poetryrepairs #235 v17.03:032

RALPH MONDAY : 'Bergman's Island' & Other Poems
Waiting
What Good is Love?
To Listen

for your reading pleasure, verse
from new and established poets
poetry requires a mature audience,
if you are under 18 years of age, click here Big Fish


Waiting

You aren’t waiting for Godot, maybe you don’t know what it is. The waiting will end in some moment, some probably commonplace experience, like waiting for the mortgage payment to post, or waiting for the microwave to beep that the quiche is done. The life is ordinary, American consumer in middle age far removed from Isis, Nazi Germany, feasting on photoshopped images of physical perfection, just waiting on that middle age spread, retirement, social security and a 401K. You have no recollection of the horrors of Achilles, the terrors of blind Tiresias, the incestuous madness of Oedipus, for your sense of history is the latest sports column, who will win the Super Bowl, World Series, who will go on a major golf run—will it be Tiger or some new kid on the block? Waiting, like the dinosaurs waited for that immense mountain to come hurtling in and force a cease to all foraging, or the black death of the calamitous 13th century, all somehow akin to a dentist’s visit, a blockbuster movie of car chases, big, bad explosions, a shoot-the-hell-out-of-the-bad-guy finale and “hero” take the feisty female. Waiting for the negative news, stock market dip, the latest CD by the latest, hottest new voice murmuring nothing. So used to waiting and growing toward nothing that even the girls in their thin summer dresses deserve hardly a glance. Waiting. Waiting. You are waiting for you.

poetryrepairs #235 v17.03:032





What Good is Love?

I bet a lot of people have asked themselves that question: Abelard after they took his balls, Paris lying mortally wounded, Medea spurned by Jason—but it’s not just the mythic amours, or television and movie trysts. Common guys and gals have wrestled, like Job’s angel, with this question, all scratching their heads in hormonal angst. I mean, what good is it? In this day and age love is sold as a commodity, a panacea—strutted down runways, soaked up at bars. Portrayed as a magic cure all, the healthy and the ill, the aged and the young, the deranged and the semi-sane pursue this Alice rabbit hoping not to get stuck in some endless hole. Really, what can you do with love? It can’t be measured, quantification is a mathematician’s nightmare, the banker can’t deposit it in your account and say this is the value. No measurable price like any other relative thing: diamond, gold watch, a new car or house. No, because what really blows people’s minds is the myth, the eternal Jason-quest after the golden apples—some narrative mystery that holds the secret to itself, smiling, the underground hibernating seed— waiting to hatch.

poetryrepairs #235 v17.03:032





To Listen 

Listen, I told her. You are young, without molding, little more than a new moon. We sat upon a glacial carved rock, watched the river’s eyemusic far below the East Rim run like a chorus from applause. Someday, in the deep night between covers, when he whispers of Isolde, pretend not to hear. When he tells you of the Lady with a bloody knife sing to him, “Bringing to mind all the things I did, So many that I can’t recount them all in this tale: Going in winter to waulkings and weddings…What remains of Andrew’s house, now full of nettles, Brings to mind when I was young.”1 Seduced by cities and media he will not know your song, but sing anyway, sing till the stars walk the moon’s ladder down the sky. We had come to this place of rock and mist, tree and wild to be within salvation’s myth, to touch the core of a lightning nourished oak, be not drooped or feebled. In those birth covers when he wants to Eros the tale between your bereaved thighs, laugh of Troy and Briseis buried in Agamemnon’s armpits—call yourself Mary the Magdalene who washes the sky with her hair.




thank you for reading poetryrepairs
please link to http://www.poetryrepairs.com/v17/032.html
link to POETRYREPAIRS




All the fine arts are species of poetry--Samuel Taylor Coleridge

poetry repairs your heart
even as it splits it open.
VIRGINIA WOOLF
The Art of Reading





Our Dancing Poet Logo! FIND GIFT BUY GIFT
http://www.zazzle.com/poetryrepairshop



No state organ: POETRYREPAIRS
accepts NO money from federal,
state, or local governments.
READERS maintain poetryrepairs
PLEASE
NO READING FEE FOR SUBMISSIONS. DONATIONS, while appreciated, DO NOT INCREASE CHANCES OF BEING SELECTED.


I have many things to write unto you but
I will not write with pen and ink
--JOHN the theologian


free counters

REPAIR: resort, frequent or habitual going; concourse or confluence of people at or in a place; making one's way; to go, betake oneself, to arrive; return to a place; to dwell; to recover, heal, or cure; to renew; to fix to original condition. -- Oxford English Dictionary


read more poetry

RALPH MONDAY : 'Bergman's Island' & Other Poems
Waiting
What Good is Love?
To Listen

1 Mary MacPherson. “Longing for Home.” 19th century Scottish ballad


top