On the themes of Envy, Sugar, and Life Cycle
BLURB
Any reader can tell: this is a very important poem. Not only because the poem is like Keats set to Schubert, but for how the reader can hear their hearts, a sonogram of allotted beats trilling past. So profound, this very important poem opens to us the core of life, so poignant the poet tells us her throat clamped shut as she wrote this undying work in her own hoarse unreliable voice.
Not everyone could have written this very important poem, only those who suffer under pressure like the glaciers, deep suffering, earthy as Ben Franklin’s belly, inevitable as a red light. This polysyllabic name-dropper of a very important poem will release your soul from her cell, let her find peace enough to know your life’s true purpose.
Thanks to this very important poem, we now know, once and for all, what Goethe, even what Hölderlin, were trying to say. The elongated song of their incandescent Empyrean ecstasy becomes simple, even sensible. We sense the poet’s ample supplies of the Good and the Beautiful, as good as a green field of wheat, as beautiful as green parrots’ jaunting tree to tree.
Such subtle craft in this very important poem! Each reading yields layers like prayers, embroidered with sublime chiming:
The bells of hell go ting-a-ling-a-ling
for you and not for me.
O Death, where is thy sting-a-ling-a-ling,
where is thy victory?
How rare, this silken falling into place.
Just read this very important poem. The next morning you’ll rise at dawn, find a sky clear and breathless as a Sierra lake, heaven and earth mirrored face to face. And you’ll find yourself reciting this very important poem, feel it unfurl like a bird grooming each feather, until each word melts, unfolds mellow in your mouth.
BLOW YOUR MIND
After the ACLU meeting, we dawdled in his dad’s old Volvo. Then, the fuzz:
Buddy, show me your driver’s license. Even in Santa Monica, 1967 cops could be scary.
Chiquita banana stickers on his wallet didn’t look witty now, more of a hex:
drugs were on everyone’s mind, so to speak. Grass. LSD. Mellow Yellow.
Every one of us loved Star Trek, thrilled more to Spock than to Chekhov.
Freedom of speech underground in The Voltaire, our furtive purple mimeo, got the ACLU
gung-ho for us. Our slogan: I will defend to the death your right to say it.
High school principal, former wrestling coach, would have crushed us honor-student editors
if he hadn’t lusted for Samo High to sweep the quiz meet regionals. Our
joint lunges for the buzzer, our hunger to show off and use the IQ,
kept us scoring points at those dinky desks until the district trophy was all sewed up,
letting us lie low by buzzing loud. Now, me, I couldn’t have told pot from oregano.
My squeaky naïveté got me on the masthead, also the invitation,
never mind how, to be local emblem for freedom of the press, for the dream
of a future with eloquent kids all taking chances on causes worth the vitriol
police and the Silent Majority slammed our way. (Little silence, so much squawk.)
Quite a crowd gathered in the park that warm spring night, a SoCal samaj
rallying to the calls: let speech be free, get us out of ‘Nam, make the skirts mini.
Samizdat deserved the risk I took sneaking my way out of family purdah.
That tough-guy cop enjoyed toying with us. We already knew he could bust us. I could just see calling
up my mom from the police station and getting grounded for a year, even if
vile stepfather Jim had been sprung from driving drunk only two weeks before.
Why, you ask, couldn’t I just follow their rules? They treated me like some stoned
XXth Century Fox, long before the Doors went druggy and deep and psychotic.
Youth gone wild, that was me for sure, typing up sober cries for room to breathe, a bomb
zone riskier to inhabit, a more lasting rebellion, than smoking marijuana.
Abecedarian of the Budgies
A week in Athens for my half-century birthday, sure antidote to Weltschmerz.
Believed Frommer’s: owners parade their budgies in Oneiros park every Sunday.
Could caged canaries be freed? Imagine seeing each avian aviatrix
dance, bound only by cotton strings that would trail daintily below.
(Elastic cord would have launched each bird like Barishnikov,
feverish, entangled like the louche courtship dances of Corfu.)
Greeks lock bumpers, jump from cars, snarl and brawl in traffic, but
Hellenic birds, even on Sundays, must stay separate as dolmades.
Icarus convinced folk you could fly too high. Greeks remember.
Joy-riding birds of Athens, loosed every Sunday from deux à cinq,
kites with tiny minds of their own, would soar while locals nap.
Limp, weepy, off-kilter, sleepy, I was not philosophical like Plato.
My half-century found me so much less settled than even Helen,
noodling my way through midlife, out-of-step and off the rhythm.
Olives of Athena sprouting in every park; now, this mythic marvel:
parakeets uncaged in the polis? What a custom! I was wild to gawk.
Question that I never sent to Arthur Frommer, trusted tourist Raj:
Remind me, who told you this tale of tethered birds? The Oracle of Delphi?
Simple me, I asked the hotel clerk how to find the park. In fine English,
truthful, not at all unkind: Never have I ever heard such a ridiculous thing.
Unstoppered, fabled birds flew away. I felt my whole flock take off,
vanishing back into the naïve guidebook of this faded layered place,
where nods mean no, where one conveys yes by shaking the head.
Xenophile I might be, but that wasn’t enough in Athens. Organic
yoghurt was the only soothing part of entire days I spent silent as a tomb.
Zeno said, Once delayed, you can never catch up. You can bet your last drachma.
Donut Slam
Time to admit: I’ll wear what fits
but I’ve worn out that F-word,
f a t : the insult with a bite,
bound to be the first thing going in my obit.
It’s like this: I am the elephant in this room.
Do I have to get a witness to prove my fitness,
to be permitted to take up space?
I’ll state it for your benefit:
seems I’m unfit, too big to be seen
by long-waisted odalisques,
they who sit easy
knowing they’ll be asked to dance,
not stranded at the edges wondering what it’s like
to be wanted, to be welcomed, not to be a misfit,
not to have to outwit to be partnered at the party
going on in the world. Do I have to throw a fit,
drive a stake to be counted?
It’s like this: it’s a good tight fit
to diet in this rich land,
or you don’t fit, not into the mold,
not into the True Religions.
Just admit: no one knows
what those fittest survivors are fit for.
Grown women in a snit,
cinched in knots, throwing fits
if their number waxes bigger.
It’s like this: if folks don’t see me, I don’t exist.
There’s a hit slams like a fist.
A surfeit of women sit huddled in the sauna,
talking kitchen porn about rich foods forbidden.
You who say sit down, quit dancing
ought to get a retrofit.
Listen: I’m not on the move for your benefit.
Just admit: in the battle of wits,
when they say ‘fat’ it’s over. You lost.
Fat’s the only mortal sin left to commit?
Clearly a sin to finish every bit.
Do you need to see a script to decrypt my story?
Well, it’s like this: I’m not finished, and honey,
I am not done.
Show Time
The band they called the Beatles
needed a bass guitar.
John Lennon wanted me to play
while he took up the drums.
But I can’t I told him,
I’ve never played bass,
I don’t know how.
He looked at me
over those round glasses,
a look that said,
like I know how to play the drums?
And I thought, Who am I
to shrink from sour notes
if he’s willing to sit up there
and whale like a fool.
Actually, he sounded pretty good,
his long hair swinging,
as he worked his shoulders with the beat,
pivoted to bop the high-hat.
Author Biography
Karen Greenbaum-Maya, retired clinical psychologist, German major, Pushcart nominee and occasional photographer, no longer lives for Art, but still thinks about it a lot. Poems appeared recently in Women’s Studies Quarterly, Bohemia, The Mom Egg, RiverLit, and, qarrtsiluni. “Eggs Satori” was recently selected for Black Lawrence’s forthcoming anthology, FEAST. Centrifugal Eye recently featured her mini-chap, Floating Route. Kattywompus Press just released Burrowing Song, a collection of prose poems. For links to work on-line, go to: www.cloudslikemountains.blogspot.com/.