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