Arlene Corwin writes

This Strange Thing Happening

What is this strange thing happening?

An opening, acceptance broader than before,

Love as chaperone.

Sights, ideas, sounds,

A seeing to the core of things –

Gradual, ongoing; every morning fresh.

Things foreign, new and unfamiliar,

Things outside my mental door:

The whole as if I’d had a drug of one or

                                                       other kind,

So new one thinks about one’s state of mind.

Mad?

A chemistry?

Not bonkers, loopy, cuckoo, batty.

No!

Perception changed:

A little bolder, unafraid –

New thoughts sprung from the hubbub of the old;

New sympathy - rich empathy,

And there’s the rub -

Unused to, as it were, to stand up for…so openly,

Articulately, stating what one thinks is true.

One wonders if the people round have noticed too.

One thinks of Huxley*

Will it stay?

Settle down or go away?

Does it have a meaning?

A broadening, one hopes – but frightening -

A bit.

One’s entering an untouched land.

One hopes one lands just right.

*Aldous Huxley (see The Doors Of Perception)

  

Aldous Huxley as the Fool -- Suzanne Treister

Renee' Drummond-Brown writes

2017

A new day

from whence

we overcame.

What if

anything

will ever change?

Absolutely nothing!

In fact

life will resume

just the same.

We’ll lie

we’ll cry

we’ll cheat

even

make a

New Year’s resolution sheet;

tuck it away,

an’ sing

some of the very same ol’ same

in 1918.

What a shame

a new year.

Auld Lang Syne

wasted

time gone by

a different day

without

a shadow of a doubt

the same ol’

same ol’

game.

Dedicated to: Anew un-Happy New Year!

A B.A.D. poem

Rooster -- Roz Young

Robert Lee Haycock shoots

Seeing the Old Year Off

 

THE DANCE: NANCY

I said I wouldn't dance with you;
Your hair's too blond, your eyes too blue.
A loaded gun and fully cocked,
dynamite cap set to go off.
I swore I wouldn't dance with you.

She's too proud of humility.
Her giant modesty towers from her knees.
She's so proud of humility, the giant Modesty towers from the knees.
Even us healthy ones she treats like disease.

I said I wouldn't dance with you.
Your arms, I knew, would hold like glue
No neon ever hijacked us,
I refused to be target practice
I  knew I'd never dance with you.

Oversharp in her ignorance, she's
indisputably a genius between the knees.
Oversharp in her ignorance, undeniably she's a genius between her knees.
The peacock preens, pretending that no one sees.

I said I wouldn’t dance with you:
The night's too young, too bright's the view.
But that bandit moon lit the fuse,
and insurgent night made the news,
though I'd said I'd never dance with you.

dancing in the moon
light with Nancy and kissing her good -
Night
comes quickly this time of year
and icily as well: the wind
bites nicely and to the quick --
oh these thoughts! are dancing nicly
through the wind kissing this memory
somehow -- I can hear the
memory embers
hisssing in the wind (is sharp
this time of year) like java in the night
comes dark and sharp and bitter.
spring it was or was it fall? (no matter)
(no matter at all the season) the reason
I recall at all is Nancy her name
whispers in the moon light, or
is it the night
wind that's light
or was it the fall --
-- no matter --
it was time and she was mine and we were
hours until the dawn (comes quickly, this time)
and I must go on:
I wanted to go on, to bound
fast as the hound Wind
and as free too but I was bound too fast to this ground
and ground too far down and
ground far too fine too but I danced on
with Nancy til I was out of time
and out of mind (but I must go on for now)
I dance with my mind I dance
with the wind and the night and the ice and
but where is the Nancy?
I dance with memory and death and death and memory
and now the dancing's through, for
every spring one makes fall's not far behind --
and life and mind and the night and the wind
go quickly this year of time and mightily as well
and all matter
(but no matter)


-- Duane Vorhees