Runnin' for the Bus

I thought I'd better get here early, because it looks as if Dr. Einstein is one of those Demon Bus Drivers that don't know from schedules, just drive as fast as their wheels will take them. So okay, I won't post-date this post. Sheesh. Scientists. Always in a hurry.

TFE's Monday (sic) Poetry Bus assignment was to write a poem while listening to a harrowing piece of music called "Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima" by Krzysztof Penderecki. (Please note that when I say "harrowing" that is not a criticism. The piece is riveting, which is good, right? but it's also harrowing. Not what I'd call Easy Listening.)

I've copied the YouTube video below, because I want to keep track of it. Meanwhile, here is what I wrote under its influence:

Aftermath

Hearts bursting, minds aflame,
we stumble through the rubble
of the world we knew before,
choking back our agony,
searching in vain for absolution,
finding only horror in our path.

Where are you, my darlings? Where are you?

The ghosts of those who died here
rise like a poisonous cloud before us,
hover, dark butterflies larger than the sky,
singed, moaning. Oh, the keening!
As too late we close our eyes and ears,
they shriek their accusation:

How could you? How could you?

Evermore, forever we will look
into our own children's eyes
and see these others looking back.
We will see their mouths gape open,
feel their terror and their pain, know
that whatever learned men may say,

It need not have come to this.

All Aboard!


(Photo from Flickr - Click here for source.)

Hear the engine roar! TFE's Poetry Bus is on the move, taking us, this week, to places we might not want to go. Okay, fellow travelers, I'll hold your hands, and you hold mine, and we'll face the demons together. Safety in numbers, right?





The Followers
by Sandra Leigh

When we are very young,
when the world is ours to make,
when our hard-won power is at its giddy peak,
even then, death is a hungry shadow slouched
behind every open door, every velvet drapery.
Silken, smooth as Johnny Depp in a soft grey fedora,
he licks at the eager hollows of our necks,
whispering seductive poetry
of dark annihilation, and we listen.

We listen, tempted,
goose-flesh peppering every limb,
flushed and faint from the hot confusion
of contrary impulses, warring desires.
Is it sex we want, or death?
Or is it, perhaps, to die of sex?

The wonder of us, the luminous beauty,
the capacity for joy, the moist glow of skin
the electric touch of skin on skin,
break our startled hearts, stop us in our tracks
just when we most need strong pumps to move us,
and the sudden knowledge that this shuddering joy,
this arrogant perfection, cannot last forever
is more than we can bear, and the sibilant urging
to end it, end it now, while it still shines,
before time and toil and sadness have gnawed it away,

rings like music,
glows like a distant star.
And sometimes, sometimes
we follow it
into the cold forever.

Aboard the Poetry Bus



...where the company is stimulating, the scenery is fascinating, and even the seats are comfortable. We seem to have left the station a little early this week. What am I saying? We weren't actually supposed to leave until next week -- but our wanderlust is such, we couldn't resist a little joyride. We would push the bus ourselves, if we couldn't get the engine running.

Fortunately, there's no need for that. This bus is humming, and TFE is at the wheel. He showed us three photos, and suggested that we use them to inspire our poems. The photo that caught my eye was the third one (third photo, not third eye).

I suppose this is as good a time as any to confess that my eyes don't work very well, any of them. The photo, as I saw it, brought to mind hoarding. When I went back just now to confirm that it was in fact the third photo, I enlarged it, for some reason. Oh.my.god. That photo isn't about hoarding at all. It's about desolation and the hope of redemption and...oh, well. This is what I wrote about hoarding. ;>)

Cling to the memories, girl -
hoard them; hold them
close beside your body
while you weep, while you sleep.
Inhale the heady fragrance of them,
rock-a-bye, rock-a-bye,
caress the tattered softness
of their flannelette skin.
Never let them go, girl,
they bind you, they blind you
to your filed away and folded
and circumscribed life.

TFE's Monday Poetry Challenge


in which we write poems based on photographs that Totalfeckineejit has posted here.

I chose Photograph #2 from The Poetry Bus part deux. It reminded me of two things: my love of the ocean -- no, my love of being near the ocean -- and the photograph of a field in Saskatchewan that I took not long ago. Oh, and it also reminded me of a song. I'll put the song at the end of the post, though, so as to end on a beautiful note.

Meanwhile, the poem. I've called it

grasshopper

How do they do it, the ones whose lives
plod like yoked oxen from cradle to grave?
An earthy furrow holds no charm;
its walls hide the sky and drown the sun.
Its way is straight, its end ordained.

I prefer to follow a winding path,
a way that forgets its beginning
but knows that all the possible paths,
whether arrow straight or serpentine,
come to the same inglorious end.

"Of course," exemplary ox reminds me,
"You'll never get a crop that way,"
and he has a point, there. Yes, he does.
There are no bulging barns
along my road, no winter stores --

But my path - my winding path
might take me anywhere, before it ends,
even on wings to the fiery sun,
or to the salt water's edge
and the deep comfort of the sea.

Monday Poem, after Hughes

We rule here,
great

stomping conquerors
stinking

with hubris,
demanding

and receiving fealty,
tasting

the blood
of the defiant

and the slow,

judging.
And yet

when we've gone,
when our heavy weight

no longer presses
on the earth,

When the pennies
on our eyes

have crumbled,
Still

there will be
this

terrible beauty,

Earth rampant
on a field of sky.

Thank you to TFE for the assignment. Click here for TFE's blog, where you will find links to more Monday poems.