More

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"My darling Cleo, you smell so sweet!" I sighed.
The same, of course, if said of me, could only sound absurd,
At least to me, and she perhaps would not much more
Care to hear it said of her, whether loudly now
Or whispered in her short red hair as I did then.

Maybe it wasn't anything very true.
It was, after all, only perfume out of a bottle
That had a fancy pink glass stopper she could use
To caress into her skin the endless scent she sought—

That funky fetching female hint
Based on flowers and ripened fruits
And the greasy musk of a small male deer.
Perhaps there was some alluring odor in it,
Even so, that was her very own.

Such sweetness from inside seemed mostly to infuse
Those five old-fashioned fuzzy pastel sweaters
She wore in random order through the week.
She let me brush my hand against one once—
The one time that we kissed—
Beneath her wine-splashed unsashed dryclean-only coat

And I pretended that I felt the warmth alone
And not the buoyant weight of her intriguing matron's curves!
Then Cleo blushed, and sniffed and hugged herself, and, tipsy, winked,
"Such fine angora is always warm and snug like this,
But isn't it a sissy ending for a gamy goat...?"

That lazy scent would cling to anything. I smell it now.
Once I found it lingering in the lining of
A leather watchband she'd hardly ever worn.
Always it suffused the deep-red woolen watch cap she liked,
When home, to throw across the room without a passing glance.

The more time passed since her divorce
that first long year or so,
the plumper she seemed to get, but she still looked good
and triggered my arousal more by far, I guess,
than she with her sweet sense would ever want to know.

I think we never had much of a chance,
that my goat-stained desire to make her care,
to make her prance,
was bound to make our glands
Go blind and bland like this—
I wanted to consume her! She could not even kiss!

Maybe I'd have gotten further with her
if I'd schemed (yes!) even more,
if I could have simply stripped her complications down
to just that juicy scent
And dipped her dimple-deep in light sweet olive oil

And then myself in her
and rolled her plump new curves around
against my roundy own
as if we were two plum tomatoes, wet and ripe,
atop a bed of breadcrumbs adorning caesar salad!

I guess you think that sounds absurd.
She'd think so, too, I thought.
My feeling, though, is I still wish
she had let that gorgeous bright red hair of hers grow long
and let me ache for her in whispers just that much more!

rcs.

Current draft (12th): 02/09/03
©2000 Ronald C. Southern

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Gary Gilmore Blues

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Criminals are the great existentialists now;
We cheer them on to life, but they go for the glory.
Death gives them identity; they even turn into artists
In their last golden moments of captivity.

We don’t understand it
And thus abhor it,
But the fact probably is, this dying’s
The first right thing they’ve ever done.

rcs.

2nd draft: 02/08/03
©1981 Ronald C. Southern

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Horse Latitudes

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Though it is true that high and wide above these ships
that smell of salt and earthy damp and slight dry-rot,
eagles soar and mate while sea gulls sail and call
as if to tell some yet-unfathomed fate,

though through the tangled rope and cloth
a feather falls and something true aloft turns false below,
here where this craft, becalmed and yet deranged,
lets drowning horses churn the glassy sea to froth,

though in the seascape's mist my dreams completely shift
and my careening mind storms back to land to find
I can but shake my lifted fist
against the pounding of the waves...

Still, in that sinking moment, comes an
unexpected rise, a flight as full
and swift and bright as seabirds' glinting vanes
of gold and gray and white. Now, once again,

I find my heart attendant to your sorrow
and for a moment unentailed by gathered furls,
cloud-white and high and wide yet windless sails,
I still have eyes to see you as before.

Now though adrift I stand ashore and view
old visions drawn out anew in this reflecting glass.
Between those always-closed old wooden blinds you opened our first
date, the small compulsions of my house and heartbreak gravitate--

stale scents of nicotine and ash, black coffee rings
and cans of Coke, pale sugar ants and salty crumbs--
slight things, I guess, largely unseen, yet how they marred
and mar the white wood shelf above my hearth.

Now in memory or in fact I stand still,
too close again, before the mirror hung above
this cold white mantle and heart's dark fire--face to face,
the same as then, as when you said I'd gone too far,

as when you pled that you would suffocate
if I kept pressing my demands
or that we might explode if I could not just love you
and not hate your husband's plain bright wedding band.

And for a while, that worked. Still, all my heart protests
that what it is I love in you
I wish to plainly see, and wish to fold
all fantasies complex into a simple scheme.

If with insistent words
or with a brave compassion
I could dare this growing mist
which makes me your displeasure,

if from my bold and quelling hateful stare
you could tell that
part of me would gladly die
to keep your heart my treasure,

if I could clutch
hell's phantoms by their throats,
make them dance
and cease to prance and gloat,

if all the things I love to say came true--how one
can love and not possess, for one--but, no, not me.
Confess: grim truth is what is true;
the rest is jagged jest, on land or out at sea...

For truth or dare, that seabird breeze could not become
a gossamer of warm air uplifting me with ease.
No flight enlivens or relieves this flagging flesh I bear,
not till the final horse's plight and the last feather's fall.

Still, though I sank and swam, and swim and sink here yet,
and though so brief (those bright reliefs!)
I think myself a better man that you and some
fair few have loved me so, absurd and errant as I am.

So, yes, it's me you see out there,
a sailor all at sea, one of those
jerry-built, jimmied, jangled lives astray,
as aimless as jetsam at ebb tide,

a muddled mariner amidships who strives
to soar, yet always goes over the side,
a churning hoof, a lifted fist,
that strains against and to the waves

till in the frothing sea
I sink and swim no more
and drown.


rcs.

15th draft: 07/28/04
©1976 Ronald C. Southern

Horse Latitudes: Plural noun. Either of two belts of latitudes located over the oceans at about 30° to 35° north and south, having high barometric pressure, calms, and light, changeable winds. Etymology: Possibly from Spanish golfo de las yeguas, mares' sea. Reports that horses often needed to be thrown overboard, to lighten the load when no wind was present, in order to move the vessels on the water may be apocryphal.

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The Shyest Hand

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My children in the churchyard
Are singing as the bells have rung,
Hoping as myself has sung
While reaching out of time
For the kindness of your hand.

My children on the city streets
Are dreaming as the sun has shone,
Starving as my heart has pined
While reaching out of bounds
For any place at all to stand.

My children on the greensward
Are growing as the trees have grown,
Soaring as my soul has flown
While reaching for the shyest hand
That I shall ever know.

My children on the plains of tears
Are cringing as the brave have fears,
Climbing as my heart has height
While groping with these vaneless wings
To gain your chaste embrace.

My children near the forest-dream
Are dying as the phoenix dies,
Shining as my eyes have wept
While catching at the warmest sun
My dawn has ever seen.

My children by this sun-lit shore
Are kneeling as the saints have prayed,
Knelling as heart's bells have rung
While reaching healing home at last,
My hand within your grasp.

rcs.

3rd draft: 02/07/03
©1967 Ronald C. Southern

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Old Millennium Dancing Shoes

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(Saint Joan and Guinevere)

Don't let it be misunderstood
what it is to be alone with an overwhelming mood,
to be untaken once again, a savage wallflower at the waltz,
waiting for a chance to see eternity, not me, improve its stance—
but, how, dear distant Guinevere—how can I say that?

It is so seldom understood
why that which is chosen is most difficult in all the world,
why human hearts confused by doubts become enclosed by walls—
why did they not break out or dare to ask
that lonely brave young Joan of Arc to dance?

Don't try to tell it now to any woman or any man,
don't even try to understand, how this reality of lies
surrounds us like a phantom's spell too subtle to undo.
Love's pirouettes in new soft shoes are all as real, World News avows,
as this old-dancing-shoe world-weariness will allow.

If you think cold sober reason can defend us from such dizzy views,
attend with me this still interior spinning room,
recline with me and shine those coal-black eyes I love this way
till gloom comes up the sheets like flames and clings to me
like smoke and stings your lids and leaves your lips quite parched...

How many dazed and daunted fools here, Gwen,
have seen the undisguised device or tool
of endless time reveal itself
and stood their ground before it?
How many voices strangled in the middle of—

Whose given word unbroken will have the strength to cry aloud
when silent tears have drowned us in our pride, yet left us dry?
There's such a world of difference now between
Saint Joan's unfaded passion and what is left of mine.
Christ, be my new religion, Gwen, the wine on which I choke!

Well, why not laugh? Am I another priest or clerk
whose soul records this wide and syncopated concatenation of lies?
A cipher whose unsteady slate chalks up the works and warps
of clumsy possibilities, of cockeyed evolution? Who dances
minuets in mud-boots at the ball and mars the parquet floor?

Time again, time that's hung with festive variation,
time in fluid movement through the seasons,
through space arranged just-so for no apparent reason,
while celibates with beards hang fire in dominoes and masks,
limp puppets on taut strings with only one thing left to do...

When time and space put on their ballet shoes and spin,
whatever keeps us cheek-to-cheek will do for us, we grin,
within the raveled convolutions of this costume ball gone bad—
but, still, that which is constant amid our own inconstancy
in part becomes our God. So, can you imagine the paradox I'm in?

The puppet-master moves the puppet,
but man is moved by nothing, or, like that damned Cauchon,
by nothing but momentum and inertia,
forgetting every heedless, dark, and broken heart that watched
the clean white hem of Joan's unarmored muslin smock begin to burn,

while time moved forth, at first slowly, lately fast,
it never stops or pauses, but glides like wind through grass
beyond the reach of love's embrace and far beyond recall
as season follows fallow season disguised as Guinevere
and we invent new reasons to turn away from grace.

Despite it all, I am a worldly man—
neither hedonists nor ascetics have ever made
much sense to me; in truth or maya, both will bleed.
So, turning, I stumble one little step further
and pray that one step is what leads to another...

Alone again with an overwhelming mood,
I dream of Joan of Arc's undying, aching, fiery soul
and love's expiring old soft-shoe for Gwen
as if such strength and sweetness could be true,
as if I ever knew that dance—but how can I say that?

rcs.

Note: Pierre Cauchon

Pierre Cauchon (kosho), 1371-1442, Bishop of Beauvais, Joan of Arc's tireless persecutor; the primary judge in her 1431 trial. He felt that her refusal to wear women's clothing was by itself proof of her disobedience to the church and of her heresy. At the same time, neither he nor any other official said or did anything to protect her when her brief effort to comply resulted in the English military guards being demonstrative about their sexual interest in her. In short, they attacked her, though she and God fought them off. Unfortunately, she and God did not have the same success with Cauchon's conduct of the trial.

Joan's "rehabilitation" trial took place in 1456. She was canonized in 1920.

10th draft: 06/26/04
©1975 Ronald C. Southern

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Goddamn These Wounded Birds

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(Poem For A Martha I Can't Recall)

Listen, oh listen,
Listen to this wayward wind that blows
Cool and calm through noisy streets,
Between the voices, between the choices,

Our palms outstretched, upraised,
The evening sun in glory,
Indifferent to our praise.

These many faces you contain,
Hold back or offer to my
Too-eager gaze,

I want to, yes,
I want to, no,
I want to shake these youthful dreams and say,
"Give up these tears or tell me why!"

I'd nibble your ears
And whisper, whisper—
Oh, but not for love—
Or do I mean, for Love Alone?

What man will dream his life away
And only speak to phrase or frame his own defense?
He is closed up in a fortress that is safe but dark.
Safe. But Dark.

But listen, listen,
Listen to this wind that gently blows
Calm and cool through cluttered streets,

Our palms outstretched, upraised,
The evening sun in glory
Indifferent to our praise…

rcs.


4th draft: 06/23/04
©1974 Ronald C. Southern

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I Know Such Beauty Still

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For someone who has accumulated so little,
I seem to have a lot of little things,
Whether preserved or accidentally kept
Or tucked away or spilling out like boys at play—
It’s odd just which things in the world will stay.

I run across them now and then,
Pictures and small decorations,
Oddments of different kinds,
Dusty things, dull or waxed or dingy things,

Leftover pieces and parts,
Black metal music machines and softish dreams,
Early technologies and quasi-arts
I can barely call the names of any more.

Things that I stopped in the middle of making,
Arts and Crafts projects,
Like that one braided belt I couldn’t complete,
Things ill conceived, badly done, or tangled,
Or hard things that were always breaking

Or soft things that would just never fit,
Like that wallet with leather parts too thick to sew,
Possessions of little value too valued to throw away.
Some things get lost too easily, I grant,
Yet others seem to cling.

Slides I took of Dan and Charlotte’s happy wedding,
Made moot by hostile divorce and my own estrangement.
Crinkled poems I sent copies of to people I once loved;
Unrelenting Christmas cards received in twos and ones—
Now all the addresses are changed, it seems.

Now all these things are strewn and stuffed
In cluttered boxes, cabinets, and drawers.
What can one do, after the rise and the rush of events,
With wornout remnants still in evidence
Of these losses and lost friends?

Envelopes that remain—some bottle-ringed, stained, and mottled,
Some pristine;
Some empty,
Some with bent-cornered post cards or folded yellow pages spilling out.

Those old receipts, reminders, questions, answers,
Paper peregrinations, perambulations, and forgotten nascent thoughts,
The letters I penned and posted back in youthful haste—
Meaningful these days only to a few old hearts.

Books my friends wrote in—inscriptions, notes, graffiti.
One, who loved Durrell’s Quartet as I did,
Said he’d see me “in another book”—
Some did, some didn’t, George, and some Will yet, I guess.

Some, like you, may dream sweet music to the bitter end
And wish to paint those Dali-esque landscapes in reality,
But reality seems so far away now, back when no one we knew got sick,
I don’t even know how to begin that measure or if you in fact are dead.

Drawings in black and white by friends who now live far away,
Hidden, stored in folders for decades, hung now on paneled walls.
Sketches, sometimes of me, Art and otherwise, now draw me in,
Remind me, remand me, return me for a while in thought,
Where a sense of those old days surrounds me, but never stays.

I tracked dear Wilfried down in Friedberg after 30 years
And we were elated at first. He said he’d long ago abandoned Art
But that it didn’t matter. Too soon, he had no more to say,
Not even of his birds. His life is blurred and lost again in Germany
And, no matter what I say, my old friend is lost to me anew.

Things that people left behind—
A fine line drawing by that Hessian, perhaps,
Or a notebook cover some thoughtless lover
Once scribbled patterns on
Or wrote her treasured name across…

What was a purple and white macramé hatband,
Made for me in happy days by a woman I possessed,
But now so faded two colors have for years been one.
The leather hat I made myself—long gone.
It is so strange how some things stay possessed
Whether I have retained them or not!


Bill’s yellowing old blue-lined address book,
Left here years ago and not returned or sought;
It’s still around, moved from here to there
And back again as time goes by.

I spot it now and then among toy dragons, beside a butterfly in glass,
Some battered insect and cactus books collecting dust, a slight smell like must,
Reminding me of those fungus-scented, antique-timbered, unswept rooms
Where Bill and Waldine worked at Coppini’s defunct old sculpture studio.

Last year’s snapshot of Paula,
Brown-haired with a sprinkle of gray,
Seated with her daughter’s handsome happy half-Tibetan baby boy.
It does not seem so long ago she was a college girl
I made love to and tried but failed to love.

Around and round I went with her like a dog on a bone until perversely
We were friends again. She knew how I’d tried to hate her,
But gave me her forgiveness. I don’t see her much any more,
But I know she makes a very handsome grandma now
And feels remarkably good to hug.

Two black and white old photos of a high-school girl,
My sweetheart then and blonde, but long ago turned gray,
A bright young beauty twice preserved
In glass and silver frames she gave me with her heart.
She’s been discreetly displayed just so for thirty years—

One photo with a smile and one quite serious but serene.
I’ve kept them in this or that room
In each succeeding home I’ve had without her.
Though she’s another’s wife, and plump and flushed and older,
I know that beauty still.

At times I can’t believe I still conserve these foolish things,
These old and sometimes faded dried-up near-forgotten things.
My life is only here upon this page and spilling out once more
Where nothing new is wondrous or will stay,

But I have known a few who were the best,
Of whom I am reminded by all these little things
How good it was to know them
And that I know such beauty still.

rcs.


10th draft: 06/18/04
©2003 Ronald C. Southern

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