Got A Minute?

Now is or is not when
To bring this up
To you
I wish I knew
The answer any answer
That did not anesthetize
The brain of a fallen ape in a universe
So vast that time is small
And small becomes a place
Where matter and space vanish and quarks
Dance with neutrinos on their way
To
The beginning of round two
The other end
Perpendicular universes
Fifth through twelfth dimensions
Risen angels pinned to cork
The place where language begins
To put back together
All it has torn to pieces
Just in time

American Marsupial, Why Do You Grin?

[Not natcherly given to blog or form,
My screwups feared, but high is time
to buck up, give in to possum-fed norm,
count feet and join struggles for rhyme...]

Villanelle 1

Hum, don't sing; it's truly best,
words then won't be tangling your say.
Humble tunes will teach, caress.

Don't mar the air with lyric-fest,
like bone of fish with too much fillet.
Hum, don't sing; it's truly best.

Beagles and cats know how to request,
Masters jump, please at dumb bay.
Humble tunes will teach, caress.

Virgins weep from untouched breasts,
labored, details just get in their way.
Hum, don't sing; it's truly best:

All will rise, be more than mere chest,
Unencumbered, without cliche.
Humble tunes will teach, caress.

Politicos, preachers, those who'd impress,
shun your verbiage, eschew all fray!
Hum, don't sing; it's truly best.
Humble tunes will teach, caress.

Eugene's Wedding Toast

In any day with any weather
There is no fear if you're together.
Fool [full] Moon like magic light on sky
Just whispers gently: "You and I"

It could be day or could be night
It could be rain or bright Sun light
At any time and any weather
From now to ever you're together.

You're at home or you're abroad.
You're having fun or work.. whatever.
At any place and any business
To be together is your sweetness.

Sometime together be not easy
Sometime you could be sad or busy
But raining day will pass away
Replaced by happiness of futures days.

Written by Yevgeniy Snezhkin, Simferopol, Crimea, Ukraine
September 15th, 2007
E-mail address: yudjin@cris.net

Postludes

After T.S. Eliot

I
The moon swoons low and purse-slung
on the sore shoulder of a frostbit sky.
One-thirty.
The smell of exhaust and french fries.
And now the winter’s faithless chill
cuts skin until
your green hat Made in China joins
the gaping wrappers on the street;
cup-jangling coins
employ a kind of strangling beat
while neon throbs of beer and sirloin.
A tired engine shifts and dies.
And then the flight of barflies.

II
The sunlight bleeds its morning mess
onto the gum-pockmarked cement.
The coffee’s smell is weak and burnt
and many cracked hands will soon caress
their styrofoam and lid-capped cup.
Of all the paces time has run
or hobbled through the lonely nights
one thinks of all the heads picked up
from pillows of undreaming sun
to days bathed in fluorescent light.

III
You lounged, awash in t.v. glare,
you fiddled with the socks you hated;
you slowed your breathing to the pace
of the monochromatic dream
through which your soul was percolated;
reflected fingers shone in your hair
love and death scenes on your face,
and when you came back to the world
the dryer shouted loud and sterling
and through the sun and white dust swirling,
you felt the coming of a train
no human eye had seen before;
sitting on your tired chair
awake for now but unaware
bright visions sparked within your brain
while restless feet tapped resting floor.

IV
Her soul pressed firmly to a ball
that fell next to the kitchen waste,
or stretched to make a stunning dress
worn once and then removed in haste;
and cigarettes pass lip to lip
and fingers jingle useless change
and small white thighs press to the wall
built skyscraper-high to give the streets
tall shoulders stiffened to the fall.

I am woken by a gentle breath
and tendrils clinging to my sight;
the memory of some eminently waking
eminently unfolding light.

Shield your eyes to shadow, and laugh;
the days meander like the waves
on the softening arms of the shore.

T.S. Eliot (on his marriage to Vivienne Haigh-Wood)

To her the marriage brought no happiness. To me it brought the state of mind out of which came The Waste Land.

The Burning Giraffe

from "The Burning Giraffe" by Salvador Dali

We onlookers are silent, like so many are
when they look on anguish.

Her frame lilts, balance precariously
preserved by these crutches
and sticks and perforated thick-
nesses of wood, ripped from within
or pushed from without we do not know.

Her frame lilts, bony armature propped,
arms akimbo, face shrouded
in red,
hands coated in red,
wearing red gloves of vein and sinew,
forward hinge of hips
pricking the vacant blue
like daggers, like the shrieks
we cannot hear, though they must be here.

Those crude drawers stagger open,
blackness within gaping like sores,
and why is it these old drawers never close?
Steely skeleton with no closet,
thighs with slipping skin
have plenty to hide,
but the contents of her chest
have been stolen.
Her drawer torn open from beneath
her breast
(and nothing inside).

So is this why she cries out now like the dying,
for the carpenter or the burglar?
Or the one who stopped up her face
with gauze and left her here tipping—
a column buckled,
a tower conquered?

Those unseen corners
of cabinetry
test fastidious attention to secrecy,
challenge meticulous concealment,
time-trained.

The lady by her side prizes her streamer of red,
silent
(as so many are)
though anguish is near.
With root-bound brain, her leafy branches
reaching for that weak scratch of clouds.

Only I remain still, one eye
trained on the stilted, lilting woman,
one eye on the distant black hills.
Following some invisible road
to water,
I arrived here, wandered in like a martyr,
neck and back ablaze,
flesh curling with flames,
fur singed like kindling.

Above me sits a stream of smoke,
a frozen songbird sitting
on its branch of orange air,
perched on its tall branch of fire,
and there is nothing
(at all)
for me to do
but burn.

fair's fair, I guess...

There's no money in poetry, but then there's no poetry in money, either.
-- Robert Graves