This tumble-down swirl-you-down take-you-out
Throughout. Keeps shoulders tensed, back crinkled curved.
“Just want this to end” blank quiet-shout pout.
“Can’t take another day of this” mind swerved
To steal its rest from half-rendered daydreams
Of success, escape, romance, shaking off.
All tired: shoulders heart knees toes and schemes.
“What is the forward way? Please help me” soft
Oh never mind anymore, so it goes
“Just someone to talk to” in lusts implodes
We walked you rowhouse home. The sun shone bright
on skinny arms and soft much-freckled squint.
Pale thirteen; voice gawk-creaking, roundsure-eyed:
“I love to football! Ev’ry thing ’bout it!:
To don the pads and cleats; the damp grass smell;
I love to run, to hit, break tackles, juke!”
I, something shorter but less spindle-ish
and harder than wobbly, uncentered you,
did nod in sunshine, bricks red alley gray,
supposing myself a greater bird of prey.
I see you’ve grown up rugged sure
with muscles, stamina, fire power
A warrior trained and tested too
Hmmm.
I feel us all time-arcing through.
I was wrong; haughty little boys
are always misinformed by impulse
broad and shallow, born in the body,
stamped in the brain, forgetful of,
negligent to,
distant from
the soul
and its wise
steady careful counsel
The Conflict of Convictions / Herman Melville / 1860-1
[see end of poem for Melville’s note]
On starry heights
A bugle wails the long recall;
Derision stirs the deep abyss,
Heaven’s ominous silence over all.
Return, return, O eager Hope,
And face man’s latter fall.
Events, they make the dreamers quail;
Satan’s old age is strong and hale,
A disciplined captain, gray in skill,
And Raphael a white enthusiast still;
Dashed aims, at which Christ’s martyrs pale,
Shall Mammon’s slaves fulfill?
(Dismantle the fort,
Cut down the fleet—
Battle no more shall be!
While the fields for fight in æons to come
Congeal beneath the sea.)
The terrors of truth and dart of death
To faith alike are vain;
Though comets, gone a thousand years,
Return again,
Patient she stands—she can no more—
And waits, nor heeds she waxes hoar.
(At a stony gate,
A statue of stone,
Weed overgrown—
Long ’twill wait!)
But God his former mind retains,
Confirms his old decree;
The generations are inured to pains,
And strong Necessity
Surges, and heaps Time’s strand with wrecks.
The People spread like a weedy grass,
The thing they will they bring to pass,
And prosper to the apoplex.
The rout it herds around the heart,
The ghost is yielded in the gloom;
Kings wag their heads—Now save thyself
Who wouldst rebuild the world in bloom.
(Tide-mark
And top of the ages’ strike,
Verge where they called the world to come,
The last advance of life—
Ha ha, the rust on the Iron Dome!)
Nay, but revere the hid event;
In the cloud a sword is girded on,
I mark a twinkling in the tent
Of Michael the warrior one.
Senior wisdom suits not now,
The light is on the youthful brow.
(Ay, in caves the miner see:
His forehead bears a blinking light;
Darkness so he feebly braves—
A meagre wight!)
But He who rules is old—is old;
Ah! faith is warm, but heaven with age is cold.
(Ho ho, ho ho,
The cloistered doubt
Of olden times
Is blurted out!)
The Ancient of Days forever is young,
Forever the scheme of Nature thrives;
I know a wind in purpose strong—
It spins against the way it drives.
What if the gulfs their slimed foundations bare?
So deep must the stones be hurled
Whereon the throes of ages rear
The final empire and the happier world.
(The poor old Past,
The Future’s slave,
She drudged through pain and crime
To bring about the blissful Prime,
Then—perished. There’s a grave!)
Power unanointed may come—
Dominion (unsought by the free)
And the Iron Dome,
Stronger for stress and strain,
Fling her huge shadow athwart the main;
But the Founders’ dream shall flee.
Agee after age shall be
As age after age has been,
(From man’s changeless heart their way they win);
And death be busy with all who strive—
Death, with silent negative.
Yea, and Nay—
Each hath his say;
But God He keeps the middle way.
None was by
When He spread the sky;
Wisdom is vain, and prophesy.
Footnote attached to the title:
[1] The gloomy lull of the early part of the winter of 1860-1, seeming big with final disaster to our institutions, affected some minds that believed them to constitute one of the great hopes of mankind, much as the eclipse which came over the promise of the first French Revolution affected kindred natures, throwing them for the time into doubt and misgivings universal.
[Playing with poems published by Herman Melville in his 1866 “Battle Pieces & Aspects of the War”]
Misgivings / Herman Melville / 1860
When ocean-clouds over inland hills
Sweep storming in late autumn brown,
And horror the sodden valley fills,
And the spire falls crashing in the town,
I muse upon my country’s ills—
The tempest bursting from the waste of Time
On the world’s fairest hope linked with man’s foulest crime.
Nature’s dark side is heeded now—
(Ah! optimist-cheer disheartened flown)—
A child may read the moody brow
Of yon black mountain lone.
With shouts the torrents down the gorges go,
And storms are formed behind the storm we feel:
The hemlock shakes in the rafter, the oak in the driving keel.
…..
Poem’s structure by verse:
8 syllables (weak, strong … strong–but with a “strong strong weak weak in the middle” )
8 syllables (weak … strong–but with a “weak weak strong strong” in the center)
9 syllables (weak … strong–but with a “weak weak” towards the front)
10 syllables (these verses are iambic, but not strictly so anywhere except the edges)
8
10
12
8
9
9
6
10
10
15
The rhyming is ababa, then aa, then ababa, then aa
A Response Poem by AMW or BW, as the case may be
Maryland, 1795
I’m just as white and free as you
demands brash backwoods hunterboy.
He’s right! he’s right about that too,
agrees rich family man, his wife much annoyed
by no-account with oldest daughter’s eye
oh silly woman!: no better suits pass by
our farflung, rifle-cracked bear-thick glade
(aged thirty-five; a milk cow, five chickens cooped,
a shack with rug and hearth, wife, saw blade,
plus shovel, ax, some maxims ready looped–
rich worldly patriarch, good Christian soul.)
I’m just as white and free as you
Joshua fit the battle of Jerico
and the walls slide trembling through–
pale sand in our blooddark Godly throw.
Joshua won the battle of Jerico
and God said take no wealth, no slaves,
but lick life from every beast and foe.
all Vengeance is mine cry crashing waves.
Two hundred years on,
four thousand years gone,
No identity ever once was real;
but how to stop the mad reeling?
to meet and greet
church potluck style
[Playing with poems published by Herman Melville in his 1866 “Battle Pieces & Aspects of the War”]
The Portent / Herman Melville / 1859
Hanging from the beam,
Slowly swaying (such the law),
Gaunt the shadow on your green,
Shenandoah!
The cut is on the crown
(Lo, John Brown),
And the stabs shall heal no more.
Hidden in the cap
Is the anguish none can draw;
So your future veils its face,
Shenandoah!
But the streaming beard is shown
(Weird John Brown),
The meteor of the war.
….
See bottom of page for a portrait and a snippet from Wikipedia’s entry on the famous anti-pacifistic abolitionist John Brown (May 9, 1800 – December 2, 1859), hanged for leading a raid on a federal armory.
Poem’s structure by verse:
5 syllables (strong, weak, .. strong)
7 syllables (same–all are like that [stressed, unstressed — aka: “trochaic”])
7
4 (this one ends on a weak stress, since the syllablication’s even)
7
5
7
7
4 (again ends on a weak stress)
7
3
7
The rhyming is abab, then aa, then abcdceec (last rhyme is slant)
A Response Poem by AMW or BW, as the case may be
Brooklyn in the light.
Stroll across the bunching crowds.
Sidewalks white, kimonos bright,
Blossoms spread out
Differently shaped and dressed,
colored, coiffed, confessed.
Many phones and T-shirts, though.
Shared too, vaguely, tales and songs.
Children crash about.
I am Saturday alone
(off my phone)
In a sacred loud respite.
……
John Brown in 1859The Shenandoah (left) flows into the Potomac (right) at Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia
From Wikipedia’s “John Brown” entry:
In 1859, Brown led a raid on the federal armory at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia (still Virginia at the time) to start a liberation movement among the slaves there. He seized the armory, but seven people were killed and ten or more were injured. He intended to arm slaves with weapons from the arsenal, but the attack failed. Within 36 hours, Brown’s men had fled or been killed or captured by local farmers, militiamen, and US Marines led by Robert E. Lee. He was tried for treason against the Commonwealth of Virginia, the murder of five men, and inciting a slave insurrection, was found guilty on all counts, and was hanged.
Historians agree that the Harpers Ferry raid escalated tensions which led to the South’s secession a year later and the American Civil War.
…
The Poem response is an AMW copyright;
“John Brown” article snippet belongs to Wikipedia’s entry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Brown_(abolitionist);
Melville’s poem & the John Brown photo are both public domain;
THe Harper’s Ferry photo is by Morgan Nuzzo (I found it living in this Wikipedia cubby: href=”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harpers_Ferry,_West_Virginia#/media/File:HarpersFerry_panorama.jpg”>)
It drags you down
It folds your shoulders in
It pinches your face in half.
It disassembles you and laughs you off.
It hurts it hurts it hurts.
Will someone listen to you?
Will someone hold you now?
Before it is too late?
It hurts all the time
Like a gong ringing
through your every spot
Make it stop
But you can’t
Will someone please help?
They can’t get down there,
They can’t get to the split
open oozing vibrating scream
They can’t get there and you can’t either
All alone here where the wind blows
and the shutters rattle
and the bogie man rustles with the shadows.
It gets old
It gets dull
It becomes always strange
like a drug trip
separated from the world
aloof because the hurt
is louder than their talk
anyway
Let me go make it stop
all the time like tentacles
wrapped around and tugging down
You hate it but who cares?
So quiet here by the orange trickling water
coming down the shattered shale shelving
so quiet when there’s nothing to say.
Zini chases the edges, like the elders had instructed.
Everything moved as one as she slipped across the waters.
The river so wide as a lake out here, far from town.
Zini’s town of bamboo rafts and shacks floats silent
off in the rounded distance, at the edges of her eyes.
She follows slow-spreading green round a rocky bend.
A water skater, a river chaser, she-who-belongs.
How easy it is when you can!
Wide flapped froggy feet fold up down the center,
thin black legs stab into the wet, push against,
jam her spindly body the otherwise, setting up
a falling slice from that side’s folded flipper.
Nothing compares to water skating,
the concentration of never-hating.
On and on she flies, forgetting everything but
her motion, calm, the swoosh of her water strikes.
Deep inside, pushing out from within, searching
for the edges, to stay within yet go beyond,
to chase the edges, catch the light, know all joy.
The village out of sight when she unfolds her flipper feet
and skids to a spraying stop, standing breathless on wide
strange crinkling river flowing to a sea she’s never seen.
On the banks the wood people gather timber in their way,
many on the lines and one flailing at the base with
two hatchets, steel glinting in a blur of passion.
A youth rests upon a rock, his short legs crossed.
She waves her thin webbed hand, he, long arm already
as thick as her torso, waves a broad flat hand.
A strange people, strong, swift in the trees,
but slow and clumsy on ground and water.
Not unpleasant, but a bit dull, divided
as they are from the magic of the river.
And, though it’s undignified to dwell
upon such matters, rather unsightly:
covered in coarse orange-brown hairs
everywhere except on their big round faces.
But, of course, it isn’t their fault
that they’re neither beautiful nor fit
to run the rivers.
One should rather focus on gratitude
for the wonderful blessing of belonging
to those who rule the rivers,
who travel to the sea.
At dinner Mama wonders what Zini’s seen and heard.
A squick-squick bird diving beneath the water
coming up empty-beaked.
The wood people hunting timber.
Waterhoops rolling wild–she had to jump over them.
Mama tsks.
Father shakes his head.
When will the council address this matter?
The waterhoops are outgrabe!
I wonder where the path within me dwells.
A compact promise guiding hollow craft.
Bold image, arched from goal, through sinks and swells,
to wise and wondrous magic–God’s deep laugh
That rings and widens, roams and reigns, across
these endless spaces whereo’r stride long legs,
with cocked arms spinning, they themselves do toss
and haunt my hopes–as jagged as smashed-in eggs.
Dear God, remove this mange from this slow heart,
that we may rise to play a greater part.
The night deep clear,
the moon soft yellow;
Leaves twist curled
They tumble on down
Me standing cool
on crackup corner
crosswise Bill Curtis
and his bar, just yonder
What makes old bulldog bark?
Makes her bow, lunge and start?
Two gamblers tall, in natty hats
full of drink, commence a spat.
Stagger Lee and Billy Lyons
Carriage driver and levee hand
Rascal pimp and his pal Billy
Fresh thirty versus five and twenty
Eighteen Ninety Five
in colored town
One backs the Dems,
one the Republicans
I can’t do it no more.
The hurt’s too much.
I need two sweet ears
that can hear such
as I aim to clear.
But there ain’t no one
who I can get through to.
There just ain’t nobody
I’ll sing my boo hoohs to
by the bank of old muddy
where I solemnlike stay.
My fingers done worn flat
My voice gone all crusted
Don’t nobody care none
I’m sleeping neath rusted
old railway signs done
in fade golds and black
But I recall that night when
fool Stagger Lee got drunk and
shot Billy Lyons in the gut then
reached o’r and snatched back
his tall white Stetson hat.
Yes, Stagger Lee shot Billy
Poor Billy lingered days
His wife and child prayed
through wide disfigured wails
while Stag dreamed of cards and cons
in a dank hard prison cell.
Now I’m limping off my time
by the curving glinting edge
stricken weak by a crime
I cannot ever find.
Still it stakes its wedge
between me and my own mind.
Doubled over, hand on you tummy
like its been torn open and the pain and blood overpower.
But you’re not even wounded at all,
nor do you have a stomach ache.
What has you feeling this way?
I’d advise if I had advice.
