Long Upholstered Poems
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Whither now hunker-shins?
You have a sweet countenance,
a squat grace,
always middle-aged
on the still edge of a speeding sun.
Another swift day has begun
yet here you sit among the traffic
unflinching, a bold
bladder quelling gravity
with low-sprung shanks.
You deep-seated recliner,
standing-pat over upholstered hams.
A lumpy Mona Lisa,
with your come-hither girth
and just a thin membrane
between you and chaos.
Your skin an alien chiaroscuro,
a candle-lit atlas,
and in the cockle and crimp
of your glistening skin
a truculent contrarian gleams
beneath your world-dismissing
Buddha smile.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
redux
Whither now hunker-shins?
You have a sweet countenance,
a squat grace,
always middle-aged
on the still edge of a speeding sun.
Another swift day has begun
yet here you sit among the traffic
unflinching, a bold
bladder quelling gravity
with low-sprung shanks.
You deep-seated recliner,
standing-pat over upholstered hams.
A lumpy Mona Lisa,
with your come-hither girth
and just a thin membrane
between you and chaos.
Your skin an alien chiaroscuro,
a candle-lit atlas,
and in the cockle and crimp
of your glistening skin
a truculent contrarian gleams
beneath your world-dismissing
Buddha smile.
The house I wrote this poem in
became an apartment for the ocean,
then a zoo for the innocently maladjusted,
then a garden for dreaming cats,
then floor-space - just floor space
to walk back and forth on.
The room I find these words in,
these metaphors, these bewilderment’s
these vernal chimes of a younger blood,
flood me now,
now in my narrow redoubt,
now in my condo-maze-ment,
my spindle-boned easement.
Once I was a simile, similar
to something else, a green fracture,
the unseasoned sap of an analogy,
now look at me.
I am upholstered, a place
roomy enough for a younger poem,
for returning to younger words,
finding ghosts in the spaces between them,
breathing through vowels,
with their open lungs,
their brain dizzying songs.
Revisiting
underlining, unearthing
blind roots, simple cyclic thoughts
as if they had just come to me,
and had not been arriving
from freshly abandoned living-spaces
places excavated
from under the forgotten foundations
of elsewhere.
They do not begin with fire—
no banners, no marching drums—
only a whisper placed carefully
into the softest parts of a child.
The most vulnerable—
those already standing barefoot
on the thin ice of belonging—
are the easiest to teach fear to,
the easiest to bend toward certainty
that is not their own.
A lesson repeated becomes a truth,
a truth repeated becomes a weapon.
In dim courtrooms where time is currency,
men trade their innocence for daylight—
pleading guilty not to crimes,
but to the suffocating wait of cages.
Freedom, reduced to a bargain,
signed with a trembling name.
And somewhere above,
in rooms upholstered with promises,
the system hums its quiet corruption—
gears greased with silence,
hands washed in procedure.
Lists are made.
Always lists.
Names written not in ink,
but in permanence—
registries that outlive mistakes,
outlive context,
outlive mercy itself.
Local hands build them,
brick by careful brick,
until the walls begin to resemble
a nation cataloging its own reflection—
afraid of what it sees.
And governors—
smiling from polished podiums—
speak of order, of safety, of strength,
while somewhere beneath their words
is the ancient arithmetic of ambition:
that power may be climbed
on the backs of the condemned.
A body becomes a statistic,
a statistic becomes a platform,
a platform becomes a throne.
And the children—
always the children—
watch.
They learn what justice looks like
when it hardens.
They learn what truth becomes
when it is traded.
They inherit not only the country,
but its contradictions—
and in the quiet spaces between them,
something begins to take root.
She will take a bus today; it will be an old bus on a long
taken journey. The factory is a derelict shell. She cannot smell
the dereliction, she smells the walls and the ranks of machines
that thunder and hiss inside a grey vault of printed moments.
Her hands remember what to do, the machine whines and spins
as she tends.
The foreman is a watchful bastard, anger fills her throat
as he glares through an oily interface in her mind.
The boss is a mustache in a suit that never speaks to the
workers. She does not recall taking the bus home.
Around teatime threads of light arrow down from a domed
ceiling introducing her once again to an upholstered moment.
She reaches out for the mechanical cat. It is its birthday and
the woman who interlopes into her present hovers over her
as she drinks her tea. Small talk wanders around the room,
it cannot hear itself anymore. The cat purrs her to sleep again.
Two women talk in a corridor, discuss deterioration or
improvement - there are signs of both. Progress in any
restorative sense is not mentioned. It is decided not tell her
who she is anymore, it only confuses the operators of
wrecking balls, the driver of the bus, the long dead foreman,.
Soon another workday will chug to a stop at her doorstep
then depart for places only pictured in monochrome archives.
Inside the buffet and pitch of a city bus breadwinners dream
of jam for evening supper.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uqZhnqHMAg
The orchestra strains to be symphonic --- a bee in a tin box.
Cigar smoke thunders, molecules of sound wilt
only to be dialed up through brass lungs.
The combo is quaintly upholstered, a classic sports car
driven by Disney. Outmoded refrains gurgle.
We see the obsolete road ahead, feel the bumps,
the lack of shock absorbers.
The third piano concerto, the romance of the exile.
1940 is pulled from under its Perspex lid, served up
as fresh Prosciutto di Parma consumed in a diner
long derailed.
The mind warps eras, Michelangelo has gone Hollywood,
the 'Creation' sketched on a paper napkin.
Last notes.
Hands too large for tuxedoed minds, stamp
like rhapsodic elephants.
Percussive fingers slam-dunk ivory tusked themes,
Russian bells quake California.
Rolling vespers outgrowing each decade,
times now locked in a recovery CD millimeters thin.
~~~
https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2010/10/sergei-rachmaninoff-car-guy-aero-investor/
OLD AND NEW 1 : CIRCUS
Giraffe on anxious heels
bought in Sandton, toddle
along with intense haste
a dream point unheard
lipstick smudges, mascara
leaks of AK47 dust she rifled
Bullfrog madly croaks
vying for a place in a stagnant
pool, scoffing brandied chocolate
pinched nerves, heart infested
throat on a tightrope
Is the net below safe ?
Doe dark-eyed, hips to sink
into, marbled beauty stuck
in corner stage believing that
the circle offered freedom, unable
to move for want of a thatched
roofed house, chrysanthemumed
Lions and lionesses rounded pillars
new regal maned performers
late for debate, entrance timed
for a precise shapely attack
on buck across the atrium who
practiced prances early morning
In the middle stood Pharaoh
with invisible crook and flail
a sleek panther serpent eyed
veils of disinterest, ears on end
at plebs in the arena, acts like
phantoms danced along a
smooth mental screen
Fidget they would on
maroon re-upholstered
benches over which not
even Bach could flow
mints popping pockets
On the horizon they
disappeared into an African
circus becoming marula trees
on our border
©GhairoDanielsPoetry1996
The house I wrote in
became an apartment for the ocean,
then a zoo for the innocently maladjusted,
then a garden for dreaming cats,
then floor-space - just floor space
to walk back and forth on.
The room I find these words in,
these metaphors, these bewilderment’s
of a younger blood,
flood me
now in my condo-maze-ment,
my spindle-boned easement.
Once I was a simile, similar
to something else, a green fracture,
the unseasoned sap of an analogy,
now I am upholstered, a place
roomy enough
for returning younger words,
their brain dizzying songs.
revisiting, unearthed,
as if they had just come to me,
and had not been arriving
from abandoned living-spaces,
from the forgotten foundations
of elsewhere.
Avoiding the girl-scouts
I hasten out of the store
trying hard not to see the people
huddled in their thin coats
as they wait for an infrequent bus.
This ice-chilled evening
with its stark revelations
is like the nag of an irregular heartbeat
sheathed like a thorn in my shoe.
Later, by a warm fire
sitting in an upholstered armchair,
a despondency chews at my breastbone,
it is a reaction hard to pin down,
to objectify,
a lingering presence.
My mind shifts through a symbolic iconography
effigies depicting:
a lost and hungry dog,
an ill-treated child,
a stranger I refuse to call brother,
places long deserted,
places found far too late.
A love unpicked from a now withering vine.
That same presence
sets a table and chair before me
that I may write, try to explain
this tumbleweed of unnamable sorrows,
a phantom, that even in happier times,
I recognize it as a coarse impression
akin to a grating scar
beneath a tender tongue.
Tomorrow may emerge as a frail old lady,
struggling with full shopping bags,
head bent to a cold uncaring wind.
Many might offer her a lift
but in my present brittle mood
I probably would frighten her,
so,
I don’t.
Is this the weekend, by the way?
(I always think it’s Saturday!)
Load the kids up in the car –
country club (I hit the spa:
hand the kids to gay Adolphe –
calisthenics, crazy golf).
I spoil myself – it helps the stress –
the kids are having fun (I guess).
Fox News Tom Cruise
No Jews designer shoes.
Rufe’s so square, a diplodocus:
the kids will always be my focus.
Everybody needs a break
(we’re human too, for goodness’ sake).
We just do the normal things:
cabin in Borrego Springs,
week in Vegas, see the shows,
birthday dinner (Kiriko’s):
never noodles, only sushi
(table used by John Belushi) –
private beach in old La Jolla
(Rufe knows someone, bigshot lawyer):
cocktail bar, upholstered loungers
(razor wire keeps out the scroungers).
Juan’s the poolboy. My help’s Auxi
(Juanito’s neat, and Auxi’s mousey).
Wears my cast-offs, lives on chilli –
keeps her pay from getting silly.
Neither’s legal – which is good:
they stay grateful, like they should.
Minimum wage would tie a noose to it:
anyhow, they’re plenty used to it.
She breastfeeds, Juanito hustles
(fine-boned body, high-toned muscles).
He’s moonlighting, pumping gas
in San Diego, humping ass.
Rufe’s no idea what good taste is.
Parties with them friends of his.
I can’t stand them business folks –
Steaks and beers and dirty jokes.
I won’t go to meets or meals
if I can’t wear my strapless heels
and backless dress (Yves St Lauren)
it’s not about impressing men
(who cares what they think?) – it’s the wives
it matters what a woman drives
who fixed her hair. What’s Satan’s curse?
To show up toting last month’s purse.