Rumors of Life (by Scott Wannberg) – video

Video permalink: http://youtu.be/7g4DHzhMZlA
“Rumors of Life” by Scott Wannberg was recorded April 28, 2007 at The Book Collector in Sacramento, California.  Video courtesy of Aphasia Press.

The Pumpkin (by John Greenleaf Whittier)

The Pumpkin
by John Greenleaf Whittier
[1850]

Oh, greenly and fair in the lands of the sun,
The vines of the gourd and the rich melon run,
And the rock and the tree and the cottage enfold,
With broad leaves all greenness and blossoms all gold,
Like that which o’er Nineveh’s prophet once grew,
While he waited to know that his warning was true,
And longed for the storm-cloud, and listened in vain
For the rush of the whirlwind and red fire-rain.

On the banks of the Xenil the dark Spanish maiden
Comes up with the fruit of the tangled vine laden;
And the Creole of Cuba laughs out to behold
Through orange-leaves shining the broad spheres of gold;
Yet with dearer delight from his home in the North,
On the fields of his harvest the Yankee looks forth,
Where crook-necks are coiling and yellow fruit shines,
And the sun of September melts down on his vines.

Ah! on Thanksgiving day, when from East and from West,
From North and from South comes the pilgrim and guest;
When the gray-haired New Englander sees round his board
The old broken links of affection restored;
When the care-wearied man seeks his mother once more,
And the worn matron smiles where the girl smiled before;
What moistens the lip and what brightens the eye,
What calls back the past, like the rich Pumpkin pie?

Oh, fruit loved of boyhood! the old days recalling,
When wood-grapes were purpling and brown nuts were falling!
When wild, ugly faces we carved in its skin,
Glaring out through the dark with a candle within!
When we laughed round the corn-heap, with hearts all in tune,
Our chair a broad pumpkin, — our lantern the moon,
Telling tales of the fairy who travelled like steam
In a pumpkin-shell coach, with two rats for her team!

Then thanks for thy present! none sweeter or better
E’er smoked from an oven or circled a platter!
Fairer hands never wrought at a pastry more fine,
Brighter eyes never watched o’er its baking, than thine!
And the prayer, which my mouth is too full to express,
Swells my heart that thy shadow may never be less,
That the days of thy lot may be lengthened below,
And the fame of thy worth like a pumpkin-vine grow,
And thy life be as sweet, and its last sunset sky
Golden-tinted and fair as thy own Pumpkin pie!

Looney Case (by P.A. Levy)

 

Looney Case

VOICE OVER

 

readers are reminded that this poem

contains cliché dialogue

a hint of cartoon violence and a plot line

of no real significance

that some readers may find mildly irritating

 

THE STORY SO FAR

 

i’m the perfect usual candidate

to be a tv police suspect

i’ve always been aware of that

i’ve that sort of face

the sort of face with one caterpillar eyebrow

a hairy creature that sits on my brow

laying in wait

 

 

THE CANYON RIDDLE

 

during a murder investigation

where a body was found in a canyon

although no one was there

to hear the scream

(except the murderer

who

according to the tv detectives

was me and only me

so help me god)

nine out of ten tv police detectives

will always point the finger at

the first person on the scene

wearing a unibrow

 

then cut to the next scene

in the pub

celebrating with a whiskey chaser

and cop drama laughter

case solved

 

SORRY OFFICERS, I’VE NOT COMMITTED A CRIME

 

not this time

they had their prime suspect

me

but they had no motive

 

bring him in let’s lean on him a bit

said the super

we’ll use some electricity

push him down a few stairs (so to speak)

strap some dynamite

between his legs

he might just want to spill the beans

full confession

tell us all

 

BREAK FOR A COMMERCIAL

 

have a smile that’s glowing and bright

brush your teeth with new radioactive white

for that beaming confidence

made from the finest

sellafield ingredients

 

PART TWO

 

the chief super’s eyes

were like tape recorder reels

his mind a mass of tangled

magnetic tape

he went into rewind and said

on the day in question

we believe

you first tried to kill

mr roadrunner esq by dropping

an anvil on his head

but missed

 

however

sly crafty wily beast that you are

you had a back-up plan

the 100 ton weight did the trick

and now mr roadrunner esq

flat lined

beep! beeps! no more

 

what the …

you think i’m a cartoon

i said

 

well you have been sketchy

about your whereabouts

 

i’ve been nowhere near the canyon

i went to a rock concert 

with my mates

barney and fred

got home late i was starving

the only thing i murdered

was a bowl of cornflakes

 

i don’t like the look of this one

said p c plod

could be we’ve got ourselves

a serial killer

 

TUNE IN NEXT WEEK

END ON A CLIFF-HANGER

CUE THEME MUSIC

ROLL CREDITS

 

staring

inspector gadget as chief super

deputy dawg as pc plod

wile e coyote as wile e coyote

 

THAT’S ALL FOLKS

‘TILL NEXT WEEK

* * * * *

Born in East London but now residing amongst the hedge mumblers of rural Suffolk, P.A.Levy has been published in many magazines, from ‘A cappella Zoo’ to ‘Zygote In My Coffee’ and stations in-between.  He is also a founding member of the Clueless Collective and can be found loitering on page corners and wearing hoodies at www.cluelesscollective.co.uk.

I never lost as much but twice (by Emily Dickinson)

Emily Dickinson 

[1858]

I never lost as much but twice —
And that was in the sod.
Twice have I stood a beggar
Before the door of God!

Angels — twice descending
Reimbursed my store —
Burglar! Banker — Father!
I am poor once more!


*

France (by Siegfried Sassoon)

 

France
by Siegfried Sassoon
[from The Old Huntsman and Other Poems, 1918]

She triumphs, in the vivid green
Where sun and quivering foliage meet;
And in each soldier’s heart serene;
When death stood near them they have seen
The radiant forests where her feet
Move on a breeze of silver sheen.

And they are fortunate, who fight
For gleaming landscapes swept and shafted
And crowned by cloud pavilions white;
Hearing such harmonies as might
Only from Heaven be downward wafted–
Voices of victory and delight.

*

well meaning neckties (by Alicia Young)

well meaning neckties

he loved me perfectly

more completely

in one night

than all the others

with their combined efforts

overblown eight ball romances
egos
ivy league educations
wallets
fun house cocks
poorly tailored psychology
wearing cowboy boots
on a summer night in detroit
front men screaming at their drummers
and the sight of me walking away

over the decades of my
failed overtures
at making a life

all gods
whose constellations
have been burned from my sky

they’re all my favorite divorce

but not him
no, certainly not

he makes me regret all the lesser men
for whom i’ve bought
well meaning neckties




* * * * *

Alicia Young is a poet, teacher, mother, middling pianist, and above average drunk. She has the tongue of a harpy and is rumored to be a bit of a tramp. She is a modern day Southern belle, born on Kentucky’s bourbon trail, who enjoys black coffee in the morning and a fine cigar at night. Her Electra complex is the stuff of legend.  She makes a hobby of causing sailors to blush.  Ms. Young is the author of Hell on Heels, poems by Alicia Young, released in 2012 by Lady-Lazarus Press.

The Mountain (by Robert Frost)

The Mountain
by Robert Frost
[from North of Boston (1914)]

The mountain held the town as in a shadow
I saw so much before I slept there once:
I noticed that I missed stars in the west,
Where its black body cut into the sky.
Near me it seemed: I felt it like a wall
Behind which I was sheltered from a wind.
And yet between the town and it I found,
When I walked forth at dawn to see new things,
Were fields, a river, and beyond, more fields.
The river at the time was fallen away,
And made a widespread brawl on cobble-stones;
But the signs showed what it had done in spring;
Good grass-land gullied out, and in the grass
Ridges of sand, and driftwood stripped of bark.
I crossed the river and swung round the mountain.
And there I met a man who moved so slow
With white-faced oxen in a heavy cart,
It seemed no harm to stop him altogether.

“What town is this?” I asked. 

                                               “This? Lunenburg.”

Then I was wrong: the town of my sojourn,
Beyond the bridge, was not that of the mountain,
But only felt at night its shadowy presence.
“Where is your village? Very far from here?”

“There is no village–only scattered farms.
We were but sixty voters last election.
We can’t in nature grow to many more:
That thing takes all the room!” He moved his goad.
The mountain stood there to be pointed at.
Pasture ran up the side a little way,
And then there was a wall of trees with trunks:
After that only tops of trees, and cliffs
Imperfectly concealed among the leaves.
A dry ravine emerged from under boughs
Into the pasture. 

                            “That looks like a path.
Is that the way to reach the top from here?–
Not for this morning, but some other time:
I must be getting back to breakfast now.”

“I don’t advise your trying from this side.
There is no proper path, but those that have
Been up, I understand, have climbed from Ladd’s.
That’s five miles back. You can’t mistake the place:
They logged it there last winter some way up.
I’d take you, but I’m bound the other way.”

“You’ve never climbed it?” 

                                         “I’ve been on the sides
Deer-hunting and trout-fishing. There’s a brook
That starts up on it somewhere–I’ve heard say
Right on the top, tip-top–a curious thing.
But what would interest you about the brook,
It’s always cold in summer, warm in winter.
One of the great sights going is to see
It steam in winter like an ox’s breath,
Until the bushes all along its banks
Are inch-deep with the frosty spines and bristles–
You know the kind. Then let the sun shine on it!”

“There ought to be a view around the world
From such a mountain–if it isn’t wooded
Clear to the top.” I saw through leafy screens
Great granite terraces in sun and shadow,
Shelves one could rest a knee on getting up–
With depths behind him sheer a hundred feet–
Or turn and sit on and look out and down,
With little ferns in crevices at his elbow.

“As to that I can’t say. But there’s the spring,
Right on the summit, almost like a fountain.
That ought to be worth seeing.”

                                                   “If it’s there.

You never saw it?”

                               “I guess there’s no doubt
About its being there. I never saw it.
It may not be right on the very top:
It wouldn’t have to be a long way down
To have some head of water from above,
And a good distance down might not be noticed
By anyone who’d come a long way up.
One time I asked a fellow climbing it
To look and tell me later how it was.”

“What did he say?”

                               “He said there was a lake

Somewhere in Ireland on a mountain top.”

“But a lake’s different. What about the spring?”

“He never got up high enough to see.
That’s why I don’t advise your trying this side.
He tried this side. I’ve always meant to go
And look myself, but you know how it is:
It doesn’t seem so much to climb a mountain
You’ve worked around the foot of all your life.
What would I do? Go in my overalls,
With a big stick, the same as when the cows
Haven’t come down to the bars at milking time?
Or with a shotgun for a stray black bear?
‘Twouldn’t seem real to climb for climbing it.”

“I shouldn’t climb it if I didn’t want to–
Not for the sake of climbing. What’s its name?”

“We call it Hor: I don’t know if that’s right.”

“Can one walk around it? Would it be too far?”

“You can drive round and keep in Lunenburg,
But it’s as much as ever you can do,
The boundary lines keep in so close to it.
Hor is the township, and the township’s Hor–
And a few houses sprinkled round the foot,
Like boulders broken off the upper cliff,
Rolled out a little farther than the rest.”

“Warm in December, cold in June, you say?”

“I don’t suppose the water’s changed at all.
You and I know enough to know it’s warm
Compared with cold, and cold compared with warm.
But all the fun’s in how you say a thing.”

“You’ve lived here all your life?”

                                                  “Ever since Hor
Was no bigger than a—-” What, I did not hear.
He drew the oxen toward him with light touches
Of his slim goad on nose and offside flank,
Gave them their marching orders and was moving.



*

Her Monument, The Image Cut Thereon (by Ezra Pound)

Her Monument, The Image Cut Thereon
by Ezra Pound
[from Personæ, 1926]

     From the Italian of Leopardi

Such wast thou,
Who art now
But buried dust and rusted skeleton.
Above the bones and mire,
Motionless, placed in vain,
Mute mirror of the flight of speeding years,
Sole guard of grief
Sole guard of memory
Standeth this image of the beauty sped.

O glance, when thou wast still as thou art now,
How hast thou set the fire
A-tremble in men’s veins; O lip curved high
To mind me of some urn of full delight,
O throat girt round of old with swift desire,
O palms of Love, that in your wonted ways
Not once but many a day
Felt hands turn ice a-sudden, touching ye,
That ye were once! of all the grace ye had
That which remaineth now
Shameful, most sad
Finds ‘neath this rock fit mould, fit resting place!

And still when fate recalleth,
Even that semblance that appears amongst us
Is like to heaven’s most ‘live imagining.
All, all our life’s eternal mystery!
To-day, on high
Mounts, from our mighty thoughts and from the fount
Of sense untellable, Beauty
That seems to be some quivering splendour cast
By the immortal nature on this quicksand,

And by surhuman fates
Given to mortal state
To be a sign and an hope made secure
Of blissful kingdoms and the aureate spheres;
And on the morrow, by some lightsome twist,
Shameful in sight, abject, abominable
All this angelic aspect can return
And be but what it was
With all the admirable concepts that moved from it
Swept from the mind with it in its departure.

Infinite things desired, lofty visions
‘Got on desirous thoughts by natural virtue,
And the wise concord, whence through delicious seas
The arcane spirit of the whole Mankind
Turns hardy pilot . . . and if one wrong note
Strike the tympanum,
Instantly
That paradise is hurled to nothingness.

O mortal nature,
If thou art
Frail and so vile in all,
How canst thou reach so high with thy poor sense;
Yet if thou art
Noble in any part
How is the noblest of thy speech and thought
So lightly wrought
Or to such base occasion lit and quenched? 

*

Unfair (by P.A. Levy)

Unfair

Yell if yer wanna go faster faster faster

jet fighters are just tomorrow’s

cigarette lighters, sit back we’ll have a long bong,

or two, then try and measure the speed of sound,

the sound of war – (what is it good for?)

Absolutely nothing stimulating about being squeezed

into the ghost train twice a day, there’s no fun in the bumper

car school run, and what’s the point in pointing guns

just so you can win a prize: a china dog, a cuddly toy,

a goldfish drowning in a plastic bag? 

Who in their right mind wants that? – (perhaps it’s waving.)

This is the fun fair so why not enjoy yourself?

Relax, ride the rollercoaster

get fat and stuck in candyfloss,

play a little find the lady, or in the house of mirrors

adjust your size, shape, contemplate

why cocunuts are shy.  Fish for ducks

and throw some hoops.

Then Scream when you’ve had enough.

Scream when yer wanna stop.

Scream and Scream until you’re sick.

But what exactly did you expect?



* * * * *

Born in East London but now residing amongst the hedge mumblers of rural Suffolk, P.A.Levy has been published in many magazines, from ‘A cappella Zoo’ to ‘Zygote In My Coffee’ and stations in-between.  He is also a founding member of the Clueless Collective and can be found loitering on page corners and wearing hoodies at www.cluelesscollective.co.uk.

Address to a Child (by William Wordsworth)

Wordsworth (in an 1873 reproduction of an 1839 watercolor by Margaret Gillies)

Address to a Child
by William Wordsworth

What way does the Wind come? What way does he go?
He rides over the water, and over the snow,
Through wood, and through vale; and, o’er rocky height,
Which the goat cannot climb, takes his sounding flight;
He tosses about in every bare tree,
As, if you look up, you plainly may see;
But how he will come, and whither he goes,
There’s never a scholar in England knows.

He will suddenly stop in a cunning nook,
And ring a sharp ‘larum;–but, if you should look,
There’s nothing to see but a cushion of snow,
Round as a pillow, and whiter than milk,
And softer than if it were covered with silk.
Sometimes he’ll hide in the cave of a rock,
Then whistle as shrill as the buzzard cock;
–Yet seek him,–and what shall you find in the place?
Nothing but silence and empty space;
Save, in a corner, a heap of dry leaves,
That he’s left, for a bed, to beggars or thieves!
As soon as ’tis daylight to-morrow, with me 
You shall go to the orchard, and then you will see
That he has been there, and made a great rout,
And cracked the branches, and strewn them about;
Heaven grant that he spare but that one upright twig
That looked up at the sky so proud and big
All last summer, as well you know,
Studded with apples, a beautiful show!

Hark! over the roof he makes a pause,
And growls as if he would fix his claws
Right in the slates, and with a huge rattle
Drive them down, like men in a battle:
–But let him range round; he does us no harm,
We build up the fire, we’re snug and warm;
Untouched by his breath see the candle shines bright,
And burns with a clear and steady light;
Books have we to read,–but that half-stifled knell,
Alas! ’tis the sound of the eight o’clock bell.
–Come now we’ll to bed! and when we are there
He may work his own will, and what shall we care?
He may knock at the door,–we’ll not let him in; 
May drive at the windows,–we’ll laugh at his din;
Let him seek his own home wherever it be;
Here’s a cozie warm house for Edward and me.



*