21-New Poems and Commentaries
By Dennis L. Siluk 6/30/2006



Poetry


1) Mother’s Bedroom


In my mother’s bedroom:
Thin bottles for perfume,
Powder on the little desk,
Colorerful ribbons on her bed,
Snow-white curtains,
A pink nightgown,
Indian moccasins with colorful beads.
The wooden-varnished floor
Has a rustic neatness.

The ceiling light is bright,
A white glass shade:
Still it harbors some insects.
You can see the bible
Resting along side her bed,
Its warped in brown covered leather
Flyleaf’s hanging out.

#1375 6/24/2006



Note: certain things trigger certain things, my mother’s bedroom, rather plain compared to some I suppose, had its peculiarity, it’s own personality, or was it my mother’s personality in that setup in her bedroom. But when I think of her, and the bedroom, which I had to cross through to get upstairs to the attic bedroom—my brother and I slept in—it is hard not to remember her personality intertwined into that house, that bedroom. Autobiographical sketches in poetry can be hard at times to depict, especially in poems, which call for them to be condensed, thus, one must create the imagery and construction, and insure the mood is nostalgic; with my mother’s death being three years come July 1, it is nostalgic indeed to write this new poem: to tell as much about the state of our exchangeable lives as I can.




2) To an Old Dead Friend
[From Donkeyland—USA]


In the heydays of the early-sixties
car-loads of us neighborhood-bums
ignorant and arrogant dreamers
came crashing through the streets,
funny we all remained alive,
free-spirited Christian infidels,
with stray spirits, many never find
the way out, too good to be true.

Often I used to loiter
past the old church steps
to the Mount Airy Bar, time after time
like you, waiting for something….
There in that neighborhood we got hooked,
like two bears to honey,
someone, somewhere praying for our souls,
“Where is God, take me from this booze.”

Now I stand outside the consecrated ground
remembering your high school smile,
You lost, but like one who’d won…
I gave it all up, long pursuit of God’s
demon, man-slayers with drugs and booze,
those transitory imps, fell off you lice
back into the neighborhood, like friendly mice,
when you died, in your early fifties,
still covered, confused, and drugged,
true to your boyish wariness in high school.

Old friend, I see your wife burdened,
living a single life, on whatever she can,
under your hand, she was nothing
worn, waiting for you to come home,
broken-hearted lioness, hands of stone
waiting—then you hung yourself in prison.

#1374 6/25/06 [written while in Lima, Peru]



3) House Without Windows

I am building a house with no windows
And a very small door,
And my friends all ask me why.

Life has been for me full of anxiety—
And I care not to let it in any more;
So you see, I am making a very small door.

And having no windows allows
What is outside not to look in—
Thus freeing my spirit to rest again…



Original published in the Magazine: The Mango Tree, out of India (August/September issue 204], considered by the editor to be an exceptional poem. Also published in the book “The macabre Poems,” Volume III.


4) O Little One

You’re growing so fast,
My little one,
With eyes of spacious hue.

You’re growing so lovely,
My dearest one,
With hair of golden dew.

And with a whisper,
And head turned down,
You say you love me so!

Your voice teardrop lime,
Your pride so new,
I say I love you, too.

Sh!—I swish I was,
But I am not,
The things a dad should be.

But I miss you so
And I L-o-v-e You!
With all there is of me.


Note: Taken from the book, “The Other Door,” the authors first book, written and published in l981; 2006, being its 25th Anniversary. Now considered a classic by many; pp; 12.



5) Rose-tinted glasses
[A Two-Part Poem]

World’s Blindness & Poet’s Vigil


1) World’s Blindness

Man can’t seem to see
He’s divided
The worlds in disarray;
All us little sheep—
Are now fast asleep
While Satan’s on His way!

In the dead of night
He’ll burn daylight:
Covered us with blindness;
When we do awake,
It will be too late
Lost somewhere in the stars!

#1376 6/24/06


2) Poet’s Vigil

Poet, find your way
In the outward trail;
Quickly, please—today
Write, that man my read
Images deeply glowing
For time is short for all
In the global picture now.

#1375 6/24/06

Note: We have tough choices to make in the future, as this new century moves forward; no magic yet, just hopefully mature actions; we live in a world when hard fingerprints is the one that makes right and wrong legal, not that it is. When I was a kid, when someone said this was “Right, and this is wrong,” I was expected to listen; now it is pushed under the rug. We seem to need the editorial pages of newspapers to tell us what’s right and wrong, and in most cases the paper is only a view of unknowing, uncaring people putting something out there so they can make a buck, the “Herald Tribune,” comes to mind, they got a lot of opinion, comments, they think is written in stone, when in essence, it is some kid green with life, and war, never been in one, never will telling us all what is right and wrong. They are hired because they can come up with fancy words, nice sentences, no common sense, but they can spell; God help us all.

In these two poems, “Poet’s Vigil,” for example, it should be noted, we as poets, parents, government officials, have a duty to show in words and actions, what is really happening, stretch out the rights and wrongs. And in the second poem “World’s Blindness,” it is no more than reading a daily international paper, traveling around the world and seeing what is happening: the devil is working overtime, as we play ‘Blind Man’s bluff.”


6) The Butterfly Urn

“Ashes, that is all I am—looking up at you;
whose the fool?
“I take up such little space, inside this little
urn—
“you’d think I was a butterfly, in a
cocoon.
“Just keep me if you wish, in a corner of a
room in your home:
I won’t say much—I got many other things
to do.”

#1374 6/22/2006


Note: The urn is preferred for many reasons in considering a proper burial; and as in many Asian countries it is kept in a home (as in Japan); some times—as in Cambodia, bones are kept (of the loved ones) in a little open-ended shelter in the backyard of a home (folks have been kind enough to show them, and allowed me to touch, and hold them, they feel they are residue spirits in a way), most made out of wood. It provides a closeness you will never get, putting a loved one in a cemetery, that most people never go to after the day they bury the person. In some cases this is perhaps good, depending on your memories of the person. In Peru, people do go to cemeteries quite often, an exception to the rule. And in Haiti, where I spent some time, a cemetery is preferred, they save all their money for such an event, it is like a holiday, another exception. But in America, they can’t wait to put you in the ground, call the insurance company up, and run outside and celebrate, spend the money, and will never step a foot back in that old graveyard again.

On one hand it is a cheap burial compared to the grand tomb, of modern man, costing between $10,000 to $30,000-dollars; in Minnesota you can do a service, nice Urn, and cremation for $1400-dollars, and take the urn home for everlasting warmth. Young Americans think this a tragedy, and so do some Peruvians, it only proves one thing, their inexperienced limits of the world: they think they live in a one-world parking lot.


7) The Cake Poem


Red, yellow, orange green and blue—
Balloons on a cake,
Candy covered mushrooms
(Red and white):
The cake sits in a window display
Waiting for the right child
To see and say:
“I wish it was my birthday!”


#1373 6/16/2006 (Commentary): written in Lima, Peru (prior to dusk), while waiting for my coffee at the Deli, “Wilton’s” in what is called ‘The Circle,’ area, by Miraflores, Lima, Peru. While drinking my coffee a woman with her two young boys looked—from the outside in—looked at the colorful cakes, with all there decorative items on top of them; the frosting hanging over the edges, the colorful items (toys); thus, life is made up of many moments, and the eye catches them, and the mind stores them for future time; I’m sure the boys will get reflective this evening while sleeping, reflective of those cakes while sleeping tonight, thus their subconscious will mold some dialogue for their parents tomorrow morning; in any case, this was one of those magical moments (plain as it may seem, that is what life is made up of: many plain magical moments); hence, this poem is plain ( but the cakes were not: and the two boys can attest to that). Dedicated to the Deli helper: Luisa



8) Before the Dawn in Beijing
[A Love Affair]


The nights were long, it seemed an era
(All before the dawn in Beijing),
Came youthful smiles, in my magic age
And we who listened to each heartbeat
A sweet compulsion of that sound
The burst, a mighty morning on Beijing;
Then yellow flowers seem to fall (sing):
She was an empire with pains and peaks
I an ocean, and sky above—

The dark was deep, a drowsy soul
Somewhere between reality and sleep,
Tides of Time and matter seeped—
Pure being, freed from memory
Of voices I have never heard,
And dreams and echoes
Nor did I find the light of the star
Before the dawn in Beijing,
Which haunts the hollow past in me…!

#1371 6/17/06


In Writing the story of “An Affair in Beijing,” original Title “Stockbridge Romance,” I had added an old poem I had done in 1997, when I was actually living this affair; and it seemed only proper to write a new poem for this future book. And so I came up with this poem, and in doing so, I will perhaps change the name of the story to the name of the poem. Normally I change the name to my loner stories, or short novels several times to fit the story. The title in important; but when you are writing the story and at the same time, giving the story to others to read, it often changes. In the case of a most recent story I’ve put on the internet, “A Romance in Augsburg,” the title did not and will not change, simply because it fits the story, and was written five years ago. Now you folks are getting it in a revision of sorts, a reediting of it. One time the book was in the process of being set up, and I had to call the publishers at the last minute to change the title, and they did.


9) War Poems on Iraqi


1) After the Dawn of War II
[Iraqi 2006]

I looked over the shoulder of the world
Through its crawling fog
And heard the cold cries
Seen the stir in the eyes
Heard the trumpets of war
Breaking the silence of dawn
(Heard somebody say):
“Soldiers will die today
For Iraqi Liberty—
That thou endure.”

#1371 6/16/2006


3) War Flag III
(Post Iraqi)

Lone are the days and short
Before the next cruel war—
What spirit then shall fill a sweet despair?
To wave the flag of war…and say:
“I’m here and Ready!

#1372 6/16/2006




3) The Color of War I
[Iraqi: war poem]


I saw the other day—
A little boy coloring away
(With crayons) in a sketch book;
With every colored pencil
Under the rainbow—
And then some…

And when I took a second look
I thought of the Iraqi war
(American and Allied soldiers)
And all the colors it stood for:

Red was for the blood they’ve shed;
Gray, for depression of their families
Far away…
Blue was for sad skies;
Black and white, for death and life;
Green, for the spoils we’ve not seen;
Brown, for the dray and dusty nights
All the soldiers had to fight—on
Foreign ground.

I pleaded, for the boy to stop,
Surprised, he looked up at me—
With his deep blue eyes, haunting
Me, he said, with a tear on his cheek:
“I wanted to color the soldier’s feet!”
I looked and there it read: ‘Peace’
Already colored-in, with gray:
Said the boy still looking at me:
“That’s the way it came.”

#1371 6/16/06



Here is an unusual war poem Dennis has written today, on the Iraqi war. He said after following it for four years, “…it is getting old; yet it sells papers doesn’t it?” He was for
the war when it was a war, so he told me, but now it is not, it is more a police action, he explains to me, and feels perhaps we have overstayed our welcome. “And what are the motivating factors now?” he asks. He adds, “When we get into questioning the motives, after a war, when they are not clear, it is perhaps time to leave…” Dennis being a Vietnam Veteran knows a little bit about how it all works; and here in this poem, he paints his picture of war, the Iraqi war, and how he sees the colors of war through color crayons of a little boy. Rosa Penaloza


Commentary on War: I’m fifty-eight years old, and I can’t remember a time when the United States was not at war, preparing for another war, or just getting over a war (not to include WWI and WWII); thus, we’ve had a busy half-century. I was but three years old when the Korean War broke out, in l950, and in 1953, when it was tranquilized. Then again in 1964, my friends went to Vietnam, and I in 1971, that war ended in 1975, an eleven year war. I thought we’d have peace but we got a few more wars in-between (we always do); such as, in the 80s Haiti involvement, Granada, and some secret Central American things; nothing real big. And then we got Bosnia in the 90s, and a few other little East Europe wars to attend to (mixed with these wars we had Granada and a few African uprisings); always helping out Europe with their little squats, which they feel are important, and when it comes to American made squats, of course they are less important to them. Also in the 90s we got Iraqi I, and in the now 21st Century, we’ve had to contend with Afghanistan and Iraqi II. We are a country full of warlords to be sure. What will be next, between 2007 and 2016, as I had predicted in 1984, we will be in line with the onset of WWIII. We have been fighting it since l950, with Korea, now it is set in motion: the war on terror is part of it of course. When I say set in motion, I mean, things are going to fly. We already got Iran and Korea on the hot list; Syria is bordering it; and we are going to have to contend with the Arabs sneaking through South America to North America and lighting up a path once they got on solid ground. Russia and China are becoming economies with highbrow ideas; we may have ruled the 90s, but I fear, things will change, as often they do. Dlsiluk




10) The Keeper of the Dungeon
[Opiel: The Gatekeeper]

The Dark, damp, deep dungeons
(Underneath the castle grounds)
Where freedom has no sunlight
This dark palace,
Is where the cadaverous dungeon keeper resides?
Where death filters its way into, this dungeon’s stonewalls:
Here, upon your arrival, hate—with mortar mixed tortures
Fester about; infinite, horrid decaying bones separated from flesh
Paralyzed human spirits—live…(the Keeper’s clientele)
Live in a lifetime of hideous silence.
Here, all cease to speak, blinded and stripped
Raiment’s, just muffled echoes—
In these Dark, damp, deep dungeons
(Underneath the castle grounds)
Where freedom has no sunlight
Where death filters its way into this dungeon’s stonewalls.
Here all will forget ones original name, after time
And all carry their own chains [no crosses allowed]:
Contemplate propositions once made—now too late.

It was this demonic beast, Opiel: keeper of the dungeon
(Once keeper of Hell’s gates)
That broke the silence seized the arms of each human being
Grabbed some by the nostrils
Dragged them disquietingly
Across the stone floors, in utter darkness;
In silence, darkness, solitude, who could stop him?
Motionless they all stood…!

“You are all my guests,” he laughed
His echo was like a pack of rats.
(No future, only madness.)

Dungeon walls speak: blank, dark secrets:
They have unconquerable spirits,
Impending footsteps, no fatigue,
Cold and slimy bodies; these walls have feet,
Instinctively they groan, wiggle about,
As if their thighs are blinking eyes
They do not know defeat!

One guest once told me:
They thought it was a dream
But when they awoke, it was reality!
“Ghosts have their dungeons of madness also…”
(I quote: the keeper of the gates);
Some are let loose to created havoc
Others like reptiles, sleep in these dark dungeons
Night after night after night; so says the Keeper:
“Revenge is my birthright.”

#1370 6/14/06 Written at EP-Lima, Peru




11) Orion’s Orchard
[Poetic Prose]


In the universe, the one that surrounds the world (perhaps the mind as well)—someone once threw a ball—I do believe—somewhere, and it exploded—, somewhat: which slowed everything down a bit, and its thrust (its push, in all directions) is still keeping it airborne: carried by the push that was set in motion (so very long ago); hence, when it loses its momentum, it will crash, I do suppose, and all that is will be the ball (its substance: what is hanging on to it, in it): that is all that will be left, everything else just waves, just waves in nothingness what that one person, once made thrust out of; as a result, nothingness and all that it created will come to some kind of a standstill (I repeat)—it has to: for what will carry it? Save, that someone does not create something else out of some kind of new anything. It’s how it was, how it had to be, how else could it have been: come about to surround the world, with all its t’s crossed, and i’s dotted. We normally don’t think this way, lest we want the mind to become mad.

I heard a voice in this dream of my mind, it said, “I am immortal, I sit behind the suns, and I watch epitaphs of all, all the living things, then I open up their lips, an endless task it seems at times, the zenith of life comes from nothingness—and I hear their dying wish, to remain, to be something; eyeless faces, that is what you all were once, but by My graces: so you became, and they become—more.
Orion’s illumed by my side, showers Me like a rainbow with its gasses, breathless orchard: it is the magnificent mocker of the universe: perhaps you would call it such, perchance: Baudelaire’s fantasy; or Poe’s Twilight; or Clark A. Smith’s perilous deep orchards; George Sterling’s musical images, ghostly lights; Dennis Siluk’s murmur, bemused silence; Ellis’ epigrammatic flight of the imagination. I touch, only touch (lest I destroy my own makings): only touch beyond its burning drums, into the winds of nothingness—what I created it all from. The horse head: it roars like a volcano, a moat around me; the Universe is like a squeezing viper, a sacrificial rip in all the proportions I’ve carved out of the thrust, as you call it, from the push: I fixed it for you: the watcher from earth.”

#1366 6/5/2006


Comment by the Author: “Here is a cosmic poem of sorts, which I hope you enjoy; I do trust this briefly and vividly will exposes the element of suggestiveness of the beauty of God’s vast universe.”




12) The Panama Canal, 2006 (The Big Ditch) A Poem with Commentary


[May 2006: Advance]: After visiting the Panama Canal, to see its worth, on the world stage, seeing it four times in four days, from the locks to the Bridge of Americas, to the lakes, etc; spending hours each day at the locks, and islands thereabouts, and talking to the Panamanians. I wrote the following poem below, at the canal.

I was told this was the eighth wonder of the world, but then when I was in Haiti, in 1986, likewise I was told, their Citadel was the 8th Wonder of the world. I have traveled the world over, and perhaps we have nine wonders of the world, the Panama being perhaps number 1 to 3, and the Citadel number nine, and we’d have to take one other wonder and put it into the missing category; the Panama Canal is really in a class of its own.

A wonder of the world it isEqual to 6000-plus, war shipsSix pyramids by the Gaza strip.With all its tunnels, and locks,Dams, lakes, fifty-one miles of it;Buildings, mess halls, bridges— Structures and more structures;Spillways and much cartage;Bulldozers, trains—ten-years of it,

Building:

Excavations, constructions—:Like digging a big ditch, throughMountains, valleys, lakes—all All I say, all immense, immenseWith tons of cement and steel,Between silt and mud; and twoOceans between: obstaclesOne after another—yellow fever.
The Suez Canal is but a glimpseOf this immense task, in Panama;Unequal in every way, to its grandeur.

Afterwards: In building the canal, it took, ten years (by the Americans; the French, several); and cost $675-million dollars between France and America; 62,000-workers worked at any one time on the site (42,000 world die from disease, accidents, est.); the site being 51-miles long, and ten miles wide. There were three locks to build, a few dams, a lake or two, a mountain to blow up, and create a passageway through. The French sold the rights to build the canal to America for $40-million dollars, after they had failed in its completion, at a cost of $300-million. Today that price tag would be over 14-billion dollars. It took 1600-hundred pounds of gold to pay the workers each month; or 24-tons of Silver. They had to produce five million loafs of bread, 100,000 pounds of cheese, 9-million pounds of meat, and 300,000 chickens each year to feed the hungry works. In addition, they had to use 150,000-gallions of mosquito oil. Its construction matter is equal to five Suez Canals. The material taken out of the Panama Canal would be equal to six large –pyramids in Egypt. It was an immense task, perhaps the most perplexed since the landing on the moon: in all the history of mankind.

Note: Written in Panama, at the Canal, 5/24/06, #1360.






13) The Jackal of Venezuela: Hugo Chavez
[Part I/For His Homeland]

Over the Venezuelan cliff
(Hugo Chavez: now president)
And under so much History!
They did not see him smirk,
Turn, like an animal,

In his cage of vulgar, his cage of scars:
He’d had so many wars!
The dark caves of his mind was
The real trigger—Russian roulette.

#1362 5/31/06



The Jackal of Venezuela: Hugo Chavez
[Part II/For his Self]

You now are aware of the Jackal of Venezuela
Growing beside you, like a vampire cow:
A death vampire, color gone, gumless bat
Balding, gelded by shadows—illusionary,
And a forehead like pigs backside
An utter lack of bone structure for a man.

But right now he is dumb
And I love his stupidity,
The blind, leads the blind.
The reflection of it; I would look in
And find a face, and it tries
To grab my nose—
That big skull’s, smashed-in
Like the shanties in Caracas—
Godawful—your smile smells
And hell is waiting…!

#1363 5/31/06


Note: We see them come and go do we not. The butchers of the world; from Iran to Iraq, to Venezuela, to Zimbabwe, Russia, China; Cuba, North Korea, Peru; we cannot get away from all these dictators that want to help us run our lives, business, as if we can’t ourselves. So we pick out the whatever we can find from garbage cans and hope we come out will a sliver dollar, but we get what we are looking for most of the time; yet we keep thinking we are going to hit the jack pocket; in such people, there is no pot of gold, as they promise, waiting for us once we get home from the poles, our voting. If they can’t butcher you from a coup d'état, they will try it your way, legally, democratically. They have the charisma it’s called psychic magnetism. The sad thing is, it is happening in Peru right now; and it will happen in other places. Colombia, was wise in its selection perhaps they’ve had enough pain; there is enough for everyone out there (more pain that is, simply for the asking), and we keep asking for it, and when we get it, we cry.





14) Grand Canyon [‘89]

Un-thought of, undreamed of,
I was now flying over and through
The Grand Canyon, shadows of
The plane blocked out the sun; so
I could see its depth, its ripples
And as we ascended I could see
Over the desert as my eyes drifted
Across the wideness of the canyon;
A lilac sun beamed its filtered air
Onto my face, as I look out its
Porthole: civilization loomed
Back behind me, in Las Vegas;
I grabbed a slice of the moment,
Back in ’89, for you, and this rhyme.

#1349 5/17/2006



15) Grandpa was Always Old
[1956-1967: Elegy]

Grandpa was old—he was very, very old, it seems all my life he was old. I know now, looking back, how many years he lived, 83-years [died: 1974], but he looked old at forty, perhaps fifty. I’m fifty-eight, I often wonder if I look old, as old as he looked to me; whatever the case, he was very old to me. Something gray and cold and at times hurtful, that been around forever, he was part of that. He personified that to me, to others, but particular to me.
I’m sure Grandpa never thought when he was gone, someone would write stories about him, many of them, and in the stories they tell of this younger man, me, with a sense of humor I hope, and everyone knows, Grandpa does not have to have grace, or lightness of touch, a dream of beauty breaking through the sun beams coming to earth. Grandpa can be Grandpa.
O, those who knew him shall have many good memories, some that other people will never have, because of him.
Long ago, when he was the owner of a restaurant, down town in St. Paul, Minnesota, when I was a kid, I used to go eat there [1956-19??]: a hamburger, pie and coke; I always had the same. He’d give it to me free, and sometimes he’d make me pay, sometimes not, but he’d always walk away saying: “…godam kids all da like is da-hamburger, coke, hamburger, coke…” if indeed that was all he was saying, I never got past that, couldn’t make out the rest.
His friend, who helped him with the restaurant, told me he got robbed a few times, but then later on in years to come, when he was going to sell the cafe, Grandpa said about his friend: “godam son-bitch, crroook…he steal everyding from me, fu..k ass…” oh well I’d say, just give him a ride home.
This is a real picture of Grandpa. He was always old in spirit, and at the end of his life, I don’t think he knew what to do with it.
He was trampling through his lilac bushes during the last days of his life, pacing a path in the house from his porch to the kitchen; the ceiling was his sky full of stars now. He got old, so very old quick, and up and died, but it seems I never saw him get old, he just was always old, and then died. I suppose I didn’t see him get old because he was always old to me.
I think Grandpa did all he wanted to do in life, his road was long and we: my brother, my mother and myself, are all better off today because he let us live with him so long ago, had he not, who knows what would have taken place.




16) Love, Youth and Envy: Poems



The Missing Song

An era in me embraces my youth
It seems but an autumn’s day,
When life and love, with jealous hast,
Went fast, to grabbed it all away!…

For then, no more a thoughtful breeze;
It somberly moves me now—
And haunts my breast, its absentness
The living grave of remembrance.

#1331


Envy’s Men

The smarter men despise me so,
I think we must disagree,
Alas, it is second envy
The only proof ‘twixt them and me,
I dream and they envy.

#1332


Past Loves

I buried love with hope
But it did not obey:
I said: it didn’t care
About my little pains—
And yes, I changed…!

#1333




17) Circles in Love


All my life,
I was a sacrifice
to love—
domineering it is!
If true gracious love
appeared,
I dare say,
her face was never clear,
and soon
she walked away.

I have gained some wisdom
with my pain;
and with all her pride,
she has none—.
Two tyrants now,
mostly vane:
lost in a world of one.

#334

Note: Written in the evening of: 4/30/2004 and the Morning of: 5/1/2006. Love, envy, pain, pride, youth, memories, they all revolve round in circles: small circles, then bigger ones; make us dizzy, especially if one is fickle. We live half our lives, if not most or all, fighting loves shadow. We want it to be (romantic love that it), to be the utmost, the high of highs. We have our first love, and we fall hard usually, we remember it all our lives. Then somehow we find our wives [or wife], raise our children, work hard, go to church, a few vacations, etcetera; and that even disappears sometimes: nowadays, most of the times. Then we go hunting again (or shopping), looking for our death partner: perhaps, the one we will be buried with, or by; then we get thinking of the ones we left behind; you see, the circle never ends. Perchance you never got caught in the circle, the better you are for it, for love was never meant to be a burden: like lust, or greed, or selfishness; we just kind of made it that way.




18) To Clark A. Smith
[Arriving in Hell]

When CAS, made his decent,
(Paid his toll, before he left—
Earth’s crust)
Proud he was when he appeared
At dock #666 Hell’s Northern Pier.

There stood Satan himself—
Opening the gates, “Drop the oars,”
He said, formal and brief: “You are
Amongst friends, the Dead, who
Never die, nor ever sleep…!” And
His ten-wings snapped insanely.

There was the Henchman, Agaliarept
Ruler of an army in Hell; he leaped to
His feet, held out his hand—saw the
Scorn on his face, said:
“Welcome, you are home my friend!”

His eyes—vile, a hoary-red; he
Stepped up onto the dock, over the
Ash-dark canopy (called a sky)
Saw Satan taking off his ten-winged
Ring, said: with a whisper to CAS:
“Wake thy eyes, and make me a
poem that will never die…!”


#1122 1/29/06



Note: Clark A. Smith, was of the old stock, yet he rose above his day, and went from Imagery poetry, such as George Sterling used, who was Smith’s teacher, and that of Robinson Jeffers, and Lovecraft, along with Baudelaire, to cosmic and fantasy. He perhaps went as deep, if not deeper than Poe. From symbolism to modernism; he did adjust to the times, but he also would not leave what was considered demonic roots of imaginative within the freedom Pure Poetry, which it allowed. I think George Sterling tried to convert him away from too strong a stance in this area, but he would not budge.

I am sure if I had asked Mr. Smith, had he had the chance to edit this poem, he would perhaps have himself sitting down at a table with Robert Howard, Lovecraft, and Satan himself, at a dinner table talking about verse, meter and other elements of poetry. And would tell me: I’m too soft with the imagery.



1/28/2006




19) Strange Devouring Poetry


1) The Ash Dark Pyre

Cremated ashes on a dark Pyre
Reptilian serpents fly over me.
My soul is like some jaded vine
Irony supreme—a strange mind!

#960 12/14/05 Committed to Clark A Smith



2) Aforgomon’s: Obliteration


I saw the god, Aforgomon
There was something in his gaze
Likened to a salty hurricane!
Then he turned and swallowed me…
(head first)

“I have come,” so he told me then—
After peering from his abyss den
(where he had lived for eons when)
Now on earth’s surface:

“Death
by chains” he said
“of
fire” he said
“is
simply a
symbol;
It
Does
Not
Hold the
Gleam
Of
Obliteration
As in my
Dizzying
Gaze.”

His eyes were like the sea—deep
He had no pity for anybody—.
My body veered before the wind,
As he appeared—at my command
That is when: when
He turned and swallowed me—
With all his necromancy!...

#958 12/11/05 committed to CAS (Clark Ashton Smith)



20) The Messiah

Like pelts stretched from side-to-side
On a wooden cross, undressed, alive—
The Messiah hung, like a wild beast,
Uncouth, uncrowned, no dignity.
Deboned—like fish—His body hung;
Lifeless, deformed, in silent pain.
Dried blood upon His ransomed face,
Eyes decaying, hardly seen.
Pores hemorrhaging with a gloss of sweet;
Skin like mounds of inflamed tar
(like boils reflecting off dark shaded ice).
Deep distress around His soot-covered veins,
A mixture of Saliva, Dirt and Shame;
Ugly as sin, beyond recognition
(like open incisions of an autopsy).

Acquainted with grief, yes, oh Yes!
As the prophets foretold, long ago.
A new scene, we became REDEEMED!!


Notes: Originally written in 1987; published in the book, “National Library of Poetry,” (won Editor’s choice Award in the North American Poetry Competition of l988, out of 10,000 entries) also published in the book, “Siren,” 2003.



.

21) Winter of Death

In the winter of doubt
Death swims—engulfs
Like a hurricane—like
A ship sinking; thus,
Pitilessly with tons of
Crushing sea!

Here I stand on the lofty
Poop, above the angry
Waves—, as it waits
For Me!...

#943 [12/7/05]



Commentary of Poetry



Poetry is Written for a Universal Audience

I’ve been writing, reading, and singing poetry for 46-years, and I’ve never heard anything so silly as poetry cannot be enjoyed universally, or it is strictly made for the poet. It is, if given a good translator: translatable, I’d say perhaps 50% of poetry. And most poets do not write for themselves, they wrote for the world, the last of the truth givers. One half the Old Testament is written in a form of poetic prose, if not, epic, ode, elegy, or dramatic. Most of your songs today are poetry in motion, a form of personification, a figure of speech that gives human qualities to inanimate objects or ideas, or can. Humor’s Trogon War is poetic; without it we’d have never known there was a war in 1250 BC in Asia Minor.
I do agree with the fact, perhaps a large hunk of poetry is not translatable from one language to another, but most epic poems are, like the Epic of Gilgamish; it frees the spirit, it is like music. In most of Faulkner’s early writings you will see a pattern, a form of poetry, he had a hell of a time trying to avoid mixing genres of poetic prose fiction into his historical novels and short stories.
In poetry virtually every line of any poem contains all levels of meaning, condensed: poems are short stories, if stretched out. Thus, you do not have to run around town and buy 20-novels to get to the end of the story.
I’ve read poetry from many ages, from the Old English, representing works in oral tradition, the old bard who had to memorize to make sure it got to its right place, with its accented syllables per line. To Anglo-Norman or Middle English poetry, where we get the French lyric forms.
And I can go on to the Renaissance which their poetry gave rebirth to humanistic culture, focused on mankind rather than on God; to the 17th century of Neoclassicism, all the way to what we have now Postmodernism.
In poetry we have what we call verse, meter, both words for poetry itself, meter is the pattern created in a line though. So if anything, you have in poetry the best of that language in a poem.
Like anything else you write, the poet and reader needs to know the audience, who is the audience he is writing for or to. Some folks say they can’t understand Faulkner, to me he is an easy read, I’ve read all his stuff; and Hemingway, is like he is writing to me. But there are some authors I get lost with after a few sentences. The poet doesn’t necessarily write to the whole world at large, no one does, but some can. And like any story, you got to know what the main subject of the poem is (or in a story: the theme, plot and insight), and if the poet can’t give it, he perhaps is not as good as he’d like to be, or you’re not as good as you think you are in reading a condensed story, in poetic form.
You also have to figure out: does the poem belong to a genre, again like reading fiction or nonfiction; these are normal questions we ask ourselves, usually when we read anything. And like many writers, such as William Burroughs, and his friends of the 50s, you have to take into consideration what figure of speech is being used in the poem, just like the story. Nowadays people do not want to take any work in reading, but it requires this to have a good read. And you may want to know what the poet’s life and times were. If I read Fitzgerald now, he is like plain music, but in his day he was a flash of lightening.