Luxe Poétique

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Canadian poet, Elaine Stirling

I want to wake
to a poem on my tongue
like Himalayan salt
on a sliver of truffle
effervescent verse
that lifts me
from these shopworn
clobbering times
like Veuve Clicquot
in crystal flutes

I want to walk
with a rhythm in my bones
like Thelonious Monk
befriending dissonance
through sybaritic street fests
where the roasted yam
and sweet corn waft
like silken threads
around the lovers
who’ve forgotten
all they know
of politics

I want to sail
on a schooner named for me
through Adriatic breezes
for the joy of overturning
the misnotion forged by masses
disenchanted who
think cringing
is heroic
and that constant
anniversaries of past suffering
bring us anything but more

I want to fly
with caravans of djinns
transparent beings born
of flame, light-headed
never fossil fueled
complicit in the comet’s arc
indifferent to the myth
of dust to dust

and when my ashes
coalesce with all who congregate
in halls Valhallic or Brahmanic,
shamanic, histrionic—take your pick—
I shell scatter luxe poétique
through the coral ululations
of the dreamer who hears
oceans when he wakes

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2016

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Easter Prayer (of the faithless)

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alexandrines, Canadian poet, Easter, Elaine Stirling, fourteeners, Poulter's measure, seasonal poetry

While sleet and bitter winds compel these bones to stay inside
and blood runs hot with sorrow for the burning world,
I turn my gaze to You with whom my senses won’t abide;
for what it’s worth, I offer these few hollow words.

What’s come of life, this endless grind, I once received with joy?
The ghouls portending tragedy each day prove true.
Disclaimers, thugs, and maniacs so eager to deploy
discouragement at every turn, what’s wrong with you?

They muttered in Jerusalem, threw carnivals in Rome.
Berserkers in Byzantium, cossacks through Minsk,
at every time in every age, we’re driven from our home
by those convinced they’ve been raw dealt, same, ever since.

And yet, in each new moment, some young mother meets her child.
A father sees his daughter wed; the groom, his bride
has paid some kindness forward secretly. A teacher mild
praises; a student’s weary spirit fills with pride.

If You exist somehow beyond the cruelty and reason
or better yet reside, calm, within my choices,
then roll the stone away and lift me to the new season.
Grant us grace to hear and speak with truer voices.

~~~

This is my first attempt at a poetic meter known as the Poulter’s measure. Poulters, or sellers of poultry, were known in the Elizabethan era to vary their quantity of a dozen between 14 and 12. You may be familiar with 13 as a baker’s dozen—same idea.

A poem in Poulter’s measure alternates lines of 14 syllables with alexandrines, or lines of 12 syllables. The rhythm creates a kind of solemnity that reminds me of acolytes moving slowly down a cathedral aisle toward the altar. Wherever you reside along the spectrum of Easter, Eostre, or “Finally, a long weekend!”, may it be a happy one.

© Elaine Stirling, 2016

The One We Hated’s Dead

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Canadian poet, Elaine Stirling, sonnet

Yes, he is dead. The news broke out today.
What killed him spared no thought for all he did
and hoped to do. My unrelenting gaze
demanding he repent and feel dismay
must scurry now, a rat who’s lost her head.
Could I have kinder viewed his cock-eyed ways?

The greater tragedy may be he died
and I can feel no sadness, nor sweep clean
my joy. When will I learn all enmity
is waste, a pox of boiling gall inside
a vessel—mine!—disintegrating lean
and vibrant strength of mind? Insanity!

So now you ford the stream we all must cross.
You wish us well. Life carries on, no loss…

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2016

Milking Sour, Milking Sweet

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Canadian poet, Elaine Stirling, sonnet

I have soured on the taste of not enough,
curdled, clabbered, clotted on the knotty
view that discontent with every issue
non-aligned with my enlightened brain stuff
brings stupendous, bold new clarity.
Do spare the violins. Pass the tissue.

We’ve all been churned, known days both buttery
and sweet, but culture’s seeds grow in the now.
They draw no savour from remembered taste.
A finer state, perhaps, awaits the me
awake to fermentations that allow
uprisings to boil over, without haste.

I walk along, content, the bank of dreams
where all that settles lifts the richest cream.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2016

My Search for the Unborn Poets

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birds as psychopomps, Canadian poet, Elaine Stirling, sonnet, World Poetry Day

I seek to converse with poets not yet
born, bright sparks at the periphery who
fear neither malware nor the afterlife.

I’ve whirled a round or two with Blake; my debt
to Donne is astronomical. While true
that every incarnation owes her strife

to popes and princes, rot and poverty,
while cowardice barks loud for guns and fists,
there surely must exist a proto-state,

some pre-orgasmic green room where non-me
and not-yet-you leapfrog in rhymeful twists
and turns of mind with those who shall be great.

A wild-eyed yellow bird lands at my feet.
“Too-whee! Step lively, mate, we got your tweet.”

~~~

I managed to squeak this sonnet in with hours to spare on World Poetry Day 2016. While the coffee shops I frequent have yet to accept poetry as currency on March 21, as many do, I remain hopeful—and I thoroughly enjoyed the latte that fueled this one.

© Elaine Stirling, 2016
Image by by Bill Majoros at http://www.billmajoros.com

Spring Equinox, 2016

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Canadian writer, Elaine Stirling, vernal equinox

Today, in my lifetime, an African-American president of the United States is visiting Cuba. This is the same lifetime that lived through the missile crisis and witnessed, via media mere decades old, the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King.

Last week, the US president and his wife hosted our prime minister, who is the son of the prime minister who brought into being two official languages for Canada, English and French. That enactment opened us to an era of tolerance and diversity for which Canadians are known and admired around the planet. Reputation isn’t everything, but the first thought we think about any one thing is first for a reason.

World events do not define me. Happiness does. So does freedom, which includes the power to look beyond my first reaction if that reaction displeases me. The further this life unfolds, the more I choose to focus on changes for the good. The more I focus on changes for the good, the more goodness I see. We are surrounded by it.

Happy Spring, everyone!

The Vast Whatever

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Canadian poet, Elaine Stirling, sonnet

When I play upon the fields of the vast
whatever, no one knows my name. No one
cares that I am learning secret rules
to a game with victories sweet and fast
where everyone reclaims their sense of fun.
It’s not the kind of game they teach in schools.

Here, no rhyme’s a crime. Sonnets happen all
the time; lame words like bonnet find their place
internally, the pulses I was born
with have the times of their life. Thinking small
is where my field shrinks. I lose my pace—
originality gives way to scorn.

If you’ll excuse me now, I have a date
with the captain—he’s a hottie!—of my fate.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2016

Who Will You Listen To?

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Canadian poet, Elaine Stirling, Malayan fixed verse, pantoum

Who will you listen to
in the times of the great despair?
Will you strain to harmonize
with all that you deplore

in the times of the great despair
or eulogize what’s dead and gone?
With all that you deplore
surrounding you, why believe in better

or eulogize what’s dead and gone
while there is yet tomorrow
surrounding you? Why believe in better
when bearers of bad news assemble?

While there is yet tomorrow
will you starve your soul to live among them
when bearers of bad news assemble
or dare to walk, hand in hand, with hope?

Will you starve your soul to live among them?
Will you strain to harmonize
or dare to walk, hand in hand, with hope?
Who will you listen to?

~~~

The repeating lines of the pantoum, a Malayan fixed verse, are a fun way to explore—or maybe, exorcise—our circular, obsessive nature of thinking. I love discovering that a two or three word phrase, when placed in different contexts, can take on a completely different meaning. Perhaps the same holds true with the company we choose to keep.

© Elaine Stirling, 2016

On Days Like This

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Canadian poet, Elaine Stirling, seasonal poetry

I love days when melting snow plings rubaiyat
about my feet on city streets, and streams
of poetry wend through my mind, accelerate
while, grocery laden, I can’t reach to dam them.

I love days when slush, exhaust and salt-
encrusted, slows me down enough to let
verse, blank and free-range, have their play.
Syllabic counters, take your salary—and go!

I love days when I don’t care who’s driving
through the neighbourhood with licence plates
from out of state to cipher what I’ve conjugated
from the verbs I do not talk about, except to friends.

On days like this, when winter strokes a gentle
cooling hand across this cabin-fevered brow
I catapult like daffodils and spring from woolly
bed sheets to the silken possibilities of now.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2016
Image of melting snow: photographer unknown