Blue Cheese and Old Pickles Poetry Contest
Craig Cornish
A dish of disappointment
mocks the kitchen chef
two anomalies sitting on his cutting board
all in their glory, dumbfounded
... and unappetizing
plated for aliens and not humans
or for a horse that doesn’t know better
this recipe’s giving him the blues and he’s seeing red
where …
his yellow brick road has two strangers today
two lost food groups
arriving earlier in hearses
a funeral procession
mythically carrying the deceased to his kitchen foyer
… some blue cheese and an old dill
that are down for an undressing
of his bitter words
like, fudge, where’s the beef
… or better yet Mars is up there
as a cloud of despair hovers over the kitchen
not a spaceship as one might think
darkness begetting light
salt, pepper and garnishes spooked
… a ready barf bag crashes this meal
Diversity explores
both resonant and opposing positions
with nearly predative anticipation
And such perversely curious
reverse revisioning diversity deplores
with monoculturing anxiety
quietly crossed
and boldly violated boundaries
of personal
and familial
and municipal
and EarthTribal
indigenous integrity
Sacred space expands
mindfully perceived
this Business As Traumatically Usual place
too lose/lose dark
and too win/win blind
to keep faith with dimming starlight
Celestial Glitter Rivered Ways
majestic
yet ominously silent
shunned Spirits
of ancient silvered sentient bright
Yet momentary mortal time
feels reflective light received
sufficiently reassuring
mythically alluring
for transient transportive pleasure
tenderly insufficient
for full-ripened organic measure
depleting dissonant self-disenfranchising
failure to complete
integrity's potential Paradise.
We whimsically wondered why
wandered victims by
and through our uniquely human history
of sexual trauma
and therapeutic politics
Mythically hinting
hunting
poly-resonant
mono-vulnerable
half full, half empty
gendered pantheology
Spanning spies discovering economic magic
denies political monoculturing tragic
outcomes for godlike monolithic
monotheistic empire-building
Wherein straight white males
disproportionatly championed
a revengeful
and punishing MonoPolistic Judge
polarizing One-1 omnipotent God
While unstraight
unwhite
unmasculine
marginalized
enslaved
and colonized
Would restore Mother Eartha's original
nurturing conservational economy
Nutritional ecosystemic politics
for wellness-natured spirits
Advocating sexual polytheistic immanence
imploring sacred not yet empty
circling recycling interdependence
inspiraling half-full health
pregnant with potential
sacred safety
half-empty zero-0 wombed
regeneratively polytheistic.
I hope to visit next Sunday
on a warm
sunny
early PeaceGiving afternoon
Outside with my wounded Daughter's
extending therapeutic family
with win/win playful
and richly resonant intent
Inside her new
young
empowering
and cooperatively enlightened
Thankful
mind-full music
and muse dancing
mythically
mysteriously
majestically joyful home.
It all comes down to
Do you believe more
in enlightening original Earth creation stories
or
in empowering messianic passion narratives.
What comes down
inhaled
drawing in light
may reasonably appear like a monotheistic weapon
to avoid patriarchal-capitalist loneliness
loss
What goes out
exhaled
empowering polytheistic tools
to embrace polypathic-cooperative
co-passions.
What are we coming down and up
in and out toward?
Life,
love,
purpose,
destiny, I suppose,
whether secularly and democratically
universally enlightening multicultural stories
or sacredly and theistically
unitarian narratives
co-empathically empowered.
Yes, I see
your massive LeftBrain verbal story
Truth OR Fiction
AND then raise our RightBrain cooperating feelings
mythically narrating more.
Do you sense a difference
between ecstasy
and enchantment?
Ecstasy draws me out of my ego,
my body
my mind
my autonomous autumnal consciousness,
winter isolated awareness.
And enchantment?
Enchantment draws me in.
More of a seduction,
maybe even curious
invitation.
Ecstasy sounds louder,
bolder,
short-term climatic
and requires loss of ego-centered monopoly games
While enchantment may include promise
of all that bluster
and outsidedness
yet adds the longer sunlight summer
before and after relationship
of seduced out
fascinated
hypnotically co-empathic internal root induction,
promising integrity's path of quieter seduction,
restoring internal becomings with external belongings
Yet to magically
climatically
mythically appear
on life's Yang ecstatic
Yin enchanting
horizon of newborn
politically green
spring.
There's political disengagement
Then personal wedding
Then ego/ecopolitical re-engagement
of every spring through winter nutritional rites of passage.
Only silence dresses her rigging now
To the call of the bosun’s whistle
Her hatches now stand locked and secure
Where long past sailors once lingered
She is the last of the old frigates
Moored in the shallows of Charlestown
Board her and hear her echoes of valor
Haughtily anchored her colors humbly fly
No blemishes on her hull show her battles
Her carronades still sit silently waiting
As she floats mythically at ease
For a moment I can hear the great moans
Her keel and sailors cresting Atlantic waves
To Captain Hulls orders to come about
And charge on the enemy ship Guerriere
On her decks I feel the plight of her dead
Hearing stories of centuries old bulkheads
Astounding feats of a morose pride
To have brought their foe to capitulate
Now she stands tacit though ever grand
And still on her decks and deep in the bowels
The mighty spirit of U.S.S. Constitution dwells
A monument of endurance softly whispering
“Lest we remember long forgotten sacrifices…”