greenmountaineer's thread

[greenmountaineer]

If Richard's Horse Could Speak

Young Squire, steal me! Chivalry is dead!
Two wasp waist maidens from the village plead
for God inside our tents. As for the priest
to whom God promised victory, he's drunk.
I smelled it in his robe. I fain would smell
the slop from sties where pigs have shat and pissed.

This stink is called the War of Roses, Boy,
its Houses red and white; the white one's dead,
but no one ever saw it wither. Christ!

I fain would ride with rebels in the Pale
and know it's cattle what I'm dying for
than take a pike for Richard, House of York.

His kingdom, aye, is no place for a horse.

 

[pensivepoet]

I have a feeling a lot of horses from the american civil war would whinny and nod in agreement.
I always have to read your poems 3 or 4 times to knit it all together, but that's not a complaint. Quite the contrary.

 

[AlwaysHungry]

Young Squire, steal me! Chivalry is dead!
Two wasp waist maidens from the village plead
for God inside our tents. As for the priest
to whom God promised victory, he's drunk.
I smelled it in his robe. I fain would smell
the slop from sties where pigs have shat and pissed.

This stink is called the War of Roses, Boy,
its Houses red and white; the white one's dead,
but no one ever saw it wither. Christ!

I fain would ride with rebels in the Pale
and know it's cattle what I'm dying for
than take a pike for Richard, House of York.

His kingdom, aye, is no place for a horse.

Very sly, that last line.

 

[AlwaysHungry]

That was my intent. When the reader discovers Thích Nhất HạNh is a Buddhist monk, the poem hopefully takes on a different meaning.

I agree that the knowledge that Thích Nhất HạNh is a Buddhist monk caused me to read the poem quite differently. But if you will indulge me for a moment, GM, I'd like to play the devil's advocate (I don't know whether that expression works in a discussion of Buddhism.) As a Buddhist monk, Thích Nhất HạNh has received what one could call training in compassion. In my first reading, ignorant as I was of his religious vocation, I was moved by the idea that he was simply a person from a less jaded culture, a person who had simply not been desensitized and not had the natural human tendency for compassion pressed out of him by relentless, repetitive exposure to acts of indifference. Somehow, I prefer reading the poem that way.

 

[greenmountaineer]

I agree that the knowledge that Thích Nhất HạNh is a Buddhist monk caused me to read the poem quite differently. But if you will indulge me for a moment, GM, I'd like to play the devil's advocate (I don't know whether that expression works in a discussion of Buddhism.) As a Buddhist monk, Thích Nhất HạNh has received what one could call training in compassion. In my first reading, ignorant as I was of his religious vocation, I was moved by the idea that he was simply a person from a less jaded culture, a person who had simply not been desensitized and not had the natural human tendency for compassion pressed out of him by relentless, repetitive exposure to acts of indifference. Somehow, I prefer reading the poem that way.

The image that didn't work for you, AH, wasn't the same as the intended one, but, unless I misunderstood your post, we arrived at the same the same place. That works for me.

 

[greenmountaineer]

I have a feeling a lot of horses from the american civil war would whinny and nod in agreement.
I always have to read your poems 3 or 4 times to knit it all together, but that's not a complaint. Quite the contrary.

Thanks. I appreciate that. When I read a poem that piques my curiosity, I usually read it at least one more time.

 

[Angeline]

Thích Nhất HạNh while drying his dishes
as if they were a charnel ground,
wouldn't know who Kitty was,
wouldn't know she no longer was

a nameless name on Austin Street
and, as if it mattered,
Kew Gardens in a borough named Queens.

But Thích Nhất HạNh, if he knew,
while standing there drying his dishes
would have grown wings to bear witness
for Kitty Genovese.

I've been quite weak lately: turns out it takes a lot longer to snap back from surgery when you are older, so I apologize for not being around more. But I do come in and read, and I had to say how much I like this poem. I love how it pulls together seemingly disparate names and muses on the nature of transience and then connects those names thematically. Most people have never heard of Austin Street or Kew Gardens or that Kitty Genovese was murdered while dozens of people tuned out her screams, or that Thích Nhất HạNh is a Buddhist of renowned compassion who would have tried to save her. I don't mind doing a little digging to understand a poem better and I'm really glad I did with this one because it's such a rewarding read once you put the puzzle together.

Thanks, too, for mentioning my Chagall poem. I know I did not go about pulling it together as methodically as you did your poem, but I did try to infuse it with a sense of Chagall in as many ways as I could.

 

[greenmountaineer]

I've been quite weak lately: turns out it takes a lot longer to snap back from surgery when you are older, so I apologize for not being around more. But I do come in and read, and I had to say how much I like this poem. I love how it pulls together seemingly disparate names and muses on the nature of transience and then connects those names thematically. Most people have never heard of Austin Street or Kew Gardens or that Kitty Genovese was murdered while dozens of people tuned out her screams, or that Thích Nhất HạNh is a Buddhist of renowned compassion who would have tried to save her. I don't mind doing a little digging to understand a poem better and I'm really glad I did with this one because it's such a rewarding read once you put the puzzle together.

Thanks, too, for mentioning my Chagall poem. I know I did not go about pulling it together as methodically as you did your poem, but I did try to infuse it with a sense of Chagall in as many ways as I could.

Thanks. 2nd stanza still feels clumsy to me; going to work on it some more.

The light verse in Robert Bly's "Starting a Poem" from today's "Writer's Almanac" by Garrison Keillor made me think of my poem in the same way:

You’re alone. Then there’s a knock
On the door. It’s a word. You
Bring it in. Things go
OK for a while. But this word

Has relatives. Soon
They turn up. None of them work.
They sleep on the floor, and they steal
Your tennis shoes.

You started it; you weren’t
Content to leave things alone.
Now the den is a mess, and the
Remote is gone.

That’s what being married
Is like! You never receive your
Wife only, but the
Madness of her family.

Now see what’s happened?
Where is your car? You won’t
Be able to find
The keys for a week.

More than a P.S.: I hope you're healing well.

 

[Angeline]

Thanks. 2nd stanza still feels clumsy to me; going to work on it some more.

The light verse in Robert Bly's "Starting a Poem" from today's "Writer's Almanac" by Garrison Keillor made me think of my poem in the same way:

You’re alone. Then there’s a knock
On the door. It’s a word. You
Bring it in. Things go
OK for a while. But this word

Has relatives. Soon
They turn up. None of them work.
They sleep on the floor, and they steal
Your tennis shoes.

You started it; you weren’t
Content to leave things alone.
Now the den is a mess, and the
Remote is gone.

That’s what being married
Is like! You never receive your
Wife only, but the
Madness of her family.

Now see what’s happened?
Where is your car? You won’t
Be able to find
The keys for a week.

More than a P.S.: I hope you're healing well.

Love the Bly poem.

I see how it relates to the 2nd stanza in the Genovese poem. The street and neighborhood names can appear random when, in fact, they are transition details that serve to connect Hanh to Genovese. But maybe they're not enough detail, and you need to add a line that clarifies the connection. They were certainly important details in terms of the crime. And maybe you also need to change the 2nd line in the 1st stanza to identify Hanh more with compassion. Maybe that would help more readers contrast Hanh with the people in Kew Gardens who ignored the screams.

I am healing well albeit slowly, which I think is normal for my age and the fact that it's a back injury. My doc says the pain is from the nerves decompressing, which just takes time. I'll be happy when they decompress enough so as to let me sleep more than a few hours at a time. In the meantime I'll just yawn a lot and try not to be too grumpy!

 

[greenmountaineer]

Witness

"Have compassion for all, rich and poor alike. Each has their suffering.
Some suffer too much, others too little."
(Buddhist proverb)

Thích Nhất HạNh while washing his dishes
as if he were in a charnel ground
wouldn't know who Kitty was,
wouldn't know she no longer was
a nameless name on Austin Street.

But Thích Nhất HạNh, facing east
on the shores of the South China Sea,
would have grown wings to bear witness
for a silent Kitty Genovese
and thirty-seven sentient beings.

 

[legerdemer]

"Have compassion for all, rich and poor alike. Each has their suffering.
Some suffer too much, others too little."
(Buddhist proverb)

Thích Nhất HạNh while washing his dishes
as if he were in a charnel ground
wouldn't know who Kitty was,
wouldn't know she no longer was
a nameless name on Austin Street.

But Thích Nhất HạNh, facing east
on the shores of the South China Sea,
would have grown wings to bear witness
for a silent Kitty Genovese
and thirty-seven sentient beings.

This one is lovely...

 

[greenmountaineer]

"Have compassion for all, rich and poor alike. Each has their suffering.
Some suffer too much, others too little."
(Buddhist proverb)

Thích Nhất HạNh while washing his dishes
as if he were in a charnel ground
wouldn't know who Kitty was,
wouldn't know she no longer was
a nameless name on Austin Street.

But Thích Nhất HạNh, facing east
on the shores of the South China Sea,
would have grown wings to bear witness
for a silent Kitty Genovese
and thirty-seven sentient beings.

This one is lovely...

Thanks. Always Hungry and Angeline triggered my thinking on this. I always take a deep breath before using epigraphs because I think they can too easily become shortcuts instead of working the body of the poem, but as we say here up in New England, I thought about it 6 ways to Sunday, but for the life of me, couldn't figure out how to integrate compassion into the poem per Angie's suggestion because really that's the essence of it.

 

[greenmountaineer]

The Last Days of de Sade

"I'm hungry once again.
The porridge turns my stomach!"
he chides his jailer with disdain
whose half smile irritates de Sade.

"He plays me like Justine," he pouts
before a young Leblanc,
the only priest who'll visit there
to talk of Satan's pain in hell.

"Guillory, the day I'm free,
I'll bugger you and mon valet
P'tit La Tour will do the same,"
he shouts but winks at nonetheless

surreptitiously because
he's placed his bet with Guillory,
trois écus; ça ne fait rien,
the priest will cross himself again

while deSade dreams up more sin
and fibs that for a franc from him
he'll bribe the guard to smuggle in
a whore dressed as a nun, of course.

"I like communion with a tryst,"
he tells Leblanc who's prayed today
enough to kill a centipede
he steps on running for the door.

 

[Angeline]

"Have compassion for all, rich and poor alike. Each has their suffering.
Some suffer too much, others too little."
(Buddhist proverb)

Thích Nhất HạNh while washing his dishes
as if he were in a charnel ground
wouldn't know who Kitty was,
wouldn't know she no longer was
a nameless name on Austin Street.

But Thích Nhất HạNh, facing east
on the shores of the South China Sea,
would have grown wings to bear witness
for a silent Kitty Genovese
and thirty-seven sentient beings.

Just stopped in to say how much I like like what you did with the revisions. I agree about epigraphs, but you needed this one to pull the poem together. Otherwise you'd have to do some telling in the body of the poem--never a great option. Also having the quote precede the poem (instead of an end note or some such) makes for a cohesive read: the suggestion of the theme is up front rather than an afterthought. And now you have two integrated stanzas so you are almost constantly putting HaNh and Genovese together which emphasizes the connection you want readers to make. Some may still have to dig a little (if they don't know who Genovese is), but good poetry is always worth working to understand! Really well constructed and moving to read.

 

[greenmountaineer]

The timing seems right.

September 1, 1939

W.H. Auden

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.

Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.

Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.

Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism's face
And the international wrong.

Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.

The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.

From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
'I will be true to the wife,
I'll concentrate more on my work,'
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the dead,
Who can speak for the dumb?

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.

Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

 

[butters]

such an intricate, thoughtful piece

 

[greenmountaineer]

such an intricate, thoughtful piece

W.H. was a Brit, as I'm sure you know. The guy had class.

 

[todski28]

Very interesting, Trix. Seeking answers easy to understand, we tend to be very dualistic in our thinking, ie, "the reasona is either this or that." I'm not suggesting that Tod was of that mind in raising the "nature vs. nature" question in the first place. Anyone who's read some of his work with its dark complexity would know otherwise.

I was an adjunct professor of criminal justice for about 10 years before I decided to take work easier pridd yet for theor to retirement(and start to study and write poetry.). My favorite course was criminology. In its inception during the 19th, the common belief was you could predict criminal behavior by measuring the skull, something we would laugh at today.

I cant see the logic in attempted black and white when the grey clouds so much. Two steps over from another perspective the drug dealer is trying to feed his family with the only skills he\she can rely on. i have wondermany times what person would I be without the life I had, without the values I managed to take away from that existence. My daughter is nearly 9at the same age I was drinking alcohol and doing other stuff as well. I can't imagine my daughter doing any of this and yet for the majority of my family that was and still is normal.

Putting boxing gloves on your 4 year old son and his 6 year old brother making them fight for affection I cant see how anyone could think that normal. Even now the hatred and resentment that bred means my older brother and i can not be in the same room together for too long or the agression and tension builds to boiling point.

And I can see the outer perspective when reading some of your darker poetry. The shock and the disbelief, and I know tha its genuine because I can see it now when we have family gatherings i.e.funerals or weddings.

My stepfather and mother held their 16th wedding anniversary a few weeks ago, and we were all laughing and beeing normal people, mum walked up with tears in her eyes and started apologising for the life she beought us up in. Now if any of you have read the Heinetitama thread I started then you would know that this is a strong woman. Not often overcome with emotion and I smiled coz we made it.

My grandparents last wedding anniversary both of them are dead now. But the last anniversary they had my father and his brother ended up in a massive fight that started in the kitchen when Robbie dads brother slashed him from shoulder to hip with a serrated blade over the last beer in the fridge, dad took it without asking. Robbie got offended dad told him to go fuck himself. And it ended in an ambulance for both of them, dad had I would say inthe vicinity of a couple of hundred stitches and robbie needed to have half his face reconstructed.

I held my grandmothers hand when just before she went and told her that I had made it. That i wasnt like them, she died in my arms with a smile on her face.

Well anyway now ive gone and got all maudlin and ruined a thread. Guess having a couple of drinks before coming on here was not such a good idea. But no regrets

 

[greenmountaineer]

As I said in my pm, tod, I believe there's a personal narrative to almost all poetry, even when written in the third person, eg, "The Last Days of deSade" (earlier in the thread). There's a little bit of a priest and deSade, I think, in most of us.

The autobiographical disclosures for me amplify an understanding of your work. Some poets believe the poem should speak for itself. I have no quarrel with that, but it doesn't necessarily follow that background information detracts. Knowing Whitman was a bit of a vagabond, a medic in the American Civil War, and most likely a homosexual adds to my thinking when reading his work.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Sal Montecalvo Thinks of His Soul

With another jigger or two by the pool
and a twist of lime on Saturday night,
Sal Montecalvo thinks of his soul,
that hardly definable absolute,
except for the Abraham Lincoln
he sometimes drops in the basket on Sunday

after he says the Apostle's Creed ,
but the next words after "I believe...
he has to read. He's forgotten them.
And if it wasn't for Angie Bianco
he'd join the choir so he could sing
"Adeste Fideles" on Christmas Eve.

But it's summertime and the living is easy,
time for another jigger of gin
with tonic while Mr. Con Edison
rocks 'n rolls his blue flame shoes
on Sal's Montgomery Ward grill
until it no longer bleeds in the center.

 

[greenmountaineer]

PTSD

The song you sang when you pushed up
from mud on Parris Island,
Gonna Kill Ol' Charly Cong,
you sang again when rounding up
wives and kids and anything
that looked like punji sticks.

Recon said they ran away
but left behind a gook,
an injured one among the reeds,
his forearms pulling legs.
You called for Gunny, he'd know what,
who came for him unstrapped.
You saw it in his slanty eyes.
Years later still the dream:

a can of Bud, a bag of chips,
Miss April glossy on the bed
back inside a Quonset hut,
a shit, a shower, then a shave,
a sleepless night of five card stud
with Gunny's Fuck you! poker face.

 

[AlwaysHungry]

Disturbing in an artful way, GM, a well crafted poem. I sometimes forget to read the titles, and when I went back to read this one, it made the poem better, just like another poem we discussed recently.

If memory serves, you have written other poems with a Vietnam War theme. If I may get personal for a moment, do you write from experience? My draft card said 1-O, not that it would have mattered, because Nixon's lotto would have kept me home anyway.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Disturbing in an artful way, GM, a well crafted poem. I sometimes forget to read the titles, and when I went back to read this one, it made the poem better, just like another poem we discussed recently.

If memory serves, you have written other poems with a Vietnam War theme. If I may get personal for a moment, do you write from experience? My draft card said 1-O, not that it would have mattered, because Nixon's lotto would have kept me home anyway.

I was in the National Guard for 8 years. The engineer company I joined just returned from Vietnam where they built roads for 18 months. They did come under occasional fire. There was always a realistic possibility we would be recalled.

My son is a career naval officer. He recently completed a successful tour as the captain of a destroyer and is now at the Pentagon. I'm proud of him, but war is hell.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Remembering 9-11

Azadah Used to Live in the Bronx

Last summer she baked like a goose,
but the snow and ice in Paktikā
are as cold as gunmetal casings
from the latest empty celebration,
but not as empty as Delaram was
who jumped head first in the Gomal
after she took off her burqa.

Baitullah just sat there, drinking his tea,
and swore "we'll kill them, Brother,
Insha'Allah," flicking horseflies dead
or drying on his pantaloons.

Azadah thanked Allah for Pine-Sol
entering-quote-the powder room.
She feels like she's going to puke
she says to herself in English
but squats instead and spreads her knees,
telling herself it's just to keep warm,
moving a finger looking for love.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Trying to Say His Breviary

White is white, black is black;
God is good, sex is bad,
except for marriage, the sacrament,

is what I am supposed to keen
behind my daresay sliding screen
or in my homily.

But, oh my Gosh, Deacon Joe
is hotter than an altar boy
who's reached the age of majority.

Dear God, Dear God, I am not
a saint in a desert monastery,
nor did I want, I did not want
this cross I bear from an embryo.