Tolerance and Street Poetry

Tags

Elaine Stirling, essay, prose poetry

The funny little man sat in the front seat of the bus and talked nonstop to the driver. Most of his teeth were missing and he spoke with an accent, maybe Italian. The man said things like, “Do you know why I know everything, even though I no schooled?” He pounded his forehead with the ball of his hand. “Because God put it all in here.” Then he cackled and gazed out the window, giving us passengers, if we were lucky, three precious seconds of silence.

In between hyperbole: “I’ve had the best life…life’s not easy…no one’s worked harder than me,” the man made outrageous racist comments in the form of life counsel. “Whenever you see XXX people, you can be sure dey have money in their pocket. You think they’re broke, dey always say they are, but they’re not.” Our driver happened to be of that race, but he never once took offense, never pushed back or corrected him. A few times, when the man stumbled over his words, couldn’t get his thoughts out, the driver calmly said, “It’s okay, I’m listening.” The driver said good morning to every new passenger.

The night before, we’d had torrential rains, and the two of them talked about it. “What time did you get home last night?” the driver asked the man.

“Two a.m. I couldn’t get no taxi from the terminal, so I had to walk.”

“You walked in that rain? All the way home?”

The man laughed. “Yeah. It rained like crazy, but I walk like summer.” He gazed out the window and said it again, more slowly.

It rained like crazy.
I walk like summer.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2014
The evocative image of a bus window comes from http://www.ilovethebus.wordpress.com.

A Paragraph I Wish I’d Written–and a Poem I Did

Tags

conflict, D.H. Lawrence, depletion, Elaine Stirling, failure, Lady Chatterley's Lover, poetry, renewal, victim mindset

“Real knowledge comes out of the whole corpus of the consciousness; out of your belly and your penis as much as out of your brain and mind. The mind can only analyse and rationalize. Set the mind and the reasons to cock it over the rest, and all they can do is to criticize, and make a deadness. I say all they can do. It is vastly important. My God, the world needs criticizing today . . . criticizing to death. Therefore let’s live the mental life, and glory in our spite, and strip the rotten old show. But, mind you, it’s like this: while you live your life, you are in some way an organic whole with all life. But once you start the mental life you pluck the apple. You’ve severed the connection between the apple and the tree: the organic connexion. And if you’ve got nothing in your life but the mental life, then you yourself are a plucked apple . . . you’ve fallen off the tree. And then it is a logical necessity to be spiteful, just as it’s a natural necessity for a plucked apple to go bad.”

—D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, 1928

~~~

Denuded

Where the oaks stood
on the crown of a knoll
until they were felled
to timber the trenches of
the war to end all wars
I stand with you now in
silence—what to do,
what to do, I wonder,
with these empty hands?

You’ve never thought
yourself a whittler, I am sure,
or a hewer of hardwood,
hatchet-driven, yet how else
to describe what became of
the foliate lushness of our
beginnings, the time and life
surrrounding us, the acorns
of my words spilling across
the humus of your visions?

You wouldn’t water them,
my words; the cisterns where
you gathered rain, you kept off
limits, saving your moist breath
for sellers of tinsel, masked
with ruby lips.

The silence stretches pink and
taut like a pregnant frog’s belly,
like the gum you used to chew
with intense concentration as
if thoughts beyond where’s the
nearest door were ready to burst.

They never did. Nothing burst
but you and me and nothing’s
changed. We didn’t need to meet
here today where oaks perished
to furnish killing fields to establish
once again that stand-offs cannot
grow stanzas or new stands of trees.

My left hand is twitching. I spy
an acorn near your foot and
wonder which of us first spoke
it. Our eyes meet as if you’re
daring me, and with the toe of
your boot you kick dirt over the
lone fetal oak. Resigned, I sigh,
reach out to shake your hand
and from the inky sky falls the
drop that will become the deluge
that washes away you, me, and
every one of us warmongers.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2012

How to Hold a Vibration and Grow It

Tags

Elaine Stirling, poetry, self-reflection, transformation, vibration

Image by Dean Keller

Spitting mad one night I asked
the rain how, yet again, the good
had dropped away, how pools
once full and fountaining now
gaped, the rusting pipes of nymphs
grown sordid, deaf to majesties
of song perpetual and flow.

We’re good at bringing low,
I said, of angling away
and pulling toward us what
we don’t appear to want, then
shoving it with myriads of
reason for our blame. Where
did we learn this paltry game?

The rain, she did not answer me,
though every drop hit perfectly
upon the rock and spikes of grass
and sparked a connectivity that
didn’t ask of every drip to justify
its time and space, or doubt its
capability to drain the banks
of cloud and never questioned
how her future moistures
would arrive. This I did note.

I visited the woods electric
blue of tamarack and yew
still damp and shivering
with memories of you and
wondered what the chances
were of once again discovering
that life is more, not lessening,
and while I formed these thoughts
a spark of something tremulous
ignited at my ear, and I could
hear the laughter of a worry-free
and blissful creativity. For me?

A plop of gooey sap, it fell upon
my nose; I wiped it off and in
the stickiness opined that what
we think coheres and swiftly
multiplies, the more of same
until we reach a tipping
point, and like the rain,
yes, like the rain…

but then the night grew cold
and bleak, a harshness circled
round me, taunting names and
grudgeries I’d held for aeons
past as if in expectation of a
judge somewhere awaiting my
accounts of who and why
and how and when; and if my
evidence fell short again I’d
fall to someplace lower than
I sought my right to be.

Where lives this judge?
I looked around.

Soaked to the skin, awake,
it mattered not to anyone
how long I stayed, and
though the ghouls they
snapped and frothed at me,
the hellhound tags hung from
their necks aclattering, I smelled
their feebling transparency.

How rank you are, I said with
no great urgency. Those tempting
parts you offer, pull away, then
twist to make the weakness mine
is nothing more than self-occluding
voice, abundancy’s swift measures
to avoid. I shrug you off!

For now that I in lover’s arms
enjoy what grows and bountifies,
I need no longer name the ghosts
of what we tried and failed to grow
in worry’s enervating bitter holds.

Upon that self-affirming thought,
the harshness fell like ebon drapes
and from the east arrayed a sharp,
near blinding brightness, so I turned,
wide-eyed, to greet and saw the
multitudes vibrating, and I walked,
slow smiling, toward the light.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2012

Do You Suppose?

Tags

avoidance, cheap interpretations, Elaine Stirling, moles, poetry

The black mole, Nature’s metaphoric stand-in for this poem, not to be confused with beauty marks or Mexican chocolate-flavoured sauce

~~~

I didn’t used to be
a mole, didn’t burrow
thoughts and feelings
into tunnels, stow my
happiness in pockets
safe from badgering
and wolves.

I bounced to this fair
ball eager to stand,
to run on these two feet
and paint my toes in rainbow
hues and choose what I
desire—and I chose!

Do you suppose
there’ll come a time
when see each other
clear we will, not leaping
hole to hole, confused
by dreams and fleeing
metaphor?

When you won’t freak
by actual approach of
what you love and want
the most, and I’ll stop
seeing you as warning
signs of all I left behind?

Or will we, like the mole,
continue by avoidance
to control the everything,
the all that is, and nurse
our feeble sight by groping
for the lumps and curves
that seem to be but aren’t,
for the fevers they induce,
the answers to our dreams?

I do suppose we will.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2012

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

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.

Projection

Tags

Elaine Stirling, illusion, poetry, projection, repression

Image: Melissa A. Robinson

When you say love

I hear the chains

you prattle on

I watch the rain

recede to memories

that I hold dear

you batter

at my walls

Wake up!

the bricks I pile

as fast as you

can hammer

while my chamber

shrinks, for all

I do to keep you

out does naught

but lock me in

and words that flowed

between us once

they trickle

some to springs

below and others

rise to form the clouds

that loose the rain

whereby you cling

to memories

of love, that word

you dare not speak.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2012

Listening for the Milestones

Tags

Elaine Stirling, exploration, Horacio Quiroga, jungle, poetry

“Listening for the Milestones” is a reworked poem, both in syntax and mood. When I wrote it in 2011, though you couldn’t have told me at the time, I was waging internal war against the craft and by extension, its practitioners. All these rules! What are they? I hate rules! What does free verse mean, anyway?!  The edge is still there, I hope, but with a little less tantrum.

Cockscomb Basin Jaguar Reserve, Belize

I nearly threw you out last night
nearly gave up, so tired am I
of the voice with no voice
the endless siren whining
of a world not fashioned
to your liking.

What I’m learning though
is to listen for the milestones,
the cool shaded flints of wisdom
balanced and shaped enough
to stand on. They have been
so rare in recent months,
I’m learning giant steps.

It’s the friction of fiction,
keeping track of the difference
between you and not-you.
I warned you at the start:
she has to fall in love with he;
It’s the rule of non-tragedy.
Meanwhile, we worked
so hard at being ordinary
and succeeded so well,
I have to make you up again.

I reached the bit finally
where he writes her a poem
and I did pretty good, mimicking
your voice; she’s confused like I was,
all those layers in a superficial package.

The question now is her.
Are her layers mine?
Do her irritations and stupidities
sting like I can?
Yes and not-yes..
She is a musing composite
or will be when the muses find her
sufficiently amusing.

Those Greeks have been dragging
me through strange lands of late:
poetry of all things
where you and others
make their home, but lately
I have felt captive with my
frozen prose, needing to get out.

You sensed it, of course, as you
eventually do, and introduced me
to Quiroga on a thousand mile stone
where you showed me the way
home with a machete.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2011

Tumbling

Tags

Elaine Stirling, our infinite selves, poetry

In finite terms
you and I are
the unfinished
finding clues
to the infinite
in items unmarked and
finely clustered

and when eternity
has had her way
with us, the predetermined
of our nature will bow
in deference to our
preternatural

lit by the unknowable
our infantile known
will surrender its tantrums
to the tantric delights
of the sacred unknown

by means of which
we tumble headlong
through the center of the mystery
long enough to choose

to plunge ourselves
again into the finite
where joy awaits

to catch us with her
thoughtful open arms.

You first.

© Elaine Stirling, 2011
Image by psion005 @deviantART