Minimalistic Ezra Pound
also wrote poetry most profound
but in his 'Station Metro' verse
he pared&pared to make it terse
Idaho's Ezra Pound
with Canto did astound
He began as an imagist theorist
with the genre did not persist
It comes like a slip in the day~
a blue stillness,
a pause I didn’t ask for
but must walk through.
The operating room is bright,
too bright,
as if the world has been pared
to its cleanest edge.
A feather rests on the tray~
not real, but the thought of one:
light,
soft,
bound to air
the way I am bound
to this hour.
Memory stirs~
the half-dream drift
of all I’ve lived through,
all I’ve held,
all I’ve let fall.
Peace is not loud here.
It is a small pulse
in my wrist,
a breath that says
I am still
in the world,
even now,
even in this
unexpected place.
And when I wake,
the light has changed.
The day has moved on.
But something in me
has learned
the quiet art
of returning.
A single white rose,
stark against the scar,
left on a plinth—
pale,
pierced,
and pared.
Air drips with heavy dew—
a heady sip,
thick nectar stung by wind,
a bitter elixir on the tongue.
The faint decay of autumn bloom rises.
Petals—
crushed,
capsized on iron.
Ensnared.
Entombed.
Rusting deep in the split stone—
iron teeth gripping the grim root.
Under the rust,
a secret scarlet pulse.
White thorns wake,
weaving through the wreckage.
Wild shoots shatter the cage,
rising—
raw,
radiant,
and reborn.
For deep under the bitter stone,
beneath the winter's heavy blow,
lies the silent, secret seed.
It waits for the solstice's soft sovereign warmth,
to wake,
to break,
and build the bloom anew.
Fair lady, look down, see me in this hole,
beaten by a creature to be dreaded,
this ill-made, unsightly, disfigured, troll,
conquered by a monster many-headed.
The moment mother screamed and I was born,
the beast's heads stared upon me filled with hate.
I pared an ugly one that was called scorn,
and left home when I could to meet my fate.
Looming precariously from above,
the brute left me here in my final hour,
delivering dire blows - first pain, then love.
Dear lady, please place a futile flower
as I bid farewell to the woe and strife,
and the monster, now dead, but once called life.
At first, the rope was thick as a trunk~
I could balance on it sleeping.
Then years pared it down to a clothesline,
then a thread, trembling with my breath.
Grocery bags became sandbags.
Stairs grew teeth.
My shadow pooled at my feet
like a dropped coat.
One morning, I unstitched the hem
of my own skin.
Thread by thread,
I learned the grammar of hunger~
not the sharp want of before,
but the slow, voweled enough.
Now the rope’s a filament,
a hair of light.
I tread softly.
There’s an all girl band called “S1ut Intent.”
They’re real headbangers which I can't take much of
but I LOVE that name - Ok, let’s write THAT poem..
S1ut intent, that’s what it was.
It was shamefully late
and the lights were on
but all else would have been torture
With marriage-like consents
and sharp cloyless appetites
we joined in love’s witchcraft
and bestowed our pleasures
entangling quite forcefully
was an antidote to the daily,
the pared-down and neutral
and once the torch was out
the epilog was stronger
than contentment
.
.
Songs for this:
Kiss by Demi Lovato
The Way I Love You by Jorja Smith
Little Sister by Ellie O'Neill
We’re just being ourselves
We’re not presenting ourselves
on a plate, commodifying ourselves.
We’re refined and pared-back—plain
but with an intriguing complexity.
We’re simple and indestructible,
our diasporic styles, assembled in a frenzy
by spontaneous instinct, need no audience.
You’ll find us in the coffee shops, the libraries
streaming and scrollin’ to unheard, noise-cancelled, beats
or in the bars kickin’—let the music play—I can’t talk much about it.
We’re not overly thought-out, sure, we ruminate, but then we’re
automatic rather than laboured, creative without overthinking.
We’re emotional and immediate, but clearly avoiding
slightly scurrilous condom entanglements—yeah
—there are reasons. true, true, true, true true.
.
.
Songs for this:
Let the Music Play by Papik & Sarah Jane Morris
Soda Pop Confusion by Variety Lab & Kidsaredead
Gunsmoke
9/30/2024
Miracle Man
Dodge City had a handsome blacksmith called Quirt,
who was played by a Hollywood actor named Bert.
With cannons for arms,
pared with his charms,
not one person in Dodge City mistook him for a squirt.
Little black books- blooming everywhere.
From shining sea islands to Belair mansions.
To white house lattice and cathedral bastions.
Little black books- blooming everywhere.
Many pawns are sacrificed; many pawns are pared/
but the queens, bishops, and kings are always spared.
Little black books... blooming- blooming everywhere.
Little black books with time-dusted secrets.
Magically disappear.
They were dynamic, their harmony was fine!
They had pared down to four, from the original nine.
The five who could not sing had pneumonia that day.
We applauded these Corgis in every which way.
They sang Joy to the World and Jingle Bells too.
Adding a bit of jazz, and then Christmas Wee Woo.
They were amazing, and we could not stop clapping.
At the end these Corgis did a bit of back slapping.
Minimalistic Ezra Pound
also wrote poetry most profound
but in his 'Station Metro' verse
he pared&pared to make it terse
It was the bronzed bell of a tinseled Ocean ship.
Until Destiny was scuttled by a fiery water witch.
In time, it became the haunting clang upon a reef.
A macabre knick-knack for cliques that ruled the deep.
They returned like blue birds, lonely for a blossoming.
To pay homage to every sailor overtaken by the sea.
They lay bouquets over shadowed grief...
as ghosts pared sweet memories into paper effigies.
Between shuffles of worn decks and ninety-proof lips.
They spin tales of crimson seas and horrible dorsal fins...
Torn hearts and sails, forever on a starboard list.
Drifting between a blue refrain and the salty mist.
In the graying vein of time, everything's forgotten.
The sweet angelic, the mundane, the eternally rotten.
Gravestones hoard salt within their granite cracks.
Tokens to a time when auroras bled into blackness.
One by one the crew will drift from this pearled realm.
Riding Tradewinds into the gilded scented heavens...
or become driftwood in the brackish heart of hell...
as the captain sways to the clang of his beloved water bell.
Wales U K some parents care..bout childrens
Senses being pared; away with caution, with
Thoughts i'd think not rare.? By any who exist
Out there ! Who have concern who'd like there
To be, in childrens lives sensibility a graduated
Learning climb, content age related is that some
Crime? Sex education cannot be right for those
Of six.' Such precious mites.' Would the same
Be allowed to steer a formula one? In such early
Years? Or perhaps a drone, eqipped for war?
What say you judge ? Who has judged before.!
Judged against a human right, you have aggreived
You cast a blight ' I am aligned I here support the
Caring parents who have rightly fought, for freedom
In context, of better ed ' are the admistrators inside
Just dead ? There can't be thought or reason
Applied ' when such actions versus needs its quite
Aparthied.' And not between species or race yet
Twixt parents and children such a great; disgrace.'
ALLERGIES
I’m tired of these rains of salty tears
Caused by allergens in my atmosphere.
Since allergies last the entire year,
Why they’re called “seasonal” isn’t clear.
The stinging spores are always near,
Welling and swelling and telling,
I fear, of my constant felling
From constant tears.
I can’t get my eye makeup to take,
Shake, bake, or stay
Because it bleeds and flakes
Due to the water my eyes always make.
So thanks for nothing, Allergies!
?How you piss off a priss like me!
You take great liberties but show no civility,
Increasing and releasing
Dark shadows doing battle
In all places and spaces on my face;?
Usually lovely but “seasonably” ugly
From the super-puffy, very stuffy
Watery, red, and watershed
Eyes I temporarily despise
Because of these constant cries
I can’t defy, deny, or hide,
No matter how hard I try.
I’m stuck with the leaks, peeps,
So if you care about skin, nails, and hair,
Beauty tips, bowed lips, and my clever quips,
Please say a prayer my face is spared,
Not too wizened and pared
Into a beady raisin
By these godforsaken
Allergies which constantly
And relentlessly torment me!
In an old briefcase
capsuled for years in a corner
of the shed, I found a rolled up wad
of poems, stalled, still looking
for something to say, frozen
in a futile gasp for air.
I should have thrown
them away.
There was also an old plane ticket,
a beer coaster from an Antwerp cafe,
and a few photographs taken
from a bridge across a canal
in Bruges with three nuns wearing
starched white cornettes
stretched out like enormous
butterfly wings perched atop
of their heads.
And tucked in a side pocket,
were letters from my mother
written more than thirty years ago.
Long dead, I could almost hear
her voice read each word.
In one, she told me how
she scored an A for English
in the HSC exam she sat
when well into her sixties.
She could recite Frost's "Birches"
off the top of her head. Stevens,
for her, made no sense. Mum liked
plain language pared down
to bone.
I am not sure why I am writing
these words about such
middling matters, much less trying
to shape them into poetry.
No matter.
Sometimes just ordinary things,
like those found in an old briefcase,
seem to find a moment
to have something to say,
at least for me.
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