Long May She Wave...

Long May She Wave Star Crossed Centers Counted Twice

In the beginning the color clouds took form and churned like butter coming out of the angry farmer's wife that she tried by meditation to grease her wheel of karma-dharma. This the time before the milking of the sacred cows.

This was before each its own distance in the generation of her charkas the cheese curds were compressed and whey filled the sky with rennin from the saber tooth warthog, a giant on land as in the sky.

She had lost her hair and what there was lay with the streamlined grain of her magnetic body save for her beauty mark that sprouted thick vines for the remnant of gorilla lice.

As it was in the beginning so as in the end- but no one could tell the up from down, she rode her harry hoglett raised from the runt as her pick of the litter. In winter growing darker thicker vair the witch inside her as above was as below.

She sang a folksy song as she rode about how the shamans were lesser gurus and downright evil. The villagers told how some learned to meditate to win her, she winning them, that or they taught her to crawl into a corner and lick her navel.

Ale wives sun dried flayed fillets their skin went caroling around her bewitched worshipful beast and men, rubbing their hands together, broken wine glass bobbins floating free at sea, nets neglected, crumbling her heart by their minds.

Then the poles flipped around and craters like belly buttons changed inward and outward that a thousand worlds like eggs were laid, her porky beast stuttered at the fission of peoples of the book cursing all who would eat of his wormy meat.

***

Our Blue Crab Afternoon

Our Blue Crab Afternoon

At the table of the fisher folk the grandma cracks the bright red crab claws. Her daughter now so close in age they make all the rounds in the village, sisters scavenging, selling Kewpie dolls in long crepe paper dresses or artificial flowers to the sailors stationed there awhile before they know when they will be called overseas into the world war. If they will return at all or if returned be the same in spirit and in body whole.

Olney listened to the grown ups hanging on to every word of their wisdom. He thought also of his father far away torn between the warm care and daily life around the supper table and his daddy's coils, sparks and vacuum tubes that in the distance his presence questioned things said, all seeing his radar.

“If you swallow a bone from our mullet fish,” they are so low of all the fish but we free to catch in the estuaries of the tidewaters beyond the worries of rationing when comes hard times. ” chew a slice of Wonder Bread to get it down.”

“ Daughter, I have told you not to eat the dead-man. Who knows what the crabs have thrown away from the bait of spoiled fish heads?”

“Well, some do eat it. But I guess we should not let the kids eat it.”

Olney marveled at the words. How deep and fearful the sound of 'dead-man'. The world of ghosts were never far away for those simple people in simpler times. In some ways he felt so much wiser than they were. They were as crazy as beautiful. But what do we expect when in the dark we are taught to pray 'Now I lay me down to sleep...” or the cross above Uncle Woodrow Wilson bed seemed so tortured and bleeding. Olney could not understand why when one morning asking him as he awakened under it sitting up on his pillow when after a long talk on chocolate bunnies and Easter eggs, Woodrow revealed to him that he did not want to live forever.

But years have gone by, more rapidly than the talk of the time that the Titanic sunk but yesterday or when breaking chunks of ice off the block in the ice box the inevitable mention of the news of decades ago in black and white newsprint about the ice pick murders.

Why is there a world a precocious child might ask or at least sense almost if a little older than his time, before our fears confine us, our life paths paralyzed. What is left after the eight legged insects of the sea leave only their exoskeleton? That also broken as with memories they once were boiled in fire, pain evaporated like as well. The hologram just some neutral limit among the grains of sand that reached some stable point of singularity in the balance. Yet time and the tides loop leaving layers on layers of churning compressed sand.

We harvest the crabs as bounty of the sea, we the predators reaching down from a higher place. We set traps and weave the fishnets. As our dreams unfold and we stand on the dust some say is only simulation, in a deeper sense the cosmic honeycomb unwinds over all its variations, over all that is and we touch of what is not. So unfolding in place we really define our own prisons.

There are also parasites from below who find the brain of the much larger crustacean. Not there to eat its flesh but to command its fins and claws and legs, to become its puppeteer in search of other greater prey. Here at the horizons wise ones debate around the table if we are such predators, parasites or prey or just the propolis that supports the honeycomb to which we compress the world made of dead-men.

Crystal comes into my life from time to time. The last thing she said to me which seemed a moment of clarity...”I have no life...” We could see that as relative in the sense that each of us and the myth as well of all together we have no life. But what did I give her those summer hours over coffee and riding the bus but a a little while to her some respite that she will remember and dry her tears from those who confuse her troubled dreams. That much of a life I tried to give her and learned a lot about my own life as well.

***

Of Depth and Field

Of Depth and Field

L. Edgar Otto  07 November, 2013

If my mind is in a cave and that essential to know

Not concerned with wall cast shadows

that fade into the fog as the goodness in the warmth

of my autumn coat walks with me

My face wet like with dew, the fallen leaves, slippery,

still, make no sound by my footprints

The shadows of trees and artifacts, bridges across

confluences of rivers, come and go as I turn

or walk, seem to confine me

Or old houses, shadows of past times, pine and

hardwood forests long since removed, replanted

The depth of field a dome all around me and deep

within that fog as I recall how my heart changed as well

in isolation, Kristen, we owned the whole world

Where the fog meets the walk bridge, you afraid to cross

alone in the light of day you asked me if the world would end

All soul's day after whistling in the dark mystery of how

a kettle sings and boils, Halloween masks and dance-

a real skeleton on a balcony riding a bike as decoration

A black cat all wet but razor thin its once plush flesh and

globe of hair facing the funeral pallor next door

Where I saw my first dead body with his thousand friends

in line I leaned down and whispered to him "One day, though it takes ten thousand years...

You are one we will bring back again..."

* * * * *

Hiatus (new photos)

Hiatus while PC and connectivity issues solved.  Limited access via library and cell phone.

Of Honey, Roses,and Venom

Of Honey, Roses,and Venom

L. Edgar Otto  27 October, 2013

I. Mothers & Daughters Work the Bars & Dress Up for

the Other Halloween

The hidden side of one way mirrors work both ways

to lift a face and mask

Tammy Faye head on, imprinting, colliding with my

tee shirt, make-up, leaves here face a featureless cloud

It starts with children's shows, mom, dad, puppets, local TV

or Xuxa, once a pron star, now darling redeemed

Beloved by the peanut gallery

Of clowns and Captain Kangaroo

tragic masks, comic masks, epic preternatural

Bottle fed shadow sheep stuffed animals to be shorne

of wool, ride bareback on the prancing pony dream, or

Unicorns only to be pushed out of opened doors

puppy mills, already lost far from the strand and broken

Thru walls and Great Balls of fire until if lucky realize

the Rolex watch reward and large brass golden giraffes

Cheap knock off copies

II. Does God do Automatic Writing

We used to count by letters made of god-like

hieroglyphics, runes near to them

Then just put on the pictures or spoken story

alphabet of metaphor, history emerged entangled

Half babble Rosetta stones in fractured leaps

leaving clues

Alas, the numbers for their tally marks, recycled wood

to burn, contracts long forgotten or in commerce

Made of cuneiform then sealed inside ball of baked clay

masking them until they're broken.

This empire new slogans carve, a pipe or cave

filled with crushed pillars of Pharaohs past

The prophets speak of generations, empty, seething

brimstone, or successive layers, levels of hell

Echoed here in earthly tells, gods, ghosts, now aliens

from end time prophesy to predictions we call science

Women still blow pigment to spray paint on cave walls

their hands that leave a shadow.

III. Venom Razzle-Dazzle or Camouflage

Sweet Rose Etta, I left but with a withered blossom with

acid fire on a chain link fence see thru as you tossed with

Your wedding bouquet, Venus belt trapped on the fly

with stained glass slippers, the imprint of you open hand

Slap on my face, so I read the news report ow well you were loved, your general hospitality- I part of your pelts of motherhood

Boys and their puppy dong tails - I saw my pet speckled

slug as beautiful as your freckled mug-  Rhesus negative Who frets she cannot wear green or look like Christmas

cat fight claw my Rh-positive animus, the little red haired girl

Hell for me would be to take a younger Eve

tempted even if she were a nurse, relive my father's fate

Then she remove one node and all its links that our

new world encased upon itself brings conflict

Breaks apart love between my children's sisters, brothers

even step and half siblings, lost modern families

Even the last left of a nuclear one to fission itself

All this somehow foreseen, my path a little less

than my father's failures- beyond resentment biological

Mom took with her to unforgiving innocence down below

as you whom I doubt said loved him, there alone to pull the

Plug following the circle of your slime of slugs

May you - and whatever lesser god that cannot forgive and

struck you blind - rot and burn in a forgotten hell.

* * * * * 

For  imaginary garden submitted Monday... concerning masks... Only could see two of you before phone slowed down and main PC went on the blink (at library now) did read some others but could not comment.

I took the Vandana's flower picture as inspiration and the venom of fireblossom... sorry if it is too dark...

Watchtower

Watchtower

L. Edgar Otto   25 October, 2013


The bus stopped in Swavesey, by the old clock
late at night from Ely's Isle to Alconbury

That urge to lose myself in crises flight, some
endless space in but safe measured hours

That to desire to seek the far away drives me
back to home, there already, we cant return again

But while the rumble lasts, glaring light hiding the night
you Carol sit by me, I not the caboose chasing your train

The driver, and the couple between him and us, well
she setting on his lap, we pretend not to notice

You show me what you bought the day in Market Square
I have you give me your address so I might write in

An old book of wisdom from a bygone age, a sister's praise of
sisters, opium eater diary, or picture of the days of plague

You get off by the watchtower, its pale Roman numeral clock
a thousand miles away the book took another subway route

I could not write you, my words blacked out, returned by
prying eyes afraid of jazz terms I loving your isle too much

At the watch tower I see your ginger hair, freckles, smiles thru
the window while the night light clock grows dim behind me

There was nothing else worth to watch for you someone
I could have loved and more, friends, our heartbeats side by side

* * * *

For imaginary garden... thoughts evoked from the lyrics of songs, and barn dances once my home...

Added later after thinking about how I used "dim" in this poem without thinking about it then seeing the same themes in the other poet's here... that and a friend mentioned too how he had to use the word dark matter or energy differently every time he used it... so I thought I might, as a source of terms made clear try to coin some clearer ones as seems it best a poet's duty.  The physicists run out of Greek roots it seems, or how creative the "gluon" not or quark that means cottage cheese... I used opaque substance or Dark matter like or obscure matter,  or anything with the simile the so called "God Particle" for awhile called Higgs-like.

So here a final thought as a poem after this daunting yet glorious educational prompt so much so at the beginning and way beyond the cycles of seasons and days intimate to our souls at the end of the line...

Crepuscles and Gloam

L. Edgar Otto  26 October, 2013

Why must my shining light racing off 
into the starry horizon
leave behind my cloud of gloam?

I slow in the salty scudy sand grain
broken shells of crystal waves
walk on water quickly sand sea foam

Poets as well feel yet the hidden scoff
so think unique zodiacal lights refrain
their own horizon's inky rain of tomes

Our compass North falls off the world 
ghosts vanished there yet leave their bones talk 
to each other as if to them, seek diamond double cones

Walk on shaky ropes of time up from our marrow
where we're close, may fall, riding one loves arrow...

* * * *

Glossary perhaps in this footnote:

Crepusculum and Gloam

L. Edgar Otto      26 October, 2013

crepuscle(s) : obscure or dark (twilight) matter and
gloam: the same for the concept of dark or hidden energy;  dusk dust

Starrizon: (the starry horizon) mirror compliment of gloam, gloamnium.

Calyptic Substance (energy, thoughts, or matter): hidden, esoteric (vs neoteric physics)

* * *

An Anthology of Flowers

An Anthology of Flowers

L. Edgar Otto

24 October, 2013


The shawled lady worked the amusement park
the theaters, restaurants around the penny arcade

She sold Kewpie dolls with long crape paper dresses
and bouquets or a single rose, her artificial flowers

How could the sailor refuse after the ride thru the
tunnel of love, was the neon light in her eyes as artificial?

Who with mooning gaze could refuse the wider ones,
pointed hair. for you Doll dressed up, hold your baby

Baby, baby face, you got the cutest little baby face
Oh don't you need one? Let's walk hand on hand

No one will know in the privacy of the instant photo booth
what sort of  poses we display, its OK I will show no one

The child that followed her on her rounds looked up at
the two headed man and poster, mushroom cloud splitting the earth

Leaving the ocean view, merry-go-round, roller coaster screams'
here's your cap mister, you left it on the carousel booth

He gives the boy a silver dollar, the small train smells of coal
I can ride it to the Promised Land or all around again

The boy thinks, more nickels for the Nickel, Nickelodeon
he cannot enter therein but can still point the way

As they leave the amusement park a Kewpie falls out of
her dress and they make fun of the swabbies he looks back

At the lady's artificial flower in her hair, then the dolls ruby lips,
sings goodbye Milk and Honey, goodbye Humpty and Dumpty


* * * * *


Kerry's prompt on Imaginary Garden