the scariest part

The scariest part,

the part that sends me to scarlet,

down the path where my uncle planted the

scratchy junipers. Beyond the immortalium

of the shepherds-purse the rabbits love

(and you cant seem to dig up); where the

sparrows in their wizardly, enchanted-ness

think blown paper and unfinished sticks

are food, is that heaven, the soft place

we land when we are dead, is symptomatic

of the lives we have lived here. Most of us

will wobble to our endings. My own mother,

the overmedicated, good witch of the north,

has taken a seat in her slip and bra set,

white as whiskers, the ones she amusingly

wears as homage to Liz Taylor in "Cat". 68

years ago men loved her in this, she would

tell us, suffering. Just thinking of it's excellence,

the long costumes of wit and secrecy, the archaic

patronage of our own sexual selves, our own

fallings in and out of love without witness

and flexibility. Devoid of religious convictions

and the Oil Anointing for the sick,

below the derma of function, an ugly old woman

with supernatural powers will sing gospel songs

from memory, most the persiflage of loss

and being lost. Some the hardships from my own

father who loved his cigarettes and hard whiskey;

he who made the external world spin as if the

giant who held it was mentally deranged. Fact is,

as he would tell me on his dying bed, "the

world and everyone in it is intentionally mad", then

he drifted off into the tremble of "The Bulge" and

again into the detachment of Jim-Crow self-hatred.

Away, is where you, me, we, most of us will go

until the slender waggishness of egoism

bails us out.

Beloveds: I attest, while standing here destitute of both

wit and understanding, that this place, this 'Earth" place,

beyond the pasture land that Goering imagined to be his alone,

will continue on in spite of us. And that the new generations

as well as their enemies will find some appropriate hill

with the lush of hazel branches and hopelessly fall

in love with the woad of the bluest

dyestuff.

Reviews

[alanwgraham]

I will just sit back and soak up the images, they build up an alternative world of word-imagening!
Although I find Goering a surprising denizen of your alternative reality! You have really conjured a world where anything is possible!
I don't know what to say!
Regards,
Alan

[h d e rushin]

thank you so much alanwgraham for those kind comments my friend.....dana

[M. Shepherd]

I am moved and thought-bent by every word, but certain poignant subtleties have stuck onto me like nettles - the word "suffering" after your mother's cheeky and endearing declaration is a faint twang of unexpected pain. This piece is so personal and specific and yet such a broad sweep of worldly musing, you seem to fill every nook and cranny of life with liquid poetry. We are born, we meander through the beauty and hopefully manage to marvel, then we die and the earth experiences other things after us that we'll never know about. I love living when I read you.

[h d e rushin]

I love your reviews Marcie......you are amazing....dana

[Bacchus]

... so good- I'll have to come back to it.

[h d e rushin]

love the name you have chosen "Bacchus". And thank you for those kind remarks.
From Roman mythology Bacchus is the god whose wind, music and ecstatic dance frees his followers from self conscious and care. Great name.....dana

[Ed Hart]

i read all of your reviewers, hoping to gain a little insight into the star-spangled spray of words parading the wit and majesty of your affair with the language, until i finally succumb, and bow again and again like the old chinaman i am at heart

magnificent

[h d e rushin]

You are the hero amongst us dear Ed. The one we look towards for courage beyond the call.
Who, without being order, will jump on the hand-grenade or take the method-logical hill.
Thank you dear friend for those kind remarks....dana

[Corset]

damn...you have out done even yourself with this one my friend, this one... you may whisper at my deathbed while you hold my hand and divvy up anything I have worth wearing. XOXO

[h d e rushin]

thank you my dear love.....dana

[Beccy]

You till the fertile soil assiduously; and always the word crop is delightful and abundant.

We are only a blink in the eye of the creator, but oh, what a technicolor blink it can be if we properly open and attune our senses.

'where the sparrows in their wizardly, enchanted-ness
think blown paper and unfinished sticks
are food, is that heaven, the soft place
we land when we are dead.'

Indeed, as WK says, you make poetry worthwhile.

Beccy

[h d e rushin]

thank you my dearest Beccy....always happy to so that you stopped by.....dana

[W.k.kortas]

What marvelous, marvelous range this piece has--the seep of an epic, but grounded in the detail of our workaday lives, our lesser dids and didn't. Making poetry worthwhile, indeed!

[h d e rushin]

you know i'm going crazy.....I mean my psychiatrist has said as much. I don't think she likes poetry at all, but he likes to amuse me with his knowledge of it. Kinda like that Sexton-John Holmes relationship with those constant undercurrents of sexuality. She implores me to keep writing
for the sake of sanity not art. Nods approvingly when she thinks I've hit a nerve.

and perhaps that is the scariest part of doing anything wk. Finding out the things we love the most about all things. The constant sorting out process, the irrevocable half notes of "music". Roland Kirk called them "bright moments" while Miles refused to name them at all. Thank you my dear friend for finding me again, Ambien infused as I am these days.....dana

[jacob erin-cilberto]

our egos might just make us fall into the abyss...but yes...as george carlin once said.."we give ourselves too much credit...no matter what we do to this planet...when we are gone...it will still be here, and refurbishing herself"

and what is heaven? and will there be birds? and will it be a garden of eden or will we be in some place with garbage blowing around on desolate streets...and sit wondering why this is.

ego or not we will die...
i really like the allusion to Liz...i could picture here...very well...in the mother...

quite a piece of writing this is.

[h d e rushin]

sometimes I sit a think of poems as a slippery thing with smooth sides that I can slip past you.
read moresometimes I sit a think of poems as a slippery thing with smooth sides that I can slip past you.
But you can see thru everything Jacob. I watched for the umpteenth time "Cat on a Hot tin Roof" just to see Elizabeth Taylor in that white slip again. In those years she was remarkably beautiful.
Thank you my friend for those kind remarks....dana

[Rosalind Gale]

What a wonderful work, Liz Taylor ... the use of "68" Goering (and scarlet) - awash with thoughts, some half-felt, others right up in the grill. You know I love your writing, you know because I tell you when I can. You help make poetry worthwhile.

-x-

[h d e rushin]

thank you Rosalind for those kind remarks. I sit and read your poems just to try and decode
the poetic equations of them. I made the same parallel to Plath who I stumbled on years after her death and for years wondered what she meant by this or that. It really doesn't matter now what she meant. Nor does anything mean what it use to mean anymore. While walking in the park the other day with the sun warming the earth, I spotted the swing set, the big ones without the
safety bar for the younger kids and sat there until my feet barely hit the ground. It wasn't long before I started swinging again like I did when I was a child. What I mean Rosalind is that,
sometimes you just know what a good ride feels like.

I love you so much.....dana