The Hosting Tree

 

What idle devil limned your voice

with salt of falsity

and set such poison in the heart

that was so kind to me?

The thing that curled and grew there had

its own vitality

just as the lush green climbing vine

kills the hosting tree.

_________

I wrote this for Word Garden Word List--Stephen Crane, but only used three of the words and one of them got removed during editing. As a result, I haven't linked this to the prompt, but that was its origin, nevertheless. 

"The Meaning of Life" a poem by Gladys Schlump (CosmicUnicornPoet)

 

O candle of life, smoking grayly,

in life we give light, even if palely

til the snuffer snuffs us and we smoke away daily

then croak and leave our life that was fail-y.

Animated wax that our bodies are

cannot be kept, nor thrown very far

to live in bliss on a faraway star

something something John Agar.

Realms of bliss realms of light

some are born in Cleveland Heights

some are born in Cleveland Heights

some are born to see I'm right.

So, return to Him who barfed us forth

be He Rumpelstiltskin or Nanook of the North

scooped up in the dust pan of life and fate

something something pomegranate. 

_______________

Shared with Sunday Muse #195. Be worthy, rabble.

This beautiful arrangement created by Penelope "Pippie" Zugronski. 

Notes: My entire life has led up to this poem. It is a form called Intestin Bloque, which means Interesting Stanzas. This poem is included in my collection The Very Interesting Poems of Gladys Schlump and also appears in the November 1956 issue of Detached Retina: A Compendium of Torpid, Impenetrable Verse. Finally, this poem won the prestigious Itchy Rash Award for Poetry, given annually by the Debilitating Head Injury Guild of Stockholm, Sweden. Enjoy! (but not TOO much. It's unseemly.)

Actor John Agar with his collection of irrelevant booshwah.

From The Sky

From the sky--
crows and doves
descended, a gift--

assembling upon
my right shoulder--
my left--

birds who bore cacophony and calm--
finding purchase and place
at each far-stretched arm--

so that, when I sought you,
Goddess of Sky--
Goddess of Earth--

I came to you in pairs--
one part snow,
one part dirt.

Here, for you, my kiss--
partly sweet,
partly salt;

from the sky, I come flocked--
love me now--
love it all.
________

________

thanks to my Sista Poet Dani at Myheartslovesongs for introducing me to this song!

Evelyn, By Lamp Light

Give her pages blanket soft

with use, with love, worn--

familiar lines still welcome

those dear ones passed, then born--

love treasured, lorn,

stitch plots taken up, then dropped.

______

for Real Toads mini challenge. Photograph by Ellen Wilson, used with permission.

Dear Red

The Soul selects her own Society--
Then--shuts the Door--
To her divine Majority--
Present no more--

Unmoved--she notes the Chariots--pausing--
At her low Gate--
Unmoved--an Emperor be kneeling
Upon her Mat--

I've known her--from an ample nation--
Choose One--
Then--close the Valves of her attention--
Like Stone--

(written by Emily Dickinson)

Dear Red--
Are you at your table--by the window--
Beyond the Evergreens
Where I beheld You once?

In the Room where you welcomed me--
An old Friend--
As though we had been--for a Moment--interrupted
And so easily--Again--picked up?

They think you a hermit, my Red--
A mouse--by baseboard held--defined--
But you are a Heart--Divine by nature
A Soul in Flame--beyond confine--

Dear Red--I know--She is near as your next Breath--
Yet as Distant--as Persia--or Africa's Nile--
A peculiar Torment--a lifesblood of words
For Her--survives--through Eternity's while--

Dear Red--
I know the Heart--forever in debt--
Written out--put Away--folded neatly, like linens--
I know what it Cost--I know what it Meant.
______
for Kenia's challenge at Real Toads

Note: for those who do not know, or read here regularly, when I visited her home in Amherst, in 2007, I felt Emily there; not in any vague sense, but THERE, and personally. She was glad I had come, she welcomed me, and she knew about my writing. It was, for me, an intense and spiritual experience.

E.D. was in love with her sister in law, Susan Huntington Dickinson (see the book "Open Me Carefully") who was married to her brother and lived next door at The Evergreens. The relationship spanned decades, shows up again and again in Emily's poems ("I Cannot Live With You"), and must have been both sustaining and incredibly frustrating for Emily.

I tried to find the version of her featured poem, above, which seemed to me to be most true to Emily's actual style. One of the things I love dearly about her is that she wrote in her own amazing and unique way, resisting advice to write in a style more in keeping with contemporary convention. Up at least into the 1950s, and even today, editors have changed her punctuation, capitalizations, and even her wording, to make it more conventional. (Why?!?) 

Inspiration

How can I explain what it means to me
That you are there?
Where does a vine begin?
What is the starting point
Of air?

I know a certain magick--
A way to make what cannot be,
Be.
But the thing is,
I cannot make sweet honey
Or sweet sting, either, truthfully,
Without hive--
Without bee.

I can capture the light
Any time of year;
Between window shade and window pane,
And hold it, dancing, there.
But I write these lines because you read them--
Create because you care--
That's as well as I can explain the vine
Or the starting point
Of air.
_____

A Bicyclist's Verse

for Emily


A Wheel is a fair curious Thing--

Traversing toward Age from Birth--

It moves, at once, toward Heaven,

And also, back to Earth.

________

Kali

Kali comes to me
In shell necklace and rings--
She stands by the water
By the water, and sings
For sailors and the water
And the bones that it brings.

Come, Kali, come
To my cove near the beach--
My cove by the water
Where we'll sing each to each;
Sing to each other
And share the split peach...

Kali is gone
But the peach it was sweet--
And the bones from the water
Lay smooth at my feet;
Smooth at my feet
And sharp at my heart--
The sailors cry, Kali,
From far down the deep.

________

Did you read this morning's poem, The Lycanthrope? If you didn't, go read it. I'll know if you don't, and I'll put a big black mark by your name in my awful little book.

photo: Kate Beckinsale
____________

Henna Tattoo

So these are the moon and stars I receive from you

My adored and true--

You whose love is not love,

But only vagary;

So these moon and stars are what's left of you,

And they'll hardly do--

Just a gorgeous and temporary

Henna tattoo.

____________

A Short Course In Ornithology

for R.P.

The reason eggs laid in a nest

Are round--

Is because they are directionless.

But feathers are pointed, and meant to seize

Both desire--

And an uplifting, animating breeze.

_______