I hate to chortle at the sound of broken laughter,
Just like I refrain from weeping when dancing smoke fills my eyes . . .
But when dogs mourn alone,
I chafe my hands with the cold of tears of solitude.
Monuments and cairns I crave among the icy
Terrains, where dogs’ paws leave eternal marks —
The print-marks of an important visit,
Evidence of life on desiccated earth.
On board The Fram they sailed majestically
In the beginning,
Before joining a steam of blizzards they escaped from,
Returning home, northwards, gelid and depressing,
For a funeral of dogs,
The ceremony of age,
Attended largely by silent yaps of strayed thunder.
Of Cairns and Kivas
The cairn went together without effort -
each stone calling out to be next
to take a seamless place among the others,
and when they were all in place,
each making their willing sacrifice,
they were one; a monument,
an offering place
.
Surely you noticed
The kiva was another thing entirely -
designed for ancient rituals’
I merely borrowed it for a while.
It was a quiet dark shelter with no corners,
no place for unwelcome spirits to hide -
I re-arranged the fire rocks slightly
and made the prayers rather quickly.
as Mesquite flames began to produce billows of pungent smoke.
As I crawled out to leave,
I watched black smoke spiral high into an azure sky.
Surely the escaping black ribbon could be seen for miles.
Perhaps you were faced in a different direction.
Cairns and kivas -
reminders of my barren inability to cause
even a tiny reaction in the Universe.
The thirst to tell stories
To understand what came before
And how, stumbling
stupidly
with bloodshot and laughing eyes
we cobble together
little piles of rocks
which from afar
tower to a something other than Babel
Old Persian expedition of eight ships
Eight hundred soldiers on board with whips
Traveled and vanquished Aksumites of good gesture
People of worship, peace and humane nature
Aksum of ivory and gold
Many stories, forgotten and untold
Ripped of faith, freedom and sold
Queen of beauty blazed houses of the laity and cold
Forty years all devouts left defenseless and bleak
On the frail grounds under scorching sunny peak
Yet stones of faith stood tall over the weak
Images of the Cross on coins, strong faith
of the banished people speak
Cairns of unnamed heroes and heroines of faith
Christians of unity, subjects of the saith
Above all afflictions and tribulations from the cursed breath
Bright lights dwell on good, strong souls
chained by shadowed wraith
Walls too high, above the grasses I see
Walls above my eye, below the world of me
Fencing my eye, lions of grey roaring
Reaching the sky, birds of prey soaring.
Walls of lamentation are memories of war
Galls of incantation are cairns in jar
Facing the wailing walls are men of tears
Groping for simping halls are women of fears.
Walls of life, memories in time
Walks of life, melodies in rhyme
Love from wells, portrait of loving souls
Waters in wells, vignette of redeemed souls.
Liberty Bell, cracked and muted after the war
Apostrophe after every catastrophe under par
Homerun in the Long March of Second War
Coins on cairns of foes and heroes in jar
An exclamation point in war under par.
Some enact outstanding feats
of altruism in the world,
some pray, administer and comfort;
both create shrines of hope.
Yet there are others tasked to
reveal waymarks on invisible pathways,
cairns and inuksuk, signs upon the trackless;
word-symbols,
akin to rocks and pebbles.
Poets who scribble, often by chance,
point a way, and when they do
God builds a small shrine
for them also.
The beach gathers its dead. Thousands of horseshoe crabs
come home on the full moon’s tide. Their courting dances,
scrawled with claw and carapace in the wet sand, leave
with the ghost hands of nursing Autumn wave.
Their nests of jewel-colored eggs, covered and soothed
seasoned in salt sea, gestate beneath a slurry of debris.
Right side up each skin colored husk with its barbed tail
rocks in the bubbling broth of Cape Cod’s bay.
Belly up, they appear as an open invitation to the plovers
who flock overhead and arrow down en masse to dine.
Piping plovers, masked in black, hopscotch through the
detritus, connoisseurs of this turquois egg-like caviar.
Among the life and death of sea we walk, barefoot, and
cautious wary of the scramble, the jutting barbs, the bits
of un-soothed glass, the desecrated cairn which barricades
the dying life from the living sea.
Published First in Sounding Review 2015
Sugar Cane Blues
By
Kevin L Fairbrother
Sugar, Sugar it’s everywhere
From Proserpine to Cairns
The green fields of cane
Are in your face all the time
On the road I’m driving
The cane swaying on both sides
Radio blaring a Muslim invasion
Who cares when there is sugar everywhere
I’m feeling high with sugar on my mind
But deep down I feel no shame
I’m riding high there is no pain
That sweet smell I take it in again and again
A change of scenery is what I need
A different choice to smell and see
Maybe then I can forget I have
The sugar cane blues
Sugar, Sugar oh so sweet
Please give me some relief
Let it end this feeling
So full of sweetness
Need to come down off this high
Into the mountains I think I’ll go
Change the scenery breathe some fresh air
To take away my sugar cane blues
Drugs like anger and toxin like pills
Flashing from the side of the ditch.
Holding out the rain, trying so hard
to rot whatever it touches.
Curses to the sun
that drying *****,
flooding the world with her harsh light.
Waking all the thinking neurons.
Firing together, they hold the promise of death.
Drugs like anger and toxin like pills
Fast drain the clear expectancies of family,
borrowed sanity with debts to pay
forming alliances, with reverence for some,
placation for none.
Cairns long erected will go down for sure
tumble or crumble
the directions are set, no fanatic speeches will stop the flow
of the rotting water
It will saturate the sills on all the windows.
Drugs like anger and toxin like pills
Pity the sap still runs.
The corn yet grows;
where death counts twice
and admires your consumption.
She exits the shower
As I towel her down
Her long blond hair
Skin so brown
With her back to me
In masterly strokes
Every part I caress
Her wanting stokes
She takes my hands
To her breasts she cups
Our torso's close
In standing up
She bares her nape
Invites me to kiss
As my blood responds
To my manly bliss
This path of passion
We tenderly follow
Our bodies racing
As we lovingly wallow
We lie on the bed
Two adventurers roam
Exploring new worlds
To eventually find home
Sensual finds
As they make their way
A pillar of strength
Through a secret gate, plays
Curvaceous mounds
With pert like cairns
Forested grasses
Wonderment stare
Through the open gate
In this warm moist land
Signals in sync
As we read our commands
In movement so tender
With sighs and groans
Between the V
As he's welcomed home
In rhythmic rhyme
Their music plays
Notes are hit
In orchestral display
Kisses shared
Bodies slide
Hearts content
In sensual glide
Eruption emits
His lava flow
Tanned maiden
Golden glow
Orgasmic glands
Climax embrace
In their world of love
This two have graced
. UNSUPPORTED CODE
Gazing over the plains nestled far below
Inching our way over rock-strewn trails,
The words resounding through our thoughts
Keep silent...like ivy growing wild, reaching
For moisture in several directions at once.
The attention we give these mountains needs
No conversation to make a point or hold
The soul rapt with an abundance of peace.
Air is as light as heaven when the nights
Rehearse their lines in circles of tranquility.
Silence fills the canyon walls...it is hope on a
Short string tied to quiescent ambiance. Stillness settles
Over us like shadows on the craggy back of Longs Peak.
Watching the dawn clothe massive cairns with a purple
Mountain majesty, our mute response serves only to affirm....
To speak would be a sacrilege.
****
White cloaked among the shine of brass and glass, Father waits,
cries of past and present mingle, among the cairns of dead.
He paces penitently within the maze
of the stucco glazed cemetery.
"Shall I pray for your dead? He seems to say..
Have you paid the fee?"
The dead rule here and he is their voice.
“How many Our Father’s shall I say?”
Money, as always the key….
“My child why do you cry?”
Father inquires with Priestly aplomb.
“Only God now knows where your mother has gone.”
Half dead flowers fall from the child’s hand.
In dank and dusty basements,
where people die alone,
and ancient cairns by weathered hands
were built with rock and stone,
in cabins long abandoned,
corners pile with leaves windblown,
on battlefields resounding as the
bullet strikes the bone,
when more than one has, indeed,
o're the cuckold's nest flown,
we realize that time is nothing
and nothing's ever known.
©Danielle White