Hiatus (new photos)

Hiatus while PC and connectivity issues solved.  Limited access via library and cell phone.

Of Honey, Roses,and Venom

Of Honey, Roses,and Venom

L. Edgar Otto  27 October, 2013

I. Mothers & Daughters Work the Bars & Dress Up for

the Other Halloween

The hidden side of one way mirrors work both ways

to lift a face and mask

Tammy Faye head on, imprinting, colliding with my

tee shirt, make-up, leaves here face a featureless cloud

It starts with children's shows, mom, dad, puppets, local TV

or Xuxa, once a pron star, now darling redeemed

Beloved by the peanut gallery

Of clowns and Captain Kangaroo

tragic masks, comic masks, epic preternatural

Bottle fed shadow sheep stuffed animals to be shorne

of wool, ride bareback on the prancing pony dream, or

Unicorns only to be pushed out of opened doors

puppy mills, already lost far from the strand and broken

Thru walls and Great Balls of fire until if lucky realize

the Rolex watch reward and large brass golden giraffes

Cheap knock off copies

II. Does God do Automatic Writing

We used to count by letters made of god-like

hieroglyphics, runes near to them

Then just put on the pictures or spoken story

alphabet of metaphor, history emerged entangled

Half babble Rosetta stones in fractured leaps

leaving clues

Alas, the numbers for their tally marks, recycled wood

to burn, contracts long forgotten or in commerce

Made of cuneiform then sealed inside ball of baked clay

masking them until they're broken.

This empire new slogans carve, a pipe or cave

filled with crushed pillars of Pharaohs past

The prophets speak of generations, empty, seething

brimstone, or successive layers, levels of hell

Echoed here in earthly tells, gods, ghosts, now aliens

from end time prophesy to predictions we call science

Women still blow pigment to spray paint on cave walls

their hands that leave a shadow.

III. Venom Razzle-Dazzle or Camouflage

Sweet Rose Etta, I left but with a withered blossom with

acid fire on a chain link fence see thru as you tossed with

Your wedding bouquet, Venus belt trapped on the fly

with stained glass slippers, the imprint of you open hand

Slap on my face, so I read the news report ow well you were loved, your general hospitality- I part of your pelts of motherhood

Boys and their puppy dong tails - I saw my pet speckled

slug as beautiful as your freckled mug-  Rhesus negative Who frets she cannot wear green or look like Christmas

cat fight claw my Rh-positive animus, the little red haired girl

Hell for me would be to take a younger Eve

tempted even if she were a nurse, relive my father's fate

Then she remove one node and all its links that our

new world encased upon itself brings conflict

Breaks apart love between my children's sisters, brothers

even step and half siblings, lost modern families

Even the last left of a nuclear one to fission itself

All this somehow foreseen, my path a little less

than my father's failures- beyond resentment biological

Mom took with her to unforgiving innocence down below

as you whom I doubt said loved him, there alone to pull the

Plug following the circle of your slime of slugs

May you - and whatever lesser god that cannot forgive and

struck you blind - rot and burn in a forgotten hell.

* * * * * 

For  imaginary garden submitted Monday... concerning masks... Only could see two of you before phone slowed down and main PC went on the blink (at library now) did read some others but could not comment.

I took the Vandana's flower picture as inspiration and the venom of fireblossom... sorry if it is too dark...

Watchtower

Watchtower

L. Edgar Otto   25 October, 2013


The bus stopped in Swavesey, by the old clock
late at night from Ely's Isle to Alconbury

That urge to lose myself in crises flight, some
endless space in but safe measured hours

That to desire to seek the far away drives me
back to home, there already, we cant return again

But while the rumble lasts, glaring light hiding the night
you Carol sit by me, I not the caboose chasing your train

The driver, and the couple between him and us, well
she setting on his lap, we pretend not to notice

You show me what you bought the day in Market Square
I have you give me your address so I might write in

An old book of wisdom from a bygone age, a sister's praise of
sisters, opium eater diary, or picture of the days of plague

You get off by the watchtower, its pale Roman numeral clock
a thousand miles away the book took another subway route

I could not write you, my words blacked out, returned by
prying eyes afraid of jazz terms I loving your isle too much

At the watch tower I see your ginger hair, freckles, smiles thru
the window while the night light clock grows dim behind me

There was nothing else worth to watch for you someone
I could have loved and more, friends, our heartbeats side by side

* * * *

For imaginary garden... thoughts evoked from the lyrics of songs, and barn dances once my home...

Added later after thinking about how I used "dim" in this poem without thinking about it then seeing the same themes in the other poet's here... that and a friend mentioned too how he had to use the word dark matter or energy differently every time he used it... so I thought I might, as a source of terms made clear try to coin some clearer ones as seems it best a poet's duty.  The physicists run out of Greek roots it seems, or how creative the "gluon" not or quark that means cottage cheese... I used opaque substance or Dark matter like or obscure matter,  or anything with the simile the so called "God Particle" for awhile called Higgs-like.

So here a final thought as a poem after this daunting yet glorious educational prompt so much so at the beginning and way beyond the cycles of seasons and days intimate to our souls at the end of the line...

Crepuscles and Gloam

L. Edgar Otto  26 October, 2013

Why must my shining light racing off 
into the starry horizon
leave behind my cloud of gloam?

I slow in the salty scudy sand grain
broken shells of crystal waves
walk on water quickly sand sea foam

Poets as well feel yet the hidden scoff
so think unique zodiacal lights refrain
their own horizon's inky rain of tomes

Our compass North falls off the world 
ghosts vanished there yet leave their bones talk 
to each other as if to them, seek diamond double cones

Walk on shaky ropes of time up from our marrow
where we're close, may fall, riding one loves arrow...

* * * *

Glossary perhaps in this footnote:

Crepusculum and Gloam

L. Edgar Otto      26 October, 2013

crepuscle(s) : obscure or dark (twilight) matter and
gloam: the same for the concept of dark or hidden energy;  dusk dust

Starrizon: (the starry horizon) mirror compliment of gloam, gloamnium.

Calyptic Substance (energy, thoughts, or matter): hidden, esoteric (vs neoteric physics)

* * *

An Anthology of Flowers

An Anthology of Flowers

L. Edgar Otto

24 October, 2013


The shawled lady worked the amusement park
the theaters, restaurants around the penny arcade

She sold Kewpie dolls with long crape paper dresses
and bouquets or a single rose, her artificial flowers

How could the sailor refuse after the ride thru the
tunnel of love, was the neon light in her eyes as artificial?

Who with mooning gaze could refuse the wider ones,
pointed hair. for you Doll dressed up, hold your baby

Baby, baby face, you got the cutest little baby face
Oh don't you need one? Let's walk hand on hand

No one will know in the privacy of the instant photo booth
what sort of  poses we display, its OK I will show no one

The child that followed her on her rounds looked up at
the two headed man and poster, mushroom cloud splitting the earth

Leaving the ocean view, merry-go-round, roller coaster screams'
here's your cap mister, you left it on the carousel booth

He gives the boy a silver dollar, the small train smells of coal
I can ride it to the Promised Land or all around again

The boy thinks, more nickels for the Nickel, Nickelodeon
he cannot enter therein but can still point the way

As they leave the amusement park a Kewpie falls out of
her dress and they make fun of the swabbies he looks back

At the lady's artificial flower in her hair, then the dolls ruby lips,
sings goodbye Milk and Honey, goodbye Humpty and Dumpty


* * * * *


Kerry's prompt on Imaginary Garden

Epistle to Alduz

Epistle to Alduz         L. Edgar Otto   21 October, 2013

When the Intelligent Designer of whom we could not speak His name said
"Let there be gluons", the Chosen in their towers of babble wrote Him out of the Play

One minor species or tribe arose by chance from all the elements and exoplanets in
the image of Universal Law to which the people labored in exile from the imagined Gardens

Beholding the great supercollider of the sky, the source of mass was made manifest for
in the dark matter on the face of the deep so his creatures felt its telescope

That time repelled his amplification condensing into gravity as in the heavens so on Earth
that the creature could evolve fore-ordained who endures or is born again, the word

Spoken and written without the soul of vowels a mystery offending the left hand that
the road to Heaven was paved with infant's skulls to hell's bottomless potential wells

The sum of paths the same at every branch or around the canopy in totality
Enter Pythagoras or his likes all at once at a distance to begin alphabets and history

"Did I bid you keep separate your church and state, a lesser broken place your helpmate
Temptress of uncertainty first and last man, my eighth day work no rest begun?"

"O Lord, He whose center is singularity and circumference a hypersphere beyond
the stars and God dust string motes everywhere, did I not pray, ask you your design?"

God then looked at his handiwork tried of testing rainbows, tired of ends in fire then
Said to these mortal creatures he knew not ready, personally, " It is disgusting."

Adam kept a level head in flatland and gazed elsewhere shutting up to measure
the plots of mud left by the Nile, the cubits of pyramids and New Jerusalem

"You see in my perfection I  born without umbilical in your image and purposes conserved
In symmetry, a creative lesser god, where before the world was, I Am, we will be".

* * * *

Speak No Ill of the Dead but Shout Out Our World is Living

Speak No Ill of the Dead but Shout Out Our World is Living  or
A Letter to His Mythical Home before His Last of Battles

L. Edgar Otto     20 October, 2013


We live free in a least government state to follow our individual purposes, fit in smoothly with the expanding society, or even ride the light of a God not our will unto a weapon unto others.

For as we are distracted by the fantasy's of those who see the state as everything, and hold its people individually without it do not exist at all, lies and charging all outside it conspiracy, the leaders feel the state is fixed and real so too the people fill their empty lives to heed, or fear, or redirect their path as salvation to the puppet strings they give attention.

The dead do not belong to the state that like in primitive tribes they can be tried for non-participation, their self-sacrificed corpse put on public display, confession by the ceremony of the circus.  The memorials merely serve to rewrite history, maintain regimes of accidental or ruthless victors.  The dead belong to the mothers, lovers, children and the soldier who sacrificed for what he believed, believing in others in sincerity or fool hardy, so serve a deep or small part.

The dead do not belong to the soldiers who dispatch them, not for superstition as once we ate the heart of our enemy, gained their power, gave them honor. The times moving us without control the fallen leaves in turbulent wind, here and there a pile of molding leaves to walk around, permit the living to forget lest it wounds their lives and lives to come, the troubled minds with flashback of the job, the test but unto death of strength, defense of genes pools and territories not forgotten the nagging guilt that we may have grown callous and uncaring to our fellows.

But far worse the departed and those caught in the crossfire, the hopeless rising in the ghettos, the children at war with each other overlooked as long as contained on the other side of tracks, and those who forgot their roots so to use the law as their chains... thus and is the machine of drones that moves by design and cold gears, inertia growing strong, that myth of spring we who recall its passion in the rants and rage against the twilight of autumn night far worse, as if above the clouds the bombs fall distance, our hands are washed from troubled dreams and face to face reopen wounds with bayonets, one military man to another,  the missing limbs not buried at Arlington hold no regrets.

The military man was not meant merely to just supply the seed, to grow fat on free loaded pension honey, the queen is slow to pay them anyway if they don't die but fade away.  For what, that his sons cannot bring to the world some poetry, or that his daughters are infertile workers for the hive without dreams of her own?

Work it is the ethic on which we build and self-rely, and work it is sacred that we bring to it what we can to ease life in this world, and work is the enemy in that it feeds on slavery with promises that it will make you free,  busy work for its own sake to learn the habit as routine so accept moving pointless objects around to sort them and if efficient find them jumbled again before the clock shift is over and the conveyor belts grow silent there relentless bone crushing sweat shop explosion.  Work is that which we find absurd to do if an animal, another, or a machine can do better.  But if we promise the least of that for a place in the society it is perhaps that the state still fears that we have learned to use our stingers and our ladies to make their own honey. Or worse that deep down they know but cannot test that we will not break down to violate in faith our good hearts without limits.

We may not fool the dead, our leaders some of the time for as such they fool themselves all of the time, and if the dead can vote or the voting dead the state remains unreal to which no rite of legitimacy or span of hegemony can insure a state endures- not when divided in its life and the life of its people.

* * * *
Perhaps for Open Link Monday  Imaginary Garden...

A thought in the back of my mind, I of lesser sacrifices alive but faded away, no more the sting of false promises reaching the summer outings, parades of Memorial Day that Lincoln promised care for the loved ones of those fallen...

Love in the Icy Cold of Space

Love in the Icy Cold of Space

L. Edgar Otto    20 October, 2013

The universe itself is a cave
what attracts, what repels
What in the sea of ice is hidden
nine tenths under swirling waters

There must be more than echos
as we cry out, make messages of song
Send them off inside bottles
after the wine bids us sleep awhile

I am not Virgil where imagination can
send my senses to a climax, no poetry can
Wait to penetrate the mystery of love
Yeats and the moon shaddow eaten

Somewhere weightless deep in space
doubled our stardust face to face
That I worship you, entwined realities
one again exploring new geometries

What in your ankle sent Frenkel wandering
in wonder far from the arms of Milky Way
His magic marker and equations on your
belly down to the end your belly button

Nature, no one can keep her in a pumpkin shell
crave on it our face that jack-o-lantern light shows thru
At midnight again, mice under snow cover
then the search to see who fits the one glass slipper

Against the cold of night the fall or bounce of dreams
we crave the cave as well for the cuddles in respite
Build our domes of blocks of snow but cannot know
If the spring returns its sun lost in midnight

* * * *

In the viXra an interesting shot film and book review inspired and kept me busy then I saw Hannah's prompt on imaginary gardens... sorry I am late, another fine exercise of love and the cosmos as poetry.