{"id":5266,"date":"2015-08-27T16:45:18","date_gmt":"2015-08-27T16:45:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregglory.com\/wordpress\/?p=5266"},"modified":"2023-07-08T10:19:43","modified_gmt":"2023-07-08T10:19:43","slug":"rehearsing-repetitions-on-the-rappahannock-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/posts\/rehearsing-repetitions-on-the-rappahannock-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Rehearsing Repetitions on the Rappahannock"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

Purchase from Amazon<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/span>\r\nPlain poems of experience, with a twist of eloquence<\/em>\r\n\r\nby Gregg Glory\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
Rehearsing Repetitions Sections List<\/h4>\n
    \n
  1. he found her here and there;<\/a><\/li>\n
  2. know, noelle, this nothing that round<\/a><\/li>\n
  3. when i wish upon a scrawl of star<\/a><\/li>\n
  4. here by the her of ocean,<\/a><\/li>\n
  5. you stepped from the bus-stop<\/a><\/li>\n
  6. round and round, the circulating vast<\/a><\/li>\n
  7. am i a seed of fire or its soot?<\/a><\/li>\n
  8. i meditate between the cracks,<\/a><\/li>\n
  9. it’s hard to say just what one feels<\/a><\/li>\n
  10. to say despair, despair, despair<\/a><\/li>\n
  11. let us attend these voices in the dark,<\/a><\/li>\n
  12. past the charcoal doorway moon-white leaves<\/a><\/li>\n
  13. what one says is never what<\/a><\/li>\n
  14. what transmits our pinch of if?<\/a><\/li>\n
  15. is there more to voice than its<\/a><\/li>\n
  16. on the river that flitters<\/a><\/li>\n
  17. the blue men march, march, march.<\/a><\/li>\n
  18. one grows tired of the infantile,<\/a><\/li>\n
  19. after a time to be no more<\/a><\/li>\n
  20. the visible world is made of<\/a><\/li>\n
  21. patchy frost that stuccoes the styx,<\/a><\/li>\n
  22. the whole stale globe is fixed<\/a><\/li>\n
  23. how tired one is of the umber river<\/a><\/li>\n
  24. the long hour’s dread, the water’s calm<\/a><\/li>\n
  25. do we make contact with a kiss?<\/a><\/li>\n
  26. the patient good of going nowhere<\/a><\/li>\n
  27. i dream of infernal pallors,<\/a><\/li>\n
  28. in twilight the river came<\/a><\/li>\n
  29. the river is full of wet surprises.<\/a><\/li>\n
  30. whatever rivers endeavor<\/a><\/li>\n
  31. the history of a seed, blind tear<\/a><\/li>\n
  32. undulations of mud and river<\/a><\/li>\n
  33. the reflective river, reflecting,<\/a><\/li>\n
  34. rosy rappahannock, dance on, dance on,<\/a><\/li>\n
  35. to lie where the river ends,<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
    What the Cyclops Dreamt<\/h2>\n
    A voice wakes me with its pin\r\nNiggling in my ear.\r\n\r\nI can't quite catch the lapsing sense\r\nIn the folding moan of words.\r\n\r\nThe moon embalms the ocean.\r\nEnhanced stars are blown about the sky.\r\n\r\nThe sea sneaks so close, I can hear\r\nIts little million feet.\r\n\r\nAnd there, beyond the crinkled cliffs,\r\nA splinter of sail. . . .\r\n\r\n \r\n<\/pre>\n
    Three Versions of “The Teenager with the Glittering Hair”<\/h2>\n
    He thought at first he was Mark Spitz,\r\nSlickly triumphant in Speedos,\r\nBecause the mirror kept its own counsel\r\nBetween more amenable poses.\r\n\r\nThen he thought he was the Mutant X,\r\nOf a DNA not quite fixed,--\r\nBecause his brother used furious crayons\r\nIn the TV's square glare.\r\n\r\nAnd last, he thought his death might be \r\nA captain's statue, heroic, unruined,\r\nBecause the sun was shining blandly\r\nAll that day.\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
    Winter Without End<\/h2>\n
    The optimist without pants\r\nSupposes plagues of pantaloons\r\n\r\nOr, better still, intenser still\r\nImposes strippages like chaps\r\n\r\nAbove, beneath, or somewhere--\r\nNakeding the trousered things.\r\n\r\nThe best of all possible pants\r\nAre numb and naked nothings.\r\n\r\nThe philosopher's frosty fundament\r\nSat fatly enthroned in a world\r\n\r\nStripped bare of pants, but not\r\nOf their conception, their conceit.\r\n\r\nIt was a world where no pants were\r\nAnd were never spoken of again.\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
    All Must Dance<\/h2>\n
    All must come and dance, and dance\r\nWith my friend, my friend Michele.\r\n\r\nMichele, Michele, wild, wild\r\nMichele who streams along the clay hills\r\n\r\nWild as lightning, light as nakedness\r\nOr kindness;  wild, wild Michele.\r\n\r\nKind, kind Michele, who answers\r\nThe dance's insistence\r\n\r\nWith diffidence, lively, lively\r\nWith her eyes, wild Michelean eyes\r\n\r\nSo lively and kind, kind, her eyes---\r\nLamps in a deep place, and a dark.\r\n\r\nAll must come, must dance, with my friend\r\nWild, wild Michele;  kind, kind Michele.\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
    For Tenor Semblance, Who’s Dead<\/h2>\n
     <\/span>\"What things real are there but imponderable thoughts?\"\r\n~~Ahab<\/em>\r\n  \r\n     There was Tenor in his party grave, sharing \r\n     All of the same old sick jokes with himself. \r\n \r\n1 \r\nHe says, \"What is there besides imagining?\r\nThese four occasional walls will not bring \r\nSpring or sorrow to any unsuffering thing. \r\nIt is the will that wanes, in summer dark, \r\nAfter clogged stars have scraped the sky and left \r\nA newer dark for some cold singer's questioning. \r\nRusted apples gathered, honey melons dusky gold, \r\nCherries rosing in the tinted sun, what was invented\r\nIf not these things?  Shall my hand remain \r\nUnfloured by its own effort?  A pointed oar \r\nPlunges and plunges in a white war and remains \r\nAn oar.  The mind is not so meager;   it becomes,\r\nOnce its rent raiment roars, in polychromes \r\nAbove chalk waters that it held and gave, \r\nThat of which it sang and did not hear, because \r\nToo busy singing in undivided, tensile mystery.\" \r\n \r\n2 \r\nIf, on the wings of sparrows, men's feet shall flesh \r\nWho shall fly, in contrapuntal destiny,\r\nIn waltz time, alone, beneath \r\nThe unceasing testament of the waves?\r\nTenor Semblance in his water-wings, bulbing \r\nAt his back, held his breath and dived, at 4, \r\nInto the tossing terror of a tame sea. \r\nOnce caught among the coral's shadowing, he saw \r\nThe flash and error of dying fish in that dim maze.\r\nTheir antlered looks and opalescent eyes \r\nPlaced a holy horror in his slalom breast \r\nRacing, among more mobile lights, out of death's \r\nAbrupt shade.  He knew of earth by this buried paradise. \r\nHe told his parents of the sharking waves and sea. Alone, \r\nHis executed gestures in scarred sunset seemed \r\nThe switch-back hesitancy of leaves. \r\n \r\n3 \r\nIt was his mother's going, her poignant death,\r\nLike still water, that made him hear \r\nCurlicues of God's named trumpet, world. \r\nA French horn paddles in his ear; \r\nFinches mocked the minister at her wake, his frown \r\nEmitted solo labyrinths, corona icicles of sound.\r\nTenor Semblance, leaving, knew his feet \r\nWere tambourines, clashing in the grass.\r\nAnd when he whispered, it was with sorrow \r\nThat he could not sing himself a barrow. \r\nIn her twinking time upon this mortal orb,\r\nIn laundered air, tender sequences \r\nOf love and love, flashed from her bright center \r\nLike perpetual suns that sang and knew their tune. \r\nIt was because of her he sought \r\nA personal, vocal dew. \r\n\r\n4 \r\nSemblance swelled in his soft decor.\r\nLike an awkward Alice, he used his vital eye \r\nTo distill a separate scenery in the dwindled grass. \r\nLittle thunder smoked the mountaintops. \r\nGnats as vultures bulked silence on their prey. \r\nBut a swung censor, sacred scenting, never lends \r\nIts incense to these more airy tendencies. \r\nNeither garland of flowers, in a stiff ring, \r\nNor any distincter bloom was worn.\r\nVictim in winter, he tried to say \r\nThe measureless landscape he became: \r\nDesolate branches, details of packed snow,\r\nPaired tracks of deer, or south-seeking geese \r\nDispassionate as the sky. There comes\r\nA crowd of moths, an abrupt lamp flapping \r\nIn discontinuous circles as he speaks. \r\n \r\n5 \r\nBut should we sacrifice infinite finesse for that \r\nSnowblind and last, fatal profundity? \r\nSonless Semblance once, with gagging glands,\r\nTurned abrogated Pa;  the wincing world \r\nTrickled from his groin.  He clawed out an eye\r\nAnd dived, lost in a reef, resulting in a sky \r\nMade blue, by harshest imagination, by \r\nExclusionary rules.  Was it a mincing butcher's \r\nCleaver thumb, his abusement of a One, \r\nChopping up the single digit we pretend?\r\nFalse finesse?  The sky was blue; he claimed \r\nTo be the author, and his grave \r\nWas dug in blue clay;  bluets brushed the edge. \r\nHis mineral bones are scavenged by worms that die. \r\nThus we see, beyond cut division or misty ending, \r\nDeath is daughter to imagination's venting. \r\n \r\n6 \r\nA man is image and is sound, \r\nImagining sounds;  a blare of being\r\nScribbled like a cloud, pinched nothingness \r\nPalely resembling himself, in a mirror;\r\nUnalterable shadow, that falls \r\nAs seasons fall, in whitest trumpeting. \r\nThus was Tenor in his dirty grave, \r\nIn severest evening, uttering \r\nA few, essential words.  In his halter,\r\nDawdling day undid the staunching fist \r\nOf night, and materbirds like mandolins \r\nTwanged his very song.  They were his toys, who,\r\nHautboy accountant, made of his breast \r\nFinal register.  A second heaven, set\r\nBeside the first, is best, when we forget \r\nOurselves in what our wish of death becomes.\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
    Dissembling Semblance<\/h2>\n
     <\/span>Lie there, my art -- Prospero<\/em>\r\n\r\n1\r\nHo-ho!  From out his party grave, up-popped\r\nThe skeletal self that Tenor'd tamed.\r\nDewy longings drift half-wet, in ziggurats,\r\nDown the dirty sticks of his dry fact,\r\nLending a silver-inlay to his polar bones.\r\nDesire sniffs for roses through groutless nose-holes\r\nAnd musty wines slalom a gorgeless gob.\r\nNothing of the lover, of the brother\r\nLingers here.  I stick four mournful fingers\r\nThrough his clackers for a tongue, wagging\r\nIdiot digits in mime Shakespearean.\r\nNo Yasunarian voice, Horatio, ensued.\r\nNo Ophelian sonnets rained in daisy-chains.\r\nLipless ivories inferred infernal grins.\r\nTongueless Tenor Semblance, disinterred,\r\nMaster-man and mirror-me, was DEAD!  And I?\r\n\r\n2\r\nI am no Poet-Frankenstein, evoking souls\r\nFrom wounded earth.  For me, a hole is a hole\r\nIs a hole.  Love caressed, love cupped, love cuffed\r\nSuckles living teats, not this bony xylophone.\r\nStill, I loiter here half-longingly and toe\r\nPale parabolas of a pelvis furred with mold.\r\nI, too, shall one day come undone, un-\r\nButtoned before the mawkish gawkers in the wood,\r\nDining on no niceties but dusty praise.\r\nAnd you, and you.  Bluets brush my boots,\r\nSans author in penless processional.\r\nTallied Tenor here, pure loss, is less and less,--\r\nA condensate escaped in Gobi air.\r\nWhat last farewell, or goodbye cry, can I \r\nCachinnate for such luckless kin?  \r\nFeral fate!  The day, the hour, is late. \r\n\r\n\r\n3\r\nThough crass and cursed and cloistered\r\nIn a hole, my man of clay, who I made, \r\nUnmade me.  Iffy gift!  Solitude still knows:\r\nTo live our lithest days in sackcloth is a sin.\r\nMy vampire mirror blings, bingeing on blanks.\r\nI miss the mischievous elf I myself had minted,\r\nWry coinage of a brain love-benumbed.\r\nImpresario of puppets, piccolo fish\r\nWaving in a world wigged with sideways seagrass,\r\nI command my scarecrow scalawag, Tenor\r\n(Whom I marched off to death, alas) a last\r\nResurrection reappearance imagineer.\r\nCoffin-lid, crack!  Earth erupt and burp-up\r\nVoodoo me, vanished voice and vair ermine.\r\nPffft!  And see, through misty mazy day,\r\nIn his water-wings and goggle-gear. . . .\r\n \r\n4\r\n\"Irksome apparition!  Clavicle and skull\r\nBut prank the picked-out polychromes of life\r\nMore sullied dull. Pink is less pricked than pinky.\r\nHow can twanged canaries out-crow sepulchres?\r\nMuddy mausoleums high-rise our tipping tropes.\r\nNo quip out-kids a skeleton's ghastly grin.\"\r\nSo I solemnized in my preacher's best.\r\nBut cut-rate Tenor in his rotted tux\r\nRetailed another fable, made gritty\r\nBy eternal Time's half-sandy clasp.\r\n\"Birds of paradise in their jungle mung\r\nWhistle fluent waltzes more queer than square.\r\nWhen kisses come twitting 'tween the stars,\r\nTheir ache is more than mausoleums are.\r\nThe softest-rose of live lips out-quips\r\nClown-corpse midgets and their brazen cars. The curds \r\nOf life are sacred, but only as we sip.\"\r\n\r\n5\r\nSo I sat in puzzlement complete.\r\nHead-hanging, feet-dangling, I weeped.  I kicked\r\nSpic hobnails against the grave's gouged walls.\r\nI did not want to hum, or ham, the mournful measure\r\nA mealy mouth had found.  Must I have more to say?\r\nTo do, to be?  Was wishing up to me?\r\nArgent star and pentecostal ghost!  It was.\r\nThe prolog past was mere evaporate because.\r\nI zipped upon the slipping ice, slouch-hatted,\r\nAs I myself alone, floe to floe.\r\nTenor was my made-up man, my solo ghost;\r\nOf his fragile form, I was holy host.\r\nVital tailor!  Sledding immortality but slips\r\nUs in our heart-stitched skins again.\r\nThus we see, beyond Death's batty beam,\r\nIs is brighter than the vim of seems.\r\n\r\n6\r\nHow, in all this claustric Ought, ought I\r\nTo utter and confess my consummate \r\n\"Ow to Joy\"?  Life is pain, and fidgets \r\nAs it sings.  Dr. Formaldehyde in his lab-coat, \r\nPeering in, thumbs an icy stethoscope to quiz \r\nAll coughs, all crimes.  What Rabelaisian \r\nParable am I in?  What sly reply does this \r\nInquisitive pin in my inflated thigh \r\nGiggle to confide?  None, none.\r\nAll my splendid spillages funnel down to One:\r\n\"Paradise is simple as the simple dew.\r\nBlond Life, raw, unadorned, \r\nIs apple enough when we feel adored.\r\n--Settle quick the pipping kettle, Kate,\r\nAnd kiss the kittens twice.--  Unintended \r\nHeaven whistles wettest, when we forget\r\n\r\nOurselves.\"\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
    The Ever-Arriving River<\/h2>\n
    How do we know we have arrived?\r\n\r\nNo gate blows open, no trumpet swings wide\r\nGiving boogie-oogie oogie-boogie to the countryside.\r\nOur horses must feed on grass, or perish.\r\nSo, too, our souls.  Having gone down the long defiles\r\nAll night, in a night that is not sure of ending,\r\nOur souls paw their bellies and howl.\r\nEven a ghost craves ghostly sustenance.\r\n\r\nHave we arrived then, when midnight creaks\r\nAnd starved souls howl at the wolvish moon?\r\nOr must we still, in our hunger, kneel and pray?\r\nMust a glittering track shiver in the sleepy pines\r\nFor the last mile shimmied on our knees?\r\nBend at that track, and drink with tragic hands,\r\nWith hands encased in silver to their wrists.\r\n\r\nDrink and drink;  drink deep, O traveler--\r\nTomorrow we must find this river again.\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
    Rehearsing Repetitions on the Rappahannock<\/h2>\n
    There is no foreign land;  it is the traveler only that is foreign, \r\nand now and again, by a flash of recollection, lights up \r\nthe contrasts of the earth.  \r\n-- Robt. Louis Stevenson<\/em>\r\n\r\nYou are here to kneel\r\n   where prayer has been valid. \r\n-- Little Gidding, Four Quartets, T. S. Eliot<\/em>\r\n\r\n\"O mind like a river!\"  \r\n-- Scott Carroll<\/em>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n