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

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

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

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

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

I Bleed Free

There’s no point in any argument, I bleed guilt
like any man guilty of what you indict me for

Is your judgement just? Or just judgement?
Through what bias do you convict me?

I bleed grief and tears, I bleed red lust
for life; I bleed need of true friends.

I bleed free of this tortured life,
offer myself for sins you imagined.

David M Pitchford
8 April 2009 – 8 May 2009

Even in Blackest Night the Moon Shines

And yet on her far side, colder, darker,
I languish unrequited . . . not because
she will not; because she cannot. What cause
might so humble our closest and starker
queen of night? What past sin could so darken
that child, stillborn and screaming, deep within
her tragic soul. She bites—part of us dies

and yet the sun reflects beyond the earth
to light one slight part of mother moon, whether
slivered just beyond earth’s haloed shadow,
or covered from human sight by quilted clouds,
such that even in blackest night she shines
somewhere in herself, of herself, and yet
ever interdependent with sun & earth.

David M Pitchford
11 February 2009 – 8 May 2009

Quick Note

A Quick Note

a friend writes in a quick note
that “we all” want me to be rid of the sorrow
my mind lunges quickly toward the false rhyme of “hollow”
which is what I think I should be
were I suddenly purged of sorrow
but I know, doubtless, that this is false
as the rhyme of sorrow and hollow
which leads me to the next false rhyme of shallow
which I oftentimes wish I were
but this too is false, aslant of Truth

“I am what I am,” pipes in Popeye
on a breath redundant with spinach
strong as hurricane winds and waves
tumbling over floodwalls nowhere I know
at this moment, yet not so long ago . . .

Sorrow is my dearest friend
standing here beside me all my life
never to desert or betray me—

but perhaps this is another rhyme out of tune
perhaps sorrow has been the demon on my shoulder
all these years whispering obscene
and absurd lies into my subconscious . . .

David M Pitchford
26 April 2009

I Play Don Quixote

The Quixote Experience

What’s madness but nobility of soul

at odds with circumstance? . . .

—Theodore Roethke, “In a Dark Time”

What is nobility of soul
but circumstance at odds with madness?

 
How great was that maiden’s need
for a knight, some noble soul, to rescue her!

 
My Rosinante was a U-Haul
a thousand miles I rode in one night
for my fair friend was beset by Hydra*—
not my wife, my true love, but that
muse of yesterday’s madness I thought true love—
yet it mattered not who she be, for I
I was Quixote on route to deliver that damsel
from Hydra and its many horrid heads.

 
First was a flight to tilt demons of despair:
veni vidi vici! I tilted and they fell to my lance,
my noble heart, words, deeds conquered many terrors
in her name to save her and her flaxen locks.
Yet no head of the Hydra could I confront,
and so a woman of the North, of snowy hair
and eyes brilliant as icebergs, whose knowledge
was much greater than mine, stabbed
that mighty Hydra. And it was good.

 
Yet Hydra persisted beyond that piercing.
Soon after I rode in on Rosinante, we
visited the site that we might know Hydra’s fate,
and lo! another vicious head it reared!
A terror more unjust than the first for its
unexpected coming. And so, too, did the demons
I’d slain resurrect to torture my fair maiden.

I was pierced by their army of influenza,
lay dying in fever and fevered of dying . . .

Meanwhile, my sweet nameless love conspired
with her husband to reunite. And on the third morning,
I awoke from a fever broke sometime in the night
to find words of commitment turned back from me
to him whom she had formerly sworn. It was just,
seemed to me the wiser path for her, and yet
I was stripped now of Rosinante, caught in a place
foreign and friendless except for that fair maiden
and her dual-minded mate, whose hate was now
assuaged, and yet at moments bright as fire . . .

Now in time’s passage, I am absent from her,
and she has lost the time of day for me.

 
And I, I seek another Rosinante, another lance,
that I might to my former lands return as foreigner. 

17 April 2009

 

Addendum: 23 April 2009

 
Hydra is slain. We got the news today!
Heads all severed and cauterized, the beast
is no more. Victorious, though not of my self,
I accept the maiden’s final hug, tearstung eyes
filled with the happiest sorrow one can know,
and take from her that proffered garland,
likeness of Ulysses Grant (another whiskey drinker)
gracefully etched upon its heart, and walk away.
 
Where now shall I ride my noble Rosinante?
Back again to the land of my former home,
or to some foreign hill upon which waits
another shining maiden with tear-stained
cheeks, under great duress, in need of a hero?
No kingdom for a horse I offer—merely a ‘noble soul’. 

David M Pitchford

 

*Hydra in this poem in analogous to the Arachnoid Cyst growing in the brain of a very dear friend.