Saturday, February 28, 2015

VISIGOTH ROVER
 
i went on the bus to Cordoba,
and tried to find the Moor's
left over
in their excavated floors
and mosaic courtyards,
with hanging flowers brightly chamelion
against whitewashed walls
carrying calls
behind gated iron bars-
but they were gone
leaving mosque arches
and carved stories
to God's doors.
 
in those ancient streets
where everybody meets;
i saw the old successful men
with their younger women again,
sat in chrome slat chairs,
drinking coffee to cover
their vain love affairs-
and every breast,
was like the crest
of a soft ridge
as i peeped over
the castle wall and Roman bridge
like a Visigoth rover.
 
soft hand tapping on shoulder,
heavy hair
and beauty older,
the gypsy lady gave her clover
to borrowed breath,
embroidering it for death,
adding more to less
like the colours fading in her dress.
time and tune are too planned
to understand
her Trevi fountain of prediction,
or the dirty Bernini hand
shaping its description.
 
 
ON THE TRAIN TO EL CHORRO
 
on the train to El Chorro
something cut me loose,
and i left this tomorrow
of my youth-
in the twilight of a lake,
in the sky mountains break,
rock chasms of echo and truth
brought me to young olive groves,
standing like soldiers in sun-starched rows,
ripe for some buyer and vendor
to trade them
and train them
so profits accrue-
in the style of Milo Minderbender
dealing in Catch 22,
when women loved like floozies,
and sat at the back at the movies-
showing me what to do.
time turned each page
of idealism's rage
into cynicism's age-
on each point of winding track
as i thumbed back
through the book of that tomorrow
on the train to El Chorro.
 
 
OVIRI ( The Savage – Paul Gauguin in Tahiti)
 
woman,
wearing the conscience of the world-
you make me want
less civilisation
and more meaning.
 
drinking absinthe together,
hand rolling and smoking cigars-
being is, what it really is-
fucking on palm leaves
under tropical rain.
 
beauty and syphilis happily cohabit,
painting your colours
on a parallel canvas
to exhibit in Paris
the paradox of you.
 
somewhere in your arms-
i forget my savage self,
inseminating womb
selected by pheromones
at the pace of evolution.
 
later. I vomited arsenic on the mountain and returned
to sup morphine. spread ointments on the sores, and ask:
where do we come from.
what are we.
where are we going.
 
 
 
SHEDDING CLOTHES
 
some soul exposed
open closed
looked at
put back
where it was
because
 
because
it was done
being in sun
unalterably changed
randomness rearranged
moving on
 
moving on
rising out of what has gone
through opaqueless
weightless
windows
shedding clothes.
 
 
THE COMET OF HER WORDS
 
he sheds his matelessness
and shapeless
statelessness
undormed
to lie with her undressed
in woods earth warmed.
after drinking
and thinking
in the hollow trunk of an ancient tree
she reads
his tea
leaves-
and he hears
her nature in the pattern
of her years,
saying now we happen
and the comet of her words
weaves it's sentences
in his,
lets go of bleakness
walking through wilderness
light footsteps in senses.
 
THIS CONCERT OF CONTOURS
 
ear nibbles
neck kisses
sex ripples
mouth wishes
to arms and legs
with minds and heads
is a body ballet
of rock and sway.
this concert
of contours
that squirts
mine and yours
is never too far away
from broken loneliness to play.
your beauty's blushes
colour in my years
and time's rushes
are hands that paint like soft brushes
so unwanted darkness disappears.
 
Strider Marcus Jones

Thursday, February 26, 2015



Seventeen Year Itch

Marcia was 17 the first time thousands of locusts rose from the fields of her father's farm and filled the air, sounding like zithers unable to stop. Her father was angry but Marcia loved the music the locusts made. She was in high school then and chose to make locusts the focus of her senior paper. 

At the town library she learned locusts spend 17 years deep in the soil, feeding on fluids from roots of trees that make them strong enough to emerge  at the proper time to court and reproduce. Courtship requires the males to gather in a circle and sing until the females agree to make them fathers.

Courtship and mating and laying of eggs takes almost two months and then the locusts fall from the air and die. Marcia remembers the iridescent shells on the ground shining, She was always careful not to step on them. She cried when the rain and the wind took them away. 

Now 17 years later Marcia is 34 and the locusts are back again. Her dead father can't hear them and Marcia no longer loves the music the way she did in high school. Now she stays in the house and keeps the windows closed and relies on the air-conditioner to drown out the locusts. Marcia has patience, however. She knows what will happen. She reads her Bible and sucks on lemon drops, knowing the locusts will die.

In the seventh week, the locusts fall from the air in raindrops, then torrents. "It is finished," Marcia says. She pulls on her father's boots and goes out in the fields and stomps on the shells covering the ground but she stomps carefully.

At 34 Marcia's in no hurry. Before each stomp, she names each shell Billy, John, Chuck, Terrence or Lester, the names of men who have courted her during the 17 years since high school. They all made promises Marcia loved to hear, promises she can recite like a favorite prayer. She made each man happy as best she could. They would grunt like swine the first night, some of them for many nights. But then like locusts they would disappear.


Donal Mahoney 






Bloody Genes


Barefoot in bed
with Pinot Noir
to flood the veins

Ancient and rare
back to Dionysus
for the fire

Hang on the cross
bloody and bruised
wait for the solstice

Kissed on the cheek
don’t believe
they’re here to help you

Sell your cloak
buy a sword
the time is nigh

Like a thief
in the night
karma never misses

Memories of Atlantis
Angels and Nephilim
the flood will come

No Buddha raft
no God-sent ark
two by two to drown

The primal soup
gene swarm collision
collective rises steadily

A primal roar
up on the mountain
warn the herd

Kingdom of wolves
red stained cloth
empire of fangs

Scott Thomas Outlar
        

Helpless I do not know if good intentions prevail among the elected, among the appointed, leaving me apprehensive that the fate ...