- A CHRISTMAS POEM -

                                                          (For Lyn, et al)

…Have occasioned

I think to have been decor-

rating The Tree, it’s

piney quills & tines  

dressing in glassy festoons

weightless baubles of

tins-led Christmas-candy

colors, like porcelain

fragile-fine, hooked canes

& dangled barber-pole-paean

peppermint-stick Memories

of savored hangon

trinkets & heirlooms

looming like a twinkling

tapestry ‘round

wreaths of snowy popped-corn

dangling - “No, darlings, that’s not

for eating…”  Yes, I

have occasioned the

rows of bubbling light-tubes

like glowing chains of

warm caterpillars

inching-on toward the Manger’s

Star of a chrysalis

Christmas Joy to Light-

Up the World!  Oh Yes, I have

occasioned The Tree

Breathing in Ecstasy…

And the Wonder, of this from

a Guy whose Imprimitur

might have been

Tannenbaum!

H.e.m.-H’H.

                         12.8.MMvi. 

 Noel.

“And so, as Tiny Tim observed, G-D bless Us, Every One!”

(Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol). And…

A “…Merry Christmas to All, and to All a Good Night!”

(Clement Clarke Moore, “Twas The Night Before Christmas”).

Amen.

—Holiday SupportCards for sale! Providing Winter aid for stray/feral cats— click the giraffe below for more info! 

 Art by Terrianne U. Swift

Poignant Post

I’d rather be on Cornwall’s shore
despairing for Isolde’s ship
than monitoring e-mail for
Isolde’s electronic blip
on my computer. Message box!
Incoming mail adorns my site
like sailboats seen beside the docks
that mock my landlocked heart’s delight.
For I see flagging on my screen
bright signals that my love arrived
with white displayed on its marine
horizon. Sadly, what’s inscribed
in black is not my heartthrob’s name,
but fans desire’s unquenched flame.

— Frank De Canio 

Life Boat

The captives in a labor camp
with hopeful prospect of relief
will huddle close against the damp
in hopes of tempering their grief.
Yet people who are on a boat
that has no chance of being moored
before it casts its crew afloat
until they’re terminally shored,
make no attempt to bridge divides.
They scarcely dare attenuate 
the terror of engulfing tides.
You’d think their need to navigate
against the coming of the storm
would make their common watch a norm. 

— Frank De Canio  

Naming of Hops

(July 30, 2009) 

Today there will be naming of hops.
Today they’ll have a beer outside 
the oval office of the White House.
Likewise our planet rotates with an oval orbit 
around the sun of no determinate God,
whose purity and innocence informs 
the white bars on the American flag.
Today President Obama, Professor Gates 
and Officer Crowley will have a beer
without discriminatory roots.
Vice-President Biden will grab a Buckler
and ward off journalistic gibes. 
The President will have a Bud Lite. 
Just so, cherry blossoms bud lightly near 
the President’s office, and all around 
the grounds of the White House. 
And today there will be naming of hops.
The professor wanted a Red Stripe.
Indeed red stripes emblazon the American flag 
with the hardiness and valor of patriots 
who fought to make this country free,
with brotherhood from sea to shining sea.
But, fermenting, with true revolutionary fervor,
he settled on a Boston-based Samuel Adams. 
So today there will be naming of hops.
And four men will bond with beer outside the oval office.
The officer in blue will have a Blue Moon.
Indeed blue is the color of justice, perseverance
and vigilance; and upon this cerulean hue, 
the stars representing our states are fixed,
as in the celestial spheres. It’s the color 
of sad, chromatic notes, flat as the moon
rising over the jazzy circuits that light 
the music scenes of America like dancing stars. 
For today there will be naming of hops,
fermented in a brew of friendship and hope. 

— Frank De Canio 

Collateral Damage

For the entire office

a death like his

coming as it has

the day before

Thanksgiving

complicates the holiday

for everyone. It makes

things difficult

for all: the wake

the other matters.

— Donal Mahoney

Leaving

A sudden shift in the air
like the coming of rain
teases the forever greedy streets
and sooty sidewalks
littered with forgotten people
and
leaves,

still dangle impossibly between
the dusty walls that
stifle the wind and
fracture the sun
into sharp spikes of light
that slice through panes of
plate glass, their dim sparkle winking
like dozens of dirty diamonds.

I memorize the rare smell
trying to drape it around my shoulders
like a curtain from an open window.

Starved and meager
grown suddenly wild
they’ll soon turn and seek
release in a sudden plummet
leaving
the sharp skeletal remains
to scrape the dry landscape
with branches that claw
the edge of a ravaged city
as if afraid to let go.

There’s little leftover sky
and it’s a dirty dishwater gray,
but most cannot afford the view
and city people need their privacy
so somehow they manage
without leaving.

Those with no money
have less to fear.
Their eyes flicker briefly.
Their faces reveal nothing.
Jealously they guard the
narrow spaces in a decrepit city
that sweeps past them
like a warm bitter dream
tricking the eye away from places
where the desperate are spread thinner
and left to lurk in the shadows of the fortunate.

I stand crushed inside of it
like a wrinkled map
grown soft and hairy at the fold marks
from too much handling.
and not much actual use.

But there’s the kind of hunger woman can live with
and the kind she’s inclined to feed at any price.
And breaking free of one thing
only makes it easier to become
a prisoner of something else.

I crouch instead inside a tight circle of candlelight
my fisted hands drawn in.
Still,
I’m not leaving.

— Steele Fields

The Outer-Proxima For Your Final Sentences From Long Ago On (A Wing And A Prayer)

If I pledged to speak to you, en oration finale which reached

In time it would take my message to rebound back from the nearest star,

I’d journey waiting for your correspondence in the shushed obsession of static murmurs

Pointing my wings for you, navigating toward the vicinity of your voice

embarking on a tranquil head start, sailing for an Orion divergence

Toward whatever turbulent, pulsating, Centuri star is at the conclusion

I would fly straight into its flames charting a celestial direction

where death would not mute out the communion of those consecrated in oblivion

be it even the rendezvous of speech in vain once I caught up to your voice

which was gasping in just a few fatal breathes then soundless and cold

was the diminutive comfort on the blank map of emptiness, a necessity in the barren

what would be the point to turn back toward home

perching myself on the shoulders of this bountiful legacy

Frozen and separated with the comfort of this message to carry me on forever-

‘Take heart, fear not, for we are.’

— Chris Grasso 

Origin Of The Sea Horse

these horses understand the language of thunder

this wild liquid gallop tastes like tears dripping off their lips

like soured secret words from a letter to an former lover

thrown out and trampled into the mud by the hollowed ones

but who decides which retreating Arabians

anchor underneath the stable

against those pelted by the torn midnight salty sky?

if each steed would grow gills and swim across

the ocean to escape, or gamble in altitude

like the Pegasus of old – eons it seems

before these dispirited creatures with slit wings

where pulled down forever –

here they are begging for the fraternity of the brine

in circles, in panic of plight

once the prairie fills up and becomes a sea bed

foals will gravel within the sunken land

still heaving their noises above the water

until they give up and breathe in the drowned grasslands

and graze on the forest of kelp forgetting how the sinking clouds

betrayed them in the first place

— Chris Grasso 

These Words Are Heavy And Dense

The warning must be heeded, similar to cigarette packs or liquor

In punier print found on Tijuana Bibles

Which howl against the high tide of spite and showing off

Feasting upon the inglorious candor, neither a label or symbol to keep away

This is the infringement of which the words will betray soul less eyes

“Once you read, you’ll judge in extravagant presumptions and understand less.”

Within the invasion of pages, these layers you peel me away

like smashing away the black bitch which crumbles

off the winey summer cliffs of St. Thomas until a statue

manifests like some dusty phoenix of the dark stone

Here you are the thief to swipe me voiceless

and lay transparent within the mythology of opinions

scraping off all my flesh in a way

which makes a man veil under a cell in shadowed disgrace

your notion is judgment chronicled for your amusement

Is it punk to shoot your way out of the library

Ruining the end of the movie before it begins?

The remnants are words left on blank so dense and heavy

You no longer know any comfort of me,

And where the stones thrown rest,

On the violation of all that you assert

you object me in glorious cavernous echoes

Where to understand me is to draw a thin red line at the surface.

— Chris Grasso 

Kurt Cobain

To Boddah-

When all the words are worn out and turn gray

We will speak in infinite tongues of an infernal poet

Remnants written in graffiti underneath the rusted bridge,

Watching you wither in demolitions so well televised

Your magnifigant notes swelling, your grungy voice plunging

Into the canyon echoes of distortion, into feedback so

Piercing and delicate as the dried up leaves of December

Which at the best times growled analogous to those angst pawn shop guitars

Your performance amplified, until the impending end of set

The spectacular recherché of perilous extravaganza every night

By a wall of noise, by the boredom of each power chord from your hand

And from the stirring excitement of music once immersed by a sound of optimism

Hemorrhaged into the false dismal of celebrity the curtain call of betrayal

By the powder and liquid illusions, the gallons flowing across the strip

Wishing at the end that your hoarse burned out voice

would have merely whispered and disobeyed your own genius

Coming back into our world of anonymity,

we would have made an exception

patted you on the back and let you through to us again

aware that you’d become a bitter shrapnel spewing curmudgeon in old age

Instead those ovations were curtain calls to the serene Divine, the heroine

as you dived, those fingers which passed you through the crowd were needles

as abruptly as those notes ended without notice

we gained access to half a song rummaged by instruments smashed, left in a coma

each critic, every thief took a turn firing from a distance

and all you could do is line up the bullet fragments into a concept album

one lead piece for each letter of lyric - wrote out the last note

the canyons sealed up their boarders to the size of a glass crack

you were in a fish bowl, a transparent placenta trapped in a solemn vitality

shooting your way out of a misunderstanding what they call suicidal ideation

as Roma fell all we could do is watch it all burn away from the hillsides

watching others run for your wildfire shooting their way out of this world too

— Chris Grasso 

Spheres Of Another Chance

(italic lines from Riley Martin)

A few of us might just wiggle out from Armageddon

on Titan rocketships as large as skyscrapers

Set for suns which are about as far as a guess

Ebbing it out like a haggler,

costing us a few more pennies of promised existence

or just another chance gone from this dissolving sphere

When this world expires

like some rotted meat left in the summer heat

We are the plight sprayed with desperate repellents

which kill nothing and retreat back into the blackness

further than our minds will handle

ii

Many suns have lived and died.

Godspeed at liftoff for this hard-bitten humanity

One way or the other YOU will live on.

The momentum will carry us away,

whatever is left of the Earth, every bit, stored only in crates

Even if you have to float as an isotope

in the vastness of space.

Every ships’ name reads “INHUMANE” on the hulls

Or show up on some other Jurassic ocean.

Emancipated, savvy & thankful

Once again you will walk.

Etching modern saviors along the insides of caves

And hopefully be as lovely as you are now.

With neighbors coexisting in breathable places never imagined

As I smooth down the avenue in my Chevy to pick you up.

Nestled in ignorance, peering in the celebration of boundless sins -

fathom upon fathoms only to betray again in endless space

— Chris Grasso 

Unchartered

you drifted,
there is
no other
explanation
for the half-mast
journey
you are on
and now you
don’t even speak
your native
romantic
tongue
and so you
have settled
for being
an “I-land”
far from
the sloping
countryside
of a woman’s
body

 

 — Ivan Jenson

Symptom free

she is
a wide eyed
pupil
of the
early onset
of youth
and she
is already
showing
signs of
the first
stages
of happiness
but sporadic
laughter
is sometimes
treated by
doses of
growing up
and a full
recovery
from innocence
is expected
don’t worry
she will live
all thanks to
a strong
immunity
to sorrow
and a healthy
appetite for love

— Ivan Jenson

Rambling on

I would rather
be personified
than glorified
and please
treat my body
figuratively
rather than literally
because I am
a nonlinear
mind stuck in a
middle class
march of time
so take me
for granted
but take me
and show me
don’t tell
that love
(though
improbable)
might still
be
within the
realm of
possibility
tonight

—Ivan Jenson

Famous first words

as a holistic being
living in a body mass
index that is
ultimately bio-degradable
I am banking on
the possibility
that I am also
a spirit guided
by light and
tempted by
red-hued
darkness
and I demand to
be honored
like a father
and cherished
like a miracle
baby born
in a taxi
and I too
am
entitled to
share in the
enchanted
forest fire
of love
for I am
fortified
by all
the essential
nutrients
and it
is not unreasonable
for me to suppose
I have good reason
to be here

—Ivan Jenson

Artistic license

I am a self-employed
freelancer
living from whim to whim
who with half hazard
abandon
freely sketches out
the gesture
of those
who pose
for me and
leave hazy
and blurred
the images
of others
who stayed
in motion
I don’t paint
what I see
so much
as leave
brushstroke
fingerprints
behind
like a poet
leaves
evidence
at the scene
of his rhyme

— Ivan Jenson

Dear Me

I pack and unpack
my plans
I put on and take
off tousled trousers
in which I must
take my next step
I call and then
hang up on
people that
might
or might
not be pleasantly
surprised by
overdue
confrontations
or underwhelming
overtures
of conditional
love
and then I
write and
re-write
my
manifesto
which I toss
out then
retrieve
and re-read
and then
I am saved
from myself
by an
unexpected
invitation
to lunch
at Applebees

— Ivan Jenson

Naked Truth

you were seamless
in the way you
hemmed and hawed
and tailor made
your answer
when I tried
to pin you down
then you tore
me to pieces
like a cheap suit
I don’t think
you will be
satisfied until
you have
stripped
me down
to my
emperor’s
clothes
so that
you can
make
angry
love to me

— Ivan Jenson

Oldie but Goodie

your words
are the trombone
sounds
in a Charlie Brown
cartoon
and your
viewpoint is
as prehistoric
as Flintstone
re-runs
I live in
my own
Pixar 3-D
world
and am
looking to
go big
as an Imax
screen
you seriously
need to be
colorized
re-mastered
and shown
at midnight
like the
campy
cult classic
you
have become

— Ivan Jenson

Reality Show

with Mel Gibson rage
I approach my not
yet rated bedroom
and sometimes I swear
I get sneak previews
of coming attractions
but then when the night
is really released
it never lives up
to the hype
babies and dogs
steal my limelight
by day
and George Clooney
and Jude Law
shoulder into
my self-esteem
when the house
lights go off
and my salty
dreams lie
like
unpopped corn
on my sticky
as butter
situation
sometimes
it gets
so cold
like
iced Sprite
inside
I end up
shaking
what my
mama gave me

—  Ivan Jenson