175. Cash or Debit

Time is a shameless
measure:
no returns and
no
exchanges:
final
sale.

Like a
holiday tape wrapping
gift
by
gift,
the holly pattern
always

Sitting on a shelf,
observing
the darkness
of
neglect

A fate
to
pity, of
senseless
indifference

or perhaps to
covet,
eternal and
proudly
beyond,
spinning mutely

We cannot see its
end,
only –
think we
do:

cut short,
it
proceeds –
old gifts and
memories
remain;
undying,
unreturned,
dust-collecting and
sitting unblinking,
unremembering

165. Smokey Beijing

grey in the morning
smog,
streets awaking
bicycles;
cars thread through:
awake,
smoky Beijing!

misty in the veils of
time,
museums stand,
tall and Junoesque;
antiques are real when
awoken,
smokey Beijing;

earthy, cigarettes mutely
fume,
lazy streams glistening ‘twixt
Mandarin;
words entwining,
awakening,
smoky Beijing:

humming, miles away the
tourists,
globe’s collection in bright sun
visors,
parasols out and wide
awake,
smokey Beijing –

from the stolen sands of
time,
progress lays its youthful
tracks,
resting lay the timeless Dragon,
in depths and
at the core,
smokey Beijing.

144. In anticipation

Each time
with the same foolish
fervour:
each
time
greeted with the same
indifference.

Cold stares,
absences,
empty
promises:
turned away from
leaden doors, cold.

In vain have I pleaded,
begging for a single
word, a
single glance,
a fleeting
touch;

Life has no heroes
they say:
I thought would be
above
shadows

yet I am becoming one:
day by day,
colon by semicolon;
I am resigning myself,
resigning my life to
complacency,
acknowledging my ill
fortune:
we must be masochists,
the survivors; and
the survived,
the helpless
sadists.

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!

126. Callas Cries

So tired –
it is past anyone’s
logical bedtime

The crowd is still
cheering
the cast and crew
all
jubilant

I am so tired

Tired of E-flats
and flute cadenzas and
blood-soaked
gowns

I am tired of this
migrant
life,
receptions,
recitals,
rehearsals,

(Hear how the
audience roars –)

I missed a word tonight
in the duet with
Edgardo,
ran out of breath in the
mad scene…

Audiences hear
what they want to
hear:
success is in their
eager
hands

Roars of lions
today
jeers and boos
tomorrow –
what is success?

I failed today,
I could have done
better;
I can always do
better –
is it all absolute?
Is it just
subjective?

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.

119. Erythrocytes

A moment’s sadness
evaporates,
clouded by the empty joys of
life.

Humans are pliable,
elastic.
This is what we do to
survive.

Words are immobile

Let me never die
obsolete;
let this moment of
desperation echo,
echo through days,
years, and if I presume
haughtiness,
the centuries:

Let some naïve student
encounter such a pristine,
eternal ode to
regret and
remorse,

knowing it is beautiful
to weep, and that
poet’s tears are worth
nothing in private
silence,
yet untold
millions in the hands of
invisible
spectators.

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.

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

95. memento mori

Forgotten smiles float –
suspended in the ether of
cyberspace:

Messages lay unanswered,
comments rest unread;
unchecked remains the
latest “news”…

Mementos of a frozen life:
smiles collected from adventurous days,
when we were young and
boastful –

Farewell, adieu –
a virtual graveyard left
unattended;
vines grow unchecked,
obscuring what was,
and what remains,
eternally
immobile.

71. Postmodern Playmates

A beached boat,
a bronze huntress
in the middle of the park:
welcome to the actualization of our
contemporary world.

At least the sunshine is
still the same as it was for
centuries:
illuminating the pair of playmates
in the same coy and dappled way
it has for millennia:

it could be a lord & lady like any
other,
leaping over a resurrected
metal dinosaur
in a game of catch.

Not until the wind slaps me into
sense
that I realize that they are in
T-shirts and tank tops,
in jeans,
playing Frisbee
in a world of endless
possibilities,
where bears beg and
rows of heads spin,
dismantled,
on discs of sun-baked
clay.

Brian Scott: Stray Plow (1993)

Cynthia Short: Lightmare (1989)

Scrap Art

Carl Skelton: Canadiana/Begging Bear (1989)

Evan Penny: Monad (1990)

Donald Forster Sculpture Park
Guelph, Ontario, Canada

Photographed by Hanneorla: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hanneorla/

17. Tiger Lillies

Orange Tiger Lilies by Marilyn

You are the most resilient flower,

Rising before the others and
Retiring late,
Model employee of the
Emerald fields.

Nearly as tall as the fence,
Slicing the wind with astringent orange -
Parodies of Renaissance virgins
With hoods of modest luridness.

Lascivious yet benign,
Sailing the low-lying zephyrs,
I do not know the
Suitors you attract.

What lucky gentlebee shall
Peek between these coy petticoats,
Painting brighter vermilion
On your sun-baked
Cheeks?