Poetry Jam in honour of Lightning Rod 2/7/13 - 3/1/13

[judih]

not my favourite thing #1

i don't like dwelling on loss
you
and not you
how you were so riled up
tossing your ire at every wrong
this sudden lack of you
this no more of
you
and not you
this i do not like
yet here i am
caught in a not-you chasm
a gaping breathless pit
not filled
but mockingly so
not you

[WIREMAN]

Opposite lightning's
True performer
He had this poem w/a prop mirror
Amazing performance piece
Performer
He could piss me off on cyber waves
Then I'd see that smile of his in minds eye....and I'd chill
We both of us, raised as golfers
We were always talkin bout going to hit golf balls
His uncle Don January a famous pro golfer and
Masters champ
The coolest out there on tour back in the 60's
Jam on to the other side clay....jam on!

[Doreen Peri]

I'll be back tomorrow or the next day to jam... for now, this is all I have...

Dedicated to Clay January aka Lightning Rod —
RIP — November 29, 1948 - February 6, 2013
Poet, humorist, social commentator, musician and songwriter.
A mutli-talented creator rejoins creation itself.

Dear Clay .... Fly with the angels. Play music in the clouds. Share your one-liners with St. Peter or whoever the hell is in the audience willing to listen. I know you will. I love you.

A Child Said, What is the Grass?
by Walt Whitman

A child said, What is the grass? fetching it to me with full
hands;
How could I answer the child?. . . .I do not know what it
is any more than he.

I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful
green stuff woven.

Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropped,
Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners, that we
may see and remark, and say Whose?

Or I guess the grass is itself a child. . . .the produced babe
of the vegetation.

Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,
And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow
zones,
Growing among black folks as among white,
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the
same, I receive them the same.

And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.

Tenderly will I use you curling grass,
It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men,
It may be if I had known them I would have loved them;
It may be you are from old people and from women, and
from offspring taken soon out of their mother's laps,
And here you are the mother's laps.

This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old
mothers,
Darker than the colorless beards of old men,
Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths.

O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues!
And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths
for nothing.

I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men
and women,
And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring
taken soon out of their laps.

What do you think has become of the young and old men?
What do you think has become of the women and
children?

They are alive and well somewhere;
The smallest sprouts show there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait
at the end to arrest it,
And ceased the moment life appeared.

All goes onward and outward. . . .and nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and
luckier.

[SadLuckDame]

You'll be taken with into the Spring
and brought forth, though this will be done
when you're just not looking at it any longer
and someone else is doing the watch.

In this new way you're still gifted
again and again.

[Arcadia]

I still can´t make music
with medical machine rests
& a too full heart
(words seems to hit
sudden surfaces
like a rubber ball
with an odd gravity)

& music always reminds other music

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgyNPL9biqg

yeah, let´s have a cup of something

[stilltrucking]

Thank you for being a Friend
thank you for the music

How the Bible Expains Suffering

[WIREMAN]

Ultimately
We will all
1st noble truth
Suffering
Diffused
Confounded
& confused
Confronting
What's left of our
hour upon the stage

[Doreen Peri]

I don't know the why of death.
I cannot comprehend its purpose.
Just when I think the crying's done,
it comes again like buckets.
I become puddle sunk into
a bed, covers pulled over
my head, wondering why get up?
Grief is overflowing in a
much-too-large imaginary cup.
I swear I'll learn to move, become
the essence of the me that I should be.
But death, the thief, has stolen
every guarantee.

[judih]

the doors were locked
insurance paid
thought i was covered

but through the cracks
into my life
death the thief arrived

nothing to do
the gap exists
my soul invaded

(for doreen)

[tinkerjack]

for Clay
for me you are in a better place
it was during the time that you were so busy dying that was hardest to bear.

I could not let you go
I was flashing back to thanksgiving day 1984
that day my rose of san antone rattled her last death rattle, funny how many old people die at the first glint of the dawns light. I been sitting by her side for days, that rattle rattled my bones hour after hour waiting for her to draw her last breath. I thought of coming up to dallas to sit by your side, but I was grateful that you had a friend their.

so here we are eleven years now I been harassing you with these random text boxes, just cause you died I don/t see no reason to stop now. most of all thanks for the music mi amigo.
I wonder what would happen if I tried to buy something from you using pay pal ?

that's about all for tonight as I sit here with the blood pounding in my veins and my temples throbbing and contemplate stupid bob's advice about before it's too late.

with much honor to your memory
jt

[gypsyjoker]

for a friend

Since then 'tis centuries, and yet each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses' heads
Were toward eternity.

time is the thief
the unbending deserter
it leaves us only the now
death is dead over and done
in its wake a
tsunami of guilt
life goes on
for the children of sunlight

[robertsnw]

My pome for Lightning Rod

Mona Lisa's and mad hatters actually so few and far between, I comb through mountaintops with magnifying glass setting the skin aflame trying to find you, no lingering ants with crispy thorax backpacks but cockatoos with their doo Wop frontal curls singed off so awkward feeling with their bald spots that they now longer rise their voices to sing to join the cacophony of others in chorus of warning or praise, joy or revolution, orgasm or surrender, but now muted, silt stained eyes are not Gothic homages to the steeped and spiraled churches that towered over and failed mankind, no no. these horn rimmed halos are the ashes, the ghosts of what we've seen eventually bonding and melding with us, take comfort in the shade that God has provided you, when fair skinned beady eyes cowards , when conquistadors of shoelace and side walk crack finally rachet their eyes upward to face that burning source of heat that's been following and changing and shaping and dragging line and fortune teller ridge and cavern through our skin, when these pale skinned beauties finally awaken old and afraid seeking palmistry or priest for answers they've never even bothered to form questions too, you, take comfort in the shade God has provided you, for the ghost of memories you've adorned with flesh, for the electrically articullated limbs that no longer frighten, for the needle pinned back wings of butterflies you attached to your own shoulders and with the lunacy of the faithful counted on the outside world and its appendages whether wing or chain to grow to fit you, that you never bow or stoop or starve to bump your head through its dwarfed doorways, but with incantation, with pulse of crack and lightning, made the world rise to meet you......good night old friend and take comfort in the shade that God has provided you.

[SadLuckDame]

In this miniscule land
where everything peeps
and frights.

At this time
you no longer deal with that,
but are in easter,
in ease.

.

[SadLuckDame]

It's the giant window
we don't want to walk away from,
but the view is snow,
much of the white
is like when you poke holes in the black paper
and hold it up to an exposed bulb.

Your journey to behind the black paper,
you see the lit up stage
or the snow out the window
is in the creases of your elbow,
neck line and soul.

Throw a snowball at Jack and Doreen, will ya.

[Doreen Peri]

Whoever wrote the cliché words
"Death is part of life" should be admonished.

Death is not part of life. It's the opposite.
The words are meant to be comforting somehow,
but they are not. I'd be astonished to know
that those who are grieving have pain eased
by this appeasement.

We carry the memories, treasure the photos,
the memorabilia, the ticket stubs, the confetti —
but no matter the preparation, loved ones cannot
expect to be ready.

The final sentence has been spoken.
And though all the tokens help keep nostalgia vivid,
the pieces of life which linger fade with generations.
Death is not a part of life. It's the inverse of
creation.

I apologize for having no words of solace or vignettes.
The best that I can do is never to forget.