greenmountaineer's thread

[DanielBoone]

St. Anthony

Green Mountaineer
loved the st anthony poem
and about the business about him being unstable. Undoubtedly. They were all--or most of them, or a significant number of them--were a bit touched. That's the beauty of it all, really. No one knows who gets to be in that crazy, visionary hall of fame.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Green Mountaineer
loved the st anthony poem
and about the business about him being unstable. Undoubtedly. They were all--or most of them, or a significant number of them--were a bit touched. That's the beauty of it all, really. No one knows who gets to be in that crazy, visionary hall of fame.

Thanks, Daniel. They didn't have Psych101 back then. You were either saintly or possessed, and sometimes it was hard to tell the difference.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Pied Beauty Remix

Cosmetallic in leotards,
the ladies look like leopards
snaring the spongy handlebars
with polished painted pointed claws
towards who's the fairest mirrored wall.

Abdominate those muscles, men!
moistly in your sweatsuits,
but flex your lats or pecs instead
shirtless, for who can tell with skin?
Your workout may work out for you,
Lord Gym.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Secret Handshakes of the Seventies

T'was a dark and stormy night
In nineteen seventy five
when Vinnie Barbarino knew
what Brylcreem’s little dab’ll do
in a duck’s ass all the girls would love
to run their fingers through.

Flipping channels, I saw Joe Namath
with help from Farrah, now famous,
take it off with Noxzema
which made me want to jump in the shower

and, reaching for a little Head
and Shoulders, I found only Prell instead
at half the cost which worked just as well
as any shampoo rub before bed.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Laura Likes John

"Don't take my money!" the dark night said
by the trash behind DIANE'S DONUTS
in Hialeah at 2:00 a.m.
where 911 is just a number
like a neon 24/7
that tosses and turns in your head.

Laura likes the custard ones too
to stick her rummaging tongue in
who does the same to barflies on stools
in the ladies's room where there aren't any ladies.

Yeah, she knows what she likes and doesn't,
leaving her lip-stained butt behind
the stink of dark roasted coffee,
twisted crullers, and powdered noses,
except for John she met last Tuesday
still with a dime in his pockets.

 

[greenmountaineer]

The Curvature of his Earth

Genevieve's looking obliquely at me
with her back against the wall
as if she was smoking a Gauloise
about to call me Jean

in some dark street alley of Paris
after squeezing herself into jeans
while her black brassiere makes obtuse
angles of two conical breasts.

Genevieve's such a scalene vamp
whose naked red polished toenails press
her bent leg against a locker

as the bell rings it's time for more
3 dimensional beautiful orbs
in AP Geometry class.

 

[AlwaysHungry]

Genevieve's looking obliquely at me
with her back against the wall
as if she was smoking a Gauloise
about to call me Jean

in some dark street alley of Paris
after squeezing herself into jeans
while her black brassiere makes obtuse
angles of two conical breasts.

Genevieve's such a scalene vamp
whose naked red polished toenails press
her bent leg against a locker

as the bell rings it's time for more
3 dimensional 2 beautiful orbs
in AP Geometry class.

I got dinged by this in my email box, sans title, and I was going to suggest "Heuristic."

 

[greenmountaineer]

I got dinged by this in my email box, sans title, and I was going to suggest "Heuristic."

I struggled with the title for this, AH, more than I usually do.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Candy Apple Red

So I say to the missus
this one I got I think is hot
and so I’m thinking
I'll put it on display.

Never put one up before,
but what the hell,
"Always a first time, right?"
I say to the missus.

Now here comes Jack,
and Jack says "Well,
I see all the specks,
but I don’t see specs,

and there's grime under the hood
and under your fingernails."

"I don’t know Jack"
I say to Jack
who for some reason
starts to laugh,

"Jack, my thinking was this:
moonlight drives in the country,
a little air freshener perhaps,
and a blanket in the back."

but Jack says "I don’t see it.
I mean I do, but all those bells,
whistles, and smells
gets in the way."

Excuse me, I mean get.
Jack said get.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Going Home to my Dog

Don't ask your friend in a restaurant
peeling the label from his beer
how a loving God allows
such pain in the world and his book

when happiness of nations appears
in Pidgin English and says to you
"such nice day" returning to
the wisdom of washing dishes.

The fly that bothered me flies away.
It's time to go home to my cockapoo
who jumps on my lap when I say "Up"
after we've gone to her happy place.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Ode to Sappho

Dani opens a window to summer
where there are morning men working shirtless,

felling trees at the edge of the forest
to season for heat in December,

and there's musk in the air when they see her
because their sweat has more than one reason,

although tonight next to her cottage
at dusk when Venus is rising,

Dani will pick oxeyes with Esther
who will say she baked some lady locks

to savor with Lady Grey tea
and a roaring fire out of season

that Dani will start for her anyway
when Esther begs Dani please.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Starving Artist

Sally, the bartender, cried in her Coke
as she recalled not ringing you up
after another Del autograph

on a White Horse Tavern napkin,
having pretended to laugh when you said
you'd die on the floor in her men's room.

Just last week she poured another
Johnny Walker for you who wrote
for your latest barstool friend:

"At least Baudelaire had Mother's money,
trying to pierce heaven's shroud.
So what's a napkin worth to you, Buddy?"

How many times had I heard that line
for "one more drink ere my fleabag hotel"
where, Del, you never did find the ink

nor words from God in uppermost case
I say to the crumpled yellow sheets
on your naked bed in this naked place.


In memory of Delmore Schwartz, d. July 11, 1966

 

[greenmountaineer]

The Jabberwock

It was but a nightmare of the Jabberwock;
It was but a nightmare of the Jabberwock,
whatever the hell that is;
whatever the hell that is.
but of whatever that Jabberwock is
Hell! it was a nightmare!

Perhaps I'm a who who's mad, you know;
Perhaps I'm a who who's mad, you know,
who knows some devil Slithy;
who knows some devil Slithy,
some slithy devil perhaps who knows
I'm a mad Who's Who, you know.

In the nighttime I hear Brillig.
In the nighttime I hear Brillig
and Tove who carol with Lewis Carroll,
and Tove who carol with Lewis Carroll.
Here in the nighttime I carol with...Who?
Lewis Carroll, Brillig, and Tove.

Here in the nighttime, Brillig,
I'm mad with that nightmare the Jabberwock was
of a devil perhaps, Who knows?
but Lewis Carroll, (who's Carol?)
Slithy, Tove, and you who know
whatever the hell it is.

 

[Angeline]

It was but a nightmare...

I just came in to applaud! You made that paradelle about as clean as can be and kept it funny in a "who's on first" kinda way. Really, you made me laugh out loud. Thanks!

 

[greenmountaineer]

I just came in to applaud! You made that paradelle about as clean as can be and kept it funny in a "who's on first" kinda way. Really, you made me laugh out loud. Thanks!

I'm glad you liked it. The last stanza gave me a splitting headache.

 

[legerdemer]

I also really like your paradelle - it is very much in keeping with Lewis Carroll's whimsical spirit.

 

[Lyricalli]

I'm going to add my applause as well. I think it's brilliant.

 

[greenmountaineer]

I'm going to add my applause as well. I think it's brilliant.

Thanks. Brilliant? I don't know, but it's certainly Brillig.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Doo Wop

Frankie uses fresh lemons
to make Italian ice for Sophie
who waits for him on a settee
as the sun goes down in their garden

where vines are ripe with Frankie's tomatoes
behind their duplex in Jackson Heights,
each one the color of her lips,
ruby as the full moon reflects

on the south facing window next to their bed
where a Pompeii print of two naked lovers
is as hot as the sun was on skin
when Frankie was weeding the garden

who now dabs a little finger of ice
on the tongue of his lovely Sophie,
mother of his two grown-up kids
and lover when "There's a Moon Out Tonight."

https://youtu.be/P4xNF9uh8SA

 

[greenmountaineer]

Belle

Belle, you began bumping into
objects, even the plumber's pants.
Too soon it was the living room
walls where you no longer ran
to stop on your hind paws and face the sun
or when you just had to chase
that stick for no other reason than fun
and dive into Black River Creek,

except when the dog God of Thunder
leveled grass like a hurricane in summer.
Poor Belle, you hid under our bed,
wouldn't come out for anything,
not even a Milk Bone biscuit,
except if a stranger came to the door
to get himself out of the rain.
You had to defend the tribe after all.

Tonight I'm no longer Alpha Dog,
sad, of course, but something else,
how to live each day as it comes
and never show the tribe your pain
I think with the last damn shovel of dirt.
For me, however, I haven't changed.
God, it hurts. God, it hurts!

 

[Piscator]

Belle Belle - it is sad that our dogs grow old so fast.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Seed

I have three maples above my house;
well, not exactly, more to one side,
and their outermost leaves slope gently,
one half the way from eaves to rooftop.

I stare at those trees for quite some time,
contemplating what the mind holds true,
namely, they come from the ground,

and yet those trunks seem to me
merely three adjectives of the Seed
hidden by three thousand faerie leaves
that dance in the Breeze where once the Seed
floated in infinity.

 

[legerdemer]

Belle, you began bumping into
objects, even the plumber's pants.
Too soon it was the living room
walls where you no longer ran
to stop on your hind paws and face the sun
or when you just had to chase
that stick for no other reason than fun
and dive into Black River Creek,

except when the dog God of Thunder
leveled grass like a hurricane in summer.
Poor Belle, you hid under our bed,
wouldn't come out for anything,
not even a Milk Bone biscuit,
except if a stranger came to the door
to get himself out of the rain.
You had to defend the tribe after all.

Tonight I'm no longer Alpha Dog,
sad, of course, but something else,
how to live each day as it comes
and never show the tribe your pain
I think with the last damn shovel of dirt.
For me, however, I haven't changed.
God, it hurts. God, it hurts!

 

[greenmountaineer]

Not An Elizabethan Sonnet

She drives maybe forty-five MPH
while tailgating maybe ten feet away
is a red faced mime whose state of rage
says "Move, Bitch!" on the Garden State Parkway.

Elizabeth's lost in thought about men
next to the pebble stone meridian
painted to look like phony green grass

"like when the Lenni Lenape Indian
men came home late with grass on their ass
and said they didn't know why to their squaws.
Men! We'd be happier without them!,"
she says to the mirrored Mr. Jaws

whose image is closer than it appears
when Elizabeth slows down two more gears.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Mother Dreamed of Flying to Paris

"One word, Ben, just one word: Plastics"
Mr. McGuire

Mother dreamed of flying to Paris
she once told her classmates at Hunter College,
but for her kids, mortgage, and mailman
husband whose weekly take home pay
meant buying A&P Ann Page products
and borrowing books about Monet.

It's 1960 when Donna Stone
somewhere in the suburbs of Hillsdale
takes out dinner from the latest oven
for Jeff and Mary who have to show
aluminum in the peas compartment
before digging in to the cobbler

as Donna downs a dry martini
who always dreamed of flying to Paris
she says to her husband Alex,
half of him still at the office,
the other half on his magic carpet
second two fingers of Dewars,
having already flown.