greenmountaineer's thread

[greenmountaineer]

(AP) WWII Soldier Found

Deathless joining with the ultimate
was the warrior's prize they said
just before the landing craft
opened wide its great white teeth,
and Attun vanished in the jungle,
cursing Captain Nakamura
who screamed his name in Japanese
on the beach at Morotai.

Conscripted aborigine,
Attun foraged thirty years,
stabbing snakes on strangler trees
that tasted better boiled than fried,
and while his snake was boiling hot,
he thought about the shrines he made
of combat bootlace camouflaged
that look like snakes on strangler trees.

Sometimes there were carcasses
whose tags were those of dogs they said
he dragged to where the GI's slept,
the owners of the island now,
and when the night was full moon bright
he prayed for ocean pea soup fog,
concealing him and carcass where
he'd etch a cross in sand nearby.

They'll take him to Jakarta,
although he wanted Kao-hsiung
to hear again its poetry,
but tonight as newsmen sleep
in tents nearby their whirlybirds
he buries boots they gave to him
and barefoot walks three miles east
to kneel in sand for Raymond Wheatly
PFC 96 45 73

after which he will return
to a special altar where
Attun will tenderly unlace
the boots that Nakamura wore
and knot the lace as mala beads
with the ones they gave to him
that he may pray for those remaining
snakes that dangle from the trees.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Better Days on Fulton Street

There were times when you couldn't scrape
two dimes for a pint of might
there be better days on Fulton
far from the marching bands parade
for your Normandy blood, sweat, and tears,
shortened for time at the beach.

Whenever we heard Isaiah say grace,
the truth was our stew wasn't beef;
"Why spend money on what is not bread?"
The man had a sense of humor, as in
baking ersatz apple pie
while singing "Putting in the Ritz."

So here's a toast, Snap Crackle Pop,
to our Woolworth's five and dime life,
and, yes, we'll take your word for it,
Rice Krispies taste better with beer than pretzels
you said just for kicks while we listened to
crackling on the radio.

So to hell with those pinstripes uptown
on Edelstein's black and white TV
if Jackie's on third, Koufax the mound,
the Duke's playing shallow in center field,
and modern day saints, wearing blue collars,
rise and shine and say "Wait 'til next year."

 

[greenmountaineer]

Renewal of Vows

We've lived too long in Leggoland
with pillowcases and Percale sheets
that match the cups for Listerine
atop his and her bathroom sinks.

I'll bring fresh peppermint for your lips,
candles to light, champagne in flutes.
I'll French kiss sweetness on your tongue.
I'll build a fire in the fireplace.

I'll be gentle, I'll be kind.
I'll be your chapter: I'll be your verse,
1 Corinthians 13:4
I am yours, you are mine.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Before Canute Went Down to the Sea

Oh how the millstream in Bosham has swollen.
Note the spot, skald, by the ink in your pen
where my belovéd daughter has fallen.

Write me a Caedmon's hymn for a solemn
runestone my masons will carve for me then.
Oh how the millstream in Bosham has swollen.

April floods render wheat fields their golden
tassels come August as hers might have been,
except the Almighty Hand came calling.

Ne'er again will I voyage to Wolin
where my jarl Thorkell, who fears not a man,
trains my Jomsvikings to beach in a column.

Summon my coterie where the tide rolls in
to see that the sea won't heed my command,
nor will the butterflies, having just stolen

my little butterfly fresh from molting
who flew to heaven to play in a fen.
Oh how the millstream in Bosham has swollen
where my belovéd daughter has fallen.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Sentience and Sapience

In early spring you planted seed
as if making love to Mother Earth.
Yet what sprouts may well be weed,

and ugly also has its need
to breathe, to feed, to be
on the vine of your tomato plant.

So you don't fill up a coffee tin
to drown the sluggish hornworm
that drops therein so easily.

Instead, you take it to the pasture,
but it will not feed
on what's against its nature,

not even balm of Gilead,
and it's too late for another seed,
and splat weighs heavy as the answer.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Converting Feet to Centimeters

Reading a tattered Beijing Times
Huilang discovers a certain McQueen
who during Paris' Fashion Week
surprises the world of haute couture,
except that his platform boots
are hooves on a water buffalo
in a Chongzuo rice field, she thinks,

reminding her of sister and niece,
one who's dead with lotus feet,
the other in sneakers colored pink,
wheeling her aunt like a pinwheel in
her room in the belly of Beijing
to eat tonight more government rice
before she crawls up to bed

where she will dream of Father again,
dead thirty years as a three year old
nine-headed bird, the necks of whom grow
unless Huilang breaks and bandages them.

 

[greenmountaineer]

The Milkman Cometh


Anno Domini 1957

Behold! The milkman cometh.
He layeth three quarts of white on the porch
and one of chocolate
at dawn before the Sabbath,

and Mother taketh
the cream from the top for coffee
and shaketh the chocolate
I dip with slices of Wonderbread.

Verily I say to you,
my cup doth not runneth over,
nor haveth we bacon from Moe,
the butcher at work in his shambles,

yeah 'tho 'tis better than the skimith
in the land of milk, bacon, and honey
poured into my bowl of Wheaties whence
my Wheaties wouldst be water thin.

 

[AlwaysHungry]

The Milkman Cometh


Anno Domini 1957

Behold! The milkman cometh.
He layeth three quarts of white on the porch
and one of chocolate
at dawn before the Sabbath,

and Mother taketh
the cream from the top for coffee
and shaketh the chocolate
I dip with slices of Wonderbread.

Verily I say to you,
my cup doth not runneth over,
nor haveth we bacon from Moe,
the butcher at work in his shambles,

yeah 'tho 'tis better than the skimith
in the land of milk, bacon, and honey
poured into my bowl of Wheaties whence
my Wheaties wouldst be water thin.

I think that you may be using the familiar form for comic effect here. It's funny because it's archaic, but the old version of English had capabilities like the familiar and also varieties of the subjunctive mood that have gone extinct in English, unlike languages like German and Spanish which still retain them.

Grammatically, one would not say "doth not runneth over" -- it were "runneth not over." "Haveth" is not a thing, as they say -- it were "hath." "Skimeth" is plausible, but with an "e".

 

[greenmountaineer]

I think that you may be using the familiar form for comic effect here. It's funny because it's archaic, but the old version of English had capabilities like the familiar and also varieties of the subjunctive mood that have gone extinct in English, unlike languages like German and Spanish which still retain them.

Grammatically, one would not say "doth not runneth over" -- it were "runneth not over." "Haveth" is not a thing, as they say -- it were "hath." "Skimeth" is plausible, but with an "e".

AH,

I know you have expertise in this area that I don't have. If you can, modify the original without losing its comedic affect. I'd like to see it. I believe poetry ought to be precise. If I've missed the mark here, I'd like to know it. Thanks.

 

[AlwaysHungry]

AH,

I know you have expertise in this area that I don't have. If you can, modify the original without losing its comedic affect. I'd like to see it. I believe poetry ought to be precise. If I've missed the mark here, I'd like to know it. Thanks.

The only corrections would be the two I mentioned, plus "Wheaties would" -- it's not the second person, so it doesn't get a fancy German-type ending. And something needs to happen with "skimith," but I don't know just what, because I don't understand what you are saying there.

 

[greenmountaineer]

The only corrections would be the two I mentioned, plus "Wheaties would" -- it's not the second person, so it doesn't get a fancy German-type ending. And something needs to happen with "skimith," but I don't know just what, because I don't understand what you are saying there.

"Skimith" is word play. In the 50's as a young boy, I remember clear milk bottles before homogenization where you could see the cream had separated. You had to shake the bottle (as Mother did the chocolate milk) to reconstitute the contents as whole milk. Otherwise, it would be skim milk.

 

[AlwaysHungry]

I assumed it had something to do with skim milk, but I'm trying to figure out whether "skimith" is supposed to be gerund. Maybe Annie will comment if she finds it arousing.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Time and Motion Study


We have no need for clocks

while you, my lovely nude,​

descend the staircase fluidly,​

your eyes upon my passion rising
toward your slow motion hips.
It's as though you flow downhill

like a waterfall does in a rivulet
to soften bedrock into pebbles,
pebbles into sand

and suddenly I'm reminded
time is the mind's invention
while motion's all that matters
as I take your hand in my hand.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Bill Thinks He Sees his Doppelgänger

Perhaps I'm just a bad reaction
to a psychotropic mushroom, Dude,
the nurse put in your stage four drip
after which the clock on the wall
decided to melt at midnight,

a good time to talk of namaste
and reincarnation as twins in Mary
who after failing the rabbit test,
says she's really, really sorry
she ever dated Buzz, that schmuck,

or you're really drunk as a skunk
from the last of two measured fingers
after Shaunessey smuggled in
a fifth of Clontarf Single Malt
you thought might numb your esophagus

or perhaps I Am That I Am
you swore was a bad dream of Moses,
drinks before dinner five p. m.,
ten years ago, September fourth,
Willy Nilly is here again.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Weighing of the Heart

"You must go to the Hall of the Dead
that Ma'at may weigh your heart"
Anibus said to me.

With a feather strapped to her head,
the Goddess of Justice sits
and summons my trial to begin.

I shudder "Am I dead?"
to the jackal-headed Anibus
who has my heart in his hands:

"If your plucked heart is as light
as a feather, it shall live forever,
but if your heart is heavier,

the demon, Ammit, whose bite
is that of a ravenous crocodile,
surely will devour it."

The duat's come to light.
Anibus readies the scales.
Ma'at removes her feather.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Broken Window Theory Prayer

Box stores that opened five years ago
OMG! mottle the highway like ruins,
glass strewn from most of their windows
once colored with sprays of graffiti.
Notice the fluttering hamburger wrapper
like a tumbleweed in the desert
catches upon some jagged glass
in dirt of a crack in the macadam.

That the earthworm find another
hermaphrodite and each one multiply;
that birds drop seeds and defecate;
that aphid and millipede occupy pavement;
that occupants of cars render unto Caesar
elsewhere what is due Caesar
and selves according to their means;
that silt from the highest mountain lakes
drop on macadam from butterfly wings.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Vietnam Trilogy

I. War Games

Son, my grandfather's father
one Sunday in Manassas
thought that war was a picnic basket
packed with cider, bread, and sausage
until he heard the rebel yell
in rifle fog like a banshee's wail
and ran for the train to Baltimore
to bury his box of toy tin soldiers,

later dug up by spit polished boys
who left on the mud to make them swell
yellow men for their GI Joes
in Uncle Joey's fishing pail
while Harry carried tamarack limbs
to whittle poles by the Chesapeake
eelgrass beds where we bludgeoned those beasts
on a rock we christened "The Obelisk."

II. Gonna Kill Ol' Charlie Cong

The song you sang when pushing up
and down in mud on Parris Island,
you sang again when rounding up
wives, their 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 steely 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
and Gunny's fuck you poker face.

III. Martha's Tour of Indelible Beaches

Martha recalled when you didn't ask why
D-Day would sometimes explode in Tom's sleep
as long as paychecks came on a Friday.

She stood by the shoreline thinking of Tom.
His nightmares had paratroops stuck in clay
near Omaha Beach like toy soldiers found
under a Levittown bedroom window.

She also recalled on Long Island Sound
a summer's day of fishhooks and minnows
and blood in a bucket near Oyster Bay
she'll visit again after please, Jesus,
Đà Nẵng where Sammy once walked its beaches.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Anthony's Lemon Ice

I like to zest the freshest lemons
when I make Italian ice for Sophia
who waits for me patiently on a settee
while the sun goes down in our garden

where vines are ripe with plump tomatoes,
each one as red as Sophia's lips
smile at me while a crimson sun sets
emblazing through our bedroom window

a print of two Pompeii lovers
she points to hanging on the wall,
feeding red grapes each to the other
as naked as my finger that crooks

a dab of ice on the tongue of Sophia
while Venus rises over her shoulder.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Terms of Endearment

"Dead Ass" comes to mind
as in the case of Little Joe, Pillsy,
and Pinhead, you heard me, Pinhead,
because his crown is smaller than
his jowls that suck on a cigarette
down at Freeman Street Park,

your best pal when you want a butt
as in "Hey, Dead Ass, get off your butt
and gimme one of your Camels"
even when there's only four left

after a game of b-ball,
two on two, point a basket,
under a dead ass summer love sun
when August makes your high tops stink.

Thank God Witkowski ain't here.
Dead ass just stands there, six foot three,
arms outstretched, so easy
to fake a shot and dribble around.

Dumb ass is also acceptable,
as in he's outta butts,
but it doesn't mean I luv ya, Man,
as much as dead ass does.

 

[greenmountaineer]

I

Now as to the matter of I
I doesn't know I has way too much
until I walks by
I's full length mirror
and says " you gotta go"
as if ten pounds in the third person
surrounding I will listen.

I likes to have a smoke before breakfast
and today I gets to
put on a new set of clothes,
and into the finest silk handkerchief
I buys at Saks Fifth Avenue,
I blows an aquiline nose.

I thinks I has a cold.

 

[greenmountaineer]

The Fly

Misty-eyed, however I tried
not to cry in the tub, I cried,
reminded of our red eye flight
to Napa to drink fine wine
when bye the bye from on high
I saw a fly drop in the water.

I couldn't let that fly,
so I scooped him out of the tub,
but there on the rug pile
my little fly died.

Under a bowl of potpourri I
found a doily to use as a shroud,
and then nigh the toilet what did I find
in a nearby waste paper basket,
but one of my poems of undying sighs
of I am thine and thou art mine
I crimped into a little casket.

"'Bye 'bye, little guy," I said to the fly.
"you too, Vi" I said to the poem
as the three of us took to water.

 

[greenmountaineer]

The Mailman

Every Monday through Friday early
Father put on his uniform
for housewives who starched blue collars
and waited for the mail

for which husbands lucky enough
for overtime in a factory
thanked him each December
and gave him a dollar or two.

He knew the math in '55
who started counting again on the first
house to house in January,
dividing by two in his new pair of shoes

thinking a dollar too much to pay
for Loony Tunes and a matinee
whose children were therefore indifferent,
begrudgingly ate bologna and cheese,

but rose at dawn with a silver spoon
on Christmas Day in '56
to play with a set of Lionel trains
and a doll carriage with a canopy.

 

[greenmountaineer]

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 Fordham 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 in the Ukraine,
mandolins lamenting empty nets,
or tin whistle plaints in Ireland.

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 two schlemiels like youse,
so far it's been pretty good."

"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 five,
tickles my belly such that I
laugh so hard that I cry.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Love Poem #8

I wrote this poem in bed
after Rosalind emptied me,

and then there was Connie who smiles with her eyes.
Kevin tells guy jokes at midnight.

Sandy of the dawn calls me "Bud,"
and the one whose name I mispronounce,

Hermione, I think,
makes love to me through her mask

and gloves with a soft spoken please
who props me up and bandages me.

 

[AlwaysHungry]

Love Poem #8

I wrote this poem in bed
after Rosalind emptied me,

and then there was Connie who smiles with her eyes.
Kevin tells guy jokes at midnight.

Sandy of the dawn calls me "Bud,"
and the one whose name I mispronounce,

Hermione, I think,
makes love to me through her mask

and gloves with a soft spoken please
who props me up and bandages me.

I like this one. But the syntax in the final stanza seems slightly awkward. I think the overarching idea is terrific.