171. The Opportunist

American Robin at Frank G. Bonelli Regional Park

San Dimas, Southern California

Image Source: Two Birders To Go

Noble:
red head
raised high,

the robin
bounces
steadily, beady
eyes glimmering
with the
spring rain

in such splendour,
lone on the
beaming emerald
do I notice:

Stringy worms
dangling from
its resurfaced
beak;
munching, it is
a mortal like any other;
the rain,
fortuitous

Cantopop sails
in from the adjacent
living room;
eyelids painted and
eyes scrunched in
synchronous exertion:
dolled-up girls
and girly
boys

Things
seem not so
cheap
anymore…

168. Cattle through the Peepholes

circles:
blinking eyes
beyond,
eyelashes long and
golden, dusty;
flies
interspersed

still yet
moving,
inches become
miles,
through alchemy
to kilo-
metres

skin beneath
metal,
air beneath
exhaust fumes:
and in the driver’s seat
the unthinking
be-jeaned,
be-plaid-shirted
blue collar
robot

driving,
surviving,

one eye:

glassy,
still, and
searching

166. Princesses and Trashcans

Unborn embryos
gestate
in my head…

a poem,
I once
read?

My mother
checked out a
book from the
library:
portraits of women;

in poetry
(I secretly
read it
too)
things 10-year-olds
shouldn’t know:

I was
gripped:
it was horrifyingly
tasty

words.
images.

Was it all a dream?

I.
Witch doctor in
hot
Brazil,
summer heat
twirling the
plastic plug-in
fan

treatises on using
recycled fetuses
as
lotion,
teen mothers &
satin skin:
“semen is the best
moisturizer”…
(I didn’t know what
that word meant
then)

crony old
fingers dance,
translucent skin
framing her flaming
red cuticles
on the turquoise
counter

Bidonville…
“Eu chorei, perdi a paz…”
Portuguese flits through the
metal grille of the
portable radio,
yellow as
banana,
sound tinny and flat
like
botox)

II.
A mother trails the
blood of her miscarried
baby,
red on the
Michigan
snow

Poems on a
poem;
strange how one can
create in a
created universe,
it’s all very
meta,
isn’t it?

Little babies,
trapped in lotion,
loss painted
red on the snow:
these things will
stick within a
kid, or
would they

164. Floaters

silent tumbling strings
translucent and transparent
flee the clear ether

silken treasured song
weaves its tapestry in Sun
glistening in the day

embers of fire red
ignite the quiet white snow
look – a fin appears

curlicuing ‘round
a chlorophyll encounter
circling comets sing

of molten moonbeams
in such dappled harmonies
only spectres swim

154. Salon des Refusés

He sits beside me,
only seat at a
crowded
intersection:

Old –
what a horrid
word;
wrinkled up,
frail, and
gauntly
tall.

Why are you here?
I would like to ask,
not judging
nor rudely,
but genuinely
curious

Abstracts
flicker
flacker,
dancing ‘cross the
pixels,
zebra manuscripts
painted
in cathode rays

Treatment
Medication
Lifestyle factors
Genetic component

headlines

Headlines:
receding,
newspapers clippings saved,
lay study
summaries

And yet isn’t science,
isn’t research
a mystery,
as cryptic as the
things they
study

151. PILOT

Still lay the
body,
blood
sprayed upon the ashen
cheeks,

blue uniform
specked
with
white
          debris.

Laying on the
tilèd
       floor
of what was once
the second
bathroom.

Gentle
          Face,
do I look upon thee with
sadness?

At one time
still upon the
mantelpiece, yet
full of life,
and yet here,
now in life
and full of
stillness –

You rest in
death so
quiet -

I want to say:
“We are reunited
once more;
how I have waited for
this fateful
day –”

Or should I stand in
silence,
full of pity and
reverence,

or Hate:
shouting “Muori
                         dannato!”,
over a body
             “Muori”
I didn’t
             “Muori”
kill?
             “Muori!”

Oh, as still
in death
as in
life,
the same
coldness and
neglect

I think I might
stay a while,
observing this
strange specimen,
at once so
new and so
familiar –

Except it is
not my house the
plane collided
with, not
my bathroom the
Pilot
died peacefully,
my puzzled eyes
beholding
this face
once more

But here in the
dark, star-lit
museum of the
mind,
the body can
rest,

eternal in its stillness;
quiet in its
permanence.

150. Com’è bello!

Unassuming,
silently presuming –
Two arachnids
tranquilly enslumbered:

Victim huntress,
paused the murderesses;
gentle yearning,
mute the Mother doting:

Golden doubles,
resting, still as marble:
Eight-fold digits
still and softly sun-gilt.

Se il destassi?

In the noontime daybeams
Venetian spun,
Gemini lay, Roman.

147. Little Litany

Little unborn
fetus,
peeking through the
window of a
burrowed
egg:

Sympathetic arteries
trail to and
from your
thumping
body

So exposed, so
fragile: your heart is
beating; it is
a tiny
miracle –
a strange thing
to see such
inner workings
crudely
revealed

We are
injecting you with
strange
fluids,
failing to
explant
you

We have
mangled the
yolk and
you are blurred
in
the aftermath;

Upon rediscovery
you are
hovering,
heartbeats
faltering

I am so
sorry

I say, over and
over as
you fade, as your
heart
stills

Poor little
chicken embryo,
I am so
sorry;

We are discarding you into
a plastic
bucket
used for
cherry
picking some
summers
ago

I would like to
say a
prayer for your
unborn
soul

But I am not
religious, and we
are surrounded by
uncommon
melancholy

Or I am,
as the others leave and
discuss their
weekend plans

I am left,
devastated – for
what?

The sacrilege of a
stifled life,
dissected and
discarded

I am haunted,
and I am
so,
so
sorry.

146. 端午节

Triangles,
banana leaves
wrapped tight
around the
rice and
crunchy egg
yolk:

Drawing no initial parallels
with the
colouring books I
scribbled in as a
child
while
the teams of
rowers
plunged their oars
into the
dragon-mirrored
waters –

Ma
tells me
a poet once
drowned out of
the misery of
exile

and that villagers
filled the lake
with these
triangles
out of
sympathy –

the fish kept away
and the body was
saved;

And on this
strange-appointed
day
I ponder,
perhaps too
much of
such tales.

143. The Sublime

From: Jan Axel's Blog

swarm of vultures,
high in the afternoon
sun;
slow and circular,
like a baby’s
mobile, suspended in morbid
listlessness above the
Florida
flats:

restless,
tension hovers in the
unoccupied molecules
buzzing between the
unfashionably active
fat mosquitoes;

boxed-up fish suppliers and
phony Chinese restaurants;
ghetto Black-men at the
7-11:
tank-top children in the
avenues and
dried-up yellowed
grass
roasting in the
sunburnt air.

142. Temporality

Like the morning dew,
here
and gone tomorrow:

3 flies lay,
spent
on the
plastic
desktop.

Having seen
them live and
breathe and munch on
dead skin cells;
buzzing now and again
on my face,

strange to see them
immobile,
almost sleeping or in
a trance-like state

It is bizarre,
sweeping them into the
garbage bin,
nestled among the
used tissues:

thinking,
this is what things
come to?

We try to live with a little
dignity, die
with a little
dignity.

Artistic visions,
dreams, and
loves:
sometimes it seems so
meaningless;

yet we carry on,
filling our lives with
things,
as if this will
somehow fill the
hollow restlessness,
or at least cover it,
like a soggy
glow-in-the-dark
bandaid

140. Visiting the Fly

In the midst of the
height of spring
robins bob their
crimson heads across
the earth again:

In a moment of
inspiration,
I am perched myself
at the hot metallic
school desk,
placed so wondrous
in the centre of such
impossible
artistry;

Flies rest calmly
on the spots beside me;
it is not mine, but
theirs:
having no place in our
domain -
here, we are reunited,
all at peace with our
own
ephemerality –

I wonder on our
hypocrisy,
the strangeness of our
condition, our
species,
our cruelty in the midst of such
serene hospitality?

"Dual School Bench" (2002)

Verne Harrison

Donald Forster Sculpture Park,

Guelph, Ontario, Canada

Photo by the very talented Hanneorla

137. Icarus

 

Curious,
the brown and grey
fruit fly
slips quickly
into view;

perched briefly
on the
tumbler’s
edge –

Plip!
Hops, indiscreetly
upon the
untouched
water:

Terror at being
trapped;
or to human
eyes
trying to remember
the breastroke,
quasi-comically:
limbs flailing as
wings begin to
sink;
milliseconds
before the struggle

ends.

An imperceptible
hush
and there is
Ophelia,
laid calmly to rest
in the still
liquid

Thomas did not need
write a mad
scene;
Shakespeare, a
play,
nor Berlioz, an
art song
or
Delaroche,
a painting;

In grim
fascination
have I surveyed
this picturesque
suicide,
having the power to
inform, yet
powerless
to save;
a strange sadism and an
equal
guilt:

133. Skins of our fathers

After the rain,
the frightened insects
emerge,
surveying the damage,
knowing this battered land
is what remains
and what must be
lived through.

How many tears have irrigated
this unruly soil in
vain?

Suns will one day emerge,
but how, but
when?

In such darkness and
uncertainty, how
strong must one be,
to trust,
to hope!

127. Sylvan Daphne

Farewell,
shadows

You brought wonderful darkness
to my life,
imbued it with
strange, special
meaning

Always searching,
we can never win when we
vie with shadows

All around me
are happy faces,
all smiling;
it is my birthday,
it is Black Friday,
they are smiling all the
time

Taking my place amongst
their artificial
joy,
I realize their artifice is false
and mine is
true

it is only I who is
pretending

My only regret being
why I could never
figure out why I was so
unhappy

Always questioning,
always wondering,
always
dreaming –

Perhaps there was only this
world,
these trees,
and that is what made me so
sad

In memory of Sylvia Plath, who committed suicide on Feburary 11, 1963 at about 4:30 AM.

125. Immolates

Adorned in sumptuous silk,
cherry red, as on the
wedding
day;
phoenixes climb,
iridescent gold
along the
hem

It is cold;
it is late autumn;
mourners line the burial ground

Wails adorn the
grey and limpid
sky

Flames touch;
fabric and skin
ablaze in
leaping
flames

there are screams
and there is
crackling

They are victims of an
undying love;
too young,
naïve,
I know
nothing

Only to obey in
servitude,
fed and clothed in the
finest lies

only to live
in eternal solitude,
bound to an old
man who
so loved me
that he could not bear
to leave me living

so carved the
two characters
of my
lowly position

in an unrelenting
damning document
of
sacrifice.

117. Il fiore della gioventù

Frost melts in the morning sun:
it is beginning and the
end.

Everything is just as always,
and it will be, evermore;

On the final days,
when silence looms more present on the distant fields,
there does not seem to be enough
to count the branches and their
geometry

the blades of grass
or their migrant residents

there was only time for so much
before the moment is lost and
replaced, cycling
nowhere and
evermore.

114. Souvenirs

Lascivious poppies,
lusty in the sombre fields:
spill their irony in the
autumn frost,
shades of shameful
red –

Long have I envied their
reckless belligerence,
perching on some foreign shore,
immune to guilt, regret,
and melancholy:

No – guiltless in their wild
beauty,
trampled, laid to rest beside their
human brethren, forever bear the
burdens of their
art –

Fatal beauty
grows across the silenced fields;
echoes resonate between the
rustling stems,
silent in eternal
grief,
gazing on the frozen
graves:

Curious, unknowing,
woebegone:
cast in strange and
lasting
penance –

Generations strive to
recollect,
remember;
generations strive to
lose and
forget.

99. after

After we die,
our parents continue making
grocery lists;
the ones we loved
take long walks in the
forest with their
lovers,
and our friends wonder
how we became
a statistic.

After we die,
the world still moves on;
people, too, keep moving in their
predictable paths.

If I were still
alive, I suppose
I would still be
spinning, rotating.

But I wanted to be
free,
I wanted to create
something.

Stupid thing,
is what I was told
I was
when I still lived,
until I accepted it.
Yes,
I am a stupid thing,
I could do everything but
none of it
right

There was no
funeral.
I lay in the place I
died,
hand outstretched,
eyes gazing at the
mid-day sun.

Finally,
I had the courage to look
straight at the
sun.
People always told us,
don’t look at the sun
directly; it’ll
hurt your
eyes.

But I dared to look,
I tried to live.
Life was simply not
meant for
me.

97. L’Inconnue

Faithless one!

In her despair,
drowned herself,
drowned herself in
the faceless Seine.

After so many soft words,
covert glances, what was she,
but a simple country girl,
he sophisticated.

It was inevitable;
it was too predictable
that he would take a wealthy wife,
and never think of her.

So many wasted days,
knitting sweaters,
daydreaming, and
nights spent sleepless.

Well, they say, it was
not all in vain,
it was not all for
nothing

The post-Romantics in their
sombre blacks, dramatic
tendencies;
oh, they fancied a martyr
to epitomize their horrid plights;
Her replicated face hung in their
parlours, denigrated,
ashen.

Found in every incarnation,
CPR Annie, pale and plastic,
drowned again – does she need
help?

Pound the ground, assess the
situation, administer
aid;
such a face saved so many
others!

Paradoxically, the
spurned object of love
becomes the “most kissed face”
of all time…

Is this any consolation,
for a heart that breaks,
for a soul that languishes?

Abandoned and alone;
all sacrifices are in vain.
Posthumous fame,
mass-produced celebrity:

to a heart that lived and loved and
died;
to a heart which spent its final beats
beneath the shining depths,
it is nothing,
it is trivial.
All sacrifices are in
vain.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27Inconnue_de_la_Seine