Cool down, papa!

Nnenna Freelon & Take 6 at the Grammys a few years back, performing "Straighten Up and Fly Right"

Jennifer Atkinson

Several poems by the author. This reader prizes especially "St Veronica's Day" and the two ghazals -- slightly favoring the first.

Short takes

1.
Ninety-four degrees:
Friday, the transition day --
rain, then cool and bright!

2.
August 31st:
subverting the summer heat,
leaves begin to change.

3.
Doctor will put me
on a thinning regimen
just in time for fall.

4.
Heavenly barmaid!
Kick-ass sense of humor, and
Italian good looks.

5.
It's that time of day --
fridge holds one cold beer, methinks.
Not for very long!

6.
It seems like the first
day in the last week or two
that I've bought no books.

7.
"Progressive" chapels
where the Mass is still the Mass
I don't mind at all.

8.
Auden's naughtiness --
"Even Hate should be precise" --
always makes me smile.

9.
Puer natus est!
My first cousin's a grandmom!
What does that make me?

10.
Go, silly verses.
Make some reader chuckle; let
him forsake his woe.

The One Whose Reproach I Cannot Evade

by George Hitchcock (1914-2010)


She sits in her glass garden
and awaits the guests --
The sailor with the blue tangerines
the fish clothed in languages
the dolphin with a revolver in its teeth.

Dusk enters from stage left:
its voice falls like dew on the arbor.
Tiny bells
sway in the catalpa tree.

What is it she hopes to catch in her net
of love? Petals? Conch-shells?
The night-moth? She does not speak.
Tonight, I tell her, no one comes;
you wait in vain.

Yet at eight precisely
the moon opens its theatric doors,
an arm rises from the fountain,
the music box, face down
on her tabouret, swells and bursts
its cover -- a tinkling flood of
rice moves over the table.

She smiles at me, false believer,
smiles and goes in, leaving
the garden empty and my thighs
half-eaten by the raging twilight.

huge as Asia, seismic with laughter

A sonnet by George Barker (1913-91), "To My Mother" -- from the YouTube channel of SpokenVerse.

Seven random jottings

(an early draft, for which I ask the reader's indulgence!)


1.
The rutted potholed road
by the auto mechanic's --
my favorite shortcut
from Medford to Mystic.

2.
Rain on Rahoon falls softly, but
rain on Boston falls relentlessly:
aquatic rap, liquid filibuster.

3.
Learning the science
of line-breaks and pauses

4.
Three o'clock, the canonical hour
of None (rhymes with "stone"):
almost time for a glass of cabernet!

5.
Admiring another poet's
"lippy delphiniums"

6.
True to life? No, give us daydreams
as gorgeous as our sins pretend to be.

7.
Whenever the Muse seduced him,
the bulky Theodore Roethke
danced like a drunken butterfly!

Unphrased objections

Clump latch become fixed lock.

Steam scout eclipse scad burl.

Bright bairn of told traipse strength.

Stilled shock betray gnarled pence.

Mayed juice of a guessed joy.

Strung think beyond string thought.
Strict lapse, street word, farce point.
Thieves plot gamble crammed safe.

Soft noise in the deep green.
High hymns of the north slope.
Bold droves of the cone felt.

Slouch purpose the might porch.

Style pilfered a game grab.

Steal quiet a mouse pace.

Reading & Dreaming

Began reading one of the blue books, one of the green, the aquamarine. Protect us from all. This one moves quickly. And also read the preface (past tense on that "read") to The Silent Life. Is that why I dreamed of a Trappist who was once a Franciscan, being interviewed by bureaucrats to find out if he was one of the good guys?

Odd other images intruded, but would they interest any but the dreamer?

An experiment

I'm closing comments here at darkspeech. For the time being.

A couple of reasons. One, it's no longer my main blog. Two, I'm getting a lot of Chinese (or Asian) spam. Three, I forget what reason number three was, but it was a really good one.

So send me an email, or visit me at my other blog, and we shall communicate in thus wise!

Thank you for visiting!