Poetics and Ruminations

Running

RUNNING

 

            In the dream I am

        running.  I am looking

            for something — my car

                parked God knows where,

in the City of Recall:

 

        the cinema gone

    dark with the flickering

        hours, the candy store

            next door, spiders

in the windows.  My legs are

 

        lead, there is no air;

    something I cannot see

        breathes in the alley.

            As I draw close

to what it is I'm seeking,

 

        the elm of childhood

    spreads its limbs again, grass

        grows between the flags

            over its roots,

the church my father preached in

 

        peels in the sunlight.

    My car is parked again

        under the shattered pear,

            and if I could,

I would move my feet to run

 

        heart pumping, slowing

    like an old film flickering

        over a story

            that runs backwards

when I stop and close my eyes

 

        to catch my breath.

 

From The Familiar Stranger, poems by Lewis Turco, Scottsdale, AZ: Star Cloud Press (www.StarCloudPress.com), 2014, ISBN 978-1-932842-78-4, paperback. Available from all booksellers.

 

Two Ballades

 

A BALLADE OF LIBERATION

"Free of her lips, free of her hips."

 

What is it every jackal wants at last?

     The weak, the crippled beast, the easy kill.

He does not stalk the clever or the fast —

     The carcass on the plain is better still;

All he need do is come and gorge his fill.

The jackal feasting is not a pretty sight,

     But all he cares about is to work his will:

Thank you for giving up without a fight.

 

I pray you, Pretty, do not look aghast;

     I speak in allegory only.  Still,

My metaphor is apt.  That day is past

     When lovers need pursue your kind until

     You lie down at their mercy — they need no skill

To stalk a prey in whom there is no flight,

     Nor need they linger past the feeding's thrill —

Thank you for giving up without a fight.

 

The Serengeti herds are still and massed;

     They wait in panting states of dishabille

To serve the scavenger his dull repast.

     The jackal need not learn the veldt quadrille

     Or feral waltz — he merely scans the bill

Of fare as it comes strolling into sight.

     He gluts, then he departs over the hill —

Thank you for giving up without a fight.

 

Envoi:

     You've made of love a bump-and-grind treadmill.

The predator walks lazily home at night,

     Smiling all the way.  You foot the bill.

Thank you for giving up without a fight.

 

BALLADE OF THE WEAKER SEX

"Weak men had need be witty."

 

We woo you in your youth, hound you to bed,

     Lie lustily to you, with you girls.  Of course,

We marry you sometimes, and then, instead

     Of growing old along with you, remorse-

     Fully we grasp the hands of time and force

Them back to yesternoon — we chase the moon:

     The chase is what we crave! — and we divorce.

Forgive us, love, for leaving you so soon.

 

But sometimes life itself is what we dread,

     The aging of the flesh, not of the bride.

We see the color in our hair has fled,

     The sallow mirror-face, the belly wide

     With illnesses impending, and our pride

Lost to summer men, the boys of June:

     Sybil sings to us of suicide —

Forgive us, love, for leaving you so soon.

 

And if we last to gnaw the heel of bread

     At the loaf's end, the crust as dry as thirst,

We wonder why it was that we were wed,

     Or why conceived at all, why born and nursed

     At woman's breast.  Though all mankind is cursed,

We do not often sing your lonesome tune,

     For most of us at last at least die first —

Forgive us, love, for leaving you so soon.

 

Envoi:

     The world will spin and time will do its worst,

But we will seldom hear the shadows croon

     The ballad of the "weaker sex" reversed —

Forgive us, love, for leaving you so soon.

 

From The Collected Lyrics of Lewis Turco / Wesli Court 1953-2004, Scottsdale, AZ: www.StarCloudPress.com, 2004, 460 pp., ISBN 1-932842-00-4, jacketed cloth; ISBN 1-932842-01-2, trade paperback. Also available from Amazon.com in a Kindle edition.

Father's Day: The Recurring Dream

THE RECURRING DREAM

for Luigi, in memoriam.

(Listen t Lewis Turco read his poem, "The Recurring Dream."

 

   I seek my father — that minister

of the deep — among the furniture

      of my childhood.  I step out of waking

   into this room and know

that time has passed.  The windows are webbed

   and moonstreaked.  A lamp with a glass shade,

 

   green and saffron, burns

on a brass stem.  The bookcases hold sermons

      and silence.  My aquaria

   stand among tumbled

tomes and testaments.  The dust rises

   into the amber darkness.

 

   I disturb a desert of hours,

search for the fish that glide

      in musty waters — blue scales

   glint under my glance,

their eyes are corals budding

   among rusty blades of sea grass

 

and swordplants.  I remove the glass lids

and dip my hand into the water —

      it is what I have feared:

   shadow of a shadow, dim air

flowing from corner to corner.

   The fish rise along the curtains

 

   to swim about me in the air,

their black fins wavering.

      I dig in the gravel stranded

   among the shelving,

the decaying books.  I dig,

   and here, in the root

 

   of the largest plant, blooming

from a socket of bone, I find my father

   where he has scuttled,

at last to be brought back, smiling.

 

From The Familiar Stranger, poems by Lewis Turco,  Scottsdale, AZ: Star Cloud Press (www.StarCloudPress.com), 2014, ISBN 978-1-932842-78-4, paperback. Available from all booksellers.

MISS PUSSY'S PARLOR SONGS, Part Nine

 

FRITZ AND RITZ

(To the tune of "Bringing in the Sheaves")

 

Putin on the Ritz,

Putin on the Ritz,

He will come rejoicing,

Putin on the Ritz!

 

Putin on the Ritz,

Putin on the Ritz,

Trump will trumpet Putin

Putin on the Ritz!

 

Trump is on the fritz,

Trump is on the fritz,

Trump is out of order --

He is on the fritz!

 

Trump is on the fritz,

Really on the fritz!

Trump takes Putin's orders --

We are having fits!

 

 

TRAVEL BAN.      

 

"Call it anything you wish,

I just want a travel ban

On whatever is Islamish --

Call it anything you wish,

Fowl or animal or fish 

From Iran or from Sudan;

Call it anything you wish

I just want a travel ban."

 

 

TWEETY BIRD

 

Tweetybird, Tweetybird, where would you fare?

"To London, to London - they better beware."

To do what in London with tweets and with flare?

"To fight with a Muslim I'd like to meet there."

To fight with a Muslim? But why would you care?

"This Muslim's a leader, the old city's mayor.

I'd like to confront him down deep in his lair --

I'll poke out his eyeballs and muss up his hair."

Tweetybird, Tweetybird, you wouldn't dare!

"Oh, yes, I would! I'd stare and I'd glare

And then I would give him a poke or a pair!"

But what if he kicked you or kneed you down there

Under your buckle, in your pubic hair?

"He wouldn't dare do that! That wouldn't be fair!"     

 

 

THE BRAZEN TRUMPET

 

I need loyalty, I expect loyalty --

That's because I am royalty.

 

 

TRUMP IN DECLINE

 

I will not come, I will not come

To visit you in the UK

If demonstrations clog the streets

Against me -- that is not okay.

 

I will not come, I will not come

To visit you, Theresa May,

If folks don't welcome me with pomp --

Not tomorrow, not today.

 

I will not come, I will not come

If Brits refuse to shout "Hurray!"

For I am brazen Donald Trump

And if I come trumpets must play!

 

 

CABINETRY

 

"Thank you, thank you, Cabinetry,

For praising my ass off because you love me.

You're right! I AM great! As great as I can be!

You just need to open your eyes and you'll see

Kim Jong and I are the nuts on a tree!"

 

 

TRIO

 

Kim Jong Il and Donald Trump

Learned a lot from Forrest Gump.

 

 

THE RINSE PUBIS SONG

(To the tune of "Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition," with apologies to the shade of Frank Loesser).

 

Kiss his ass and pass the deposition,

Kiss his ass and pass the deposition,

Kiss his ass and pass the deposition,

And we'll all go free!

 

Bare his ass and swing into position,

I just love to be a politician!

Kiss his ass, we're all between Perdition

And the deep Blue sea!

 

Yes, the Dork, our President, has said it:

"You have got to give me lots of credit,

For we're all out on a mighty mission

On the Fake News on TV!

 

"All aboard, we ain't a-goin' fishin' --

Kiss my ass and pass the deposition

Ain't it great to be a politician?

You just might go free!"

 

From MISS PUSSY'S PARLOR SONGS by Claudette McFang.

Miss Pussy's Parlor Songs, Part Eight

 

SECRETS

(To the tune of "I've Got Sixpence.")

 

Trump's got secrets,

Super-secret secrets,

Trump's got secrets

To last him four more years!

He's got stuff to secrete

That he'd rather tweet

Or leak into the Russians' ears!

(Poor ears!)

 

No cares has he to grieve him,

Nor conscience left to deceive him,

He's happy as a shark, believe him,

As he blows hot air out his hole --

Out his hole, out his hole,

As he blows hot air out his hole!

 

 

TRIP

 

Trumpelstiltskin's gone to sea

To gad about, perhaps to see

A sheik,  a pope, a manatee --

Petty Trumpelstiltskin!h

 

 

TRUMP TO NETANYAHU

 

"I never mentioned Israel!

The reason why? I cannot tell,

But this I know, and know full well --

I never mentioned Israel!"

 

 

LITTLE BOY TRUMP

 

Little boy Trump,

Blow your own horn

As you have been doing

since you were born.

But where is the boy

Who whimpers and weeps?

He lives in a White House

Full of white creeps.

Should we awaken him?

Useless to try,

He'll merely start whimpering

And spit in our eye.

 

 

WORMY MATH

 

Two and two is four,

(Trumpkin, Trumpkin,)

Four and four is eight,

(Counting up your budget gold,)

Eight and eight is sixteen,

(You and your arithmetic)

Sixteen and sixteen is forty-five

(Are just $two trillion off!

 

 

IMMEMORIAL DAY 2017. 

 

"I would like to wish everyone, including all haters and losers (of which, sadly, there are many) a truly happy and enjoyable Memorial Day!" -- Donald Trump

 

I wish Donald Trump

A hunk of my rump,

And a rather large lump

Of what I must dump.

May he lose his member

So he will remember.

 

 

COVFEFE

A Riddle on a Neologism by Donald Trump.

 

Come meet the extra virgin

Of whom you may have heard,

Virgin number seventy-three

Free and, I give you my word,

Even better than the seventy-two

From Isis you'll get when you're dead --

Even better, believe me you!

 

(Who is the extra virgin?)

 

From Miss Pussy’s Parlor Songs by Claudette McFang.

 

Miss Pussy's Parlor Songs, Part Seven

 

PART SEVEN

 

THE WAR ON COAL

 

The War on Coal is over

With windmills in the air,

With solar panels on our roofs

And water everywhere!

 

The War on Coal is over,

It's back to shoveling stone,

Reviving radiation --

Cancer in the bone!

 

The War on Coal is over!

We're fracking "natural" gas,

With pipelines full of petroleum

And methane up the ass!

 

 

DO AS I SAY

 

"Do as I say, not as I do,"

Says Vladimir the Vamp

To Donald Trump, his favorite,

Most cuddly little scamp.

 

"You've violated every law

Agreed to by the nations!

If you don't quit it right away

I'll minimize your rations.

 

"What I've done in the Caucasus

And elsewhere is quite legal --

The Russian Bear can do such stuff,

But not the puny Eagle,

 

"So leave my pal Assad alone

To gas his folks in Syria!

Do nothing more to make him pay,

To make him loathe and fear ya!

 

"Or I will somehow make you do,

Not what I do, but say.

I'm Vlad Bear Chest as you must know --

I thought that you were gay!"

 

 

SPICER "THINKS"

 

That famous basher al-Assad

Is worse than Adolf Schickelgruber

Who never gassed his untervolk

When Deutschland was alles uber.

 

The Holocaust never occurred --

Auschwitz was a Nazi spa,

Apparently, where people went

When they were feeling kind of blah.

 

When one is born, then time begins,

And everything that came before

Does not exist, so Spicer thinks,

Thus it is easy to ignore.

 

 

THE BIGGEST BOMB

 

The biggest bomb in the modern world

Carries the onus of being hurled

By the biggest anus of the smallest lump

Of dust in the cosmos, Donald Trump.

 

 

ARMADA

 

" We're sending an armada

Full of deadly weapons

To threaten North Korea

With TNT and atoms.

 

"Our task force will arrive

Any day and assail ya,"

Donald Trump avers...,

"Wait! Now they're in Australia!

 

"I'm pretty sure I mentioned

To all my Navy buddies

That they should hit Korea,

Not play with fuddy-duddies

 

"Down-Under at their war games.

There's some misunderstanding

About what they're supposed to do,

Where their bombs should be landing!

 

"I guess I'll have to handle

This mess all by myself!

Hand down my water pistol

Lying on that shelf!"

 

 

ARSONIC

 

The CinC went on TV

To say Comey was fired.

Comey saw on TV news

That he'd been disenhired!

 

The President was very brave,

For he had been empowered

To hire and fire almost at will --

He was no sleazy coward

 

Hiding in the Oval Office

While on the other coast

Comey at a conference

Found he had lost his post --

 

Trump's email co-conspirator

When Hillary was running

Found out what gratitude's about:

Perfidy and cunning.

 

 

TRUMPELSTILTSKIN

 

Today I'll lie, tomorrow too,

The next I'll tell a whopper wild

Enough to match the things I do,

For Trumpelstiltskin I am styled!

 

The Haiku

 

        Apparently, perhaps because recent books of poems by Richard Wilbur have been written in three-line syllabic "haiku stanzas," many writers have imitated his practice and by extension have decided that anything written in three short lines is a haiku. Neither Wilbur's stanzas nor poems are "haikus" in the traditional sense. 

        The haiku is a poem which has its basis emotive utterance, an image, and certain other characteristics as well, including spareness, condensation, spontaneity, ellipsis, and a seasonal element. A distinctions has sometimes been made between the haiku and the senryu, though  both have exactly the same external form. The senryu is an inquiry into the nature of humankind, whereas the haiku is an inquiry into the nature of the universe.

         The haiku is philosophically an outgrowth of Zen Buddhism. Haiku translated into English tend to appear, to Western eyes, overly sentimental and to fall victim to the pathetic fallacy — overstated personification. We do not understand that the Zen poet is trying to put himself or herself into the place of the thing perceived, empathizing with the inanimate object. Moreover, the Zen poet is trying to “become one” with the object and thus with all things.

         The haiku has perhaps been best described as “a moment of intense perception.” William Carlos Williams enunciated the American-British Imagist doctrine as “No ideas but in things.” Both conceptions are, if not identical, at least quite similar, for both are based upon the sensory level. Williams’ dictum and T. S. Eliot’s “objective correlative” q.v., sever the observer from the perceived object, while at the same time preserving much of the effect of Zen empathy. An objective correlative is simply the vehicle of a metaphor. The theory is that, if the correct object that correlates with the idea to be expressed (symbolizes that idea) is chosen, then the idea will arise through connotation and overtone without being stated denotatively. It is through this objectivity, finally, that the poet in English achieves empathy — which is only a way of saying there is no such thing as pure objectivity.

        Here are three traditionally constructed haikus (by yours truly):

 

THREE HAIKU

 

    When the rain falls through

the mountain, the bottom of

    summer's night turns white.

 

    What does the moon ask

of the summer? The sound of

    the rain is darkness.

 

    I hear the roses

caroling in the garden

    beneath the old oak.

 

-- Lewis Turco

 

The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics, Including Odd and Invented Forms, Revised and Expanded Edition by Lewis Putnam Turco, Hanover, NH: University Press of New England (www.UPNE.com) , 2012 • 384 pp. 3 illus. 5 x 7 1/2" Reference & Bibliography / Poetry 978-1-61168-035-5, paperback.

 

 

May, Merely

MAY, MERELY

 

                    The weeds pant

like the center of summer.

              I follow my nose

       to the dogwood in bloom:

 

                    it is May

merely, but Amherst blossoms

              in its early heat,

       sap oozes from the bark,

 

                    and the limbs

are heavy with what may be:

              phantom fruit, the seed

       in the dusty pollen.

 

-- Emily Dickinson / Lewis Turco

 

From "A Sampler of Hours," in Emily Dickinson, Woman of Letters: Poems and Centos from Lines in Emily Dickinson's Letters Together with Essays on the Subject by Various Hands, edited with an introduction by Lewis Turco, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press (www.SUNYPress.edu), 1993. ISBN 0-791414-17-5, cloth; ISBN 0-791414-18-3, paper. All poems are collected in Fearful Pleasures: The Complete Poems of Lewis Turco 1959-2007.

Three Ekphrastic Terzanelles

Spiders, Long Island, Maine. by
 Elizabeth Burke

 

A PAGE OF SPIDERS

 

The spiders seem to want to crawl away,

Out of the drawing with its printed notes

Onto my desk top where, perhaps, there’s prey

 

For them to draw into a net that floats.

But I am building this fleeting cage of letters

Out of the drawing with its printed notes --

 

I have no wish to be the prey in fetters,

Although I have no other choice, of course,

Except to build this floating cage of letters

 

To fend the spiders off until remorse

For the misprisions of my days is lost

In spinning filaments without recourse.

 

The price for living – an atrocious cost,

A page of debts that cannot be repaid,

For the misprisions of our days are lost

 

In filaments of time gone retrograde.

The spiders seem to want to crawl away --

A page of debts that cannot be repaid --

Onto my desk top where, of course, they’ll prey.

  

PAST SOUNDS OF SINGING

“…his poems are like singing from the cemetery.” – Rhina Espaillat

 

When we stroll out by evening we are wary

Of our route. We would not like to hear

The sounds of singing from the cemetery.

 

Although we know there is not much to fear,

We whistle past the churchyard lying there

On our route. We would not like to hear

 

The sounds of singing burdening the air,

Emerging from the boneyard on our course.

We whistle past the churchyard lying there --

 

We wish to hear no aria; even worse,

A chorus of old voices made of stones

Emerging from the boneyard on our course.

 

We care no whit for what the wind intones

As we go strolling through the evening shades,

No chorus of old voices made of stones

 

Should shadow us through streets or country glades

When we walk out at dark. We should be wary

As we go strolling through the evening shades

Past sounds of singing from the cemetery.

EVENSONG

On lines from Dylan Thomas’ “The Hunchback

in the Park.”

 

Until the Sunday somber bell at dark

Made dozing tigers jump out of their eyes

By casting its summer song over the park,

 

Drenching us daylight creatures with surprise,

Startling the nurses near the willow grove --

Until the tigers jumped out of their eyes

 

We had no notion it was time to leave.

But evening calls and it is time to go.

Until next weekend there is no reprieve,

 

For we must work or study and the zoo

Must bide its time among its ponds and fountains.

Evening summons us. It is time to go;

 

Shades lengthen, shadows fall out of the mountains

Onto the streets where we must travel home.

We may not spend more time with ponds and fountains

 

But travel the ways and byways we have come.

We must arise, begin to travel home

Because the Sunday somber bell at dark

Casts its evensong across the park.

 

 

 

A SAMPLER OF HOURS

SAMPLER

 

Many an angel, with its needle,

              toils beneath the snow

       making a sampler of hours

              that fades with the sun

just as the snowfall fades to reveal

              a green alphabet

       written in the script of flowers

              bordered in lilac:

the arbutus is a rosy boast

              adrift in morning;

       zinnia, an ochre brag

              along the far fence.

What is there between them but waiting

              for the sky to rise,

       lifted by the seraphim

              who ply their stitching?

 

From Emily Dickinson, Woman of Letters: Poems and Centos from Lines in Emily Dickinson's Letters Together with Essays on the Subject by Various Hands, edited with an introduction by Lewis Turco, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press (www.SUNYPress.edu), 1993. ISBN 0-791414-17-5, cloth; ISBN 0-791414-18-3, paper. All poems are collected in Fearful Pleasures: The Complete Poems of Lewis Turco 1959-2007,