It's A Long Walk

Photo by Tom Chambers, provided as a writing prompt by Tess for Magpie Tales: Mag 240

It's A Long Walk
Back To The House

Broken poem, no
sense to the signs or the fence,
the rusted barb wire
strips still connected
to the posts -

and far away
you've hung your last name
and all those pewter
goblets.

I'm to think vital
thoughts and make a speech
in two days while you
hang yourself, hooked up
like sheets in the prairie wind
and fading, warble.

‎October ‎5, ‎2014 1:15 PM

I utilized all twelve words provided in Wordle 181 in Brenda Warren's Sunday Whirl

Collisions

I'm not listening
not anymore. The bad words,
the insanities,
the hidden motives,
all that from your smiling lips
as you take me down,
assuring me, oh
rest easy, easy does it,
take it just like that,
that is what you say
as I walk straight on into
that God rotted wall.

October 7, 2010 7:27 PM

My Second Attempt

The Death God Necros by Skinner, b. 1978

Skinner is a self-taught artist living in Oakland, California who has meticulously crafted a balance of extraordinary mural work, bizarre and antagonistic installations while maintaining a prolific commercial career. Influenced by 80’s pop culture, human struggle, myths and violence, dungeons and dragons and the heavy metal gods, Skinner’s mind is one of psycho social mayhem fueled by a calculated chaos. His work has been shown all over the world in various museums, universities and galleries. He has been an ambassador of the alternative arts movement in countries ranging from Russia, Cuba, Japan, Europe and all across the United States. Don't be surprised if you see one of his murals on a small side street in Scotland or some tiny village in Russia. Skinner has and continues to bring his own very specific weird art to anywhere in the world that can handle it. Skinner’s work has been celebrated in various publications including Blisss, Juxtapoz, Hi Fructose and Beautiful/Decay as well as numerous European publications. In the fall of 2012 Skinner launched his own art and apparel company called Critical Hit. Realizing that his art is better kept in the hands of people who appreciate it on a day to day basis, he applied his strange visions and humor to an affordable media where fans of his work can find giclee and silkscreen prints, his hardback book Every Man Is My Enemy, t-shirts featuring his one of a kind designs, custom toys and figures, patches, buttons, zines and more! Pay him a visit and see the chaos in action! http://shopcriticalhit.com/

My Second Attempt

I tried to rise up
and ended with a reject
and so here I am
confessing my shallow
heart – I have scrabbled my way
out of the hardpan
but need to dig dirt
out from under my broken
talons, shake the shit
off me and burnish
my gold leaf wings as I try
not to tear them up.

I wanted to call
God down from on high, something
like that, but all God
did was point at me
and titter gaseously
through my damp exhaust.
Damn.

‎April ‎26, ‎2014 8:18 AM

Written in response to a poem called You Speak Heart and posted on Orange Is A Fruit, Irene Toh's blog.

Water Flower

I feel damp and warm
but I know it's temporal
in nature. I'll be
colder than this soon.

But still. I will be damp still.

It's the way of things.
It's the way of us -
a flower in bloom, ever
unfolding color.

October 7, 2010 4:55 AM

Dry As Dust - Three Word Wednesday

For Three Word Wednesday Thom supplied the following:
Barren; Intense; Worry.

Dry As Dust

My barren old brain
thinks dessicated dread thoughts
that would be intense
if not so dried out.

I hem and then I haw out
the side of my head
which is good because
the worry beads plonk down
and hit the wool rug
with the muted thumps
which prove they are no longer
in the splinter bag
I keep just for you.

‎October ‎1, ‎2014 10:53 AM

The Hunt

The Hunt

The fierce heart of birds
of prey take me into you,
into thoughts of snow
searching for your scent.

But now fall...

The eagle calls
your name after mine
and the aspens quake
beneath the force of that sound
in the hills while small
things dive into holes
and I am forced to open,
expose my secrets
to the clear fine air.

Someday I might be ready
for loving someone.
Someday I might get
my heart back, open my chest,
put it in its place.

‎April ‎25, ‎2014 1:48 PM
Modified September 29, 2014

This poem was composed in contemplation of a poem written by Irene Toh back in April of this year. As these things go, the call and response of poets to each other do not necessarily create direct statements and replies but the poems do move in some kind of tandem, however distant the connection may be.

See Orange Is A Fruit for the original version. To see more or less the whole series, go to New Poetry Collections and download Duet. It's free for the taking.

It's A New Day - Magpie Tales - Sunday Whirl

Jacek Yerka calls this one Autumn In Madeira,

Chosen by Tess for today's Magpie Tale

I am calling this one Sanctuary

Also, in response to Brenda Warren's Wordle 180 - The Sunday Whirl

It's A New Day

I sticks tight nearby
my new found identity
while you polarize
the ashes fear make
and pour them on the bare lot
next door.

Discernment
is required, selfless
love too.

You are no posey
day tripper looking
for joy in the flames.

At least we escaped the dread,
the dun rabbit run
and all the craters
the bombs left behind telling
us to dive, dive, dive.

‎September ‎28, ‎2014 12:50 PM

The Old Neighborhood

Loving The Crow

Loving The Crow

I've been looking high
and low, under rocks, behind
the dusty curtains
that make me sneeze hard
trying for a hint, some clue
left behind, some taste
of your red ripe lust
for life.

I would stroke
your feathers until
the sparks would leap off your back
leaving the blue black
sheen of your bird life
for all to see spun large, large
on my pallid shape.

October 6, 2010 12:22:36 PM

The Bronze Age

Slaying The Minotaur

The Bronze Age

I see you believe
the sweet and gentle white lie
of the rope that winds
through the endless halls
with knots that mark time, mark us
as if we were once
knot and once again
will be knot but for now we
are swift and fleeting.

I would believe too
but I was told face to face
that I was to stop
such blather right now
(which was long long long ago).

Oh, I remember
the bronze minotaur
and the bloody dark red spoor,
the flood leaving me!
Me! sere on the floor
over twenty eons past
and magi after
telling time stories
to confound the western priests
for the fun of it.

‎April ‎24, ‎2014 10:28 PM

Writing in response to Irene Toh

Perjorative - A Red Wolf Poem

Schweinehund - (pejorative) Term of offense, its use corresponding roughly to the word bastard; literally pig-dog.

My boss for the last sixteen years was a man highly educated and trained in a narrow track tailored to building things, project management and seat of the pants engineering. At one point he learned this German perjorative and its literal English counterpart, "Pig-dog". For a few years, everything and everyone was a pig-dog. As a highly capable man and skilled fighter who also was a bit of a bully, he never worried about how insulted the rest of us might be. After all he was scrupulously fair about the money and the actual work so that was that. If you wanted to you could scrap with him, but there might be your job in the balance. As far as I know, everyone figured it for "harmless" and we went on about the work.

He was highly successful in his level, by the way. People would work for him, like I did, for a long time because he kept the work steady and we were given pretty much a free hand so long as we produced. He made more than adequate money for himself and we were not ill paid for what we did either. For several years though, pig-dogs were not far away.

Perjorative

Bacon sizzles, dead pig
in a trance on the final
track to ivory
chompers and there's sign
of popcorn snagged and stiffened up.

The pig skin curls, no
emperor nearby,
not this time, darling, not now,
no royals anywhere.

If it was time out
I would be a touch relieved
but it's fifteen yards,
clipping called on me,
bacon is no sport at all
you sorry pig dogs.

‎September ‎25, ‎2014 3:21 PM

Red Wolf's Wordle 27:

Use these words in a creative work.

Red Wolf

Bioluminescence - Three Word Wednesday

From the film, Avatar, a bioluminescent forest.

Thom G's Three Word Wednesday is a weekly exercise that has been my pleasure for years now. It is sometimes more challenging than you might think. This week though, an adequate explosive parasite only leaves me with a couple questions... while the organism is parasitically adequate is it also explosive in any sense? ... or, is this parasite explosive enough, adequate to its task? I think I will set up on the latter idea.

Adequate; Explosive; Parasite.

Living Light

I hiked Sumatran
jungles and the mountain crags
of summer's Andes
and carried off from
somewhere a tight cyst on me.
Two worms were in it.
I bred them - found
they had some strange qualities -
a bright parasite -
and me a lucky
cobber since the pair were not
explosive like all
their progeny are.

I was an adequate rogue
but now thats all changed.

Biolumity.

That's my new corporation.
I just have to learn
how to keep them cool
since they blow up like nitro
when they warm enough.

September 24, 2014 5:06 PM

Triangle

The space elevator is not practical at present but could be, waiting future developments. It would extend to a terminus in geosynchronus orbit perhaps a tenth of the way to the moon. The ride would be the distance equivalent of going all the way around the planet, about 25,000 miles.

Triangle

"I built the final
lift, the elevator to
the moon, to beyond
all the local sights.
Look! That plaque, it bears my name.
Well ... my nom de plume.
You bet I am named!
And that lift I built for you -
you know that, Sweetie,
yes you do," he said,
all plaintive and hesitant.

You murmured at that,
having to admit
at least that much is due him.

Me, I still have proof -
the rich scent of you
between my fingers, beneath
my eyes, down my chest.

‎September ‎22, ‎2014 3:28 PM

Getting High - The Sunday Whirl

In Newport, Oregon, 1976, preparing.

Getting High

Smoking an Old Gold
as is my habit, I give
you another joint
all the time seaching
for my damn shoes. It does seem
I've lost many items
to the crossed ocean
in the draped and dark front room
where we live and keep
high these days. Could be
I'm a wannabe miner
of your mind and heart.
Your expression just kills me
when your eyes go daft.

‎September ‎21, ‎2014 12:24 PM

A bit anachronistic perhaps. I had in mind while writing the living room of my ground floor apartment on South 8th Street in the San Jose State student quarter in 1966. By 1976 I rarely smoked dope, having already become a serious drunk. I was interested on this evening in prooving that I could still roll a great joint even after five years away from the dope.

Written for Brenda Warren's Sunday Whirl, Wordle 179. Use these words:

Keeping Up Appearances - A Magpie Tale

Image provided by Tess as a writing prompt for
Magpie Tales: Mag 238

Keeping Up Appearances

I hear your stories.
They slosh about. I know you.
You wade in waters
all the time, wearing
black rubber boots kept to hand
just for that purpose.
You care for your feet
better than you care for us.
The dog, for one, sighs
when you take your leave,
a big dog sigh, blustery
and aromatic.
Me, I hold my ground.
Nothing the matter here, Ma.
Ain't this whoohah grand?

‎September ‎21, ‎2014 11:49 AM

Where It Started

The boys at work up the hill from me. I was late on the scene, born after the War was over by a couple months, in November of 45. My mother carried me through the end of the War, but few knew the war was nearly over at the time. The development of the atomic bomb was a deep secret. When it was first exploded, no one knew for sure what would happen. Everyone was expecting the invasion of Japan and the projected possibility of a million casualties. So my mother was wondering what kind of world her child was going to face. That was when the 2 bombs changed the Japanese experience and will to fight on.

Wiki says:

After he returned to Berkeley, Ernest Lawrence mobilized his team to go painstakingly over the results in order to gather enough evidence to convince Chadwick. Meanwhile, at the Cavendish laboratory, Ernest Rutherford and Mark Oliphant found that deuterium fuses to form helium-3, which causes the effect that the cyclontroneers had observed. Not only was Chadwick correct in that they had been observing contamination, but they had overlooked another important discovery, of nuclear fusion. Lawrence pressed on with the creation of larger cyclotrons. The 27-inch cyclotron was superseded by a 37-inch cyclotron in June 1937. In May 1939, the 60-inch cyclotron was started it. It was used to bombard iron and produced its first radioactive isotopes in June, and the first cancer patient received neutron therapy from it on November 20.

Lawrence was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in November 1939 "for the invention and development of the cyclotron and for results obtained with it, especially with regard to artificial radioactive elements". He was the first at Berkeley to become a Nobel Laureate, and the first to be so honored while at a state-supported university. The award ceremony was held on February 29, 1940, in Berkeley, California due to World War II, in the auditorium of Wheeler Hall on the campus of the university.

The remark about World War II - the Nazis made it really hard for everyone to get to Sweden.



I listened to this song at the Brass Knocker in Saratoga Ca in the mid sixties. It was sung by Paul Zeigler. He did it different and I assume that was because the people he learned it from did it more his way.

Where It Started

I say I was born
in Berkeley as if it was
a red badge marking
my heart with all the world's grace
or something like that.

I am openly
proud of my connection with
the east bay and north
of that old Bay Bridge.

I would walk the avenue,
or ride a big bike-
I had to stand up
on it- but that was later.

At the start I lived
up the hill toward
the big Cee near the cheap seats
(they called it Tightwad
Hill) and nearby smart
boys broke uranium bits
and found out how to
blow up the damn world.

‎September ‎20, ‎2014 1:55 PM

Insubstantial

You were in the light,
I mean in the other light.
the God light of late
afternoon and fall
and some other hushed moments
you can never make
happen no matter
how you yearn, how you might try.
You were in the light
and I don't know what
you intended or what might
come of how you stood
so still, so breathless
and still and beyond my grasp.
Gray - I dispersed - smoke.

‎September ‎19, ‎2014 4:06 PM

Do You Think I'm Sexy - A Red Wolf Poem

Do You Think I'm Sexy

You elevated
my sway and posture - did not
touch my briarpatch
soul - no one does that.

The souls near enough to touch
get caught and cut bad
as a rule.

I know
I am beautifully formed
and like some Roman
emperors I flaunt
and embellish in satin
and such while briars
lurk under it all
and let me stab you without
any true regrets.

But I moan as good
as you do when I see need
for it - real tears -
I cry real tears.

‎September ‎18, ‎2014 2:09 PM

It was suggested that I write as one of the beautiful people, so I have - in spades, I think. Check here for the site and the links to other poets: Red Wolf Poems

Red Wolf

Upstaged - Three Word Wednesday

A performance of As You Like It

The actor in the tree is perfectly placed to upstage everyone else.

This week's words from Three Word Wednesday
Breezy; Hairy; Monstrous.

Upstaged By Shakespeare

So unconvincing
your breezy good looks winking
like silver beech leaves
aflutter in wind
and your hairy threads so much
like moss in some stream.
So unconvincing
is your appeal to my ears.
I recall your words,
your monstrous rhyming
vocality so declaimed
as you pranced upstage
and stole light from us -
how dare you? As if you had
some God given right...

September 17, 2014 2:24 PM

I have thought more than one time how irritating it must be to be taken out of the limelight by the top guys of the age - whether Shakespeare in his time, when he was arguably and consistently the best show in town, or The Beatles and The Rolling Stones in their time when the British invasion really meant them. You work hard and make decent wages for your art but nothing like they are doing and you can't see it, what they have that you don't. What a crock that is.

Dancing With Veils

This is an internet picture. It evokes a similar feeling though it pales by comparison. I was gifted with a private performance by my lover in 1998. I have never in my life been more in love than I was that afternoon.

The Turn Of The Century

I had a lover
who danced with veils in my house,
before me and God,
small tight breasts under
vest with see through pantaloons
before adoring
me as only she
has ever done.

I tumbled
down the steepest slope
in my whole hot world
and then opened stem to stern
promising the moon,
as if I had rights
to the cold of lunar time
and bright stellar spice.

‎April ‎23, ‎2014 7:54 PM

Written in collaboration with the work of Irene Toh and posted first on her blog, Orange is a Fruit
Click on the link above.

You Can't Make Me

View of Haiti after the earthquake. Bleak Street.

This poem written and originally posted in the comment section on Orange Is A Fruit, the Wordpress blog of Irene Toh. You Can't Make Me in it's original form is also found in a collection of poems called Duet as a download here: Red Wolf Journal, New Poetry Collections

You Can't Make Me

Don't you know by now
is what she said to me, tossed
off like flicking hair
or picking a sore
at the corner of her mouth.
I am still here, face
planted on Bleak Street in my
own quantum dot haze
calling this shit art,
still mud eyed looking beyond
my own ooze crusted
brick at the good life
they say waits for me over
the tropical wall.
It's chickens again,
barnyard pickers on sore earth
telling me what for.

‎April ‎23, ‎2014 6:12 AM
Last two lines added
September 15, 2014

The Barnyard

I Has Spoken! - A Magpie Tale

The photo "Morning Curtains" chosen by Tess as a writing prompt for this Sunday's Magpie Tales: Mag 237

I Has Spoken!

I will leave you there,
right behind the translucent
lace arrowed in space
in gravitic drapes
aimed at your neck blushing pink
as if inviting
me to second thoughts
in re my inner demons
but no, I'm going
to Colorado
with my guitar and my dog,
just like I damn said.

‎September ‎14, ‎2014 11:25 AM

Your Gone Away Posture

To me you have gone
and taken your name away.
I no longer know
what it is to say
it, what aroma
and shape it takes when I say
it in day's early
light or in moonshine.
It's your gone away posture
that strafes my soul's face
with large caliber
plugs of gray sea ice
and my peeled back skin reveals
my sunk thews and bones.

October 5, 2010 12:45 PM

Green Wine and Vanilla Gin

Green Wine, a bit tipsy perhaps

The word list from Red Wolf Poems
green, wine, vanilla, gin, bloggers, papers, moles, stain
See the post here

I'm Not As Think
As You Drunk I Am

I drink your green wine
or else your vanilla gin
with the impunity
I showed you before
the bloggers came up between
the moles.

They dug and
now curl above ground.

There is a stain on my teeth
and one is broken
but that never made
the papers.

‎September ‎10, ‎2014 3:22 PM

Vanilla Gin

Red Wolf

The Changeling - Three Word Wednesday

The Circus Geek

The Three Words for this Wednesday: Carcass; Geek; Slash
Go To Three Word Wednesday

The Changeling

Me, a circus geek
I was in the long ago
with warm chicken blood
and sheep gut slickness
and other things too,
paying my way in bad times.

A carcass, I smell
like some farmyards might.

The midway alive at night
is a slash right through
all the other dreams
I once had and I am glad
that's all over with.

Now my changeling ways
are well hidden in some back
thoroughly locked room.

‎September ‎10, ‎2014 2:03 PM

The Midway

Bleak Street

Bleak Street

Said she didn't know
where to go from this blasted
street with all the broke
down cars, the spilled oil,
and the starving dogs chasing
the few remaining
cats and rats.

Not one
honeybee left in the land
is what the guy said
before we killed him.

Said she didn't know how to
get up the old grit
now that the canned goods
have run out, not even now
that the cooking oil
is all used up. Yea,
she has started to look at
me with a strange glint.

‎April ‎22, ‎2014 6:57 PM

The Gray Sea

You know my fervent
hopes, my pleas that you decide
to stay in my arms,
but like the gray sea
of this late autumn morning,
like the slick washed sides
of the creatures there,
you slip free and go. I can't
keep you home this time.
This forces me out
of my dream. I must admit
I no longer know
your true and private
name.

October 4, 2010 12:24 PM