[David Anthony]

Apropos of a discussion elsewhere on Erato.
Here's one of mine:

Tallyman

It seems no time since warmth replaced the cold,
and nature’s careful plans were first displayed
in buds along the foxglove’s stem, arrayed
profusely and preparing to unfold.

Tall tallyman, I know the price you pay:
your clustered blossoms nodding to the dawn
fade one for every evening as you mourn
the counted fall of every summer’s day.

Too soon a wilder wind arriving, scours
the season’s bright creations, stripping bare
the hedgerows and the woodland clearings where
you sacrifice your last and lonely flowers—

still beautiful, although the best are past,
and missed the most because they were the last.

[RCL]

Submitting for publication

------------------
Ralph

[This message has been edited by RCL (edited February 13, 2008).]

[David Anthony]

Indeed it does, Ralph; and it's a fine poem.
Best wishes,
David

[Frank Hubeny]

The idea for this one came from Martin Elster's My Perfect Girl--Gone . The object here is also inanimate, although it talks as Martin promised us they would in time.

Silicon Lover

She was a doll of silicon with eyes
That stared upon Tom's own with loving care.
Unless they forced her, she would never share
The joys between her legs with other guys.
She did not cost so much, to Tom's surprise,
And he would use her often lying there,
Upon her back, with clothes or fully bare.
He never told this lover any lies.

While Tom was out, Bill turned her on in play,
And listened to her voice, so sweet, so kind,
So full of love, he stripped. She hoped he would.
Bill took her many times that night and day.
To Tom's concern, she did not seem to mind,
But pleased his friend in every way she could.

[Jan Iwaszkiewicz]

One of mine:

Whelk


It is the slack upon low tide. The green-
sheened, flat expanse is like an open book
that's written in discarded filth. A hook,
with drying bits of gut hangs down between
a rotting strake and shore. A dragonfly
floats slowly just above defiant claws.
The crabs do not retreat. I check and pause,
around my foot’s a frantic scrawl just shy
of making sense. A whelk has scribbled out
what seems to be some form of script. I tread
with care although the flooding tide will spread
a layer of silt and bury it without
a thought. I tried imagining the words
it could have left: “I hauled my cloistered world,
upon my back with no complaint. I curled
inside this lonely cell to hide from birds
and octopus, stingrays and things unknown.
Yet still I ate the waste that others made
(the use for which you made me Lord). I've prayed
for family and friends as one’s alone
in death. None came. I beg you now My Lord
although I'll die alone please let my seed
share life and death with someone close. I plead
to let my shell give up its self, though flawed,
that others may commune and I still be.”

A cancer’s eating me and here this shell
has also had a dying need to knell,
though not for death, for immortality.

http://www.faunanet.gov.au/wos/factfile.cfm?Fact_ID=38, The Sydney mud whelk leaves a distinctive 'scribbled' trail

[Dan Halberstein]

This is me, hatin' on a month. If you've ever been in Washington in August, you might understand (though I don't know where the rails came from in the end.)

Remembering August

August breathes too heavy, warm and wet and still
as the muckpuddle sidewalks breeding gnats
Her halitosis lingers, until the rain
brushes the middle-aged teeth of the year

Don't let them fool you,
Everybody sweats

August steams your lenses and car windows,
heavy-handed as a housewife on the prowl,
in morning masquerading as a less desperate time,
but wilting in the middle of each long day

Don't let them fool you,
Everybody sweats

For her amusement, August paints your t-shirts dark
beneath the arms, or sticks your suit to you,
then gusts a wheezing laugh through too-full trees,
fraudulently promising a cool breeze,
all the while, intending nothing of the sort;
August sports with you,
tracing an already decomposing finger
along your ribs and spine

Don't let them fool you

But August breaks and whimpers in the night



Everybody

Remembers September, thinks of her fondly,
cool and kind and clean, or
confidently steaming down August's transformed rails,
all her corruption vanished,
since that one night

Sweats

Don't let them fool you,

That one night when August broke

And what do you remember of August,
sticky, hot and cruel?
The struggle to the surface of a drowning dream?
Everybody

Remembers September,
after the fall, and,
if they dare to try,
Don't let them fool you,

Everybody
Remembers August

[Laura Heidy-Halberstein]

In-Utero

benevolent garden
one foreign seed draws first breath
inhale - divide

three spores are scattered
six cells seek sanctuary
exhale - multiply

malignant conception
each silent new spawn mutates
inhale - exhale
______________

Blue Ridge

Listen to midnight
at the edge of the eyrie
two egg-teeth chipping

Come carrion hour
each gray-downed half-winged fledgling
turns face to the east

Observe the sunrise -
how it blinds men and opens
the eyes of eaglets

[RCL]

What is all this uproar about Pathetic Phalluses? Oh! Never mind. . .

Erect more of the same quality!

RRD

PS Thanks, David.

[Laura Heidy-Halberstein]

Originally posted by RCL:
What is all this uproar about Pathetic Phalluses? Oh! Never mind. . .

HA!! I must admit, when I first read the term over on Metrical, my dyslexia kicked in and I read "Phallic fallacy" at least three times before I understood I was misreading. I was so puzzled as to why Mike was being accused of trying to pretend he was writing like a <s>dick</s> man.

Lo

[Dan Halberstein]

"Women. Give 'em an inch, and they take both."

- John Ruskin, 'On the Pathetic Phallusy'