Pilmigrations

Birds, feet, trends, individuals,the devout-- many migrate. many make pilgrimage, even if only to where they were born. Migrations and pilgrimages are welcome here. And sometimes, there will be other inhabitants.

Friday, November 23, 2012

Indiana


Indiana


1
Oiled field burns high in Indiana on
Stray husks of soy

The fire spreads out of its bounds
emigrated from 200 yards beyond
the House and the Barn. In the heat, the Drug Lab separates from

The Trailer, against the law of trailer burn up first fast and total,
has split in 3 

This aftmost piece: A rocket shaped backarcwise over the grove in
green and orange onto Hwy 150: the solid
skimming along the center line, the liquid retarring
the surface, the gas lamping out for elements
to sustain it

2
The forward cabin: Spit from the Trailer, Kenny and Richard's personal palace suite off the Lab ("even temperatured” like Bob Biscuit had promised)
with a family-room-extra-bath-kitchen, sets off spinning like a top.
A handleless head eating weeds and worthy 

Bump askew on the locust trunk
bounces off to blotch a tiled diagonal for 210 feet
bores a final signature.  This any boy would recognize on July 5th, who barefoots
hungrily through his backdoor to savor last night's damage from his
upsidedown Taiwanese helicopter.
A stump!  and lift six inches high, now bound on a vector between House and Barn

3
Amidships: Die Hard I and III,  Dr. No, Live and Let Die; Thunder Road and Two Lane Blacktop; eight-tracks of Jan and Dean, the Everlys and Isleys plus tapes and CDs of the Doobies and Dire Straits and Buffett despooled, spaghettied, smashed, splintered.  It’s like a drunk tattooist has pierced the microwave control panel, couch, Barcalounger and fridge door

A yellowed wedge - "Jan and Dea'' - harpoons the drawing Kenny's Mindy
made two years ago: the House with a tree on each side and no horizon present (the 13th century not dawned in her 3rd grade art teacher's world).  His Debbie stands in an apron in the foreground with Darinda. Mindy and Mandy are at the apex of a sunny swing chair on the porch, Kenny by his open truck door

In the corner behind the fridge, Richard spilled rotated, washed up, cracked up in the liesure cabin. Centrifugal hot flashings have whipped Richard’s current temperature up to 102 during his Indiana ride.

A sudden electrostatic burst takes over the bolted-down entertainment center
and HBO's 10:00pm movie shows the Drug Advisor's kids in Traffic when they are playing casino: spinning H roulette in the bathroom and snorting an eight-ball in their easy chairs. 

Speakers connected via S-video to Richard’s amp vivid away, but Richard can't hear, what with the throb and the crackle of his ribs and neck; a knee might be broken, too. 

The weed ingested 90 minutes ago slows his appreciation.  Dryshock constricts
his throat.  The meth of 45 minutes ago speeds his breathing and panic to a
heartrate of 145, his eyes dilated, he rivets onto Erica Chrisomethin, the  blonde of the moment on the E! Network and Entertainment Tonight – the hardiest fare in Southern Indiana.

Wary to check his head after being bopped by Karo and balsamic bottles
down from out of the cabinets just above his final resting place here – does
he have honest head gashes?  And how deep?

4
Flashback 19 seconds: Kenny is asleep with Mandy when a noise starts.  
Debbie dreams of a crashing ocean wave drowning her spool bed.  Darinda sleeps with her doll entourage down the hall.

The wheeze of the second Trailer section has become a scream.  It is Frisbeeing through the slumbering bushes between the Barn and the House.  Alarmed, Debbie stiffens to rise up in the bed, but, wrapped in her gown, she has become a torqued Slinky hooked head and foot on the brass bed rails.  With the shrieking wave migrating past, she untangles and dismounts to get Darinda out of the shuddering house.  She takes her dead-eyed daughter from the corner bedroom corner clutching a Barbie.

Kenny waits near the landing. Mandy speeds by, going down the stairs with Mindy bundled up.  Debbie and child are right behind –all moving past the shattering north window. 
Shards of bare sticks off the shrubbery are peppering in, now striking Kenny in the triceps and shoulderblade.  Shotgun in hand, Kenny jumps past.  "Get down!" and "Downstairs! ... Now! ... I’ll meet you by the Truck.”  Kenny hits the bottom step of the Pantry exit – a burst a crack and a fireball shoots back from the Frisbee toward the Barn.

5
By the Truck Debbie’s screaming for Richard.  By the light of the Barn fire, Kenny knows the the Weedwhacker will flame up at any moment so Richard’s a goner if he hasn’t already burned up in the Flying Lab or the Beaker. The Barn and Road residue will inform on them. “You see that fire, Debbie? Last I saw, Richard was in that, trying to catch up on a batch of CoQ10.  The chemicals will tell on us! He’s gone up in a teardrop, sweetie. Please just come with us!  We love you -- get in the car with us – for our Darinda.”

Kenny backs up the Truck from behind the House, hits the Road turning right to Evansville to hop a Mississippi barge south. Two explosions behind them, Darinda sees out the back.  Craning, Mandy catches a ring of fire spring up over the House they loved.  Metal siding, shattered myrtle branches rain on the hood of the Truck. “Our Ark,” he thinks. 


Copyright 2012 Patrick Calhoun 29205


Sunday, November 11, 2012

Falconers Dream


Falconer’s Dream


A      At the waist of the man sleeping twisted
         veils a midriff of dreams. This dream –
         Nose to the metal, butt to the stars,
         stopped at a fork in the road in his car
         Draped over the driver’s window,
         the sound of a carnivore


Falconer labors
         Under the day's doing
         writing on our heart
         enlightens our eyes

B      Her quiet mind drifts.  In her ear
         curls a nautilus of dreams
         She sleepwalks now, opens the package
         of a day: the scent of magnolia,
         and his tenderness left spread on the bed
         By the coffee a coupon says
         his ocean ever goes on


Falconer labors
         Under the day’s doing
         subdoing, undoing
         underlying undertakings

C      On the feet of the walker stopped waking
         binds the blonde hide of dreams
         Naked, scampering by Missildine's big window glass
         he darts seeking shoes and a hank
         Of cloth to cover his pale parts.


Falconer's labors tail off. 
            Tonight, ten thousand souls dream

Friday, November 9, 2012

Emerald Streams



Emerald Stream

I
Sing to us of the rampage
Of low-lifes in a white rage.
Sing high of touching your wife
Warm thornless rose so ripe.

Yours a call from the cave
Speak the inaudible from the grave -
"Spinach, cudchewer, casbah"
Disinterred slurred whisper.


II
Rings of gold, shards of crystal
Horses a-canter, forces hostile
Words assemble, eye enchant
Bring out hidden fact with elegance:

That all things conduct an energy
Tear us out of our lethargy
Along to a final good death.
Breathe a rich air. Deeply breathe.

Rocks & tigers, milk & bees
Barriers, pediments, columns, rows.
Carrier pigeons, worrying crones
Love's bliss, envy's groans

Intone them.  Beguile the clever crow
Sent up from empty chaos down below
To stalk us nights and noons
Mocking our loud proud bones.


III
Try, succeed, freeze, falter
Embrace a peer and an elder
Encircle, envelop what you seek
Sew back in shape your tired cloak

Shout, cant, repent, stillness
Do you fly kite in fullness?
Poet, do you lift your hearer to an all-seeing
Height, billowing his soul with feeling?

Craft, sound, event, notion
Fate of ancient nation
None rings the buoy bell
But you, loud above the daily swell

Chasms, spasm, ease, disease
Can impose pain, defeat repose
You'll speak solutions defying count
Where prose answers only disappoint.


IV
So say it broad; say it bold.
Light the brand, high it hold
Of the hero, of the sailor
Sing - and of the girl in squalor.

Upon the face, an earsprung leak
Deep held wax, brown warm cheek
Hearer lanced by poet's power
To show what’s thrown and its thrower.

Tie the synapse back together                 
Walk the message to its mother.
Soon visage and message merge
Picture as vivid as toes clung to a gorge        

Sing a symphony of life
Celebrate the streets, thy wife
Thy heart, ignore the kite
The hearer knows the flight


If not with whipsnap exact
Your words are his. Connect
Him with a mind of sound
And smell.  Touch profound.

Thunder - it might rain – the poet's thinking,
And corrects a word. Once more re-inking.
 “When I'm done with this, I'll take up the ‘Ode
To Julia’ once again once I finish this lyric deed.”


V
Detachment out of Gloucester plain
Pitiless horsemen flatten all to ruin,
Abed dreaming, the crone considers
If her daughter's now a widow

Crow holds a message in his beak
Snatched from pigeon by a flick
From the side.  No warning of cavalry
Coming to stop the wayside inn's revelry.

Like bees on flowers, they descend thick,
Dismounting, swords in hand, attack!
Front, back, over window sills pouring
Like milk down tavern walls and flooring

Write quick poet of the crashing of doors
Five seconds to write of the soup the Devil stirs
Boot stamping, skull crushing with elbows
And hilts of swords. Beheading with one blow.


VI
The cat strikes out, the crow's brought down
The door breaks off, the poet's hewn
In two, the crone’s stained red, the tiger laps
The milk of gruesome pink. Tight words snap.

The crone cries out, the kite breaks free,
Spasms from our new widow.  Can we
Hear the crying song from ebbing poet?  The cat
Scrambles.  The weathered buoy bell rings flat.


Copyright 2012 Patrick Calhoun


Birds of Opportunity





Birds of Opportunity 

From straight noon to two,
A blearing sun
Pins down hopeless

Henry at the window, transfixed
In the diner, fired, alone

Like thirty before him for reasons
Thin or few or none

Disorderly pigeons
Herded by        
A thrown clod of bread

Chick’n liver brings in
Lots of workin’
Men to eat & chat

The fringe of town brings flurry   
Of chickadees & buckaroos

With no go-away pay
No notice.
He was flying blind

Henry squinted blankly
At the satin syrup

Again pushed to sis Billie to
Beg as brother for help

Out of the striped cup’s bottom, the
Sugar slid down over his lips

Loaded with the beads of grounds
Like wet bird seed

Henry pays up
Tips her well
Waitress smiles

Not resenting
Nor shamed
He calls sister

From diner
Pay booth
Unsurprised

Sister says no
Freer still
Of traces

Then to Mom.
No tree to
Alight on. Nor

Entangled in
In her nest.
Surprised, he

Gets a cell call.
Boss wants him
Back,

Back in the
Wiry coop.
Half of

Henry
Strains
To

Go back.
A
Third

Fears
The
Caging

He’d return there
There but dreads
but

Dreads low cloud
Ceilings. So, 
Filled-with-hope

Henry tells him
No


Copyright  2002, 2012  Patrick Calhoun