The Aegis

[Zlatko Waterman]

(Performance notes: I performed some music to entertain the residents of The Aegis, a high-end, luxury rest home, in 1999 with my friend, the violinist Ches Willis, a piano player and other musicians.

The acoustics in their living room surpassed those of any hall or room I have played in. The relatives of the residents arrived from the airport for their visits driven by a chauffeured Rolls Royce. Urns of ashes ( cremated bones) were installed in a special bronze wall in the rose garden on the property.




The Aegis


is a fancy nursing home where
the walls are glass
and the columns are twittered with
rose plaster and goldfinches.
Every room has a window and is a real winner.
Winches, belt-thin, hoist
the ruined flanks to dinner.
A background of Haydn,
a foreground of porcelain bridges and
scooting replaced hips.
This is the finest chandelier light
glancing from Waterford goblets.
What’s in the basement?
More clean.
The bones are in the garden.


9/05







definition of "aegis" :
(http://www.thefreedictionary.com/aegis)

[stilltrucking]

Aegis Combat System
Description: The Aegis system was designed as a total weapon system, from detection to kill. The heart of the system is an advanced, automatic detect and track, multi-function phased-array radar, the AN/SPY-1. This high powered (four megawatt) radar is able to perform search, track and missile guidance functions simultaneously with a track capacity of over 100 targets. The first Engineering Development Model (EDM-1) was installed in the test ship, USS Norton Sound (AVM 1) in 1973.

I am a sick puppy cause that is the first thought that crossed my mind.

Then I thought of Athena

aegis | a shield; Zeus had a goat-skin aegis, while Athena adorned the aegis with the head of Medusa

As you are well aware of I am brain impaired with poetry. I am so grateful that I can still read. I can’t “hear” this poem, but I can “see” it. Thank for the beauty of those images.

Now go sh*t in your hat.. Sorry kind professor I am just in bitchy mood lately, maybe a late onset of male menopause. I figured I should have been done with that years ago.

That image of clean bones brings to mind a pretty little female skull, long polished clean by the worms. The Sylvia Plath effect. Why is poetry such a blood sport for women? Just wondering. Not really asking.

thanks

[Zlatko Waterman]

"clean as licked bones" is how Rilke puts it, Still.

We just hear too much of Anne Sexton, Sylvia, and Virginia ( Woolf).

You also have, in this country, wonderful females like Louise Bogan and Elizabeth Bishop, world class drunks and world class poets, who made it to old age and kept writing ( and drinking).

AND the magnificent Marianne Moore ( not a drinker), and her boyfriends, the Brooklyn Dodgers:


(paste)


http://www.learner.org/amerpass/unit11/authors-7.html


Check the end of paragraph one on this web page . . .



--Z

[mnaz]

"columns are twittered"...

"scooting replaced hips"...


very nice. I can see this place clearly...
(chuckle inducing)

[Zlatko Waterman]

( onstage: Z ( left) and Ches (right) performing at The Aegis, 1999.)

( local newspaper photo)








I suppose this link ought to be placed on Kat's "the right time to die" thread, but here it is, anyway:

http://www.aegisal.com/

Make sure to wait a few seconds while the "cover page" dissolves to the "home page."