This place —cold and famished,
abandoned —
Recalling issues of broken mortars
And mildewed, hinge-leaning pestles . . .
Desiccated and forlorn,
Like a lychgate in a church of battle,
This place reeks of unholiness, with the
Spring of wild, rioting grass, invading
Where we hitherto gathered and sat the
Setting sun out of the wilting clouds.
Fragile fraternity hangs on the decaying soot
Of fireplace metal basket, rusty and time-dispersed.
The unknown saw has gnawed mightily
At our sacred trees and our shrines have crumbled;
Broken doors and lintels devoured by wood ants
Raise questions about wood dust lodging at
Our lungs.
There’s cold serenity here, my kinsman —
And a rift of dismemberment.
Chose a Title; Naïve Faith, Sponsor – Edward Ibeh – 8-27-25
Naïve synonyms: callow, guileless, innocent, pure, genuine, honest, simple, sincere
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Naïve Faith
Callow faith walks with wide eyes
In playgrounds littered with stark cunning
When adorned innocence
Seeks to soar where angels fly
Not blinded by fool’s gold
Nor looted by evil’s glittery tinsel
Or minds darkened by drugs of ebony
That plagiarizes honesty
With rationalized temptations
In ravished glamour.
Artless faith, clothed by incorruptible purity,
Shivers when simplicity senses
A wrinkle in infinity -
Guileless belief skirts gullible’s traps
Clothed in a gift of sight.
When beastly motives
Try to sideswipe honesty
With glitz and jewels of paste
Dangling shiny promises with dark underbellies
Naive faith, clothed in discernment,
Sees with candid clarity.
The rose still blooms despite attacks
By mold or mildewed rust
The sun still wakes the dawn
Even when eclipsed
Crowned by a faultless corona
As stars refuse to enter black holes
Faith embraces the innocent.
I’ve only desired to light old lamps with young wicks
(the tongues of flame must be blinking hard with vigilance)
Across dark, mildewed alcoves that smell of ink —her writing ink —
But one thing led to the other, and the ink I
Found froze in my eyes, the bottle instantly petrified among desert ruins.
I searched, from my village to Nantucket, borrowing
The courage of voyaging storms, seeking earnestly her quill feather,
Just to caress her pretty face with it.
But the power of distance arrested me midway and warned me
Of the dangers of costly adventures.
I hankered after a trained parrot —an amanuenses of note—
With less brilliant plumage,
Electrifying elocution,
To detect to me the protocols of her language.
But that, too, failed.
The parrot was either born mute or chose to be.
I did all I could? to seek, to find, to locate, to identify items
Belonging to her —bric-a-brac of a telling age.
And then there were none.
A mackerel sky fillets a fish scaled village,
an ear clapping, full sailed, fog
moors itself to the rooftops,
then hides all in a breezeless blear.
Rheumy eyes peep out from nets,
damp noses sniff abaft trawling drapes.
Cloth in hand, potbellied proprietors
battle the splatter and spray,
dabbing at mildewed shelves,
warding away slopping waders
and salty puddles.
On the sightless sea
far beyond the shore and shingle,
fog horns are lowing like lost cattle.
Later, misty reeks will be scoured
from groggy docks,
hauling hands will rope together
the tide-tossed salvage
by and by, squeaky boots
may trudge to taprooms
where codgers and callow alike
can be well oiled
and duly quenched.
A night in fragments—
Breath reeked mildewed regrets,
and static collided behind my eyes.
I tasted shattered neon,
sipping cheap club gin.
Even alcohol can’t silence the poet—
I mock her perfumed clichés,
but still draft her eulogy
in thrifted elegance.
“I hate writing blind,” I muttered
as gin bled through crooked verses—
March 14th,
a drunk poet sighed—
Her pen staged the week’s second tragedy.
At least yesterday’s wasn’t on paper.
A squirrel got into the homestead,
it picked a lock with a dry thorn.
The smell of dank fur clung.
We carried small talk above our heads.
Nothing put away but still dangles.
Denim droops, snagging
the arms of rumpled shadows,
fusty jeans gander and loll.
Calico and cotton are rescued
the soggy separated
from the mildewed.
Soon front steps will be scoured,
tails and collars made to flap
while medium-sized back-yard critters
flounce and fluff.
If a blotting wind returns,
the squirrel will bail with a flick of its tail,
we will wash bathtubs,
fully clothed with yesterday's suds.
I had only just heard that UK cheese was revolting.? Not mildewed or slimy which could be
Insulting? No.! even the cheeses have it seems had enough of that quyeer kahmer
Nonsense and stuff.' It seems they're egged on by mother goose? Probably a code name
If what I hear is truth? The thing all got started because of some cows Daisy and Ermentrude
Were insulted and how..? This angers all cheeses! the Leicesters are mad red.' And some real Tough chedder is about to shed, its cool staid image before all is said.' As sure as
Grass makes hay.' And cows our milk, we need un-tarnished cheeses not some man made
Filth.' Yes cows have farted.. And will again' and humans grew strong and repulsed some pains the
Products great' its allways been green.) Like the farmers fields a beautiful scene..Yet over to
The cheeses.' Who are on the roll.' They want to escape from (old kahmer's) intended gaol
I think this cheesy battle could come true.? Here's trusting to human acumen though it's another way to get
Through.'
That’s how some poets roll the the dice here, don’t you see?
I think it makes sense, if your life is all about me, me, me!
Old poetry friendships ………like garbage, tossed dowm
a mildewed, stenchy, drain.
As some “must “ be read or you are tossed out like a cat in
the cold, pelting, raim!
They forgot those old days, when they wrote little and had
Very few readers.
But now, you are useless friend, and tossed into the trash,
like a broken, comfy, living room seater?
So, don’t feel bad, if this happens to you, they forgot you,
so move on.
For you have a poetic gift, with fun, beauty and inspiration
to pass on.L
And yes, you can read any other poets who do not
read you.
Poetry badminton, is a sad game, I most
heartily eschew!
Life throws curveballs our way, but it’s not great
to live as though comments were our all.
Spouses, childhood friends, church,pets, life
celebrations ..demand our all.
We are duped into thinking that keystrrokes
mean friends.
I used to think so, too but learned that’s where
the story sadly ends.
~Poem 2~
3/9/2024
I envision the low wall,
ivy-clad and mildewed
a stone relic of some-time'
beyond this moment.
The garden has not withered wild
but has slipped through the years
untouched by decay
or an over-running disarray,
but is as it ever was
before the dawn of this day.
Perhaps you also have imagined
this same green and floral oasis,
and there have composed
a reality within a poem?
In an hour or two, or perchance
a hundred years from now
we may peacefully great each other,
there,
in that ever present now.
The holiday cabin smelled of wet pigeons
but it was lakeside and cheap.
The lake was not popular,
too deep and weedy for swimming,
too shallow for docking boats,
yet it suited our make-do mindsets.
Of course,
we were romantically attached at the hips,
feet glided upon air
as we wandered upon the pebbly beach
fingers entwined in a dank mist.
Graham crackers and marshmallows
were unpacked
alas the firepit was soaked
with too much leafy fog.
A desultory fire was sparked
in a damp bed beneath a mildewed roof.
We had only tomato soup, tough bagels
and a pack of Marlborough.
We had not planned for chills and hunger.
Inevitably the vacation
grew lukewarm.
Runny noses and sneezes,
the cheesy smell of wet footwear
all seeped deeply into our gestalt,
philosophically
we bailed on the quickly drenched dream,
and each other.
The years have not mildewed
for my moss is deep and soft,
it is a fine as baby hair
as thick as an uncut meadow.
Somewhere there are lands I have plowed
over and over,
beneath which are the fragments
of chalky skeletons,
the remains of scant harvests.
Time accumulates a life,
caves and cave-ins layer atop each other,
and above it all
the moss flourishes
to cover an abandoned machinery
that once excavated molehills.
Rusted tools, implements
now all buried
yet still they seep iron
into my earth.
My moss is threaded with clover,
a greening stronger than steel.
I am heaped and rounded
a place for buttercups in summer,
and when a winter-tide
seeks out that velvet plush,
it shall not bite nor crush
but lay as a companion beside me.
We carry small talk above our heads, ceilings drip clouds.
Nothing is put away. Coats dangle over chairs in layers.
Drugged by spate and mizzle, denim droops,
snagged over rummage
and the outstretched arms of impedimenta.
The house awakes to a soft toed patter.
Around us, cuffs pull the roof closer to damp collars,
hangers weep in wardrobes,
while the unhung sink in muddy shallows.
Before the light paddles away, calico, cotton, and shirttails
are rescued, bundled into higher heaps;
the soggy separated from the merely mildewed.
The muddled and fusty raised above an imagined tide.
Tomorrow, front steps will be scoured;
the washed-out made to flap.
Squirrels may walk the earth again,
and if a blotting wind returns, we will wave
from dry bathtubs.
He don't live down your way.
He dwells in another day
he will never let you into.
His face is white
but not bright - yellow age
has mildewed his smile.
The house on the hill
is not his,
but he won't let you visit.
Jailhouse rock
will keep you dancing
behind be-wilderness bars.
He forgets to like you,
he thinks you're cotton
to be picked.
Children run from his knees',
kids know that the cotton man
has a secret plan
and it don't include us.
She had many sad stories,
they were filed away, labeled,
color coded;
tales presented as apocryphal bibles.
He would listen as she pulled them out
of her droning breast,
intoned then as if reciting
poetry to an acolyte sponge.
Her stories festered the air
with pitiful sorrows,
scratched yet more stigmata
upon hide-bound woes.
White paper moths would fly up to his eyes
as if to illustrate her narratives;
tissue thin, he would see within them
the many skeletons of her living ghosts,
bones free now of all minerality,
fish-wet and wriggling
in the gel of a long preserved plasma.
He often closed his ears
to make his lips numb. The nasal gnarl
of her broken voice
coated his tongue with sticky commiserations,
a jejune sympathy
that had the texture of mildewed goatskin.
Her words mechanically ticked off
every injustice and persecution
ever heaped upon a martyred mind.
Eventually though, her deep well of mopes
dried to a blubber of sighs.
Then all those emaciated moths
would flutter around her
anointing her echoing skull
with a seeping urine-like substance
she called love.
Can I escape
from my own imbedded think
Rapidly warped perception
is the liquid I drink
What Jesus is saying
I discard with a blink
My mind bent morality
displacing Biblical ink
The collapse of my synapses
interlinked and exhausted
with too many strange thoughts
my mixed mind is accosted
So sinking six feet
a shrivelled seed potted
Mildewed dusty dirty
in the burnt soil rotted
I rise from the ashes
Escape from my dry
Soul, body, mind, reconstitution
on the wind I now fly
Embracing this new freedom
Knowing why my old self had to die
Perspective changes everything
when viewed from on high
For God’s ways are different
He speaks in whispers not a shout
Trusting in His wisdom
removes every doubt
Within this mortal heart
I can feel His Spirit sprout
Who I wished to be before
is no longer what I’m about.
Written May 12, 2020
Richard J. Lamoureux
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