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Best Poems Written by Gawaine Ross

Below are the all-time best Gawaine Ross poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

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Hymn To Pan

Hymn to Pan

Before Morocco was Roman, you see,
the music of Pan was African jazz.

At the Wednesday night prayer meeting
the percussion discussion of Mingus goes on,
getting' all jumpy and sweaty inside.
This is the time of the passionate stranger,
of bullfights and trumpets, of magic and lust.
You should see that goat high steppin'
playin' his pipes for centaurs and satyrs
while rivers of wine and buckets of beer
splash the maenads snaking with joy.
Seven black dancers leap on a cliff,
five different rhythms make them alive:
It's music that spears them, one at a time!
One says “It's crazy,” one says “It's love,”
three new rhythms awaken the dead!
Fertility spirits moan and shout
as flutes and oboes evoke ancestors.
A soprano echoes a baritone's wail.
The sky man wears a cloak of feathers,
the earth woman wears a skirt of grass.

A neighboring tribe joins the fray
entering caves with torches aloft,
wearing masks of stallions and mares.
The god who grants all desires arrives
riding a winged golden lion
as twenty eight drummers climax at once.

I can believe that joy is infectious,
I can believe that music is Life.
I'm going to jump and roar my approval
she's going to ride a broad chested centaur
the people will tussle a long hungry python
when Pan calls us in the middle of the night.

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In Nursing School

In Nursing School

In nursing school they have us learn all the proper medical words,
Because in Greek and Latin we defecate, but we never make turds,
And what's worse than learning about all these dreadful diseases
Is forgetting my English to replace it with obfuscating medicaleses,
Lest we forget that great chemical known as adenosine triphosphate
Which is the powerhouse of the cells, or did she say an exudate?
And though I've been to India and seen the river Ganges,
I never knew my fingers were really called phalanges,
And we must learn about colitis, encephalitis and diverticulitis,
But I hope these germs don't decide to get up and bite us.
You can't find out a lot about someone by palpating the patella,
Not even if the patient is female, or if he is a fella.
And we must distinguish anemia, diarrhea and gonorrhea
From the almost identical condition known as leukemia.
Sex is one thing, I think, not one of us has time for,
For after school it's off to work until you're blind or
Wishing you had never heard of cellular necrosis,
Not to mention the hundred kinds of psychoses and neuroses.
And then there's that other major hurdle called getting adequate funding,
And if you can't get a loan or a grant they'll have you do the plumbing.
It seems the clinical locations are never really near ya,
In fact most of them are deep inside Siberia,
And if out in the Sun recall that your skin can get tumorous,
For the study of medicine is serous – very, and hardly ever humerus.
Your medical books will have you believe you've every disease known
From autophobia to an ecchymosis to cerumen on the bone.
But at least there are no bullies insisting we are all big wimps,
For studying things like urine, saliva, bile, blood and lymph;
And if there's one more part with the outlandish name of buccinator,
I think I'll lose it all and become a hallucinator.

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Hebrides

HEBRIDES

Big waves crash on a Hebrides shore,
Horizontal rain slashes the rocks.
There’s no shelter here, not even a crack,
There’s no wood here, and nothing to burn:
Frost giants hurl slivers of  ice.
The sun will rise twelve hours from now,
But by then, they say, the snow will be
Knee deep, and nearly slush.
I’m dry enough, but stranded atop
A granite pinnacle miles from shore.
Yesterday I clambered up
To say farewell and then to leap;
But now I can’t, and the coward man
Whimpers and lives for no good reason.
They’d rule a fall from here an accident,
Insurance claims would pay my bills
And spare my family funeral costs.
The fall, I think, a moment of terror,
But actually, not much pain.
And as for the afterlife –
Rosicrucians say 
I’d repeat the same act over and over and over
Falling into a self-created hell.
But escape,
That’s not an option.
Friends look at me and say:
“Better choices you need to make:
You’re not paralyzed from the neck down,
Retching from intestinal cancer,
Helpless in bed with chemical burns,
You haven’t lost a wife or a child
To a tsunami or a terrorist attack,
You’re not foaming with addictions
Or exposed in shame on national TV,
So what’s your problem?”
TRAPPED! I tell you, I’m trapped
Inside the same old wretched self,
In a prison too small for the animal life
The monkey and the otter praying to play
In sunflower fields abounding in streams
Where fountains sparkle joyously
And rainbows lift the sky to the sun –

Away from the hamster chained to a log,
Away from the failures and toxic romances,
Away from the husbands choking their wives,
Away from the igloos buried in ash,
Away from
Away from
Away from
Away from the hollow men
Pulling the strings.

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Dominica

Dominica
Gawaine Caldwater Ross

We share melons and papayas
beneath a sun benevolent.
A salty breeze, the river is cool,
and the passion flower blossoms
are fragile but rich. We stroke
their fragrance and sip intoxication -
we slip a little further and
I find myself afraid of love.

Papaya trees are many breasted,
the flesh of mangoes, exquisite.
My restlessness is like the surf
seeking coral lagoons.
You speak in certitudes,
I dream of them.
Beyond the coconuts shining
in your eyes
I see gazelles outrunning lions -
you laugh,
I recall November sleet.

Your stainlessness and artless joviality
are in contrast to my venery.
But in honor of your being 
I play Schumann on the flute.
You respond with a noble clarinet,
Royal, but so voluptuous.

You think love means saying “Yes,”
I think love means bleeding.
You say, “That's a grim thought.”
I say, “Life is grief.”

We are divided by that which attracts us -
even as you speak of trust
I see the void behind the stars.
You speak of freedom,
possibilities, and taking risks;
but I have been to prison:
Saturn has bound me with rings of lead,
the acid rain has stained my face.

We lay our cards out on the purple silk:
today they say I am the Hanged Man.
Are you the Queen of Swords,
or the Priestess holding 


nine bright cups of Dionysian wine?
You smile and ask,
“Where, oh Where, is the
void in ecstasy?”

We strip and go against the current.
The water here is swift and cold,
the sunlight revels on your
scintillating buttocks.
I follow towards the cataract
and drink the water that has caressed your thighs.
You shriek, the monkeys leap,
and I wrestle with a jaguar.

You summon me to join you
high up on the rocks
where the moss is a foot thick.
I manage half a fervent laugh
And watch you diving into pools.

Opals ripple on the water.
We gather oleander, orchids,
Lilies and lotuses
and weave them into garlands
and in the falls we

linger in the timeless spray.

Details | Gawaine Ross Poem

The Bad Priest

The Bad Priest
In Lyons (I think it was Easter, 1438),
I was a priest and somehow can recall
the dim church, the heavy clouds of frankincense
and the knights and the peasants lined up for communion.
I chanted the magic words
and did the magic gestures but
instead of the wine becoming the blood
of our Blessed Lord,
it changed into piss.
I was not ready for this.
Inside the chalice, 
the reflection
of my own most hideous face -
I poured my face onto the floor and
a thousand rats writhing in a sea of worms
destroyed my last pretense of piety.
The congregation – the whores no less than
the assassins – knew that I was one of them
and could no longer hide the fact.
The stained glass windows crackled and shattered,
the church crumpled into rubble;
and we all shrieked
as the earth quaked
and God was deaf:
to the sobs of the amputees.

For the unforgivable crime of sacrilege
the ecclesiastical tribunal interrogated me
under the direction of the Bishop.
Those Dominican friars, those Domine Canes
(bloodhounds of the Lord), figured I'd sold 
my soul to the adversary and when they
put me on the rack and hung me up backwards
and hammered each ankle and elbow in turn,
I saw that they must be right,
for they showed such tender concern
for the state of my soul.
I confessed but still had to be tortured again,
in order to confirm the first one.
The Dominicans wanted to burn my genitals
to get to the names of family members 
who might be party to this conspiracy,
but in his mercy the Bishop forbade them.

I had to prepare myself for being burned at the stake:
There would be no merciful strangling instead.
I could pray for the grace of God,
but I knew I wouldn’t get it.
I could not even look forward to oblivion
as I regarded that yellow shirt
printed with the Devil's signs
that I'd have to wear on that
morning of shame and buckets of shit.


My friends will ask for my forgiveness 
as they set the straw afire.
Will I be a Christian then?

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Possession

POSESSION


The astral priest saw that the time had come
To finally invoke an Aztec god,
He left his family and Friends behind
To go to Tlaxcala on the day of the wind
To call Quetzalcoatl with bone flute and drum.
Then when Venus shone through a lens
On a shattered stone ruin six hundred years old,
He stood by high columns engraved
With scenes from the lives of the gods, 
The moon glinting occultly on onyx and gold.
His feathered cape and the jaguar mask
He wore began moving all on their own,
The eagle claws strapped to his wrist
Shook with anger, with passion and pride.
The Lady of the Serpent Skirts
Howled in the bowels of limestone caves,
And in the hall of Smoking Mirrors
Tezcatlipoca took aim at the Sun.
Double-headed feathered serpents
Coiled about the calender stone,
And even the pavement ‘pon which he stood
Rang with the spells of ancient wizards.
Then to his shock a crackle of lightning
Leapt up his spine and burst in his brain,
And then the hot fire assaulting his nerves
Sent him convulsing with terror and joy.

The god was demanding, he urged the priest
To climb out of his skin and leap into flame,
To cook his heart well as a meal for the gods,
To break all his limits - surrender at once
To waste not a second, but ride the tornado,
To seize the anaconda and tame it with a glance,
To penetrate flint with his fingers and eyes
To enter volcanoes and dance on the boiling
Magma within the Earth’s orange cleft,
To be at once an atom and star,
To see all Space as the ground of Being.
And then to fall screaming into the Abyss.

From somewhere out of the silence came drumming,
The drumming of shamans invoking spirits, 
Guardian spirits of wolves and crows
Gathering round to aid the priest.
And then at last he knew whence the drumming,
Just the rain pounding the roof of his skull.

Lightning lit a fire
And drifting off to sleep the flames revealed
Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca
Fought their way through thirteen hells.
Their warriors, the Eagle and the Jaguar knights,
Exchanged obsidian butterflies.
The feathers wafting in the wind
Became the crimson clouds at dawn.

A cool scented breeze caressed his neck,
Raindrops gleamed on a spider’s web,
Sunlight filled the turquoise sky.

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Historical Reflections

Historical Reflections
The Emperor has four hundred wives
with flower faces framed by jet.
Mai Lin can pluck a thousand tunes,
Yin Feng knows all erotic arts.
They drink spiced wine in jasper cups
as the snow beats against the windows;
the mob outside is howling for grain.
The Son of Heaven orders a new diversion
And the Mongols are whirling down from the steppes.

The governor of Kwangsi province
contemplates his plans of vengeance:
He takes the heavy rebel bribe.
The Imperial troops are mauled and shamed.
The Mongols have crossed the Huang-Ho river.

The Confucian minister practices rites
he no longer believes in.
Religion must be upheld for the people.
But that foreign doctrine of the Buddha's
must be persecuted with vigor, for
the nuns and monks refuse to bear children
for the defense of the Empire.
The Mongols have taken Ch'angan.

The public treasury is empty,
And the Son of Heaven is deep in debt;
the harvest was meager, the crops blighted.
Famine panics two provinces.
The peasants join bandit armies
and reduce the lords to pounded meat:
The Emperor's agents are bought or killed.
Peasants sell their children as slaves,
the women all turn to prostitution
and the currency is worthless.
A sack of rice is worth a limb,

And the Mongols are building mountains of skulls.

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The Broken Chalice

The Broken Chalice

It was way too early for me to move in,
But love conquers all, or so Ovid says,
But nothing could prepare me for the javelin.

At first it was an electric lusty heaven,
We were so in love our words could not convey
The danger that was hiding there like a javelin.

Loving she was, and so very feminine,
But every day she dragged me to AA,
She could be sharp, like the head of a javelin.

Soon I knew what fear was, and the anger therein,
She simply could not trust me, even though I prayed
And assured her I was faithful, she raised the javelin.

Nothing was enough for her, her demands had no end,
I was heading into madness, for a Dies Irae, 
And on a fateful day, I ran into the javelin.

And after all the surgery, paranoia set in,
She destroyed our trust, both night and day,
I wept and wept,  the tears falling from my chin,
It was not enough for her to delay the javelin.

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Diassociation

Disassociation
Gawaine Caldwater Ross

Some people dash through fire,
others plunge through ice.
Is Reality the only thing
when Chaos is the King?
Ring all your golden Christmas bells,
the sewer rats still dance:
Then the ice they buy and sell 
will wind up in your drinking glass.
All muddied and black,
that iridescent toxicity
in which the ship is lost.
The mutineers choose weapons
and toss the captain overboard
to feed her to the sharks
by the reefs of broken glass -
each mirrored fragment seizes night light
and casts werelit visions
of her home bleeding, collapsing
as the boulders fall dead center.
(She goes into her heart and mind
which reminds her) of departing kin
who told her of the doom that wheezes
down the orchard's razor walks.
?	Too cold? - We'll leave this
television frame behind
to go and seek the whip instead.

The radio commander never stops:
Hilarity dances with dank despair,
mudslides block the view.
She seeks a serpent that doesn't bite
and settles for a badger's den
with herself as Cinderella, Joan of Arc,
the Virgin Mary, or a
vulture squawking over food.
The radio commander orders her
to yell in a crowded subway train:
“Rubber plantation workers beat seedless grapes!
Venus is being invaded by dogs!”

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All Praise the Brest

All Praise the Breast

When an infant’s hungry, frightened or injured 
His mother places him upon her breasts, 
Comfortable like pillows with nipples. 
Nipples. Mmmm, good. 
From the very beginning 
The breast is a major source of comfort, 
Which we forget during childhood 
But discover again after puberty. 
Breasts are satisfying, 
No matter their shape or size, 
They are full of promise, 
For future generations depend on these.   
Beyond all eroticism, the breast is good and comforting.  
When a man holds his sweetheart’s breast while drifting off to sleep, 
The woman cannot imagine 
The comfort he derives from simply holding her breast. 
This itself is enough to make a bad day good, 
No alcohol required. 
They are beautiful on all levels, to the senses, heart and mind. 
How wonderful it is that women exist!