Santa Claus on the Cross, Two

We’re in a restaurant the other night –
I’ve got to tell you – and out of the blue,
She turns all puffy eyed and says, “Alright;
But I don’t want a fight – but, lately, who...”
Who what? I want to know? I’m half of this –
But no – she sits and gives me nothing more –
Just sits, just waits, and then she adds, “I miss
That you, you know. The way you were before.”
And I respond, “My sweet, my love does not
Find its containment in my mind or heart,
And be assured that everything I’ve got
Is yours, my dear, is yours to every part.”
She scoffs, and in a condescending way,
She adds, “Now is that all you’ve got to say?”

Count One Count Two Count Three

A vortex we are: baby mine, I’m yours –
An eddy in our minds, in pool we see
A chronicle of whirling joys and wars
There sadly mirrored gladly back to glee.
I think; you act: together we’re the one;
But if we’re one, good god, why me? why you?
And each the other’s one is fast undone
By everything I do you do we do.
A third, there, stands, between our minds: our soul,
And, see, there are those wings that fly and find –
The purpose, whispered to us: Set our goal
To walk to ride to fly to minds combined.
So we – count one count two count three – the trinity,
Which sounds, we think, a link like sweet divinity.

Confessions Truly Made

We stand before the lake and rising dawn
Still naked from our night of making love
And watch the bursting light ascend upon
The further shore and standing pines above.
The sky a mottled scene of clouds and birds,
The sand below our feet so soft and cool -
With no attempt to put our thoughts to words,
We’re in compliance of some greater rule.
So not a tremor of the sad afraid
And little words that bring just mad regrets -
Not speaking of confessions truly made
The night before about my grievous debts,
We stand in an attempt to make this last
But know right now the dawn by now has passed.

The New Fish

I am like gentle Jesus, meek and mild;
Pure Parsifal’s my name – I’ve seen the Grail:
Upon her smiling radiance, I’ve smiled,
Behind the cloak-and-dagger of a veil.
There high within a castle’s vaulted room
Where witnessed by some always solemn knights,
This naïf became the sacred bride’s new groom,
While happy benedictions burst with lights.
The next day I went fishing with the last
Of her bridegrooms, a man already dead;
He pointed to the trees, the skies, the vast
Aliveness of the throbbing world, and said,
“She’s healthy now, for you’re here now. Your life
Is sacrifice before this happy wife.”

Suddenly Last Summer

Like Amfortas, I hold an open sore –
An uninterrupted memory of
Last summer’s pain and pleasure on our tours
Of each the other’s heart’s idea of love.
The plot includes a Kundry: She was you –
An emissary of another world
Of summer colours full of lover’s hues
Where round and round and round our hearts infurled.
But into this extended moment’s bliss
Came Klingsor’s moment and the stolen spear
That took the summer from us with its kiss
And brought me swiftly to this lost frontier
Of wasteland in the narrow winter mist,
My wound alive and wanting to be kissed.

North Ontario

The movement of the water in the break
Below my boat that cuts into the gleam
That flashes on the surface of the lake
Reminds me of my presence in the dream
That is the sparking sun that lots its light
Or is the swaying tree that croons its song
Or is the bird or fish at play or fight
Within the healthy show of life’s fit throng.
But textured with this life is death’s display
On every branch and needle of a pine
For dappled with the greens are shots of grey
That mark its life and gradual decline.
I’ve found a lucky place to drop my bait
And catch some life before it grows too late.

Paris and Oenone

She asks me what I want, and I respond,
“Your lips, your eyes, your hair, your everything –
Along with a renewal of our bond
And all the sweet assurance that will bring.”
And then she says, “My life, my love, my man,
I will renew our sacred bond, but you
Must with sincerity completely scan
Your heart in this. Has it been wholly true?”
“My dove,” I say, “This finger and its ring
Cut from my hand if what I swear to be
The truth be otherwise, and for that fling
Them in the grave of our dead love, I plea.”
“My man, your words go much too far; I sense
You’re much too like a poet in defence.”

The Dream

Of goblin, elf, imp, gnome orc, pixy, troll
And leprechaun and fairy wizard too,
The early trekking hero knew the whole
Great lot of them because he travelled through
And over mountains, forests, deserts, seas
To Mordor, Dis, Asgard or Shangri-la
Or Lotus Lands or fair Hesperides
To conquer, or to bend in certain awe
Of cup or fleece or sacred golden fruit
Or wise man perching on a mountain’s top
Or maiden playing brightly on a lute
Or to his mirrored self and thereat stop,
Adjourning to a place sans strain or strife
And wedded to his memories of life.

Sweets for the Sweet

A leather bag, a silken scarf, perhaps
A bauble made of gold: these are the gifts,
Three very worthwhile gifts; and three sweet maps
To find the heart, or fix it, as it shifts.
The leather’s for its handy usefulness,
The silken flag’s a sign of ownership,
And gold is for its strength and our success:
So stocked, we set the course on our sweet trip.
And so the brute who gave its life as gift,
Or worm, or tunnelled cavern of the world,
All gave before we thought to fix the drift
Of our relationship with silks unfurled
Towards the further spaces of the seas
In endless reach of some sweet happy breeze.

Dread Correspondences

Achilles had Chryseis, whom he took
From dread Apollo’s temple as his own;
But Agamemnon raised his head and shook
His beard – the shame of this is too well known.
Achilles had Patroclus, whom he lost
When in an evil temper he denied
His arms in battle; but the dreadful cost
Was paid by him when Paris hit his stride.
Achilles had his heel and I have you,
For like a pagan priestess stands serene
On high in her dread temple draped in blue,
You rule my heart but do grow somewhat mean.
So forces too dread for that noble Greek
Completely immolate him – and us weak.

Captive

Inscribed into the ring, the eagle flies
Within the limitations of the gold –
Its outstretched wings on bullion skies
Contains the full circumference of the mould.
Sharp eyes attend the one who carries it
And on reverse its talons bite the flesh;
Contained but not contained enough to quit –
Its hunger for you seems forever fresh.
You take it off, and then lock it away
With all the little trinkets you don’t wear;
But eyes and talons follow you all day –
A terror that your wits cannot forswear.
It’s in your thoughts, you say, and nothing real,
And two months later makes your mind its meal.

The Once and Future Claus

There’s tragedy in falling snow and stocks,
And in our confidence as good consumers;
But it’s near Christmas and we have our socks
Arranged for anything that Santa humours.
We do not think that maybe, just perhaps
We’ll get that gift that makes us cry out wow;
Nor do we think that probably this lapse
Of expectation’s longer than for now.
It may not be next year, we know – it may
Not come in two; but this long night before
At last will pass, and open on a day
When everything we’ve wished from every store
Appears before our newly wakeful eyes,
And they will come to us in every size.

Templar Church

I prefer bad weather for this visit;
Intrusions of a vulgar summer day –
Hard rays of light on stone – I ask, “Is it
A proper light for their infernal grey?”
My heart a stormy sea, I pass their door
Into their place of everlasting musk;
My shoes tread gravely on their marble floor,
My nostrils filming with their smear of dusk.
Upon the altar – there – I see the plan
Of their tripartite god enthroned in red:
A father holds himself on cross as man,
A dove appears in flight below his head.
“Why are we here?” they whisper in my ear,
And I reply, “To hear you and adhere.”

The Swan Unbelled

Within the budding meadow is a pond;
Upon that pond a lonely swan now swims;
Within that swan a heart has struck a bond
Within a memory that never dims.
Into the budding meadow walks a girl;
She sees the swan, and he sees her as well;
Around her neck he sees a tiny pearl;
From round his heart she hears a little bell.
A pearl that shines its light into the swan –
A bell that rings the little girl awake –
The light and sound play gaily with the dawn;
The morning sun shines softly on their ache,
Which even now the two have left behind;
The swan flies off and takes her happy mind.

Dante and Beatrice Married

You catch me looking at you all the time
And you return my flabbergasted smile
With something silly spreading to sublime
That then beguiles my thoughts for quite a while.
I trace you as you glide from room to room
While you sneak peeks to catch me as I write:
A game of mouse and cat, or bride and groom,
Is played that day and deep into the night.
You leave our home, off straight away I screen
Your every step from corner store to mall;
Though from your bend of back I know you’ve seen,
I sometimes dash to hide behind a wall.
Then you get home and catch my smile once more;
I’m out of breath, but have you at the door.

Full Homer

I love the word purblind and so I’ve built
This fuzzy poem upon its blurry base,
And though of this I have some halfling guilt,
It’s not enough to stop my tall embrace.
I use it to describe a pretty friend,
To illustrate a lapse of judgement when
Her actions move against her actions’ end
And she forgets that men are merely men.
I point my finger with it, and I sit
Self-satisfied that I’ve thought of it first
And gratified that maybe I have hit
On some half truth and done my very worst.
Too fast, however, she replies, “Blind man,
Just try to get your trash into the can.”

Psychomachia One

With what you know of me, you still can love
This madman who just yesterday again
Called you her name – why can’t I be free of
That form and voice that right now crowds my brain?
You knocked three times my stupid brow
And spoke to it directly, “What’s in there?
I see her there. She’s squatting there. I vow
To break inside and smack her derriere.”
We laughed, of course, and that was that it seemed;
But then my thoughts again were in a knot –
The other one, who now awakened, screamed,
“So if she wants a fight, that’s what she’s got –
For I’m not going anywhere too fast,
And, nutty one, I know who’ll come out last.”

The Fool and his Cat

As the marquis de Carabas I rule
A tarot card embossed with foolishness,
And striding simply there, I am the fool
Of self-assurance mixed with blind excess.
And with me jumps my dog, and there’s my cat:
Remaining far ahead, he’s out of frame;
But please believe he wears his boots and hat
With that insouciance that brought us fame.
For Puss n’ Boots's his name, my title comes
From his clear efforts on my vague behalf;
And as the far-off sounding of the drums
Proclaims their marquis’s near, my walking staff
Becomes again my splendid sword of law –
A ruse maintained by slight of one deft paw.

Puss n' Boots

After I ring the small brass temple bell
I bought at my corner Tibetan store
My cat replies and my emotions swell
When I see him there padding through the door.
He meows once or twice, in constant purr,
And walks directly to the lingering sound;
Then with a paw he reaches for the spur
Of his fixed thoughts and brings the small bell down.
This happens without fail whenever I
So wish to bring about the incident;
Now therefore when I need the world’s reply,
I ring my little bell, quite confident
That in a little corner of my life
I have command while helplessness is rife.

I'm Out of Magic Wands

We reach towards a remedy in this
Grey world of misery and melting ice
And as our toes test out the near abyss
We turn to neighbours for some smart advice.
He shrugs his shoulder and she laughs too loudly;
They look toward the rest but get the same
Vague shrugs and laughs – until a voice says proudly,
“We all should call again on what’s-his-name.”
“Oh, please, come back,” we all say now, “oh, please –
We live in daily fear that warming air,
A madman’s bomb or some doomsday disease
Will get us all and you don't seem to care.”
Then from the clouds their what’s-his-name responds,
“Do it yourself – I’m out of magic wands.”

Ice and the Cockatrice

I would not risk the Cockatrice’s three hairs,
Or eat its flesh, and if I sensed its whistle,
I’d fly with hands gripped firmly over ears –
Nor would I risk the Basilisk’s dread missile.
The Cockatrice and Basilisk do not
On grounds exist, of that I'm much afraid;
If called, I’d fly and hide – I won’t be caught
With armour, sword and shield on some crusade.
But give me skates and ice, I’m there to play
With stick in hand and shoulder set to check,
And, yes, I’ll drop my gloves – their goon will pay
With body blows or wood brushed by his neck.
Don’t ask me why this is, for I don’t know;
It might be that I’m ruled from what’s below.
_________________________________________
I found Earl's original couplet, “So supernatural monsters scare me shitless, / But give me flesh and bone, then check my fitness,” inadequate. Too much of a simple summary of the poem.

But the couplet he settled upon, an unkind critic might say, seems to be a mere continuation of the sestet, in tone and meaning, and ends with the word “below,” where he supposedly gets his sporting mojo.

But if one remembers the octave, where his talk is of his fear of supernatural (or poetic) monsters, the word “below” becomes somewhat ambiguous, for it is now the source of his cowardice as well.

The strength of the poem therefore relies on that word.

So how is the word “below” to be read? Hell, yes, of course, always. And cock and guts, or their mental facsimiles, potency or willpower. But this answers nothing. Why doesn’t he have the guts to enter hell? On earth, one guesses, he’s all right.

One could talk about fear of the unknown. And of how familiarity breeds contempt. And be right.

But the use of such clichés obfuscates what’s truly profound here. As Freud says, the mind is not a place, nor is it a battlefield. It is battle. It is conflict. It is not a place of conflict, it is conflict itself. It is conflict in search of field or place.

Earl's imagined battle with the Cockatrice or Basilisk has no such place, is, as said, imagined. Nothing exists “below” his feet. Earl says, "The Cockatrice and Basilisk do not / On grounds exist." And later, he goes on to say, “But give me skates and ice, I’m there to play.”

The formula? Bravery needs locality. Or something for the feet. “Ice,” in this case.

Guy Barbaroux

The Potency of the Poet

I don’t know where I want to go with this,
But started anyway because I’m bored;
A sonnet's meant for love, and so a kiss
Might perk me up: So I'm now quite adored.
Within this poem, she is my slave for love
And I her lord, of course; she clings, I hold,
While cupids chuckle in their bliss above
And lofty cloud formations snake in gold.
I’ve gone for broke. I’m done. And she’s still here.
But this is still a poem. I’m glad of that.
I turn; and she returns to that place where
I pulled her body from. No need to chat
About her hopes or what we’ll have for dinner,
Which scores – at least, in this – another winner.
_________________________________________

Is this poem misogynist or misanthropic? It’s both, of course, and neither. For the misogynist is the brunt of Adam’s misanthropy.

Adam is a happily married man. He married his nurse. He used to be this man, a narcissist in love with his own misery, but here he, the man he was, is his muse.

Which I suppose is another form of narcissism. But there’s also the woman he calls to life. She is not only a fiction. She was an obsession. May, his wife, knows her quite well. She needed all her healing powers to cure him of her.

“I turn; and she returns to that place where / I pulled her body from.” This is, without doubt, the Orphean moment when Eurydice returns to Hades.

So we’re driven by deep forces here. On the level of the subconscious, the woman is the real woman of his neurosis, but he’s connected her with women from his unconscious: Eurydice, and at the point of orgasm, “While cupids chuckle in their bliss above / And lofty cloud formations snake in gold,” with Aphrodite herself, and therefore the Eternal Feminine.

So with an enemy as powerful as this – and she is an enemy, for she is prepared to yoke “her hopes” to his – the poet’s only refuge is the prosaic from which he ascends in the first quatrain and to which he descends in third quatrain and couplet.

His medium, poetry, therefore, is also just as dangerous. For when he writes, he calls into being those archetypes of which he is both enamoured and terrified.

So this is the engine of his life: In the centre is a magnet that turns when its two attendant magnets turn. On its right is the magnet of narcissism (+) and self-loathing (-), on the left that of the attraction (+) and revulsion (-) he feels for women and poetry. It’s the kind of contraption that pushes an electric car. And it’s why Adam gets up in the morning.

It’s no surprise that stillness characterises his moments with May. The Pieta not in marble, but in flesh and blood, in Adam and May.

Guy Barbaroux

The Zeitgeist, Googled and Found

Please put me in contact with our Zeitgeist –
I Googled it and got some of their ware
With lists of this and that, and, Jesus Christ,
I didn’t see my name or your name there.
And so I searched a video so named
That spoke of banks, the 9/11 scheme,
And talked of you, O Christ, where it was claimed
That everything you are is patch and seam.
So you have been erased, but that leaves me
And where I sit in these dismissive times....
That’s it, that word: dismissive – now I see,
Dismemberment's our ethos, for all crimes
Will be revealed, condemned, and we will rise,
With felons broken right before our eyes.

My Main Squeeze

Squeezed here inside my car where I feel free
To follow where the road beneath me leads,
When the entire world appears to be
Subservient to my discharging speeds.
My car is red and smooth, constructed low,
And every line’s so curved – obedient,
It goes to where my mind tells it to go
With absolute, immediate consent.
So why can’t women be more like my car?
Why do they fail when I put on the gas?
They’re red and smooth and curved and are –
If well maintained – as pretty as this lass,
Who even now tells me to pay attention,
For there is something wrong with her suspension.

The Scream Confined

A sonnet helps me put my mind in order,
And so I don’t experiment too much,
For I am told that I have thoughts that border
On lunacy, and more than just a touch.
So I contain myself to fourteen lines
And each line touches firmly on five beats,
And this straight regularity confines
Much as a jacket just as straight defeats.
But then the volta comes and I go mad
With those contrary thoughts that make me smile
Until the second volta leaves me sad
That all will shortly end, for down the aisle
Two quickly rhyming lines walk to be wedded
And both are just as quickly then embedded.

Saints Michael and Ignatius

Make every day a Michaelmas; we pray,
We humbly pray, O prince of Heaven’s Host,
Who in high battle taught him to obey
That puissance that he strove with pride to boast.
Did you, O prince, cast into hell all who
Now wander this wide country to condemn
All to the snares of wickedness, to do
To all what you in force once did to them?
The answer comes from yet another voice
That gathered yet another army’s might
To do in earthy battle what by choice
You did above in that primordial fight:
“Saint Michael, you have gathered me in this
What I, Ignatius, do for land and bliss.”