Sandburg’s Prophecy

Last week, I took the boys pond fishing in my hometown. As we sat on the banks, we watched the A-10s (a military plane) practicing their maneuvers.

My mother sat on the bank, told me that she’d spoken with a nurse on the base. “We vaccinated 500 more this week–malaria, yellow fever, anthrax,” the nurse said. My mother asked where the soldiers were headed. “Can’t tell you,” the nurse said, “but you should see them. They’re only boys.”

“Sandburg’s Prophecy”*

Lakeside, the Warthogs fly–
touch and go; touch and go–
rotary cannons jutting from
snarled teeth like a cigarette,
smoking.

They cut clouds, turn wings
exposing bellies to the setting
or rising sun (I cannot tell
which anymore), reap only the
wind.

They are the offspring of our
desires, the worst or best
of our natures embodied (I
cannot tell which anymore),
thrusting.

Of my country, the worst men
will say is this: you gave
my children a war without end,
conscripted them before their
times.

Of my country, the best men
will say is this: you held
for one day longer, born up
on the wings of Warthogs and
eagles.

__________

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*The above poem is an homage to Carl Sandburg’s “They Will Say.”

War Eagle Mill

“You dozed, and watched the night revealing
The thousand sordid images
of which your soul was constituted;
They flickered against the ceiling.”
~T.S. Eliot, “Preludes”

War Eagle Mill

The road rises against Ozark hills,
past the War Eagle mill to the caverns.
Farm houses rise over creek beds littered
with cold cellars, they which stand waist high,
sandstone reaching from the dugout earth.
Cedar shakes cover, maybe, mason jars of
canned jellies, jams, potted meats.
Maybe, though, they are empty,
relics of other days.

“Forces use chemical weapons against
opposition forces,” the radio breaks.
It is an omen of changing winds, the
rising tides that lift all ships, push
toward the jutting hawksbill crag.
Amber says, “I don’t want my boys
warring,” as if conversing with the fates,
or God. The fates are silent, empty too.
The valley, it is late coming green.

Where once there was fellowship,
now there are the trembling portents.
Where once there was morning beauty, new,
now there are sordid images, flickering by candle.
Where once there were child’s games, cowboys
versus Nazis, now there are only captors.
The waterwheel turns still, water pushing,
pushing, always pushing. To everything there
is a season; to everything a turn.

****

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Cover photo by Muffet via Creative Commons.

LET’S GO CRAZY–A POTPOURRI PURPLE POETRY PROMPT OF TYRANNASAURICAL PROPORTIONS

As I considered material for our last purple poetry prompt, visions of Barney–that short-armed, purple, sing-songy dinosaur–haunted me. He, dancing in my mind’s eye, musing that classic children’s standard, “I love you, you love me, we’re a happy family.”

“Shut up, Barney!” I thought. “There are serious poets that visit these parts and they want serious prompts.”

He was unrelenting, kept singing his song, like a drill bit boring into skull.

Determined to write a prompt involving something more substantive than a dancing dinosaur, I wracked my brain for purple material, settling, finally on exploring the historical context of the nursery rhyme of Little Jack Horner. Remember Mr. Horner, that precocious boy with a knack for extracting whole plumbs from a pie using nothing but his thumb? The oft-forgotten back-story of the nursery rhyme finds its roots in bribery, treachery, and King Henry VIII’s quest to subvert the Catholic Church and take its gold. And just as I was beginning to tease out the nuances of this plum poetry prompt…

“I love you, you love me….” Barney usurped the story with his own utopistic notions.

*For more about the manner in which Barney’s intrusions cramp my style, follow me over to Tweetspeak today. And jump into the mix!

On the Occasion of Mike’s 40th Birthday (or “Gather You Fires”)

There are band of good people that I know, and Mike Rusch is the chief among them. I’ve penned this for him, and them, on the occasion of his 40th birthday.
I promised poetry this year. Here’s one of the first installments.

*****

There are kin-lights recognizable
in the best brothers–
the spark of saints’ names spoken,
wive’s held like own Aphrodites,
Somali-starred stories,
the memory of the frailest soul
lost,
the mention of village where
daughters, nieces, neighbors, sisters
were born into an acquired taste for
air, for our wounded lungs, for the
notion of forgotten,
remembered.

Gather you fires–
awake in the collective–
rare though it gathers,
short though it’s lived,
small though it seems;
We are.

Lights are again and again,
like the ashes of last year’s
Lent, and next year’s,
the dogged birthmarking
of our natures, best and worst,
together.

Gather you fires best–
awake in the collective–
in the feasting, in
communion wine, and there
find that we together are
more than ashes.
We are,
a briliant, unforgettable
constellation.

Purple Plays (An Associative Poetry Prompt)

Our pigmentatious affectations seem lacking for the colors purple and indigo. Sure, Prince danced in a purple rain, but that was hardly cliché. Who’d ever heard of colored rain until the release of his 1984 album?

There is also Violet Beauregard, the ill-mannered, hyper-competitive tomboy in Roald Dahl’s classic, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. In the 1971 film adaptation of the classic, Violet disregards the warnings of Willy Wonka and chews an experimental three-course gum until she is transformed into a one-ton indigo blueberry. Luckily, Violet ultimately finds relief on the factory juicing floor at the hands of the orange-skinned, green-haired Oompa Loompa crew. Even still, I’m not sure exactly why Violet was painted in indigo hues, nor why Dahl chose to give her the colorful name. Of course, I’ll admit that I may be unaware of some long-held association between impertinent children and the colors violet or indigo.

The above is an excerpt from my poetry prompt for Tweetspeak Poetry today. Stop in and try your hand at a bit purple poetry.