Kissy Blissy Smooch Hooch

Tags

appreciation of fellow poets, dissolution, Elaine Stirling, nostalgia, poetry, utopia

—or the disastrous 2012 bottling of 
Talent Crush, Talent Crush Lite,
and Talent Crush Zero

Image by Arany Sas (Golden Eagle) Kotomi Creations

We were seventeen souls strong
starting out, give or take a boob
or two: disenchanted, disappointed,
ragtag talents, bruised and bounced
from one too many bars and marriages
and corner offices with views.

Let’s all write poems, said the loping
charismatic one. I don’t know how,
said another. Will you show me? said
a third, and the one said, sure, and
hung a poem naked over the fence.
We all gathered round to admire.

None of us knew, I’m quite sure we
didn’t, that poetry is fertile ground;
it’s the ovulating womb of language,
and brushing up against true verse
unprotected is almost guaranteed
to birth baby poems.

That first stormy spring we hatched
and raised forty-seven poets, adopted
twenty-three, and by mid-summer
our pastures were bursting, our cups
running over with talent crush berry
bushes; and every new poem, as the
season wore on, though diminishing
in taste, swizzled and glimmered like
pop rock candy, and no one complained
or mentioned the degradation because
we were kissing and blissing and
drawing little smoochy hearts around
everybody’s work—and wasn’t it fun
to know we’re all one, ascending
together like bubbles in root beer,
in no-name champagne?

I can’t remember which of us
decided to bottle what we grew—
or maybe I do and I’m just not telling.
anyway, we called our poetic soda
Talent Crush and we sold it in liters,
half liters and full-on literal emperor
size magnums.

Buy your Talent Crush here!
Orgasmic, organic, fake as all hell,
it’ll quench your thirst for the time
it takes us to click like or suck your
money, whichever comes first,
and we’ll even publish your rot—erk,
I mean, your whirling, swizzling free
versing hooch in an anthology that’ll
only set you back forty bucks for
your own limited edition faux
leather copy, including
whip and gags!

Three of us poets became millionaires;
seven lost their homes, their families
and belief in themselves. The rest
drifted off, I don’t know where, and
rumours that some went blind and
mad from drinking what came to be
known as Kissy Blissy Smooch Hooch,
well, I never bothered following up.

What I can show you is the ground
where it happened—right here, look,
this charred and empty space.

Maybe all you see is silence; maybe
all you hear are the echoes of memories
of love at first sight—often short-lived
but no less true for their brevity—but
I can tell you straight that before we
started bottling and taking ourselves
so goddamn serious, epics took seed
among us; form poetry, old and ne’er
before seen the likes of, blossomed
like plum trees. Free verse ran like
baby chicks and knew no bounds.

Could you give me a hand here?
Feeling a little dizzy. Thanks…

Truth is, this poem may be the last
I ever write. The shakes are getting
worse, and I can’t pull up the happy
the way I could before the kissy
heart makers, the all-is-one fakers,
moved  in and took over.

Oh, look, there’s a bottle tucked
under this old shed that somehow
survived the scorching. Talent
Crush Classic, the original!
There are even a couple of
drops left—prob’ly not enough
to get you off like the old days,
but you might feel a smooch
or two, an urging in your
nethers to put pain to rhyme.
Wanna taste?

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2012

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Ayenbite of Inwit

Tags

Elaine Stirling, Michael of Northgate, middle English, poetry, Prick of Conscience, remorse

How I would have loved

to speak of codes and antipodes

Artist unknown

with learned minds amid the oak

and pines of Kent with you; as

I recall, you were the cleric, senior

monk with tonsured head and

stoopéd gait that I mistook, most

stupidly for piety.

~

From dawn to dusk I scribed

your blighted notes that rambled

on loquaciously; you wouldn’t

stay to read or clarify, you had

your rounds among the villagers,

lost souls to save ‘neath petticoats

in haystacks, your long face held

grave as if to prove the earthly

weight of lust was greater than

the trust you hung on me like

shackles wove from brier.

~

Highwaymen, they say, know best

a naïve spirit when she crosses their

dark path; a weasel, your familiar,

snowy white, they say you saved it

from a trap—no doubt, you did, for

had you not saved thousands over

time from lives of quiet equity to battle

some messiah-like debauchery they

never would have known, if not

for you? I know your bite.

~

Now the twenty-seventh day

of this dark month has come again;

we stare across a precipice of space

and time; and though I glare, I am

quite safe from you and your

dominions with their lies and

dragon lairs of disappointment.

~

Seen enough, I’ll tap the final drops

of ink from off this quill and throw the

coded messages I squandered my

good life—and nearly this one too—

to write into the River Brill, ne’ermore

your ayenbite of inwit to uphold.

~

NOTE: On October 27, 1340, a Benedictine monk named Michael of Northgate completed a book called Ayenbite of Inwit, Kentish (middle English) for Prick of Conscience or Remorse. Literally translated, the title means “again-bite” of “inner knowledge”.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2012 (October 27)

The Jubilation of Little Herring, Rune Song 1

Tags

Elaine Stirling, folklore, giants, Kalevala, leadership, poetry

 

Along the edge of dark blue waters

cold and lonely northern waters

lies the mighty sleeping giant

known as Pentti Koskenkorva.

~

Touch your ear, my name is Peter

is the name sense of this giant

slumbering mass of earth and eskers

sleeping off a dearth of questions,

~

never asked and seldom answered,

Pentti Koskenkorva blended

with the ironwood around him.

What’s the point of being giant,

~

holding answers, living pliant

like the waves and mighty waters,

when no human ever seeks him?

Wingless, bored and flighty human,

~

seeking, never finding human

fears the energy of motion

rooted to the blind emotions

hunger, thirst and lust his potions.

~

Stirs the waters till they’re muddy

tears at hearts until they’re bloody

numbed and callous, nothing lingers

of the knowledge at his fingers.

~

Once mankind, he loved to stalk

with cougars and the wandering stocks

of caribou, he slurped with bears

the lush blueberries, now he hides

~

like quivering rabbit, locked within

his lazy habits—why I can’t

and why I won’t—the total sum

his daily rote, oh bloody hum…

~

ho bloody hum, the giant’s heard

it all before, he’s had his fill

of lamentation, what’s become

of jubilation? Are there none

~

whose incantations might arouse

a celebration of the mind

and sense? But no one answers him.

Sleeping giant Koskenkorva,

~

though he snores and rumbles nightly,

offers truth that’s spoken rightly.

Touch your ear, my name is Peter

loses hope, there are no leaders.

~

Then one day a wandering girl child

knobby kneed and grubby girl child

drops a rock into a pool and

watches circles rippling and

~

fraught with strange imagining, she

hears an angry sputtering. The

hillock where she eats her lunch, it

grinds from side to side as if

~

a chin resided neath the brush

of saskatoon and thorny bush.

On outcrop of a grayish hue

she dances, then with eyes of blue

~

astonished sees the wrinkling brow

of granite fold and glacial fault

scrunch up, a breeze, then mightily

the woods blow out a giant sneeze.

~~~

To be continued, don’t know when…

Meanwhile, here is a lively sample of

Finnish rune singing by the folk group

Värttinä. If you listen closely, you may

catch the Kalevala meter that my poem

follows within their tune “Nahkaruoska”,

which means “leather whip”.

© poem by Elaine Stirling, 2012

© oil pastel of Antero Vipunen by Hanna Kantokorpi, 1991

Women of Fire, Center of Calm

Tags

Elaine Stirling, form poetry, French Renaissance, Inquisition, Marguerite of Navarre

During the 16^th century reign of Marguerite d’Angouleme, mystic queen of Navarre and author of Heptaméron, there lived at the crossroads near a village a wise woman, a witch of Saxon blood named Frances Clammety. Frances was

Marguerite of Navarre, known. as the Pearl of pearls, (1492-1549); portrait attributed to Jean Clouet or Leonardo daVinci.

born with a turned-in foot, considered a sign of the devil, and would have been drowned at infancy had not the cook of the royal kitchens taken pity on her, tending and raising the child near the great hearth ovens.

The following poem honours Marguerite and Frances in the form of a septime, an 8-stanza, 52-line poem that repeats a sequence of seven end words with a final envoi, a “setting forth” of seven-within-three lines. The word Heptaméron sources from Greek and means seven days. By means of this numeric doubling, we may draw closer to the healthful spirits of two fearless women and thereby raise our own spirits.

Women of Fire, Center of Calm

Hark ye, of darkened minds and sorrowing closed

hearts, draw near the fire to a time when pearl

of pearls, who held the throne with views oblique

and provident, had need of powers greater than the rank

ungodly priests, asphyxiating Christ upon His cross

with inquisitions, north and south, their storming

clouds fast blowing to Navarre a deadly cause.

~

The Saxon witch whom fools in their jesting cause

named France’s Calamity was tending pots of rank

and bitter herbs when did the carriage on a storming

eve arrive with inquiring royal blood. It is the pearl,

thought Frances, of whom I’ve dreamed. She closed

her book of spells and kissed the wooden cross

which hung beside the door, scarred and oblique.

~

O bleak they are, these times, said she of rank

noblesse who, cloaked and shivering, closed

the cottage door behind them. I bring a cause,

good Frances, that has need of your effect. Across

these mountains darkening forces rise, the pearl

of humanity to kill. I’ve heard your skills oblique

and true can overturn even the greatest storming.

~

The bawdy humour of the queen did cross

the sharply mind of Frances, who gazed oblique

upon her guest. It’s not your life, M’lady, or rank

you seek to save, but that of deeper storming.

‘Tis so, said Marguerite, I bring the cause

of universal woman and her pleasure-giving pearl

whom churches and weak husbands would see closed.

~

Dependent on no man the vibratory pearl

in darker courts they would excise; my storming

to the king avails me not. The market’s closed,

he says, to women who would claim joy’s cause

outside the marriage-sanctioned bed. He is oblique,

thereby not cruel but jealous guards my husband’s rank.

In sexly arts our swords do often clash and cross.

~

Womb powers rise they will again, storming,

said the witch, but fall ‘neath envious sisters’ cause;

we’ll find no friends of use behind the rugged cross

until we learn the oscillatory holy skills oblique

toward self-reliant stature that God gives holy rank

to mind above all else. Meanwhile, fast closed

we must remain to wrongful claimaints of our pearl.

~

The magicks that ‘twixt witch and queen oblique

transpired no earthly records ever will you cross,

to safeguard knowledge of the dew-kissed pearl

they buried casks with ancient secrets amid closed

and hidden chambers with impassioned storming;

their works, as one, assured deep pleasure’s cause

that would arouse both sexes to an everlasting rank.

~

If ye be man of goodly cause, embrace the storming

woman at the crossroads. Your rank she’ll lift oblique

by starlit pearl to heavens where no heart is closed.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2012

Who Killed the Dove?

Tags

consciousness, deeper self, Elaine Stirling, epiphany, innocence, poetry, trust

I dove in a dream last night

to a court of letters where Love

artist unknown

stood trial for the crime of pride.

Salty rain was pouring in through

glassless windows so I moved

to stand under a canopy of

rushes, hoping to understand.

~

Prove it!  Prove it!, the prosecutor,

a great black pelican, was shouting.

Judging from the wobble of his wrinkled

pouch, he’d had enough of a trial

that was taking him nowhere.

~

While a bright red cardinal chirped

in defense of Love who sat quiet

in the witness box, I spied with my

little eye that the audience were all

letters—that’s right, letters…of the

alphabet. There were jays and kays

and double you’s, esses with small

pees asking their smartly-dressed

upper cases, y r we here?

~

Silence!  squawked the goose

who was judging the proceedings.

He craned his long sleek Canadian

neck toward Love. If you cannot

control your entourage, I shall

ban them from this court,

forthwith!

~

Love, the defendant, said nothing.

~

A dove hovered over Love, and no one

seemed to notice or care. She was a

hologram, maybe—no, a holy gram!

Ha, ha, crowed my witty dream self.

A holy gram, transparent and

weighing almost nothing, yes!

~

His Honour the goose glared at me. I gulped

and moved further back into the shadows.

~

Where were you when you last saw pride?

demanded the pelican.

~

At a bar, said Love, in Toledo.

~

Ohio?

~

Spain. I had brought my sword

to the blacksmith on Perfidia Street

for sharpening and felt need of a drop.

Love, too, thirsts.

~

I smiled. I was beginning to like

this guy Love with a bird above his head.

~

What was pride doing in this bar in Toledo?

~

Trying to be noticed by a raven-haired beauty.

~

In what manner was pride trying to be noticed?

~

The usual method, by swelling,

by rising to his glorious, full-thrusting—

~

Chirp, chirp!  chirped the cardinal for the

defense, which I took to mean, shut up,

Love, you are making things worse!

~

The pelican shook his saggy, disapproving

pouch. Please tell the court what happened next.

~

The beauty, said Love, looked over at pride,

and he . . . and he . . .

~

Love could not or would not go on.

The dove above him fluttered, flapping her

wings as if she had landed in something tarry.

~

I felt a shuffling to my right and turned to find

the letter X standing beside me. Letters don’t have

eyes—well, I obviously does—but I’d swear, X was

looking straight ahead, pretending not to see me,

while at the same time hoping to be seen b-y m-e.

~

All right. So Beauty looks at pride,

the prosecutor said. Then what?

~

Love looked out upon the court of letters,

and so did I. The letters were shifting,

changing places in the long wooden benches.

Neither the cardinal, pelican nor goose seemed

to notice, so silent were the members

of the alphabet.

~

To the prosecutor, Love replied:

Beauty, whose full name was Beautiful,

gazed upon pride, and he fell.

~

Fell where? Witnesses say he disappeared. No one has

seen pride since that night in the bar, where you were.

~

X moved closer to me. I could feel my shoulder

touching the upper tip of his left stroke. It dawned

on me then that Love was not on trial for the crime

of pride, but for the crime of killing it!

~

I felt a stabbing in my heart and noticed that the rows

of letters had settled into place like Scrabble tiles.

~

PROVE LOVE

PRIDE DIED

~

Love opened his arms and spoke

to the entire court in a voice so quiet

that even the salty rain stopped to listen.

~

Pride fell into me.

He will not be seen again.

~

At that moment, two things happened.

X leaned over and kissed me on the cheek

~

and the dove flew away.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2011

The Dream of the Dull Prince

Tags

dreams, ego, Elaine Stirling, humour, kundalini, life force, short fiction, vampires

image by Michelle Schaffer

I dreamed I was sitting on a multi-coloured, striped canvas lounge chair in the middle of a gravel parking lot, in sight of a cheap corndog stand. The circus, the fun place, is behind me to my right, but I’m not going there. I am merely lounging, feeling quite dutiful in this nowhere/neither place, feeling grateful—or trying to—for the pretty coloured stripes beneath me and at my back.

Two acquaintances come along, nice guys that I know from my neighbourhood, on their way to the circus. They look surprised to see me. “What are you doing here?” one of them asks.

I look around at my gravelly surroundings. “Damned if I know,” I say, and wake up.

Now if the dream had continued, I would have replied, “I’m a lady-in-waiting.”

“To whom?” one of the guys would have asked.

“The dull prince,” I say with conviction.

“Why?”

“Because he fancies himself universally appealing.”

“What’s that got to do with you?”

“Well, it’s not true, you see—he isn’t, but someone has to help him keep up the pretense.”

“Why?”

In the dream that might have carried on, I become confused. I glance around again at my colourless, rocky surroundings and remind myself that at least my butt is parked on something pretty. My friends take pity and clarify their question.

“Why are you his lady-in-waiting?”

At this, I brighten. “Oh, because I have been trained to wait, and I am very, very good at it.”

“Yes, we can see that.”

I notice somehow that my friends have taken on the names Frank and Earnest, which they do not have in real life. An Oscar Wilde-type joke, haha!

“Waiting on the Lord, that sort of thing?” Frank suggests earnestly.

“Yes, yes, waiting on the lord! He might need me.” I conjure twinkly eyes and two bright red spots appear on my cheeks. I feel like those people in the audience at The Hunger Games.

Earnest looks around. “So where is he?”

“Who?”

“Your dull prince.”

I don’t know, I think. That’s not right. I know exactly where he is. He’s over at the corndog stand, which only pretends to sell corndogs—I can’t remember why, but I do know that if word gets out of the real activities of the dull prince . . .

Frank and Earnest wait while I work through my options of what might happen if word got out about the dull prince. When I reach the option that probably showed in my eyes, Frank says, “Would you like us to come with you?”

“Yes, please,” I reply, not because I’m afraid but because I want them to see what I’m about to see.

I get up off the stupid striped chair fit only for waiting ladies and accompany them to the corndog stand. No one is staffing the counter, but behind the flashing lights and digital LED displays of non-nutritious, highly processed wienies dipped in hornymeal . . . horny meal? Oh, that’s right, it’s a horndog stand! How could I have forgotten?

So, yeah, behind the glitter, sits the prince who fancies himself universally appealing, crosslegged and surrounded by . . . how shall I put this . . . coiled entities who’ve forgotten their identities. There are heaps of them—pulsing, writing, vaguely erotic in a $5.00 per trick streetwalker sort of way—and there he is in the midst of them, taking each coiled being, one at a time, tenderly onto his lap.

Using empty words and promises, he persuades their mouths open to reveal fangs that had once acted as conduits to their life force, to the belief in beauty, worth, intelligence. Frank, Earnest and I watch while the prince, whose life of excess and self-indulgence has dulled and emptied him of all except the belief in his universal appeal, squeezes the cheeks of the being on his lap.

Sweet venom milk pours out, which, of course, the prince laps and laps, and which would feel to the one being drained like affection—I should know—until the secretions deplete, at which point, he throws the creature aside and reaches for another.

“Bloody hell!” I exclaim, in both my waking and dream states.

Frank chuckles. Earnest offers his arm. “Not your prince?”

“Not in the least!” I take his arm and steer my two friends firmly toward the southeast, mere steps away. I can’t even see the stupid chair. “Our circus awaits, gentlemen.”

~~~

© Elaine Stirling

The Empress

Tags

Elaine Stirling, Empress, Finnish mythology, gilded tarot, Jean Sibelius, Kalevala, poetry, swan of tuonela, tone poem, Underworld

from the Gilded Tarot deck by Ciro Marchetti

I’ve heard it said, and on occasion
read within the annals of the long
forgotten Swan Court of the Tuonela
that whispers of a dying king, his
words ensourced to secrecy, lend
promise and new rise to any who
would strive to build and hope and
climb anew to higher, better lands.

~

His susurring on feeble breath still
hovers, lordly, o’er the swampy fens
and lowlands of the Petrograd and
Kalevalan byways, though…

~

I dare not speak of them myself—as
yet my whisperings are coarse, their
hobnail tread, their tarry dread, the
purity of Tuonela could ne’er abide.

~

But as I slowly vanish from the
ill-refined, these squawking hungry
gullic realms, I shall reclaim my legacy,
the graceful long-necked whisperings
bequeathed to me by lustrous court,
sweet mythic court that sings in dreams
orchestral of expansion led by Swan
King, lord of Tuonela.

Fantasia, the Legacy-Swan of Tuonela, tone poem by Jean Sibelius

The Empress, © Elaine Stirling, 2012

The Freedom That Comes

Tags

Elaine Stirling, letting go, prose poem, relationships, survival

Image by Alison Jones

Final entries from the log of bush pilot James Armitage, 34. Wreckage from his float plane was found September 14, 20__ in a wooded area near Copre Lake in northern Ontario, Canada. He had been missing for eleven days; the notes were written with the stub of an HB-2 pencil. Cause of death: hypothermia.

~~~

The freedom that comes from not having to hold an uncomfortable vibration calibrates instantly higher.

All of what happens and is happening involves infinite adjustments of detail by What We Really Are at non-physical levels. What manifests in daily life is the furthest extremity of these events with the twin channels of thought and feeling as our downstream propulsion—like the left and right pontoons (looking pretty banged up, sadly) of this Cessna 172.

I’ve reached the far end of a chessboard, and now I’m trading up. Even before this happened, I was free in every moment to launch a new game if I didn’t like the old one. Next time, I’ll choose opponents according to their ability to bring enjoyment. No more assholes!

Anyone who feels compelled to correct my interpretations is welcome to launch their own new game.

It takes two sides to maintain a tug-of-war, and letting go the rope, while it ends the match, is not illegal. The collapsing heap at the opposite end is temporary and will sort itself out. Every collapse does.

The lead in this pencil is almost gone.

Emily, I love you, and I’ll miss our arguments. No one could piss me off like you, or lighten my heart, or drop me to my knees in gratitude. You were my greatest adventure.

Tell Brianne and Matthew their daddy will come back to them in a new way when they’re older, and when they see me again, they’ll laugh. Ask them if they know how much I love them, and listen to their answers.

Tell them there is no death.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2012

A Newer Court

Tags

abundance, alignment, Elaine Stirling, poetry, power of the jester, the choice for joy

Spare me the god that promises

stores of riches in heaven.

Heaven surrounds me

and I want my riches now.

Spare me the god who holds out

hope just beyond my reach;

I want the god who hopes along

with me, who laughs, rolls naked

on the floor with a massive excitement

from the discovery he has made

through the joy of conversation

and attention he has paid

to me, as I to him.

◊

I have no interest in purity or piety.

I have worn those habits and they choke.

◊

Servant of God? Not I. Not you either.

My god has no need of servants.

He seeks kings and queens, nobility only

whose inner courts thrive, whose fields

prosper in a shimmering countryside,

whose knights and pages

courtiers and ladies share

the common wealth of the divine

right to rule and who manifest

in every joyful act

sublime destiny.

◊◊◊

© Elaine Stirling, 2011

Acquainting Strange

Tags

absence, Elaine Stirling, form poetry, Gavriel Navarro, longing, Navarrete quatrain, reunion

A Navarrete quatrain*

How strange these absences that call upon

Image by K. Kovarik, 2011

the masses of the unexplained to bring you

close enough to hope—perchance to know,

that what we had, long past, uplifts us still.

~

How strange these empty thoughts, their

tubular assault like whistles in a headwind,

scraps of words they make no sound, and 

yet, your lips, to me, stay moist and readable.

~

How strange your nonexistence in this life

where oxygen and carbons breathe a name

diurnal, tea leaves spilling cross my desk, they

draw your face and mine eternally as one.

~

This strangeness that besieges us is overturning

fast to presence. Winds, be calmed. I hear

your poetry in rise and fall, your lips and chest

they draw me in. We’ve done, at last, with leaving.  

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2012

*The Navarrete quatrain is a poetry form developed by Gavriel Navarro. Simple in appearance, it’s deceptively tricky to write (at least, for me). If you’re up for a challenge and, if you’re lucky, a heightened state, you can find the directions for the Navarrete here at Gavriel’s Muse.