Confessions of an Anti-Creator

Tags

Canadian poet, Elaine Stirling, humourous verse, narrative poetry, parody, rhyming couplets

~~rhyming couplets, ad nauseam, for the reasonably mature~~

I’m chewing on a worry bone, sucking out the gristle
for the grand epiphany, precursing my epistle
that is sure to congregate a fascinating crowd
when I lay out all that’s wrong, particularly loud.

I have such wondrous insights, can gurgitate the worst
of everything that’s going on. I burn to be the first,
reminding you I knew it, so you should have just come here
to get your dose of what to think and maximize your fear.

The secret to this day and age is, always be prepared.
Mistrust could be your greatest friend, if only you would dare
to look askance at happiness and hum-di-dums who share
the best of what they see, as if the rest of us would care.

You want a good analogy? Imagine you’re a cloud.
Me, I’m silver iodide, the element that wowed
the scientists in Cold War years who wanted to make rain.
The army paid them millions. Corporations took the gain.

You’re up there floating, nice and light, dreaming of your honey;
I zap a gram of iodide round about your tummy.
Suddenly, you’re feeling weird, maybe even crummy—
start gaining weight & running late, worried about money.

The chemical reaction of my presence from the get-go
will free you like a laxative, and something has to let go.
You’ll look around and wonder who just shat on your parade,
who turned the traffic lights to red and stopped you getting laid.

If I have now convinced you that my worldview is mighty,
we’ll jointly whip up hurricanes of lefty against righty.
From here on, all I have to do is throw you little bones
of breaking news & random blues, I’ve mastered all the tones.

Antagonists, the task is ours to muddy up your story,
distract you from your purpose, keep you boiling, feeling sorry.
Well, now I’ve tinkered long enough to guarantee a shower.
Confetti? Hail? Precipitates are all within your power.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2017
The wonderful image of a mad scientist comes from Designzz.

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Nightfall of the Iguana, 2017

Tags

#bringingbacktheglosa, #PabloNeruda, Canadian poet, Canto General, Elaine Stirling, medieval Spanish fixed verse, narrative poetry, New Year's poem 2017, seasonal poetry, Waldeen

~~a trilogy of glosas, concluded~~

The jaguar brushed leaves
with his phosphorescent absence,
the puma speeds through bracken
like devouring fire.

—from “Some Beasts”, Pablo Neruda,
in his epic Canto General,
translation by Waldeen

~~~

Not long ago, I found a strange map
in the ruins of a Maracaibo mansion,
the corners held down with rough-cut rubies
round and plump as duck eggs. Palimpsests
throbbed like blue-black veins across the chart—
illegible, unscarred by zealots and thieves.
I was told by the raggedy viejo who sleeps
underneath that the map and her routes
can be viewed by whoever believes
the jaguar brushed leaves

with her tail and the weasely dictator fell.
Claims such as these, they never sit well
with the rushed and the rational. Being neither
that day, I asked the old man to explain.
Once a year, he said, when defenses
deflate, humankind’s natural omniscience
is recalled and recorded upon this map
by shades of the recently departed who’ve
dropped all pretence of sorrow and vehemence.
With his phosphorescent absence

of political skews and racial miscues,
he hovered over the map, and with a finger
gnarled as ebony burl, he cruised along
routes I’d been known to frequent and
rubbed them all out, pronouncing every one
irrelevant. Time to accept there’s no fact in
the past with the power to deplete or subvert
your future. Take a page from the wild. When
the cayman’s not hungry, he’s loath to attack, and
the puma speeds through bracken.

Likewise, in the seam between moments—and
years—that appear to engender and justify
fear, you will find a clear trail laid out by the good
that is you and your boundaryless kin. You are
timely, well compassed. Walk on, begin.
And now it is time for this Job to expire.
He dropped the fat rubies into a sack.
He rolled up the mansion and with it the map,
spinning all he had shown me into a gyre
like devouring fire…

Wishing you a happy and magical New Year!

© Elaine Stirling, 2016

Pot Belly Stove

Tags

Canadian poet, Elaine Stirling, narrative poetry, villanelle

~~a villanelle~~

In the center of my kitchen sits a pot belly stove
made for cooking and for heating, just like every other.
My appliance has no cause to think and nothing to prove.

I gather wood from an apple grove,
buy yesterday’s news from a friend’s big brother.
In the center of my kitchen sits a pot belly stove.

Last night, a troubled neighbour drove
into the lake to get even with his mother.
My appliance has no cause to think and nothing to prove,

so I shall not comment on their familial love
or lack thereof. Too much of anything will smother.
In the center of my kitchen sits a pot belly stove.

Earlier this morning, an acquaintance shot a dove;
its peace, apparently, disturbed him. He could use a lover.
My appliance has no cause to think and nothing to prove.

Peddlers of corrosive fuel and cheap vitriol move
daily through our village. They are of small bother.
In the center of my kitchen sits a pot belly stove.
My appliance has no cause to think and nothing to prove.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2016

Jeb Miller Clancy & the Silk Knitter’s Fancy

Tags

Canadian poet, Elaine Stirling, humourous verse, narrative poetry

This is an ode to Jeb Miller Clancy,
publican of The Silk Knitter’s Fancy.
Rented out rooms by the seat of his pants, he
never saw life as forbidding or chancy.

Night after night in his tavern on Mile Street,
Jeb Miller Clance served his clients a wild streak
of savoury pies and craft beer called Hey, Wheat!
seldom bothered to tally his eat, sleep & play week.

Normally, now, in an ode of this type,
we expect our protagonist living his right
and substantial good life to encounter a fight
with some jerk and his knife, or a moll
with a history of psychos and strife.

But the aim of this verse isn’t what you might think,
for the life of Jeb Clancy, while centered on drink,
food, and bed sheets avoided the brink
of self-pity that wedges us into a chink
like a tiddly wink…

…of belief in a past or a future of doom
with barrages of fact that deny wiggle room,
See, the thing about Jeb and this jiggedy tune
is that death will o’ertake us all, later or soon,

as it did on a cold stormy October night
when Jeb took his sweetie out dancing. The light
of the moon caught them kissing just right—
when the meteor struck with spectacular might.

Today there’s a hole where the publican rests
that’s become what you might call a pilgrimage quest.
All who pay homage insist they feel blessed
by the spirit of Jeb who sees you as his guest

of The Silk Knitter’s Fancy that only admits
patrons with hunger for meat pies and wit
and a pint with good friends who begrudge not a bit
your decision to live with fine humour and grit.

~~~

Author’s Note: I mostly wrote this poem for the opportunity to say tiddly wink.

© Elaine Stirling, 2016

Studio of the Mind

Tags

#bringingbacktheglosa, Canadian poet, Elaine Stirling, Hope Mirrlees, narrative poetry, Spanish medieval fixed verse

Yesterday, while sketching rough lines for the poem you’re about to read, I was pondering the strange nature of blogs. Oceantics has been up and running since September 2012. I’ve posted 476 poems, more or less. What began as something like a dare, then a showcase, has settled into my favourite phase yet, a studio. I post poems here. I try stuff out. The most grindingly awful, I have the freedom to delete. Most, though, have stayed. I’m more in love than ever with the craft of poetry, particularly the privilege of the glosa. Someday, in the ethers, wherever we go after this, I want to bear hug the Spanish courtier who developed this awesome form. I kid you not—the glosa transcends time/space and lets you party with any poet who ever lived.

In the following glosa, I have refracted the poet’s lines to create new end words. Hope Mirrlees won’t mind; she was a great rule breaker. Scarcely known now, Hope was the author of Lud o’ the Mist, a book that inspired some of today’s most successful fantasy novelists, including Neil Gaiman and Sir Terry Pratchett. Fyfield Books has published her collected poems, from which the following quatrain has been borrowed.
~~~
…a weight of glory so immense / as to appal and freeze
the mortal sense is true in poetry as well
as true in fact. / It can occur both after
and before / the one unchangeable and strict event.

—from “A Portrait of the Second Eve Painted in Pompeian Red” by Hope Mirrlees

What have you seen today?
The blind man at the caravanserai inquires.
Murder, theft, I say, endless dunes,
monotony. A date pit cracks my tooth.
I wake. It was a dream, though I still feel
the grit behind my lids. My world, by degrees,
creeps in: laptop, tablet, ipod, phone. I can’t
leave well enough alone. Popping time-released
gel caps, my shoulders ache with strange dis-ease,
a weight of glory so immense as to appal and freeze.

He reappears in scrubs, pushing
a mop outside the ICU. What have you
seen today? A kind soul, I say, paid this
forward, a venti low-fat caramel latte…
unexpected funds. Guess I’m sort of shallow.
He shakes his head. There is a smell
to presence that you mask and hold at bay,
a musk enticing as a wedding night you chase
and lose and crave what you could once foretell.
The mortal sense is true in poetry as well.

Where deepest violence now blinds, imagination,
fierce desire rise and skip ahead. They’re carving
beyond tragedy new sites. The never searched,
no precedent or archives, is where those angels
of great scholarship assemble to assist, whispering,
Exchange your weary vehemence for rapture.
We’ll provide the evidence both spendable
and luscious. Let darker realms be as they are.
The ultra-rational cannot abide our laughter
as true in fact. It can occur both after

and the during, as your friend, whose Stage IV
illness took her, came to know in final breaths.
Grief angered and engulfed me, but worse,
I also saw, as if I’d grown a multitude of eyes,
more of rage’s like and weight rush in,
barbaric, howling, overwhelming, hell-sent—
until I heard her voice. Not so. You do not have to
breathe your last to know the only destination’s love.
Everyone is light refracted, pretending death, bent
and before the one unchangeable and strict event.

~~~
© Elaine Stirling, 2016
A note about the image: I don’t know which Pompeian red painting captured Hope Mirrlees’s imagination, but I like to think it might have been this one. A caption, borrowed from Mauricio Naya’s “Muralis” on Pinterest, states: A new study by Italy’s National Science Foundation (Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche) has determined that the famous “Pompeian red,” the brilliant red coloring many of the famous frescoed walls of Pompeii, was actually ochre/yellow. According to the study, the yellow color was rendered intense red by the hot gasses emitted during the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79.

Saturday Night at the Swizzle Inn

Tags

Bermuda, Elaine Stirling, narrative poetry, poetry for fun, Swizzle Inn

I decided to let my fun begin
on a Saturday night at the Swizzle—
no! No, no, no, no!

I didn’t decide at the Swizzle Inn
on a Saturday night to do anything but
nurse a gingery rummy dark drink
of the house, slurp a chowder, a curry,
I couldn’t decide between fishy
or spicy…both sounded nice

but of one thing I must be
abundantly clear:
I had no intention of
knowing so dear
the commencement of fun
that had smoothly begun
with fresh mahi mahi
and Bermudian rum
chased by pale Indee ale
at a rustic wood table
beneath setting sun.

could a meal pale derision,
abolish all fear of enjoyment
perpetual, bring happiness near
enough to embrace and to tug
at my heart, and to view
on the sleeves of the good
folk around me?

well, I couldn’t have told you
what I now surely know,
how it all worked its way
into and under my sunburned
skin, which is how I began
to let the fun in on a Saturday
night at the Swizzle Inn…

postscript

to those with a penchant
for gossip and dirt,
I refuse to disclose
if I purchased the shirt—
but straight out I’ll tell you,
I’m happy to say, that I did
swagger out arm in arm
with great fun and exuberant
whim on a Saturday night
at the Swizzle Inn.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2015
Photograph by author

The Inadequate God

Tags

Elaine Stirling, narrative poetry, sonnet

 

 

 

 

The ad read, For Sale: casting stones, a pair.
They contain the magic of what remains
of the inadequate god their prophet
praised and stalked to prove he is everywhere.

I bought the stones and gave them names,
set them on a shelf and then forgot it
till my fortunes fell and the dwindling share
of a joy I’d known turned to shooting pains.

Relief was all I sought. Desperate,
I threw my stones in anger, didn’t care
so long as someone paid, until the strain
proved god is useless and mankind crooked.

I make my living now by casting stones.
Feeling inadequate? You’re not alone.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2015

The Miserabilist

Tags

Chant Royal, Elaine Stirling, form poetry, medieval fixed verse, narrative poetry, variation on the ballade

~~ a chant royal ~~

A motley fool of one hundred and two
who freshened the moods of seventeen kings,
confounded ten queens and ne’er a sword drew,
nor suffered the pain of everyday stings,
with a purse always full, a bed always
warm, once offered to share his foolish ways.
Just five simple words, all trials will cease,
enemies vanish, your fortunes increase.
No magic potions, no frogs to be kissed,
an action so simple, it must needs please:
Don’t inhale near the miserabilist.

The miserabilist? A word no one knew
in court or in town, it swiftly took wing
& all through the realm, a strange caution grew
as folks sniffed one another for something
amiss in the way that they spent their days
or their ducats, criticized or gave praise.
And when they approached the flagrant unease
of some poor sad sot, they tried not to breathe
till they’d set his ass or his boat adrift.
Many were crowing of new-found relief.
Don’t inhale near the miserabilist.

The motley fool’s popularity grew
while the rickety king found a new spring
in his step, for his subjects who once knew
only the keys of complaint learned to sing
new refrains. Livestock grew fat on the graze;
barren wombs came to life; a pinkish haze
settled over the land; a tinkling breeze
cooled the fears of poverty and disease.
All ventures thrived; every day brought new grist,
abolished old habits of thought like fleas.
Don’t inhale near the miserabilist.

Now our motley fool was no fool. He knew
that avoidance alone can never bring
joy of the kind that eliminates blue.
Constant surveillance against anything
must eventually flood minds and by-ways
with its very nature. Streaks of dismay
were already seeping like rancid grease
through the gossip and fray, a slick decrease
of focus on five simple words. Once blissed,
now sinister was demanding release.
Don’t inhale near the miserabilist.

Fool, undeterred, he donned his cloak and blew
the air from out his lungs. He stashed the rings
and torques of gold that fortune brought and flew
by night on horseback to an untried king
with retinue who wished to learn the ways
of wealth and surplus. Endless sunny days
accompanied our fool whose mental ease,
well practiced, holds no tics. No enemies
could pierce him, no impostors grasp his gist
of life as serial simplicities.
Don’t inhale near the miserabilist.

The motley fool has never ceased to tease
the humourless within us. Still, he pleads,
let go of consequence. Give wrath a miss.
Breathe deep into the vast where love agrees.
Don’t inhale near the miserabilist!

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2015
Image, “The Jester”, a woodblock by Irving Amen (1918-2011)

The Tangled Sea

Tags

#bringingbacktheglosa, Alain C. Dexter, Elaine Stirling, medieval Spanish fixed verse, narrative poetry

A Glosa

He wrapped her warm in his seaman’s coat
against the stinging blast;
he cut a rope from a broken spar
and bound her to the mast.

—“The Wreck of the Hesperus”, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

In the moribund night of a waning moon
on the crags of an island known as Doon
o’ Fara, moves the shadow of a weaver
from thatchéd hut to cliffs of spray and salt.
By day she spins and knits complicated
garments for the discerning and remote.
By all accounts, her wealth cannot be touched
or measured, though she started life as
property of one they called the Stoat.
He wrapped her warm in his seaman’s coat

and circled her, resentful, day and night.
Whate’er she thought or dreamed, he knew.
He brought her sprigs of violet and skeins
of tangled wool to while away her hours.
He filled her head with tales of dread and
disappointment that sealed her like a cast.
You are my legacy, he’d croon. When I am gone,
you’ll carry on my song of life’s depravity,
wrapped firmly in the wisdom of my past
against the stinging blast.

The weaselly man he traveled far, indulging
endless appetites. To ease his welcome home,
he filled the holds of ships with ivory bits and
wooden masks in such vast quantities that
Fara could not move inside her thatchéd prison.
Some folk say she clubbed him with a bar
of solid gold; others say he met his end
in polar realms—who knows? One day,
she hired a young man home from war.
He cut a rope from a broken spar

and built a sledge, and together they expunged
all traces of the dark controlling Stoat. With every
discard off the cliffs, her mind became more spacious.
The young man went his way, and she, devoted
to the doon, mastered patterns of abundance from
the roiling wind and sea. Eons since have passed,
and only in the darkening moon are glimpses of the
weaver seen. But on certain icy twilights, you may
catch the whiff of him who, loathing freedom, cast
and bound her to the mast.

~~~

You can learn more about the medieval Spanish form called glosa here.

© Elaine Stirling, 2015

Lilith and Eve Meet for Lattes

Tags

Elaine Stirling, medieval fixed verse, narrative poetry, poems for the solstice, sacred geometry, sestina, the two wives of Adam

A Sestina

In a café in Yemen, two lightly veiled women,
over foamy lattes and pistachio crescents, meet
to exchange little gifts with laughter and to dish
on the man they both know well. Every eve
of winter solstice, they come together, Lilith, first
wife and Evie, the second, illustrious mates

of the guy we call Adam, the force who mates
and regenerates without really thinking. The women
sigh. Our Adam is a lusty one, the first—
you’ve got to give him that. But how to meet
a higher love, muddled hearts are asking, Eve.
Have we perhaps overdone the dish?

Frozen to the point of tasteless is the dish
of revenge, her friend agrees. Of all that mates,
vengeance breeds the saddest spawn. Yet this eve,
we have a chance, sweet Lil, as founding women
to imagine something better. It’s foolish to meet
the same agony over and over again. But, first…

They draw their heads together, Lilith first
who says, it would only take the two of us. A dish
of Primum Mobile is simple. Tomorrow, we’ll meet
in the Garden, pick saffron and capers, mates
of great flavour. The day has arrived for women
to reclaim their artful selves and men to love the Eve

of their own disenchantment. The lovely Eve
smiles. Forbidden fruit, as I know well, at first
tastes sweet, then rots. It is the Knowing women
could have held but served instead upon a dish
to please their self-created, exiled mates.
I’ve here the list of all who now yearn to meet—

and I, says Lilith, those who, clothed in joy, meet
every day as Eden, freshening paradise, Eve,
as once we greeted Adam. You and I, perfect mates
of genesis, we perpetuate the ever-present first
with uplifting thoughts and feelings to warm the dish
of pure desire. Gloria, in excelsis to all men & women!

And thus, the everlasting meeting thrived of first
and second—Lilith, Eve—conspiring a magnificent dish
for mates proportionate to the highest in all women.

Happy Solstice!

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2014