Old stuff of mine
FinsburyParkCarrots
Seattle, WA Posts: 12,223
Palimpsest
We are seen as absence, as a clear
void behind your telling of our tale,
but hidden underneath your words we bear
a history, a name. We'll blood the pale
words in which our othering is made.
We'll speak, Your histories are silencings:
you would the Empire's palimpsests would fade
the markings of our past imaginings.
Our birth's inscribed there, yet. There's a Self
for us, a present cipher in the light
dentings of your page. We'll feel its clear
patternings, imagining what might
reveal a way to make a past appear
behind the penned smotherings of long
cries, and we'll reshape it into song.
___
The evening went well, Jim thinks. They paid
him cash, always a boon for poetry
read live. A vital crowd. No, not the staid
old tweedy lot you'd mainly get. The try-
out of those newer pieces live was ... nice
road testing, nice ... A girl sat at the front.
She mouthed out her number to him twice:
Should have spoken to her. Hmm, you don't
Pass these chances up. That's what's at stake
in this: a lonesome gravestone. Shame the night
ended when it did, a little late to make
The Swimmers for last orders. It's the blight
of this old life: that words should be the curse
to keep one from good loving and the throng
of life out there. To write to make a purse
dries up the throat and falsifies the song.
Jim thanks the organisers, then shakes hands
and quits the 'net cafe. Coats and shoes
flap past him. Cold air breath streams past in bands
that smell of burger vans. Hot, banshee throes
begin to agonise his frosted ears:
Some lads, whose song "One- nil, one-nil, one- nil",
provokes in him an echo of the good old years
when no-one read his work. "I'd party 'til
I couldn't stand or talk, but never bore
and never spout out poetry. I'd swear,
love, curse, fall down, get up for more.
Then words came in the morning with my fear.
How dare these lovers mouth to me and rude
young louts shout out the score as if to chide
me, left to walk these streets alone? Plain, crude
words will mock my solitary pride."
He slaps his forehead. "Thinking like an ass
again, old James?" Moonlight on his boots
makes a moment's poem. It will pass
when he looks before him and he roots
through faces passing for that prettiness
he saw tonight. And there she is, just by,
behind another cafe window, her dress
offpink, seamed with one red butterfly
sequined, a flash of memories
of Jean, his first wife. Pah. A young man sits,
just opposite. "Don't listen to his lies!"
He mutters on the glass. The kid takes hits
deep from his coffee cup and starts to mouth
some monolgue. The girl's eyes narrow now.
"Oh no. A would-be poet. Stupid youth!
Girl! Run from his sham, his flash, his show,
His verbless scrawl without a period,
Those metaphors he mixes,those broad
fat brushstrokes drawn to make a blob a god
inside his world view splodge. Run from that toad
and find a carpenter, a fisherman,
a coalman or a beggar, but don't fall
for someone with a notebook and a wan,
world-weary look and wish to offload all
that poetry on you. Get out of there,
live, start breathing, love, try not to care
about the Beat!" A pigeon raised its cere
to look up at him. "Tell me, does he scare
you, little birdy? Does your instinct say
That kid's a poet, summoning chill rain
over his lover's life? You'd run away,
dear bird! If only humans had your brain."
Jim heads through midnight crowds, and breathing in
he feels the river breeze upon his face
and reaches bridge still silence. There within
cool waters down below, there's the embrace
of lovers from high stars where no word
hinders kissings. Jim looks to the still
unrippling river belly where the cord
to good moonmotherness remains. Until
the river ends, the heart of poetry
is nameless, moonknown, whiteblack; here
he knows in shadows where the song lies. "Try
not to make a sound", he thinks. "Not where
the light on water's all. I'll live from now
watching midnight water for the glow
of starlain lovers on the stream. And free
from words, I'll laugh, and dance, and learn to Be."
___
Next time I'm in a ditch, I'll look ahead
to see what's caught the water up. Big logs
of wood, or twigs, no doubt. Some dread
ditches. Me, I love them. I like clogs
of mud around my rubber waders. Good
mud, good dirt. I'll trudge through all that brown
sludge. I'll reach the dam, throw out the wood
and fork the water cress that's overgrown
and traps the stinking stream. You see, that's me,
really. I like working. I was born
to shovel dirt and free the brook. I'll be
there at dawn tomorrow. I'll adorn
the verges of my stream with plucked spoil
to make a simple river of my toil.
____
You prayed for an inevitable night,
night of starlessness, night of nothingness,
night beyond the grace of words,
night beyond the memory of feeling,
a night beyond blackness, of a nothing
never to be imagined in the abyss of empty still
where even silence would be something,
would be calmness.
And now the night has come
Your hell is worse than you'd wanted:
There persists a lambent seraphim
flickering above a windowlight
where loved ones behind unshatterable glass
join hands and call an inevitable dawn.
____
A laugh. a cough. A contrapuntal grunt,
growling down, grinding from the round
grounds of bass. But now a force, a shunt
of breath, and now a pounding flurry! Sound,
upscaling ciphers of a city night:
Weaves of voices, merging with the street-
carhorn sqwawks and sidewalk jive; red bright
flashing niteclub lights; sharp spatshoe feet
pavement-tapping Kupra shuffles; squeals
from hepstance zootsuit spenders of last change;
hatbrims, coatfurs, cab-home jokelaugh peals:
Flourescing sound in sky-extending range
from Dolphy's clarinetted multitone!
Shout Loud! Now Sound Out! Here Comes Everyone!
We are seen as absence, as a clear
void behind your telling of our tale,
but hidden underneath your words we bear
a history, a name. We'll blood the pale
words in which our othering is made.
We'll speak, Your histories are silencings:
you would the Empire's palimpsests would fade
the markings of our past imaginings.
Our birth's inscribed there, yet. There's a Self
for us, a present cipher in the light
dentings of your page. We'll feel its clear
patternings, imagining what might
reveal a way to make a past appear
behind the penned smotherings of long
cries, and we'll reshape it into song.
___
The evening went well, Jim thinks. They paid
him cash, always a boon for poetry
read live. A vital crowd. No, not the staid
old tweedy lot you'd mainly get. The try-
out of those newer pieces live was ... nice
road testing, nice ... A girl sat at the front.
She mouthed out her number to him twice:
Should have spoken to her. Hmm, you don't
Pass these chances up. That's what's at stake
in this: a lonesome gravestone. Shame the night
ended when it did, a little late to make
The Swimmers for last orders. It's the blight
of this old life: that words should be the curse
to keep one from good loving and the throng
of life out there. To write to make a purse
dries up the throat and falsifies the song.
Jim thanks the organisers, then shakes hands
and quits the 'net cafe. Coats and shoes
flap past him. Cold air breath streams past in bands
that smell of burger vans. Hot, banshee throes
begin to agonise his frosted ears:
Some lads, whose song "One- nil, one-nil, one- nil",
provokes in him an echo of the good old years
when no-one read his work. "I'd party 'til
I couldn't stand or talk, but never bore
and never spout out poetry. I'd swear,
love, curse, fall down, get up for more.
Then words came in the morning with my fear.
How dare these lovers mouth to me and rude
young louts shout out the score as if to chide
me, left to walk these streets alone? Plain, crude
words will mock my solitary pride."
He slaps his forehead. "Thinking like an ass
again, old James?" Moonlight on his boots
makes a moment's poem. It will pass
when he looks before him and he roots
through faces passing for that prettiness
he saw tonight. And there she is, just by,
behind another cafe window, her dress
offpink, seamed with one red butterfly
sequined, a flash of memories
of Jean, his first wife. Pah. A young man sits,
just opposite. "Don't listen to his lies!"
He mutters on the glass. The kid takes hits
deep from his coffee cup and starts to mouth
some monolgue. The girl's eyes narrow now.
"Oh no. A would-be poet. Stupid youth!
Girl! Run from his sham, his flash, his show,
His verbless scrawl without a period,
Those metaphors he mixes,those broad
fat brushstrokes drawn to make a blob a god
inside his world view splodge. Run from that toad
and find a carpenter, a fisherman,
a coalman or a beggar, but don't fall
for someone with a notebook and a wan,
world-weary look and wish to offload all
that poetry on you. Get out of there,
live, start breathing, love, try not to care
about the Beat!" A pigeon raised its cere
to look up at him. "Tell me, does he scare
you, little birdy? Does your instinct say
That kid's a poet, summoning chill rain
over his lover's life? You'd run away,
dear bird! If only humans had your brain."
Jim heads through midnight crowds, and breathing in
he feels the river breeze upon his face
and reaches bridge still silence. There within
cool waters down below, there's the embrace
of lovers from high stars where no word
hinders kissings. Jim looks to the still
unrippling river belly where the cord
to good moonmotherness remains. Until
the river ends, the heart of poetry
is nameless, moonknown, whiteblack; here
he knows in shadows where the song lies. "Try
not to make a sound", he thinks. "Not where
the light on water's all. I'll live from now
watching midnight water for the glow
of starlain lovers on the stream. And free
from words, I'll laugh, and dance, and learn to Be."
___
Next time I'm in a ditch, I'll look ahead
to see what's caught the water up. Big logs
of wood, or twigs, no doubt. Some dread
ditches. Me, I love them. I like clogs
of mud around my rubber waders. Good
mud, good dirt. I'll trudge through all that brown
sludge. I'll reach the dam, throw out the wood
and fork the water cress that's overgrown
and traps the stinking stream. You see, that's me,
really. I like working. I was born
to shovel dirt and free the brook. I'll be
there at dawn tomorrow. I'll adorn
the verges of my stream with plucked spoil
to make a simple river of my toil.
____
You prayed for an inevitable night,
night of starlessness, night of nothingness,
night beyond the grace of words,
night beyond the memory of feeling,
a night beyond blackness, of a nothing
never to be imagined in the abyss of empty still
where even silence would be something,
would be calmness.
And now the night has come
Your hell is worse than you'd wanted:
There persists a lambent seraphim
flickering above a windowlight
where loved ones behind unshatterable glass
join hands and call an inevitable dawn.
____
A laugh. a cough. A contrapuntal grunt,
growling down, grinding from the round
grounds of bass. But now a force, a shunt
of breath, and now a pounding flurry! Sound,
upscaling ciphers of a city night:
Weaves of voices, merging with the street-
carhorn sqwawks and sidewalk jive; red bright
flashing niteclub lights; sharp spatshoe feet
pavement-tapping Kupra shuffles; squeals
from hepstance zootsuit spenders of last change;
hatbrims, coatfurs, cab-home jokelaugh peals:
Flourescing sound in sky-extending range
from Dolphy's clarinetted multitone!
Shout Loud! Now Sound Out! Here Comes Everyone!
Post edited by Unknown User on
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(He says, listening through the one unblocked ear to a recording of uncirculated Hendrix!)
(I was listening to some while I was cooking dinner tonight.)
Not uncirculated in the sense I'm talking about. I mean, unbootlegged.