Fragments from the Gone World

by Jack Ramey | Aug 15, 2015 | Art, Jack Ramey, plato, Poetry

I

The gods are far too literal minded :
Ithmonike of Pellene
pregnant for three entire years
after imploring the god Asklepios at Epidaurus.
You silly woman, he said upon her return,
why did you not say
you wanted to give birth?

II

Fingernail-clipping moon
Above dustbin horsetail cloud.

A small moth ascends
As day descends
into darkness.

Dawn breaks
My heart
Apart. Opens
up the night
Like a knife wound
Spilling red across the horizon.

III

Great Egyptian Ptah, lord of creation,
spoke out loud his green-skinned imagination :
and the universe hurled off his tongue into being.

IV

Rose taffeta unwinds
from her spinning dancer’s dress

You’ve hurt me
for the last time, she says.

A rogue’s gallery of blackguards
lines the walls of her memory

like a portico around her cerebellum’s
cloister as baroque violoncellos squawk

in the nautilus hollows of her ears
like a dead sea of ancient tears.

You are gone now in dust
and I am still here, dancing.

from Eavesdropping in Plato’s Café

Featured Print:  Ship Wreck  by Linda Lyke

Newfoundland Paintings:  Ship Wreck is from a series of paintings that convey the struggle for survival of the Beothuk Natives and European settlers of Newfoundland and memorializes the images of both cultures with their complex topography of land and sea.

Fandango

by Jack Ramey | May 12, 2015 | Art, Jack Ramey, plato, Poetry

The last few bars of Mysticali Rose
drifting down the street
mixt with dust and rolling mesquite
the beat lingering there
in that corner where
heat gathers itself up into a knot
of tangled memories and squats
in a heap of rags and print
and sighs out loud for squandered love.

You want to sing
but cannot even hum.
You want to scream
but no sound escapes your mouth.

Only the white moth flies out
making good her fatal break
as bone men strum their liquid guitars
and proud dancers in red shake
their fiery heads in tune, in tune
with the fierce rhythms of leaving.

[/Poem]

from   Eavesdropping in Plato’s Café

Featured Painting: Blue Dancers  by  Susan Reycroft