'Bonfire', by Lisa Yuskavage © |
Demeter caught dreaming about Boreas from the Catskills to the Alps
yes, I let ghosts feed on me...when these raw and ready
northerlies come with hint tunnel whispers and glide
they ride saw-toothed o'er the humped forested
old mountains and rivers, come February
here in upstate New York...
there are still German words
fingerprinted here to the clays
and shale of the river muds
stitched into quilt and language
of this land's every season
turning further away from indigenous...
and this time of year does
so remind me about wheels
those of progress and millstone variety
spinning us away from being
nature driven and steed pulled
so despite the reach
of farm to federal commerce
over fief and pageantry with
the American colonies having won
their freedom from the English
an old German pagan idolatry still rings,
in dagger-ed bells here
perhaps the Jewish bakers
or Hessian soldiers maybe
influenced it with how their words
still cling long after their leaving...
but poem and I think this place
with its many rivers
and mountains with valleys
reminded of home...
calling to ancient tones
as sure and true
as a bellowed and bowed ache
of planked wood
I walked on
the snow cleared deck way
to where the water stay
when a startlingly clear pay
attention to me noise
it did make...
a stopping noise, made me crane my neck
I looked at the stars in starkly cold air
and thought of Demeter stirring her lady bits
and what I wanted was her tea
and I needed water too
and I had already wished
I went to the well
more often and earlier
when it wasn't so
wintry out here...
but today, I remind myself
it is the 21st century
and I am very often a drunk poet
wanting the poem to be atop
a raft which carries salt down the Salzach
and is used perhaps to make
a nice braided weck
with a tight shine top
these melt-away breads, which
are made to go with anything
beer and song can be paired to
and are especially delightful
when it is very cold outside...
the Alps are jagged mountains
the types of pinnacles
that demand the strongest
kinds of fires in the hearth
when Winter senses
it must start
leaving its palaces
of ice and clime,
perched perfectly
knife near sky...
as I lean here, I swear I hear
looking out my window
watching the bare trees
wave and tremble
under the street lights
in wobble breasted fed fertile voice
spry bellied mother laughter
pulling the Sun toward Spring
"Proserpina, Proserpina",
she calls, melodic and longing
"what have you to want from me on your return...
is it ribbon-ed trees with garland flowers and lithe honeys from the early bees...?"
---------------------------------
at the river city port slip
the quiet past midnight
ate our unloading of wares
very very eagerly
poet
this is vestige farmed
harm-way hypnosis
modern america
---------------------------------
you call the chocolate flower candied blood lust
after the super bowl valentine's day
it is really Lupercalia...
poem says it was a festival for
the keepers of wolf rites
and their goat sacrificing adherents
it was what could be construed
as a Shirley Jackson lottery civic fertility party
that morphed into a gathering
for fucking, frolicking and fraternizing
it has been like this since way before Rome...
this yearly madness or fever
is a go panic we're stricken with
in the 1980's it might have caused us
to throw basement beach parties
regardless of when, it assembles us
in any sort of huddled communities
where we could find our innermost immolate
and unfurl ourselves against what always seems
a never ending Winter...
we want to pretend to want to clear ourselves of core sin
we want to flesh our innermost desires so to speak, thresh
the grain for more bread with festive ambling about
whispering come-on(s) in hurried and excited tones
wearing bright plumed masks and animal pelts
working well to intermingle an intelligent wielding
of a self letting go of boundary while falling, intoxicated...
who would we be
without Lupercalia
needed suckle warm relieve
would we make believe
there is a certainty
we must tend to
what in us is still deceived
by mankind's apathy
is its continual ascendancy
to throne-d dominion...
are our striations
patterns of almost
are they what
we've poured over
every single perceptual life's form
we eventually buried
in the rich worm-y loam
of remember when...?
we were shepherds once,
pastoral in our elliptical realms
we held flat horizon views
we knew if we could fly
the round and round carousel
of animal kingdoms wanting
image after image of a divine death
would lead us to golden ever after(s)
and make thieves of us who want to know more
the bright morning stars
already cast as permanent shadows
will forever hunger for color
in an increasingly black and white world
that lives by trading, lying
and bleeding in unknown(s)...
what the dark ultimately is here, I guess, is our every unseen,
so clairvoyants don't look inside me anymore, I've candlelight enough for the a few more rolls of the die, thank you...
you fill in purpose, motive
and opportunity of scale
when I'm always on
the other side, of course...
this expression of purification
by spawn is undertaken to understand
our place in the landscape
of every when and where
we are awake and aware...
but isn't it scent driven memory
always taking us there, especially
when Demeter moans
with giggles of a young maiden
lathering beguilingly
this beauty of a crone
your nose is only an approximated precise
or at least it is part translator
of the most commonly exchanged
underbelly currency
concerning human souls
and their old and new homes...
we will spill into vessel-ed chance taken with(s)
and we will program burn our poisons,
to mimic this so as we past mid Winter
glowing in luminescent lust
we can make a fertile leap
into unknown adhesion(s)...
we are but bone and cage,
we rage, we blossom,
we ripen tender ferocity,
we watch what rivers
do, to slow knife words
when they know
we are really listening
to hear our timeless parts...
so, tell me Lupa,
where must I begin
and when, a shave
and haircut
two bits...?
EJR ©
Like the story of Demeter and Persephone...such a flow for maybe ten of poems...
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