SEPTEMBER SNOW

I noticed it was snowing, dirty snow,
big, fat flakes drifting slowly down.
I was not surprised, although it wasn’t cold—
such strange things have been known 
to happen.  Now I was dreaming, now
I was dancing in the snow, head thrown 
back, arms out, hands open 
to catch the flakes that floated down,
warm and soft on my fingers
like soft, greasy ashes.  And now 
we were running and screaming. . . .

NIRVANA (previously “KARMA,” then “DHARMA”)

No.  I will not consent to return again, 
fooled by a curiosity worse than lewd,
to be sucked through a sweaty pucker into a womb, 
then dropped like a collop into the same old trap again—
So many years of limping pain, frustration, 
humiliation, bullying, shame— 

No, not even if offered as consolation
to race naked in the returning surf, among brothers again—
to bathe, to play, to wrestle... and to love 
the beautiful bodies of young men—  

No.  No.  Desire is pain.  

 

pekbook .com/download/naked-men-on-twitter-quot-think-it-might-be-a-beach-day/aHR0cHM6Ly9wYnMudHdpbWcuY29tL21lZGlhL0M3eGUzaUFVOEFBSHIyNi5qcGc=  

 

. . . AND ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/08/yevgeny-prighozin-putin-enemies-dead/675097/

Prigozhin’s Death Heralds Even More Spectacular Violence

What will others in the Russian president’s circle do now?

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/08/28/prigozhin-putin-state-funeral-wagner/

Putin, stained by Prigozhin’s death, faces calls for military funeral

 

 

VIEW OF THE MISSISSIPPI FROM FORT HILL AT THE VICKSBURG BATTLEFIELD NATIONAL PARK AND CEMETERY

 

     From the wide, meandering drive

     you look away, beyond the lines

     of white anonymous markers,

     down to where the barges

     are pushing past the piers

     as slowly as the hour hand of a clock,

     while tiny speedboats whine

     as they skip up and down

     like mosquitoes, skimming the water

     to better their times.

     The digital tour guide at Fort Hill

     makes it a point to say

     that the River isn’t what you see 

     (“the River” around here

     always means the Mississippi)

     but the Yazoo Diversion Canal,

     an artificial waterway

     created by the Army Corps of Engineers

     after the River slid away

     and left Vicksburg behind.

     The real Mississippi winds, unwinds

     like a snake uncoiling, on the other side

     of the shifting sandbars and temporary islands

     that lie in the distance, looking like solid ground

     crowded with undergrowth, cottonwood, willow, and pine.

     Several hours farther down,

     at New Roads in the Parish of Pointe Coupée,

     the River once twisted itself out this way.

     On the farther, higher side

     they made the old bed into a resort,

     a playground for aquatic sports,

     called False River Lake.

     They have sail-boating and water-skiing there,

     and trolling, and fishing from the shore,

     lined now with substantial real estate.

     It all sounds fairly dull and safe,

     and perhaps it is.

     Perhaps there’s a point to be made

     for placidity, though: 

     Sometimes you hear someone say,

     with ironic politesse,

     “May you live in interesting times,”

     —when they don’t mean to bless.

     But more than once the River has

     struck at a town:

     of that rip-roaring sinful place,

     Natchez-under-the-Hill,

     there isn’t much left now;

     and at Grand Gulf,

     half an hour south of here,

     fifty-six blocks of busy, sleepy people

     sloughed off into the water

     bit by bit, without a sound.

     Only a few minutes farther away,

     antique and beautiful,

     the clock-faced steeples of Port Gibson wait,

     set back decorously not-too-near

     the soft slopes of the Little Bayou Pierre,

     a minor tributary that everyone there

     calls “By a Pier.”

     They watch the town’s two bridges—

     the skeletal old one, mostly struck down

     in the great storm of  ’Fifty-Four,

     and the squat, heavy new one, that brute mass and weight

     have held in place so far.

_______________________________________________________

https://mississippiriver.natgeotourism.com/content /historic-downtown-vicksburgmspa915737884acb72d3

ABOVE THE EAVES

 

Slight acrobat, it

darts, veers, and pirouettes

on the edge of sight,

teeters for a split 

second on the tip

of a wing and dis-

appears

           —not play, not display,

but insight—skill

intent on survival,

that makes us feel

how far away 

the top of the sky

 

 

 

 https://www.pinterest.com/pin/699043173402181376/

 

GRAFFITI

“The Critic and the Lawyer but behold

The baser side of literature and life.”

                        Byron, Don Juan, X: 14: 1-2

 

Sincerity’s no guarantee

Of art—of poetry least of all.

Sincerity’s what confessors hear,

It’s what the nurse and medic see,

Or worse. I sometimes feel

The greatest sincerity’s what we read

On restroom walls:

“I want to . . .”  “Call me . . .”

“Whoever reads this is a queer . . .”

Call it ignorance; call it rage,

The major symptom of our age;

Call it, if you will, sheer lust

Perverted and fertilized by disgust,

It shows the basest need

Constrained by fear, and thus

It is sincere, even when in part

Unconscious.

But . . . art?

Anonymous, they bare their need,

Evading responsibility

Through secrecy in public,

As, behind doors, lawyers trick,

Yet magnify the law:

“The Law exists apart.”

“The Law exacts awe.”

“Law does not swerve.”

And, like graffiti, like all means 

Self-elevated into ends,

The law remains erect

Long after those ends it was meant to serve

Are not. 

The law does not respect

The sticky issues of the human heart,

Which usually turn out to be,

On close examination, rather raw,
As in graffiti—

The raw material, in fact, of art.

True practitioners and those who know,

On the other hand, elaborate from need,

But know that need is not enough

Without the skill to take the rough

And change and mold, or make it flow,

Make stubborn forms or passing waves,

That startle while they captivate,

Releasing us as they enslave.

But even so,
Like law and graffiti both,

It’s a necessity—

I mean art merely,

Not sincerity.

It helps us live with one another

And with ourselves—if not like brothers,

At least in a natural sort of order

While we remain, oh so sincerely,

Selfish, unloving, cowardly. 

 

 

 

 

 

  http:// nothingbuttalent. net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/toilet-graffiti01.jpg

 

 

  http:// monsieurlabette. tumblr.com/image/141438790376