems to scream in my ears
and night's dew, though cool, burns
the places dust and grit have made raw.
Each fold and crease tenderized
with pulverised silicates. Parts of me turning
pink to ruby, pale to burgundy, and soft to pulp.
My body cannot find a comfort to rest upon
as each muscle and curve twitches, sensitive
to even the wind's breath, soft and gentle
to the storm battered land but a flail to my wounds.

What should this prove to one who fails in offering
succour to the devastated survivors
of events their hands have had no part in bringing?
He spews words of shame to the helpless
when there are few capable hands reaching
out to assist. His derision of leaders ridiculous
to those who recognize his incapacity to lead,
even on a well-marked path. His herd of goats
bleat, contented to feed on ragweed and thistle,
as he feasts on delicacies bought with wages
failed to pay to those who labour on his behalf.

Shame to the governing power as it prances
in silk while people gather meager sustenance,
sky-clad and weary, on those very beaches
they promise to defend. Shame to those gorging
on goat meat even as their shepherds struggle
to hold the herd together. Shame to those
who fail to see suffering while imposing rule
and restrictions on the ones who writhe beneath
their lash. Shame even as I am shamed
in nakedness, stumbling in garbage and waste,
through a wilderness of ignorance and imperfection,
and hoping for a better way revealed tomorrow.

 

[champagne1982]

Dear Gord
(Gordon Downie b. 6 Feb 1964, d. 17 Oct 2017)

You rocked my blues right outta sad
each time I heard you serenade
Bobcaygeon and reminded
that home is no place for fascists
and girls who don't give a fuck
about hockey. We know the goal
that shook the world and the other
that took a man out to nature
and never let him get back home

And fully and completely understand
how this torture in the desert
exonerates you. But no, I don't wanna
swim on those dirty sidewalks
or see the sky fall one cloud at a time.
This ain't no nautical disaster
and I don't give a fuck about hockey,
not today, my music is slipping away
it's more about muddy memory,
dull and hypothetical and now
your constellation will reveal itself

one star at a time

 

[champagne1982]

My Stars are Older Than Yours

1.
You fall into space with gravity
snatching you back to start rolling
underneath the earth. Just around
the bent line of time and mass
effects that shape a sphere

You know the math for this event
and I cannot bring it to a conclusion.
My mind is intuitive in knowing
that we are both drawn toward
the centre and can't get to it.

The stars are moving, faster
than imagination allows. A number
exists in some (I call it arcane) form
that explains how they eventually
move outside of our trapped view.

2.
If I could I would ride to the edge
of the star path and wait for that year
to pass on Earth. Turn my back
on our solar system and watch
the galaxy slip by from my vantage
point out here, where the Milky Way
radiation has minimal effect so far
from that centre that I can't get to.
Explain it to me slowly so that I
can understand why you are both
close and infinitely far from me.
if I tried to take the direct route
through Earth's crust can i reach
you before next month?

3.
You see the stars before I do
but does two hours count?

Will a light cease to be in two hours?
Is a star's end so easily understood

while I watch it flicker and extuinguish
all those years and two hours ago?

I hope so, stars should point us
in the direction of their last moments

for a century, but for the two hours I spend
falling off the planet trying to catch you,

will anyone read my words and expect to find
wisdom of more than all I have tried understand?

4.
Stars aren't forever but they are the closest thing
to infinity that I can see. People can see the birth
of stars in nebulae billions of miles and millions
of years ago. How long ago they die! Flaring
from a small dwarf and expanding out so far
that the collapse back onto itself generates
incredible energies, fabulous radiation
and noise even though in space, no one can hear
the death throes of a dying star or feel
the torturous twisting of time and matter
as the core is reduced to a pebble and the last
photons take a brilliant journey to my retinas
two hours later than you have already seen.

 

[champagne1982]

Even Planets Are Stars You Know

Tell me what is in the sky
where the heavens touch the sea.
The stars hang suspended over
the black glitter of the ocean
and shine like drops of water,
globular and patient,
hanging from Arachne's web
flung across the darkness.

Tell me what is in the sky,
in an expanse that is a stranger
to aurora glowing, and tracing
finger painted awe against the stars.
You do not see the bear
lumbering across the night
chased by the dog, and hungry
for the solstice that ends the cold.
She hunts for seal and walrus
and stays far from the fires of men.

Tell me what is in the sky
when the moon hangs low
and gibbous over an ocean
painted with the dusk. You see
the glow of stardust barely hinted
to your audience, as day draws back
the curtains to show the masterpiece
painted by Orion, with his trophy
flung across his shoulder
in defiance of all those who
thought the lion had done no harm

Tell me what is in the sky
as Mars glows pink and Venus blue,
but rarely in the same hour;
while the dog star never leaves.
The clouds blow in to leave
their own star drops in layers
on the gruond, and I look up to see
the varied crystals falling in myriad
brilliance to glitter on my lashes,
closed against missing you in the night.

 

[champagne1982]

Super Nova Fan Girl

The fuel burns hot and fast
consuming energy until
the core starts cannibalising
neutrons and can't decide
where to put the rest
of the universe. How massive
can that ball become
before fusion collapses
and compression starts
the reaction of a hundred suns?
Implosion has only one end
and until critical mass is reached
continuously drawing on
itself and darkening, an overdose
of atoms already in a new
state, crushing the spark
until the star can suck
no longer and in one mighty
shrug throws off all the clinging
hands and desires of matter
in an explosion that sends star
stuff to the ends of time
the boundaries of space
the edge of what we call life
in our most insignificant way
without ever knowing
that if we hadn't been watching
would the cat be alive today?

 

[champagne1982]

What's In A Nebula?

An infinitesimal share of energy,
the heart of matter, or maybe
the heart of the matter rests
on your neutrality. Life depends
on the non-reactive quarks
and the distance in a vacuum
travelled to this side of time
leaving the history of creation written
on the building blocks of matter.

That star generator
of hydrogen and energy
smashing together to bond
protons and neutrons. blessing
the universe with heat and energy
and helium. The fusion at the core
of all we could possibly be wrapped
in the heart of the pillars of creation.

The stars give us matter
and matter gives us energy
and energy, in the perfect
perpetual machinery
of our universe,
consumes and renews
in a cycle never imagined
by Copernicus when
he modelled the solar system,
placing Sol at the centre
of all human understanding.

Dangerous as the core of a star
is the thought that mankind
has been turned loose to learn
all it takes to bring a spark of life
out of the dark void and look
on the face of creation bound
at the heart of an atom.

Always seeking electrons
and always finding that critical
thinking is more than chemistry;
man needs the magic of a star
to continue to be awed
by the blinking existance
of a bottom quark inside an atom.

 

[champagne1982]

Three Years Gone

And I miss your warmth when I
need reassurance that I
am still alive. You burned
in my life, a quasar explosion
that blasted me into excitement.

I took challenges I would never
have accepted - never thrown
myself down mountainsides
on snow and fast moving rivers,
-never risked my present
for future excitement like I did.

You left too soon. There are things
undone and incomplete, successes
you can't share from where you watch.
Do you watch? Do you know how
you are missed? I do. I do. I do.

 

[champagne1982]

for the dead of The Third Battle of Ypres -1917- fought in Passchendaele, France

The Torch Bearer

This loss is deeply felt beyond the pain
of fire, of wounds cut so deep
they merely feed the mire of mud
and sweat and the waste of living
trapped inside a narrow trench
with just one way out.

Not sleep, no rest upon this bench
from the guns, the shells, the cries
of birds shook loose from leafless
trees and broken branches.
The noise of fear is drowned in cannon
fire and the torrential downpour
of late coastal winter.

Yet I bear this flame, the true desire
of soldiers fallen in this dirt, the filth
of oppression, facism and zealous
belief that wrong is right, slavery
is freedom and that war will bring
peace. We fight on to correct
the wrong of dying here.

The quiet I see in the dead man's face
reminds that he has found his rest
and passed to me the burden to soldier
on and teach morality to a land
that knows such fire and pain
of wounds so raw that no justice
can correct this loss.

 

[champagne1982]

Discernment

I have prayed for wisdom and sought
out intelligent companions in this world.
My blessing that I find what I seek
has only been amplified through
the odds being more in favour of finding
the stupid, the fearful, the calloused,
those who are imperviously imperial

The Entitled!

the lazy, the ignorant, the fools
who can't get past the fact that all
they have held dear and tightly
just happens to be Wrong.

No wonder that a frustrated child
finds a way to silence all that keeps
him lonely. His peers, false friends,
insulters (why didn't anyone ever
tell him these are inconsequential?),
the cruel and greedy, their reward

waits in the grave, where their casket
will cost more than the car he drives
to pick up the assault rifle he purchased
on line from the guy who said he'd
toss in a bunch of bullets, for range
target practice, of course. Of course
a 19 year old couldn't raise this
against other people! Of course not.

Does the collective memory of that
collective government forget how
43 years ago last week, the nation
sent 18 year olds to the Orient,
the far east where a completely
different education awaited the youth,
at the business end of an M16.

They trained killers then, now
society has taken over the training.
Killing without discretion
ingrained in children younger
than the ones sent to soldier
and taught to kill with discernment.

Where has the time gone?
Where have all the flowers gone?

 

[JCSTREET]

Gemini Lost

first verse - very good

"where Zues' son makes play.

I take it you mean Zeus