It must have been made
and rejected
in times grinding gears –
a knobby irregularity,
a leftover of smelt and dross.
This is all there is
a gobbet of oven clinker,
but behind it I sense cracked teeth,
soot seared across burnt eyeglasses,
blackened bones,
for after the gas came the flames.
Here it is,
a fragment long convulsed
from its own incineration,
an irregular rake-off, smithereens
dragged across a blind stone floor.
This tittle of slag once had to fit something
the rough rim of an iron door perhaps
behind which an old furnace
still cools in faraway minds.
A ferrous chip chiseled from a gulag,
or a souvenir from an SS campfire meet.
There is always something left
after the unthinkable,
always some spicule of irregularity,
detritus to explain or confound
as we toss it back into the fire again.
The wind is in from lost town,
it is as thin as a knife edge.
Razor beaked gulls
twist their necks, rolling
in the gritty bluster.
Lost town sinks beneath
churning clouds,
its smokestacks
just above each
new wave of despair.
The people there
have misplaced their lives,
and if they only had time
they would out-scream the gulls,
but a groveling grind
keeps them turning iron wheels,
or shoveling dry clinker
into long rusted buckets
of hope.
There is a sadness at the sight
of this wreck of a boat,
beached on a brick pad,
paralyzed and deprived
of riding the tides or being swung
on a mooring line by waves
and wind. It sits as a curiosity
to attract a passing eye,
a ruptured monument to the precincts
maritime history. With a gaping
hole and peeling paint
it is a mere caricature
stripped of dignity.
On walks I often pass it or sit
nearby as if in silent vigil
or just to keep it company
for a while. I would like
to see it given a fate
more fitting than being an exhibit
of progressive decay.
Silly of me perhaps to endow it
with worth and be moved
to write these words and do honor
to the hands that made it,
feel a sense of sorrow
as a weathered soul
is sometimes inclined to do
when confronted by such a sight.
It was a harsh, hard going season.
“It’s a dying winter, lad,”
he said, crunching words around,
a gnawed pipe stem.
Briefly embers sought a place to disappear.
Cinder gray eyes, set deep
into the crumpled grit of age.
A wry off-set smile.
Then one day he went back up
the clinker graveled path
to his small, low-roofed cottage,
with its squat, darkly puffing chimney,
oily cans, coal dusted kettles,
the fumy, over-stuffed parlor,
with its feet-warming, black,
fire-baked grate,
and one sooty cat.
Never to be seen again.
Rough hands upon her,
not near, there, or where,
nor the seashell tip of a fingering care
or other
lack-lustering lapping's
but the groundless clubfooted grasping
of long incoherent passions.
A clinker of desire hammered anew
by the forceful hands
of mist shrouded Nibelungen;
a dross now forged bright
into red-eyed gleams of flame.
She who bears the weight
of such a slobber-lipped changeling
covers his paws
with a tracery of spidery entanglements
the softest spell-binding webs
that break his knuckles;
refining hot bones
into phantom kisses.
For her satisfaction (and hers alone),
she captures that clumping stray
caging him deep,
and he left with no hands but hers.
The theme from Schindler's List
moves us to tears, or it should do.
Pity there’s not a genetic test for,
cold indifference,
moral weakness, or self-justified evil.
Go on admit it, that SS uniform
was really cool for its time.
My father was an Irish Jew - go figure.
Pity there's not a lie detector
for all the thoughts we dare not say out-loud.
The clinker in the gas chambers
has long cooled.
The German race is gracious,
kindly and considerate.
Minds can get sick, nations get sick.
The artful must take away our power
to keep more power for themselves.
It’s the same all over.
Such people are the most fearful.
Hitler was scared of his own shadow,
and so he should have been.
If you are frightened of your shadow
take the test, the ‘shadow test’.
There's a reason you hide it from yourself.
You can never be sure
if your shadow is greater than you are.
It must have been made
and rejected,
in night’s grinding gears –
a knobby irregularity,
a leftover of smelt and dross.
This is all there is
a gobbet of oven clinker,
but behind it I sense cracked teeth,
motes in a burnt eyeglass,
the thin singed bones
of fledgling flights into darkness.
Here it is,
a fragment long convulsed
from its own incineration,
an irregular rake-off, a detritus
dragged across a blind stone floor.
This tittle of slag once had to fit something
the rough rim of an iron door perhaps
behind which an old furnace
still cools in faraway minds.
A ferrous chip chiseled from a gulag,
or a souvenir from an SS campfire meet.
There is always something left
after the unthinkable
is thought upon,
always some spicule of irregularity
to explain or confound
as we toss it back into the fire again.
SUMMER’S END
staying cool, in the pool,
where children are cruel,
on a very hot day—
Summer’s officially over.
from submarine fool,
fishy bubbling school,
plenipotentiary fuel—
a payload parade.
when the ping-pong jewels
surface - whirlpool
of fleeing ridicule.
afraid of riveting stool—
a flotsam snicker’s bar.
The worst part is the noise—
that awful fartastic that destroys
the floats, duckies, other toys.
it lasts and lasts…
it’s a spastic stinker,
a ferocious clinker —
it channels the sulfur pits of
Turkmenistan’s door to hell.
officially over,
the pool in deep cover—
no one hovers
near
the episodic rear of Summer.
9/24/2021
Fart-tastic
dear god or whatever
you can begin me now
begin me on a whiteboard
a blackboard
anything that can be erased
my cookie was baked with bad blood
begin me again
as if I were a fish
on an alien shore
gulping impossible air
i took myself to the edge
my chicken heart clutching
a chicken-hearted prayer
i am resurfacing
maybe drowning
only ducks and whales
can speak of this
upwards sinking
there was a time
a no time
when a magnificence
consumed
only to put me down
half-eaten
now all is washed over
by the before & after
what is left over
is this ort and tittle
this residual prayer
a clinker of dark & light
now seen
now unseen
dear whatever
i got stranded
Classify myself as one of the great thinkers
At times been known to come up with a clinker
Try my bestest
Surely passed the testest
Still, random people are giving me the finger
Classify myself as one of the great of thinkers
But sometimes been known to come up with a clinker
Try my damn best
Thought I'd passed the test
But people on the street keep giving me the finger
Classify myself as the greatest of thinkers
But sometimes been known to come up with a clinker
Try my damn best
Thought I'd passed the test
But people on the street keep giving me the finger
her storm seen sometime or never
her form a mottled cry,
begs the clinker from the sky
that many try, to pacify her ire,
nought can quench her heady fire,
her storm seen sometime or never
none have won to pacify her surge,
to all men now a cursed scourge,
begs the clinker from the sky
no prediction can be lent,
only heaven’s interdiction can be lent,
her storm seen sometime or never
grasps the metal’s leery eye,
depths of Hades burns it dry,
begs the clinker from the sky
then hard pull, protection’s reins,
her nature’s wrath, knows no direction,
her storm seen sometime or never,
begs the clinker from the sky
02/03/2015
Meenie was clamoring against higher prices of milk
My Sullivan hit a clinker he was not of that ilk
Sullivan screeched a lot
My Meenie shot her bolt
And both in revolt ate turnips artichokes and silk
Meenie= my pet female cat
Sullivan=my pet simian ghost
A fat flouncy funky flunky house sparrow bobs and bows his way tacking like a clinker built
dingy sailing across our sea of grass catching worms fattened by May's sun and showers .
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