House of Last Straws

Tags

Elaine Stirling, enough is enough, fourteen liners, humourous verse, Live in the Momentum, moving beyond, narrative poetry, nursery rhymes for grown folk, satire, self-perception, The Game

I had the recent great
fortune of visiting a creature
rotund and pink whose late
distant cousins had died of a feature
common to swine. She draws
for a living on the island of T____
and lives in a house made of straws,
not a stick or a stone could I see,
and I wondered what nature of pig
would invite such a one as I am
to a weekend of custard and fig
when she knows I am fonder of ham.
“Mr. Wolf, I am pleased. You are welcome
indeed to look around and rest some.”

Our opening moments were tense
for the island resides in a sea
known for storms, and the pretense
of friendship, given that me
and her kind have a past
was a strain to maintain.
“It’s a pleasure, Ms. Piggie, at last.”
To view me better, she drew back the curtain.
“I thought you’d be larger,” she said, “more
of a brute, but these are hard times,
no doubt, for lupines seeking to score
like you did in meatier climes.
I’ve a favour to ask, and you are my man.”
I licked my dry chops. “I shall do what I can.”

“This house that I built of last straws
for many a year has kept me, not warm
but apart and alive, now its flaws
like mad locusts are starting to swarm.
I’ve plans to invest with some camels
I know, whose backs have been broken
from too heavy loads. Their annals,
I’m sure, you have read if not spoken
of. Time has restored them, they’re spry
as young foals, and I’ve no need
of anyone’s judgmental eye.
Happiness is picking up speed
turning deserts to green,
and I do not see myself as unclean.”

Though at first I resisted her porcine
request, I came to oblige. I waited until
her ship had sailed off, streamlined
and sleek, then I worked up the will
that, of late, had grown weak from the shame,
self-inflicted, of the nature of me, and I rose
to the heights of the Alpha Omega, the game
we had come here to play…I suppose
there are bits of her house of last
straws still blowing about and landing
on backs overstrained, but my friend, she’s cast
her cares to the sea of pure understanding.
From here, I am off to dance with some belles
on a veldt. I’ve a taste, as you know, for gazelles.

Thank you, NS!

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2013

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Pockets of My Heart

Tags

Elaine Stirling, love poems, new romance, poetry, the Slipstream Series

The pockets of my heart
admit no coin, the silent folds
wherein I keep love’s promissory
notes are not for prying fingers
sewn nor bribe, long after purchase
sought and turned away.

Whate’er I thought and did
when love had seemed to turn
his back is of no consequence
to what I hold and trade and
credit well today. My heart
no ledger keeps, but neither will
she stand, a little match girl
shivering, in cold and wind
when open arms and crackling
fire wait at home to kiss these
hands and warm the bottled
ink I bought in Christwell’s
High Street shop and
carry in my pocket
just for you.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2013

I Barely Escaped with my Misery

Tags

Elaine Stirling, love poems with a twist, new romance, poetry and parody, self-pity, the Slipstream Series, the tedium of tedium

Last night under cover of
a starlit sky, I barely escaped
with my misery. I had hardly
any time to pack my treacle tears
in rows of feathered carton nests
for future recollection, watched
in horror while the pot lights
strung across the Dresden, oh
so precious figurines of every
hurtful thing was ever done
to me (I never save the hurts
I do—no hoarder, me!) exploded,
sending shards and powdered
yodels cross the atmosphere
into my weary eyes. Oh, how
they stung! To look at me, you’d
think, poor thing, all she’s been
through…I peep through slitted lid
to see if, yes, indeed, you’ve taken
up my cause, are willing on my
lazy ass behalf to bang the
drums and cymbals that I haul
around of not enough and woe,
sweet woe, and fall into a moment’s
hopefulness that maybe misery
and I have executed well our
great escape—the wake of
desolation that I like to call
enlightenment gives off a
hoary glow and gathers
pop-eyed crowds, but no—
un-try as I might, I see the dots
between the spaces of the Pleiades
are connected and they lead
from me to you and me to you
and me to you and nothing
I can say or do will stop
the waves of bliss and ever-
lasting happy trysts we
mapped now lapping
at my toes.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2013

Spin Class: A Rondeau Redoublé

Tags

banishing the unwanted, Elaine Stirling, fixed verse, form poetry, French medieval verse, inviting what you want, one woman's meaning of life, rondeau, the power of grace

A muse, a maze, there is a mystery
of complicated steps dancing us around
a pole we called the jubilation tree
until we bored our senses to the ground.

Garlands of happiness cannot be found
when blame and fear o’ertake me
at the roots, entangled by what sounds
a muse, a maze, there is a mystery.

If I could be amazed and let the fury
fall to stillness, be amused, unbound
by webs of politics, I’d re-examine history
of complicated steps dancing us around.

Niccoló knew it’s easy to astound
a stunnéd prince who shuns simplicity,
while Henry drew from Walden’s ground
a pole we called the jubilation tree.

The wondrous mind embraces symmetry;
resentment blinds and clubs us down
to sizes never meant to be. This we could see
until we bored our senses to the ground.

I am now freedom bound,
unique, an axis mundi, mystery
of stillpoint rising, a revolving mound
of song and laughter, poetry,
a muse, a maze.

~~~

Author’s Note: Long before there were dust busters, leaf blowers, and other noisy banishers of the unwanted, we had fixed form poetry. Energy-efficient and quiet, fixed verse like the rondeau had—still has—the effect of rousing desiccated thought systems and blowing them the heck out, if we choose. We are what we think. We are also what we allow ourselves to believe. As kids, we didn’t have much choice over what we took in, and much of what we defend as adults, especially when it’s noisy, knee-jerk, and name-calling in nature, sources from those creepy old dust bunnies. Niccoló refers to Machiavelli, a highly misunderstood soul, while Henry’s identity, I’m sure, is self-evident.

© Elaine Stirling, 2013
Image of Yggdrasil, the World Ash, from Wikipedia

The Demiurge

Tags

Elaine Stirling, Gnostic terms for half-baked men and gods, narrative poetry, Plus ça change plus c'est la même chose, the poison of false humility, what happens when I read Rousseau

—counsel of an 18th century Parisian libertine to her young charge, cobbled together from the French

He keeps a cabinet
of pretty speech
of trinkets made from
iridescent sheen collected
from the surface of soap
bubbles that have
journeyed from the
washerwoman’s toils
far upstream. What burbles
from his mouth—I cannot
stress this heartily enough—
the words you think you want
to hear, “Mon Dieu, from him!”
they’ll pop before your
eyes, and in that blinding
moment when it seems
that all is clear and found
and true and whole, he’ll
rob you of what little
you allow yourself to say
from your own mouth
that’s good in you.

And poof, like that,
his task is done. The
bubble’s burst, of course,
but he’s not gone, this
demiurge, for surfaces
remain; appearances hold
reign as absolute as any
Louis, roi or duc. The tops
of things is all you’ll see
while he holds court,
while in the caverns of
your soft and pretty belly
a mad yowling will be heard,
a dragon’s tortured breath
that seems to char the silken
weave of what you once
perceived—and rightly!—of
yourself: that you are pure
and incorruptible, beyond
all measurable worth.
Such are his works.

But mighty they are not,
nor wondrous, for what
the half-desiring lacks and
therefore must obtain by
force or guile is the power,
yours alone and ever so—
the power, my sweet
heiress, to conceive.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2013
Painting by Jacob van Schuppen,
circa 1700

I Would Rather

Tags

Elaine Stirling, expansiveness, mortality, poetry, the nature of confidence, the tag is not the poem

I would rather be succeeding
than successful, enjoying
than replete with joy, rather
be exploring than to claim
I’ve found it, catching
for the fun of than to
say I’ve caught.

Yet all the same, I’m glad
we’re finally face to face.
Your presence here
expands the joy that
of its own accord has
always poured into this
cup to overflow and more.

We are the fountain,
you and I, no less than
gods immortal—and of this,
some new sense I’m certain
will be made and handed
down to generations
unlike ours, the future
souls, already unafraid.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2013

When This Body

Tags

contemporary form poetry, detachment, Elaine Stirling, letting go, moving past, Navarrete quatrain, physicality, reconciliation, self love

When this body is awash with love
of self, I see you free of worry lines
that once defined you fall away
revealing sun flares of exuberance.

When this body sees your vibrancy
coronas form around the simplest
words like hope and be and I
let go of distances formidable.

When this body moves through paths
we cleared together aeons past
converge to higher ground, remembering
volcanoes and their blinding ash.

When this body cashes in on all
she’s seen and done, the love
that crowns your form will lift us
both from grim, erupting histories.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2013

Hero

Tags

creating reality, Elaine Stirling, form poetry, manifestation, mythology, nagual, personal alchemy, plot devices, septime, seven stanza verse, subtle bodies, the hero archetype, writer's craft

A hero comes to me in dark of night,
mandolin strapped to his back, with shoulders
curled against the wind. Chinooks are moving
in. I think they may have blown him here,
though hard to tell. He moves with equal ease
through stillness, scaling walls in minor keys,
ignoring doors to broach this gate of mine.

My hero cannot be possessed. He’s mine
at best of times, a realist, nowhere
to be found when I have lost my keys
or sense of self. His breadth of shoulders
frames serenity while chaos storms the night;
he fends me from imagining dis-ease
and keeps my languid spirit moving.

On cloudy days, he plays mazurkas here
beside the fire until the pulsing night
surrounds us, and desires that I mine
with little hope by day spring free with ease.
My hero stands on solid ground of shoulders
that precede him. Our whole procession’s moving
toward an assembling One who holds the keys.

When I acclimate to ease
inside, I feel my hero moving
fully aimed to please the now and here,
delivering friends and lovers with the keys
to ships and fantasies, a diamond mine
without the cruelty. His silhouetted shoulders
steps ahead, he entertains no dark night

of the soul, adept at holding shoulders
loose, my hero is a player strumming keys
in octaves you can only hear at night.
His eyes and smile I have made mine.
The rest is me, a subtle body moving
with the cellular eccentricities of here
as best of all & better coming. He’s my ease,

the plot and action to my story keys,
reminding me, accept no substitutes! Mine
is the right to happiness by means of ease,
pursuit of joy. He is my rock, unmoving.
From him, I catapult and build us here
a cityscape of dreams. We love at night,
create by dawn the slope of light’s soft shoulders.

Through brighter times we are now moving,
he and I, receptive to the exponential ease
of Creation sprinkling across our shoulders
bold imaginations of the tumbling, lusty night.
Tolerate no whimpering fakes with rusty keys,
he quips. The hero’s role is yours and mine
to be enjoyed through mortals here.

The peace that’s mine brings more of same. The hero’s keys
to each with ease is given here, where comedy is moving,
masked, our shoulders squared encircling day and night.

~~~

This poem is a septime, a form of my own devising with seven repeating end words in seven, seven-stanza lines. The three-line envoi counts down the original 1-7 words, 7-1.

© Elaine Stirling, 2013
Image of Lemminkäinen’s mother,
artist unknown