Conspiratio: Part IV

Tags

Elaine Stirling, narrative poetry, The Corporate Storyteller

Final chapter of a 4-part poetic mystery

Where there are no mountains, a balcony will do. See you at eight. J.
Strange message, but the ticket for the play called “Transfiguration” was free,
and I hadn’t seen Jack and his three lusty friends since the day he pretended

to spill his cup, and our luck overflowed. The sale of saints had been slow,
so I closed up early. Everyone wants horned gods these days and long-limbed
goddesses of sea foam. I send them to the airbrush artist down the street.

On the stage was a fountain with a beam of light aimed at the center
beside the wall of a medieval church with plumes of mist swirling from
cracks in the stone. The theatre was filling with no sign of Jack.

In the box seat of four, there was only me with a bottle of water, sitting
under a sign I couldn’t read, that must have been important, since people
below kept looking up and pointing. Precisely at eight, where there’d only

been space on the stage, a woman appeared in a loose khaki vest
like a female Che, hands in her pockets, relaxed. Before we begin this
phenomenal play, she announced, I would like to present the one

who made this production and all that surrounds us not only possible
but infinitely probable. The spotlight then swept from the stage to the box
seat across the auditorium, crowded with so many people I wondered how all

of them didn’t collapse into the orchestra pit. Letters carved above their box
read “Tragedy”. In the ominous silence, a few people coughed. Then the light
moved on, across the lower balcony toward me. The beam was so bright

that I couldn’t make out what was happening. A rumble began that sounded
like thunder from under my feet. It was only applause, but the sound had a
strange sort of surging and roll coming at me in folds. I thought of the icons

I painted with illustrious names of faces that change, and the customers
who said they’d never felt better than when they displayed what I sold,
but before I could place where I’d known this before, the roar settled down,

and the spotlight returned to the stage where the play had begun. A small
group at the fountain had gathered to speak of a quest to expose what they
called the Pretender. Do we know he’s a he? asked the woman in khaki, while

spinning a blade. When we find him, then what? said the man who looked
kind of like Jack. The one in the middle who said, she is he, he is she,
I couldn’t make out. Were there four at that fountain or three? I squinted

to see. While lifting the bottle of water, I noticed my palms had grown hot
and the plastic was warping. The liquid inside was beginning to boil. Shocked
and surprised, I tossed the container, which flew in an arc across the theatre

to the box seat named Tragedy. In the very next instant, a jet stream of water
shot out from the crowd. The plaster collapsed. The wood and the metal that
held them in place contorted. I watched in horror while the box seat dissolved,

and the people fell out in slow motion as if they were in outer space or an
ocean. While they floated and gathered their bearings, the rest of the seats
in the theatre rolled into cylinders, squirming and surging like red velvet

serpents in search of—I don’t know, a meal or exit—the shapes rearranged
and turned toward me. I jumped up with what remained of my sanity, yelling,
“Jack, what the hell kind of play…?” Jack, Jack, Jack…the name kept repeating,

a nickname for John and a nickname for James, the icons I’d painted so often
I knew them by heart…even more. They were men that I knew, had come to
adore—hardly saints—with a leader who taught us pretending is what

we have all come to do. Just do it with grace and with ease. So for aeons,
we practiced pretending until, as with too much of any good thing, it outgrew,
overtook us. We chose the wrong box, went crazy and crowded. Conspiracy,

a.k.a. unity, turned into something we tried to deny—would have gone on
denying, until that day we three met again at the fountain of the court
of St. James with our leader, who taught us on a mountain long

ago to breathe as one, conspire. Only this time, he said, you won’t tire.
And you’ll see that the play goes on and on. The cast of “Transfiguration”
took twelve curtain calls. I can’t explain the special effects, and there’s

no point phoning Jack. He’s locked in his study writing poetry. The master of
blades, she’s learning some new martial art. Me? Like my transfigured friends
I do what I want. As for the sign above my box seat? Clue: It’s a C word.

The End

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2014

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Conspiratio: Part III

Tags

Elaine Stirling, homage to fixed verse, narrative poetry, The Corporate Storyteller

Parts I and II of this 4-part poetic mystery can be found here and here.

Fresh from playing to adoring crowds in the Halls
of Tragedy, the knave of hearts removed his cape
and texted his accomplices, gathered in the malls

waiting for a break in the monotony. Long legs draped
over the armrest of an authentic Louis Quinze,
he scanned with piercing eye the landscape

and the clouds, not in the sky, but in the plans
of hearts and minds of people walking by.
Pressure was his specialty; he had a weatherman’s

panache with barometrics and a roving eye
with hands to match that anyone unfortunate
enough to fall for, would see themselves put by,

hearts pickled in a teary brine. We’d had a spate
of rain, the perfect weather for a knave who cruised
the busy antiques market for a certain kind of date.

Intelligent discerning women, he once said, are less bruised
by “the little death” of a master lover than those in search
of a provider. With such Gallic epithets, our thief oozed.

Catching sight of one just right, browsing books of church
and state in times medieval, he moved in and drew attention
to himself by picking up and putting down the merch

and sighing, where can one find perfect poetry? Tension,
not yet sexual, improved when he pretended to nearly spill
his cappuccino. Ooh! Are you all right? the question

he was hoping for, was asked. From there, it was all downhill.
Before the hour was out, he knew everything about the lout
who’d left her for some bimbo, and the knaves he’d drilled

appeared, a band of gorgeous, musketeering brothers. Out
they went, the four of them and her—ménage à cinq—into the rain.
Her little deaths, I’m told, were so magnificent she forgot about

the no-good lout and thought her heart was cured of pain.
Poor dear didn’t know the nature of the thieving knave of hearts.
And for a time I wondered what went on in our leader’s brain,

drafting the Pretender of pretenders to a game of fits and starts.
From all that I could see, his strategy remained unchanged.
He’d slap together lousy verse of moons in June and hearts

and read to wounded women, cow-eyed and deranged,
timing recitations when atmospheric mass was low
and spirits dragged. Seduction, too, can seem free range

and organic but like most things that are non-GMO,
there is a price. His lovers would try calling him and find
his number changed or learn that he was married, whoa!

And then there came this heat wave, dry and hot behind
the rainy spring, and we none of us had seen or heard
a word from knave of hearts. Rumours flew—he’s blind,

been kidnapped, drawn and quartered, trampled by a herd
of jealous buffalo. I would have let it go, except the knaves
of diamond, club, and spade, his buds, begged of me a word.

You have to come and see him! He’s been flattened, raves
both night and day in ways we cannot fathom. Is it worms?
I asked, knowing of his tendency toward rare. No, he behaves…

The knave of spades could not say more. They took their turns
explaining in a chopper to the island paradise our ailing friend
called home, the morning sun so scorching hot it burns

to even think of that strange day. We found him with a pen
and massive sheets of parchment at a desk lit only by a lamp
of kerosene, all windows sealed. You’re here again?

He scowled at his pals and then saw me. A sudden cramp
appeared to hit him. Perhaps I haven’t mentioned this, but he
and I a history shared that ended in the cold and damp.

I thought that he would pitch a fit, or worse, on seeing me.
Instead, his face lit up. He cried, you have to hear this romance
I’ve been—no, not that, rondeau—mon Dieu, the symmetry!

She is my lyric, muse, my true and second chance.
He riffled through some pages. The only one I’ve ever
met of thousands whose eyes and body dance

whene’er she speaks of lovers past. I’ve never
known a woman free of pain. To bring her spirit into form
and word is why I’m born. I am her loyal knave forever!

His friends and I (they’re all named Jack) informed
appropriate authorities the knave of hearts would not
be trolling markets of despair again. The resulting storm

of barometric chaos caused some city clubs to rot
because of poor foundations, but in time the atmosphere
broke free. The pain that once obliged us, we forgot.

And while I’d love to end this sunny story here,
there’s one more chapter that will make things clear.

~~~

For those of you with discerning poetic eyes, you may have noticed that this is not free verse, like the first two chapters of “Conspiratio”. In keeping with the character and plot, I opted for terza rima, developed to stunning mastery by Dante in The Divine Comedy. I also ended with the traditional couplet, which, allowed me to say, “to be continued”, without having to say it.

© Elaine Stirling, 2014

Conspiratio: Part II

Tags

Elaine Stirling, narrative serial poetry

Part II of a 4-part poetic mystery. The first installment can be read here.

I awake with a stab at the back of my head
with the ceiling askew and a chandelier hanging
with no recollection of why I have come, until

a weird itch makes me reach to my vest with
the pockets that no one can see. A collection
of blades in their black silken sheaths like the

pipes of an organ, a fanfare of reeds, tickle my
fingertips, draw blood in stripes, lacerations,
and beads. The sharp tiny pains make me gasp,

then to breathe, and new oxygen carves me
an image of trees stripped bare round a village
of children with nothing to wear, and their rumbles

of hunger going unheard by the agents and lords
of the land. I know that the mansion is of my own
making. I know how to smell out revolts—

I remember!—and how to slip into events and
appear to the lazy, undisciplined floaters who think
they have nothing to learn that I’m easy and friendly

and willing to…there’s a squeak to my left and
a creak just behind, and I sense with a prickle of
goosebumps the mansion which used to be mine

has been annexed by beings of squatters, of suborns
and mannerly servants whose scrapings and curtsies
are choreographed lies. A quiet cold rage somersaults

through my veins and I rise with the blades at my
chest softly rippling. I’m here to root out the pretenders,
to look in their eyes and to do what my leader has bid.

~~~

The first ones I find are a girl child of ten who’s been
crimped and curtailed on a shelf in a room where a woman
who polishes silver admonishes: Dolls are a treasure,

soft voices a pleasure. No man respects a strumpet
of leisure. The more she goes on with her hideous rhyme,
the larger she swells like a cowhide balloon, while the child

on the shelf in her ringlets and crinoline shrinks, cold
and shivering. Who’s the pretender? I wonder, not daring
to slice what appears to be life, though grotesque, making do.

Who are you? sniffs the woman, looking down her long nose,
passing judgment that gasses the room with the smell of dead
lilac, affording me time to declare. I am Sacrifice, Ma’am,

here to eliminate, once and for all, germs, dust, and mites,
and I’ve come with free samples! I open my vest left and right
to display the collection of blades in their sheaths. This delights

her. She swells to the size of a blimp, while the curly-haired
girl on the shelf has diminished to roughly the size of a demitasse
spoon…in the corner, I happen to spy in the shadows a movement,

a jangle, a curious angle of light, and I hear the monotonous
sounds of a treadle, the whirr of a bobbin that’s feeding a needle.
I pull from a pocket that nobody sees a device and I throw it,

more deadly than morningstars, straight at the light. The treadle
sounds stop, and an arm reaches out through the shadow and
catches the pair of reversible shears I’ve kept polished and ready

for years. A slim, fair-haired woman appears in between the
matron and doll-child, both of whom scream when she holds up
the shears and expertly slices the space that entangles.

She cuts through the smothering fabric of labour as godly,
straight to the seam of a young woman’s dream to be free
and to follow her passions. While she’s reversing the grain

of a biased, impossible life, the pretenders deflate, fall
to dust. I dart through the house with a pearl-handled blade
tearing stitches of scars from old disappointments. Room

by room, pretenders and squatters and hoarders of shame
lose their grip, and the mansion, long skewed, starts
to rise from its deep hibernation, while outside, ideas

that languished meet up with the children no longer
deprived. They play, chase each other, unbridled with joy.
The trees, stripped and bare, take on bark, burst to green.

With the village revived, the foundations of where
I now live set to thrive, I pause at a spring for a drink,
when I feel at my heart a cold hand slipping in. I turn

to the face, long and thin. “Oh, it’s you,” I remark
to the unsmiling thief, while he tightens his grip. “Make
it quick, if you would. This pretending has tired me out.”

…to be continued

© Elaine Stirling, 2014

Conspiratio

Tags

Elaine Stirling, narrative poetry

A Poetic Mystery in Four Parts

Part I

We met at the fountain of the court of St. James:
a seller of icons, a thief, and a master of blades.
Which of the three you attribute to me will depend

on the slyness—forgive me, the shyness, that holds
you in silence. For now, let it be, let suffice, I was there
when we met on that day at the court of St. James.

Four scenes to a puzzle whose solving may lead
to transfiguration, and if you believe that is too vast
a claim, if you doubt that I look at you now

with the sound of your name on my lips, with an
archive of all that you’ve done and have come
to regret at arm’s reach, and you call me a fool,

then you’ve nothing to fear from the day
that was sunny, the day that we met to conspire
at the fountain of the court of St.James.

~~~

We surrounded our leader, who said:
a pretender to all you hold dear of enjoyment
of life’s true desires has risen to power.

I’ve brought you all here, for I need you
to find him. His influence grows through adherence
to roles like a burrowing termite destroys

what appears on the outside to be well
and whole. We looked at each other. Do we know
he’s a he? asked the master of blades.

When we find him, then what? said the thief
who disliked taking on any task that did not guarantee
an endless supply of pleasure for free.

Only the seller of icons refrained and allowed
what our leader had yet to explain to be rolled
at our feet like a turbulent circular sheet.

It resembled a rug or a map with a scallopy edge
like the shells of St. James, but the center—or, rather
the radii that would suggest to the eye where

the center should be, rolled and squirmed and
tumbled and surged cylindrically, like the skeletons
of neolithic earthworms. I’m aware that I’m stretching

biology—a nonvertebrate’s bones cannot be—
but I need you to see what I saw…what you saw.
He is she, she is he, said our leader of three,

placing his hand here and there as you would
at a stove or a barbecue fire to check on the heat.
I’ve torn this, he said, from a rupture that covers

and blinds what were once thought to be
indisputable minds. That the dangers of failure
are great you must know, but to think only death

that you smugly believe you don’t fear
lies in wait is the most infantile assumption
to make. He looked around from you to me

and to the other. Each take a piece that you
feel you can hold, then set out alone to retrieve
and receive and reveal the pretender. If you try

to deceive or to make me believe you’ve
achieved what I ask you to do…he dropped
his arms with the fading of words and the ghost

of a smile. He turned to the fountain of the court
of St. James, and the water shot skyward, a singular
plume. The friend to my left toppled back just

as if the ground had been yanked, while
the one to my right, face forward collapsed like
a wine-sodden groom, which only left me and

the memory of you, of us three when as
strangers we came and collided and learned
the word debt. I reached out and touched

a scallopy edge of the map, and the fountain
went dark and I heard a loud buzz in my ear
like a storm cloud of gnats and a grumbling

voice with a tone of despair saying, “So much
for that!” And the sun on the day that we met
at the court of St. James disappeared.

…to be continued

© Elaine Stirling, 2014

Arousing Queen of Diamonds

Tags

Elaine Stirling, fixed verse, narrative poetry, sonnet, The Corporate Storyteller

The Meeting

You, who stand before me, reading letters
on a screen, bold enough to forswear
kneeling, though I am a Queen, this final
suit, the fourth, you’ve come to understand.

So be it and forewarned, that those fetters
you’ve grown fond of do not interest me. There,
upon your sleeve, that heart that weeps diurnal
is but nerve worn raw, repetitive, bland.

I look for pages spined, who fear not betters.
Tit for tat, that flat terrain I’ll smash. Dare
to master what arouses me, eternal
glory you will taste in quantities most grand.

Three lessons I now lay before you. Take
what pleases, leave the rest to rust or break.

First Lesson

I’m loved too well for hardness and for hue,
my flaws held up, estates and properties
precede and do not represent my whole.
These fissures are the story, not my shape.

Of shape, hear this: the diamond drills most true
while I, as kite, uplift, no enmities
midst rise and fall. But when momentum bowls
I will not stoop nor slow down your escape.

My court resides where lesser than imbues
the greater than with broadest view. Parties
and their friction lift my bounteous soul
to spill on you, as plenipotentate.

We will, in lesson next, address your speech—
those terms you’ve learned to shrink and ones that reach.

Second Lesson

This day where so much more begins, depends
on nothing that does not reside within
your diamond patterns, quadrilateral,
and each point lives upon a plane.

How tempting to relive what fear defends
through memory, your files labeled sin
or crime, disease—oh, please! The literal
is not your friend; its goal is to profane.

Cease harping on the done and past; split
ends divide the means. Mistrust the joker’s grin!
His jaws are locked, his thinking guttural.
Here, in diamond’s court, you wear no stain.

Listen now, for lesson three will summon
tidal victories from prior hells and heaven.

Lesson Three

You, of tender dreams and sleep perturbed,
learn fierce that nothing ails except by crude
and lazy emphasis. False markets chased
repel, while holding true to joy must sell.

Attraction is the law that undisturbed
will bring the best and more of love and food
sublime. My attendants with perfect haste
deliver and upon command, expel.

The steps that manifest have eased and curved
to bring you forms of high degree. What’s viewed
above, below must sanctify, both chaste
and passionate. Arousal serves you well…

And now, coordinates in place, we rise
to catch the diamonds in each other’s eyes.

~~~

I’ve employed the sonnet with a rhyme scheme of abcdabcdabcdee to give these pieces a kind of loose weave. While most lines lean toward iambic pentameter, I deliberately welcomed 9 or 11 syllables to convey the laid-back quality of a most misunderstood Queen.

© Elaine Stirling, 2014

Erato’s Vow

Tags

Elaine Stirling, light erotica, poetry, the muse of love poetry, writer's craft

Give me the poet
who knows the power
of a line break’s precipice

hears the rush
of stanza demarcation
space and pause

like hooves
in open gallop
raindrops in collision
with resistant clay

who plays
with lightning balls
of energy that aggregate
to words, as if they
were eternal

loving sound
beyond all boundaries
rolling with her
cross the bed
where rhyme
and meter wed;

and of this poet,
I shall make a scientist
with flows of thought as
gentle and immutable

as goosedown
traveling the evening
breeze with news
of revolution.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2014
Image is “The Education of Cupid”, by
François Boucher (1703-1770)

Moving Eden Outside

Tags

Elaine Stirling, poetry

You will never read this
in a way that could make
any difference, but I’m telling
you anyway. There’s a song
that I played on continuous
repeat when I needed to
think the best of you
for a long time, and
it took a lot of
pretending

and then
the task was done
and I didn’t have to play
the song anymore, only
something in the time-
warped weave of the
Universe refuses
to give up

and so
I hear the song
in the damnedest
places, where there
shouldn’t even be
music, and I
smile as I quietly
move Eden outside.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2014

Excerpts from a Grimoire

Tags

Elaine Stirling, narrative poetry

Full title: Excerpts from the Grimoire of a Goldsmith of Antiquity

From the flecks of future-past
surrounding me, I choose
the brightest and the smallest
with a set of calipers so fine
and movements so precise
you’d think to look at me
that I am doing nothing.

From these flecks of choice
and possibility, arrangements
sort themselves in order
more or less of cells
to dust, to nugget, leaf
and palaces, creating worlds
and galaxies and still beyond,
continuous.

You’ve found my world,
I see, else you’d have
carried on diminishing
and wearying, forging
leaden boots instead of
gold to plod through life,
confusing weight and density
with what shines pure, and
selling specks of hope mashed
in with heaviness, to every
questing soul who chances
to sit by you for a spell.

Be calm. Your saving
grace and I have talked
for aeons, and we’re very
nearly through the binding
and completion of this book—
a fleck or two of space,
and not another
word will do.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2014

DSM & Other Classified Disorderlies

Tags

Elaine Stirling, fun and silly rhyming verse

Reader Alert: The following verse is meant to be read in the spirit of play. I have tremendous respect for people who work in the psychiatric profession, and empathy for those who struggle—and thrive—with mental illness.

~~~

I’ve taken a course
to understand
why the course
of my life has not
gone hand in hand
with the orders I gave it—
or somebody did.

I can’t quite remember.

I ordered a book
that took men and women
much smarter than me
sixty-two years
to determine what’s
what in the brain
we call normal

which was something
I thought I never
could be

and now,
having read
and not understood

—I am using the book
as a stool for the foot
that I used to put into
my mouth—

I can say
with undisguised glee
there are only three things
that are wrong with me!

#1

I have the ability to not sit still
in the presence of boredom disorder.

If you determine
I should take a pill,
I will reach for a pillow
resisting temptation
for I can delay
like nobody’s business
and save for a day
the gratification to whomp
it across your head.

And take a nap instead.

#2

In the face of anxiety
I do not panic
though I probably should
if not panic
do something

I’m too busy
thinking of all
of my options
in times of anxiety
there are only
three

fight
flight or
freeze

but when caught
in tight corners, the Fs
on my tongue get tied up
and I twist them to

fleas
fright
and frig it!

Then do what I please.

#3

On days like today
when I’m too sad
to play in the rain—
YET AGAIN!

and reading
the forecast with
pictures of suns they
delete (oops, wrong
again!) makes me feel
even more of a drip

I go on a trip
in my mind where
there’s no border guards
and the Silk Road
is booming

and buy myself
mansions with poets
in residence

ask Paco de Lucia
to tune my guitar—
he always say yes!

And I learn to play chess.

that is all
that is all
that is wrong
with me

~~~

DSM stands for Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. It was first published in 1952 and is now in its fifth edition, known as DSM-5.

© Elaine Stirling, 2014
The painting called “Ecstasy” is by Maxfield Parrish.

Four Vignettes

Tags

#bringingbacktheglosa, brave new business leadership, Elaine Stirling, form poetry, glosa, medieval Spanish fixed verse, narrative poetry, The Corporate Storyteller

Sometimes, glosas arrive in clusters. I don’t know why, but here is my second in as many days. What’s different about “Four Vignettes” is that they cross the border into my other self, a corporation communication consultant and author of The Corporate Storyteller: A Writing Manual & Style Guide for the Brave New Business Leader. I like the convergence and hope you enjoy this piece.

~~~

He lives not long who battles with immortals,
nor do his children prattle about his knees
when he has come back
from battle and the great fray.

Homer

~~~

They found the warrior of market share
and innovation slumped today, outside
a club called Chronos, batteries of
his heart and phone both sapped.
Stock prices dipped, then soared
when rivals no less mortal
swallowed and digested what he built.
Satellites report sightings of Leviathan,
swimming toward Southeast Asian portals.
He lives not long who battles with immortals.

The woman who was born to draw
read Plath while keeping dinners warm
for eighteen years until the father
of her sons confessed—“It’s not about
your breasts”—he wore the curdled
bouillabaisse the night he left. A squeeze
of assets paid for canvases and lessons,
but a palsy stilled her hand. There’s
nothing either spouse can do to please,
nor do his children prattle about his knees.

A son of academics fights his way
through jungles of Cambodia
to overcome the asthma caused
by politics of tenure. He is learning
from the spongy earth to breathe again
and dreams of elephants who track
like canines for remains of kidnapped
millionaires. Black-eyed village children
dance, seeing him with lungs intact,
when he has come back.

Five sisters under thirty take
the corporate world by storm with
baked goods shipped to zones
of mass disaster. Micro-loans paid
back, their faces grace the halls of Forbes
and LSE*. They speak of work as play
and profits as a joyful, yeasty, rising
harmony. We’re made of sturdy clay
that softens when we cherish time away
from battle and the great fray.

*London School of Economics

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2014