Colonization in Reverse

Or English girl eats her first mango...

(a kind of love poem by John Agard)

If I did tell she
hold this gold
of sundizzy
tonguelicking juicy
mouthwater flow
ripe with love
from the tropics

she woulda tell me
trust you to be
melodramatic

so I just say
taste this mango

and I watch she hold
the smooth cheeks
of the mango
blushing yellow
and a glow
rush to she own cheeks

and she ask me
what do I know
just bite into it?

and I was tempted
to tell she
why not be a devil
and eat the skin
of the original sin

but she woulda tell me
trust you to be
mysterious

so I would just say
it's up to you
if you want to peel it

and I watch she feels it
as something precious

then she smile and say
looks delicious

and I tell she
don't waste sweet words
when sweetness
in your hand
just bite it man
peel it with the teeth
that God gave you

or better yet
do like me mother
used to do
and squeeze
till the flesh
turns syrup
nibble a hole
then suck the gold
like bubby
in child mouth
squeeze and tease out
every drop of spice

sounds nice
me friend tell me

and I remind she that ain't
apple core
so don't forget
the seed
suck that too
the sweetest part
the juice does run
down to you heart

man if you see
the English rose
she face was bliss
down to the pink
of she toes

and when she finish
she smile
and turn to me

lend me your hanky
my fingers are all sticky
with mango juice

and I had to tell she
what hanky
you talking about
you don't know
when you eat mango
you hanky
is you tongue

man just lick
your finger
you call that
culture
lick your finger
you call that
culture

unless you prefer
to call it
colonization
in reverse

Alone

How deep is a grave?

A six-foot shaft in the soundless earth.

A bleeding turf.

A fill.

Then soon, just a deep seamed scar

On a lone green hill.

Exceedingly Nice

I am so enamored with the delightfully delicious lyrics from Charles Edward Carryl's almost forgotten 19th century poem, the Sleepy Giant brought back to life by Natalie Merchant's smokey sweet voice. I hope you enjoy this as much as I do. Who would've known? Little boys do not like being chewed.

One Thousand Years

A thousand years from this tonight
When Orion climbs the sky,
The same swift snow will still the roofs,
The same mad stars run by.

And who will know of China's war,
Or poison gas in Spain?
The dead ... they'll be forgotten, lost,
Whether they lose or gain.

Of all the brilliant strategies
Of war-lords now alive,
Perhaps a Chinese iris vase
Of porcelain may survive...

Perhaps a prayer, perhaps a song,
Fashioned of love and tears,
But only beauty, only truth,
Will last a thousand years.

~T Malone

Once in a Moon

Your face reminds me
of a large full moon
on a dark cloudless night,
beaming down at the
deep, tenebrous, rumbling sea
whose fluid hips swirl,
dancing seamlessly around
the shimmering stars and
keeping rhythm to the
unvoiced song swimming
through the waves
in my head.

Tyger! Tyger!

Take a walk through the urban jungles with this magical short by Guilherme Marcondes of Brazil loosely based on Blake's, "Tyger! Tyger!" This mesmerizing little production combines puppetry, illustration, photography and CGI. Wow!



Tyger! Tyger! Burning bright,
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symetry?

Poor Marie

The guillotine drops.

I fall into a deep abyss.

Darkness envelopes
My aching head.

Perspective is Everything

Clod and Pebble

"Love seeketh not itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any care,
But for another gives its ease,
And builds a heaven in hell's despair."

So sung a little clod of clay,
Trodden with the cattle's feet;
But a pebble of the brook
Warbled out these meters meet:

"Love seeketh only Self to please,
To bind another to its delight,
Joys in another's loss of ease,
And builds a hell in heaven's despite."

~Blake

For Strong Women

A strong woman is a woman who is straining.
A strong woman is a woman standing
on tiptoe and lifting a barbell
while trying to sing Boris Godunov.
A strong woman is a woman at work
cleaning out the cesspool of the ages,
and while she shovels, she talks about
how she doesn't mind crying, it opens
the ducts of the eyes, and throwing up
develops the stomach muscles, and
she goes on shoveling with tears
in her nose.

A strong woman is a woman in whose head
a voice is repeating, I told you so,
ugly, bad girl, bitch, nag, shrill, witch,
ballbuster, nobody will ever love you back,
why aren't you feminine, why aren't
you soft, why aren't you quiet, why
aren't you dead?

A strong woman is a woman determined
to do something others are determined
not be done. She is pushing up on the bottom
of a lead coffin lid. She is trying to raise
a manhole cover with her head, she is trying
to butt her way through a steel wall.
Her head hurts. People waiting for the hole
to be made say, hurry, you're so strong.

A strong woman is a woman bleeding
inside. A strong woman is a woman making
herself strong every morning while her teeth
loosen and her back throbs. every baby,
tooth, midwives used to say, and now
every battle a scar. A strong woman
is a mass of scar tissue that aches
when it rains and wounds that bleed
when you bump them and memories that get up
in the night and pace in boots to and fro.

A strong woman is a woman who craves love
like oxygen or she turns blue choking.
A strong woman is a woman who loves
strongly and weeps strongly and is strongly
terrified and has strong needs. A strong woman is strong
in words, in action, in connection, in feeling;
she is not strong as a stone but as a wolf
suckling her young. Strength is not in her, but she
enacts it as the wind fills a sail.

What comforts her is others loving
her equally for the strength and for the weakness
from which it issues, lightning from a cloud.
Lightning stuns. In rain, the clouds disperse.
Only water of connection remains,
flowing through us. Strong is what we make
each other. Until we are all strong together,
a strong woman is a woman strongly afraid.

By: Marge Piercy

Earth Voices

by: Bliss Carman (1861-1929)

I

HEARD the spring wind whisper
Above the brushwood fire,
"The world is made forever
Of transport and desire.

"I am the breath of being,

The primal urge of things;

I am the whirl of star dust,

I am the lift of wings.

"I am the splendid impulse

That comes before the thought,

The joy and exaltation

Wherein the life is caught.

"Across the sleeping furrows

I call the buried seed,

And blade and bud and blossom

Awaken at my need.

"Within the dying ashes

I blow the sacred spark,

And make the hearts of lovers

To leap against the dark."

II

I heard the spring light whisper

Above the dancing stream,

"The world is made forever

In likeness of a dream.

"I am the law of planets,

I am the guide of man;

The evening and the morning

Are fashioned to my plan.

"I tint the dawn with crimson,

I tinge the sea with blue;

My track is in the desert,

My trail is in the dew.

"I paint the hills with color,

And in my magic dome

I light the star of evening

To steer the traveller home.

"Within the house of being,

I feed the lamp of truth

With tales of ancient wisdom

And prophecies of youth."

III

I heard the spring rain murmur

Above the roadside flower,

"The world is made forever

In melody and power.

"I keep the rhythmic measure

That marks the steps of time,

And all my toil is fashioned

To symmetry and rhyme.

"I plow the untilled upland,

I ripe the seeding grass,

And fill the leafy forest

With music as I pass.

"I hew the raw, rough granite

To loveliness of line,

And when my work is finished,

Behold, it is divine!

"I am the master-builder

In whom the ages trust.

I lift the lost perfection

To blossom from the dust."

IV

Then Earth to them made answer,

As with a slow refrain

Born of the blended voices

Of wind and sun and rain,

"This is the law of being

That links the threefold chain:

The life we give to beauty

Returns to us again."

Aimless Drifting

You have splintered my soul.
I reach out and try to hold on,
As you silently slip beyond my reach.
Erratically I drift in a sea of chaos.

The Trade

Discarded object -
lost and forgotten treasure,
destined for trash can.

The Lovely Loreley

"I cannot explain the sadness
That's fallen on my breast.
An old, old fable haunts me
And will not let me rest."

I do not know what haunts me,
What saddened my mind all day;
An age-old tale confounds me,
A spell I cannot allay.

The air is cool and in twilight
The Rhine's dark waters flow;
The peak of the mountain in highlight
Reflects the evening glow.

There sits a lovely maiden
Above so wondrous fair,
With shining jewels laden,
She combs her golden hair.

It falls through her comb in a shower,
And over the valley rings
A song so mysterious power
That lovely maiden sings.

The boatman in his small skiff is
Seized by a turbulent love,
No longer he marks where the cliff is,
He looks to the mountain above.

I think the waves must’ve flung him
Against the reefs nearby,
And that did with her singing
The Lovely Loreley

Variations on the Word Sleep

I would like to watch you sleeping,
which may not happen.
I would like to watch you,
Sleeping. I would like to sleep
with you, to enter
your sleep as its smooth dark wave
slides over my head.

And walk with you through that lucent
wavering forest of bluegreen leaves.
with its watery sun and three moons
towards the cave where you must descend
towards your worst fear.

I would like to give you the silver
branch, the small white flower, the one
word that will protect you
from the grief at the centre
of your dream, from the grief
at the centre. I would like to follow
you up the long stairway
again and become
the boat that would row you back
carefully, a flame
in two cupped hands
to where your body lies
beside me, and you enter
it as easily as breathing in.

I would like to be the air
that inhibits you for a moment
only. I would like to be that unnoticed
and that necessary.

~M Atwood

Haiku

Frontal nudity
Masked only by a blossom
Delicate petal.

When I am Dead

When I am dead and nervous hands have thrust
My body downward into careless dust;
I think the grave cannot suffice to hold
My spirit 'prisoned in the sunless mold!
Some subtle memory of you shall be
A resurrection of the life of me.
Yea, I shall be, because I love you so,
The speechless spirit of all things that grow.
You shall not touch a flower but it shall be
Like a caress upon the cheek of me.
I shall be patient in the common grass,
That I may feel your foot fall when you pass.
I shall be kind as rain and pure as dew,
A loving spirit 'round the life of you.
When your soft cheeks by perfumed winds
are fanned,
'Twill be my kiss ~ and you will understand.
But when some sultry, storm bleared sun has set,
I will be lightning if you dare forget.

~John G Neihandt

Love

Love rests on no foundation.
It is an endless ocean,
with no beginning or end.
Imagine,
a suspended ocean,
riding on a cushion of ancient secrets.
All souls have drowned in it,
and now dwell there.
One drop of that ocean is hope,
and the rest is fear.

~Rumi

Excerpt from "The Divine Weeks"

(La Semaine ou Création du Monde)

The rav'ning Kite, whose traine doth well supplie
A Rudders place; the Falcon mounting high,
The Marline, Lanar, and the gentle - Tercell,
Th'Ospray, and Saker, with a nimble Sarcell
Follow the Phoenix, from the Clouds (almost)
At once discovering many an unknowne Coast:
In the swift Ranke of these fell Rovers, flies
The Indian Griffin with the glistring eyes,
Beake Eagle-like, backe sable, Sanguine brest,
White (Swan-like) wings, fierce tallents, alwaies prest
For bloody Battailes; for, with these he teares
Boares, Lyons, Horses, Tigres, Bulls, and Beares:
With these, our Grandames fruitfull panch he pulls,
Whence many an Ingot of pure Gold he culls,
To floore his proud nest, builded strong and steepe
On a high Rock better his thefts to keepe:
With these, he guards against an Armie bold,
The hollow Mines where first he findeth gold,
As wroath, that men upon his right should rove.
Or theevish hands usurp his Tresor-trove.
O! ever may'st thou fight so (valiant Foule)
For this dire bane of our seduced soule,
And (with thee) may the Dardane ants, so ward
The Gold committed to their carefull Guard,
That hence-forth hope-less, mans fraile mind may rest-her
From seeking that, which doth it's Maisters maister..."

Guillaume de Sallust du Bartas ~ 1578

Kootenay Lake

I found this poem in an old book at the library. Perhaps not totally politically correct, nor the best piece of literature, however, those who have visited the Kootenay's will undoubtedly remark that in close to 100 years, in some ways not much has changed in these parts.



Kootenay Lake

Down in the Kootenays,
Live a lot of Folkses
Some of them are human
And some are just jokses.
But all are very happy
In a quiet sort of way, --
Never very gloomy
And never very gay.

The climate is so temperate --
For Canada, you know --
It only get just cold enough
To put a coat of snow
Up upon the mountains,
Making them so white
And wonderful to look at,
On a moonlight night.

And then there comes the Spring,
When the birds begin to sing
And all the Kootenay poets
Make "sing" rhyme with "spring;"
But no one ever reads them
So it doesn't matter much
If they're written with a rhyme, at all
Or just in double Dutch.

But the Spring is quite delightful,
The water is so blue
One would have to be a Shakespeare
To paint it all for you;
When all the woods are washed
In a little April Shower
And all the mountains seem to get
Much greener every hour.

And then there comes the Summer
With its hot, dry, sun;
With its swimming, fishing, boating
And every kind of fun;
With everybody busy
The whole day long, --
Done nothing in particular
And that not long.

and after that, the Autumn--
Or as they say "The Fall"
Which aesthetic people claim
Is the best time of all;
With Nature running riot
In Brown, Red and Gold
And the trout cooking better,
For the water's getting cold.

And all through the year
There come the Kushanook,
The Nasookin and the Moyie
Into every little nook,
Wherever there's a settler
A Mine camp or town,
They call for freight and passengers
All up the lake and down.

Sometimes they will land you
Upon a solid wharf.
Somtimes upon the beach
They have to push you off.
But always quiet and courteous,
And always with a smile, --
Which makes it very pleasant
And a trip worth while.

That is why on our Lake,
Live a lot of Folkses,
Some of whom are human
And some are just Jokses.
But all are very happy,
In a quiet sort of way.
And after that, why after all,
There's nothing more to say.

Taken from Kootenay Kuts and Other Jingles --
A Small Collection of Rhymes and Reasonings of a Rambling Rancher
Pherewan Brown, 1929