seminal poems

[quasimodo1]

THREE DESERTERS conversing with the lord remained a possibility, the comfort of a prayer, the rock of the liturgy, the great brick womb we named in humour, days deposited like blocks on graphpaper, hyms and organs, matins and vespers, priests morphed into moguls, bishops into jestors, the smart one wanted out; purpose crossed sooner, there will be no celebacy, we three had found a delecacy, in girlfriend summers and backseat gunners, warm work for tuition, while gods suffered attrition, in thier ranks, no thanks, the missionary dreams of saving micronesia three students on a train seeking amnesia, we would have a life, we would have a wife, the Silver Bullet fled DC, the three, the free, and me

[Logos]

Who wrote this?

[quasimodo1]

To Logos: I wrote this, about 1969, glad it isn't obvious/ and meant it to be among the personal poetry threads.

[quasimodo1]

In the time of Promised Land Lake, My boy took joy in critters, cute and fierce, He researched minnows and crayfish, At times incarcerating snakes and kidnapping birds, Cautious to hold them in his brevity, Carefull to release the close held life before it's wildness softened, before they adapted to closure. His heart was pure and kindly; The creatures always sensed this, Before long thrushes perched on his arm, Deer would not run, dogs readily approached him. What auras animals see, informed them he was safe. What language bodies speak chanted serene with him. But older worlds interloped, Disruptive humans groped in greed, These creatures take more than they need. So he couldn't take their pulse and wouldn't heed their lies. Eventually dismissed their rules and suspected the force behind thier schools. ..........quasimodo1

[Pendragon]

Well, Quasi, I do not understand this type of poetry, and do not pretend to understand it. Perhaps, if I heard one of you authors actually read their poem, I might understand it. For me to read it, I get zip. I am honest, anyway, in any review I give.

http://i94.photobucket.com/albums/l108/AbsalomKane/Smilies/PuppyLove.gif

[quasimodo1]

Poets Might Be The Contributors To Replace The Seratonin Reuptake Inhibitors, As We Require Only A Trace Of The Entire Human Race, To Un-depress The The Psyche, To Unwind The Mind. The Spring That Relaxes The Stressors, It Releases The Lasting Serenities. Stigmas, Aspersions By Humans Are Cast Unenlightened, Are Hurled And Implied... To Incite This "soul In The Rough"; They Preclude Any Resonant Empathies. If The Man Is Insane; Correction Is Inane. He Can't Hear What You Say Over The Din Unallayed...of What You Are. So The Only Logical Course Is A Will Not Meant To Force. Gentle Coexistence Cures; Non-violent Resistance Lures The Man To Eventually Emerge From The Chaos Of On The Verge, From The Net That Covers And Closes To A Freeman Who Suddenly Exposes, His Kind And Better Nature. Only Then Will He Strike Out For New Country, Only Then Will He Hike To The Haven, That He Always Felt Most Brave In. He Will Make A Claim On That Land, Once He Has Been Given The Rarest Helping Hand, That Does Not Judge, But Results From The Benefit, Of Those Who Easily Revisit What They Did Not Previously Understand. Quasimodo1 ........title=therapy Ii

[jposey]

Quas:

I like your stuff. Though obviously thoughtfully constructed, it appears almost stream of consciousness prose. It forces the reader to think and interpret, thus meaning different things to different people. (It's also a window into your brain)

Your grasp of the language and nuance is excellent.

[quasimodo1]

To Jposey: So kind of you to respond. Interesting that you mention "stream of consciousness", it is the last thing I expected but so reflective of some authors that have impacted my world-view. In way of explanation, the partial preoccupation with things psychological (or psychiatric) is more the result of having a son with a certain condition (although a few might make mention of my eccentricities). Thanks for taking the time to read and observe and if you like...give me a clue about your literary interests. quasi

[jposey]

Quas:

Poetry allows me to play with the diversity of the language and the pleasure of wordsmithery. Nothing serious tho' - I recognize my limitations.

Have you played with painting word images? I'll bet you'd be good.

[quasimodo1]

To jposey: Yes, guess I've been scribling and writing since my C.University days in '67. Lot's of old fashioned academia...you know...days in the stacks, real card catalogs, periodical reviews and my own "experimentation". My daughters have a ream of stuff from back then but they won't let go of it. It might be embarassing anyway. I got to go to the bank now, be back in awhile, ...so what's your major gig, if you don't mind? quasi

[jposey]

Quas:

I'd like to see some of your conventional stuff.

Retired airline pilot, lots of entreprenurial stuff, now volunteer fly for Air Force Auxiliary, play golf, program and write poetry for catharsis.

John

[quasimodo1]

jposey: Sure, let me do google search through my clutterfile...that's a little while. A close friend of mine left the Air Force about ten years ago; like many people, he's way smarter than he knows. He worked in crypto/photo analysis with all the clearances and "firewalls". He's probably the most frustrated want-to-be-a-pilot ever. Bigtime into electronics and radio on a mathmatical level that leaves me gaping; sometimes I get my mind around some of that stuff. ....Poetry might have cathartic elements...make that, does have those elements that are intrinsic if not part of the definition. You could use the private message route if you don't feel comfortable posting it. My father and I owned a small business which, in retrospect, might not have been the best move but I'm sure you know how the pressures of nepotism and finance can make a day job seem necessary, if not attractive. Anyway, let me see what I have around here. quasi

[jposey]

Quas:

I posted a pair of poems on this site in the personal area.

Tell your friend that short of incapacitating infirmities, anyone can be a pilot. Pay the money for lessons and "you is one".

Join the local CAP group and they can point you to the best lesson deals. Once certified they have the cheapest deal for renting an aircraft.

John

[quasimodo1]

NORTHVILLE TO LAKE

PLACID____________________________________________ _______________Stretch out that

wilderness trail through bog and snow, Alone yet followed by green intimidated

trekers, Now forty-eight miles from roads in the know, From vile vendors and

homewreckers, Cities beguile, corrupt and inhibit, Forests grow and streams exhibit,

Azure air above your visit, No longer packing books or guns, Bears are black beneath

arboreal suns, Walking on waffles ruining lichens, Stalking an attitude in future

environs, Draining your battery purposefully low, To sleep by a fire your heart aglow,

Any infrared sensor would acquire your form, Ultra-violet energy detected and

warm, Until just before dawn the blackflies swarm, The netting repels their seetwo-o

search, Like pandering priests keep you from church, You come here to renew what

cavemen do, Let sophistocates suffer in citified mew, In three days walk you're back

on the muscle, Infinities of forest between you and the hustle. quasimodo1

[quasimodo1]

Couchsachraga, means dark and dismal place, in Iroquois, in Adirondack woods, in the home of the barkeater, who when the snowbase pressed in on the native hunter, who couldn't even snowshoe out to hunt, languishing in latewinter camp, would be unable to travel to the base of Tahawus, the cloud splitting mountain, to gain game for family, tribe and animals domestic, a dismal, dark time of shorter days and want, this hunter's view of his land majestic, now digressed to primeval needs, so he and his, formed trail ways, to the lignum vitae of special trees, under their bark is layered, a hardly digestable tissue, it would insure thier issue, would withstand the waning weathers of winter, and arrive at spring in situ. quasimodo1

[quasimodo1]

A dream of factual enlightenment will briefly lend a flight, in suspiciously sacred texts, advisories say to drop, your baggage of valued needs, to slide accross the table toward the waiting poor, what you ought drop to exit, the door to future movement, make the lotus on the floor, take a case of information, take a tenuous link to man, send messages, memos and verses, back to choppy waters of before. Take a last look at the blue globe you are leaving, in certainty allow no grieving, as you attempt a karmic reversal, no chance this is rehearsal, its one shot, one hill. Crest it two miles high, the date-line crossed over oceans tossed, and turns are not permitted, to the landing field committed. Enough is there for room and board, enough to be the godless missionary, to make a last empathetic trip, etherial spirit preparing for Tibet, its not the DaliLahma's throne, the soul is changed to a skipping stone, a line of rippled circles forms, ditching the vessel beneath the norms, the norms that previous life required, are puposefully, dutifully and serenly retired.

[quasimodo1]

Watery previews, a kevlar canoe rides in traffic, in

two tributaries parrallel, on obedient streams, on

the roofrack of four-by-four, in rolling rivers of

steel, soonlater discs brake, redclayish wheels slip

on the slop. A gaggle of loons, balefully call; too

dark for a launching, pitching bivuac before dawn.

Sun over Speculator, Piseco, Keene or Long Lake,

similar flows near all these places, quadrangles map

the river traces. No spruce holes to fall in, only fern

snow remains, hypothermic emotions suprisingly

sigh, evaporating waterways of worries, on

saddleback mountains, placidly pushing the bark,

into Cold River, regarding the ramp back over a

shoulder. Allarmingly swift, glacially full of

emulsional till, this h-two-oh density surrounds

and declines, through hardwoods and softwoods,

keep tunneling down, last week's rains, feed a

snakelike meander. Its all sun and hardwater, stones

and cool moss; reminders of mills, reveries of floss.

Romance passes aft of the fantail, rough riddance

to the weight, of That baggage, of That burden.

Breath pinesappy air full of histamine bounce, off

the serpentine, schist and alluvial shoals. Geology

laughs, at you and with you, subjunctive branches

and feeders, undercrowded leantos, sqatt on

anthropoligetic islands, punctuate Long Lake, fine

focus on the view, delighted we exit, the moving to

the still. Forgetfull Waters, Reminder Winds, course

over kettle whole lake. It spreads out in a plane, a

record-holding line-level, never used, since the

French, and Indian wars, lends a fragile, this-side-up

balance. This first navigation in Adironcack park,

Forever Wild says the statute, forever piety departs.

Nightfall we normally, overboil water, in case

there's giardia, encysted and immortal, unlike two

sons and a father, who impose on this wild, who

covet this clime, who would live here forever, but

don't have the time. {quasimodo1}

[quasimodo1]

Today we climb Gothic, the Range trail lifts us close, snow filters heavily on ascender and boulder, it drifts not but whites out-- so peering is a problem; our crampons bite the blueish ice, securely, specifically. It comforts me to be enclosed, in a group, in narrowing weather. To slide or fall will isolate but otherwise we congregate, around the fix ed cable which grasps the rods that pierce the stone that may glue us to this mountain. Why we call it Gothic is why we name a mountain; just a rough resemblance to something besides itself. By now the heavy winter packs are light by last week's standard; sixty then is like thirty now because exertion equalizes, because we climb regardless. Anvils could not tary us; eyes are tools to travell. Air smells of oxygen with hints of spruce, of hemlock. Thinking of absurd pineapples, in heavy syrup waiting, the mind spins on anticipate, we seperately ponder the fuels of the night, the calories to come, the wherewithall to morrow. Movement matters mostly, other lives we push aside to move up granite, four astride.

[quasimodo1]

Megatropoliscapes raling thru Cos Cob, big

apple and south, mirrored waters light the

box buildings to east and Atlantic. Elbows-out

people linger westward, eons of them doing

what? Electrically transported without and

within, the coach without buggywhips have

cellphones and laptops, passing as travelling

companions, virtually. A human may speak to

you, ever the longshot, whenever it suits

them to peal into a sentence, a fragment of

patience to evoke evolution, the movement

without a purpose. Its still reassuring--a little

painless conversation, disjointed and

deserted from armies of meaning, patrols of

connection. Speak. Move on. More silence

like platinum.

[quasimodo1]

Rope Creek, Cabestro Creek, the same stream falls down Latir Peak. It's a rope only in some strange surreal spanish sense. It lassos a mountain with it's counterpart a valley over. For years you waited to be here. Now you walk it, through elk resting spaces, thru and by the lairs and territories of montebanks, make that catamounts, as in cougars with an hundred plus ten mile range. Your ride drops off this hiker, measured mileage from the ranch. It's a great day to be up high, i.e. if you count high starting at eight thousand feet. One day of altitude sickness at almost nine thou. Fill your canteen, breathless for a nap. Repeat four times and walk like this. Man it's great to be so high, with a huge westerly blowing, contantly...the indefatigable wind, the onerous planet waits to wear you down so that a high percentage of water to bodyweight will surely not endure. First day, daypack only. Second day, no pack. Third day go to full pack and an all out plunge into and up Latir Peak Wilderness. Has a great name and worth it. Let's not mince words here...Sangre de Cristos Mountains, where you dwell. Ten days or a millenium, no difference when you think in terms of the instantiniety of time. Forever in a vacuum with a halflife. After treking up a couple thousand feet you can just make out the intrussion on Cabestro lake; the arrow shape of a boat on a lake that's too small for boats. You have placed hidden stores in two staging areas with gps gridmarks, just in case, all goes south. Both boxes shrink wraped about a quarter mile apart; nobody will find both; nobody will find one...you need the backup plan. If all fails, there's still the compass, space-blanket and knife, the survival way. Yes, there's that. 9800ft. Here's a hallmark, let us say watermark and waves of old snow pressed into almost ice, signs of a bear and that mountebank, lots of elk, the wapiti. The trees sway and make their argument, stay and pickett them because this is not just forest but forest preserve. If it was national forest of different brand, it could not be logged out. This is preserve and the fed can cut it, changing the governmental mind is an option. You might need this wood for a war. Maybe not. 11000 thousand feet, no more altitude sickness/ that's strange, where's the smoke? Cabestro creek is all foam, now bordered by a rug of ancient moss that never gets disturbed. Hikers in the know, they won't walk on it; it would take ten years to repair itself. Even worse for the lichens which you have to admire for their tenacious sucking of nutrients from pure chill rock.

[PrinceMyshkin]

What a wonderful richness of detail and whole-hearted response to it. Thanks.

[quasimodo1]

Predawn online with joe thick enough to

grease a wheel bearing, earlier than the oc

e-mailers, the sun still ponders hesitantly,

let's not jump into this day, liesurely let first

light fall over your head like a curtain in the

wind, why rush things, multi-task and get in

an uproar? Get the buzzwords out of your

brain, get zen. The letters and calls squat on

your desk impatiently; after all you're just

one person; statisticians would have to data

mine to find an infinitessimal anomaly. Sure

you can allow the stressors, let them win the

day, take the field, claim victory. Stress is

what happpens when your day is running

you. Control is what happens when you

think the parenthetical light can be stetched

out, giving liscense to an overbearing work

ethic. In media stat virtu; did the Romans

have that sign on the Appian way. Not. Then

being in the ruts made sense unless some

drunken wheelright set your base. Trains

can't make right turns, even when collission

is imminent. 747s can't land on a bike trail.

Don't let your day become unwieldy. Delete

half the items on the "do" list, tomorrow is

fine for them. Days aren't like deli lines, you

don't have to take a number. The

assemblege of days, now that will want slow

and strategic thought. But what ever

decision you don't make, something will have

to happen anyway. Inertia lurks behind the

workload, your only enemy. Motion is your

friend. Easy does it. {quasimodo1}

[AuntShecky]

I like your own writing. All of your heavy research into the Poetic Greats may one day pay off. My only criticism is that in the first few pieces I wish that there had been more
definite line breaks. Though the pieces are indeed rhythmical. Choosing the absolute best place to End a line
and begin the next line can bring a whole nother dimension to the piece.
The Northville to Lake Placid piece is my favorite of this group; I like the Whitman/Ginsberg way that you arranged the lines.

[quasimodo1]

" BARDO : You are laying the foundation for a new life, which will be a totally different life. It will be your last life,because anyone who is dying consciously, who uses the gap to have a taste of absolute purity, enters into the womb alert, is born alert. His enlightenment is guaranteed by nature; he has the seed, the foundation " -Osho-
On many passings these past two years, on feeling finally the residual positive that enables survivors to speak, on a joyfull and long-suffering wife who survives in her children and memories in transit, on my best friend's wife, who called with a pain in her knee, who uplifted all, dropped a bad husband like a lump of lead in a shot tower--to be with a journalist who can spell ethics, whose work in a cynical trade did nothing to a pure heart, whose center was taken when she left in reluctant disanimation. A WWII vet killed by hospital newbies; Phil the marine from Kwajalein, got luck on Eniwetok and lived happily until the dumbing down of education inadvertantly handed him his hat. Who ever heard of elephantiasis let alone its recurrance. The 37 year old step sister who discarded dysfunctional family and mean spirited husband; while she unloaded groceries in her new apartment with her two beautiful daughters; aneurysm interrupts. A patriarch in army-air-force uniform, created his life, his house and business only to fade painfully, the day was right and ready. Others disembodied themselves in the grips of darker animas; we control our empathy there quite well. The most instructive and most disquietly elegant change came to a young daughter's lover; his residue we all keep with us. The bardo says transition, the bardo keeps them sprightly. {quasimodo1}

[firefangled]

quasi, this is astounding, from the "foundation" you lay to your rendering of it in an amazing and touching reminiscence and homage.

[quasimodo1]

Under the Valkyries
Stomping on slippery roots, the path to Feldspar brook, the drone of aircraft overhead; five miles on, near Opalescent creek, the sound again; nearing the next leanto, second highest in the Dacks, while the overgrowth impinges our gait and conceals sliders, we cast our gaze to sky; B-52s lumbering through thick air, engines just above the stall speed. We would have named them Gondul, Gunn and Herfjatun. A brook laid down before us, cold crystal from the peak of Colden, we dipp our cups, drink and chatter, white-throated sparrows with thier callsign consider the intrusion, just when we dismiss jets in this unihabited green space, another whining shock of wedged aluminum arches over; our oldest member walks concerned, knowing what the circles of hulking forces mean, it is Hrist, Sigrin and Brynhildr, it was Air Force out of Stewart, in prep pattern for menace, for crisis; we did not pay no attention to it. While we resume our ten day sprawl, even when Flowed Land shone before us, above the lake, above us all. While svea stoves hiss at nightcamp, boiling glops and quarts for tea, we speak a bit about warfare, way off over who-knows-what horizon; we keep the loom between us, but wonder while we wander, in this vast auroral forest, would this trail drop out before us. A borealis flashed and shimmered, blues and reds and blackness, the skylights were not visable, in the kafkaesque world, in the postnuclear alienation. Visions of Valhalla visit our forest. Passing falling waters, we were not searching for the bravest of the slain; let's hope Odin's still alive, if the bombs fall through the rain. {quasimodo1}

[quasimodo1]

Cos Cob of Connecticut fame, a place without the power of place, at least, as, Machu Pichu, as, the four corners Area, as, Pueblo Bonito, as/or the Redwood forest and especially as not "the hitching post of the sun". Still, something remains of primevil and ancient forest, seen not in a european's eyes; rather Abenake looking from sea-going canoe. Now the ever-replicating mission of men has override; now concrete, asphalt and mcmansion sit, cover and disguise. quasimodo1

[quasimodo1]

Our father's house of square of circles consisted, Inertia is especially resisted, My mother's death, my sisters' lives, felt ghosts afoot between their drives, Family plans and father builds, The structure overrides the guilds, We hammered nails and built up block, Upon the earth his was a rock, peculiar to a man of vision, of self, and wife, and rough precision. When life was there you paced in circles, the disembodied spirits stood round in , they had somehow endentured work for centuries, they make you too by ethic and entreaty, now they crossed the river, you could stay, or sell the shell; unload the spell, All seemed possible yet harder, the better to change your larder, It is no difference you're full grown, to escape the grasp and build your own, for every space has it's potential, for failure or growth exponential, bad luck to sleep on dead men's heads, good luck to stay away, to wait your death in that grey, the moral is to stay away and let your confidence have it's day. {quasimodo1}

[symphony]

I loved Enlighten up tag, NorthVille to Lake Placid, 826 and watery previews. Great job quasi. :)

And if i had spray paint with me right now, i think i'd have written these lines in red on my ceiling.

the soul is changed to a skipping stone, a line of rippled circles forms, ditching the vessel beneath the norms, the norms that previous life required, are puposefully, dutifully and serenly retired.
Loved it. Thanks.

[quasimodo1]

To Symphony: Thanks so much for your comment. It's great to know someone takes time to appraise these efforts. Really, quasi

[quasimodo1]

Tinaja mesa, behind thirteen-mile house,

bowl shape on the south side below a caprock. It

wants to be climbed and smirk out to the human

its power of place. Small circles of rocks mark the

Hopi camps, centuries have past while these stones

held the hearth. Mule deer and eagle, coyote and

cat, find their bed, nest and lair. Every other rock

has black scorches of lightening, at low point this

mesa is a mile over the sea, a sea that used to

ripple and wave over this ground. Hoofing up the

grade are micro-environments, mini-ecologies, and

mansign. JackM drove me to the base; he'll read

and sleep while waiting. Spring sprouts on the high

desert, cactus flower and columbines are peaking

their color. Top of Tinaja reigned 6K above

sealevel; the climb appeared easy from the window

of the ranch. Knowing better than this, the dayback

stuffed until the zippers might fail. Half way up

muledeer gathered; a clan suprised by this hiker

downwind. Hesitating they froze until in the midst

of them I stopped; then they fled out of custom not

fear; game can tell when a man is armed.

suprised the elk bounded off; just behind them

a ravine sounded to a stream at its base. Not

risking a fall, the climbing rope deployed; just long

enough for a looped belay. I was rapelling down

the wall when the rope fell short and risking a ten

foot jump, unknotting one end the rope retrieved,

relieved that the depth was just 80ft. This slow

moving creek promised good cool water, downsteam

a carcass of a flashflooded steer. Freeclimbing out

on easier pitch; the caprock required two hours of

grade. The climb's exertions were just beginning;

no sign of the trail except by compass, until I

walked out onto a park where some old prospector

left his dugout dwelling, full of ratlers, it's interior

remained undisclosed. As height increased and

white caprock appeared...I lept onto a bus sized

boulder which rocked with my weight...precariously

its tonage caused a rush to a safer stepping stone.

The last bit of climbing, with gear for assist...an

Eagle started strafing me, upset about it's nest. His

agressions made it easier to climb the final

overhang; the uptrek done, a few photographs with

water, with fire...I noticed a trail where the topo

indicated, which when fifty jards down, stopped

by overgrowth of thick desert plants that

entangled around your legs like a velcro trap. The

four hour climp was six hours up and five hours

descent, bushwacking, the perfect place to suprise a

dosy rattlesnake and just near the bottom, starting

to feel safe...those same plants captured one leg

and twenty yard tumble left me flat on my back,

wondering for moment about injuries...my luck held

out. My man Jack still waited, deflated by the time,

underrated by my guess. Lumbering to his truck, I

found him sleeping with his cellphone, a finger on

the nine, ready to drop the dime. Tinaja

mesamountain turned a cumulus cloud above, as

its western face regaled over Eagle Tale Mesa. This

dayclimb turned into marathon, this photo-op was

72 exposures long, a high water mark for a climber

before Latir Peak west, before the rockymountain's

best, and a long, long rest. quasimodo1

[AuntShecky]

An interesting read, but it could use a run-through by Spell-Check: "it's" (should be "its") "expected," "rappelling," etc.

Also, consider revising the enjambment.

[quasimodo1]

Thanks Aunty, posted this bleary eyed and now wish I dumped the whole thing. A posting is sometimes like an insult...you can't take it back.

[quasimodo1]

Poetry writing to the third power, certain off-limits subject matter, like a brush with mortality, not the safe kind but the lets-not-go-there type, the type tv won't show, the stuff of twelve step meetings, the gritty and cold old dwellings, hope for abandonment, this brick and cement witnessed bright cheerfull hours, even days, not quite months, surely not years. How about back in monestary school, minor, major, novitiate, sub-deacon, deacon and let's not say priest. The gall of loosing your spleen. Writing to the fourth power, the chicken-hearted will name it courting, self-proclaimed ordinary persons call it a date, going out and come-on-in. The admitted realists refer to friendship of opposites, the dreamer of existential thoughts might cliche' a cultural mystique surrounded by biological function; for those who reminisce over mairrage, over found soul-mates, The survivor recalls an intense, heterosexual friendship and keeps on, surviving, exalting, examining, critiqueing, forgetting. Of the fourth power also has a natural world, where your id slips between the ovals of electrons, the body pierces ocean water, the mind will not immerse. Here in a dog-year might be a moment of zenish intensity with volcanic mountains and alpine lakes. But I digress from the distractions, let's keep on point here and move on to other subjects. Birding, shooting clay, marathon swimming, deep sea fishing, virtual travel, vital sunrises; dare the sunset to catharsis. It's all fun except for Winston's black dog. And laughter, real and always brief; the thief of standards says so.

[quasimodo1]

Water to renew new york, the hiker camps without thought, spring flows in the tawny spans of a here today gone today river, more like a vast wet sheet than a river, you can trek for days to crossing, the peeping frogs decibel out from the edges, reeds, cattails, they sound out for thirty six hours, then summer, then vestigate through the popping tree winter, of twenty or thirty below. From two hundred feet look down on these travelers, their conversation and rushing waters merge like a monarch lands for a rest, cedar river flow below high peaks and foothills, osmosing tanin into the state, dragging heavy minerals at 44degrees, the waters bleed out from Gothics, Tahawus, Hurricane and Giant, this fluid may live in Manhatten, but here is its youthfull fountain, here the peaks and cedars give rise to its massive falling. Watersheds give, watersheds live. {quasimodo1}

[quasimodo1]

An island calls for years, Even after it migrated east, after Foreign boatbuilders yanked it's forest, Even when many hurricanes got busy building new inlets and closing others, the Indian tribes knew to venture only seasonally, Groups of subsistance fishermen and women camped at some peril on the leages of beaches, the Atlantic had it's graveyard just offshore, the Ocean frightened a Lighthouse inland, the Gulf Stream brushes the Labrador current like counteropposing traffic, Well healed humans place structures of value where waters have always come, a Resident doesn't drown in a stormsurge, he Merely is subdued by an act of god, an Act that insulates underwriters and lets Everyone know that on this outer bank, All are on their own. {quasimodo1}

[AuntShecky]

Quasi, you've got some intriguing images. Did you ever consider arranging them in a such a way that they would
look like "poetic" lines? It's not really "prose" that you've posted here, but it doesn't exactly "look" like poetry on the page, either.

Did you ever, just for fun or practice, try to write in metrical form?

[quasimodo1]

having taken and delayered gunter's onion__and time's instantaneity come to rest__a day will be a decade. years rifting into chasm__and the requirement of hope which is, as an idiot repeated...fear of the present__impinging upon a moment where over your shoulder lurks a clear memory__of bright, chaotic and extended households__of evergreen shacks squating over a mountain view__and ninety-mile treks through Indian passes__and atavistic tendencies which turned into assets. where once glass seemed translucent now the light comes through diaphanous tapestries, embroidered with deed. within this instant__like a heavy-metal nucleous with its whiring radioactive buzz, is the future fetching__the firearms of monumental caliber__vehicles eclipsing the rainy mist which rises over a serpentine road. q

[quasimodo1]

220 Taylow Street poses up the hill__ opposite capitol, inside a vatican: a mysterious sieve let in a mix; pennsylvanians, okies, clevlandites and acolytes__ drawn toward the Big Picture, logical it was: some had accents from Madison, Creole, Atlanta, mocking those dialects, semi-approved. national shrines adjoined smithsonian monoliths: dc hummed or more civilized tone in those days__ we go back looking for Larry's, off limits water hole, trying to mime a naivete' of a decade__ knowledgeable of architecture, history, religion: well-versed in the ancients, the dogmatics, the pragmatics; hurrying godot to his goal, moving him along before clarity vanished. Murphy ruled with different laws__ one well recalled dealt with card catologues__ those pre-IT oak and endless little drawers; living in the sub-stacks, days and dusks, tomes on Rome, reems on Rheims__ post-renaissance men before disillusion; prayer with scholarship, Latin with Greek, Sandskrit with Aramaic__ we skirted those a bit__ some of us just, didn't get it; then we left as there was nothing to get.

[quasimodo1]

Infantile eyes examine__through blueish or brown

auroras. Lucy Jr. of Oldivai fame, looked out and

into__the campfire glow of sulfurous earth, amidst

the sons and daughters of homo sapiens, cousins of

erectus and father's of australopithecus and sapiens

sapiens__wordlessly inquiring for outlooks__answers

flowing unchecked into the cortex__which were

boiling down in the firepit: am I welcome here?

and now?

[ReynardKitsune]

you should rephrase it
it hurts my eyes >.>
anyway i like them

[quasimodo1]

SHARPENING STONE IN THE PREDAWN HOURS

Holding down my life
Like an oversize sharpening stone
Whetted under summer sunlight
Then February froze, then augustly heated
Finally ice seized and snow covered
Any number of times, thru three seasons
So that its density diminished, became oversound
Four inches of perimeter held miniscule flaws
Both hard and plastic simultaneously
When spun up, the agate wheel fragmented
Outer inches flew off in irregular rocks
Until the circle spun around with polyglot circumferance
Cracked, ragged, ruined-- as to purpose
Still spinning and spinning, pressurized a carbon-iron block
Until the stone again sharpened both itself and the iron
It became a polymer rock rubbing silken metal,
Soundlessly whirring, deburring felt-smooth metal
Smooth on, smooth off
Objects both keen and married
In their opposites
An angled blade sliding on icy glycerin, compare it to a titanium javelin piercing warm pvc
A beautiful movement impossible to photograph
Except by nine-thousand frames per second
Returning to the honed iron object
Having become a blade
The reborn stonewheel created an edge
Viewing its acuity produced a shiver
A chill from imaginary cutting
A modus vivendi born of previous dissipation
Now distracted, digressed
Focused and purposeful
So much so that its absurd tangential movement
Seemed inane.

[paperleaves]

Quasi, I LOVE YOUR STYLE. I feel that we may be on the same wavelink when it comes to writing:)

[quasimodo1]

MITHRIDATIC IN MIAMI

From the vulnerabilities of his infancy
Baby William prepared for his personal anti-ecology
Siblings sibilant past awareness
Would have him banished from the nest
Survival wasn't a pastime for didactic plump instructors
Finding moss on the northerly bark of trees
Held no relevance for a foundling with a home
Of sorts
Family for frenetic children wanting for a nicety
The father was proud but lacked all sources for that refinement
Economically incapable of providing an alignment
With a food triangle like the template used today
Indicating luxuries above needs, to the starving.

[quasimodo1]

What days they live in this disquieting glory
What days we spend without currency
With a mentality set on cruise
A vehicle uncarreening uninhibited unafraid
Awareness of this speeding success
A second behind the fact
Like a baseball pitcher who adjusts his grip
Semi-consciously sure of a strike
Like the batter choking up the hickory
In his vision precursive the ball's beautiful arch
assured
Like a writer whose last line is written
Before the outline
Like a railbird having a winning day
His Secretariat clearly ahead thundering down the furlong, finishing a head ahead
Like a volleyball duo in synch
Pouncing on predestined balls
They think tomorrow can be like today
Until tomorrow the blueprint
Is unavailable


When will, mindset, motive and motion
Assemble like light infantry
And morale is high
( shirkers have not these days
Nor the overly-analytical )
Its first thought, best thought
And follow through
It’s the poetry of actions unwittingly preplayed
Its attraction getting the better
Of promotion

Most wondrous of all is the timing
They get these days when they must
Or simple serendipity plays its hand
On a day like this
Stalingrad stopped starving
Sevastipol was capital of the earth
Because its mayor
Was having
One of these days.

[schadenfreude]

You have an intriguing style, Quasi. I like your imagery.

[AuntShecky]

The latest pieces show two areas of great improvement:
(1) more specific images and fewer generalizations in the content. I liked the sports allusions in "Expansive." Any friend of the great Secretariat is a friend of mine!(2) better shaped lines which look good on the page.

[quasimodo1]

BALL LIGHTNING

Casting filament into the surf, during an electric storm
The nylon became copper, flexible rod grounded-out angler
And earth
Lightning appeared in sun-shaped balls
Like star-shells over the outer- bank beach
A confidence struck like a bolt; a caught fish a given.
Over and above this sport, a sky stored the positive charge, capacitor for radiant thought and presage: fine realization of past and future
Rested firmly on present sands.
These moments mock the perceptions of risk
The firmament never needed creation
And almost stared out, sarcastic
Toward the glacial ebb of evolution
As if the so-called epiphany much coveted
Had always been clearly available
When doubt was not.

[quasimodo1]

DAWN ENTHRALLED

dawn
She has us
enthralled
encephalitic
Encompassing what's new
No day's a given, or taken
Energized by this day's unique light
Truly, in physics, no parallel
Absorbing this light
All tasks are
Play, are effortless
In this
Blithe and liquid light

[qimissung]

I really like these. In particular I love the last lines of "Ball Lightening": "As if the so-called epiphany much coveted had always been clearly available when doubt was not."

[quasimodo1]

THE DAO OF MASLOW

The Dao of Maslow
cannot be expressed
if attempted
an inaudible, ephemeral sound
of feedback-loops
Hypnotize, mesmerize,
until comprehension
masquerades
as conceptual mastery.
The riddle is mystic
The proximity mythic
The ancient memory atavistic
in the epic garden
of needs.

[PrinceMyshkin]

THE DAO OF MASLOW

The Dao of Maslow
cannot be expressed
if attempted
an inaudible, ephemeral sound
of feedback-loops
Hypnotize, mesmerize,
until comprehension
masquerades
as conceptual mastery.
The riddle is mystic
The proximity mythic
The ancient memory atavistic
in the epic garden
of needs.

I'm an admirer of Maslow, of many of his aphorisms, which adds to my admiration of the nimbleness of this poem.

[quasimodo1]

Thank you, PrinceMyshkin, it's the kind of smaller poem I love to work on when the great epic containing all humanity's knowledge elludes me.

[PrinceMyshkin]

Thank you, PrinceMyshkin, it's the kind of smaller poem I love to work on when the great epic containing all humanity's knowledge elludes me.

Perhaps that great epic will, in the end, be comprised of these smaller poems as St. Peter's is made of individual stones...

[quasimodo1]

Old St. Peter's Basilica was the fourth-century church begun by the Emperor Constantine between 326 and 333 AD. I hope I don't run short on time.

[quasimodo1]

THE MITHRIDATIC DEATH OF MIAMI BILL

-


"During his boyhood his life was attempted by plots on the part of his guardians, who, mounting him on a restive horse, forced him to ride and hurl the javelin; but when these attempts failed, as his management of the horse was superior to his years, they tried to cut him off by poison. He, however, being on his guard against such treachery, frequently took antidotes, and so fortified himself, by exquisite preventives, against their malice, that when he was an old man, and wished to die by poison, he was unable."
Justin, Epitome (XXXVII.2)


From the vulnerabilities of his infancy
Baby William prepared for his personal anti-ecology
Siblings sibilant of his awareness
Would have him banished from the nest
Survival wasn't a pastime for plump, didactic instructors
Finding moss on the northerly bark of trees
Held no relevance for a foundling with a home
Of sorts
A family for frenetic children wanting for a nicety
The father was proud but lacked all resources for that refinement
Economically incapable of providing an alignment
With a food triangle like the template used today
Indicating luxuries above needs, to the starving.

[quasimodo1]

HOSPITAL FOR INCURABLES
Hope flourishes in
The Hospital for Incurables.
Or used to before the demolition of the Home,
Now there’s a sublet opportunity.
Driving by that Gold on Black sign,
My empathies went out to the unseen patients,
Or were they boarders?
How might one apply?
Why would one apply?
When there are perfectly sound bridges,
In this intemperate region.

[PrinceMyshkin]

Something about this - the title, perhaps - made me think of E.A. Poe, apart from which it's a metaphysically challenging riddle.

[quasimodo1]

Its been awhile, PrinceM, but the riddle is the story that goes with the piece. In a part of Philadelphia some used to call "the Main Line" (it's moved westard some since then), this Home or Hospital was an enigmatic presence and more passers-by than myself wondered about the goings on there. This is back in the day when "hospice" refered to something quite intangible. I heard stories from those days when husbands would threaten sickly wives (and vice versa) to abandon them there. The actual facts about the place... still researching that bit of local history. Thanks for the comment. q1

[quasimodo1]

XAIPE
A GREEK NECROPOLIS
Reaches gently for the living
e.e. knew the word, as did Durrell.
Death to the harsh RIP, life for those with Xaipe on their stone
“be happy” and journey well spoke the now dead Greek to the then dead Greek
Like a meaningful oblivion, a much lighter chastisement.
Now you know your life’s limitations but go on to another without imitation.
Brevity is this soul’s witticism.
The massive English vocabulary cannot emulate such a parting wish.
Go not into darkness like a Celt, but to a kinder geniality less permanent.
Like the parent evoking a child’s eventual end, they wish to see them going…
Satiated and gratified.
The weight of the gravestone is but a bubble of ozone.
Xiape and greetings.

[quasimodo1]

SPACES OF LIGHT, DARK
Travel is a balm, despite being becalmed,
My wonder is those closed in spaces, made for famous corpses.
Tombs, mausoleums, crypts, valleys of kings, above ground burials.
Time draws out differently, distortedly, there… in those wishful spaces.
Above Crete now is that same Minoan light, which,
Was doused by pyroclastic dust,
Below which the dazzling murals live in a somewhere time,
Not awaiting renewal or visits from disembodied souls,
Nor a warrior-poet with weapon anxieties.
Like the crypt for Hugo’s Esmeralda, laid out
Closed in that timeful mute space:

Imagined infinities of life.

[PrinceMyshkin]

"Time draws out differently, distortedly, there…" and how beautifully you draw it out for us here. Thanks.

[Bar22do]

SPACES OF LIGHT, DARK
Travel is a balm, despite being becalmed,
My wonder is those closed in spaces, made for famous corpses.
Tombs, mausoleums, crypts, valleys of kings, above ground burials.
Time draws out differently, distortedly, there… in those wishful spaces.
Above Crete now is that same Minoan light, which,
Was doused by pyroclastic dust,
Below which the dazzling murals live in a somewhere time,
Not awaiting renewal or visits from disembodied souls,
NoR a warrior-poet with weapon anxieties.
Like the crypt for Hugo’s Esmeralda, laid out
Closed in that timeful mute space:

Imagined infinities of life.

Quasimodo1 -

"Imagined infinities of life" is awesome!

travel is a balm, indeed,

I don't really know why should crypts and burial places be wishful... but

I like the dark, disillusioned atmosphere of your poem. Thank you, be well - and regards from Bar

[quasimodo1]

CAPULIN’S SPIRAL
Volcanic cores, as a rule, form asymmetrically, magnanimously speaking.
A turnpike spiraled upward toward the deceased caldera,
A giant geometric string of basalt dna.
Edging along the lack of guard-rail felt unusually riskless,
Although any untoward turning would bring death without maiming,
Finding this fact comforting was unnerving.
Capulin raises its cone, its shell sloughed off, dwindling to the talus down.
While cretaceous creatures counted their days,
The fireball graciously dawdled.
This unabashed tourist, depreciating, elevating a view, of panoramic tableland,
Mesas, buttes, the errant creasote bush.
One might imagine Folsom man scrounging near the venting fire, sulfurous,
No existential mindset being available.
Even pre-Anasazi people exhibited seasonal vulnerabilities.
The progeny Hopi would visit, weather permitting.
Revering their sweat lodges and baskets while Pueblo Bonito squatted
In a remote valley, ruining itself without witness.
The Department of the Interior designated the inferno a monument, while,
Nothing legible appeared in the stone; the magma chambers speaking for themselves… What could they say, in any case…
Kilroy was here… Crazy Horse was there.
Down in the foggy caldera, a crucible long cooled by tectonics,
Just another tranquil comfort. “Let us go then, you and I” to a non-Michaelangelic creation of the purgatorial earth.


[PrinceMyshkin]

This is an astounding poem which might be bettered only if it were divided into stanzas. There's so much richness here, so much to devour (and to Google!) that stanza breaks might provide even the most enchanted readers occasions to take a breath. (As a matter of perhaps impertinent curiousity, I'm wondering if you deliberated breaking the text at any point but decided it needed to run as one cascading waterfall of images and syllables?)

[quasimodo1]

The lab technician was carrying his sanity, in a bag with a fashionable logo, not being that careful, considering it wasn't anything special, he almost left the rationality control in that plastic sack, in the back of a yellow cab, he remembered it just as he walked away from the fee exchange, couldn't tell, might be useful later, or even a requirement at an anxious job interview, there was no amygdala to leak or leave stains, he was pretty sure the pituatary wasn't included in his mental approval package, still, one must have safeguards against rufians, hooligans or, the holy saints forbid, psychopaths. What if a manic-depressive noticed its normalcy and got suddenly jealous. A half wit would go quite far on misgotten gains of sanity. Petty crime wasn't the main concern, however. Paranoids with conspiracy theories could have a field day masquerading as workmen, analysts, care-givers (that would be a stretch). Soon he's have to get it back under his hat, in some way, then the only worry would be his eventual demise, his passing away, though that be many summers off, maybe, with luck. When he passed on to the next life or to the void, he did assume he would be sane at least. How else could one deal with solemn afterlife moments. If the tibeten book of the dead had any credence, he'd at least need it to get past the evil gods trying to prevent a more positive reincarnation. Even if the bottomless pit of oblivian was his only reward, not that he deserved one, still one needed to keep one's head together in situations like that. Don't even mention any kind of last judgement... You needed your wits in a grave test such as a deity might apply. He'll stay calm, in any case. Just think. Don't let your mind wander. Infinity needed stability.

[PrinceMyshkin]

There's an engagingly hysterical wit throughout this but in the end that proves to be a problem as hysteria and wit - the one expressive of a loss of control and the other, an attempt to control a situation that is otherwise chaotic or self contradictory - hysteria and wit are adversaries, and the premise of this piece seemed to me that in the end one or the other would triumph. But here, in the end, there's a sense of a reasoned resolution, which I felt as an anti-climax.

[quasimodo1]

Somehow I wished a cynicism and sense of absurdity would hang on the alleged humor but the anticlimax, as you say, is not unintended. Your too kind, as usual. q1

[Bar22do]

I actually enjoyed how it ended, for me the end allows to absorb the intensities and to get back to the reading with a new perspective. It's an experience, one that makes me fore-feel another within, and thus naturally invites a second reading.. Best regards, Bar