Abating

Madness Abating

These past few hours, peaceful
how long since I’ve been at peace
tumults of my own making
plagued me more days than I recall

Now, I’m learning again
to believe in miracles
watching one hour at a time
sober and accepting

as life unfolds with new meaning
and though old ghosts may haunt
I walk paths of serenity
heart open to the wide world
mind open to solutions
spirit open to hope and miracle.

28 October 2009
David M Pitchford

Swimming through Stone

Swimming Through Stone

“The drowned cannot swim” and yet drowning comes

harder than once thought. That whiskey river

flowed deep and fast—twenty years swimming drunk

through three marriages and more affairs than

any man should curse himself with, and you

were my rock, my respite buoy and lifeline—

I tried to drown to protect you from me,

but courage failed. Living that way—dead end—

thinking you’re drowned only to find yourself

swimming through stone, heart and mind in the grave

while your stubborn soul clings to earthly life . . .

longing for death, sinking in denial

and swimming against granite grain, we strain

toward life, striving to sober up and live. 

19 October 2009
David M Pitchford

Grounding

Grounded

I still feel your gravity
          and I want to be
                    grounded to the world that is YOU

David M Pitchford
12 October 2009

Runs-with-Sticks (for Sevannah)

Runs-with-sticks and the Broken Man

Sunlight glints off burnished copper curls
she runs with sticks
Mother laughing, secure in her safety
Grandma scolds, “you could put an eye out!”
And I, a broken man
watch in silent delight laden
with a thousand speculations:
how can a broken man
be trusted to love your mother?
 
All summer I’ve watched, adoring
though too tightly wound within myself
—within my own head—
to do much but watch
and flinch when your voice
pierces my ears with pain
while my heart leaps with joy
seeing you joyful
running with sticks
jumping barefoot onto rocks
scraping a knee and leaping back up
to run over rocks again
finding new and bigger sticks
collecting the smooth stones
and cicada shells, though they
bring shivers to your beautiful mother
 
But now summer is gone
and too late, your mother having moved on
to be with another,
I realize that a broken man’s love
is no less safe than running with sticks
the greater danger is falling—
now, fallen and broken more,
I know that the loving was
inevitable; the falling was not,
but born of fear and tripping
on tethers from the past
terrors of future failure imagined
now become self-fulfilled prophecy.
 
Like you, runs-with-sticks,
I’m jumping up, brushing off the dust
and running into the sun.

David M Pitchford
28 September 2009

Love Song for Aimee

Love Song For Aimee

I wanted to write you a love song
pitched to your sweet voice, perfectly
sitting out on the stoop, reading poetry
practicing lyrics while you fell
further out of love waiting
for me to find my voice
for me to interview my heart
and learn the truth, what was there . . .
 
But the rhymes came out imperfect
voice caught in my throat
constricted by fear and the flotsam
of old loves, of broken dreams,
of betrayals and desertions
 
I wanted to write you a love song
pitched the precise blue of your eyes
—why haven’t I told you the beauty I see there?
Now I sit on this black metal love seat
glider too rusted through to seat two
the lyrics come too late for love
new abandonment & new love lost
constrict my throat further
and I can’t sing you a love song
over the wooing words of your new joy
and the cries of my heart over new loss.

One not given to clinging to bitterness,
I find in the flotsam these true words:
I love you
I wish you well.

David M Pitchford
26 September 2009

After Anne Sexton

The Dead Know (After Anne Sexton)

We live merely by grace of pulse, soft throb
of heart pumping, squeaking gallows of our lungs
sucking one breath after another, rungs
of some prophet’s ladder—angel tries to rob
our feet of purchase each step—for all we sob
and gasp and cry and cheer, our songs are sung
for the living (even the dirge is sung
to comfort these). Yet living hearts will throb
 
and strive and lust for life until the grave
reaches from beneath the Earth to capture
its bounty back and pull all down, swallow
life in Death’s inimical gravity . . .
What do the Dead know of life’s sweet rapture
but memoried rot in which they wallow?

David M Pitchford
18 September 2009

Love Song: Oh Southern Queen

Love Song: Oh Southern Queen

Let us go now, you and Ideal in
eerie feathers clad and mourning knights
torn asunder in contests, to delights
under meteor skies. Maiden within
seems less tender than Truth. Lies more akin
gone from godly tongues . . . What ungodly frights
over dreamscapes, demon chased, and unites
faith through Pinnacle eyes? What tales we spin
 
here under Cancer moon and sisters dark
Eternity is God’s breath breathing Him,
never to exhale! We the lesser sing
unerring hymns, sun-bright and shadow-stark
‘neath foreign moon, meteoric—no slim
Ideal, she is dark of silver ring! 

David M Pitchford
11 September 2009

This is a revisited version of a sonnet written in a book (Epic Fantasy) titled Oh Southern Queen, which was dedicated to my wife at the time, Siobhan. It’s a bit abstract, but I’m still very drawn to the poem.

Super FREE spec fiction ezine

http://www.cyberwizardproductions.com/AbandonedTowers

If you haven’t check out Abandoned Towers, now is a great time to become a regular browser and supporter!

Red Love

Today I Love You Best in Red

Once lover to the moon alone, younger,

I wrote poems to golden shades and longed

to be Endymion. We danced in youth

and beauty as though life, time, and hunger

held no sway. We drank and sang, and we wronged

neither each other nor others, and Truth

was our gospel, covenant in verse—rhyme

ticked, clicked, licked our wounds over life and time.

 

Now youth grudgingly leaves us to wiser

age—as though wisdom were consolation—

and what once was firm, now time’s gravity

pulls from flight to ground. And now we miser

moments between, horde our burning passion

as though it might burn out. Naïveté

was such comfort . . . Jaded love seems sallow

contrasted to young love—though it’s shallow.

 

Today is all. Today, I love you best in red

and blue, in front or back, on the couch or in bed!

Forever have we loved. This moment, all is said

and done; in this moment, you seduce and we wed.

David M Pitchford
30 May 2008

Picture: “Red Nude” by Amedeo Modigliani, 1917

This is kind of an experiment. I’m working with Ottava Rima with a quatrain chaser. Does it work? What works best? Does the rhythm break down anywhere? Where?

Ardently seeking feedback. Thanks

Poems Between Lovers

After the Vows: Poems Between Lovers

Available now via Diminuendo Press (and the usual places).

You are not Orpheus

You are not Orpheus, love, nor would I

have you be, and I will not slip in to

Hades hands. Understand my love is new

even when mundane is the order of

the day and I wish for words of passion

and wit. My days are incomplete without

a kiss from your lips, in a smile or pout.

Fanciful dreams in romantic fashion

still find their way into the world around

me, but now my prince has a face I can see

and when I look in your eyes, I see me.

My name in your voice is sweeter, I say

more musical than any poetry,

or song, Orpheus ever thought to play.

Siobhan M Pitchford

Aphrodite in Your Shadow

So well you take me as I am. I fear

to imagine what would be should that fair-

fortuned force that fogs your eyes suddenly

shed the scales that put me in your vision

as you describe it. I see no such man

within my mirror, but thank the heavens

that you see me so. And how do I see

you? Aphrodite shone as bright, I’m sure,

yet your steadfast nature is earth scented,

unlike Venus’s too fickle fragrances,

therefore so much the more desirable.

Yet, how can I compare you and be fair

when she is myth and you of fleshly make

she I wonder of—you I worldly hold.

David M Pitchford

Hardwired Humanity: Cyberwizard Productions

Sarah Wagner

 

 

This fantastic collection of short sci-fi is great entertainment. Sarah Wagner weaves humanity into each tale and vignette. In an age in which we are realizing more and more the fusion of man-machine to machine-man, Wagner reminds us of the deep human issues involved in our love affair with technology.

The storyalone , “Shadow”, excerpted on the publisher’s webpage, is worth the cover price . And yet, there’s so much more to enjoy. Her first story struck me as a more mature version of something out of a Heavy Metal movie. Her scenes are clearly enough depicted to recall numerous movies; her pacing never lags for overabundant description. It’s a quick read for those who want a quick read. For those of us who like to wade in deeper waters, there’s plenty here to start more than a few deep philosophical ponderings and discussions.  

“Shadow” is definitely the best novelette I’ve read this year.

David M Pitchford

 

http://www.cyberwizardproductions.com/altered/hh.html

Every Day Poets

http://www.everydaypoets.com/novembers-table-of-contents/

This is a new little sister site to Every Day Fiction. EDF has yet to publish me, but I’m on the schedule for Every Day Poetry. Go check them out and Subscribe! You get a poem a day in your email FOR FREE! Be super-conscientious about submitting work; they are rather . . . discerning . . . I know two of them, the editorial staff I mean, to be very fine people – the third is one with whom I am not acquainted, but I’m sure she’s a fine person as well.

Rokeby Venus: Ekphrastic Sonnet

"Rokeby Venus" by Diego Velasquez c. 1650

What Within the Looking Glass?

 

Is it truth you see within your looking
glass? Or merely that shallow reflection,
that skin-deep self, flesh manifestation
engineered of cells divided, cooking
DNA’s unique recipe—working
toward our next, our better(?), evolution,
and victim to fortune’s machination
toward Nature’s mysterious re-making?
 

Venus, do you see your truth? Burning flame
lit by unseen sun, burning bright within
eyes shadowed by doubt, self-immolation
to protest yesterday’s beauty—that same
beauty as marks you today, looks akin
to Ideal, yet perceived sans admiration?

David M Pitchford
6 December 2008

Father to Son

Letter to My Son

Something I want you to understand:
Words are merely words!
I’ve said a great many words to you
I hope a select few
            have sunk in,
            touched you to your core
            reinforced the bulwarks of your selfhood
I hope many more
            have watershed
            rain off a duck’s wings

However;
I know
you, no duck, are
            a thunderbird!
            nor no mere swan.

What I really want
            you to understand:
words are as important
            as you take them to be.

In awe I have ever been
            both of you
            and your brother
            your quicksilver wit
            your abilities to comprehend
            complex topics
            some intellectual
            others emotional and ambiguous

My point:
            I want you to trust
            yourself, son
            your reason
            your thoughts
            your knowledge
            your intuition.

Tumultuous turmoil will occur
            over coming months
            unforeseen years
            entire lives . . .

David M Pitchford
9 December 2008

Poet’s Angst

“Melancholia” by Albrecht Durer

Poet’s Slow Silent Serial Suicide

He grew tired of Atlas and that gravitas
bored of fraternitas and seven errant brothers
grew dull in orchard pastoral poems, Goose Mothers
and traditions meaningless as constellations
he failed to comprehend—and so his end
became one of commerce—as though some
coin—any coin—might prove his worth
to him. Passage fee for Charon . . .

He could comprehend—in the end
that was his Ubermensch heel—Achilles
on kryptonite—history transcends all
men, who are, in geologic time, but
motes seen in this rural house
once by a party uninterested, who
will not buy—and so we die. We die
and our drama no more to Earth or sky
than that buzzing fly which mates
the dim lamp’s incandescent bulb
as though impassioned poet wooing,
making mad love to the waxing moon,
mythic romance, Endymion waking.

He turns the light out, knowing the fly’s disillusion—
and kills a little piece of every poet.

 

David M Pitchford

6 November 2008

The Matter of Hell

Always, IT Comes Down to Battle

Thousands of years of this stupid struggle,
and yet how many millennia must
we spend our passion in wars’ battle lust
when we have far along our true mettle
proven to a lord who stars can settle
and whose prowess rings the Bang! What is just
in this reaping of souls too young, robust
innocence fed to fires, babes in kettles
boiling in oil as though an incense to
some mighty or almighty power right
enough to demand or deserve—what do
the righteous when conviction proves the night?
If God be not compassion, let Hell burn;
may we dancing in its flames ever churn!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

David M Pitchford
27 Feb 2009

Caveat

Caution to Readers

My heart knows of despair,
my mind keenly perceives tragedy.
Lines I write speak of these many
black moments, these desolations.
And yet the light in my eyes remains,
for they recognize as well each silver
lining, each lesson to learn of failure,
each hope concealed in shadow:

it is the heart’s purpose to pump blood
out into the world, to bleed into life,
and it is also the heart’s purpose to pump
blood from the world into the flesh
that the flesh might recover, might heal,
might retain its ruddy resilience.

David M Pitchford
17 April 2009

After W. D. Snodgrass

April Inventory

A year it’s been, since last April shined in green boughs.
What have I accomplished but mischief?
A few poems—sonnets mostly on Bouguereau,
and a few of love to a woman from whom I’m parted
and bitter—bitter was our parting, for I was the fool
trading a diamond for a stone of no worth, though
that worth only now comes dimming through shadows
of her malice, ungrateful and with a tongue razored
with spite. Other poems of the banal and of little
matter—(of their substance I shall let others judge).

Fortunes wasted never tasted; I spent what little
I had on tilting windmills and an Odyssey unworthy
even of a poetaster’s meager verse. No Ulysses, I
dwelt in the arms of Circe, thinking a promise
might hold as though weather were not fickle
as the deserts’ shifting sands, oceans’ meander
of tides and streams, currents and upheavals.
At first her bed was warm and full of pleasures
worthy of Kubla’s dome, but too soon health
and her love deserted me to demons of fevered grief. 

Too much time spent in self-absorbed misery,
drunken rages filled with wasted words, knives
with which I pinioned those innocent of my sorrow—
I pray they forgive me, not that I be consoled
but that they may find peace within themselves,
some tranquility I am unqualified to teach.
Too much time spent drunk on grief, raging ‘gainst
waters far down life’s stream and rains that never
fell to bless, to fertilize these green pastures
turned ochre in the barren fields of heart and soul. 

And now I am Jack with my packet of seeds,
hoping to plant the ivy, the vine, the stair-tree
to a sky in which to find fortunes, or reap some
heroic demise, or rob some giant in the sky
of his golden candlestick. The trees gather their snow,
bend with its tragic weight, and yet green they remain-
leading the way to that optimism of a green season:
I hone my tongue to dull passivity, open my heart
to gentler thoughts, sentiments of now, and toss
the bottle sidelong into the running stream of time. 

David M Pitchford
17 April 2009

First Draft

Burning Souvenirs

This was the poetry I wrote her
when we thought we were in love.
And this fifty sheets, poems I penned
thinking to win back something lost.

 
This is the desk her son made me
one year for Christmas—
like me, he had a tendency not to
finish things, not to see things
through to the end . . .

 
Here are the hats I wore,
gifts for father’s days
I’ve unearned in my errant
disinheritance of abandonment.

 
Here in the multi-colored tongues of flame,
these are paintings she forced on me
when I left her that fateful New Years Eve.
A wonderful rendering of Proserpine,
and one named Sirens in Vermillion
after a sonnet I wrote during my internship.

 
Alongside those, falling now to ash,
are books of poetry we wrote together—
one published, the others mere manuscripts.
And with them, drafts to feed the flames
give air to my impotent inferno—
conflagration of my impotence.

 
And, yes, there in the dying embers,
you can almost make out the evenings
of passion and conversation we shared,
the dreams and desires and hopes and
fears we never could live beyond:
interesting how they smolder so,
dimming from passion-red
to graveside grays and death-white.

 
Of course these things would not
burn of themselves; how many bottles
of vodka and whiskey and rum and cognac
I’ve fueled this fire with I cannot account,
but I know they number in hundreds or more—
or at least I take it so from my legends . . .

 
This is the card from our first anniversary
and the accompanying nine.
These are cards she mailed me,
to home or office, to remind me
how everlasting was her love,
her faith and eternal devotion.

 
These are the letters of my own
betrayal to a love I proclaimed for-
ever. Broken promises not worth
keeping (as in, clutching obstinately).

 
That in the violet flame,
that is the hand with which I held
hers our wedding day, spewing vows
like the love-stricken fool I was.
And beside that, the convoluted heart
with its too-many chambers
that held faith and betrayal both—
presence and absence, arrival and departure.

 
Those smoldering ruins,
those are the scholarly papers,
essays I thought at the time brilliant—
note how dim their flame,
how acrid their stinking smoke.

 
This is the sweater knitted for me
by a nameless love twice forgotten.
These are the shreds of woven poetry
that never quite fit the loom.

 
This is a patch, dragonfly, given
by a twice treacher—
it’s the scars I bear that won’t burn
until the final pyre of my obscene,
incandescence of final cremation.

 
And these last, these are official letters,
notices from attorneys whom I owe
many dollars which I never will repay,
and with them the debts
I will never admit to owe. 

David M Pitchford

25 April 2009

Conversing with Hayden

Conversing with Hayden (Carruth)

How much I value this friendship!

I raise my glass of ice-cold chardonnay.

—Hayden Carruth from “Conversing” p29 Scrambled Eggs & Whiskey

An old man before my time
and sans the wisdom of greybeards

 

I toss my two cents on the smooth surface,
break the waters of your docile pond. Frogs croak

 

their songs regardless. And you,
you speak to me of my own madness

 

across years and distances never reached
over but by poets in boats of verse.

 

David M Pitchford
25 April 2009

Omen?

From the Dryer Vent

I’ve bitched about them for days,
their chirping an offkey song
nest of sparrow hatchlings
behind the cover of our dryer vent

With all that crap in there
the clothes won’t dry
we’re wasting electricity!

But this morning
stepping out for a bowl
of Jamaican Rum tobacco—
a dead chick
covered in tiny ants
like men plundering a whale 

Why should I feel guilty;
I didn’t wish their death;
merely wanting for clean laundry,
and this bird dead
unclothed and silent now
of its urgent chirping need—
a feast for ants.

David M Pitchford
13 May 2009

Love that Was

What was True No More

It really happened. All that happened was
real. Though we experience so much life
within our imaginations, it is
the sharing that lends us that which to call
real—consensus reality—we felt
what we felt, knowing what we learned as we
went along together. Love and life and
all that accompanied these. But changes
come along with life, define life, present
choices—some we make better than others . . .
Love did not change; it abides still despite
separation. But conditions evolved
into distances that seem unbridgeable—
“irreconcilable” the term of ending.

 David M Pitchford
9 June 2009

Poem after Galway Kinnell

Lost Love’s Legacy

The lover after marriage and divorce
goes a separate way alone. Though one goes
the vow broken remains in splintered blows
against abandoned partners . . . Grief’s pale horse
leaves that trace of eternity—sows coarse
sorrow down within, among, heartbreaks’ throes
of wondering wounds—shard upon shard blows
in blizzard gales—indefensible force 

bequeathing pains’ legacy, anguishing
intense as sun on glazed snow . . . dignity
offers no solace, nor solace surcease
as the heart from hurts scars Time’s languishing
panacea fills those cracks . . . infinity
makes every vow false, yet loves’ stings never cease.

David M Pitchford
15 July 2009

This sonnet was intended to be a sonnet interpretation of Galway Kinnell’s “The Vow”; however, it decided to go its own way . . .

The Vow

When the lover
goes, the vow though
broken remains, that
trace of eternity love
brings down among us
stays, to give
dignity to the suffering
and to intensify it.

As you can see, Kinnell’s is a rather remarkable poem.

Indecision

Indecision

There we were stuck
in the moment caught
indecision
nowhere
to go
nowhere

David M Pitchford
20 July 2009

A nod to Nietzsche

Nodding to Nietzsche

They say that god is love: yes, then, Nietzsche,
god is dead. Its bloated corpse is my heart—
my mouth and stomach fill with these buzzing,
stinking maggots and mind crawling, creeping,
lurching in broken swirls of worms and roaches
eating the carrion of my thoughts and
feasting on dead idealism and
corrupted vows—corpses of guardians
slain beside their dead god, angels dancing
no longer on the pin’s head, but rotting
in the fetid stench of human frailty
and failed faith. Yet death feeds life. It cycles
in apotheosis even stone dead.
As maggots become flies, so love’s death bears hope.

David M Pitchford
21 July 2009

Revision: Nietzsche Sonnet

Nodding to Nietzsche

They say that god is love: then, Nietzsche, yes,
god is dead. Its bloated corpse is my heart—
mind memory-ravaged, life torn apart
by stinking maggots as they consume no less
than all: sins unforgiven though I confess
all fault—mea culpa—life, all and part
corrupt, iniquity in me an art
of unbelieved words, verses void and vimless

slain beside their dead god, angels dancing
no longer on the pen’s head, but rutting
in human frailty—this slippery slope
of failed faith. Yet death feeds life—romancing
apotheosis, Death stops his strutting:
As maggots become flies, so love’s death births hope.

David M Pitchford
28 July 2009 (revised from 21 July)

From Kat’s Challenge

Short Sad Story of a Life 

It was the yellow banner caught him up,
reflected in her sun-lightened hair. First
coffee. That led to lunch. Lunch lingered through
afternoon. No surprise to awake in
her arms. His friends became her friends; later
blending families their next logical
step in a unified life. Sharing life’s
experiences kept them together.

Circumstances arose. Taxes and debts,
kids going off to college, and one day
he awoke to find himself sorry to
have missed some nameless thing, some destiny
never promised—Feeding seeds of his madness
whiskey, he fled to hermit retirement.

31 August 2009
David M Pitchford

This poem was written as an exercise based on a ten-word challenge made by KAT Corrigan in FaceBook. She listed:
1. Taxes
2. Lunch
3. Coffee
4. Banner
5, friends
6. Feeding
7. Retirement
8. Sorry
9. Awake
10. Sun

generally, the idea is to use all ten words in a poem — style or form are not mandated, I’m simply rather fond of the stump sonnet