A car tire hovers above a pothole filled with snarling monster sculptures.
Big Sister replaced Big Brother and generously generated this image
“Watch out for that pot hole!” “Which one?” Snap, crackle, pop! “That one.”
Pot Holes
Jack Pine Sonnet
Welcome to Pot Hole time. It’s all yours and it’s all mine. Mine, possession, not land mine, though hitting one at speed will rattle your teeth, shake your spine, and leave you feeling far from divine.
Pot Holes, Pot Holes, everywhere, filled with water you can’t drink. They hide the depth of every hole with waters, dark as ink.
Spring’s freeze and thaw breed ever more Pot Holes than we had before. I think at night they stay out late, to fornicate, and celebrate.
A low spring sun in the driver’s eyes makes shadows shift and slide.
A mazy life full of chance drawing a labyrinthine thread through a maze of Pot Holes that we dread, the morning sun blinding our eyes so we cannot see the Pot Holes’ size nor how they move and dance.
Big Sister replaced Big Brother and generously generated this image
Comment:
This is wonderful fun. Moo has ceased to be jealous of Big Brother and Big Sister with their attempts to read my mind. And what a great job they do of it. All in the cause of the Pot Hole Dance Season. Have you seen the Pot Holes dance? You know, one minute there isn’t one and about and then a split second later – CLANK! The dreaded tire pressure light comes on. You turn it off. It comes back on. You turn it off. It comes back on.
You stop the car at the roadside, turn off the engine, get out, and check the tires. They look all right. You kick them or tap them with a stick. They all sound all right and they all sound the same. You get back into the car. You start the engine. All the lights come on. All the lights go off. Except one – the dreaded tire pressure light. Well, I can swear pretty well in about five languages. I turn the tire light off. Wonder of wonders, it goes away.
I am so happy. I turn on the radio. I clap my hands. And CLANK! I drive into another Pot Hole that appeared from nowhere and walked or danced or shimmied or slithered into the road right in front of your car. You guessed it – and the tire pressure light comes on!
A well-loved rag doll leans against a wooden post surrounded by blooming roses at twilight.
Big Brother read my mind and painted the picture
Rag Doll
Jack Pine Sonnet
They fought over her whenever they met each one holding her by a leg or an arm
An eternal tug of war a terrestrial dog fight with no truce called and neither giving in
One day they went a step too far and tore the doll in two neither happy with an arm and a leg each
as for the rag doll torn apart in fury she was discarded thrown in the garbage
when nobody was looking one child returned rescued the rag doll sewed her back together and filled her with love
Comment:
Tragic, really, and really tragic. A reversed Judgement of Solomon in so many ways. An Allegory applicable to so many situations in this tiny, overcrowded world of ours. Every night, on the television, we can watch hour after hour of shows like this – minus the last stanza. Some endings can never be happy.
One night, for the fun of it, I counted all the deaths, shooting and murders on selected shows over a three or four hour period. I saw over 150 violent deaths. What sort of legacy are we leaving our children, our grandchildren. And what will their children learn in their turn? Food for thought to be taken three times a day while avoiding exposure to reality – or is this the alternative reality to which we will all be exposed?
A cracked heart-shaped stone with carvings lies cracked in a desert landscape.
Inquisitor
He told me to read, and plucked my left eye from its orbit; he slashed the glowing globe of the other. Knowledge leaked out: loose threads dangling, the reverse side of a tapestry.
He told me to speak, and squeezed dry dust between my teeth. I spouted a diet of Catechism and Confession.
He emptied my mind of poetry and history. He destroyed the myths of my people. He filled me with fantasies from a far off land. I live in a desert where people die of thirst, yet he talked to me of a man walking on water.
On all sides, as stubborn as stucco, the prison walls listened, and learned.
I counted the years with feeble scratches: one, four, two, three; for an hour, each day, the sun shone on my face; for an hour, at night, the moon kept me company. Broken worlds lay shattered inside me. Dust gathered in my people’s ancient dictionary.
My heart was a weathered stone withering within my chest. It longed for the witch doctor’s magic, for the healing slash of wind and rain.
The Inquisitor told me to write down our history: I wrote how his church had come to save us.
the day my house burned down nothing to say – nothing to do the smoke reek stays with me still my house on the hill overlooking the sea
it meant the world to me – I stood there just stood – no words – no prayer – ashes still hot burned through the soles of my shoes shoe sole – body soul – all of me burned
invisible the scars – not fire burned like the faces of Spitfire pilots on fire from burning engine oil deformed faces – nightmares one and all
the burn ward – grafting – rehabilitation new skin replaced the old – inch by inch so slow – not swift like fire – pilots ashamed to be seen – hiding – afraid
the house – brick and concrete chimney still standing – roof – windows – doors – gone furniture flame devoured – I’m no coward but I couldn’t face the heat – too hot –
now – in my mind’s eye – I look out and see and what do I see – I see the blue-eyed sea I see the house foundations – standing strong I see my new house growing like a tree
old roots dig deep – a silver photo – framed spared somehow from fire and flame a diamond sparkling amid ash and dust gold gone – the diamond sparkling on
will I have the will to rebuild – to till the garden anew – the sundial standing still counting only the happy hours – asleep life’s storms and showers – closing it down
and this I know – rebuilding may be slow but as sure as the sun will shine – the sundial will awake – the phoenix will be reborn from the flame – the house will rise again
Sun’s yellow duster arrived late this year gray cobwebs still clutter my mind
I try to brush them away with clumsy fingers but stubbornly they stick and cling and will not go
Spring came in with snow gales and icy rain
Warm winds will soon spring showers bring to revive cold clay and help things grow
Comment:
We have lived in this house for 37 years, but only once have I seen ducks land on the snow-covered lawn. Whatever were they thinking? Good question – do ducks think? They are living beings, so of course they do. But I am totally unaware of what they think nor am I able to understand the nature of their mental computations.
We share this world with so many creatures that we do not understand. I wonder sometimes if they understand us. Who knows? If we cannot speak their multiple languages, if we cannot enter their culture and their minds, if we see them as nothing but food and devour them as fast as we can, never thinking of them at all, save as more or less savoury items on our dinner plate — les meurtiers et les victimes, as Albert Camus wrote. Murderers and victims – and we are both. Murderers of our victims and victims ourselves to our unbounded greed.
… at the beginning of the end, when more things have gone than are with us and the summer’s sun withers the grass and wrinkles our faces baking us bright red – como un cangrejo te has puesto, hijo mío, en el sol de Somo, como un cangrejo – and — pulpo en un garaje — you grasp at the new words, the new colors, the new delights, your tongue trapped clumsily in your mouth like a red rag doll and the midnight bull charging the spectators who gather and olé, au lait … as the drunken bullfighter climbs the bull and kills the post. The red cape flutters in our memories and to the slaughterhouse we go where the open body hangs loose like a flag and the red meat of him held out for all to see and some to share … and this is his body and this is his blood, sacrificed in a circle of golden sand for our drunken amusement … for whatever I did, I never visited those bull fights when I was sober … at five thirty, they began, and at 3 o’clock we would gather in the city center and slowly wend our way from bar to bar, up the Calle de Burgos, past the street where you lived and upwards, ever upwards, towards the bull ring at the top of the hill, from bar to bar, I say, and the bota, the wine-skin filled and re-filled with that dark red fluid that will set us all baying for the bull’s blood, or the matador’s blood, it doesn’t matter whose blood, as long as someone bleeds and the bull is butchered, torn from this life by a man on horseback, armed with a lance, and he thrusts the heavy blade between the shoulders of the bull, the blood first dripping red, then gushing, a small stream over the rock of the bull’s shoulder, and down the bull’s front legs, to slither on the sand, and the bull still ready to charge the horse, and the bull’s head steadily dropping as the muscles in the back and neck are gashed and torn and there’s no hell like this gaping wound between the bull’s shoulders and the blood flowing freely and vanishing into the sand, the golden sand, once pristine, stained now with blood, and soon to be further blemished with feces and urine, and the picador, his job done, walks his blind-folded, armored horse out of the ring, and the bull, un-armored, un-enamored of the process which turns his torment into a spectacle staged for our drunken delight, as we pass the bota round, and the blood red wine travels from hand to hand, and we squirt the bull’s blood squarely between our lips and it dashes against tongue and teeth and we swallow the body’s sacrifice hook, line, and sinker, as the banderillero runs in, harpoons in hand, waving his banderillas and plunging their arrowed barbs into the gaping wound that flowers on the bull’s back, and the bull stands there, twitching, wriggling, saliva and drool slipping down, sliding stickily into the sand, as the matador doffs his hat, takes his vorpal sword in hand and treads the light fantastique in his laced-up dancing pumps, his waltzing matilda feet so swift, so sure, eluding the lumbering rush of the charging bull, the load of bull, that tumbles down the railway track towards him as he stands there, the matador, poised like a ballerina, as stiff and as steady as a lamp-post around which the bull circles like a drunken man, staggering a bit, but still bemused by the red flag tied to a stick which waves before his eyes and goads him onwards, ever onwards, in his plunge towards a brilliant death, as he pauses, feet together, and the matador makes his move, one, step, then two, and the bull lurching forward to impale himself on three or four feet of curved, immaculate steel, and the matador immaculate in his reception of the bull – and what is happening? What will happen next? Sometimes, the sword pierces the spinal cord and death is instantaneous. Sometimes, the sword pierces the heart, and death is more or less swift, but certainly certain. And sometimes the sword pinches against the bone and flies from the matador’s hand, and the matador must bend, and pick it up, and try, try again, the red rag below the bull’s nose, the bull drawn forward, yet again, to impale himself, yet again, on the sharp end of the sword, and this time, the sword goes in, but the wound is in the lungs and the peones, the pawns, the workers, the drones, the little men who help, turn the bull round and round in ever tighter circles so the sword will open and even larger wound, sever the main arteries perhaps, and the bull, blood spurting through nose and mouth, lurches now, then falls to his knees, and lies there, bleeding, and the matador chooses the descabello, that little sharp sword with the razor blade at the end and he tries to sever the spinal cord, there at the back of the neck, and sometimes he does, and sometimes he doesn’t, and if he can’t then it’s the little men again in their colorful parrot suits all gleaming with sequins and stars and they carry a sharp little instrument, with a pointed end, la puntilla, that short, double-edged, stabbing knife which is plunged into the occipito-atlantal space to sever the medulla oblongata in the evernazione method of mercy killing, and the puntilla is plunged again and again into the bull’s neck at this atlanto-occipital joint, until it severs the medulla oblongata, and when it is severed, in this glorious neck stab, then finally the bull drops dead, and the show must go on and on, and on, and the horses come in, black funeral horses with bright feathers on their heads and they loop a rope around the bull’s horns and away he goes, trailing blood, and urine, and shit, all across the sand and other little men appear to sweep the sands clean, and my neighbor who wears a large walrus moustache stained red now and purple with the wine that he has splashed about, shakes the wine skin and finds it as not as full as it was, so he sheds a bitter tear, and since the death was slow, the crowd all whistle and boo the matador and his merry men, but when the death is swift and quick then the crowd is aroused and they wave white hankies at the presidential box and the president awards the matador an ear, a salty, smelly, sticky ear which the peones cut off the bull before he is towed away, and then the matador throws the ear in the direction of his current sweet heart, the fairest lady in the crowd although she be as brown as the beauties baking daily on the summer sand where the sea horses dance and there are no bulls, and no bull shit, and no maids with mops, just the scouring sea, and sometimes the president gives away two ears, or two ears and the tail, dos orejas y el rabo, though this I have seldom seen, and what does the bull care that he dies bravely and well, for now he is dead he hasn’t a care in the world, and the butchers in the butcher’s shop are carving him away, carving him to the skeletal nothingness of skin and bone that awaits us all, the nothingness of this more or less glorious death, with our tails cut off and our ears hacked away to be pickled or smoked or otherwise kept in the fridge as the butcher’s trophy … and who now will walk stone cold sober into that magic circle of sun and shade and stand there, unbowed, before the might of the untamed beast, the untamed bestiality that drives us wild as it wanders through our nightmare cities and our wildest dreams … and now the crowd call ¡música, música! and the band strikes up and martial music plays as the bullfighter and his troupe march gaily round the ring, their trophies held high for all to see before they are thrown to the ravening crowd who bay like the dogs they are as they taste fresh, bloodied meat …
A silvery thatch bears witness to the winter of my withering.
My broken body hangs from the coat hanger of my shoulders, its worn-out sack knitted from skin, bonded with blood.
I walk with two canes, not just a sick man, but a stick man.
When I fall asleep, my enigmatic body haunts me with its death-rattle of drying bones.
Comment
Sometimes no comments are needed. However, when it comes down to it, I guess it’s worth saying that I am raging, raging against the dying of the light.
The dying of the light – in the evening, when the sun goes down, the house grows silent and cools around me. Some nights, when the news is bad or depressing, I feel we are entering another dark age. Luckily, spring is on its way, with summer not far behind. But what will spring and summer bring?
I fear the heat, the gathering of muttering trees, the ambush nature is setting up for humanity. We live among trees. Trees, all around the house. Trees, climbing the hills into the distance. I loved them when I came here first. The maples, the paper birches, the mountain ashes with their spring finery and the light green fuzz of forming leaves. Winter – the firs and pines dressed in their winter coats.
Last summer, fires broke out all over the province. The closest was a mere 30 kms down the road from us. We could smell the fire, see the smoke, and sense the discomfort of the proximity of possible outbreaks closer to home.
As I grow older, I become more fearful. Walking downstairs in the morning – cada pie mal puesto es una caída, cada caída es un precipico / each badly placed foot is a fall, each fall is down a precipice. Luis de Gongora. ( d. 1627). Alas, it’s that time of life, and it comes to anybody who, like me, has walked this far.
It’s the animals that I pity. The birds who move on and away and no longer stay with us. The deer who also have nowhere to go when their habitat is destroyed. The moose, the bears, the coyotes, the foxes, the jack rabbits and yes, they have all been visitors to our backyard.
Last summer, the local council circulated some ideas on how to prepare for immediate evacuation of our property- what to pack with a day’s notice, three hours’ warning, two hours’ warning, one hour’s warning. I hope it never comes to that. But now, I no longer know, and so I rage, rage, against the dying of the light.
Terminal and terminus, they both mean nec plus ultra: the Pillars of Hercules, the end of the known world, and my own world’s end.
I throw my hands skywards in desperation: “Is anybody up there?” There’s no reply, and I see no ladder for angels to descend or ascend.
Only the crows, those black-winged monarchs destined to wear the survivor’s crown, cry out their anguish as they wait for the day when they’ll pick clean my unburied bones and rule this sickening world, an earthly paradise no more.
Comment:
When I said “I am looking for a picture of a crow,” Moo went wild. “Me,” he said. “I’ve got one.” And indeed he had. Here it is – two crows perched like vultures over the body of a fast melting snowman. Our current world in miniature – and don’t forget the yellow snow and the doggy doing a dump. “Moo,” I said, “That’s not nice.” “True to nature, though,” he replied. “You want reality – you got it.”
Reality – what a strange word. Who knows nowadays what is real? The barber’s basin in Don Quixote – is it a barber’s basin or is it Mambrino’s Helmet? Good question. Relativism – it depends on your point of view. U a barber’s basin – turn it upside down Ω and it’s a helmet. So how do we deal with an object that has two functions and can be seen both as one thing and then another?
Good question. Cervantes solves the problem in his own unique fashion – U – bacía / basin and Ω – yelmo / helmet. Put them together and you get the neologism [newly invented word] baciyelmo – a basin that serves as a helmet and a helmet that serves as a basin. Wonderful – if it weren’t for the snout, I’d swear that was the origin of the pig-faced bassinet.
Some days, I try to understand all this – but I throw my hands skywards in desperation: “Is anybody up there?” Another good question. I often ask myself that question but I despair of an answer.
My friend Francisco de Quevedo voiced the same question in a dream that came to me last night.
¡Ah de la vida! ¿Nadie me responde?
Life ahoy! Will nobody reply? Is anybody up there? Will someone reply?
Blas de Otero once made a similar utterance –
“I raise my hands in supplication – you cut them off at the wrist.”
Tell me, if you know, – what is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare. And look at those crows, standing there, staring, waiting … waiting for their turn to come. Patient, eternally patient. Just standing around. Waiting.
There is a stillness in the bee’s balm, a withering of early blossoms and still no bees: will they ever come back? The bee-keepers don’t seem to know as they scratch their heads and search dry colonies only to find dead and dusty hives, with cells devoid of the lust and life of their former inmates.
Each day we watch over the flowers, and hum as we wait for the bees to buzz: “will ye no come back again …”
This is the hospital’s forgetting place, the left-luggage office where, a human parcel wrapped in a blue gown, I wait to be claimed.
Tagged with a label on my wrist, I find myself alone with my fate.
53
All choice disappeared when I came here and surrendered myself to the system.
Now I lack free will and freedom of choice.
Yet I still dream of choosing my destination, and the ways and means of arriving there.
Comment:
A terminus – what an interesting word. Terminus a quo or terminus ad quem? Or just a railway terminus or a bus terminus where we sit and wait to change buses of trains? Or maybe just a terminus in terms of being terminal? Oh what a tangled web we weave when we first start to analyze our words in order to see exactly where we might go and where they might lead us.
And what a journey I was on when I first wrote that poem. Sitting in the waiting room, outside the radiation room, waiting for the lady who would wag her finger and point at the machine’s next victim. Would it be me? The man next to me? That woman over there? Many of us avoided each other’s eyes and just sat there stunned – and now you know the meaning, in context, of ojos de besugo – do you remember that from Rage, Rage, 48?. Others chatted. Some sat there quietly while their teeth chattered. Few of us knew each other, except from the hospice where we stayed if we weren’t day patients travelling in on a daily basis and rushing home afterwards.
Libre albedrío – free will. We can say so much about free will and determinism. But when we enter the system, it’s the system that rules. We have free will to enter – and they [the authorities] say we have free will to exit when we wish – but do we? Good question. A very good question. Once tagged, we are as free as the birds, as free as the salmon, as free as the whales – but within that freedom we are tracked, followed, taken in hand, advised, persuaded, manipulated … and whales have a whale of a time when they’re trapped up in fish netting …
Then there are the follow-ups. The appointments. The emails. The telephone calls. The check-ups. The blood tests. The MRIs. The X-rays. The Holter appointments. The various scans. Who is brave enough to get off the wagon or to open the aircraft’s door half way through its flight over the Atlantic and step out? Would you jump from the save-yourself-train – not at all like the gravy train – and think carefully – are you really saving yourself or are you getting yourself into hotter and deeper water? Come along then, let’s open the aircraft’s door and step out over the Atlantic. And tell me, what exactly are we stepping into?
Stop the world, I want to get off! Not so easy to do, my friends, not so easy to do. Not even when you think the terminus in which you are sitting is taking you to hell in a hand-basket. You start to stand up. And the little lady appears, smiles at you, crooks her finger, nods her head, and – as obedient as one of Pavlov’s well-trained puppy dogs – off you go, following in her footsteps.
rogermoorepoet 