bi_janus
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Posts posted by bi_janus
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I think it a pretty sketch. Sometimes, people ask too much of each other, and love sometimes fails to conquer. I would like to see the back story elaborated.
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Between Florida and the Cascades, Eli
Bi_janus
How does a man
compete with a place?
What’s the calculus
of the hurricane
and the volcano?
Brief reunions,
twice a year,
would haul us
across the rasp
endlessly, keeping
the wounds weeping
red wolf tears
until our wolves shriveled.
Intimates reduced
to acquaintance, what
would our talks encompass—
the river of longing
between the hearts,
worse, our work,
a holiday mimeograph?
Eli, you saved me
for Ann, and I
you for Justine.
We kept the cake,
eating it, too,
sating the wolf’s hunger.
Are we longtime companions,
whispered to the world now
in encrypted obituary code?
Vivimos dia por dia.
Email is no touch,
yet I look
for yours every day,
and, as to touch,
none is more
than less.
We would not bear
thirty more goodbyes,
thirty more last times.
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What you don’t know (1998)
Bi_janus
Enrapt by Ann,
I was polite,
but never bothered
to know you, dear one.
Five years is a gulf,
and younger brothers
are accessories.
Then, I turned the camera on you,
taking super-8 film.
At fourteen in North Carolina,
you played in the shaded branch,
damming with rocks,
using leaves for boats,
your arms fluttering.
Through an eyepiece,
I suddenly saw
you clearly.
Were you reticent
or naïve?
Ann and I laughed when
we first projected your play,
“That boy must be gay.”
We waited, horrified
when you almost married.
Years later, when you
and Ted, visiting,
watched the film
in our living room,
you wondered aloud,
“How could I not
have known?”
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Thanks, Camy. The stem is not penile green. Yes, Des, and a strict headmaster.
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Thank you all for your help and the sensitivity in which it is couched. A mentor once told me that the acceptance of frank response from those of good will is requisite to collegiality. As I read through the admirable work you all have written, I am convinced of your good will, and have developed a sense of collegiality with you. I promise not to toss any balls your way without wanting you to take free swings!
I am intrigued by Des's suggestion, but will have to ruminate on it for a while. I am presently inclined to get rid of the second question altogether. That said, I am fond of fire images. Thanks, again.
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This one is nearing completion. I would appreciate some help. I am dubious about the second question. Regardless of how you feel about the whole thing, better with or without that question?
Second Commandment
Bi_janus
You have reason
to be jealous,
and we feel Your fear
behind the bitchy rant.
At the beginning,
we ate the juicy pulp.
Did Your fear begin then,
when we outran You,
became, as You feared,
like one of You?
Did Your own intemperate fire
finally singe Your leaves?
Five thousand years
of pique have not
calmed Your jealous heart,
because You know that,
kneeling together,
entering human communion,
drinking an offering
from the same stem,
sharing the salty spend,
a manna of human devotion,
we hear You aghast
that we know Your heart.
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G'day, Des, and thank you for the affirming poem. We don't need a slam or formal venue. We should, as I suspect you do, share our verse with the people we love, in living room or abed.
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Bravo!! The first book of poetry I gave my wife was Betjeman's sonnets. Sometimes, decent poems have to bounce around in my ear and head a while before they yield something worthwhile. In the US, our poet laureate is appointed by the Library of Congress. For 2011, the PL is Philip Levine. WCW wrote remarkable poems, all the while practicing medicine. If you work at the craft enough, you usually find the mark once in a while. Fine poetry happens between a writer and a reader.
We should have more poets and we should hear them read. And, Camy, I shall always be on the lookout for "penile green."
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Old Soul (1967)
Bi_janus
Old soul
you thought me
when you were seventeen,
and I fifteen.
How did
your confusion outshine
mine?
Your soul
wasn’t my aim,
because you knew
how to hold me.
I took advantage
of your longing,
but you riled
and shattered
my silence.
Your fear
and my fear,
companions.
Your need
and my need,
lovers.
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Agni (1984)
Bi_janus
The breeze slaps at me lightly
from the end of a long breath,
and branches swaying slightly,
announce charred birth and death.
Whispering edge of your roar,
first sensed by voles and deer,
warns that you aim to transform
utterly every mote to a pyre.
Moments summon you, raging
in green stem and crown,
screaming, sighing, and curdling
every pudding to black and brown.
Loosing the whole forest’s heat,
you burn me across the bare line
artlessly placed at your feet
to scarify with ash the divine.
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Washington and Oregon papers are reporting that the last vote needed for passage in the Senate has been garnered. A Democratic senator from Camano Island became the 25th promised vote. The House has been a lock for months. I really didn't think we'd ever get it through. Governor Chris Gregoire made the legislation a priority, but Rep. Jim Moeller has been at this battle of six years. Now the real struggle begins as theocrats are already preparing a referendum. If nothing blows up, Washington will become the seventh state in the USA to sanction gay marriage.
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It's never too late to switch to the Mac!
Ah, yes, oh wise one.
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Well, you got the Lenny. See this week's edition of New Yorker magazine.
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Prayer
Bi_janus
I hear Leonard’s been talking
to himself again.
He’s hard to figure,
an unthinking genius,
all angles and sin,
uneasy as hell
when he sings the hymn.
Not like Johnny G,
who’s on his knees
in the theater
before every use
of his knife.
JG wants God to keep
him from slipping up.
Lenny wants to sing
like he used to wail
in Chelsea.
I hear Leonard’s been talking
to himself again.
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Let me check with Ann. Yes, it is possible.
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Since that night, I had been consumed with how to tell Eric. Ann had tried to keep our son from seeing the news on TV. At seven, he was reading parts of newspapers, but Ann didn't think he had seen the story. Everyone in my unit was very helpful, especially the cops. None of them dwelled on the incident, but, to a man, they told me that if I needed to talk they'd listen. My head still buzzed and I felt nausea when I thought of that night, my heart rate rising more from the memory than it had during the event. One of the shrinks I worked with on the CISD team had called and listened while, oscillating between giddy relief and guilt, I tried to straighten out what had happened. He told me that the roof would fall in on me later and that the worst thing I could do when it fell was to withdraw.
The news coverage had been steady; most of the reporting was about the boy and his family's grief. His parents couldn't fathom why he and I had met that late summer evening. When the television talent mentioned me, they simply regurgitated my record; none of them asked what that night cost me. On the advice of a JAG representative, I made no statements to the press. News cycles are short, and at least I was old news by the time we came home. Everyone I was with seemed to be looking at me with a curiosity normally reserved for celebrities. More than occasionally, I wanted to scream to them that this was no cause for celebration. At the Reserve Center, after the company commander read the demobilization order and we were released from active duty, I was finally alone for the long drive to my home. I was raw and felt exposed in the company of others, but solitude no longer brought comfort.
Senses behave differently under stress. Hearing, smell, vision all betray their normal occupations. I was in one of a few Reserve MP Companies that housed a CID detachment, but that night one of the patrol MPs wasn't feeling well and I agreed to stand in. Wearing a uniform once in a while is useful. At that time we still patrolled in Jeeps. Our unit alternated summer active duty between regular army bases and National Guard camps, and this year we were at a Guard camp. Most of the problems we encountered involved drinking and driving or traffic infractions. I was standing in on the night tour.
I had told Eric over his whole life that violence solved nothing, that he should avoid fighting because people who solved differences by fighting revealed their own weakness. What would I tell him now that would make sense of this mess? My partner and I were one of two mobile patrols that night. We were checking a couple of warehouses when we saw the flicker of flashlights at the end of one of the buildings. We pulled up to the warehouse front and radioed to the other mobile unit. We quietly walked away from the lights and around the opposite end of the building. We could hear laughter as we approached the lights. My partner swung out wide and I hugged the wall. Two and a half minutes.
I had walked into a burglary. I drew my sidearm and was about to put the three men on their knees when my partner screamed, "Gun!"
Two of the three ran. We let them go. I don't remember screaming at the kid to drop his weapon, although my partner said later that I had, repeatedly. I was looking him in the eye and saw hesitation on his face as I closed with him in the dim light. Then, I saw him make a decision. He started to raise his weapon. The kid didn't hear the reports as the slide on my M-1911A snapped back twice before he fell, eyes open, along with my brass.
I pulled into my driveway and Ann and Eric came out to greet me. Ann looked as if she might cry as Eric jumped into my arms and hugged me. When I put him down. He looked up at me and said, "Daddy, Christopher said you killed someone."
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2 for Anniversary 40
Bi Janus
distant Winter winds
bend twigs expecting storms Oh!
the white rose yet blooms
chocolate cigar---
sometimes a cigar is just
that my happy friends
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I think this poem exists because Camy natters internally about much that he experiences and shares some of that nattering. Well done, sir. Poetry, music, painting, fiction are like stones dropped in a pond. Who knows what the ripples may disturb?
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Come on, guys. No one bled in creating that moment. You've never thought of time as blood flow?
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The Bleeding Moment (1971)
Bi_janus
I have enough
just now, maybe forever.
Two into one,
we stick together
here and there.
With no one else,
we summoned
this perfect moment.
If we lie here breathless,
will we compel
this perfect moment
to bleed into
the next and
the next and
the next?
If we lie here at ease,
will this perfect moment
harden and clot?
Will a sheath
scab around
its vital ooze?
If we arise,
will the husk of
this perfect moment
suffice?
If not, when will
the roughness of
this perfect moment’s
scar no longer attract
our unthinking caresses?
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Now, that's a lyric!
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Thirteen-year-olds’ Song (1963)
Bi_janus
Two pups
in twin beds,
talking of
life and sex,
“What’s it like
when you kiss her?”
Come over,
I’ll show you.
After the fun,
my ear
to your chest,
I hear the same song
her heart sings to me.
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Cutting (1994)
Bi_janus
For Jana
Nicking a vein
takes no real effort,
no commitment.
No struggle, but skin,
puts up stop signs.
The arteries demand
the patience
of a fisherman
casting close
to the bone,
tangling the hook
among the mangrove
roots.
Scan to donate
What is wrong with us..."
in News & Views
Posted
In the US we have a deeply conservative streak that places the responsibility for the socialization of children only with the parents. This hopelessly outmoded point of view took root before schools were huge, classes were so crowded, and technology allowed anonymous bullying. Schools are the perfect place to spend time on the socialization process. Teachers, though are essentially forbidden to deal with these issues as they chase standardized test scores and dodge theocrats. I long for the days of A. S. Neill. Sexuality is part of the problem, but as others have said, a lot of adolescent suicide occurs in straight kids. Every difference from shifting norm seems like chum in the water. I suggest that a start at addressing this slaughter is to find allies on local school boards and press them for a real solution. Communities that don't hold policy-makers accountable are reduced to watching the chaos roll. Attending a school board meeting can be a revelation about who is making policy in your schools.