Bold
A Collection of Poems by Grant J. Venables ,
Published by Grant J. Venables
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2010, Grant J. Venables
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My Laos Zelda
keeps my heart
aching,
and racing,
and breaking.
And
Mike and Emily:
“Long May You Run.”
Table of Contents
Amber Butterfly, Obscure Force, Now Gone
Ode on September and Blue Jays
Your silk bathrobe tie lies lazily there
Tossed over the back of your blue make-up chair
Now the fan taunts it out from its serpentine length
And it tempts me—you gone—to once test out its strength
“Wanna know?”
“Got to know!”
It flutters and flaunts in this exodos, cotton-warm air
The scars on my arms still tingle—sometimes
When the cold weather causes the pressure to climb
And I always said it wasn’t your fault
And I knew you were drunk
And I know how you
Like the play, and the feel, of soft firelight on that dry, cold steel
Still, that squint of your eyes as the blade sunk straight in
As my blood pooled in shapes—by the bed—on the floor
And then, not a grin, but a cousin of pride
Like some Hemingwayesque Picador
Like a child, with a bug on a pin
So now, here alone, I write this all out
Try to write you away, try to vanquish that doubt
But the paper turns red once the ink runs upon it
And I’ve tried both Italian and English forms on it…
(Even gone you’re too strong to conform to those norms
So I reach for your robe and I leave you with almost your sonnet.)
Amber Butterfly, Obscure Force, Now Gone
Walk beside
Confused
An Amber Butterfly
Pinions poised and serpentine
Darts without direction
Marks perfection in a flight
So, so
Obscure.
Walk along and stir an
Amber Butterfly
Flies beside
Confusion’s
Pinions’ course
Gives a fleeting piece of perfection
As it leaves
Of what beauty means and
How it’s its own
Force.
Erratic flight perfection
Amber Butterfly
Wrapped well in
Confusing
Pinions’ frantic pace
Share five seconds of direction
Then
Move on
But you’ve left a trace of true beauty
Even still
With you
Now
Gone.
To you, old man,
—not so old man—
Soundless in the end; that quiet smile
Quite wilted into the nothingness of sleep—
Of sleep, perchance to dream—although
The lights and blips and hospital tricks
Say nothing of dreams or thought—I
Can not register—there was too much
Electricity for that blunt an end—too
Much activity for this short stop—
But maybe…most likely, there is
Nothing now—all your synapses softened,
All your sharp spark grounded as
Soon you will be too.
Sometimes the absurdity jumps and flails
Like a trained dolphin screaming from
The painted blue tank: this all means
Nothing!
Nothing!
Nothing!
No thing!
As it falls, sucked back to the surface,
The splash causes an unknown eruption:
Applause, laughter, from an audience of aliens,
Their teeth aglow.
Alone and without you I’m grey
A grey that casts no shadow
No hand to hold, no one to phone
A dry, dry man in desert land
A scarecrow twig in each feint hand
A tear that falls from no such face
Is lost in sand without a trace
As much a lie as anything
With two blind eyes
Without a voice
Buried in sand—a shadow man
Unknown even in this sad land and
Grainy home where wind
Rips flesh from tired bones
And leaves the ribs for
Spiders’ homes
Without love, only shadow…but
That love could bring back to me some
Hope at breath
Some form to me…but
Without,
Without
You…
You left the door ajar
The sand grinds through
Alone in this tumble-weed town
Alone I turn slow grey
For
You
Forever
Away.
Close my lips
On your memory:
Our strange polyphony—
In the mind’s eye
We are sunset lovers
Kiss lingers, shared
Speak in tongues of
Only lovers
Unashamedly; close
My mouth on yours
Hot and lasting
Close the light and end
The day—with you,
Restless lover,
Sheets wrapped legs
Bad dreams can
Not steal you
I will defend you,
Protect you; I will
Close the door on
Any fear you foster:
Sleep, Angel
Close your eyes when we
Hug like you used
To when I could
Feel your breasts
Heave in recognition
Of my slightest touch;
Let me kiss you
Softly, kiss your
Weary eyes,
Close them from whatever
Daylight
Close this page;
I know you’ll go. I
Fool myself
With empty
Words. I’ll take the lead;
Close the chamber—put a
Bullet in
My –
Close to that ideal
But wasn’t there;
Distance was
Relative, you said,
I thought not—
A chasm is
Material not ethereal
Fall off into
The abyss—not
The bliss—not
Even close
Close to leaving
Today
But your doe-eyes
Make a
Guilt paste that holds
Catholic tight,
Bolted in place—
Can’t sleep
With you
So damned
Close—let me breathe—
Away!
Close as I am to you
Now, I understand
How I needed you
I didn’t even have a self to
Know myself
But now I’m
Stronger—with
You holding me close
I know
You’ll be broken
When I move
Away
Close to the edge
Of town I stop for
Gas and realize I’ll miss
Your laugh;
Wonder how many
More things will
Dawn as I move
On—we were close to that
Bliss:
Good Night,
My once
Sweet Prince.
All Denmark is a prison
Such poisoned memories
What of the gibes of Yorick?
And all his comedies?
The cloud of thought
From yesterday
Hangs o’er him low
Too heavily
Manipulations of what was
Melancholia then protrudes
Forgets the field of daffodils
That is the bliss of solitude
And then
Just when
The sombre clouds might part
He recalls that which
Weighs his heart
Of self-inflicted magnitude
And grey memories thus jail his mood
Our Hamlet chose to live this way
Surrounded by his fields of grey.
Family
What a Cyclops
What a grand break-wind
What a fable
What a lie
What a beautiful dream
Capable of all imagination
And cruxifix-iation
And sweet suicide
A cut left wide open
For the lily-white
Pearls of ancient family flies
(prelude)
(Floating like Ophelia
All madness washed away
Flowers for a bridal crown
Water as a wedding gown
Lovelier and lovelier
Some best their life with death
More beautiful, more beautiful
Without the need for breath
Sweet Ophelia)
Sweet Ophelia
Be my sweet Ophelia
Dried flowers in your hair
None to compare with my love
None to compare with my love
No one else to hold you, love you
In the chill of autumn air
I’ll warm your hand, Ophelia,
When others say we have no right
To hold on tight to our love
We’ll hold on tight to our love
Let your father try to split us
You’ll never stray too far from my love’s sight
We’ll see as one, Ophelia,
So you’ll not answer river’s call
We will fall deep in our love
We will fall deep in our love
They can take my name and kingdom
We will live for our sweet love and that is all.
8 O’clock, and I’m 43
still formed quite well
and fit enough to walk
alone
along the beach
for quite some while
8 O’clock—I’m 43
the monsoon rains
pound hard tonight
so early the sky lost its light
I’ve showered and I’m shivering
And I don’t know why
8 O’clock and 43
the sum would come to 51
I wonder at that age
Will I be any more
Ready to die
Will I have found a wife
A child
Some one to love
Some one so that when soaked
So deep with fear
I will not, cry,
alone
Eight O’clock still Forty-Three
Is not the worst that it could be
It’s in a trough, that much is true,
But climbing up that next great wave
I might just see the sky, the sun,
The night…or maybe never make that watery wall
Such a slippery slope sometimes
With me without
Much hope at all
8 O’clock and 43 is
still quite young in this grey night
perhaps I’ll get my jacket and
my trousers that fit nice and tight
and find a bar and buy a round
and have the fellahs come around
and slap my back
and pass a smoke
and share a slightly risqué joke
(...all the while I’ll be eyeing
that young sweetness not so far,
alone, there for me at the back of the bar)
8 O’clock and 43 is far too close to
midnight
the darkness closes in like a cold, wet wrap
I have no natural light
I’d do better to stay in again
And weigh myself again
And have one quick hot rum
And off to bed again
And take a pill, or maybe two
To such deep sleep
And dry, stay dry
8:00 and 43
8 & 4t-3
0800 and FORTY-THREE
8pm and XXXXIII
8:43
It’s all the same to me
I wait in quiet reserve
I’ve nothing left to fight with
(not even these frail words)
I should have married young
I should have settled down
I waited just too long
It’s all just pilling up
I fear and fear and fear and fear
So scared to be alone
And too frightened of my own white nakedness
To share this bed with anyone
Besides my only
loneliness
oh
8 and 43
Memory holds its own hand
Close to its closed eyes
It feels like…
--You can’t see a memory.
Therefore
Be careful how you remember
Because—like many cardsharps—
Memory has big sleeves
I don’t have it here but
I remember a song that
Makes me miss a young
Blonde—very young, very blonde—
My first real lover
Pretty and fawn soft
Freckled in the sun
(I have to dig deep—trench—to bring
up the pain and tears—there’s
no song that long—no back that
strong.)
What is the first blank outline of your memory?
How much is fogged with fantasy?
How much is moved to memory?
Her—your—first memory shines
Her-you-in such favourable glow when
Retold and resoled;
Be careful, Mother: what was yours?
And how was it sold to you?
My first true memories are of
Fear, Pain, and Beauty—those grey matter girls, that
Scar (or scare?) the mind (or brain) (I can’t remember
Which trick of diction is more appropriate?).
I remember Dad yelling
I remember the cold
I remember being six and seeing
A naked girl as pure beauty, remember touching, in awe, her chamois-soft vagina.
I remember you, the first time I saw you,
Like a geisha,
White mask to hide all that
Insecurity—I remember
Thinking you might be dangerous
I remember thinking all that and going ahead;
And now I look at you
Warm and stretching, naked, lined out like a cat,
And your beauty pushes me
To remember nothing.
Memories
I remember walking from
Autumn to a winter-cold rain
I remember—a silence—that
Scarred into sound
I remember all the animals I’ve killed
I can see them in front of me
Eyes questioning my motives
I remember friends, now dead,
And how they said words
Differently from anyone else
I remember cleaning up his apartment
After the old man killed himself
Blood by the window, on the wall
I remember snow in the evenings
Falling so thickly like it was
All joined together and fell in great
Fields of flakes, horizon thin blankets, so fragile and cold
And I remember the silence
Of death and snow
So complete, frightening
Wonderful—full, loud
With awe.
Lovers Gone
Lovers gone, dead, ash
Women I have yearned to touch
Touched,
Kissed everywhere and again,
Been inside
Now gone, dead,
Cold and ground bound
Ashen memory, dust
Once their bodies… so fawn soft,
Like cream,
Breasts not aged, unknown to babies’ pulls
And all those grabbing hands (of men and gravity)
The body’s freshness all natural
No need for whitening, brightening, tightening
Just as it is—was—now grave
Ashen grey
I hear that old ghost moon
I hear your low moan groan
Those lips, full, kissed,
Early June cherries,
Eyes in the morning—such wonder at it all
Now sparkle gone—gone ashen grey
I scribe these lines as inken shrines
To all that beauty, all those lives.
So proud, so proud, to fall so far
There’s never any reaching back
To find a friend, a hold, a hand
And I’d been warned: “In Hubris’ Land
You’ll walk alone and end one way!”
Without a love, a hand, a hope
To fall so far too deep to cope.
Too deep to cope, the fall for sure
Demure, she smiled so knowingly
While inside trembled like a leaf
She was so hubris to the core
And so no word, no plea for help
And now she trembles on the floor
To fall, for sure, for evermore.
For evermore the fall waits there
They owned the world and told us so
Their movies sold, they drove fast cars
But we saw Hubris in their stars
We warned them that the fall was near
They drove away and laughed out loud
The fall waits there, so proud, so proud.
Patriarchy
Man takes a wife
Man takes a gun
Man has some troubles of his own
Man spits out hate
Man takes a whore
Man doesn’t think twice about war
Man holds the law
Man digs divisions
Man tars his soul with his decisions
Man kills a man
Man feigns no fear
Man never sheds a thoughtless tear
And after all these
Wars and revolutions
And at the end of this (post) modern day
The woman remains silent
Man still demands his say
You
The more pressure
The less love I give and I know
It isn’t fair but it’s how I am
And I’ll not be changing much
For anyone
Not even one
As beautiful as you
And what makes its truth more tragic
Is you know
I do love you
Man can be
Such a prick, you know it’s true,
And he puts his power first
And he slams his mighty fist
Scaring children and quiet women
Even women
So beautiful as you…
And what makes
Him more pathetic
Is you know
He loves you so
Machinations
Taking pictures of cold steel
And reflection glass
And gasp in awe
At all of this machinery—
Can it be art?
These Meccano machinations?
These human creations?
Bolted with parts,
Pumped cold with blood from
Air conditioner ducts
Through heavy, metal hearts.
Poser
Poser posing for the shot
A man, by god, a man
Tussled hair by his own hands
Smiling naturally
Looking off o’er wondrous land
So dramatically
He makes his girl re-shoot the shot
To catch his spontaneity
Such a wonder is to see
This poser posing
Naturally
Week four, now, and I wish more
That your warm, demanding body
Could return—like a burn, your
Scar has never left my head,
So with your body back, it
Wouldn’t hurt so badly
To talk of “missing you,” in those
Contrite terms would be far too pop-singer-esque
And we’ve never been that
Not near that commercial blue
No,
Our flame burns brighter
Hot, hot, hotter with realness
Redness, rawness through and through
Me and you
There’s a picture I’ve moved by the bed
So I can see your crooked smile
As my last sight each night
You were less crazy then
We were in a small boat
Up a wild blue tributary in Laos
I look at you flat on paper
All my senses remember every sense of
You and my body quivers in
Rare anticipation,
Like a junkie giving the
Prick a slow bead just before
The final plunge.
Come back.
Oh, you—that’s the warm sun-glow
Crawl straight to the brain
Push the plunger down
Push the hammer down
Fill up with you in all your
Glory—feel you with my tips
Hear your heart beat strong
Round your small breasts
Smell you, iron rich, slight salt, woman smell
Survey your sleeping form
As you spoilt-cat stretch out
And then reform like a tanned dune
In a line of sand soft silhouettes:
Your head
Your shoulder
Your hip
Slight decline of thigh—
Listen to your breath
Your mumbles in sleep
I don’t need words
You are such
Sensuous
Addiction.
Another 10¢ night is underway
Lame-assed steno-pad to be filled again
Write a thousand words to no one
A thousand ways to say nothing
A thousand times since sunrise
I reached for your hand and each
Time said, That’ll be the last!
As each time passed
Looking for you on your corner
Under autumn leaves
At the bottom of this warm whiskey glass
I’d like to take a cigarette
Burn it, slowly, in my arm
And for that minute of exquisite pain
Get you off my mind, out of my pen,
And my brain
But then you’d just storm back
Like a runaway train taking everything
Out of its way until the black
Silence stopped it
No—
This is my hell, my penance, my privilege:
These nightly thousand words of nothing
For no one, never ending,
Prometheus all fucked-up
Never finding your hand again, you,
My dearest flame taken;
This slow blood let will kill me
With great agony
But almost
Without
Pain.
Smash that thick window
Pane with my willing fist take
The broken glass and slash
My ready wrist
No need to wake me after that
No need to take my hand
The lights will fade
Tied up in your troubles I
Squirm to wriggle free but
Weighed by all your baggage I’ll
Sink both fast and deep
There’ll be no warmth
In that cold black
There’ll be no light
In that wet depth
Poisoned by the lies of all of
Church and state and country
All adding to that bitter juice add
Family to that caustic sluice
Just swallow all and
You’ll feel quiet in the mourning
Take one last gulp and watch
The candle slowly fade
Only in deep silent sleep
Do we find a peace that
We can keep.
Perched on the edge of a word,
Or a series of words,
That if pierced with right rope
Then combined into thought and pulled tight
Could make fast so sublime a light
Or call blank terror, bleak terror
Colder to touch on passion-wet hands
Than cruel frostbite steel
Unable to pull back without
The sickening fingerprint peel of live skin, paper thin
Glued cold to that metal (as earth itself it is cold)—still,
Perched on that,
Perched on that
Word.
Poems Like These.
Sometimes
These poems spring up like crocuses
Through some break in snow
Offering all hope that five cruel months of cold
And dark is come to some close.
They offer softer colours in a world of
Snow white and long, cold, everlasting night.
Sometimes
These poems weigh like rocks on ropes
On fairies’ wings. They sink us to delicious depths
And offer only bleakness in a world that
Often needs reminding: it isn’t all good.
And then,
Sometimes too,
They’re just
Weeds to be pulled and tossed, and in some
Dark back alley of like words
Forever lost.
The Poet
I know I’m near there now
Near enough to—without too much vanity—
Appreciate the form and it’s taken me (and from me)
So many years, so much pain, and thought, and women—
Women…in all their beauty
And tragedy, their muse forms naked, as my pen
Dips in for another inspired line: colours, shapes, scents
All of women;
When I gave up on God, I was so god-damned relieved there
Were women—so weak we are for them—
And there I go:
A tangent, a wander, a ways off the path—and to think
To open I was pondering my craft:
Ha!
I cannot retain a page of focus without
Leading, cock-heavy, into that other wonder realm…
(and maybe that is the poet.)
Lake
In the lake where many moons
Have danced in sad reflection
Where words are
Lost and found
(but in waves are never bound)
I tempt the still perfection
The loon, the wolf, the beaver too
All know the water’s ways—but they
Can never record thoughts to be
Recalled in aging days
Ink black, the night, and paper moon,
And glassy mirror pond
To dip my pen into your depths
And create my own Lancelot
From nothing more than midnight moon
And music from a haunting loon
Oh, this the bliss of solitude
And many miles before I sleep
As twittering swallows fly
I grow old, I grow old
And 13 blackbirds
Fly
Slowly
South
Slowly
Away
Half
Don’t leave half-thoughts
Half-written, half-hidden
Half-finished for another day
Because when they read half-knowing
What will they have to say?
Don’t leave half-full
Half-anything
Where they can—poking, prodding, penetrate—
Present half-truths
To all and leave half-lies
To ruminate.
Never leave half-mad
Half-drunk, half-thinking you’ll not return…
Our love is not in section, portion, piece:
It’s whole,
As we, two halves, complete.
This page
This page (this cage, to hold in lines) determines how much space I have to open up this universe to try to make it make some sense. I strive to write to each line’s end to hold this knowledge from this pen but sometimes line ends come too soon with pages out of writing room. With fear and careful planning, both, I open doors to profound thought knowing with each new ink dry line I’m limited in space and time. So on a half a page, like this, I take to pen methodically and chose subjects to be revealed, unpeeled on parchment small like this (...a topic such as lack of space of measured pen and thoughts within this soon to be diminished page).
(Part I)
(formerly known as Advertisements)
there is no time, not anymore,
for sonnet form or villanelle—
the epic poem’s passed away
as has the ode, too, seen its day
or verse that holds a speaker’s voice
recited by the common man;
seems now we’re left with one bleak choice
as there’s no time for anything
but barest, obvious, easiest rhyme
and that is thrust upon us
by advertisements—ads, of course
the short, cruel tasteless core
that makes our language whore
to sell: to sell’s the only way
we hear our “poems” now today
“fuck”
“suck”
(two whole beef paddies
special sauce lettuce cheese…)
Ads
(Part II)
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Coincidence?
(Wake-up, mother-fucker.)
She cooks that love, most every day,
And serves it with a sliver spoon
And fills the air in every room
With scents of songs all sung her way
Takes me away, her love,
Before it meets my mouth
Takes me away
Her love it flows in baths she pours
And as she cleans the whitened walls
Her love cascades like waterfalls
Her gentle touch makes art of chores
She opens doors, and streams of
Love flow free
Through open doors
And beyond house and work therein
She knows when weary, I arrive
Her smile keeps all faint hopes alive
A gentle word restores my faith
In love, in life, in all our race
With simple grace
She restores all
My faith
She strokes my head; I pass last breath;
She smells of spice; my blue eyes gone,
With sweet caress and lover’s song
I leave with ease next to her breast
I smile to death—she holds my hand
Her kiss
Takes my last breath.
Soft
Come softly as the night
As complete and resolute
With the same soft assault
And reliable motion
Covered up with your stars
Tucked into your dark arms
Come softly as the morning
Colours growing from the grey
Lights as soft and strong as prayer
(But there’s no forced believing
To spare us or to please us)
For the morning has its beauty
Nothing less and nothing more
Simply a spinning orb
That spins around another
Brought alive by your morning
You come softly like that motion never felt
Come softly, like the dusk
Like the cool of evening air
Like the swallows out in silhouette
Bats waking for their day;
Oh the dusk, the sweet half-state,
Like falling into love
Slow slides from light
To lusty-darkness
Oh so softly, just so…softly,
Like the homesick cooing of
The grey, grey mourning dove
Pull into your dusky eyes
Kiss my lips into that night
Beauty
Beauty speaks through me
Sees through me so clearly
Ethereal reality as slow as
Life’s calamity, as fast as
Love’s insanity; it’s paradox
And paralyze and ancient stone
And lover’s eyes
Personified, objectified;
It’s all so pure
It’s so polluted, worshipped to
And prostituted
Sweet Song
I have nothing to write on
As my heart is too full
Of the pull of your laughter
That makes merry my soul
There’s a smile that I take
Even now that you’re gone
When I die I’ll be with you
When I die I’ll be with you
I Watch/You Sleep
I watch
You sleep
Your finger twitching
Like a dog’s paw
Dreaming,
And running…
I wonder who you twitch for
Run to,
Hold.
I see your white, perfect teeth
Through sleep-parted lips
Your hair falls carelessly over
High, proud cheeks
And small fingers jolt
Just now…
I wonder who you dream of
If not
Me.
I yearn to hold a place
In your slumber world
I hope I’ve made you happy enough
In this waking land to
Be worth at least a twitch,
A loose mumble, in that other realm
Where I am ever unsure
If I
Exist.
I fell in love with you again
It wasn’t that you’d left for long
I’d often enjoyed being alone
But this time with your shadow gone
I fell in love with you again
A week or two, or maybe three
Could pass, for me, just day by day
I like the space, the air, the quiet
But this time with you out of sight
I fell in love with you again
Much like the joy of finding
That particular expression
Once there, now out of reach,
Then finding it, breathe relief:
Through your absence I reacquaint myself
With why we two do love
And wait with anxious lips and love
And passion that burns well above…
Your Beauty
When your beauty speaks
It whispers in non-prayer
To no god, to no one
I lean in to listen
Your love is the seed
That coats the blood-red berry
But also hides inside;
To smell its perfume, fine;
To bite in would destroy you
When you opened up
Your oyster-bloom
Allowed my hard body
To pass inside—a universe oozed
Sweet like a young maple tree’s blood
When I make you cry
I coat myself in a tar
Of meanness and shame,
Of remorse, and I curse all
My crude sex
In Your Heart of Hearts
In your heart of hearts
Where once wild rivers ran
Where dreams swam warm and naked
Not weighed by any man
Where hope and love combined to light
So never was a threat of night
Where laughing songs were music all
And never was the blight of fear
Before it all, that song I long
To know again, before stones
Came crashing, spelling pain.
In your heart of hearts
Where now you grow your walls so high
Where your ramparts and your battlements
Have coloured flags to fly
Where your heartstrings wear like
Razor blades for your inch-thick masquerades
Is there chink enough in armour?
Is there space between the stones?
Is there room in some small anteroom
For my true, soft felt amour?
In your heart of hearts
Is it rotten to the core?
In that inside hiding place
Where it’s going, going, gone
In that space you save for some one else
Does it ripen from the centre?
Do you store your sweetness there?
Is there some soft place to enter
Where I’d tread with soft, sweet care?
In your heart of hearts
Does there burn a fire warm?
Does it furnace your whole being?
Will it brave our many storms? Is it soft or is it floral?
Does it hold a source of light?
Is it ready for me, ready
For me, ready for my life?
Because I will stay on with you
Once I’m in I’ll not turn back
And I’ll rip out all my insides
So you’ll have a place to see
Inside of my heart of hearts
To what really is me.
Inside your heart of hearts
I will circle twice
Wrap my tail around me
Settle in for that long night
Keep you warm from inside out
Never leave your love alone
In your heart of hearts
I will make my home.
Fear not the Night
Fear not Her cool embrace
Fear not Her quilty gown
That black veil o’er Her face
In darkness feel Her solitude
Her cobalt blue exhale
Her hand a sprig of nightshade
Her aspect beyond pale
She’ll give, but once, a moth’s wing’s kiss
Then swift and sure forever sleep
Embalmed, entombed, for evermore
I give, to Her, my life to keep
The daylight shows such misery:
The pain, the weakness, greed, and plight
Sweet Sunset swab me with Your balm
And let me slide so gently into
That
Good
Night.
The Rags of Time
The winds of time, fair, ravish all
Their sands the surface of the tallest
Building and the smallest house
In equal share lend disrepair
What can we build that will not
Fall as sands from winds of time
Lay bare:
Bone-bare, they fall, and fall, and fall.
The waves of time rush to the shore
They act as waves and nothing more
Their currents make a natural mess
Of wharves, and rafts; they wear cement
Away like weather weathers leaves
And leaves the shore in its own
Sharpless Shape
As waves, make waves, make waves.
The rags of time make dressing poor
And leave us naked by the door
As in we came, so out we go;
The rags of time are beggar’s clothes:
“Just two more years!”
“Just one more day?”
We can’t surpass our ragged stay
And as the rags slip to the floor
Last gasp released:
No more, no more no more.
Feint of Death
There’s a feint of death on the air tonight
Nothing menacing or grim
No swath well laid, no steaming censer swinging
Nothing, even, that could capture light
No rancid smell
No reek of fear
Nothing ever-lasting
No heavy-hand, no unseen land, no bang—
A whisper from a spider’s maw
A bee sting and bad blood
A freakish clot lodged in the brain
It doesn’t need the drama of a truck of bricks or brakeless train
There’s a time and place for everything
But we can’t always give ourselves the orders
There’s no significance, no ceremony
Not even a real roll of the bones
Some pray to some god for some time
Some find relief and even “the cure”
Some pray to the same the same day, the same way, and die right away
Some turn their heads from lights on high
Some live to cheat and hurt and lie
Some turn from god to sorrow and never look back
Indifferent to its aftermath
These winds drift sleeping promises
It’s a feint on the wind we’ll all know
Neither cruel nor caring nor kind nor sparing
She only knows to always softly blow
Death the herald angles sing
Sing silent in the night
Death to whales and trees, to sperm, to everything
For death is the ultimate thing
Of nothing.
Till My Ashes Make Clay
The dry Cicadae ticking with
Their own bagpipe drone is
Now home to me
In the evening, on the river
Watching barges grunt up to China
Clumsy in the dull current
Clumsy as dusk pours in over the plains
And the sun is swallowed by the
Bamboo fringed
Mountains of Laos
Home to me now
When they said, you can
Never go home, they
Knew of what they spoke
For here I am and here I’ll stay
Till my ashes make mud with this
Warm Mae Kong clay
Till my ashes drift snow
In this warm Mae Kong
Winter
Waits
Midnight rain’s slow exhale, again,
Spits out the last of its anguish
Dripping from eaves to apples and trees
Wind carries away the last of it
Two hours before, the storm frightened:
Such fury, bravado, and loud anger
Like a stupid, drunken man:
An impostor of strength, it so
Scared us.
Now finished, laughing,
Safely back in our bed,
We turn to each other
And replace that wet fear
With another slice of the ethereal:
We make love to the drips
Off the trees to the eaves
To the garden
Below
In its darkness
Where fear, once again,
Silently—as ever—
Waits
Waves do not come and go speaking
Of Michelangelo for
Each a certain
Purpose
Is
Not that they know being
All together impartial
And besides too
Wet to
Care
Still they crash and pull, shape
And shift, with relentless
Drive and that
Limitless
Energy
For all they need are themselves—
Shaped out of nothing, a
Whole skin of the
Planet—
And—
So they say but we’ve no
Way of really knowing—
The lonely autumn
Moon
Tsunami Dream
I drift to dreams of Tsunami
Death dreams while still afloat
Still breathing in white rampage
Rampant wave deliver us
Phone calls all day
“Where’s Jimmy?”
“Where the hell is Jimmy!”
(He’d lent his phone to a lost English tourist)
“Where’s Jimmy?”
I kept getting the wrong foreigner
In the confusion of water and death
And waves of tears
Dream to too many cigarettes
The whole long day—learned more to hate
That knee-jerk news
Subjective say
Like an amphetamine blur
My favourite beach washed gone
Restaurants gone—
So many crabs eaten there in red, red curry
Friends disappeared—most, sometimes, often found
2 weeks, 6 months, some still float under that day’s dream
I sit again
Same sand again
Same sun again
So different me
Drifts
To
Dream
Happy? Endings
What fear do you have
That water won’t run through?
Skies turn from grey, to black, today
And again
And again
Pain either leaves
Or stays
Or turns us much more gravely
Nothing to do
Either way
And it’s all the same
With laughter
Khao-Pan-Sa
On this Khao-Pan-Sa
The moon’s as big as beggar’s dreams
So gold and bold (like wedding rings)
And within reach…
But as we know
as far away
as happiness
or god
It grows and glows paint perfect round
You want to pick it out of all that black:
Hold it tight and warm
Feel its velvet fur
Wear it like a glowing, golden wrap
I left my love on a flood of tears
She had this dream that we would be
Forever
But nothing’s built for that
That moon, so big to blind the night,
Now hides behind a mountainside
The dream is gone
And miles to go
And miles to go
Kayak to Kanada
While others waste the day
Riding that next great wave
My boy’s kayaking to Kanada
The rest, the pack,
Heads bobbing in a surface line
Like some lost seals
Wait, all as one,
For lunar pull and
Then all rise up and out
Like some Poseidon dream
They ride in hard-held concert
While this game’s played
My boy kayaks to Kanada
He sits out beyond the break
On same style board as
Other pack
But he, rather than ordered ride,
Imagines bears and snow instead
And paddles to that hinterland
While others waste away in this
Finite sand
Blue Night Robe
Slack-jawed surfers
Sharked-up in odd rows
White tips awaiting that wave
Long boards and short boards
Bobbing all the same
Anticipating so eagerly, praying
To whatever forces that big water on
But she doesn’t care for their
Petty diversions, supplications, conversions, conversations to
Perversions of mass
She answers to no one
Unaware of even herself
Stretched over the globe
A sheer blue night robe
She dances to no body’s tune
(except for, maybe, her lover’s, the moon)
Men and the Sea
Old Friends
Gathered by Tsunami Sea
After years of absence
(makes the heart grow…)
Drink man’s drink
(dry crackle of ice)
Talking of money, money, money
And subtle vice
(only when the women-folk have
gone to fetch more ice)
Laughter at old tricks
Laughter with common foes
Laughter around understatement
Laughter in hyperbole
(waves whose breaks we understand)
It used to be wild nights on the
Razor’s edge
Were the alchemy of our love
But with all that water under the bridge…
What now is our common currency?
Talk of money?
Surely we hold too much love
To tread in such
Shallow
water.
Ode on September and Blue Jays (2008)
September should read, “Glory of Autumn—
Glory of the Fall,” but not this fall.
Should be the big finish:
“Who will be the winner of the big first prize!”
Should be,
But is not...
Again.
John Keats so beautifully captured
September in his glorious “To Autumn.”
It was a celebration of the finish with dignity
With an ovation at the flourish, the conclusion with pride, the end.
John Keats did not support the Blue Jays,
Or perhaps he did forecast their arrival in
“Ode to Indolence,” or “To Sleep,”
Perhaps.
(I wonder if he ever wrote about firing a manager?)
September, in my university, was
A Friday night game at
Old John Ducey Park, and our wonderful
Trappers winning baseball under a still
Warm autumn sky.
This turned to October
And our Blue Jays, a post-season team, a
Post-season fixture:
Pennants
World Series
They even sold product
(funny how mediocre doesn’t sell shirts)
September, today, means a cessation of play
Hoping to knuckle through with close to 500
A goddamned whimper through at 500
Means “maybe next year,” knowing that too
Is just another goddamned whimper-through.
And Ode to September turns tirade and more
As the Jays puke-up another road-trip
Choking on the chicken bones of their
Own useless play: play?
Losing to the big dogs is an acceptable conceit,
But to Baltimore? The Royals? Tampa Bay?
Remember the word “sweep”?
Used to be a Jays’ term.
Forget the Wild Card
Lie out on that field of dreams and die.
Ode to September
Is a tough pill to swallow
In a division,
And a world,
Filled with Yankees’ caps
And the Red Sox Nation.
Ode to September: as Autumn lays her
Sweet head on the threshing room floor,
She reaches for the remote
To unceremoniously shut off another Jays’ game—
Once I heard a Robin sing a morning song
And wondered if she sang it so for me
I told a friend, whose hand I held, and while she smiled
I thought I sensed a slight discourse that changed
Her face slightly
“No,” she said demurely, and heaved her breasts in pain,
And kissed me,
Then she smiled once last and never breathed again;
The Robin flew into the sky, had left
Its pulpit in the tree,
And sang that same sad song again, and again not for me.
Once I heard a Whippoorwill in summer’s
Early morning mists
Its sad song truly broke my heart—
My lover touched my hand just so
“It’s got nothing to do with you—when
Your song’s sung you’ll follow through”
She kissed my chest and left our bed
And lost herself into that fog
And still I hear that Whippoorwill
And still I smell her perfumed breasts
And still I feel the ache of lover’s pain
Knowing that we’ll never kiss again.
Now I hear a Great Horned Owl
Wisest of that ancient race
Who-ing from atop a great Oak Tree
And as he moans it stirs a chord:
That low call is his soft command to me!
I stir to move—my angel fair holds tight
My hand, pulls me in close:
“You really must not heed that owl’s call.
He’s lonely in the autumn night, that’s all.”
Her eyes are wild with ancient fear
And in their mirrors I see myself
And understand the calm of lovers past:
“I have to go; my time has come at last.”
The owl calls me once again
My heart stops without any pain
I kiss her tender lips and close my eyes
And gladly join the owl as he flies.
The imperious crow cocks back his
Black head and caws twice:
Once for the living and once for the dead
Perched high in a maze of black dry
Branches, preaches, monosyllabic
Warnings: brashly, caustic crow teaches
Man throws rocks, plants scarecrow’s torn warnings
Crow laughs at those ineffective gestures
Man so weak as to hide behind tattered clothing
“Live” “Die” he gravely chortles to
Them as they, frightened, try to kill
All strangeness that may save them one day
Regal crow and his royal cousin raven
Prefer man at sleep in the six feet down
Ground where he holds tight and dream keeps
In a Calcutta graveyard, where English headstones
Silent rest, the hawk holds high
But noble crow on granite crosses sits best
And it’s there, either high in bramble tangle
Thorn tree, looking down on bleak city
Streets, or the dead stone, headstone he,
The imperious crow, cocks back his
Coal black head and caws twice:
Once for the living
and
Once for the dead.
Grant J. Venables
writer&teacher&father&husband&lover&friend&brother
living in
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
&
Chiang Khan, Loei, Thailand
I can be reached at any of the following addresses and will be happy to answer questions, join in conversations, and receive advice:
http://www.tumblr.com/blog/grantjvenables--writes
http://grantjvenables.blogspot.com/
mailto:grantjvenables@gmail.com