Equinoctial Chant
A.
Even, neve
Neverending summer calms
At costs. The beads of sweat
Dripping off my nose, and the mulberry
Leaves riot in primary
Colors, along with their brothers-
The cottonwoods of the West,
Our maples flapping in the breeze,
Vinegar elms, poison oak,
And my friend the hophornbeam.
Burning bright.
But the Tyger never drops
Her ornamentation, never gives
Counsel to her shadow
Steeped directly to the east or west
At twilight time. We do.
We do.
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poem by Stan Petrovich
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Licking the Toad II
'Doctor: 'Are the tablets beginning to work now? ''
Miss Alma: 'Yes, I'm beginning to feel like a waterlily on a Chinese lagoon.''
-from Summer and Smoke by Tennessee Williams
The Aztec people had a closely related god of sacred psychoactive plants. Xochipilli, Prince of Flowers, was the divine patron of 'the flowery dream' as the Aztecs called the ritual hallucinatory trance.
See them there:
young naked hippies gamboling in the hot reeds
along the Clorado River
in southern Arizona
looking for toads
chasing the hopping delicate toads
whose only defense
is what makes them prized
their poison
their recreational high
Slough them off!
Dry the skins
let them renew their
poison
Paracelsus' dosage
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poem by Stan Petrovich
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Saturday In The Town Square
The women gather are dressed to the nines;
Floral designs of cornpetal blue and lace
Adorning their cool blouses.
A black pit holding fire
Smoulders and is left to burn, on the side,
Offering smoke to the pellucid air.
A newly made gallows stands,
And a very tall man in a tall hat,
With an axe and a black mask,
Takes his place-
He is in charge.
A large crowd gathers, talkative
And unashamed, in a hurry though.
They lead out shackled red-faced Rudy who
Looks like he has a belly full of gin,
But he really has a gut full of regret.
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poem by Stan Petrovich
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Astounding
Rusted metal in moonlight, orange. Monkeys can't hold it,
So they even are not worth good graces.
But who, friend, is? Motorcycle men towing old ladies,
flipping off those they pass in hatred and self-satisfaction,
Scream to be mocked, for the pomp,
Their absurdity as Camus' absurdity. And today, Whitsunday, meaninglessly, the tarantulas at the pulpit, experts in raking in dough,
Grab our soulless hearts, tug the strings of their pulpits.
Bankers are select money-grubbers, Who get off when they overfee the poor, so they can float in heated pools.
Oil concens drain your pockets as you refuel:
You are playing their fool.
And the journey you prolong unto death
Is to make the rich richer;
But bless their bloated suicide rates,
As they sit transfixed by Fox News,
Empty-headed, lily-livered, drunk with deep pockets.
Out for the honor of no one,
Not themselves either,
Because there is direct pay
Dearly in coming
Birth, stillborn,
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poem by Stan Petrovich
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Night Falling
Now it is dark at last
Twilight time for the forsaken wanderer;
The junipers are a backdropp for some evening smells;
That take on a meaning of their own,
One of wisdom, one of experience-
For they have held sway in all weather and time;
They are not graven idols,
Or burnt offerings-
They live as my life goes on,
Tirelessly showing me that
Not-going at times gets one farther than the quickness of light itself.
In time at night they act like the old humps they are,
Talking about seeding the clouds,
And they are most familiar with all the cloud-types,
The Romulus and the Remus
Of watersheds.
They speak of weather like men speak of food,
Natural goodness abounding,
Hungering for more weather to brave,
Like eating hot peppers,
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poem by Stan Petrovich
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Family Feuds
Wilson, Wickford and Dunne
Were gunslingers and lawmen
With a remarkable thing in common:
They all had half-brothers they needed to kill.
They rode the Jornada del Muerto
In New Mexico, shooting rattlers
And drinking bad coffee,
And smoking black Mexican cigars,
And looking up at the shooting stars.
Hugh Wilson found Jeb in Santa Fe,
And shot him in the back of the head.
Nick Wickford crossed paths with Samuel
At some godforsaken trading post,
And blew out his heart.
Ryan Dunne caught Slocum Bickford watering his horse,
And shot him from a distance (of sorts) .
Now the three were wanted dead or alive,
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Man Alone
He assails the desert Mojave,
Down the rockiest of dirt roads,
Thinks of the uses of agave,
But food, drink, those ol' rice & beans
Can now forever not be his goad.
Coming upon an old white railway station,
The kind the loves to find,
Huddlesd between two dangerous mesas,
He removes his boots in order to unwind.
A mass or sores & carbuncles covers his feet.
Written in baked blood upon one of the abandoned walls
He sees the dying confessions of another man alone:
'You are born alone,
'You live alone,
'Even in the company of others,
'And then you die alone...'
He happens across as sliver of a broken mirror
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Paris,1912
I was born a hundred years ago;
Made it to the Mecca of art
For art's sake;
Picasso's circle constituted by poets,
Mainly;
Gathered in outdoor cafes
We came up with modernism
By slamming the door on the old
And inviting in the new:
'If the artist says it's art,
Then it's art.'
(I look at the streets now,
A hundred years later,
And am griefstricken how
The gasoline engine has
Singlehandedly reduced
The role of poetry in young lives;
I am so sorry I thing rap music is neither
Poetry nor music;
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poem by Stan Petrovich
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Time Of The Tubers
our thinking tribe
hands sandy from digging yams
compelled to fight the mesomorphs
who captured women and girls
came upon the white carcass
of an alligator
the Bald One rubbed his head
and tasted a string of raw flesh
it was when we first
invented cooking
then we faught
crying sputtering wrenching gutcrunching
in a short gulch that resounded
they with their brawn
we with our forethought
and longer staves
so handily we triumphed
getting back the women and girls
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poem by Stan Petrovich
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