April 2024
Bio Note: I am a poet, a freelance journalist, and a fiction writer, going steadily bonkers over the delayed publication of my novel of speculative fiction, Kapra Talesman. Evidence of this state of mind is perhaps revealed in the poem below, "Chris-cross Crisis."
Chris-cross Crisis
“I Want to Fall in Love With You” —Chris Isaak
Songs are killing me
Pop songs, even
‘popular’ ones,
like the one Chris somebody sings,
with the unlikely title about wanting to fall in love with someone,
as if that were remarkable, or hard to do,
or a matter of solving some complex interpersonal equation
(well, maybe it is)
Like, why can’t you do, it man? –
if that’s what you really want to do so badly?
So badly that you keep repeating it, a dozen,
I don’t know how many, times
(Also, btw, a song with the word ‘Jesus’ in it is haunting me too,
one of the permanent markers left on my brain by
a traumatic freshman year of college…
You know, the psychedelic-folksy one by The Incredible String Band,
where they sing, “I love you,/
but Jesus
loves you the best,/
and I wish you ‘Good night, Good night’…”
Actually, that whole roster of immortal voices, Baez, Collins,
Mitchell, Laura Nyro – Dylan, natch, Phil Ochs…
Ouch, poor Ochs! who did not survive the time of magic
Poor Ochs!
… so fortunate, any of us, to be alive)
And so old – all of these, now ancient, unpredictable memories swimming back
with a long, long rush of forbidden intimacy
to touch me (somewhere sensitive) with the tip of a forefinger,
an ounce of fat (or fate), on a memory, or a membrane, I don’t know which…
I am a lifelong fan of that First Period,
the time in life when the soul is most vulnerable,
seeking guidance, a lodestar…
and desires to follow that star forever
I am speaking of a phenomenon that is unsayable in words,
but in music… in a cosmic sigh…
“Oh” [he sings, we sing, everybody sings], “I want to fall in love with you…”
Finally, I did… that is, with the right person
Solar flares of gratitude,
as if a new star bloomed in the cosmos,
and the old ones could be permitted
to wander their way back
through a black sky of their own making
to other, darker galaxies of eternal neediness and
dumb shows of desire.
See you over in the next cosmos, amigos, where all that is,
and ever was
gets together,
becoming one in a nameless super nova embrace
of infinite commitment, passing in an instant,
yet impervious to time
Premonitions Rising
Flat-edged figure-like shapings of green,
sharp-sided, as if ironed by March,
up from the decadent earth,
strutting in unseasonable wear
as if planning a production number
for the Disney channel
These are my guys,
the shock troops of late winter, the early Ides,
the sunshine soldiers of a change of state.
Still laughing and preening a month beyond,
beating their little buttery-petal chests
An early chorus of ‘likes’ for sweet-limbed April,
three parts imagination, one petal here or there of performance
Face it, we all love beginnings,
all smiles, like productive fathers
passing out cigars,
smoke rings
to cloud us from our ends
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