Thursday, August 27, 2015

Variations on the Man with the Blue Guitar







"The strings are cold on the blue guitar" Wallace Stevens


1

A boy blew out a tune on a toy whistle.
The moon heard it echo. The wind heard it cry.

The clouds changed its sound.
In another country, it fell from the sky.

Unnoticed, it fell to the ground.
There are words only heard in the dark.

There are stories only told to strangers.
We dance to radio signals warbling in the air. 

We change our faces daily.
We turn the world over. We sleep when we can.



2

They wear masks of tin; they glitter in the sun.
Their rockets blaze; they build warheads by the ton.

They talk of peace but it never comes.
A cloud descends, the lies resume.

Their minds are empty; their hearts are blank.
We walk and stumble along a darkened wall.

We hear a whistle. We hear a call.
But we can't be sure. There are so many before us,

so many bodies pushing and shoving,
hordes of them. We become confused. We fall.



3

The boy adored the blue guitar.
He made a kind of shrine.

He bathed in the light of that star.
The world glistened and shined.

He was born again when he heard the blue guitar.
They are flying drones way up high

(UFOs whiz around in the dark).
A robot pushes a button and lives vanish.

Out here in the white sands of the desert,
after the blast, the dead disembark.



4

At midnight, the world turned to stone;
and with it, the human head was reduced to bone.

The mountains turned purple, the sky turned gray.
Rivers and oceans froze, the land filled with snow.

The world went to sleep; the world turned to stone.
Architects silently put their tools away.

The shape of things had become an empty hole.
The boy feared his dreams might stop, his vision fade.

The boy feared he would turn to stone.
The boy feared he would be reduced to bone.



5

In his mind, the boy made a shadow box
of all the things he had known and seen.

He made a shadow box of violet, blue and green.
He remembered oceans, clouds and ponds.

He remembered all the things he had known and seen.
An X marked the houses of the dead.

Bloated bodies floated down Canal Street.
The Superdome was in total darkness.

The lights were out; there was no turning back.
The boy painted his fingernails black.


6

Folks waved white flags from rooftops.
The president did a flyover.

He kept his distance, his view was blurred.
Only Kafka could invent something so absurd.

A man went up into the clouds.
The man traversed an ocean for love.

He could have been an astronaut, he was so far gone.
He was lost in the air.

He whirled and tumbled and when he came down,
his wife was not there.



7

The man examined the clues.
The man had a bad case of the blues.

The man made a trip to the Pale Horse Tattoo
parlor. He wanted to commemorate 

his years of clandestine service 
in the company of shadows,

when Peter Lorre was his avatar and guide,
when the world was dark and blue.

The man heard the thunder roar.
The man was weary of war.




8

Children are gathering in the dark.
An idea forms and we begin to bloom,

almost invisibly but not quite.
Think of the resurrection as a kind

of second chance, as a kind of blossoming.
Some died by fire, some died in a blast.

Some vanished like a vapor, some died in a crash.
We let go of our secrets

but our voices seem strange.
We must move beyond this phantom feeling.



9

History has abandoned us.
The old world fades but the ruins remain.

We breathe in its dust and it changes us.
We have no need of sleep.

We bloom like flowers in the night.
We know what it is like to shiver in the cold.

We know what it is like to stumble and fall.
But our eyes were opened. We heard the call.

We followed the light of a distant star.
We heard the sound of the blue guitar.



10

A boy blew out a tune on a toy whistle.
The moon heard it echo. Constellations heard it cry.

On another planet, it fell from the sky.
The clouds changed its sound.

Unnoticed, it fell to the ground.
There are words only heard in the dark.

There are stories only told to strangers.
We dance to radio signals warbling in the air.

We fly by the light of a nameless star.
We dance to the sound of the blue guitar.








Tuesday, August 4, 2015

Blue Horses

Gather up the horses and let’s ride.
Carry me across the river to the other side.
Carry me across the river to my bride.

*Gather up the horses and ride.
Carry me across the river to the other side.
Carry me across the river.

Gather up the horses and let’s ride.
I remember the day when the world turned gray.
I remember the day when the world turned gray.

*Gather up the horses and ride.
I remember the day when the world turned gray.
I remember the day when the world turned gray.

Teach me how to fly before I die.
Carry me across the river to the other side.
Gather up the horses and let's ride.

*Carry me across the river to the other side.
I remember the day when the world turned gray.
I remember the day when the world turned gray.

Gather up the horses and let’s ride.
Carry me across the river to my bride.
Carry me across the river to the other side.


*voice of Eurydice



Saturday, August 1, 2015

Monsters

They once wore hoods over their heads
so no one would know
who they really were.
Their rituals were practiced in the dark.
Now they act out in the daylight.
A plane goes down in the Ukraine.
Troops line the border.
Villages burn.
 
Chemical weapons drop from the sky.
Children are bombed in Gaza.
A drone kills a reporter in Iraq.
The innocent are tortured.
But no one is brought to trial.
They make warplanes and missiles.
They declare this to be
in everyone's interest.

A baby is dissected beneath the glare
of surgical lights; its organs sold.
They make laws that allow the killing to go on.
(Even Doctor Frankenstein sought to create life not to destroy it.)
They make speeches and raise funds.
They run for office. They often win.
They are hard to stop.
They rule the world