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Watching the Wind
  Our fallen Rain
    Towards eternity

Sky Teacher
  Needless to Say
    Love Seals my Lips
      with a  Gentle touch

As if  it is True
 As if  New
   Fresh Belief 

Watching the Wind
  Relief from Pain
    Towards eternity

I reach out 
  to catch the Rain

  Touch the Gift

    Towards eternity

Dawn Steepens
   The Climb

My knees are drawn
  Beyond my feet
    A stillness
      moves

Touching the Wind
  Toward continuity
And I have experience,
  a pleasure indeed. 





by John Edward Culp
  upon this Tuesday
     of November 21,
            2023

RELATIVITY

A tablet was found

with the famous Pythagorean theorem.

The tablet is 1,000 years older

than Pythagoras.

An acrylic painting was also found,

made by Grzegorz Wróblewski.

The painting is one day older than

Grzegorz Wróblewski.

I painted it yesterday
in Copenhagen,

watching the twinkling stars

and alien spaceships.

Strange…
They didn’t explode Icelandic volcanoes.
And they didn’t come the promised
horsemen of the apocalypse.

YEARS OF CHANGE

You have to breathe deeply.

The ring finger didn’t explain
anything to me.

(Everything was born and died
happily…)

One day I was a spiritual being,
and the other
a scientistic mammal.

I visited parallel worlds.

Mostly in the Copenhagen Zoo.

Patricia Highsmith on Patricia Highsmith

She tried to abort me
drinking turpentine before
I was born he left us
and it changed me
poisoning my mind, my life

always a disappointment
displeasing, distrusting
mother, stepdad at 3
a grey-black spirit of doom
a foreordained unhappiness
a grievous, murderous hatred
I had to learn to live with

when they dragged me away
from my home in big sky Texas
to the gritty streets of New York
lost and scared they sent me
back to Grandma in Fort Worth
I never knew why or when or if
they would come for me
and I hated them for that

when I returned to Manhattan
belonging no place, not there
not Queens, Greenwich Village
I chose Barnard, literature
stylish clothing, affected poses
drinking my way up the ladder
with society girls and gin
whiskey shots in bars
schmoozing the lions for inroads
to the literary life I craved
women and booze and writing

about identity and deception
the fears and furies of secret selves
the subterfuge of the repressed
Graham Green called me
the poet of apprehension
my characters got the revenge
I wanted for myself.

Patricia Highsmith on Her Sexuality

My first job was for a man
writing scripts for comic books
freelancing and living alone
dead broke in Taxco
the Mexicans knew how
to drink cheap all day

I returned to New York
and headed to Yaddo
writer’s colony in the woods
met the man I would not marry
promised him and hurt him
completing my first novel
for a British publisher
and Alfred Hitchcock
adapted it for the screen

I was headed for top rungs
while suffering from cycles
of anorexia and alcoholism
therapy helped my writing
the psychology of the psychopath
I felt I understood
I was a man
who loved women
and mistreated them

enjoyed seducing straights
breaking up couples
the two Pats
the charmer, the offender
battling inside, on the page
my life a novel I made up
lies in interviews
in my diaries fantasies
inventing until the end

I left millions to Yaddo
my literary estate to the Swiss
my heart in a bottle
of whiskey and turpentine.

Virginia Kent Catherwood on Patricia Highsmith

With her I felt strange
unlike what I thought I was
yet loved, I loved her
manly ways in a woman’s body
deep dark warmth I found
another kind of love
my husband used
against me in court
took away my daughter
to protect her
from her own mother’s love.

After we broke up
Pat worried about me
afraid of my reaction
to my story in her novel
based on a pretty stranger
she waited on once
while working the counter
at Bloomingdale’s
and stalked her home
to the rich enclaves
of suburban New Jersey
and fantasized about her
made up a world, a love
a taboo romance
destined to be
a cult classic
a major motion picture.

Pat heard how
the woman killed herself
in her running car
in her closed garage
while Pat was writing
about her, about me
in her novel
Carol.

Ellen Hill on Patricia Highsmith

I don’t know why I loved her
left her, went back to her
so many times she used sex
to make me unhappy she went
from cool green grass underfoot
to shattered glass shards

like the time she got drunk
at a party in London
and fell over the table
her long dark hair
caught fire
and we put it out
and carried on British-style
as if the singe of bitter burn
didn’t smell up the room
the time she hid her pet
snails in a purse, dozens
spilled on the dinner table
sliming starched white cloth.

I was not a homosexual
but I fell for her
stormy kissing biting hardness
always fighting she thought
I was too straight, too organized
too critical and a snob
I expected her to treat me
as a man would and
I was forever after her
to stop drinking, cheating
ruining other people’s lives

when she threatened to leave
I sprawled on our bed
sucked down two martinis
in my silky underthings
let her watch me
swallow barbiturates
she couldn’t leave me
not like that

yet off she went
to some party
out late, waiting for me
to die
in a coma
for days she did not visit
involved in a twisted tryst
on Fire Island and you’d think
I would not forgive her
antipathy, cruelty, selfish
fear I would accuse her
of murder by proxy
once I read her novel
about a man driving his wife
to commit a suicide
mirroring my own

but I still loved her
lived with her in Mexico
England, France, Switzerland
in her black bunker
with lookout slits
a sad drunken recluse
when she was all yellow
skin, bones, bitterness
still writing, still carrying
that little hell in her head
hating what galvanized her
Pat still Pat
always looking
for a fight.

I did not attend her funeral.

Marijane Meaker on Patricia Highsmith

We met cute
in a lesbian bar
in the 1950s
we could be arrested
for the love we made
I was taken with her
gentlemanly manners, good
bones and thick dark hair
her laughter, shared
book talk and gay gossip
I wanted to be her
my books paperback
dime store pulp and Pat
a literary lion, lesbian icon.

Isn’t it wiser to accept
that life has no meaning
is what she said
the earth like the moon
with only her on it
her dark fantasies
keeping her going
all those years
all those books
stories of men who compete
who climb, who con, who kill
for the thrill in her novels
about the American Abroad
an excuse for excess
self-indulgence, hedonism
how she lived herself
from villages in France
to villages in Greece
Venice and Positano
she said our love cured
her wanderlust.

We settled down together
in an artsy community
in the Pennsylvania countryside
fruit trees and a barn, she gardened
cooked dinner and dressed up
in  slacks, a crisp white shirt
bright ascot, polished loafers
with a shiny switchblade
from her blazer pocket
she trimmed our indoor plants
and sipped a second martini
while studying the dictionary—
a strange cocktail hour, yes
but we had a sweet life

mostly because of Pat
affectionate, easygoing
didn’t want her mind
cluttered with bad feelings
but she knew
I was besotted
obsessed and afraid
of losing her
I became her
drinking too much
smoking her Gauloises
wearing her jackets
reading her diary
I wrote a literary book
about famous suicides.

Perhaps I don’t like anybody
was how she explained
her characters’ lack
of decency, humanity
her own prejudices
her own shifting identity
her withdrawal, escapes
from love affairs
like ours while above her a window
filled with light blue sky
just out of reach
too small
too far away
to escape through

Landscapes

Some of us preferred

the nights when trees

were on fire to the ones

where only flowers were burning

The smoke was a challenge

for breathing but after a while

we learned to live with it

Those of us who preferred

our landscapes with living things

over desolation rainbows were

disappointed when there was

nothing left to burn

Even the sunsets regretted

the absence of particulates

that made the sky seem alive

It seemed unnatural

to grieve the end of landscapes

as no one responded  to them

anymore

What would have been

the point

The moon is down

phantom tree limbs scratch

against the windows

and the overhanging roof

in my mind.

The appliances cycle on

and off, so loud and insistent

they threaten to murder sleep.

Outside, the birds have

been assaulting the picture

windows.  Their collisions

are like tiny fists pelting

the glass.

We gather their bodies

in canvas bags. Take them

to the beach and throw them

to the wind commanding

them to fly.

Symbiotic

We share everything now

even our dreams

The details may be different

but the effect is always

the same

Her dreams are of flightless

birds that are somehow impelled

from their coops into the air

where they collide in pairs

and fall, on fire, to the earth

Mine are of the beheading

of chickens on multiple

chopping blacks propelling

their headless bodies spouting

gouts of blood as they run

about the barnyard

We watch from inside our bedrooms

where the heat pipes are bursting

in the walls releasing gushers of water

that peel the patterned paper off

in long strips that cling to our faces

as we dream

Neither of us has the will

to wake up

All of our nights are like

this now

Redefined (Ezekiel)

An accumulation of

frozen sheep redefine

the landscape

Piles of ice, and snow

and road waste are assembled

like burial mounds planted

on the fallow furrowed fields

Dried wild berry vines

and sunflower stalks smolder

in the rusted metal burn

barrel

We look up at the sky

at what the sheep

can no longer see

After the storm:

the used tires arrive

then the ripped-free anchors

lobster traps

rope netting balled in Gordian knots

snared, severed filaments

deflated life rafts

broken oars

parts of wet suits

life jackets

men and women’s clothes

all the odd lot of stuff that

once might have been in-board

no boat

Some of us remember

when the seasons did not

fluctuate from one extreme

to the other

There were variations

on themes: colors, warmth,

and chills instead of deep

freeze and fire

Soon there will be nothing

left to burn as it is pointless

to plant things when nothing

has a chance to grow

Maybe the end has

come and gone

and no one noticed

late dusk birds or the fields turning to winter 

there was a place where thousands of birds gathered and I said to the woman, ‘Do you think they fly south from here or kinda make some plan to soon? And maybe they say, for instance, “How have you been? It’s been a long time. Is everything well? How is the family?”’ See, they are not only numerous but loquacious and loud, yet beautifully so for the din of the world of man and woman is not. and the dusk is not what it used to be, for it seems to arrive and leave too quickly, and doesn’t want to be a long poem or slow song but perfunctory, all-business,- like it has broken up with the earth and is just dropping off its things out of obligation. yes the dusk and the earth used to be lovers. they were crazy about each other but it’s no longer so. winter waits and taps it’s fingers rudely and impatiently. what does it care for the love of others? ‘…ya ya ya blah blah blah…,’ it says, not being a romantic, ‘just move on.’ and the birds,- they went across a long field and then suddenly dove downwards, on practically a right angle,- w/a certain agility and confidence before disappearing from sight. it is the poet’s job to try and document such things, I thought, as that. the edges of far witching hour dreams actually, the electric light cascading onto the street in the rain, or the late autumnal season, where it marries winter in not a love marriage but a fixed one, an arranged one. and do you know that if it rains inside the fall that it is the fall crying? and now you know why. maybe the birds understand this. perhaps that’s what all their gossip is about. 

Biography of a Guitar

Smooth wooden sides,

Carefully and carelessly carved away

From his mother. Rounded, sharpened

A carved down, hollow memory of a tree

The pattern of which is roughly polished

Into dust. A new pattern, freshly painted

On with seemingly gross perfectionism

In which the wooden shell will only in

Later years, see the reflection of imperfection

And neglected love hidden away

In the weathered hand of the painter.

Factory coils wrapped tight and thin

Starved plastic strings on pieces and knobs

Hammered, delicately attached to the

Oak tree shell – Now he sees he is from oak,

Not a patchwork of wood –

Wire, string mazes form strict lines to be

Arranged with handles? Knobs?

As a painting gains new layers, the oak tree

Shell is now metal, now string, now taut, mean,

Soft, still wooden. And with a simple strum of the

Wires, the strings. Slight turn of the knob

Ears to listen and a strum again,

A song is made.

Time Walks Each to its Grave

Tell me a story, your mouth whispers

Finished, still your eyes plead let this

Not end yet.

You’ve seen the way autumn stalks

Your beloved monkshood’s life, and

Know that his life is not fading:

It has found a home in his wrinkles.

Let time walk me down your path,

And watch life herself

Dance from your eyes into the scars

Cleaning your hands. She is only resting,

Yet as the lines in your palm meander,

So will her dreams.

Red-Handed

Aimlessly typing

I know, I remember knowing

You’ve never

Cut out your tongue only to learn

A missile shot through it,

Writhing in taciturn soil.

Silence an air raid, serenity.

Slide back under a tar-black sky

Wrinkled at some distant

Stain, bleeding

Into these stars too.

It’s only your fault ethics

Are haggard things, and

You’re haunted by lives

You’ve never breathed.

It could’ve been anyone, couldn’t it?

WHEN THE DAY WAS DARK

My toes were my eyes till

sunrise. It’s then that the

dawn lit beyond where my

footprints knew. But the true

Isness remained hid like

it did when the day was

dark. There’s no Hark! and no

Eureka! I’ve no law

which can explicate how

my fate operates, or

why there is life, or when

time began, where it ends,

who I really am, what

is scam. That sun is a

blimp. It just limps through the

defined sky, lets me eye

the way of my tracks – all

in back, and none move to

head off sunset: Daylight-

and-shadow’s status quo.

MENAGERIE IN E MAJOR

The monk cast that day’s third I-Ching

and then he made his turkey sing

to entertain the drunk heathens.

And the Turk had his monkey dance

in his red sequined funky pants.

The monk’s turkey and Turk’s monkey

showed them both they were worth money,

so Monk and the Turk joined forces

and purchased two purloined horses

that they taught to play bass and drums.

They toured as The Amazing Ones,

led by a jazzy pachyderm

who blew triumphant saxophone.

FURNACE AND FREEZER

My world is hermaphrodite.

A dimension where moral

coexists with the evil.

It grasps equal opposites.

Down is just as good as up.

Yes, there’s gray, but black and white

occupy the selfsame sites.

Oceans are the desert’s cups.

A vacuum comprises all.

A freezer and a furnace

work to serve a like purpose.

A dwarf is considered tall.

And your wanton naked face

is expressive as your ass.

FRANCIS DRAKE

My hands are caked and yours are so fine,

but somehow they fir

trim together like ships of the line.

Marry me, oh carry me, sign your name mine:

I’ll be Francis Drake and you’ll be my Golden Hind.

I’ll fill up your hold with all of the gold

that I can find, all of the gold that I can find.

We’ll dance naked, if you’re so inclined —

just billow our charms,

wrap our sheets round yardarms entwined.

I’ll ride you of I’ll guide you, make your name shine.

I’ll be Francis Drake and you’ll be my Golden Hind.

I’ll fill up your hold with all of the gold that I can find.

I’ll fill up your hold with all of the gold,

with all of the gold,

with all of the gold

that I can find.

I’ll be Francis Drake and you’ll be my Golden Hind.

MY FINGERS

Visit me in my mushroom tower and I will come to you

down this deep dark ditch amid tinder black flowers

down to the buttercups and dew.

My fingers have ridden through the forests of your hair

and slept on belly-gold prairies.

Have explored your hidden valleys, climbed snowcapped breasts,

and on your beach hips have rested.

Tanned your naked stands, strata in the earth in layers of

dark

light

dark

light

dark:

while (miners in anticipation) my fingers tremble….

And then it is we who are the layers in the dark, quaking among bedrock,

hardness melting into darkness, joining in new formations,

stalactite buried and unearthed buried unearthed buried unearthed

through the long geologeons of night

till finally separated by a fault

…and our sky becomes snow on coal.