Tag Archives: Intermissions

What We Do When We Talk About What To Do

One gives notice. Another grins and abides. The one no longer interested in content, the other insisting on diary entries reaffirming his firm grip on reality. One is motionless, the other still moves about. One accepts but withdraws, the other complains, and even though there’s little to complain about, finds a way to complain about that too. One prays in an empty space, the other watches the news in a room full of knickknacks and memorabilia no one remembers. One drifts, the other plans outings.

One falls silent, another gets up and talks. One is more interested in conversations without words. One deactivates, the other continues to like and comment and, in short, feels engaged.

One stops the vertical fall and the horizontal push, and edges fall away. Another scrolls up and down and takes cuts.

The one never did make sense, the other insists on making sense.

Mr. Bodhair’s Gargoyles

Mr. Bodhair awoke drinking purple fortified mulled wine, spiced with rotting fish, from the mouth of a grotesque gargoyle (disturbingly aware of the redundancy), a recurring dream in which he scaled the crumbling masonry walls of some late medieval gothic cathedral, compelled by an insatiable thirst for water, only to be frustrated by the bizarre flows of undrinkable fluids emitted from the throats of the unspeakable yet annoyingly noisy concreted creatures. He got out of bed, pissed, and started the coffee percolator, smoking a cigarette while he waited, refusing to think about his gargoyles, believing the interpretation of dreams, like poetry, a waste of time, along the lines of horoscopes, prayer, or NASA.

Woolly and Blue

Yes, lend an ear or
if you can’t hear
a hand everyone
needs help some
day sooner or later.

A great funnel follows
this big bang spiral
the universe a canal
of turns and twists
through a milky orifice.

The birds play the leads
the melodies while the trees
rhythm leaves in the wind
as I wile away the evening
dressed in hearing aids.

More than sound is here
to hear is to feel motion
an eyelid angel’s kiss
across the baby’s lanugo
can you hear this?

Dear Reader,

Won’t you please tell me your rules,
style flaws that send you over the edge,
your conjugations, constructions, con-
junctions, your clauses and marks
memorized, when to be and not to be,
double negatives and things dangling
in white space and other wedded dark
matter; for I will find immense
pleasure in breaking & trashing
the etiquette of your ways & days.

Thanks,
Nomere Ana R. Chist

spring

with spring’s sprang nearly sprung
green cheer spread here and there
winter’s rust vanquished vanished
birds appeared and cats chirped

bees abuzz and poets well coffeed
at sidewalk bistro tables smiling
flowered girls no more sobbing,
words like dandelion seeds fill

vacant lots of napkins and notebooks
from self sown gardens of the mind –
happens every year most this clime
a great force in and out the ages goes.



Spring Sweep

Cherry blossom suds fizzle
across the street in the past
tense as the maple samaras
loosen their grab and let go
tiny purple red flowers –
Susan sweeps & I hold the shovel.

The scents immense
a pentatonic hair gel sneeze
like a rim shot on a snare
then the squiggly rinse
of liquorice bush fills
the air as at the summer fair.

But what is still future tense
figgily (like a fig fallen ripe)
on a fawn lawn afternoon
for now needs no articles
not a the or a a stammer
waves of breezy sizzle.


No Word

It might have been said,
were there one to say it,
she was the last human,
but then she would not
have been the last one.

She’d been told to keep
by the river, the fresh fish
would grow and multiply.
The weather returned,
the goats and chickens.

She talked to the animals,
but she found life easier
if she kept silent, forgot
words, let go lingo and,
in the end, was no word.

On the Whole of Things

having cut it out [it, all its]
pleasure now without article
embellishment whole
some questions

consider blue hydrangea
yesterday transplanted
from pot to ground
root, stem, leaf, bud

in which will we find
whole plantness
cup without coffee
gives us to mark time

a day without hours
hours without minutes
minutes without seconds
where will we find time

for whole things
words opening
seeds, bulbs
into whole language

grown in pots
root-bound can
but describe
like mathematics
can not be


At the Centinela

We squiggled and danced around
and the radio and the romance
until all the songs blew fuses
and the whole night crashed down.

We could hear that dark fall coming
down in the valley and up on the hill
whistles and the steel rail humming
buttered popcorn and bubble water.

At the Centinela drive-in theatre
in my ’56 Chevy hoping it would start
up again when the twiddle ended
under surveillance during the draft.


A Sign

They looked for a sign
in the skies, the seas
somewhere, anywhere
around the universe.

A sign that might tell
where to go, how to get
there, a range, a stage
or stay the hell put.

But signs are placed
not by the gods
but by you and me
fools to think we

know anything about
directions, instructions
nods, wags, or winks
we live on the brink

where all the signs
say, “Keep away
from the Edge!”
that surrounds us.

It’s Its Own Thing

On our walk last night, birds,
low in the trees and on the ground,
in the grass and all around,
and it started to rain.

Tomorrow, it may be sunny.
It takes many shapes, this thing.
Sometimes it’s an ear ringing,
a particle of physics.

It is not Paris or San Francisco,
certainly not El Paso or Cairo.
It comes and goes like wind,
ubiquitous and protean.

It’s not me, though
I often have it, or not.
That’s just it with it;
you never know for certain.

It is a professional, white-collared
without capital, contained
out of site.
When it decides to rain,

not a thing you can do about it,
except dance or hustle home,
from which you want
to get away from it all.