The Paths of Glory...

Neil Alexander's photograph, above, got me thinking about a subject I have always found fascinating, that being the now-departed days of the British Empire. I don't have a poem to share (though there is a poem in the first clip), but here are these two videos (I couldn't find them together) from the end of the Australian movie "Breaker Morant." It is about the sacrifice of two soldiers on trumped-up charges of war crimes. It was done in order to open the door to negotiations for an end to the Boer War. It sounds dry, but it isn't.  --FB




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for One Shoot Sunday

Rain

I want it to rain.

I want to place my palms where your shirt is open and gather rain between my spread fingers.

I want my face as close to yours as your skin is to the storm.

I want to kiss you,

Hungry.

I want thunder

And strike-heat.

I want to show you that the sun is simply too small, too common.

I want the culverts and the sloped roofs rushing.

I want no one, and nothing, else.

I want you,

Desperately.

I want it to rain.

______

Rocker Chick

I don't have a new poem to post, so I'm posting this video which I think is from Austin City Limits. It's Emmylou singing a medley of old rock n roll tunes. I'm definitely lovin' the hand on the hip and the growl! (I swiped the vid from the fine 365 Days Of Emmylou Harris blog). Now it's here, cos it's my blog and i can. *sticks out tongue*

Succor From Saint Fireblossom

Love Poem

Somebody say--
How old are you anyway?
I'm thinkin' I'm
A hunnert and five, my last birthday.

Well well, they say--
With they fingers together, steepled up;
You ain't exactly young.
You ain't no fresh pup.

Some things are ridiculous on their face--
Old women in love,
Poodle dogs who dance in place.

Listen mister, I said--
Have you ever kissed a bullet?
Or left yourself for dead?
Because I have.

And when you kiss what kills you,
It's some kind of
Deep blue voodoo--
I dare you to tell me that I lie.

Tucked under a crow's wing,
I left that place.
It was ridiculous on its face,
And now the branch burns under me when I sing.


I kiss another woman if I want to,
And I stand where I need to be.
I wear a gris-gris made from wolf's hearts--
They don't live long,
But fearlessly.

_______


Thank you to Hedgewitch for letting me use her gris-gris. Thank you to Coal Black for spiritual assistance.

Photograph: Sharon Stone in The Quick And The Dead

Magpie 72

There's only one reason for wheat fields--

Only one explanation for the earth--

So we could kiss and lie where the grain grows high,

And make love between the daylight and the dirt.


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for magpie 72

Fireworks

Oh say can you see
The long dirt road
And wild green trees
On the 4th of July
When I was seventeen?

In  the middle of nowhere,
My best friend,
His father,
A cousin,
And me.

Sitting in the grass between my sweet, funny friend
And my first girl crush,
We watched and felt the bright, booming fireworks
All the way until the end.

I lost track of Mikey,
The girl cousin that I liked--
And I lost my sweet friend
To dope and suicide,

But I can still see
The long dirt road
And wild green trees
That 4th of July
When I was seventeen.

________

This is for Jenny Matlock's Saturday Centus. I had to use the phrase "oh say can you see", and then was limited to 100 more words or less. I used all 100.

This is a true story. I was a pretty innocent seventeen year old, and maybe that's why I remember this particular 4th of July as my favorite. Any innocence I had didn't last the summer, but for one night my world seemed perfect, and I've always remembered it.