Cacti silent hear

Distant promises of rain

This is true praying

Love that! / R

This is epic!! You could have given us a break and blogged the 4 of them over 4 days. It is a lot to analyze....all 4 are beautiful!
rated

So much imagry here. Savage love bites... Pollen weary bees!
The imagry is present and painted in every verse. Making me read everything twice, once for the thoughts... then again for the pictures.
R

"Breath vanishes thus

Souls lost within vapors"

seems so not far away...enjoyed your litanies!

We ban together

Is the one that speaks

Still reading...

Well, that was quite an education. Gracias, profe. I'll be back for more and I'll be early to class.

You will laugh through blue smoke hues
I found a memory unused
We spoke promises not truths

The section on dancing and metamorphosis...bailamos, por favor, it's time for a costume change.

This is magnificent and evokes so many emotions in such a short time. I too love the haiku of the cacti. Wow. R

Is this a Love Song for A. Arthur Blewitt?
He grows old... he grows old... he shall wear the bottoms of his trousers rolled.
Will the mermaids sing to him?

Now I'm worried my previous comment came off facetious or aloof, making a glib comparison to T.S. Eliot. I meant it as a compliment. This is a very complex rich piece. I've come back to it many times. To me, it's saying something essential about life and love and fatherhood and failure and loss and impending death and things unfinished. It's worthy of very close reading.

No worries, Helvetica! You can make it up to me by always mentioning me and T. S. Elliot in the same breath.

i recommend 'plunging' into this verse

head foremost

note: what word conveys the sound

correspondent with plunging?

,

Dear ume,

"what word conveys the sound correspondent with plunging?"

I hope it isn't "doosh"!

Not to spoil anyone's fun with this posting, I want to share an analysis by our friend Helvetic Stone

(http://open.salon.com/blog/artsysoul):

SCRABBLE THE MUDDY COBBLES
(a poem by A S H ... aka Allen - Skipper - Howlett, with notes from Hel Stone)

1 ARTHUR BLEWITT

(First stanza named for protagonist, self-deprecating, sounds like "blew it," regret)

Wind and Cloud and Ice

And Man who is the Fire

Claim the mountain top

(each stanza begins with haiku: Man against nature, can there be fire with water and cold? But desire, longing to conquer large goals)



Cock's pride chortles forth

Dawning on humble mice

Cobwebs encompass windows

In gray doors peeling red

Unopened

(A farm in morning. Dawn. Birth. Humble beginnings)

·

Morning ragtime worm

Cut cut orchard

Hot thick apples

Leaning trees

Amber apples

Savage love bites

Pollen weary bees

(Still farm, orchard, growing, adolescence, fruiting, procreation, abundance, fecundity)

·

My head clock really buzzed

Wanting that gin whack

Suddenly sucking back

Lonesome blood

I asked love

To end me

(Wanting escape, alteration, drugs, liquor, sex, death)

·

Dark shore beckoning

Across brandy dreams

Desire whispers

In craters of anguish

Lanterns flicker

In abandoned white ships

(Seeing ways out, ways in...work and travel and seas and night and moons...hope in distance)
·

Midnight deeds aroused the cherubs

Burdens churned unspoken sleep

My echoes forgot

Daytime devils dream my soul
(Days and nights become reversed, things that should not have been done do not matter, the daytime takes over, although the night is still the guide)

·

Old bones restrain

False needs of love

Lords of vanity beckon

Deeds into stone

Ignorance proud within

Bonds old bones
(Age begins to take the body. Sex and work begin to lose meaning. Fabricate reasons to hold on)

·

Speech crashes my throat

Sober acid words

Guide my love up

Out the hot blue veil

Of half-digested empty skies
(But the truth, through language, must be known again, that being love, that being meaning that was never lost)

·

I myself thin soil

Frigid

I am willing orchids

I am armored
(Lessons have been learned, strengths gained, but there is still room for more)

·

Quivering faces

Half-closed eyes waltz

Innocent birds

Clutching wrinkled

Outstretched

Frail cane hands
(Age so often is dismissed, but there is beauty, grace, and delicate love and trust)

·

Wrinkles slicing bony pate

Pleated gnarly rind

Eyes shuffling decades faint

Mortality’s past my

Suspender stoop

Sneakers wade molasses

(The body does these frustrating things, it is the body only that fades)

·

Jackhammer testimony

Shakes aching man

Toward another

Sucking razor ledge

precipice

Above nature’s marathon

Perched women poised

Pushed back

Alone

(Judging oneself, unrealistic, and unwilling to let anyone in...particularly any woman)



You will laugh through blue smoke hues

I found a memory unused

We spoke promises not truths

Consistency unchallenged
(The rhyming roll signals the end and a toll...there was a betrayal, or many. Women cannot be consistent, can they. Neither can some men)

·


2 MARY MORRIS

(Second stanza: introduces the love interest. Boy gets girl. Man looses woman. Old man gets old woman back?)

Are you what you see?

Can you touch a reflection?

Who is listening?

(Haiku is the only glimpse of her voice, the other, the object, the thing wanted, the thing lost, the thing that was an image that never was)


Dull eyes toil

Down 50 women

Each born tourists

Hands preach plans

Tight jeans’ walk

Gyrates talk

Delicious designer illiterates

(Of young women in western dress who should be beautiful but are not)

·

Hot arrows out eyes

Poked desire smothered

Smile weak worse advised

Silky tongue mothered

Lady summoned me

Sip poisoned tea

(One stood out, one was different. One spoke kindly. One offered something dangerous)

·

Tempting apples

On her hot kitchen table

Plunging teeth try to bite

Into her perfection

Bursting juice

I enter

(The foreplay is always the most romantic part)

·

Moon touching silky curves

Tingling floats soft fire

Stars crashing hot nerves

Strike long long desire

Beyond sane

(Passion is terrifying)

·

Sitting sucking caramel

Rolling dewdrops on her tongue

Bittersweet baby doll

Sinking shadows sugarplum

Fairies twirling under lashes

Dance me to metamorphosis
(Something is changing)

·

Fierce hair snapping

Hips mud-brown fling

Silky legs fire dancing

Pagan secrets flare

Gods screaming stare
(It might be going too far now)

·

Diaphanous goddesses

Draping marble bodies

Pull Zeus in

To their catacomb

Osseous Acropolis

Clinging wrinkled wet

Bend Zeus

Expressionless
(At the point when sex becomes inhuman, uncompassionate, it ceases to be love)

·

Love’s callousness

Amidst hidden carnage

Destroyed wisdom

Hammering solitary souls

Into a spaceless station

Of indefatigable enmity

Swallowing blazing stone
(It wasn't true...it never blossomed beyond lust between Arthur and Mary. Something happened. Bodies got in the way of souls)

·

Celebrate sin with wine

Man fuse woman flash child

Knee ring wedding enslaved

Quietly trusting lying cheating

Door aha divorce
(Doomed it was, from the beginning...they married for the sake of a child, but were never truly in love)

·



3 CHILD

(Third stanza: the product of the union of Mary and Arthur)

Cacti silent hear

Distant promises of rain

This is true praying
(The moment when one hears thunder in the desert, is like a child without a family)


Hush

Mom’s breast smells sweet

Sometimes

Chile gonna cry cry

And

I’m your heartbeat

Whispering everything’s alright
(Arthur loves the child, loves Mary loving the child and the child loving Mary)

·

Cherubs foretold

Rainbow meadows

Clouds of pear gold

Dear Lord’s way

Calming pure white

Allowed Holy

Evil’s twilight

Mortal play
(Child brings a new choice, a new hope, a lightness to the drama of life)

·

Look well beyond

The breaking rain

That cloud of fire

Heaven insane

With loud desire

Out to love
(How to raise a child with love and hope and faith when parents have so little themselves)

·

Baby watch mother down the charcoal path

Cried love song

Mother smiled dancing to the nearest end

Kept silent music
(Mary dies young, never sang her song, a life of quiet desperation)

·

Dissipating ran

Half-remembered

Careless footprints

Now gone

Infant’s magic dream

Dim soft glow
(The child quickly grew, strong but out of focus in its life, but still on fire)

·

My child fights

The darkness of freedom once

My words ignite

The soft light of ignorance
(Arthur still contacts the child, and tries to help its pain, but is at a loss to relieve it)

·



4 DEATH
(Fourth stanza: Arthur faces his mortality)

Young Leaves arise through

Litter of fallen Old Leaves

Embrace in passing!
(The passing of wisdom from father to child)


Months burned slowly

In my town

Silence bars me

Out past two o'clock

Invisible

Inside you

Another found

In rain drowned
(In distance and isolation, people Arthur's age, strangers, acquaintances, begin to die)

·

Breath vanishes thus

Souls lost within vapors

Bide forfeited essence

Their pallbearers sway

Words hopelessly spurning

Death

Surrendered

Cadavers

Rekindling
(Arthur begins to be not so afraid of death, it's becoming more familiar)

·

Death cosmetically at peace

Cushioned beatless soul

Tears in motorcades of grief

Families ominous

Unembalmed rolled

More yet-to-come

Child’s sadness lids this life
(Funerals with children are the worst)

·

Books covered your faith

Lullabies played through your cares

Hope now bears you tears

Praying resounds years of pain.
(Arthur counsels the child and self to find comfort in religion and in song: it is bittersweet)

·

Bronze melts upon desire

Into fire – and love dies

Self-sacrifice – the spirit

Feverish and mute – yet lies

To shape again the dust
(Arthur teaches how desire and love and spirit are the very things that we are made of)

·

Skies crack

Raven cries

Whales gasping

Salt scraps

Survivors of every desire

Run praying please favor us
(We must ask for mercy, for all the mistakes we made trying to fulfill our desires)

·

To run from heaven

Rain crossed the moon

Crashing long drought

And never found love
(Surely, God will not judge us for missing our opportunities, for failing to love)

·

Breathless

From stimuli steel-toed

I play the floor cold

Extra harmony up my ear

I will taste decaying tears

Deathless
(Fighting for life joyfully, the closer it comes to the end, one wants to dance)

·

Remember sweet treason struck angels protected

I am faithless reason whence spirits seize space

For His Holy Anchored Embrace
(In the end, the love of god may be more elusive than that of a woman...and perhaps more sweet)

·

Before moonbeams

Before god’s despair

God’s newborn mouth

Soundless nowhere

Mothering

Before God’s cry
(God wanted you all along, that's what you want to believe, dear Arthur - what if he does!)

·

Murderous from his cloudy chair

Over a cigarette nonchalantly

Staggered his mouth broken apart

Whispering ashes hot against me
(That's not god. That's a man. Probably your father. Or you to your son)

·

We stand together

Frozen waterfalls waiting

For the thaw of death
(Father and Son become Father and Son. Lifetime is but a moment in the eye of the universe. But each waterfall is beautiful and unique)



I now understand

The best haiku I can write

Is the one that says

(Nothing. Because the experience you are trying to explain cannot be explained in words at all.)

(Except, I think, you just did)

BRAVO, Helvetica and ASH!! The team-taught classes are so much fun...and OS is one of the finer schools ~ Save my seat, por favor!

Boy, we're really pushing this tool, aren't we, ASH ...

Still just love the poem...

XXXOOO

Hel