by Jack Ramey | Sep 13, 2022 | Jack Ramey, Poetry
February 28, 1959 – August 9, 2022 Day after day becomesnight after nightand he is still gone . . .gone of a cancerdeep in the bones from filming 9/11 disasterhim and first respondersinhaling toxic vaporsfumes and ash and then 20 years latermarrow turns maverick against him. There are no stars todaybut those of memory:he lives still in my reverieand I need recall onlythe good times now: Our times together in England and Franceand Germany Cologne Stuttgart Paris Lyon with cousin Anne-Marie who livesin the hot magic of Provencejust a few footfalls from the Marquisde Sade’s chateau and while there youshowed me the source of the river Sorguethe Fountaine de Vaucluse and in thedistance Cezanne’s old man Mt. Ventoux. And with sweet Aunt Lucette in LeHavremixing perfect Pernod aperitifsand fixing a home-cooked Norman suppernear D-Day beach head where your fatherbraved his way ashore and somehowin midst of war fell for a mademoisellenamed Renee, your lovely mother. Then London touring in the Hun Mobileand shooting random poems on filmlocals thinking we were Germans dueto Deutschland license platesup all silly dodgy night laughing drinking Benedictine B&Bat Houndless Water Bed&Breakfast in Surrey Englandsurrounded by chronically screaming peacock birds. Or here above the Ohio riverwhere I live nowwhere we worked togetherfor the love of art and each otherand I see before my mind’s eyethat time years ago whenyou and Meredith broughtlittle Zach and Sammy and we went tothe Louisville Slugger Museum with thosetwo cute card-collecting baseball fansand had our pictures takenbeside that giant bat on Main Street. Or back in NYC in 1983CBGBs and me auditioning for the role ofDr Richard Benedict, your great...
by Jack Ramey | Aug 6, 2022 | Jack Ramey, Poetry
Marc and Anne-Marie live in the shadow of the Marquis de Sade’s chateau between Le Coste and Coustellet in the hot magic of Provence. They live like children of wonder who have no past or future who laugh at everything and sing secret songs to the sun. They make large French furniture which they sell to tourists; they call their baker mother; they linger over dinner long hours into the night and only drink the light red wine made by their neighbors. There is a place you must see, says Anne-Marie. C’est un secret, un mystère, and she leads me off the dusty road through a tangle of lavender and jenever bushes whose berries smell like gin to a clearing where an old stone building stands. Round narrow closed gazebo made of flat stacked stone looking like a turret plucked from a wild castle. Voila! Ici. What is it, I ask. Je ne c’est pas. No one knows. They say it is old. Vraimont ancien. Inside, two small chambers, hard clay floors, a fortress for dwarfs perhaps or a place where the Romans put you when you laughed instead of bowing low to Caesar. But some say it is the place where the secret names of the gods are kept. The ancient gods, gods of this place, the gods of the Luberon before Jupiter before Jesus god of Vaucluse, cold flowing goddess of Ils-sur-le-Sorgue goddess of vine and grain and the white old man of Ventoux. And all around us outside in the still shivering heat a chorus of insistent cicadas, les cigales, the keepers, cling to the trees...
by Jack Ramey | Apr 12, 2022 | Jack Ramey, Poetry
At the near tipping point of the worldthat tilts ever more sharply now, greed and brutality slide down towardthe vast abyss that gaps beneath us and we stand at the still edge of raptureas the candy-colored clown laughs half-aloud his metamorphic chuckleand the earth we walk upon buckles like an uprooted sidewalk in a sideshowfarce that plays on and on forever: a forgotten suburban nightmarewhere dreams tumble down slowly into dreams and we are left standingdizzy on the thin precipice of a myth. And now it’s time to panic. In The Uninhabitable Earth, David Wallace-Wells warns us that “No matter how well informed you are, you are surely not alarmed enough.” The Doomsday Clock is ticking, and it’s less than two minutes to midnight. “Midnight” is the total destruction of the environment and with it the destruction of many species of life, including homo sapiens. We can no longer control the fires around us, but still we burn the Earth with petroleum and coal. Even the Bible predicts our fiery Hell, which is turning out to be man-made. Featured Photograph: Ohio River Sunset by Bernie...
by Jack Ramey | Jul 4, 2021 | Jack Ramey, plato, Poetry
Jack Ramey reads Freedom Day. http://www.springwoodpress.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Freedom-Day.mp3 We hold these truths to be self-evident: all white men who own property are created equal – this of course excludes black people and Indian people and women and poor white whiskey tangos who have no pot to piss in. Nonetheless, it is a beautiful morning this morning when all Americans are freed from work (except those who work at Walmart and MacDonald’s and Burger King and Pizza Hut and Kroger and Safeway and Piggly Wiggly) freed to pursue barbeque picnics by the lake and drunken relatives and loud firework displays that proclaim with colored gunpowder our freedom. Oh say can you see? Those rockets bursting over your villages for the past ten years in Iraq and Afghanistan, the cluster bombs and napalm exploding in jungles forty years ago in Vietnam, just look at the beautiful tracers shooting out from the sides of ironic helicopters bearing the name of those we have subdued – Apache! Geronimo! shouted those paratroopers who leaped out of planes on D-Day two years or so before I was born into this land of freedom and gory. The list of those we have invaded to protect our freedom is too long to tell: hello Philippine Islands, hello Nicaragua, Guatemala, Panama, Grenada, Cuba, Tunisia, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan,Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Japan (and all the islands she laid claim to) Germany, Italy, Mexico, the Korean Peninsula, the Five Nations, the Creek Nations, the Cherokee Nation, the Chickasaw Nation, the Shawnee Nation, the Sioux Nations, the Comanche Nations, the Yuma, the Pomo, the Ute, the Cheyenne, Blackfoot, Crow, the Mandan, the Sauk and...
by Jack Ramey | Jan 27, 2021 | Jack Ramey, Poetry
…………….. In Memoriam: Steven Urchek Death is the mother of beauty The mother of us all Birthing us on to new journeys Into new identities Melding us with the Holy Spirit The All-One Over-Soul. And on January Twentieth 2021 A day of hope for our country Your soul merged with the universe And became one with the Great Mystery. You gave your life over wholly to Others: your caring wife, your two fine children All the students you mentored over the years Teaching them the history of our nation The ideals of our democracy. All the boys and girls, young men And women who called you Coach Pitching and catching and all the while Learning how to be fair and decent human beings. You bravely fought the uphill fight Against an awful disease, hanging on Refusing to give up in the bottom of the ninth Until the final swing of the bat. Rest in peace old friend, my son – in law and in love – Now you play and coach in baseball heaven Sitting in cloud dugouts Swapping home run strike out triple play tales With Babe Ruth and Bob Feller; Hank Aaron And Herb Score – taking your rightful place In All-Star-Paradise All watched over with loving care By the precious and holy grace of God. Urchek remembered for impact he had on so many lives – by Mike Shaffer...
by Jack Ramey | Oct 22, 2020 | Jack Ramey, Poetry
Jack Ramey reads Celluoid Elegy. http://www.springwoodpress.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Celluloid-Elegy-3.mp3 ————————- – for Judy The pigtailed killer of the wicked witch led daddy’s kids thru Emerald City before she made it there herself while Round John Virgin smothered the child (holy infant so tender and mild) ——————————–in the Silent Night of catholic childbirth I was a starver a server a saint but she was Dorothy of yellow brick road living her movie each Halloween each aging easter in Oz ——————————–queen of Kansas of Hollywood oiling her tinman thirst the frightened cat of her heart screaming for years a burning scarecrow and no bucket wet enough in all of Oz until the Wizard showed his sideshow hand and you touched it Dorothy —————————all polka-dot and hunger you rode his cure-all car —————————thru cheering munchkins cheering long live Dorothy and long live our john wayne sham & hambone saviour our dodge city gambler and now I am scared out of my baby fat at this point at this scene my altar bells ring ————————my ghost mask falls my shopping bag full I cry as I cry each year at this time: —————————–Dorothy be careful —————————–look out his fingers are needles are lightning his floodlights are thrilling but he’s Halloween’s bad candy man ————————dealing the cards like Tombstone Tarot like Lash Larue who holds no bluff for tincan hearts who beats out your song ————————on his Halloween porch a Broadway magus with musical bones ——————————– (Oh Dorothy) your straw wanted real ones made in Oz yes but not by this wizard of nightclub bubbles this junkman wizard of trick or treat ——————————-who stole the heels from...
