The Unpublishables

by Steve Lavigne

  a silver scepter in his white knuckled grip.

  Front right: the hooded friar, hands freshly washed,

  silently fingering his cross.

  Front left: the clean shaven, three-piece double vested

  executive distractedly clutching his blackened briefcase.

  Down center: the barefooted, the twinkling eyes.

  The accused.

  For truth is one and one is truth

  and so the youth are corrupted.

  We must, Yes we must, cleanse this thinking for

  this is the greatest nation the Earth has ever seen.

  You are freely given your choice, Socrates:

  Death,

  Death,

  Or Death.

  We cried and we groveled, oh dear one, don’t choose

  death,

  and we stood crushed

  as he glided, twittered and sang,

  trying to explain

  till the sun reached the rim of the horizon.

  Then he slowly brought the cup to his lips,

  smiled,

  and all watched as the sun rose brilliantly

  in his eyes,

  And the three accusers crept back to their temples.

  This too is a something poem

  Like the quanti-colored seeing

  Through a fly’s eye,

  The multi-glassed mirror

  Of a fly’s mind,

  A sensible knowing

  Before absurdity takes

  Whatever’s fair, foul, enamored of perfection

  Must fail-

  Sensibilities are ringed

  In rings of absurdities,

  Plethoras of pretty little poses

  Preparing us for death.

  Perspective is quite peculiar,

  Whatever we think or do

  Changes our circle of knowing –

  Absurdity fills in the differences

  As I am changed by you.

  Her mother’s face fallen like stunted groves,

  Once full now timbered devastation,

  Belies her grief, an encompassing globe,

  Denied the green love of forest station;

  For memories lie singular, like the soul wound

  Of lost species, trapped in her boy’s wooden tomb.

  He’s riding the ism rails

  He’s a riding the ism rails,

  dialectical iron constraints,

  contracting through vast plains of politics,

  religious icons, tyrants and dictators

  blurring by his window seat to the world.

  Ahead, the first class supper car breathes

  of twice cooked repast from a previous age.

  The engine steams over a groaning of bedrock ,

  and soil and bones.

  Looking ahead, straining

  against the glass, pressing to see

  still further,

  he sees the two-fold linear

  track of mind

  converge on the horizon;

  end of the line

  realism,

  vanishing point

  perspective.

  Loved One

  White walls with nameless magazines saying countless nothings.

  You turn to the next page.

  An intercom crackles and you gaze and wonder as a

  white-coated medicine man bustles by with a

  note-filled clipboard.

  Sterilization burns your nostrils.

  An obscure flash of white steps into your view.

  The blood pulsates on the back of your neck and

  your tongue sticks dryly in your throat.

  She beckons.

  You follow with an unintelligible nod and

  pursue the quick-paced heels as they click

  sharply on the square-tiled floor.

  You stumble after her trying to catch up but

  can never quite manage, when abruptly

  she stops. You are there.

  You hesitate,

  take a deep breath and enter blindly into

  the grim gaping mouth in front of you.

  Tubes.

  Tubes fill your vision.

  Coiled tubes alive with liquid life, they curl

  and rear in every direction.

  Upon a raised platform lies a silent figure about

  whom these tubes bury themselves…

  Deep.

  Deep into the nostrils, the throat, the chest,

  they look as if they twist throughout that

  configuration lying there.

  A bustle and you are guided with a gentle yet firm

  hand (that is neither warm nor cold) to the center

  of the room.

  You look into the silent figure’s face and your eyes feel

  oh so tired yet it is only a little past three.

  You stiffen and again focus your eyes on the face.

  Your mind longs to reach out and touch

  that pasty, grim visage but your hands lie frozen.

  A second has passed and the bustle of white leads

  you to the door with the same coldless,

  warmless grip.

  You are powerless to resist and move automatically.

  The closing of an electric door.

  Dusty gray jacket

  And drizzling dawn

  Start the rumbling tractor

  And low of dull knowing

  And waiting

  In their fettered stalls.

  Feet stamp and echo,

  The harness connected to the head,

  The engine steams

  In the morning muck

  Roars and approaches the shed.

  The harness is slipped on the tractor

  In its deadly game

  Of tug of war,

  Where both know the game is staged,

  Both know their appointed parts,

  And it is the man who lowers

  His eyes first,

  As the churning tractor

  Pulls the struggling cow

  Onto the muddy field

  And into the rising dawn.

  The head is raised,

  The straining force

  Lifted off her front feet;

  She tip toes in a death dance

  On choking, wobbling hind feet.

  The eyes wild and wide

  Stare unclosing,

  Nostrils flare,

  The gun is cocked,

  The barrel raised,

  A sudden blast

  Shocks the body

  In one great, slow,

  Rippling wave,

  Then after shocks

  As the bullet passes through bone

  To soft gray.

  “She’s only stunned,” he says,

  “so she won’t feel any pain.”

  The throat is cut,

  Urine and shit stream out

  In a sudden release,

  The blood is caught

  in a silver tinkling of pans,

  the body strains and pulses,

  a thin strand

  of flesh and bone

  the only connecting

  of body and head.

  The eyes glaze

  Then slowly dull

  In the growing light.

  The man looks at the boy

  And laughs. Smiling,

  He says something the boy

  Doesn’t quite understand;

  Something about life on the farm,

  Or maybe the meaning of life.

  Part Four

  Blue jay framed

  On aspen trunk

  Rusted oak bough

  Drifts to sleeping ground

  Blue sky chicory

  Folds at end of day

  Gnarled arm oak

  With raucous crow call.

  On a visit from a friend

  Although I did not tell you,

  I kept the towel you used

  long past
wash day

  and every day I would dry

  my hair, my face, my chest

  and linger with your smell

  my eyes not seeing

  only feeling you:

  smile, quick eyed laughter

  friendsome touches.

  And though the fragrance of we

  is slowly fading,

  still in silence

  I sense your essence

  and wish

  you were here with me.

  I lift my hand

  From your moist embrace

  Head dizzied thick

  With the smell of love

  Lips brushing cheek

  In a tickle of peace

  Lips tremble weak

  In caress of love

  Sweet murmuring face

  Soft downed belly

  Hands in the hair

  Embrace

  Embrace

  Embrace

  Silk thin skins

  Rippling

  Joining

  Merging

  Swells of passion waves

  Twining

  Peace

  In passion

  Gaining

  The voices of little children leaves

  Trip and trickle across the ground,

  Scamper and skip with delight

  As the busy mother wind

  Bustles her children along

  To a cool damp winter’s sleep;

  She breathes and sighs in gusts

  With an ancient sadness and grief-

  She knows she will never see

  These little laughing feet

  In their summer’s growth again-

  And though she knows

  Death is but a beginning

  And all life weaves itself

  Into her pattern of now, yesterday and eternity,

  There is no solace in the sighing time,

  No end to grief in the dying time,

  In the deep of a cool damp winter’s sleep.

  The Rest Of It

  His voice, with longing, cracked the silence;

  He listened, then kneeled with a bowing sigh,

  His echo to emptiness but numbed defiance,

  Long now it seemed since he expected reply.

  For years by these blue, sun tipped glittering waves,

  By these myriad greens of its tangled shore,

  Some free will communion was all he craved,

  Yet still his mind filtered, fragmented and tore,

  “Enough, enough! There is nothing here,

  no origin, no co-creative cry,

  all these labors wasted in a blind fear

  or hope of some nature god before I die.”

  And death it seemed, his mind suddenly silent,

  Till he heard sharp clatter, heavy heaving flank,

  A snorting warning, mad dash, then sudden quiet;

  The immenseness crumpled him on the bank;

  For the first time he saw a grain of sand,

  Pure holy water beyond any demeaning;

  Himself no more than imposing demands,

  While life was singing, a choir full of meaning.

  Poised my heart lifted

  like the prayerful step of a heron

  my tethered soul pulling against the shore

  I smell crushed mint

  see fresh velvet scraped

  on the bare branches of elderberry

  and I long for the curves of your arms

  like an otter twisting

  under the covers of our bed

  tumbling,

  diving like swallows

  over the river

  at last light

  Like the gulls which are born to flight,

  We are born to love—

  Easy, freely, in harmony,

  Yet, we fear the faithful giving;

  Of being eaten by the uneven,

  Our flesh being torn from our being,

  And it being torn, being all.

  Now for almost always

  until again today

  snuggling her

  ducking

  under down

  covers kisses

  forever and again

  and always

  at night

  walking wet

  pavement

  through

  rings of

  deserted street

  light

  I miss you already

  and I fear the unknowing

  like a faulty gas gauge

  your head nodding up and down

  as you nap on uncertain roads

  dark trees crowding the embankment

  These poems are for the lovers

  Not for the poets to see

  And pick apart – discerning

  Fingers probing for art

  In this part of a part,

  Because beyond them are the lovers

  Who feel or not that this is their poem:

  The whole which is for seething lovers,

  The parts for sermonizing poets.

  I write naïve passions my soul to save

  Full low with mutterings forlorn and grave.

  None should read this but for painstaking fame,

  Some ethereal substance beyond men’s blame

  And praise, some heart easing passion and much

  Cerebral pain. So be it, but to touch

  The garments of those whose wheels turn with truth,

  To recover old age with spiritual youth.

  Mark me, Grammarians! Stilted seem I?

  Then read me not, I do not yet deny.

  You Diggers, stand your ground; no more shall I be

  But humble as soil, I shall conceive.

  Part Five

  While Journeying With Red Cross Knight

  From under Lucifera’s gilded gate,

  He seeks with an ever increasing haste

  The key unlocking his black widowed fate

  With stinging prodding pride. “Wither now, chaste

  Lad?” Pride says in sighing from its cased

  Vault. “Look here! Fathers upon fathers lie

  All mute, their fearful flesh to oily paste

  Pressed, yet on and on your weary bones fly.

  Do you not know their fate is thine? To lie

  Such toilsome task is not unmeet, for thou must die.”

  to professor _ in english 215

  Mock on, mock on in two fifteen,

  Do you not know that you have been

  But we must be? “but what,” I cried,

  “content with nothing and with nothing pleased

  till self and pain to gentle grave are eased?

  Is there no shore for raging tide

  Or age as sight for youth diseased and blind?

  Has he not taught and I not learned in kind

  That to live is to love, truth’s realm abide:

  Man’s greatest works receive, her vile despise,

  E’er with good humor and sense realize?

  For he but breaks and batters buttressed pride

  And thus shall never die some mere muted sound,

  But in his pupils beating breasts astound and resound.”

  When in rhymes beyond time,

  I read of loves divine,

  Sublime,

  Their sweetest breaths

  Move me not

  Like my imagination pressed

  To blessedness

  By your working dress

  And unmade face

  And subtle grace

  Of household laughter

  Coursing through the day,

  For all cry out “Love!”

  Love past an ephemeral urge

  With passion purged

  Till we have become

  What the poets yearn

  What men have forgot,

  And what the gods have learned.

  Men Who Run With The Wolves

  It’s a dog eat dog world-

 
; Damn their hoary hides!

  Nothing can be taken whole

  But needs be rent, torn, wrecked

  Before another uses what once was theirs.

  You’d think they’d let go-

  Lie down gracefully

  In their last patch of sun;

  But no,

  They gnarl and growl

  At even the youngest pup,

  Just to gnaw their last gristled bone.

  They know it’s mine; justly mine.

  It’s they who demanded

  I smear their hapless blood

  Upon my maw,

  Their gray beards twitching

  Feebly under fangs of destiny.

  They desired this blood letting,

  And may it speed their

  Once proud dreams-

  Maybe even now,

  In their last consciousness,

  They still believe

  They run in front of the pack-

  A gentler day, graciously

  Engraved on their mite-eaten brains,

  But now, now

  There is something new under the sun;

  I lead

  And am no trembling maid servant;

  The pack follows my destiny,

  If I die, the pack dies,

  May I be glorified, eternally.

  White pine, soft pine

  Five-needled gentleness

  Against the blue of an autumn sky;

  These once ancient giants

  Of a virgin wilderness

  Have regrown to a mere post adolescence

  And still are felled

  To build more houses

  Or sheared off the land

  Like an unwanted growth

  For a “better, pre-fabricated,

  Corporate consumer” lawn.

  My pine –

  A six inch twig in dirt

  Given to me in the first grade;

  I don’t know how it survived

  Much less endured the uprootings

  And sandy soil of its youth,

  Yet, there it stands

  A little pine amidst pines

  In a tiny wooded spot

  Intersected by homes;

  For twenty-two years it’s been growing

  In that shaded overgrowth

  And still my thumb and forefinger

  Can still touch as I curve

  My hand around its smooth gray skin;

  It’s been a crowded time,

  Both our lives stunted

  In tightened rings of waiting

  For openings to the sun.

  We didn’t anticipate the powerlines.

  The tree will need to be severely pruned.

  But I guess nothing can be totally natural now,

  There’s always some want in human kind –

  Hardly ever need – so that wild nature is sacrificed and killed

  Mutilated for useless products,

  Torn limb from bleeding limb,

  The natural world, my tree,

  My natural being stunted and trimmed,

  Pruned in the name of a growing “civilized” society.

  It’s too deeply rooted –

  To transplant her now would mean her death.