greenmountaineer's thread

[greenmountaineer]

Slyly erotic, gm. I didn't see the earlier version(s), but really like this one. There's a lot of cool riffing in it, jazzy.

Thanks, Mer. The inspiration for this stems from a management conference I attended years ago in the Chase Park Plaza Hotel in St. Louis. It was a very Art Deco kind of place with old fashioned elevators that required attendants.

As I stepped in the carriage one night, this very old African American woman was at the controls, and almost inaudibly, as if she was singing to herself, she treated me to a Negro spiritual in the most beautiful voice I had ever heard in person.

Perhaps for this very personal reason, it remains one of my favorite poems.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Edited version, dusted off and inspired by AH's post of "The New Colossus"



Rocco's Love Poem

"Best damn ice on the planet
at Lorenzo's Restaurant"
I say to Finny on my cell
who already has us a table there
up on Arthur Avenue
across from Prospect in the Bronx.

Herschal, the CPA's running late
just like his mother told him to be
home from the park before eight,
nine o'clock in the summertime
when Hersh was Bradley, I was Clyde,
and Finny was Willis Reed.

What with girls, the bottom line,
and pick-up games at Riverside,
we barely remembered the holy names
who played their fiddles and mandolins
or tin whistle plaints in Ireland
when hate was your name and your place.

So out of the blue I mumble "Hersch!
Sometimes life is one big schlep,
but with some vino, pasta fazool,
and a dish of Lorenzo's lemon ice
with a couple a goombas like yous,
so far it's been pretty nice."

"Jesus, Mary, and Josephat!"
best damn Hersch on the planet says,
who puts my neck in a headlock while
Finny, I swear he's six foot nine,
tickles my belly such that I
laugh so hard that I cry.

 

[greenmountaineer]

I and Thou

"The world is not comprehensible, but it is embraceable."
Martin Buber

Thou is feeding strained carrots to I
I smears all over I's tray
and giggles about after Thou says
"no, no, no" wiping I's face.

"Now it's time for the tub" says Thou,
which I doesn't understand
until I sees a rubber ducky,
another Thou to embrace

before Good Night Moon's nighty night story
in bed with I's head on a sweater
I hugs for Thou's sweater is warmer
than the Thou that Thou says is Little Rabbit.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Puzzled

Draping a napkin at dinner time,
he waits for the friendly wait staff
and also drapes the New York Times
Sunday Edition, last one left.

A couple there seems odd to him,
two across looking suspicious,
holding hands across the table,
nine letters meaning propitious.

Oh, she looks so favorable
by the bar for whom some Joe
orders manhattans, two down,
so tidy so meticulous

as rolls are served while he recalls
a person unknown or unspecified
is a woman who lives at twelve across
about whom he hasn't a clue.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Frankie Says Sonny's Working Late.

Yeah, Right! And I'm Sophia Loren.
You tell that to Sonny, Frankie.

Wait a minute, don't hang up!
You were my wise guy in high school, Right?
Remember Papa's barber shop,
me licking the peppermint stick outside
when Papa wasn't looking
and how you sang Sherry Baby?

Frankie, you tell that sonofabitch
all I got now is an empty house,
a mansard roof on a Palisades cliff
with his goddam view of the Hudson,
Tiffany chandelier, Big Deal!

And you tell Sonny the satin sheets
he bought me last week at Macy's,
I'm here with my digital camera on,
my finger rubbing where it ain't Sonny
for Joey DiMaio in Brooklyn!

 

[greenmountaineer]

T. S. Eliot Was a Watchman

at the Faber building during the Blitz.
What exactly was he watching?
perhaps a celestial poem in the making
for those in their sudden concrete tombs?
a child forgotten on the street?

Did he once think the war to end all wars
would end all wars, and did he think
Michelangelo would show us God
reaching out to Adam more
than Adam reaching up to Him?

We see what we want to see:
birth, copulation, and deathly heaven
on earth; why there's even brotherly love
in East Coker where violin strings
complement afternoon tea,
whatever meets our needs.

Notice the air between their two fingers,
you'd swear that Adam's about to meet
the light that blinded Saul in Damascus
or maybe the rapture's Poof! a delight
when children clap their hands and laugh
at the fireworks up in the sky.

No, children cry as well as laugh,
a baby's smile isn't just gas,
and kittens in alleys find comfort in teats
he thought as he donned his helmet and dashed
to go get the child in the street.

 

[greenmountaineer]

The Holy Land

As I wandered through the Holy Land,
I toured an archaic art exhibit
and there I saw stick images of hate,
directing their sticks at other stick men.

So much have or have not hate,
camels, donkeys or daily bread
or women depended upon back then
the tribe or empire where you were from.

And when I left for the Dome of the Rock,
the Wailing Wall, and Church of All Nations,
I toppled into the Slough of Despond,
which, strange though it was, flooded the desert.

 

[greenmountaineer]

The City of Charn is Dying, Mike.

It's always winter, never Christmas.
Jadis, the white witch, freezes Tumnus
after she coldcocks Rumblebuffin.

Mike hasn't heard a word I said,
but for the cartoon names, of course,
who look like his friends on Looney Tunes
he mentions to his rocking horse.

It's a picture postcard Christmas
outside while inside in our show,
as some scary music plays,
Aslan's doing a quid pro quo

on behalf of Edmund Pevensie,
not much older than you are, Mike,
since Jadis, queen of Narnia,
lured Eddie with her Turkish Delight.

The beavers are silent, so is the faun
as both of us watch from the Rubicon
through Digory's wardrobe, so to speak,
when death approaches the altar stone.

"Change the channel!" your mother shouts
from the kitchen before the commercial
for something all little boys must have
under the tree to be someone special,

but let's rejoin our scheduled program
as the good guys win the insurrection.
You rock with joy on your rocking horse,
having forgotten the vivisection.

After all, Mike, 'tis the season
for every good little girl and boy
until the so-called age of reason.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Rejoice!

 

[greenmountaineer]

Stille Nacht

As if a boy's choir sang
in a church on the Graben in Vienna,
voices rose before calloused hands
lifted barbed wire in No Man's Land
to trade cigarettes, tin meat, or trinkets,
but for a teething ring he whittled,
not far from the village of Neuve Chapelle,
for the begat or to begotten.

She was a maid never known for her letters
who told him she missed her period,
and he dreams about Mary back in his trench
after a fortnight of shelling
where he prays when the sun comes up
soon after his one silent night
no corpsman will find a teething ring
splintered in corporal pockets.

 

[todski28]

As if a boy's choir sang
in a church on the Graben in Vienna,
voices rose before calloused hands
lifted barbed wire in No Man's Land
to trade cigarettes, tin meat, or trinkets,
but for a teething ring he whittled,
not far from the village of Neuve Chapelle,
for the begat or to begotten.

She was a maid never known for her letters
who told him she missed her period,
and he dreams about Mary back in his trench
after a fortnight of shelling
where he prays when the sun comes up
soon after his one silent night
no corpsman will find a teething ring
splintered in corporal pockets.

what can I say.... but holy hell. terror hope and bleak reality. emotional concise and painful to read.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Childermas

The schoolyard playground looks like a frozen
cenotaph that once was a forest green
sandbox Little Girl wiggled her toes in.

Vestibule photos put on the notion
we all lived in a yellow submarine.
The schoolyard playground looks like it's frozen.

I said last May, "She's poetry in motion.
Come Fourth of July, she'll likely be seen
skirting the ocean dipping her toes in."

Little Girl loved the boardwalk commotion.
I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream,
sand, and the waves Daddy's feet get lost in.

The priest says to pray that all souls repose in...
Christ! Not the one with the magazine!
My nightmares still bleed calamine lotion.

"The Christmas toys were already chosen!"
I screamed to the deadeye killing machine.
The schoolyard playground looks like a frozen
sandbox Little Girl once wiggled her toes in.


Reposted
In Memoriam
Sandy Hook
December 14, 2012

 

[greenmountaineer]

Caroling in the 'Hood

Tyronica used to dance dressed in blue.
So Grandma Mamie's raising Kalisha
far from beautiful downtown LA

where, Ladies and Gentleman, we present
the Los Angeles Philharmonic
performing at Walt Disney Hall
Pytor Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite.

Meanwhile Keshawn beatboxes a dumpster
to Come All Ye Faithful as Jayla becomes
a crip walking back alley ballerina

because he's asked her to be his blue diamond
until giant red rats pa rum pum pum pum.

 

[greenmountaineer]

María Comes in from the Cold

María whose gray hair is white
with flakes of Hackensack snow
will eat frijoles cold tonight
unless someone fixes her stove

while no one in Boca Ratón,
the big rats, fat cats, or landlord,
will pick up el teléfono
or has to come in from the cold

speaking Spanglish in el Welfare
Office rattling por favor
una pildora left in el bottle
por la vagina, Señor,

for petty crimes from laid back times
when on her knees in Mayagüez
María teased Hola Muchacho
and never had to say please.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Zygote

A zygote is a diploid cell
made from male and female gametes,

namely, an ovum haploid,
the other haploid a sperm,

a preimplantation conceptus
as it's known to those in obstetrics,

attached to the uterine wall
for neuro-, myo-, and organo-

genesis to become an embryo
when indifferent gonads form

testicles or ovaries
after which more features are born,

e.g., Mullerian female ducts
or so-called Wolfian, if a male,

invisible to the naked eye
until something rather divine

turns a boy into a father
and another, once a girl,

into a blessed mother,
Oh, Joy! Joy! Joy to the world!

 

[greenmountaineer]

Professor King's English

Drinking eggnog that tasted like swill,
I earlier interpreted "Ozymandias"
to Adjunct Professor Bleistein
during a winter solstice party
wherein a bevy of graduate students
began reciting their primitive verse.

"Tammy last spring did a paper on Kipling
with would be poets who would be king"
I said while surreptitiously
expectorating some foul brie
to comment upon her assonance.

Bleistein, I think, agreed with me
or was nodding at her ass perhaps
as I plummeted two more merlots,
one to cleanse the palate of cheese,
the other one for the road.

But the goddam road rose up on me!
What the hell was I thinking? Shit!
I don’t know. I don’t fucking know!
I didn’t see the sonofabitch!

 

[greenmountaineer]

Christmas Tree Story

Once there weren't the gingerbread
suburban Tudors topped with snow
on Cedar Street, the kids asleep,
where peace on earth had finally come
he thought while in his easy chair,
recalling Sister Hildegard's
St. Boniface's first grade class,
construction paper on his desk
and in one hand a No. 2
lead pencil Sister gave to him
with which he drew an outline of
a Christmas tree he colored in.

"The Blessed Trinity," she said,
that points towards heaven, Master James"
on top of which he glued a golden
star he won for spelling God.
What better gift for Momma then
to Scotch tape on the wall
where, instead of looking up
to see the Star of Bethlehem
after waking up at dawn,
he saw his heaven on the floor,
a Radio Flyer shining red
from Mr. Swatko's Re-sale Store.

And then he thought, despite it all,
the memory a blessed one,
his mother on the wagon bed
and he there sitting on her lap,
her yellow robe as soft as straw,
hot cocoa nearby in a mug,
and though there was no morning Joe
his mother Mary smiled at him
and what he thought a tree should be
he Scotch taped on the wall.

 

[greenmountaineer]

And You Visited Me in Prison

"Mr. Whalen Needs a Tombstone."
is what the inmate bulletin board said
about Ed Whalen, their Quaker Friend
who quietly was taken in his sleep
one night after teaching men to read
different letters than fingers of HATE
tattooed on the one hand while LOVE,
what was left of it, bleeds.

Ed's soul was as soft as smoke that curls
from the Yule log to the ephemeral
Northern Lights instead of the metal
beds inside four cinder block walls
and the razor ribbon that wraps around
pronouns where love never cuts to the bone.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Irish Stew

It's all the same but it's not,
the step-dance and the clogging girls
while knuckle down boys are playing craps
on the Bowery down by Delancey Street
or twang a banjo on blue grass
Appalachian Sunday porches,
one busted string stretching as far as
a tin whistle plaint in Ireland

or a mine caving-in lamentation
in a graveyard that the company built
that weighs like a ton of wherewithal
coal mining fathers want for their sons
and daughters, as mothers far too young,
who pray to God that birth will come
on the table mid-wives scurry around,
the family slurps their stew upon,

and wakes display their pine boxes on
before being laid under cypress trees
in a graveyard that the company built,
unlikely in the potter's field
the city built without any names
on the graves, although they're the same.

 

[legerdemer]

Draping a napkin at dinner time,
he waits for the friendly wait staff
and also drapes the New York Times
Sunday Edition, last one left.

A couple there seems odd to him,
two across looking suspicious,
holding hands across the table,
nine letters meaning propitious.

Oh, she looks so favorable
by the bar for whom some Joe
orders manhattans, two down,
so tidy so meticulous

as rolls are served while he recalls
a person unknown or unspecified
is a woman who lives at twelve across
about whom he hasn't a clue.

This one made me smile and see ahead into some not so distant future.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Draping a napkin at dinner time,
he waits for the friendly wait staff
and also drapes the New York Times
Sunday Edition, last one left.

A couple there seems odd to him,
two across looking suspicious,
holding hands across the table,
nine letters meaning propitious.

Oh, she looks so favorable
by the bar for whom some Joe
orders manhattans, two down,
so tidy so meticulous

as rolls are served while he recalls
a person unknown or unspecified
is a woman who lives at twelve across
about whom he hasn't a clue.

This one made me smile and see ahead into some not so distant future.

Crossword puzzles and rocking chairs await us all, Mer, with maybe some eye candy passing by from time to time.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Sally Finds Jesus in Vegas

Under the exit ramp Sally Does Deep Throat
shouts to Snake Eyes, "You better get up!
It's time to visit one of your wild oats!"

The broken beer bottles, but when she's sober,
look like the minis once poured in her cup
when Sally was dancing at Full Disclosure.

"Ya better get goin' there, Sugar Doll,
or Bitch won't let Little Girl sup
with Daddy down at Vincent de Paul."

When Sally went hunting down at The Nugget
she saw a one arm bandit hold up
a bleach blonde granny who looked like a puppet
doing the hokey pokey while jingling
two nickels left in her plastic cup.

So Sally gave Granny all of her bling bling
and after a swig of watered down scotch
she hitched to Mojave where the coyote
dung stinks less than a delegate's crotch.

 

[greenmountaineer]

De-Veining Shrimp

The City of Mommy is dying, Daddy,
after Melinda left for college
to major in biology,

and my neurons synapsed SAT's,
Tiger Mom, dreaming last night
she needed help with her algebra.

Silly me, down from the attic
with pics on the fridge of orthodontics.

Bam! goes a can of tuna, Daddy!
I left the shrimp in the freezer. Sue me!

And furthermore, don't laugh but I,
I dreamed of their little poopy lines.

 

[HoneyAdored]

......

 

[greenmountaineer]

Brilliant and still laughing. You captured the feel perfectly and I was there.
I'm printing this one out and keeping it.

Thanks, Honey. I wrote this for my lovely wife a couple of years ago when our daughter started college.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Sing Sing

He no longer orders Singapore Slings
to suck on the maraschino cherry
as when he used to scan alluring
derivative futures like the funnies
Nick used to laugh at each time he crowed
he made so much fucking money.

After three hours of diarrhea
he'd wipe his ass with some of that paper
or pages ripped from the Good Book
the chaplain forgot to give to him
during prints, a full body search,
Castile soap, and a shower.

Instead in the dark on his upper bunk
he listens to lights out banter for dirty
talk about whores, bitches, and pussies
Nick says a prayer for when Mighty Joe grins,
because Nick once a rooster, is hen
on a metal bed. Ping. Ping.