JENNIFER IN TWO VOICES


I know why the sky sings the blues -- for you, Jenny, for you -- atmosphere breaks down and cries. Once the wind must have had your voice: Wind makes my soul rejoice to hear your echo once more. Your precious beauty to preserve, earth freezes to its nerves in ecstasies of ermine. And the waves for you outreach -- the sea begs up the beach, hands-&-knees its way in pride. And trees have honored you in gold, red carpets where you rode, jade ceilings and emerald floors -- nature's learned your lesson well how to be beautiful: your appearance is your sermon.


I know why the sky sings the blues -- for you, Jenny, for you -- atmosphere breaks down and cries. (Across the landscape many-firred, atmosphere breaks down and cries,)  Once the wind must have had your voice: Wind makes my soul rejoice to hear your echo once more. (urges us make love manifold. To hear your echo once more) Your precious beauty to preserve, earth freezes to its nerves in ecstasies of ermine. (among the creeks and conifers in ecstacies of ermine.) - And the waves for you outreach -- the sea begs up the beach, hands-&-knees its way in pride. (in fields of foxes henna-furred -- I hands-n-knees my way inside) And trees have honored you in gold, red carpets where you rode, jade ceilings and emerald floors -- (where moist warmth is plentiful. On jade ceilings & emerald floors,) nature's learned your lesson well how to be beautiful: your appearance is your sermon. (raven-eyed/lynx-face Jennifer: Your appearance is your sermon.)

Across the landscape many-firred, atmosphere breaks down and cries, urges us make love manifold. To hear your echo once more among the creeks and conifers in ecstasies of ermine, in fields of foxes henna-furred -- I hands-n-knees my way inside where moist warmth is plentiful. On jade ceilings & emerald floors, raven-eyed/lynx-face Jennifer: Your appearance is your sermon.



TIMES AS GOLDEN CALVES


Plaster casts and black sutures

cohabit with surgeons’ masks. Doctors lift up their scalpel like an execution axe in service of ice sculpture. They daydream of parachutes to hurtle them through their clouds.



And the butcher is carcass,

as the treaty is the war, or the poacher is his traps. The scarecrow loves the crow, and the shooter shares the blast. Ventriloquist is dummy when a be stops becoming.



Views of peasant and castle

once framed the common outlook, as though the sheep needed wolves, as though serfs needed dukes, to justify how their gulf would link prey to predator by way of divine order.



All the pasts have their futures

and all futures have their pasts.

But the present is itself.



MUSHROOMING



If you were forest

I could purport

this noble purpose

for these frequent

meticulous surveys

that I perform

throughout your moist

and fetid shadows.



RUBICON


Each dawn comes embarrassed.

Time rearranges us, from chaos to chaos.



Our memories are ghosts of what

were once our pasts

before structures collapsed.



Infinities of if permit change to exist.

Wisdom becomes mischief.

Stoics become criers in meditation choirs for umbilical pyres.



Even the Rubicon once got lost in the swamps

and then was retro-conned.

Destiny is not fact.



Fates are carefully stacked by gambling architects

to construct poker fraud. Certainty’s a façade,

installed by clever gods. Time rearranges us.



From chaos to chaos, each dawn comes embarrassed.





QUATRAINS, EXPLICATION


You kissed me in your garden, and then you tortured me.

I learned in your orchard belief forestalled pardon.

With the heat of parenthood you loved me at once

then suddenly took affront when I ate what was good.

Your day hovered, stern and still after the roosters crowed.

I staggered to the crossroad that led up to the hill.

My sweetest tree lost its leaves, my rose just yielded thorns.

My clothes were raffled and torn by guards who were thieves,

while a thief gave me succor. By comrades unfriended,

my murder unattended but for mother and whore.



It’s the gravel in the rattle

the critics listen for,

the riddle at the middle of poetry.

That’s the ambiguity

that they adore.



You planted my temptation, knowing I would fail,

then carpentered the nails for my situation.

You were judge and betrayer, prosecutor and crowd,

you, the weaver of my shroud, the author of my prayers.

I was Jesus and Adam, pillars of your temple,

my deaths your staged examples. But I am yet a man.

#0 – No and Maybe – Maybe and No first f’st’s           

CARD 1:  Are whirlybirds! No. Why do you hate your Mother, Sonboy? Maybe. The Host of the Lambs. Maybe. We can tell you think you are better than us. No. Give water to the thief on the Lord’s right first. No. The Captain’s a bird. Maybe. Doing this job up Panama mountain. Maybe. I am not so I must be so I am.

CARD 2: We’re just a bank. No. We are not responsible for any of our lands. No. Oh. Maybe. I’m in it firm now. Maybe. Huh. No. Eh, Mister Small, what you need to call off your bark? No. Wheah’ he be Knockie? Maybe. Hey, my hippo. Maybe. I suffer for the sake of Percy ‘cause I’m Percy. No. So. No. Deck We’re dealt.

CARD 3: Rap-bands. Maybe. Nice touch yonder sailor-suit, bah! Maybe. Your entirely-entire line of the usual spew. No. Brainypup Breeding farm. No. Barbazee! Maybe. Thank God it’s a joke. Maybe. Some slimy cosmic law varies everything. No. From cook number one to cook number hey. No. The nonexistent center-point of my sky-high cranium.

CARD 4: His foe is his opposite. Maybe. Now you may sing out your complete version of yourself. Maybe. Please go. No. Your defense rests. No. My children are reduced to consuming orphanage mush three times daily. Maybe. Repairback now to formulate the render upon you. Maybe. The world is indeed a dense place. No. Base trash-mashers. No. Step back let me gag.  

CARD 5: Now he will let it go. Maybe. So nod, chew a lip. Maybe. Whatever you do, Captain, gives me another question to say. No. Carve out a round plug with the spade to outline your largening cranial posthole. No. Lets pull that stringy meatlump back inside the out of itself a bit. Maybe. No wait Bezonas Bezono no no wait Bezoni sed ne Stop Povas stop calculating. Maybe. Rudeman Boy or Peanut-Gasman.

CARD 6: Bitching like a hosed-down horny farmbull! No. A lie is just another task to be completed. No. You as a Doctor are not to sicken patients down. Maybe. Great job Mister Renpasta. Maybe. Why is she up there all mounted in that balcony? No. I am just the bloom guy.

CARD 7: Your anchored in silly loose jelly beliefs. No. But then again, I expected that outcome to be. Maybe. Yeah. Maybe. The boss had supplied him with the skill to work entirely by eye. No. I resent this interloper spying. No. Shit job of du wirst die wohning wech seln. Maybe. Seasonal toy factory assembly line. Maybe. Look at that moon—there’s a face.

CARD 8: Lake Superior quick-drying rash-wax. No. Enter the regimented phase of your life. No. Swarming green gillfish. Maybe. Perhaps if he did not automatically recognize her, she’d prove to be someone else. Maybe. A painless death when finally dead, but—in the process of—indescribably cruel. No. Number of aortas in the world. No. Rude boys.

CARD 9: Making babies. Maybe. Adopting dogs. Maybe. Dog shelter roulette wheel. No. Which is more of a roulette wheel. No. Just because Dad hates sausage, you do not lose your natural right to decide on sausage for yourself. Maybe. Even before Sonboy was born they were three. Maybe. Deep in the weeds you may be, but the ground below is solid. No. Calling myself nobody, the best term to use.

CARD 10: Missouri predawn physical training with shooting stars. No. Do not live long enough to die. Maybe. Dad does not like sausages? Maybe. It will never really have happened. No. Globe box under tree—Replogle book came with. No. Stockade fence—party on one side dog walk on other. Maybe. Remco Rocket Cannon. Maybe. Battleships. No. Aircraft carrier. No. Gas station. Maybe. Wedding dress. Maybe. Heavy smell. No. Humid & Hot.

CARD 11: Escape from Doctor Grundig. No. Globe factory. Maybe. Mom met Dad. Maybe. Part two. No. Plywood versus solid wood. No. Globe factory. Maybe. Mom met Dad. Maybe. Part one. No. She makes him breakfast—all is solved! No. Mom and Sonboy—united—all tinychilds are one. Maybe. Maybe. No.

Bio has changed:   Jim Meirose’s work has been widely published. His novels include “Sunday Dinner with Father Dwyer”(Optional Books), “Understanding Franklin Thompson”(JEF), “Le Overgivers au Club de la Résurrection”(Mannequin Haus), “No and Maybe – Maybe and No”(Pski’s Porch), “Audio Bookies” (LJMcD Communications), “Et Tu” (C22 press), “The Private Adventures of Fresh Detective Gerdulon” and “The Box” (both fr. Alien Buddha Press).   Info: www.jimmeirose.com @jwmeirose

Photos taken at the Museum of Human Evolution (Museo de la Evolución Humana (MEH)) Burgos.

THE LONG SIDEWALK

The sidewalk is long. 

You can’t see to the end of it. 

At first, you figure it’s just perspective, 

but as you move along it, 

the sidewalk physically narrows. 

Soon you find there is no room 

for you to turn around. 

So you keep walking forward, 

the only way you can go. 

The sidewalk borders  

a dark woods to one side; 

a swift river to the other. 

A misstep could plunge you helplessly into either. 

The narrowing continues until

you have to take your steps single file, 

one foot directly in front of the other. 

Further on, the sidewalk turns sideways, 

merging into the horizon, 

a line you must tread like a tightrope, 

lest you plunge helplessly 

into the future or the past.

Dinner in Colombo

He’s having

An egg kottu

At a random place

On Galle Road

In Colombo,

Trying to

Hold back

This massive smile

As he eats,

He loves

Sri Lanka.

Taylor Dibbert is a writer, journalist, and poet in Washington, DC. “Invictus,” his debut poetry collection, is due out in January 2024.

You never know they’re gone until it’s too late.

The sun blossoms in the distance,

piercing bespeckled eyes,

leaving them in tears,

having never seen dying beauty before.

Sunlight takes eight minutes

and twenty seconds

to race across violet oceans,

to make its presence known.

Cosmic oceans drown the screaming.

We don’t hear the sun

because the voices would be deafening.

We are not ready to hear it cry.

We never know when the screaming halts.

We never know when the calls stop.

We never know when the requiem plays.

We never know they’re gone

until it’s too late.

The Ephemeral World Then, 7:57 on the Clock, Prose Poems for Lost Souls 

one

the wild summer sun and the countenance of the earth 

the two men in Orlando were talking about baseball, and thinking of it, the two men in Nevada were talking about hockey. the first two spoke of spring training and the second two of drafts and players old and new. each time I went away from the group and tried to find what the landscape said. birds or the lakes, the desert sun or the vastness of rocky natural structures. they were not wrong per se, but they never looked up to see the sun, thought I. and the dusk would begin soon enough, and not having seen the brightness and the horizon, the firmament clouds say, and not having listened to the wind, then what would they do and what would they really know beyond statistics and local gossip? 

two

Cars and Stars, and Coyote Road Abridged, Destinies and Nonduality-Advaita-Vedanta

first I was a incarnated and then not long after I was in a little store on the south west side of an intersection that was almost always grey and dirty, unwelcoming and represented the tough and rugged parts of a metropolis and not the good aspects. I wonder if anything is still there where that shop was. I suppose something is there. in the middle was a huge display with toy cars. i didn’t want the cars and never thought of it,- not even one car and not even once. I just liked how it all looked. I was not identified w/the world in the way others were. Later I was gifted many, many toy cars and the person taking care of me stole them. 

decades later I sat with the two blondes on a large swing in the dusk in a northern town. one, the Piscean had long hair and one had short they were saying how the world was and were very smart. yes one was a Pisces and I don’t like Pisces but she was on the level and an exception. her eyes and her cheeks looked like a Pisces woman, as were the problems she struggled with. I told them they were great people the two of them which was true, but that i had to go. a few weeks later the one called me and I knew something was wrong at the first ring because she never called me. she was calling to say the blonde Piscean on the level woman was dead. she had been killed in a car accident by a drunk driver. 

I thought of how much I didn’t like cars much anymore, and I was soon under the summer dusk but the dusk would turn to night which is dark and the summer would turn to autumn which is less colourful indeed and the autumn or fall speaks of winter and it’s bold and cold and grey times that wait like a disease or an unfortunate or even tragic destiny. 

three

beyond the towns 

In the denser parts of the town where there were more houses, more infrastructure, more electric light and other, there had been snow but it melted. Yet, not too far north of there where the town ended, an old brick church unintentionally marking a quick liminal way between the two, a church from another, simpler time,  well there began snow. and that snow, because no heat troubled it, stayed on the ground and branches and the whole world there… evergreens-sumac-stones, little streams, wide and narrow paths, birch trees, shriveling strange old mushrooms plus a myriad of other things of course,…and far,- so far in a distant field framed by beige reeds that danced just a bit for a winter wind whose end had reached them, a hawk sat at the very top of an old tree that was leafless. it surely surveyed the landscape stoically, sagaciously, and it looked for some reason that it had been there forever. how the hawk is loved more than the world. how the hawk means more than the whole world. how the hawk by the snow in the abandoned winter fields under the opacity of the firmament is then the world. 

four

those old leaves and the ridge or the valley floor

wandering along the old path. how old is that path and the surrounding ones and who made them through the summer way, the autumnal breeze, the winter snow wafting or the spring rain light and kissing the air? the aged tree, fallen a long time ago, off the ridge and across the valley floor, its root system exposed and looking like a thousand intertwined phantoms from an underworld unknown. up there somewhere, red sumac that receives the snow, and the sumac is calm, stoic, for maybe it knows something on the other side of drama or has never believed fully in the world. yes the blue sky peaks out briefly but soon, too soon, it is grey and overcast again. the evergreens and old leaves, the valley and ridge and the small and large paths see it through always. so shall we.