The Death of November

 

November has died, of a fever, in bed

under gray blankets made of wind and dusk.

I had called out to it before, full of a strange joy,

saying, 

                   see how the maples and pear trees

                   send their red-haired daughters down

                   like roses from the pale hands of virgins

to lie at the feet of autumn's wounded matador.

November has died, and must be sewn into

 a snow-shroud to be carried by somber hearse

past the last of the violets by the garden wall,

still living

                        like children up past their bedtimes,

                        wearing brocade vests, leather shoes

                       and shirts with sleeves of brilliant green

waiting for the west to swallow their parents, and their pasts.

November has died, and the shade has been drawn.

A new lodger arrives, talking too loudly, eyes as bright

as polished coins, holding a glazed sweet in one hand

raised up

                         as if it were a goblet full of honey, taking no

                         notice of the widows with their black mantillas

                         wrapping the last cornbread cake in a cloth,

for the sad mongrel who lies down on November's chilly grave.

______________-

Word Garden Word List--The Prodigy

 Hello my little adding machines, and welcome to this week's Word Garden Word List poetry prompt! 

This time, our source is Amy Wallace's fascinating biography of William James Sidis, entitled The Prodigy. I read it way back in 1988 (I have kept a book log since late1987)and have never forgotten it. 

Amy Wallace

Never heard of Willam James Sidis? Well, back in 1910, his name was synonymous with the phrase "child prodigy." His IQ was estimated to be 50-100 points higher than Einstein's. His father was a pioneer in the field of abnormal psychology; he and his wife believed that they could create a genius in the cradle. They hung ABC blocks above his crib and within six months little Billy was speaking. At three, he was typing and had taught himself Latin! At five, he wrote a treatise on anatomy, and at six he spoke at least seven languages fluently. 

The youngster enrolled at Harvard at age eleven, stunned the nation with a lecture on four-dimensional bodies, and articles about him ran on the front pages of the nation's leading newspapers. Graduating at sixteen, he was desperate for privacy.

William had had enough, and staged a dramatic rebellion against his parents, academia, and the world's expectations. It began with jail and a scandalous trial. He then drifted from one menial job to another, concealing his genius but writing a number of books on various subjects using pseudonyms. One of these dealt with his favorite hobby--the collecting of streetcar transfers. 

Today, his name means one thing to a handful of educators--a burned out failure who died, ironically, of a cerebral hemorrhage.  But now, in an era of parents frantically trying to push their children into achievement at ever-earlier ages, William James Sidis's story is more relevant than ever. In his own way, Sidis's life was a success of living on his own terms, rather than everyone else's.

What we do here is to use at least 3 of the 20 words provided in a new original poem of one's own. Then simply link up, visit others, and do the math, dahling. This prompt remains active through Saturday.

And now, your List:

books

cotton

cram

dishes

enormous

famous

fat

girls

hellish

instantly

legend

love letters

midnight

numbered

problems

rained

riot

sewing

Sunday

trance 

Ode to a Chrome Cradle

 

The Ford Rotunda burning down, 1962.

It was decided

by women who had lost their sons

that there should be no more Sundays

in Detroit.

It was decided

by girls with broken dishes for bones

that all sewing should be done with dope needles

and veinous thread.

It was traditional

for the underground tunnel to Canada

to be filled with shredded tires and bent hubcaps

from fatalities.

In Detroit, the mediums

predict things that have already happened,

going into trance states instantly upon hearing

old Motown. 

It was decided

that love letters be made mandatory

for bums and debutantes whose heads rot softly

like pumpkins.

It was considered good form

for fat golfers to dole out mulligan freeways

through Black Bottom but never the fresh greensward

of Oakland county.

It was decided

in the end, that all elms be destroyed by fungi

and burned every Christmas at Ford Rotunda, disappearing

in tandem, brightly.

_________

The Detroit riots 1967

For Word Garden Word List--The Prodigy

Music: The Shangri-La's Leader of the Pack

Process notes: I grew up in well-off Oakland county, just a bop down Woodward Avenue from Detroit. I still remember being taken to the Ford Rotunda at Christmas when I was a small child. There were live reindeer, and my brother always got a toy version of a concept car. It burned down in 1962. I was seven years old.

In 1967, the city exploded in a riot after the police raided an after-hours "blind pig" nightclub. After decades of being hassled by Detroit police, the people there had finally had enough and fought back. I stood on the corner of Woodward Avenue up in my safe white suburb and watched the smoke rise over Detroit. I'll never forget it, and things would never be the same again.

Gobble Day

"Sunday Visitors" by George Hughes

 Everybody's back for the holiday;

Daddy's got his football on and he's 

instructing them in the way they should go.

No! No! Up the middle every time!

Flag? What for, refs? Open your eyes!

Today's game brought to you by Target,

Chevy trucks, Placebonol, and Applebee's.

Big brother is blundering around,

chasing the dog with his squeaky.

He steps on little sis's foot--she says, Sorry!

Older sis is opining to cousin Lisa

about her and Kyle's new house and she's

fixing it up just the way it should be.

So these workers doing the tile,

they're hopeless! Mexican or something,

I might as well do it all myself!

Uncle's eyes are more glazed

than last year's ham. Bottoms up!

Mommy's in the kitchen stuffing the kids

and dressing the turkey. She's got spices

on the counter and gin in the cupboard.

No dear, thanks, I don't need any help

unless...could you set the table on the dishes?

Use the good salt and pooper shakers.

Daddy's really angry now, his blood pressure

high and his blood sugar low. Idiots! Dumbbells!

Lisa looks lobotomized. Older sis is still talking. 

Everybody's back for the holiday.

The dog drops his toy in the gravy boat;

Rough seas, Cap'n! shouts older bro

as the two of them high-tail it upstairs.

Mommy has basted the kids and taped

the potatoes to the fridge. 

I think that looks nice, don't you dear?

We always used to.... do something or...

Daddy shouts, Where's that bird?

Mommy collapses in a kitchen chair, crying.

Big bro and the dog come thundering downstairs.

Lisa has left, Uncle is face-down in the cranberries.

Oh, Kyle, it is chaos here, just chaos.

Are those workers doing the sun room today?

Well why not? Oh, right, I suppose.

Daddy shouts, What's wrong, Lillian? 

Mommy falls out of her kitchen chair laughing.

Granny screams, Merry Christmas!  

It's Gobble Day, Gramma. Mwah!

------------------

For What's Going On? "Feast"

Poets' Bento Box

 I dug our grave with a silver spade

and a paper bell in the coffin shell--

a bento box where our lines were laid.

I dug our grave with a silver spade

but then in a dream, a kiss delayed

like a sweetly sorrowful gift from Hell-- 

I dug our grave with a silver spade

and a paper bell in the coffin shell.

_______________

a triolet for Word Garden Word List--The Return of Ellie Black

TLDR:

Dave Van Ronk, in the song Motherless Children, sings these lines:

Dig my grave with a bloody spade when I'm dead

dig my grave with a bloody spade when I'm dead

dig my grave with a bloody spade

make damn sure that the digger gets paid

He also does a song Old Blue about a beloved dog who dies. He sings:

I dug his grave with a silver spade

lowered him down with a golden chain

I kind of combined the two in my triolet, which is not about motherlessness or dogs, but is about an old relationship. The bento box denotes the compartmentalization of it. 

In the 19th century, there was a great fear of premature burial. A solution was offered in the form of "safety" coffins, which had a bell above ground attached to a string underground and placed in the corpse's hand. In the event of premature burial, the person could ring the bell to summon help.

Finally--and my process notes are now quite a bit longer than my triolet!--I had a dream recently that a person I had put out of my mind came to me and kissed me tenderly on the cheek, bringing back old feelings, if only in that moment. A paper bell, if you will. 

Music: Elton John Funeral for a Friend/ Love Lies Bleeding

Word Garden Word List--The Return of Ellie Black

 Hello my little jive turkeys! Let's do the Jumpin' Jive and jump right in with this week's Word List poetry prompt!

Every year at this time, Poetryville is filled to its eye teeth with prompts centered on gratitude. Speaking as a card-carrying jive turkey, I have no appetite for yet another one, and so this week's prompt has zero to do with gratitude unless you are a churlish crank like me and are grateful this isn't a gratitude prompt!

I have just recently finished a humdinger of a thriller by Emiko Jean entitled The Return of Ellie Black. I absolutely could not put it down. It concerns a teenage girl who is abducted when she wanders away from a party alone. Two years later, she reappears, discovered by two hikers, alive. 

Emiko Jean

Where has she been? Who took her? How did she escape? She's not saying much, which is a mystery in itself. If you enjoy this kind of novel, read this one!

Meanwhile, what we do here is to use at least 3 of the 20 words provided in a new original poem of your own. Then simply link up, visit others, and then be discovered at some distant later date carrying a plate of turkey and mashed potatoes and asking, " Could you pass the cranberry salad, please?"

And now, your List:

bento box

baby

bandana

bento box

chatter

dizzy

eyes

flipped

gestures

gift

hand

loop

maroon

nervous

ocean

paper

perpetual

seven

vulnerable

wheel

world

Black Calla Lilies On My Grave

 

When my home was made in the wind

in owl-silence, as patient as the planets,

black calla lilies grew upon my grave

where Hera's spilled drops transformed.

I had a million sisters, the scattered stars,

a sibling mobile telling night-stories

as I slept on the silver surface of a stream.

My mother was the moon; my father flame.

Black calla lilies grow upon my grave,

where I was born into flesh, a sentient stone.

I wandered off, unattended or so it seemed,

and made my home in sand and sorrow.

Like a branch in the rain, my body grows

heavy, a stiff cocoon my winding sheet.

Below me, the black calla lilies watch

as if I were now the sister-star singing.

Where is the wind where I made my home?

Where the owl-silence and the patient planets?

By day my father whittles, by night my mother shines,

whispering, " 'Calla' means 'beauty' dear child--

Come home to the lilies, to the wind, and to us."

________

for What's Going On? --"say it with flowers"

Music: Ane Brun All My Tears