The merry-go-round goes round
and around the roundel.
The merriment ends in a clanking,
coruscating, whimpering crash.
Footsteps, tentative, team
with illusions of brightness,
sunny days, and marigolds
dragons used to hoard
to keep away the hoarfrost.
Their crystals shatter in the sun
and shards of beauty litter the ground.
Footsteps, carelessly grind the shards
to the melody the merry-go-round
continues to play.
It’s Spring and the weeds are growing
and growing and growing
giving life to gopher holes and ground squirrels,
twisted ankles, star thistle, puncture vines.
I cut them down.
A wasted tank of gasoline pollutes
the air.
I cut them down.
A momentary pause
and then they’re higher than before.
I cut them down.
The riding lawnmower breaks
and sits abandoned in the field.
The weeds are choking out the world.
They cut me down.
So file this under the heading: The inchoate ramblings of a grey-haired loon. What? You thought I should have started with “Hwaet”? Nobody has started with Hwaet since Beowulf. So you ever wondered about “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and why Coleridge spelled rhyme rime? I must confess that I never did. After all, rime is a perfectly acceptable spelling of rhyme. And yes, I knew the alternative definition of rime, but I never made the connection with rime instead of rhyme until, for some unknown reason, I happened across rime in the O.E.D. “Rime: Hoar-frost; a chill mist or fog; frost bitten. To cover with rime or hoar-frost. To freeze with hoar-frost. To count, number, reckon, recount. To make clearer or vacant for one; To clear for oneself; to remove, clear away. to withdraw, depart, retire. To stretch (oneself).To pry into.” So now I get the title “The RIME of the Ancient Marnier.” It has nothing to do with the poem rhyming or at least not only with the poem rhyming. Coleridge is talking about the rime of the ancient mariner, that bozo that stoppeth one of three and made him miss the wedding. So here I am, a grey-haired loon (Don’t you love the line, “Unhand me, grey-haired loon”? One of my favorite lines in all of poetry. It ought to be listed right up there with “Call me Ishmael” and “It is a truth universally acknowledged . . . .”) and still am capable of learning something new. O.K. cut me some slack. It’s two o’clock in the dead of night. The air is still. The moon is down. Even the cars on the freeway three miles away have gone to sleep and I am awake and musing about another grey-haired loon.
It is poetry you’re hearing.
Listen to the poetry.
Listen to the poetry!
LISTEN!
TO
THE
POETRY!
Look at the way the words are sitting on the page.
Look at the way it’s punctuated and or
punctuated weirdly, wrongly “ differently. Don’t
you understand that just the punctuation just
the way it sits there on a page makes
what you’re hearing/seeing poetry? This is a poem.
a poem. a poem. a poem.
A POEM!
you are hearing you are seeing.
In terms that even you can understand, you might be sitting
in a smoky bar or
and sitting on a hard-backed wooden chair
and flaking, spacing out because
you’re sucking on your fifteenth beer or guzzling
Jim Beam,
but a “poet” stands before you
DECLAIMING, dreaming, dreary eyed
and angry AND you will not understand,
refuse to understand it’s poetry. Still you
are not listening you cannot hear the
POETRY.
and You
and other drunken, thoughtless, mindless dolts do not/will not understand
refuse to understand
the poetry the poetry the poetry the poetry the poetry
refuse to understand that this is poetry.
My husband, if he comes, will bring raw milk.
The stuff they sell in stores I wouldn’t feed
our pigs. We’re renting; sort of like a work
exchange. We only have a hundred head
and they belong to Mr. Peterson.
But all the calves are ours. He only wants
the milk and us to keep the place until
it’s sold. I hope it doesn’t bother you
to look at me but while I’m camping, well
it hurts to wear my wig. My husband bought
it. See, my hair just doesn’t seem to grow
as quickly over steel as over bone.
The doctor said I was suppose to stay
in bed, but bed is boring, lonely too.
So I convinced my husband I could rest
while camping just as well as I could rest
at home. We spent our honeymoon right here.
I hadn’t camped before but with the cost
of everything and being out of work,
my husband thought that this would be the best
that we could do. And as it happened, he
was right. We camped beside the stream. I loved
the time we were together, here. You sure
it doesn’t bother you to look at me?
Fort-seven years and it hasn’t all been poetry.
Much has been prosaic.
It’s been going to bed at night
and waking up in the morning.
It’s been the trash bins being emptied on Tuesday mornings
and losing the continual fights with the weeds and the gophers,
ground squirrels, and even the occasional skunk.
Much of the time has not been memorable.
It’s simply been the ticking of the days and weeks and years,
the cancers, and the gradually getting old.
But there has also been the bonding of a puppy
even though we lost her way too soon.
There’s been falling in love with an empty piece of ground
in a god-forsaken place where we couldn’t imagine living
and building a home and a life there.
It’s been building a library and growing frustrating gardens
and growing a life-time of love.
It’s been making and growing a child, a joy and a delight,
to always and forever hold in our hearts.
It’s been forty-seven years of loving/living with my best friend.
A groaning mist? A glowing, groaning mist?
A clown? This isn’t leading anywhere.
Agronomist! It’s dark, the glowing mist
envelops everything. A clammy mist?
A clumsy mist? A calming mist amidst
the murder spree? Amidst the spray of mud?
Of blood? The tintinnabulation of
the groaning, misty, blood encrusted mud
is crud. The groan is hidden by the mist?
Is hidden in the mist? A midst the mist
a groan? And bloody ground? The mist can’t hide
the bloody ground? A groaning in the mist?
A glowing mist amidst the bloody ground?
A dead agronomist? His blood is missed?
His blood amidst the circles on the ground?
The dead agronomist is lying in the mist?
The dead agronomist is lying there amidst
demonic circles, pentangles. Got it.
Done.
Today is the fourth day of NaPoWriMo and this might be my all-time favorite poem, although my high school students might think it should be titled, “Another Simola Lecture.”
Reading a Poem
Today the poem deals with the surreal.
So, where is Joseph when we need him most?
Just bear with me a minute. Don’t get lost
in the deep grass. There really is a point
to all of this then I’ll get back to Joe
or Joey. OK, back to Joseph then,
but take a closer look at this first line
and tell me how you’d read it. Would you say
So WHERE is JOseph WHEN we NEED him MOST,
a straight iambic line when read this way
or would it make more sense to read the line
SO, WHERE is JOseph when we NEED HIM MOST
or possibly the line is better read
so WHERE is JOseph when WE NEED him MOST?
And if it isn’t like I read it first,
is it iambic still or something else?
And did the poet goof and screw it up?
Or, for example, take this famous line,
(You knew I’d bring in Chaucer, didn’t you.)
Whan that April with his shoures soote.”
A headless foot that starts a faulty line?
Or is a headless foot acceptable?
Or not to get off track, should we revert
to the belief a barred-L equals “e”
and therefore we should read the line like this:
whan THAT a Prill e WITH his SHOU res SOOT e
and make the line iambic through an through?
Of course there’s still the problem of the schwa,
but that’s a question for another time.
Let’s not get sidetracked. To continue on,
“A chair is sitting in an empty room.”
I am not old and won’t be old for years.
WHO told me so and who am I to say
they’re wrong? Remember when a high school kid
was old, mature, sophisticated, OLD?
Remember when the ancient chariot
arrived to pick us up at forty years?
According to the calendar, I guess,
that wasn’t old but only middle aged,
but geeze Louise at forty I felt old.
My life was all behind me. There was just
a few more years of walking with a cane,
of gumming food, of farts, and hearing aides
before the “old” police would come for me
and put me in a van and cart me off.
I’m almost twice as old as I was then
and thanks to WHO I’m not considered old
and won’t be old for three more years at least.
And who knows, WHO could change its mind again
and say at eighty that I’m just a kid.
Today’s suggested prompt for NaPoWriMo has to deal with Robert Frost’s poem, “The Road Not Taken. “Write a poem about your own road not taken – about a choice of yours that has ‘made all the difference,’ and what might have happened had you made a different choice.” But my poem has taken a different road.
So. Bobby walking down a winding road
decided on a whim, which way to go
and wonders, ages hence, if he screwed up.
He thought he had decided, made a choice.
But life is happenstance. There is no choice.
A car that wouldn’t start. Your life is changed.
The milk is spoiled. There’s an electric storm.
A stranger in a parking lot says hi.
The cafeteria is out of bread.
And always we consider what our lives
would be if only this or that had changed.
If they had hired me, or fired me. . . .
And “if” we tell ourselves, if only this
or something else and everything would change
or would have changed or could have, should have changed.
If only this had happened. If. If. If.
A universal sword of Damocles
But then there is no if. There is no choice.
There’s only is and isn’t after all.
A butterfly will flap her wings or not.
And when she does or doesn’t we will find
our lives are on a very different path.
So Bobby, go ahead and wonder if
you must but just remember where you are
and where you’ve been is only happenstance,
the choices of a thoughtless butterfly.
The road you’re on is not a road you take.
It is a road that you are taken on.
The beat; repetition of the beat,
the beat, the syncopated beat
supposedly enhances dances, dreams.
Supposedly the repetition beat,
rapacious beat, the reoccurring beat
is there to stimulate an empty mind,
to fool imagination, trick the soul,
allowing differences to multiply,
allowing unrestrained ideas to bloom.
Supposedly. Supposedly. The beat,
the banal repetition of the beat
supposedly, supposedly it helps.
Robert Simola 