And the Nobel will go to...

Thursday the Nobel Prize in Literature is announced, and so I continue my tradition of failing to pick the winner.  My record is 100 percent at not being even close to reality.  So, here we go again.  Play along at home.

First, five I feel deserve to win (the certain kiss of death to winning chances, sorry Javier):

1. Javier Marías
2. Cesar Aira
3. Pascal Quignard
4. Mikhail Shishkin
5. Karl Ove Knausgaard

Next, three likely to win:

1. Haruki Murakami
2. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o
3. Adonis

And three who could win but should not:

1. Haruki Murakami
2. Peter Handke
3. Philip Roth

And you? Who do you pick?

a poem for September going into October

The little white death is coming.

Nothing existential or forever,

just the first snows

that blot out the tired grass

and the golden carpet of leaves

that have surrendered themselves

as messiah-like sacrifices to the future,

so that all might live and rise

again in the Spring.

school is in session

My little princess is ready for her first day of second grade.

A historical poem of sorts

The Road to Rome

It's August 26, AD 79.

A young boy walks the road to Rome, his feet calloused and his ears now broken by the horrific blasts he has heard. Never again will he hear the sounds of birds or of other little boys or girls. He will never again hear his mother's voice, because he is now deaf, and she is now dead. His world is a pillar of smoke. Just a week before, he laughed as his father read him a dirty poem carved on a stone wall as they both went to the market. His strong father, a merchant, was building a future for the boy, a future of prosperity, a future undercut by total death.

Horses pass the boy, and he cannot hear the voices of the soldiers and engineers who have been sent from Rome to assess the scope of the catastrophe. “Boy,” they shout. “Boy!”

The boy shuffles on, emotions and awareness now as buried as his home. He has escaped with a few other stragglers.

“Forget him,” one soldier says. “He's like the others we've met. On to Pompeii.”

a poem for a Tuesday

My words are about you, about your taut skin

and the seaside blue of your eyes and the heat

pulsating from my cathedral, your body.

My words are about you, my greatest desire,

my poor words, impoverished and dependent

on adjectives, nouns, verbs...trifles.

My words are about you, they are calloused ropes

set to ensnare you, to halt time and rip space

and hold you steady and immortal.

My words are about you, and so about me

and my futile attempts to work base metals

into refined gold.

My words are about you, poor offerings from a poor beggar,

the only thing I can give you since you already

have my beating heart.

My words are about you, and I sing them like a bird

freed from the cage sings a song carried

aloft on white tufts of cloud.

My words are about you, and now I listen

as you cast forth the spell of your words,

and our words are about us.

RR Shea

Paragraphs from friends

Behold:

Here are a few passages written by some of you.  I've excluded names and included artwork.  Misspellings and errors in punctuation are probably my own, and I do apologize for any I have made in retyping what you have sent me.  Enjoy!

The woman on the bench liked her coffee dark and sweet - I could smell as much from where I was leaned against a tree, occasionally pretending to try to read. Heading to the park to be away from distraction always seemed like a good idea beforehand, but much like dry-shaving or having just one more drink, it never ended the way one would hope. There were always kids or lovers or homeless or cops enough to keep me from settling in to even the most gripping novel, and as soon as I'd slogged mindlessly through a few pages (which would have to be re-read), I'd re-realize my folly, pull up camp, and head back home, the whole round trip wasted. This time the catalyst for my capitulation would end up being her coffee. I hadn't had any yet that morning, and my envy noisily churned my gut. I shoved Kafka back in my bag and turned the attention he'd been getting, and then some, to the Lady of the Mug. She held her orange, pear-bottomed mug with her palm against the bowl, hand threaded through the handle. Her index finger traced the small arc of the lip that it could reach, back and forth as if pacing. She was unperturbed by tendrils of her hair whisking across her face, and I envied her composure, tucking the few strands that had been courting my nostrils back behind my ear. Between the metronome-like arcs she traced above her coffee and her absolute stillness, I was almost certain that she was meditating - another thing that I, as twitchiness personified, seemed incapable of doing. Contemplating my shakey hands, I noticed that her mug didn't even have a lid on it! How, I still wonder, had she gotten it from home to the park bench without spilling? Just as I was adding her to the long list of people who have all the peace I will never attain, I noticed a bitterness flit across her face, as though she'd taken a sip, only to find all the sugar filtered out. A mix of schadenfreude and concern kept me watching, and the look reappeared a few more times, like the shadows cast by a herd of small summer clouds. I walked over to the bench and sat two butt-widths away from her, willing her to look over so that I could smile.

A Green Line Connects Everyone Girl in a short red skirt and a stripped black and white shirt, too nervous to sit. Instead she stands awkwardly with her bike, wondering if anyone is looking in her direction. A couple have a loud conversation in plain view of everyone around, without making a sound, just a fluttering of fingers. Happy, kissing, staring, without a care in the world. A black man with a shiny bald head staring out the window as the people and buildings and vehicles roll by us rolling by, biting his fingernails, button down white shirt, lost in random thoughts The person behind me, back to the wall, not moving not talking, trying to be unnoticed. A black shirt, a black hat, a look not to be trifled with The middle aged man enters on his phone, talking business, and more business, eyes constantly on his phone because to to be doing nothing is a waste of time The old man in the blue shirt, tucked into his pants a bit too far, carrying a book but never opening it, confused by technology but out in the world none the less Two twenty something Indian sisters full of smiles, making plans, big and small, into the city full of endless possibility.

Her head on his shoulder,

A glass of Tuaca in her hand;

It is late and she gazes off

With a faraway look until

Someone speaks

and she comes alive

blonde hair, ponytail

young and pretty

her head nestled

on my son’s shoulder.

She is up with the sun and now sits on my bed, her legs dangling over the edge, golden hair in tangles and the color of wheat in high summer.  Her skin is more golden, enriched by the the sleep of the previous night and by dreams and by her blood, which is partially my blood, replenishing her cells.  She buries her little face in the thick and furry neck of her beloved dog, an early morning intruder who has also taken up residence on my bed. The dog opens his eyes a brief moment, ascertains the situation, releases a sigh of obligation to the girl who adores him, closes his eyes and fades back into sleep. I have put my book down and now watch this morning scene play out. The birds sing outside and, if I listen closely enough, I can hear the hum of the city as it begins to wake, as cars begin to depart for their morning destinations and I begin another day with my girl. Only the empty space where my wife slept last night, abandoned much earlier this morning as she too went off to work, besmirches this gorgeous landscape. It is morning. It is glorious. It will come again.

Here sits an old woman, perhaps a grandmother, perhaps a long lost lonely lover, a teacher or just a surviving housewife. She wears very traditional clothing in accordance with an orthodox church of times past. A long, dark brown skirt, cut just below her ankles as to show no skin. She wears a once-white long sleeve blouse with a floral pattern, but tinted an off yellow color, indistinguishable due to the use of the shirt, the water it is washed in, or just a reflection of the age of the woman wearing that blouse.

On her head she wears a dark reddish brown scarf, to protect her ears and hair from the dust and to keep her fragile body’s warmth in. For warmth and tradition, the same reason she wears black sox and sandals. Next to her feet rests the end of her cane. The cane very much matching her looks: dry, weathered, and worn out. This is what I see as I walk towards this old woman sitting on a bench in the parking lot outside of her apartment complex.

She just sits and watches time go by.

For at that age is there anything to think about besides what deceptive input comes in through one, two, or all of the senses at once? Being overburdened by stimulus, once something is grasped it has already slipped away in the river of input that is constantly bombarding the aging processor. Thought is better left to be done in places such as the quite stillness of church, or the personal privacy of the water closet, where disturbances are infrequent and not interrupting at best, and thoughts can link together through the ambiguity of synapses. Here, as she watches time pass and perhaps unknowingly observes the sense of detachment she feels from what once she knew to be real; she lashes out at the fledging pigeons that walk on her sidewalk in front of her bench or behind her, on her weeds and her garden. She protects what she can with her extension of arm to keep time from taking what she can grasp for now, as real.

Paragraphs coming

Thank you to everyone who sent me their descriptive paragraphs.  I plan on putting them up today or tomorrow, and if you still wish to submit one, I'll take it.  If I've already uploaded the paragraphs, I can add it in an edit.  Cheers, all

Would you like to write desccriptive paragraph?

A writing challenge for all who are so inclined: in the next day or two, observe someone - a stranger if possible - in public, describe them, what they are doing, what you think they are thinking about. Just a paragraph or two. Send it to me an email and I will put all of them on my blog without any names. It might be interesting, and being anonymous might give you a little more freedom in your writing.

The upcoming novel by Javier Marías

I haven't found much about this in English, but the Spanish papers and blogosphere are abuzz with news of a new novel. “So Bad Begins”, the new novel by Javier Marías, comes out in the Spanish-speaking world on September 23, 2014, published as usual by Alfaguara.

Javier Marias states this about his new novel: "It's a book about desire as one of the strongest engines in the lives of people, which sometimes overrides any loyalty, consideration and even respect in the treatment of others. Another theme of the novel is the impunity and the arbitrariness of forgiveness and no forgiveness. The idea of ​​justice demands that people sometimes have much to do with the act itself and that does and does not affects us.”

Please note that translation errors from the Spanish sources are entirely my own.

you carry a sword

In a world of text message embraces
And social media heart-to-hearts
You carry a sword

At your side

And you hold a flower in your hand,
The flower of peace and strength
For your friends

And the gleaming sword...

The words of so many people
Are like claps of thunder
From a receding storm,

Meaningless reverberations.

But your words are the blade of your
Flashing sword, cutting true and noble
Into the wall of suspicion,

The barrier I have built.

For we lock ourselves in our own prisons
Waiting to be freed, not strong enough
To sever our own chains, needing

A sword of comradeship.

Let us leave the imperfect
To the imperfect,
And sally forth,

our heads held high,

Our blades at our sides
And our hearts true and ready
In friendship

Flowers in our outstretched hands.

poem after watching my daughter swim

She skims like a swan across the water

as fear evaporates into a dark cloud

and is blown away and scattered.

The white dresses of passing feminine time

loom in the distance, one possible

harbor on her adventures.

Yet, other paths open up and an archipelago

of unpredictable futures stretches out along

the horizon. Each stroke of the swim

Moves her closer to the bounty of her choices

but as she glides, the opposite edges of the island

chain become harder to steer toward.

Progress cuts off possibility, but still she swims,

the swan out on the sea, traversing her life

toward her awaiting destiny.

On which island will she land and how long

shall she tread upon the sea?

Swim, my swan, to destiny.

Luis Fernando Verissimo

Luis Fernando Verissimo writes amazing books.  Here is a great interview with him from the CBC.

poem 21 July 2014

A soft flow of sweet milk drips down

from the vault of the sky,

from the stars

Onto the dry crust of thirsty bread

that is the baked earth,

the land.

I have kissed her cheek and her hand

and with my own hand

carressed her face

And numbered and named the celestial

bodies just to see the corners

of her pouting lips

Raise up like unattended balloons

with strings cut by jesters

and without anchors.

Then the drip of milk becomes a trickle

and the bread of the earth

cracks and crumbles

But the stars in the sky persist,

the stars forever flowing

and her lips rising.

RR Shea

A little Sunday Saraceni

Here are Four works to contemplate for a fine Sunday evening, all of them by Carlo Saraceni. The Getty has a good blurb on the artist:

Carlo Saraceni  

b. about 1579 Venice, Italy, d. 1620 Venice, Italy
Painter
Italian

Carlo Saraceni dressed in French clothes, spoke French fluently, and had French followers, but he never visited France and his jewel-like painting style was most influenced by German and Italian artists.

After training in his birthplace of Venice, Saraceni settled in Rome in 1598. He had joined the Accademia di San Luca by 1607. In the early 1600s, Saraceni painted small-scale biblical and mythological subjects on copper, then a relatively new support in Rome. German artist Adam Elsheimer's style inspired the vast landscape settings that Saraceni began using so frequently and so well; their paintings were regularly confused.

After Elsheimer and Caravaggio died in 1610, Saraceni seems to have inherited their market. Primarily occupied with public commissions, he painted numerous altarpieces in and around Rome. He grew increasingly interested in Caravaggio's art, painting larger figures, subtle light effects, and momentary actions. Elsheimer's influence remained equally strong: Saraceni continued creating Elsheimer-inspired poetic landscape backgrounds.

And the works:

Mary Magdalene Reading

St Cecilia and the Angel

The martyrdom of St Cecilia

Icarus Burial

What will my daughter need to read?

I find list-making, especially as it applies to reading lists, to be simultaneously soothing and infuriating. I am happy that English departments at places like Oxford University often eschew a list and instead encourage applicants to read widely and much. That advice in hand, it is still true that the dons and tutors expect their incoming English students to have read Jane Ausen, a good amount of Shakespeare, and the Brontes. The canon remains, though it is in need of constant revision and update. I wonder: when my daughter gets ready for college in 11 short years, what will she be required to have read, and what will she have read to make her ready?

I'd like to provide two lists here of a dozen literature books I want her to have read, probably in her last few summers before going off to school. The first will be rather obvious, but it will exclude such items as “Hamlet,” for I would hope that between her excellent school , our private book collection, and parenting, she will have the basics down. “Pride and Predjuice,” Shakespeare, and some Chaucer are givens. Not all works are originally written in English, but most are.

The second list is mostly literature in translation, some of it is well-known, and I believe all of it is criminally under-read by both students and adults.

And so:

The obvious list:

1. Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne
2. The Inferno by Dante
3. Selected writings of John Ruskin
4. Dubliners by James Joyce
5. Don Quixote by Cervantes
6. The Count of Monte Cristo by Dumas pere
7. The Red and the Black by Stendhal
8. Candide by Voltaire
9. Swann's Way by Proust
10. The Bacchai by Euripides
11. The Art of Happiness by Epicurus
12. On the nature of things by Lucretius

And now the more ecclectic and, in my opinion, interesting list:

1. The Maias by Eça de Queirós
2. A Heart So White by Javier Marías
3. The Leopard by Giuseppe di Lampedusa
4. A Month in the Country by J. L. Carr
5. A Time of Gifts by Patrick Leigh Fermor
6. The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman
7. Songbook by Umberto Saba
8. Canti by Leopardi
9. Dom Casmurro by Machado de Assis
10. Labyrinths by Borges
11. Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz
12. Stories of Anton Checkov

Lists aside, it is a pleasure every day to see her delve into books, to swim in the pages of some great story, or to be able to read aloud to her or to watch as my wife reads to her. Reading can be an act of love, one of the most pure.

little yellow bird

You feast on seeds, little yellow bird,

as the sun melts into the ground

and the cool winds pick up

to stir in drops of moonlight

in tonight's black dance

of passing time.

Tomorow you will flit again

to the feeder standing sentry

in the midst of the yard,

unaware of the passage of comedies

and tragedies in the lives

of the people who put out the feed

and observe your carefree flights

with a mix of youthful joy and the sure

knowledge of lived age.

Some Sunday Italian artists.

For fun, I thought I would list a trio of modern Italian painters of interest, provide wiki bios and links, and show a few examples of their work. Then, I'm going to spend the day with my precious little daughter, because as much as I love art and literature, it is the love of my wife and daughter that keeps me going every day. They are true treasures.

Here we go

Mario Mafai:

(from Wikipedia)

Mario Mafai (12 February 1902 – 31 March 1965) was an Italian painter. With his wife Antonietta Raphaël he founded the modern art movement called the Scuola Romana, or Roman school.

Mafai left school very early, preferring to attend, with Scipione, the Scuola Libera del Nudo, or free school of the nude, of the Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma. His influences in those years were Roman galleries and museums, and the Fine Arts Library at Palazzo Venezia.

He met painter and sculptor Antonietta Raphaël in 1925, and they married. In 1927 Mafai exhibited for the first time, with a show of studies and maquettes organised by the Associazione Artistica Nazionale in Via Margutta. In 1928 he had a second exhibition, at the XCIV Mostra degli Amatori e Cultori di Belle Arti, as well as a collective with Scipione and other painters, at the Young Painters Convention of Palazzo Doria in 1929.

In November 1927, Mafai and Raphaël moved to 325 via Cavour in Rome, and made a studio there. Within a short time, it became a meeting point for writers such as Enrico Falqui, Giuseppe Ungaretti, Libero de Libero and Leonardo Sinisgalli, as well as the young artists Scipione and Renato Marino Mazzacurati.

A few paintings:

Emanuele Cavalli

(Frrom Wikipedia)

(b. 1904-d. 1981) was an Italian painter belonging to the modern movement of the Scuola Romana (Roman School). He was also a renowned photographer, who experimented with new techniques since the 1930s.

Son of Apulian landowners, Cavalli moved to Rome in 1921 and there he became a student of Italian painter Felice Carena, also attending the local art college. In 1926 he exhibited some paintings at the Biennale di Venezia, where he would continue to exhibit regularly.

From 1927 to 1930, Cavalli attended some expositions together with painters Giuseppe Capogrossi and Francesco Di Cocco, also travelling to France (1928), where he was introduced by his friend Onofrio Martinelli to the circle of Italiens de Paris (i.e., De Pisis, De Chirico, Savinio and others). He exhibited at the Salon Bovy of Paris with Fausto Pirandello and Di Cocco, then in 1930 returned to Rome where he joined the Scuola Romana.

In a series of exhibitions Cavalli held from 1931 to 1933, the artist began elaborating Tonalism, a pictorial and aesthetic style that will find in him one of its best and most refined interpreters, even from the theoretical point of view. In these exhibitions he received the support from important art critics and collectors, as well as from renowned Italian author Massimo Bontempelli, the uncle of his friend Corrado Cagli and the promoter of "Magic realism", a literary and artistic movement which had many similarities with tonalistic painting.

In 1933 Cavalli, together with Capogrossi and Melli wrote the "Manifesto del Primordialismo plastico" (Manifesto of Plastic Primordialism) defining the Tonalist Creed, with special emphasis on the style's spiritual and abstract side. In 1935 and 1943, Cavalli exhibited a group of paintings at the Quadriennale di Roma, developing the theme of painting-music relationships: he displayed a series of feminine figures of different tonalities, and explained this work within the terms of "contrapuntal sensitivity", comparing it to a "collection of preludes and fugues in major and minor tones".[3]

Other important exhibitions were held by Cavalli at the Leonardo da Vinci Gallery of Florence in 1939 and at the Zodiaco of Rome in 1945, the latter crowned by the appointment as professor of Painting at Accademia di Belle Arti Firenze. He thus moved permanently to Florence with wife Vera Haberfeld.[4] In 1949 Cavalli was affected by a deep crisis, increased by his professorship not being renewed and his close friends' change of style towards abstract art.[5]

Cavalli continued to paint for the rest of his life, alternating it with photography and innovative imaging,[6] receiving important commissions from public and private organisations.[7]

A few paintings:

Carlo Carra

(From Wikipedia)

Carlo Carrà (February 11, 1881 – April 13, 1966) was an Italian painter, a leading figure of the Futurist movement that flourished in Italy during the beginning of the 20th century. In addition to his many paintings, he wrote a number of books concerning art. He taught for many years in the city of Milan.

Carrà was born in Quargnento, near Alessandria (Piedmont). At the age of 12 he left home in order to work as a mural decorator. n 1899-1900, Carrà was in Paris decorating pavilions at the Exposition Universelle, where he became acquainted with contemporary French art. He then spent a few months in London in contact with exiled Italian anarchists, and returned to Milan in 1901. In 1906, he enrolled at Brera Academy (Accademia di Brera) in the city, and studied under Cesare Tallone. In 1910 he signed, along with Umberto Boccioni, Luigi Russolo and Filippo Tommaso Marinetti the Manifesto of Futurist Painters, and began a phase of painting that became his most popular and influential.

Carrà's Futurist phase ended around the time World War I began. His work, while still using some Futurist concepts, began to deal more clearly with form and stillness, rather than motion and feeling. Carrà soon began creating still lifes in a style he, along with Giorgio de Chirico, called "metaphysical painting". Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, the metaphysical phase gave way to a sombre style akin to Masaccio's. An example from this period is his 1928 Morning by the Sea.

He is best known for his 1911 futurist work, The Funeral of the Anarchist Galli. Carrà was indeed an anarchist as a young man but, along with many other Futurists, later held more reactionary political views, becoming ultra-nationalist and irredentist before and during the war, as well as by Fascism after 1918 (in the 1930s, Carrà signed a manifesto in which called for support of the state ideology through art).[1] The Strapaese group he joined, founded by Giorgio Morandi, was strongly influenced by fascism and responded to the neo-classical guidelines which had been set by the regime after 1937[2] (but was opposed to the ideological drive towards strong centralism).[3]

He died in Milan in 1966.

A few paintings:

To art, literature, and all those we love and cheerish in our lives.

Cheers

Inspector Montalbano vs. chemo

Nothing beats the cancer blues like my loving family and losing myself in a well-written mystery.  The chemo and radiation have been tough, and I have been very tired.  But, I keep going, and I will continue to keep going.  I'm going to fight and win, and I'm going to live every day.  Despite my current condition, I am a truly lucky man.  Now, on to the book.

My mystery of choice is the Inspector Montalbano series. The prose is light, the descriptions of food are glorious, the inspector is a flawed but thoughtful character, and I find the artwork mentioned to be intriguing. From Angelica's Smile by Andrea Camilleri, here is part of a dialog concerning a burglary of money, jewels and art.  Montalbano is asking an affluent young couple what has been stolen:

“What else did they take?”

“Well aside from the car,[...]and a seascape by Carrá,” the lady concluded, cool as a cucumber.

Montalbano gave a start.

[...]

“And?”

“A Guttuso, a Morandi, a Donghi, a Mafai, and a Pirandello...”

In short, a whole gallery of art wortha fortune.




------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I know about Carrá and Pirandello, but I don't know the other artists.. So, I have looked them up and here offer what might be the paintings stolen.

A seascape by Carra:

A Guttuso:

A Morandi:

A Mafai:

A Pirandello:

Not bad at all.

And now, on I read, on I write, on I live, on I love, and on I fight.

Cheers!

blues bar on the edge of town

Late at night in a blues bar on the edge

of town, a brick building crowded with emptiness,

I'm drinking whiskey from a cloudy glass,

and listening to a man sitting at the piano

in the corner as he pours out his anguish

and his vampire fingers plunge through the ivory keys,

through the floor and the crumbling foundations,

and down into the earth, the victimized earth,

stirring magma to trigger a Vesuvius eruption,

a flame quenched only by drinks from my cloudy glass.

R. R. Shea

The voyage of my far-away friend

For TJ.  

My far-away friend sits in port,

the sails of his ship battered

from storms and sun,

listening to the stories

of the timid locals

and pompous magistrates,

drinking the house wine,

and eating the bean pie

of the melancholy fishwive

with a smile and a wink

of gratitude.

A merchant says that the ship is lost,

that the mast and riggings

will never again drag

my far-away friend's ship

onto the open waves,

that he is stuck in port

to lead a small life

among small lives.

Such news fills

the dock workers

with immense gratitude.

But my far-away friend

has sailed too far

and seen too much

to believe idle speculations,

In the morning,

he casts off,

light breezes teasing

his boat away from land.

His journey will be longer

with such tattered sails,

but his hand never leaves

the old iron rudder,

and the song of the sea

and of life full lived

never leaves his heart.

On he sails,

while timid souls

lament he left

and his far-away companions

rejoice at his voyage

out into tomorrow.

R. R. Shea

chasing a dream

As night broke into pieces, I had a beautiful dream,

a thought which fled me like a deer

frightened by the smell and sound of people.

I chased the dream into the woods,

the trees growing thicker and larger

the deeper in I gave chase to the creature

Until the beautiful dream was gone

and I was surrounded by leaves

and tall, scornful grass, and bemused bushes.

My heart grew cold and I shook

as I heard branches crack and the birds

stop chirping as some unknown animal stirred.

A hunter perhaps? I crept slowly back

the way I had come, back to the growing light

of the white and rescuing morning sun.

Back to the start of the chase of the dream,

a dream with features as obscure

and anonymous as any wild deer. 

R. R. Shea

Filling the box

Fragments of thoughts

drifting around inside my head

like sections of newspaper

blowing and scattering and littering

the streets of an empty city

or a city still fast asleep,

not yet touched

by the morning workers

who collect the past

in their garbage trucks

to make things neat and clean

before the next wave

of paper and print.

Salvage some of those papers,

collect them in a wooden box

with a sailing ship

carved on the lid,

the box of hopes

and dreams and remembering,

the treasure chest of the mind,

a collection started and coveted

on the morning of our lives,

curated as time flows forward,

things discarded and then longed for,

things burned away with joy,

memories carefully wrapped

and stored in the bottom

of the box.

Fragments of dreams

- for thoughts and dreams

become one inside

the treasure box -

and fragments of hope

begin to fill up, until

we realize that the only way

to make room for these

drifting remnant pieces

is to throw away

the dirty strips of despair.

And so let us burn these away,

burn the oiled up papers

of our long-ago failures,

of our self-imposed inadequacy

until there is room again

to keep filling our box

of dreams and thoughts.

cycle of the poets

The sun and soft breezes inspire gentle thoughts

and poetic musings for weekend scriveners,

but

              storms and mud and lashing rain

uncover our true humanity and our lives.

Floods and thunder churn up reality,

expose the deep roots of suffering and living,

and drag poetic wanderings back down

into the primeval muck of creation and the life

of this world, the breeding ground where nature

has her dark victory and humanity begins again.

The filth, rushing water, and strife of this life

make artistic fancies gestate once again.

Nothing is unchanged and all things bloom in death.

Struggle conquers daydream, dreams are changed,

But

                               then the clouds pass, the sun returns,

and newly evolved poetic dreams take flight once again in the cycle

of creation, the cycle of the living, the cycle of the poets.

R.R. Shea

This coffee

This coffee tastes like a memory,

sipped and savored as the sun rises

over the eastern morning fog,

sipped in solitude as my family

sleeps and only the birds

and rabbits are awake.

The hot liquid pulls me back

into the body of a young man

who has been entranced by a beautiful woman,

a flowing memory of her eyes as blue

and deep as the sea, eyes dancing

as she laughs at my jokes and drinks.

Now I drink alone this first cup

and her eyes are closed and a smile

still plays across her sleeping face.

She will rise from bed soon and join me

and together we will drink coffee and share

the entire universe without words, only with love.

The whisper of the dramatic

The old masters write that only the most beautiful creatures

tame and shatter our souls, that the smile of a woman can save us

from our own hell or from another's purgatory

and that our world can crumble when our beloved

turns her shoulder or walks away,

and I respect the old masters, except on those occasions

when they are fools, proud idiots, and ignorant magicians.

Our inner selves are far more fragile than the old masters

ever imagined, weak vessels liable to capsize and sink

at a mere memory or a smell in the air that reminds us

of childhood loss or middle aged apathy or elderly boredom.

Our hearts are not glass, but the image of glass, painted

on cracking paper by the maddest of the old masters.

We break not at the dramatic, but at the whisper of the dramatic.

a storm power outage

The late-night storm knocked out the power

and so we lit many candles and huddled

on our couches as the lightning

etched images of uncertain night

into our imaginations.

The flickering of those wax torches

gave the air a feeling of a feast

or a medieval celebration

and our laughter and smiles

came easier to our faces

as we felt invincible and close,

pilgrims having traveled out

of the hectic modern world

of electronics and into

primitive temporary joy.

Sleep, my little one

My little girl, in the darkest hour of the night

I tip-toed into your room again

as you drifted on your sea of dreams

and I watched you sleep

and my heart filled and then

almost burst open.

I wept in silence, my tears

diverted as they fell

by the smile of my

quivering mouth,

joy and sorrow co-mingling

on my tired cheeks.

I thanked you in whispers

and inaudible sentences

for being my daughter,

for existing and bringing

your burning torch into

Plato's cave, taking my hand,

and leading me out.

I begged forgiveness

from your tranquil pose

of peaceful recline,

forgiveness for being an adult

and forgetting sometimes

the important things in life.

Forgive me, my princess,

for trading in giggles

in favor of irony and sarcasm,

of forming impressions

of friends based on how

they make their money

instead of the contents

of their dreams,

for forgetting about

the tremendous magic

of imaginary tea parties.

Sleep, my little one,

and dream and stay a child

as long as you can, and help me

to find the little boy who still

lives deep within me

and wants to come out to play

one last time.

Sleep, and I too will sleep, and we can

dream a single dream.

RR Shea

sand and glass

Human footprints in the sand

perhaps the trail of a woman

who is playing and hiding,

waiting to be found and suppressing

a giggle as her lover follows

the tracks in the sand.

Footprints in the sand as a travesty

or the final clues of a missing child

last seen in swim clothes and

carrying a red beach ball

and frolicking in the waves.

Footprints in the sand as a puzzle,

perhaps tracks observed by tourists

who believed they were alone

at this beachfront villa

and now wonder with whom

they must share their solitude.

Footprints like braille or hieroglyphics,

semiotic injunctions on the empty soul,

messages without grammar but overflowing

with all possible meanings.

And within these footprints exist the seeds of glass,

the raw materials from which

some faceless corporation will build

widows for houses and cars.

The sand will be gathered,

heated, transformed, forever changed,

until the footprints in the sand will become

a window from which future generations

will watch their children play

or their spouses come home from war

or sunsets or approaching storms.

The sand-made-window will offer

more readings and signs,

give more clues and provide

for more things to observe.

But it will also separate people,

throw up a shield between the inside and the out,

which has since sand was first transformed

to glass been the secret agenda

of all our windows.

RR Shea

a change of harvest

As a youth, the ripe red fruit fell

from the trees and the bushes

to my soft-skinned feet

and the cool water flowed

from endless streams.

Honeysuckle perfumed the air

and crickets played symphonies

to send me into nocturnal sleep.

Now youth is gone

and I must scrape

and wrestle my food

from the earth,

cracking knuckles and parched lips

the only interruptions

in the foreboding silence

of our existence.

Listening to the rain

Let's stay in bed

all day and night

and listen to the rain tap out

the confessions of the

restless men and women

in some faraway city,

Raindrops like a telegraph,

hesitating watery caresses

against the window,

a morse code of the cosmos,

let us listen

before we close the curtain

and kiss each other

and laugh and whisper

our own secrets,

drifting into sleep and dreams,

as our sweet nothings

are absorbed by

the passing clouds and fall

as snow in colder lands.

R. R. Shea

two old ropes

Two old ropes, gnarled and caked in mud

tangle around the trunk stump of a dead oak,

each end leading away into the lush grass,

one rope trailing north and the other south,

like a madman's compass,

like branches leading off into confusion,

like broken promises between two lovers.

The buzzards and the birds

of prey fly overhead,

circle, spot a place to land,

then dive to ground, but

– just before their talons dig into the earth -

they swoop off again,

screaming their disapproval.

The sun and the moon stand guard above,

each fighting to abandon post,

obligatory sentinels,

ready to surrender

or wait for the fire

from the lightning strike

to erase this obscene canvas

and bring the great regeneration

of what has been purified.