Poems

Dreams

Dreams are important in Oaxacan mythology. 
Do we create them ourselves?
 Or do they come to us as celestial messages? 
Can they exist without us?
 Or do we form a symbiotic relationship.,
each dependent on the other?

Eight Deer or Tiger Claw / Ocho Venado or Garra de Tigre is a Mixtec Hero;  
his name is composed of two parts:  
(1) day name (ie the name of the day on which he was born) Eight Deer and  
(2) nickname Tiger Claw.  

His symbol in the códices is a small circle with a comma like a tiger claw. 
Nuttall is the twentieth century editor of the Zouche Nuttall Codex  
in which Eight Deer’s history of conquest is recounted. 
Nine Wind / Nueve Viento is another Mixtec Hero  
and the founding father of the race, according to some códices.

Dreams

Once I stole the nose from a sacred statue;
today I watch it cross the square attached to a face.
Eight Deer walks past with a fanfare of conches:
you can tell him by his donut with its little tail.

A shadow moves as zopilote wings his way across the square.
I caught him once on a midnight bus;
he begged me to fold his wings and let him sleep forever.

A gringa called Nuttall sells tins of watery soap.
Her children fill my days with enchantments:
bubbles born from a magic ring.

Eight Deer, eight years old, sets out on his conquests.
Nine Wind births his people from a flint,
or was it the magic tree in Apoala?

The voices in my head slip slowly into silence.
Sometimes I think they have no need of me,
these dreams that come at midnight,
and knock at my window.

K9

I had a little doggy and my doggy loved me,
I fed my little doggy on cookies and tea.
My little doggy had a very sweet tooth
and when he needed feeding he went woof, woof, woof.

One day my little doggy fell down and died.
Something had broken in his inside.
I wanted another doggy but my wife said “No!
I’m not cleaning up the floor when he wants to go.”

I Googled an e-dog and found one on E-bay.
E-dogs are nice and clean, that’s what they say.
They make you smile and take away your frown
and they’ll sit and guard the car when you go to town.

Now I’ve got an e-dog and he’s very, very nice.
I wind him up each day and recharge him twice.
My wife loves my e-dog and she also loves me
because my e-dog needs no feeding and he doesn’t go pee.

Twisty-Twerky

Twisty-Twerky

Twisty turns everything upside down,
Twerky steals your smile and makes you frown.

Twisty makes you doubt both self and friends,
Twerky’s malevolence never ends.

Twisty turns good into evil deeds,
Twerky bites every hand that feeds.

Watch Twerky twist, see Twisty dance:
he didn’t pick on you just by chance.

Twisty-Twerky slithers through your head,
climbs into your clothes, and freezes you in bed.

Now you doubt the sun and you doubt the rain.
You’ll never trust another person again.

The Unexamined Life 1

The Unexamined Life 1

“The unexamined life
is not worth living.”
Socrates.

A philosopher’s life’s based on thinking,
and drinking, and thinking, and drinking,
and thinking and drinking,
and thinking and drinking,
and thinking about thinking and drinking.

He gazes and gazes at his navel,
every day for as long as he is able,
and talks to his wife
about trouble and strife
and the problems they have to unravel

But all is not doom and gloom
when a philosopher enters the room,
tho none can debunk
the size of the trunk
of the elephant stuck in the room.

As for me, I am caring and giving,
and although I work hard for my living,
I’d willingly share
with a friend in despair
half my cloak and a third of my living.

“Join the army,” the philosopher said.
“There’s no life like it,” he said.
“You get very few thanks
when you’re in the front ranks,
but it’s better than walking round dead.”

(To be continued … )

“The unlived life
is not worth examining.”
Pseudo-Socrates.

Needles

Needles

You won’t come
to very much harm
when nurse sticks a needle
in your arm.

The nurse is nice,
the needle’s bright
and you know things
will turn out right.

Sometimes, things go
a little bit wrong,
but side effects
don’t last too long.

You needn’t fret,
you needn’t frown
until they ask you
to lie down.

If nurse’s eyes
light up with glee,
if she strops the needle
on her knee,

if she sneaks up to you
from behind,
the needle’s blunt
but never mind.

You’ll be out of there
before you can squawk
and a walking stick
will help you walk.

M. T. Kettle

M. T. Kettle

I had a friend called M. T. Kettle
and he was one of those boys
who thought they were very,very clever
and always made a lot of noise.

Alas, he had an empty head
but the teachers set him right.
They drilled a hole in his empty head
and filled it with homework every night.

Each day in class when they tested him
hot tears fell from his eye.
It was such a shame
when they called out his name
to watch that young boy cry.

In our school, education
was like filling M. T.’s head.
The masters took notebooks filled with ideas
from white males (mainly dead),
and told us stories of their own past glories,
We would have liked fresh thoughts instead.

We sat in a classroom, row upon row,
our pencils in our hands,
and took dictation about every nation
that had passed through colonial hands.

“Now knowledge, boys, is in your notes,”
that’s what one master said.
“I read them out, you write them down,
they never pass through anyone’s head.”

Doldrums

Colloquially:
a state of inactivity, mild depression, listlessness, or stagnation.
Dold (stupid) plus –rums (a suffix as in tant-rums).
Wikipedia

All at sea
in a pea green boat:
let’s just hope
it’ll stay afloat.

When winds don’t blow
and Doll Drums roll,
pray sea-urchins
won’t devour your soul.

If you feel some wind
but the flags won’t fly
watch Admiral Brown
as he passes by.

Take this friendly
advice from me:
“Sit at your desk
and never go to sea.”

And if you really
want to see the sea,
just watch it on a movie
on your home TV.

“As idle as a painted ship
upon a painted ocean.”

The Ancient Mariner
S. T. Coleridge.

Beaver Pond Mactaquac

The Happy Hours

The Happy Hours

In my garden are many birds,
some with pretty looks.
Alas, so many of my birds
are never found in birding books.

Here’s the Oinky Boing-Boing Bird,
a veritable sign of spring.
When he appears, get out the spade:
it’s time for gardening.

His legs are yellow, his face is blue,
but he’ll bring good luck to you.

When Mrs. Flowerhat comes along
the neighbors greet her with a song.
They cluster on branches in the tree
and chat together merrily.

No matter whether it’s rain or sun,
they tell tall tales about everyone.

Occasionally, it looks like rain
and then the birds don’t fly.
They vanish or they hang around
with a tear drop in their eye.

The sundial sleeps in the falling rain
and I find it really funny:
he only wants to tell the time
when the world is bright and sunny.

Horas non numero nisi serenas.
I count only the happy hours.

Li-(n)-es

Li-(n)-es
. ________________________ .

A straight line:
the shortest distant between two points,
as the crow flies, but what if it’s spring and the crows
loop the loop and fly claw to claw and wingtip to wingtip
tumbling up and down in an aerial game of snakes and ladders
with wind-thrown dice
—un coup de dès n’abolira jamais le hasard —
and a throw of the dice will never abolish chance
and is it by chance that their wingtips whistle in the wind
as they somersault over the house and tumble down
the tiles never touching anything, but carving
and painting the air with broad, feathery strokes
and oh the power in those oh so gentle wings …
… floating, flaunting their shiny blackness
like kites held back by the colored
li-(n)-es and strings that restrain them
even when released to their elemental sky-
-dance among cloud and wind

And what is drawing except taking a line for a walk
–and I don’t know who said it, but he’s probably
dead, so I can’t give him the credit he deserves —
but the pencil point, pen point, is a dog on a leash
sniffing the ground and following its nose,
here, there, anywhere the wind blows its magic
sense of scents and the pooch-world reduced
to a nose like a pencil point that draws the dog on …

And
“My ambition,” said Henri Matisse,
as he wielded his scissors,
“is to liberate color, to make it serve
both as form and content.”
I too am content with colors and a line
attached to a wandering dog
and my spirit unleashed
to make colors flourish and flow
wherever they want my mind to go.

	rogermoorepoet on My Love For You
	acalvern on My Love For You
	rogermoorepoet on Red Cloud of Reality
	chuckbowie on Red Cloud of Reality
	rogermoorepoet on Dalí ‘s Clock