A Carrie Retrospective

[champagne1982]

Inspired by the Gunfight! challenges --

Death of a Punfighter

Standing in the middle of a dusty,
windblown street, refuse scuttled
into shady corners. Lately, misery
has been my closest friend.

That happens when you've turned
into something you can't change
or bury deep inside an outer skin.

Where do I begin
and the page leave off?
Maybe we're all just ink
inside the pen.

 

[champagne1982]

sonate ad libitum for violin

sempre risoluto -
virtuoso mine
your bow flowing across my strings
an introduction to the melody
warming me, seducing my voice.

cantible -
coax the rising pitch from my mellow song
artfully disguising that it's you
who stirs my heart
to seek these notes.

tenerezza vibrato -
as you draw each harmony
hidden within this tightly strung
instrument up from the soul
of the music we make together.

allegro, presto -
each note struck
with dancing fingers and supple wrist,
the heat of fevered performance
exhorting, pleading, needing
your kiss, to make me sing.

a largo, grazioso -
you touch me now,
only to hold resonance in my voice
your timing such, that I cannot fall
from this sustained throb

lento con meno mosso -
exquisitely held in balance
despite the clever counterpoint
of my strings to your bow.

a piu amore quasi troppo -
when it seems my sobbing
ache will pass from pleasure,
through pain, into death
don't let me fade;
poco a poco animato.

a passione vigaroso -
con tempo di valse son fils -
into a final spin
that will lift me elated
up into the paradise of your love.

 

[champagne1982]

Melodrama

You heave a sigh as if you're the only living one
who's been hard done by. Don't hiss and gasp,
save that breath for when the asp bites your breast.
Do you see what you've done? Perhaps you've never
been truly free to understand this acting game?
The way you hand off blame to another makes me think
you won't ever. Give it a rest and stop behaving
like a baby with a constant craving for its mother's milk.
Turn your rasp into silk and slow down to taste the drink
that makes you gasp as you sink against her chest.

 

[champagne1982]

Trite Trip

Would I flog the life out of a dead horse
when there are metaphors waiting to be mixed?
Shaken, not stirred,
the kitten purred
and all Bond wanted was more
Pussy Galore
has a camel toe
right up where her body suits go.
Zip!
Gimme summa dat, baby!
Don't say maybe
Perhaps it's not to late and can be fixed.
The dead horse is in a coma, of course.

 

[champagne1982]

This Ain't No How The Blues

Oh I ain't singin' no muddy water blues
No I ain't singin' those muddy water blues
Cause I got Perrier water ta choose,
And I ain't wearin' them blue suede shoes.

Oh I ain't cryin' no beat up truck blues
No I ain't cryin' those beat up truck blues
Cause I got an Explorer that's in the news
And I ain't payin' hard time dues

Oh I ain't broke,
Cause my Trust Fund just matured.
Yeah it's no joke,
I'm Canadian, haven't you heard?
Gallery happenins on openin' night
Champagne and caviar treatin' me right
Right there with the well-to-dos
Wearin' designer Gap-trendy-wanker denim blues.

There ain't no way I can find the blues.
No there ain't no way I can find the blues.
There be looks in the family tree,
And my luck is damned good, don't ya see?
And my baby's so fuckin' sexy,
He be lovin'
Nobody else.......
but
Me!

Oh I ain't singin' no Angeline Blues
No I ain't singin' no Angeline Blues
Cause I got lovin' friends in alla you's
And I ain't singin'
No I ain't cryin'
I ain't singin' no Angeline..........
Blues.

 

[champagne1982]

Last Orders

Apparently, my Great-Great Uncle Joe
received his boat orders 60 years ago
or so,
Never to really grasp the great wrong
he helped to set right. It was a long
lark song
Heralding the morning he was to sail,
across the channel. Brave-faced laddies hale
and male
Not ever imagining what kind of hate,
on those Normandy beaches, lay in wait.
Too late
To realize that death wears an ugly face.
Desperate to live but only to die with grace.
That place
Would never be the same again once still
air finally sank to earth. And live? Some will,
until
They receive the word to cross over borders.
Remember that they're just following orders.
Last Orders.

 

[champagne1982]

dressed for poetry

MADE UP
with my kohl
-lined paper-
EYES
-watching words written with-
MANICURED NAILS
-it down with-
STYLE
HAIR in a chignon or
loose
SHIRT
-and baggy
PANTS
-and moans escape my-
PINK GLOSSED LIPS
-whispering
there's no time to-
DRESS UP
-in spiralling dizziness-
lie down with me
POETRY.

 

[champagne1982]

This was written as boomerengue (I miss her!) and I were kibitzing in a Gunfight! warm up thread. We came up with a name for the saloon and everything. Lah! Did we laugh...

The trollop at the One Tit
Sits over in a booth
A little soft down where she sits
And a whole lot long of tooth.

Her nipples brush against her shirt
Her hair is henna red
And what's beneath her mini skirt
Sober men all dread.

Her pimp has gone and left her
For a strumpet, new and green
He has no time for a worn out whore
A One Tit Bar has-been.

She presses up against your arm
And asks you for a drink
Then turning on her ancient charm
She says she'll lick your dink

If you but take her to the alley
Outside just down the street
Where there you two will dally
While she kneels down at your feet.

You turn to her all bleary eyed
A blow job sure sounds good
You go to follow her outside
Through the rundown neighborhood.

With weaving, bobbing grace
You move towards the door
But then you wind up on your face
On the tiny dark dance floor.

The trollop at the One Tit
Sits over in a booth
A little soft down where she sits
And a whole lot long of tooth.

 

[champagne1982]

Poetry Happens

Time to strip bare
Minimalist poetry.

I Want to Feel my Heart beaTing
in Rhythmic Metered Measures.

Each syllable of your strophe,
spoken,
A caress of my tongue.

The play of alliteration through
Lurid, luscious lips;
Liquid, languid language.

Don't deny your poetic devices,
The deception of symplicity,
Like virginal innocence, entices
Poems of perfect prosody.

Ignoring the structures of long ago
Can labour the meaning of words, you know?
So trust in the fun
My poetic one
And let style, rhyme and rhythm flow.

There's more to be said,
I could go on and on,
About the joy in turning
The perfect phrase.
Never forgetting that,
There's a certain satisfaction,
Describing, in magical metaphor,
That last instant before
Poetic birth

 

[champagne1982]

Poet's Passing

I only pray that a poet's heaven,
Is simpler than here on earth.
Where joy in beauty, trust and faith
Is all that measures worth.
A poet walks but a short time,
Upon the worldly shore,
But if his words are meaningful,
He'll be remembered evermore.

Adieu Smithpeter.

*****************
Sonnet for SP

Amidst the agony there is a place,
That sets the shadows free,
Twilight mellows the harsh lines of light,
And blurs the edge of destiny.
You've gone away, to have come so far
This monstrous thing to bear,
The endings of beginnings
The next doorways to nowhere.
A simple man would have stayed away,
Far from this frightening face
But death's mask is also peace
Looked down on from a higher place,
And sorrow marks a setting free
Of a soul in flight, pure majesty.

 

[champagne1982]

In outrage at the way the Edmonton Police Service was ignoring the aboriginal women who were reported missing over the years in the region


White man whore

you'll never be more than what you're worth
nothing
owning only the mouth they use
the hole they spill inside and pay
for the next crack rock
there's a dead girl they found the other day.
the cops show fuck 'em. Don't they know
the hooker isn't a suicidal slut?
Dear john's got a job, a house, a car,
his family is very supportive of him even though they don't know
that the only times he wears a condom are with his daughter.

 

[champagne1982]

Baby's Breath

Would that men had wombs.
Perhaps then soldiers' tombs
Would be fewer numbered
For as their fathers looked
Upon their baby faces
There in the quiet night
As their children slumbered
They would realize that sleep
Is far better than is death
And that only peace
Is felt on a baby's breath.

 

[champagne1982]

Duty

Not another one.
No. Screaming thoughts.

Once again into the pain
Find it,
Rip it away, enjoy the tear.

Leaving for another
As if that's all there is
Coming and leaving

It's cold here
You take your warmth
Truth is, you may never
Bring it home.

 

[champagne1982]

Aurgasm

Perhaps there's something here?
A definition of that subtlety in your touch
On the steamy seam between my thighs.

It's open, burst through
From the swelling,
A welling up of sensation
That explodes.

I've been wanting to fuck
Ever since I first felt
Those fabulous fingers.

I've been wanting you
Ever since you twirled
Those tantalizing turns.

Crow darling,
You are my cock
That greets the dawn.
Come feed your pussy cream.

 

[champagne1982]

To both neo's and my own disappointment I took away a series of "paintings" and oh! how I regret it. My old computers failed me, websites have come and gone so now, my poems are lost to the ether, but for this one... Published in Red River Review

Water Colour​

 

[HarryHill]

Champagne1984: a vintage year

 

[champagne1982]

Champagne1984: a vintage year

LOL you make me weep, "Larry" what am I? Vinegar?

 

[champagne1982]

Georgian Bay Sunset

I will try not to use tired jaundice
or hem my thoughts with prose-tinted
violet, but instead linger on fuchia
limning distant vermillion, over the bay
that serenely coos in dove
grey beyond the wharf;
where steeples dressed in verdigris
peek over the oaks and the lonely
linger on silvered magenta puffing
a last cigarette before bed.

 

[champagne1982]

Closer

It's been years that I've known
about where my heart calls home.
There's a place outside the physical
closer to my soul

You rest your light beside my thoughts,
where your spirit brings me song,
and when you flare with passion
I feel that you've always belonged
closer to my soul.

So stay inside my love.
Don't wander far or stray
outside this great emotion, stay
closer to my soul

 

[champagne1982]

Look At Us, Lizzie!

I found a memory hidden in a box
with smiles and silliness we sat
and were everything an early
pair of prairie settlers never
dreamed of being. But even
so we perched inside
that Conestoga wagon and travelled
back to our bunkbed stage coaches
when you always rode shotgun
and I was the damsel in distress

 

[champagne1982]

Musings of a Morning

Morning wakes me with light, insinuating bright blades between eyelids framed with lashes of a darker mouse than my hair. Fine wisps of it lay trapped, flattened, between pillow and head. The murder argues over space on the neighbour's cedar-shingled roof, suddenly silent as they reach accord that garbage day is happening on the north end of town and that is where they should go.

I listen to the quiet, as racous as the local diesel trucks. A clatter of valves and pistons that grumbles from their exhausts as they crank in preparation for the commute of a hundred kilometers, into the boreal forest, to the tar sand deposit hardly anyone cares about.

I do. Creatures numbered in the millions, if you count mosquitoes and deer flies, call the stick forest home. Poplar, birch and spruce create a skyline of towers and spires rivalling Edmonton in their intrusion on the horizon, of course, from a distance. Yes, of course, in scale against the relentless blue of an Alberta dawn.

The creosote soaked lumber pads spread, flat and featureless beneath a different tangle of pipes and cables. Myriad branches of metal and composites cast a maze of shadows on earth, stripped of its clover, wild roses and muskeg. The smell of bitumen is never sweet unless you can relate it to the coppery scent of money passed from palm to oily palm.

Occasionally, an outrage squeaks when wells fill with more arsenic than water. But, heck, this is just a bi-product of high wages, hasty development and haphazard growth. We will pass away and in a couple of centuries the grind of massive excavators and compressors will be forgotten, the green of nature slowly consuming the skeletons of steam extraction plants and drilling rigs.

I wish I could see the clover, wild roses and muskeg return even though I realise the boys of the patch will 'dozer the surface beauty into the strip-mined pits. When they see what they have caused, they'll see mud and stagnant pools, and will they, like some believe a creator said, call it good?

 

[champagne1982]

2 Years

As if two years could be enough
to erase persistant dreams
and banish scars that remind
that a smile's not what it seems

If two years could set it right
the memory of that vivid terror
would vanish from your psyche
and we'd recalculate the error

If two years could be rewound
no horror would cause you pain
but I'd never have the chance to say
how happy I am that you remain

my child of many dreams fulfilled
and many more to live.

 

[champagne1982]

Tea At A Wake

I sipped tea as they filed by
heard some fall upon your breast
you wouldn't wipe their tears
and kiss their foreheads
that benediction gone

Oh for your arms to raise
and clutch me in glad embrace
and see the smile grace
those lips that offered prayers
at night to some unspeaking
father that you promised
would find a place for you

I tasted heels of bread
slathered in butter baked
inside that Franklin stove
dunked in milky tea as your
tuneless hum soothed
another grandchild rocked
against your heart

The chair beside me scraped
against ceramic tiles
dragging me away from the warm
smells of your hearth
and I saw their tears
as they gathered in clumps
here outside your laying out.

 

[HarryHill]

LOL you make me weep, "Larry" what am I? Vinegar?

..
So I got the year wrong, it's hard reading anything with your cork protruding from the neck of the bottle. Do you prefer to be 'popped' or gently eased out? Don't tell Moe and Curley I was here.

 

[champagne1982]

I can understand your reluctance to have them join you. Moe always is so Dom, y'know?