DAVID BATE

[b]Cries in the Greenhouse[/b]

Amid a low rumble of distant thunder
and the howling of wolves
under skies
as slate diagonal,
sandwiched in shades
and edged with gunmetal gray;
we go down to Willow Palm
where lives Leviathan
in irregularly joined inkblot swamps
of colloidal silver,
ringed by jade fountains
spewing forth bold, gleaming foams of gold.

Close
in a pristine meadow,
an Avatar
with marbled arms outstretched
as though to receive,
clothed in a fine linen shirt…undone
and
a crystalline lightning rod
in one sculpted hand;
sleeps
in an Emerald Python’s cool, iridescent coils.
Gently enfolded,
the Avatar dreams of…
Shining purple grackles trapped
in silvered panes of isinglass;
Nearly transparent figures
stepping forth from row upon row
of still life watercolors hung in the Louvre;
Souls slipping out of dreams
and drifting as glittering dust
into dense compressions of collapsing stars…
the metaphysics of slumber states.

From his dreamscape,
the Avatar sees
the curve of your perfect foot
that so confounds the wise:
a smooth contour of its gentle arch
gleams in full moon bright
as
climbing a ladder of night,
you rise gazing
into steadily increasing light: a radium dawn,
and he notices
the Holy Fathers whom in Latin chant
— Gregorian —
of calculus in ultra violet,
carnival shills,
seashore shells…scattered
across deserted sands
and great millstones
which grind exceedingly fine.
With eyes wide open
yet tightly closed…
shimmering Aurora Borealis
dances across smooth lids
and his face of peace.
The Avatar sings in a lost key
of fabled Chryse,
love’s arrhythmias
and the very last Christmas on Earth.

The Emerald Python who cradles him
in muscular, gleaming spirals,
dreams too
through a view
from a rain softened window…Of:
A hundred life-sized dolls
–perfect in every way–
encircling a blazing campfire
–awaiting the gift of life–
built upon the graveled shore,
which hugs with a death-grip
the Sea of Absinthe…wormwood ships
in its harbor;
Fleeting vignettes of angels
waiting quietly in the shade;
Great obsidian ravens of winter
perched among pine boughs
laden with a first snow;
The softness of an Ohio June
and robins by the wood;
God’s mysterious ways and restraining hand;
Glimpses as though from a passing train
of the Knave of Hearts
kneeling
amidst a glistening green velvet fernscape
of an antediluvian greenhouse…
buffing a young King’s boots.

Here we stand in Willow Palm,
where lives Leviathan
among inkblot joined swamps
of liquid silver suspension
from which
a giant theater screen rises
as if a massive salamander from flames
and we observe now…
Mother-of-Pearl taking note
of footprints on the main palace mirror
over which the feet of ten thousand geckoes
have passed;
As Royal Guardsmen transfigure themselves
into wild geese
migrating at jet speed
into a fading fireball of a sunset;
A psychic in Texas wearing engineer boots,
heavy makeup and fitted with a cocktail gown,
glimpsing a U.F.O. and pausing
in a surreal field of monstrous tumbleweeds
to meditate;
Finally we notice the Avatar turning
to study giant Cecropia moths
gathered in phantom pale, lantern light
Now in a vision of you
I’m amazed and tremble
as your gaze penetrates my flesh
and shivers through me
like mists of horizontal rain.
Cathode rays transmit to me …your picture-thought:
statuesque starlings stand in hushed rows
like soldiers at attention by your bed and stare unblinking
at your radiant cobalt blue skin
and black opal eyes.

In the Twilight Tavern
from which long ago you departed,
magnificent old elms still arch
as if hands at prayer
over Highway 9,
which leads to your family tree
and that weathered farmhouse
where you once lay still born
until God breathed you
back unto life.
On the timbered wall behind the bar,
hangs a photograph of deer hunters in below zero
and a wizard-like pianist plays softly
by the smoldering fireplace
at ground zero,
caressing ivory keys…causing them to cry out:
creating the strangest of sounds
to distract and hypnotize
inside yet outside this twilight alehouse at dusk.
A metronome “tocks”
back and forth up
on the smooth mahogany bar
while a Praying Mantis
– – arms raised in petition – –
watches from the mantelpiece
above the flagstone fireplace…and softly rasps,
“Has God imagined you yet ?
What is the sound of friendship
on an altar,
burning in sacrifice ?”

Cinemas within cinemas…
further unfold upon the gigantic theatre screen.
Furiously,
butterfly collectors pursue their prey
in a slipstream…
splendid specimens moving
ever further away;
The Gatekeeper looks for evidence of life
along the diamond-glass boulevard
leading to an invisible mall,
where there are to be today
festive holiday sales;
Persona,
shirtless and draped with Indian beads
…hair as golden fleece,
stands in levis and sandals
upon the overpass,
studying
the Gatekeeper’s every move;
Moles, albino and blind
from generations under ground,
race silently across red tiled roofs
of the deserted village below;
And Behemoth murmurs propaganda
as he imagines your vicarious pleasure.
Then
noticing the tarnishing of silver,
you step out of an avalanche
and into warm waters of the Nile.
Then into your rear view mirror you glance
and observe Leviathan emerging
from frothing opalescent waves,
mouthing mealy metaphors and spewing out
a thousand figures of speech.
You may recall that petting zoo and
remember only too well the reptile house…
watchful eyes as though dark prisms,
of cyclopean, languid, sighing anacondas;
elliptical, jeweled staring orbs
of giant boa constrictors whispering
and those intense, baleful stares
of immense coal and cork
colored crocodilians.

Pulsating
with the sound of a colossal heart beating,
another horizon-esque screen forms…
as if alive.
The Avatar leaps to it,
landing like a fly upon a window pane.
Then
with one hand and both feet firmly planted,
he swivels his head
to face us.
Wildly waving the lightning rod with his free hand,
the Avatar causes tremulous music to fill the air…
almost as though glittering rains of sound
rising up from the ground
and pouring in like wind from all around.
He speaks… (as if unto a void) thereby causing
hologram images to burst forth
from a hurricane of fire…
images of pterodactyls soaring
on leathery wings
across the Prozac skies
of a turquoise summer
in the south of France.

Our holographic visions shift.
It’s you !
By the Pool of Tears…
a Cobra’s whisper there
where
you looked for meanings and hidden meanings
surrounded by doors
and paintings of doors.
Finally
with flickering crimson tongue,
the Cobra gently stroked
your smooth gravity fingers
when all your friends had gone away.
Then one day
in Willow Palm,
standing in sudden
enshrouding shafts of sunlight
converging
like beams from outer space,
– – chameleon-esque – –
you changed the color of your skin
and
stepped into a thin shadow of intimacy
where
your clich�s left me light years beyond alone,
your slogans strangled
every (bare) breath of life
and emptied out
every (safe) house I found;
all engraving daily even deeper…
the emptiness of an empty room.

I cried out for at least
Radio Hanoi, some ‘signal’ hidden in chatter
or a hint of recognition
in your foggy faraway eyes.

Sometimes shivering in tears,
I winced as Sphinx moths buzzed by in blurs
like tiny airplanes…
and often in sleep, I writhed and tossed
while vividly dreaming
– – in multi-dimensional Technicolor
and surround sound – –
of the crystal lightning rod
held up
to Sun, Moon and Stars
by an Avatar who sleeps
in a fine linen shirt …colors as
a Biblical Joseph’s coat…
with marbled arms lain outstretched
as though to receive,
there
amid the iridescent, rainbow coils
of an Emerald Python
down in Willow Palm
where lives Leviathan
among inkblot joined swamps
of liquid silver suspension,
ringed by jade fountains
gushing forth
bold, gleaming foams of gold.

by David Bate (c) 2003
([email]dbate [at] corru-kraft [dot] com[/email])

[b]Author’s Note:[/b]
David Bate lives in Long Beach, California. He writes primarily surreal poetry, which seems to well up from his subconscious in the form of dreams. Pictures, music and poetry trigger whole image sequences, which David translates into words.

David’s overall goal is to connect with the reader’s subconscious mind using words, with the hope of creating images that can be felt by the senses. His rarely has concrete linear meaning as a goal.

David’s primary influences many and varied: the paintings of Dali; writing by Pynchon, Ginsberg, Auden; music from Pink Floyd and Tangerine Dream through The Beatles, French surrealistic music, The Cure, Depeche Mode, Ozzie Osborne, Kitaro?the list goes on. Filmmakers such as Gus Vanzant and Ingmar Bergman play a role, as do many others. David produces Spoken Word cassettes to music, and has plans to compose video poems. Look for David soon at Open Mike sessions in the Long Beach area.

KEITH WEBB

[b]so much less than sensual[/b]

this is a picture
or more of
a window into a
roadside bar, where
trucks parked on gravel
surround
a place I know
too well to be tranquil,
a place for solemn meditation,
mediation between my things.

although subtle thoughts get
broken apart by the occasional
loud mouth stepping up,
what he sees as his life’s work,
is a seldom at bat,
and there is peace here
more often than at home alone.

inquiring for a menu with my beer,
the cute as a baby-doll girl that came
for my order
wondered later why I had barely
touched my steak sandwich,
a patty, unfrozen and
fried in a skillet, so much
less than sensual, laid out equally
such a waste of a cow’s life,
and I say, “It’s okay.
I didn’t come here to eat.”
she replies, “I understand.”
but then how could she
know of so many things
waitress
barkeep
Nostrodamus.

[b]our lives[/b]

for my life I could not decide
why you played your hand
in such drastic measures.
corner sac,
dime bag,
half ounce, half pound
your fist down the
clothes chute, your luggage;
though you could too little
take the important things.

it could be you burned too bright
as bright as the sun
and burnt right out,
burnt right out of here.
though we could scarcely go on
so I won’t put this off on the
innocent,
yourself a mocking bird
myself a deer.
me, I could never fly
but you could too little
help but take flight

how the blood must have
beat under your skin
so that when you were forced
to face life too straight, and
you zoomed after your
desperate needs, and face first
but from behind
with too little time to contemplate
matters that could throw you
so in the end you threw me away.

or possibly I tried to love you
too much, now quite clean, my heart
just couldn’t live in there
inside of you.
though too late we see now
our hearts
need not have cost us
our lives.

[b]Flood Plain[/b]

Water fell down on us,
rain and runoff, with such
utmost precision I would
think it had surely been
this way before. Somehow
melted off, evaporated
and then rained down
with the rehearsed patience
of one drop at a time,
choreographed like a giant
nonstop ballet but
now everything rehashed
has found its way
through your door.

Had I only known
the mess of cleanup,
all it entailed,
I maybe would have arched
into this swan dive down
down deep and pulled
hard until the pressure
per square inch imploded my head
and washed from my body
my blood joined the flood,
rode the surf and
then was bucketed through
fireman’s chain and dumped
back onto solid ground,
where someday,
we might re-convene.

The rain took your
things away, washed
your photographs and
memories, pushed
them onto land’s sea
your happiness sailed off
along with me,
to find others who would
uncaring, shovel them with
the mud past the barriers
of those sand bag walls.

I can still see you standing there
on that shingled roof, and soaking
your tiny cold bare feet
that unforgiving water on your
brow made now of stone.
And right around the corner
we find my little mud hut and
that thatch roof in the
flood plain built even lower in
elevation, somewhere down in
your soul. If my cigarette breath
means a forest fire burning
then the tears you cry are my flood.

by Keith Webb (c) 2003

[b]Author’s Note:[/b]
Keith Webb is a graduate of West Virginia University with degrees in Journalism, Public Relations, and Creative Writing with emphasis on poetry and short story.

Keith placed in The West Virginia Writers Network Spring Competition in the category of Emerging Writers with a story, “Snakes in Heaven” and the Waitman/Barbe Creative Writing contest with a story, “The Chances We Take.” Keith finds inspiration in his job with the Federal Emergency Management Agency doing disaster relief.

remembering the language: an exercise in self-mutilation

waiting
for something in the
insincere october sunlight
but nothing comes
and i begin to feel
like pollock

walls and weights and
the blood of ghosts until
the only option is to drown

until the churches are
all on fire
and my children starving

[i]my children starving[/i]

i will teach them to
eat the flesh of god before
i let it come to that

poem which, when held at the proper angle…

[b]poem which, when held at the proper angle, becomes a portrait of michael gira[/b]

the sky suddenly deep with
the weight
of approaching autumn

the poems like small miracles
or minor saints

like ordinary men shot dead
on quiet streets
in front of their wives and children

and i want to tell you that
the violent acts of strangers don’t matter
but you turn away

i want you to believe
that love is some sort of salvation
but i can never say it with
a straight face

look at gandhi

look at lennon

think about what it means
when a newborn baby is found
in a knotted plastic bag on
a philadelphia sidewalk

think about the sun

pure white light traveling
through all of that empty space
just to show you how dark
your future will be

Pocket Change

“What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish?”
T.S. Eliot, “The Wasteland” — 1922

As locust of grief gathers its legs
for the pounce and traffic spins
in its clotted grave,
answer escapes by channel of fog.
I am seized by the question’s thrust–
turn toward ways you fanned a purse
and opened it on Christmas Eve.
A man with his face inking a sign
marked homelessness, dotting
your “I” with a tear of having more
than your heart required in wallet clutch,
pushed you to extend your gift.
You dropped $5 in his lap.
He smiled the way a cock must crow
waking up a sleeping farm.
Teeth became a rope of pearls,
real in their soft reward.

Passersby withdrew from slug trail poverty
and the wind raced its breath
toward frost and clung.
“Pocket change, that’s all we are
and all we have, trading pennies for a dime.”
The song of it all in photograph
rekindled decades hence in water bath
for wisdom’s tiny carrot curl.
“One clash with fate, that’s all it takes,”
you murmured quietly, as if your vocal chords
had violins in lumpy throat.
That single reach. Rendering a bible’s jacket
more than paper babble bound.
Undaunted by his drunkenness and sour cough,
a memory pushes through my hands.

*First Published in The Pedestal Magazine

Assumption

It’s been two years, one month, three weeks,
four days.
Since I sat on the edge of her bed
reading “Dover Beach” aloud
for ears pressed firmly
to the final page of life.
Patches of strength
curling their corners
like bandaids over wetted skin.

And I thought I could.
Make crepes that smiled from the pan
and press her Irish linen
without the steam of tears
and tuck it out of sight.

We matched like new pairs of socks
in my underwear drawer
or widows holding hands at Sunday Mass.
I’m sure she knew I smoked
and never said a word.
But turned faux pas like broken lips
of china cups around to face the wall.
It’s been two years, one month, three weeks,
four days.

And I thought I could.
Sit on her bathroom floor alone.
Use wine to take me places I needed to go.
She had this way —
of revising defeat —
of pouring waterfalls of misery
into margarine tubs
and sending me home,
steering straight.

I still feed the daisies she left
with watered gin, and they flower
even in September’s shade.
Each book she bound with patient flesh.
Advice a gilded potpourri
sprinked like sugar
over bowls of regret.

We both agreed that bridge
was a waste of precious hours.
That poetry and shoehorns
wedged crippled toes
into the “best of times.”
It’s been two years, one month, three weeks,
four days.

And I thought I could.

*First Published in New Thought Journal

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