Tony Renner live 10.26.12 @ Noisefest 9 (LNAC, S. City St. Louis) from Chizmo.tv on Vimeo.
Trouble There on the Frontier
When water and government and children disappear
We take apocalyptic scripture seriouser and seriouser.
Coyotes mentor hens in history of the West they alter,
Chant chicken neck chicken foot then put them on the altar.
Legs of rumor running down this cowtown spread
Plagues and fantail sprays colored chorus girl red.
Hot shotgun hut admits no sunlight so we burn it.
Horse of course can’t recanter its curses so we burn it.
We draw Colt Peacemakers and X’s all over our maps
Traveled in covered wagons circling back to traps.
Autocracy and automobile and automatic buffalo
Sheriff’s deputies and dentists moved from Buffalo.
Trainhorn don't you know there’s no return to buffalo?
-- Steven D. Schroeder
Note: Originally published in Pleiades.
Here's what my Playboy Playmate bio would be:
Occupation: writer, Plath scholar, tarot card reader. She also teaches English at St. Louis Community College and Humanities at Lindenwood University.
Turn-ons: Sylvia Plath; cats; Kabbalah; the Buddha; correct use of subjunctive form
Turn-offs: Fascist dictatorships; airport security (same difference); winter
Guilty pleasures: satellite radio (XMU, Lithium, and AltNation)
Latest passion: weighing the evidence as to whether William Shakespeare was really Francis Bacon.
Villanelle for the Wife of My Stalker
He follows me around like the Moon at night,
waxing close over everywhere that I’ve been.
She pretends that everything might be all right.
She cuddles their baby and smiles too bright,
entrapped in his hard golden band ‘til the end.
He follows me around like the Moon at night.
He plans my return, makes arrangements, despite
what his dark moods, blow-ups, and death threats have meant.
She pretends that everything might be all right.
Long brown hair and beauty mark; she loves to write.
He’s made her his model of me, from back then.
He follows me around like the Moon at night.
He lies smug in their bed. With her, but not quite.
What’s unknown won’t hurt, and the truth can be bent.
She pretends that everything might be all right.
For five fearful years, this man has been my blight--
His forever love-curse we three cannot end.
He follows me around like the Moon at night.
She pretends that everything might be all right.
-- Julia Gordon Bramer
Julia adds this note: "Form doesn't have to be boring. It pushes the writer into new and unexpected places. Still, every syllable, the meter, and the repetition have a purpose. And with the villanelle form, it becomes like an incantation. Poetry is serious, powerful magic."
Autumn Wears a Red Dress
Autumn comes gaily clad,
Cooling the skin, but enflaming the eye;
She is the raucous harbinger of
Winter’s silent and unprotesting
Final death; the immodest,
Elderly grey,
Corpse to be concealed
Reverently beneath
Modest, white morgue sheets
Of snow and ice.
Autumn, she comes,
Crying and wailing;
Beating her chest,
Exposing her distress;
She can not be consoled,
Until that tantamont tango,
Naked and whole,
At last.
From the Debutante Spring
That grew like a wallflower;
Danced bare-legged and
Gawky limbed;
Rode her Papa's toes
Like an awkward colt.
Through to Summer ,
A Fine and Generous Lady
Ample bosomed,
Carnal and knowing,
Her skirts full and lush,
Fertile and green;
Her suitors, potent;
Her children, many.
Comes Autumn, then, finally,
Liberated from decorum and duty,
By the windsong echo of
Death-bone rattling drumbeats
Of thanks and praise;
Blessings.
Autumn dons her gayest dress;
Flaunts her harlot fashions,
Taunting like a Hollywood starlet
The phantom that approaches
To claim her last dance.
Autumn hosts a feast! A party!
A festive Big Easy Wake,
Held just before the
Last rites will be given.
Bare legged again,
But veined now, and thinner skinned,
Shedding her accessories
Coyly, one by one,
She boldly leads
Mourners dressed in riotous color;
And Dixieland bands,
Trumpets gleaming, toot sweet,
Through dream-soaked streets,
Announcing
The Year’s last breath.
Dressed in bold finery,
With nothing to celebrate
But certain death,
The Old Year is carried jubilantly
On the shoulders of the parade
To the Midnight of the Seasons.
On this Eve
The pyre is lit;
The uninvited and the dead
Feast with the living;
And the soul of
The unborn New Year
Runs mad with prophecy
And redemption in the streets;
The Old Year's breathe rattles
Like kindling,
And She lays to rest
Upon the dead wood crackling orange
Against the black night.
And Autumn wears a red dress
To the funeral.
-- Rae Cailliach
Mirror Zone
I'm afraid
You're afraid
Everyone's out there burning in their graves
Let us go
Let's go out
I'll find you out
Everyone we've told
I don't care
What we do
We will just slide away
And then we'll all be in the mirror zone
Oh, oh, the mirror zone
You will run
I will chase
I will burn
You will find every little piece of you ...
Down inside
In your heart
You will pull it up
And then we'll start
From the beginning of your ...
Life is hard
You don't care
But you will find your way
When you're older
I promise you
Oh, oh, the mirror zone
-- William Kyle
Laurel Oak
Each leaf a single finger,
pointing at every angle,
smooth in the dense, bronzey canopy
that had expanded skyward
for a hundred years,
a mere sapling when the house
was built beside it.
Each leaf an exclamation,
terminus of trunk, limb, and twig,
pulsing the root telegraph
of water, earth, and sun.
I shot your portrait with the rippling bark
filling the frame around you,
a second presence blending with your hair.
We knew the comings and goings
of that raccoon nested in a hollow
higher than our roof. We saw
the songbirds of spring and summer
taking rest, the eagle alone in the dawn
on his way to the river’s hunting ground.
The black breath of the storm swept
from the west, killing the power,
and caught me at the shop,
away from you.
Your voice kept breaking on the phone,
“I am in the basement, with the cat,”
as if that would comfort me.
I would have run through the torrents
and lightning to get home,
only our daughter was with me.
Somewhere a transformer exploded.
Your voice hesitated, “Out the back,
it lit up for a second. The tree,
there’s nothing there—just bucketin’
down like a feckin’ machine.
I heard something, like the sea, rushing,
then the siren,
I am in the basement, with the cat.”
-- Drucilla Wall
