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Doug L
Firefly
Canada
5434 Posts |
 Posted - 02/17/2006 : 00:34:23
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Driving home from the radio station after midnight, I see
six girls waiting for the last Dunbar bus, huddled against
minus 20 wind chill in skirts, inward-turned circle, sharing
one cigarette between them. What once was a campfire is now
reduced to an orange spark. Drive down the hill, past the loop,
see the driver reading a book, warm inside the empty bus.
visit http://www.betterdaysradio.blogspot.com |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
1895 Posts |
Posted - 02/19/2006 : 18:50:55
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LETTER TO CALIFORNIA
We write to each other as if
we were using the same language,
though we are not. Your sentances lap
over each other like waves
of the Pacific, strictureless;
your long, sleek-voweled words
fill my mouth like ripe avocados.
To read you is to dismiss
news of earthquakes and mudslides,
to imagine time in slow motion.
It is to think of the sun
as a creature that will not let anything
happen to you.
Back here
we grow leeks and beans and sturdy
roots that will keep for months.
We have few disasters; i.e.,
no grandeur to speak of. Instead
we engage in a low-keyed continuous struggle
to get through the winter, which swallows
two seasons and throws its shadow
over a third. How do you manage
without snow to tell you that you are mortal?
We are brought up short by a wind
that shapes our words; they fall
in clean, blunt strokes. The birds here
are mostly chickadees
and juncos, monochromes
bred to the long view
like the sky under siege of lead
and the bony trees, which hold
the dancer's first position
month after month. But we have
our intimations: now and then
a cardinal with its lyric call,
its body blazing like a saint's
unexpectedly gaudy heart,
spill on our reasonable scene
of brown and gray, unconscious of itself.
I search the language for a word
to tell you how red is red. |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
1895 Posts |
Posted - 02/19/2006 : 18:52:12
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| The above is by Lisel Mueller. |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
1895 Posts |
Posted - 02/19/2006 : 18:59:13
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"She knows that walk, that whistle, that knock.
It's the black wolf who sticks
his floured paw underneath the door.
She tries not to open. One look at his face
and she'll drop the gun. He will pick it up
and turn it on her where she waits,
her eyes shining, her hands over her head."
~Lisel Mueller~ |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
1895 Posts |
Posted - 02/22/2006 : 22:14:56
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"Nature is a Haunted House-
But Art- a House that tries to be haunted."
~Emily Dickinson~
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Jonmark
Windchimer
USA
1787 Posts |
Posted - 02/22/2006 : 23:34:56
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Remember where you came from, where you're going, and why you created the mess you got yourself into in the first place.
You're going to die a horrible death, remember.
It's all good training, and you'll enjoy it more if you keep the facts in mind.
Take your dying with some seriousness, however. Laughing on the way to your execution is not generally understood by less advanced life forms, and they'll call you crazy.
~ Richard Bach ~ |
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Doug L
Firefly
Canada
5434 Posts |
Posted - 02/23/2006 : 00:45:00
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I don't consider myself a great poet in terms of writing poetry.
In my prayer life I turn into a poet. I no longer separate my
life from my prayer. I still set aside time for prayer, but
there is a difference between saying prayers and being prayer.
-Macrina Wiederkehr, O.S.B.
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Edited by - Doug L on 02/23/2006 06:49:07 |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
1895 Posts |
Posted - 02/23/2006 : 20:53:39
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| He gathers twigs and kindling for his cup of fire. The small bowl of comfort he offers her under the dark sky. His folded wings finally quiet. The tremor in his hands hidden in his deep sleeves. The stars spin in infinite isolation above them. "Tell me what to remember," she pleads. He says, "Everything." |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
1895 Posts |
Posted - 02/24/2006 : 22:24:11
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| In the long-distant past they danced at the cobbled edge of Durrow. A thousand years. A thousand miles of moor or more. Dark sky overhead. Rain mostly. His cold fingers numbing. His heart, a flame set on High. O, the path they must travel. Hell and high-water. No fork-in-the road to trick History here. His voice alive in her ruby-stung ears. |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
1895 Posts |
Posted - 02/26/2006 : 15:19:11
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| It was September '87. It was a Friday night. 'Cause of Santa Ana winds what ended up happening was. The power blows out all over Burbank. The winds start kicking up sin. The car's rockin' and rollin'. Side to side. Me and the AD just sit in the limo and smoke cigarettes all night. Now there's this scene where they're up on the roof. Just as they pan down to street-level a palm tree catches on fire. "I gotta get that," the second unit camera guy says. Okay. I stick my hand out and shake his. The rest is History. |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
1895 Posts |
Posted - 03/03/2006 : 20:54:44
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| Light grows by leaps and bounds. From high windows. White flowers. Embroidered on the sky. Hand-hemmed pillow cases. Looking out from that shuttered sea window. Salt on the screen. Chimes in the northwest corner. There's the beveled pane, now. All fractured light and twisted trees. Groves and low orchards behind them. And heavy air. A fragrance they can lean on. "The real deal!" he says, defiantly alive. "Hahaha," she says, "you watch too much Television." |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
1895 Posts |
Posted - 03/04/2006 : 17:11:08
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And yet elation drove the dolphins' course
as if both from and to you, their joy was ours.
And had there been a prophecy that said: "Wait!
On a day of great delight you will see dolphins."
Or, in the ashes and embers of a wrecked sunset
the same voice, falling as quietly as a flag, said,
before the constellations arranged their chaos,
"Those drifting cinders are angels, see how they soar,"
I would not have believed in them, being too old
and sceptical from the fury of one life's
determined benedictions, but they are here.
Angels and dolphins. The second first.
And always certainly, steadily, on the bright rim
of the world, getting no nearer, or nearer, the more
the bow's wedge shuddered towards it, prodigal,
that line of light that shines from the other shore.
~Derek Walcott~ |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
1895 Posts |
Posted - 03/05/2006 : 18:37:19
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| Standing in line at the triple A counter. A gratutious Sunday morning. The clerk explains how the title transfers "acrobatically". "I mean, autoMAtically," she laughs, correcting herself. The Cirque de Soliel is performing across the Freeway. Their posters on utility poles all over town. In hot hedges outside the Auto Club, irridescent hummingbirds hover. Sipping from outlandish Birds of Paradise. Suspended in mid-air. Long drinks while their costumed wings shimmer. With the Pink Slip in my pocket I head for the market and home. The kids want to stop for lemon ices. The sun rests it's color at the horizon's razor edge. Wide crimson spreading. Mexico to Malibu. |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
1895 Posts |
Posted - 03/05/2006 : 18:43:23
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| "Ah, Senor," Fernando says, "the guitars are quiet tonight." The filigreed silver cross in the corner. The shuttered window. The studded lemon-lime light. His one hundred reflections in the rear-view mirror in the middle of the night. The last ride out of town. |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
1895 Posts |
Posted - 03/11/2006 : 18:40:10
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| Reverend B. How are you? |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
1895 Posts |
Posted - 03/12/2006 : 18:56:42
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WITH JUAREZ AT THE CAFE LUPE
We've been friends long enough, he says
Patting the tortillas dry
Letting some cigarette ash fall into the cornmeal
I look up from the shredded lettuce and cheese
He gets edgy when I don't meet his eyes
So I look up
But I don't say a word
Hey
No use fishing for trouble
And look at him
Something is about to sneak up on him
And he knows it
Today is a special occasion
We rig a canopy over the well
And put folding chairs out for the women
I set the tables with platters
And large wooden bowls for the salads
At every sixth place is salsa and chips
Pepper sauce and Tabasco
So nobody has to reach far, he says
Placing himself in the center
And measuring the distance with the spread of his arms
He leans in his boots in the doorway
While I finish taping the paper tablecloths down
I know by his look that he likes it
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Ailinn
Windchimer
1895 Posts |
Posted - 03/13/2006 : 19:46:28
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| Holes in the cloudbank. Stars showing through. Salt and sealight under a glitter-bright sky. His Spirit in the galley bent to remembering. Red right returning. Welcome three bells. |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
1895 Posts |
Posted - 03/13/2006 : 19:47:49
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The soul is a bird on a string straining for Heaven.
~Saint John of the Cross~ |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
1895 Posts |
Posted - 03/15/2006 : 19:49:13
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| They're trying to cut down on coffee. Chloe and Zeke. She works at The Diner now. The coffee's free. And the mac and cheese congeals in Zeke's arteries every Wednesday evening at 6 pm. "Come Friday!" Chloe pleads, "the halibut's better." "Drowsy," says Zeke, and shrugs rounded shoulders. Handsome in his beaded shirt. Drowsy Two Nose. "Three X's against him!" Chloe says. |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
1895 Posts |
Posted - 03/15/2006 : 19:52:57
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| She cuts his blue heart out of his burning shirt pocket. She safety-pins it to hers. He sends messages to his Hole-in-the-Wall gang explaining the situation. He sends, "Hurry! This is no joke!" The sun sets in a cup of the mountains. |
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The Nightly Vigil