by Jack Ramey | Aug 6, 2020 | 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 | Jan 11, 2019 | Jack Ramey, Poetry
. The Iroquois called you O-he-O, the Wyandot the Oheezo, which some took to mean “sparkling,” others “white,” while the French took it to mean “beautiful” :– La Belle Rivière, the beautiful river they called you and they were right, at times you are white, at times you sparkle like diamonds in the sun, and you are always beautiful in all your moods – muddy brown from spring rains, or placidly green, silver flowing water, bringing life and death to all who live and grow beside your thousand mile length three centuries ago or today cascading down from Allegheny and Monongahela confluence sliding by stone age huts and Adena conical burial mounds high up on hills and always bloody, bloody throughout your mythic history of discovery, war, and conquest. Twenty-first century versions of those same huts still on the same hills, or perilously hugging your banks which sometimes you overflow north and south flooding their dirty basements just to show them they might be a bit too close: back off, you say, give me some elbow room, some space to change my course as you wend your way down to meet the stuttering Mississippi, and so on down to dark and broken New Orleans where you spread yourself out upon the vastness of the deep. <br> As a poet, I am fascinated by the metaphysical, mystical, and metaphorical nature of rivers in general and the Ohio River at Madison in particular. From my home, high on a hill overlooking the Ohio River and downtown Madison, I am able to experience the daily changes in the relationships and moods of...
by Jack Ramey | Jan 10, 2019 | Jack Ramey, Poetry
. 1. A great bronze god This morning Swollen and muddy, Slowly silting down, Muscles rippling like some Giant water stallion, Moving past Broadway, past Elm Past the geese at the floating marina Past the stacks of the monolithic power plant Past all the bare and sunken trees To list round the bend at Hanover, Moving his way on down to Louisville, New Albany, Evansville, Memphis, Cairo, Mississippi! Carrying the weight of thousands of lives. The dead are with him as well as the living: Dead logs and dead bones, The ghosts of those who perished in his flood In their perilous leap toward freedom, Ferried long ago from Milton’s shore Or Indian Kentuck by reckless boatmen, Indiana Charons rowing their dark breathing freight to Elysium. 2. The beginnings and endings Of all things tucked Within your liquid furrows, Your deep rollings, As church bells toll you On your cyclic way to a shared oblivion: Hart Crane’s great wink of eternity, Whitman’s mighty I-am-Thou Shine with the sun On your burnished surface Issuing forth vague promise Of some hidden covenant to come, Some secret bargain With forces unknown; And one day all will be revealed As the prophet saith When the weight of all this water Unseen and teeming With life and death Comes at last to rest In the dropless one-time silent sea. . As a poet, I am fascinated by the metaphysical, mystical, and metaphorical nature of rivers in general and the Ohio River at Madison in particular. From my home, high on a hill overlooking the Ohio River and downtown Madison, I am able to experience...
by Jack Ramey | Dec 31, 2018 | Jack Ramey, Poetry
………………..- .– for the corporate heads of Honeywell Hiawatha combed the snakes From the mind, preparing the way. Preparing the way for Tadadaho, Keeper of the fire of the One United Longhouse of the Haudenosaunee, The people of the longhouse, who Keep the flames burning By the shores of Onondaga Lake Where the Tree of Peace was planted Long ago and the weapons of war Were cast into the abyss To be washed away forever. But forever is much too long a time, And the weapons of war Have changed. And the snakes have returned In factories. War clubs and tomahawks Replaced now by sodium chloride And ash byproduct and god knows what Other chemicals dumped Into the holy lake by corporate enemies Of the earth: Raping our mother with No regard for the future generations: The unborn faces in the ground, The ground now filled with filth. The pure silver lake is now a cesspool Of mercury and feces: one of the most polluted Lakes in America, where effluent From a waste plant flows unimpeded into it. No swimming allowed. But poor blacks And hungry immigrants still fish Her fouled waters and sicken from the catch. The place chosen for the continuity Of rational existence, of how to be a true Human being walking the ways of the Creator In the days before colonial greed Is now the most polluted place in Iroquoia, Now called Syracuse New York Where once crystal waters brimmed with fish, Place for deer and beaver to drink, Place for the people to drink, now unfit for creation Making a mockery of the Great...
by Jack Ramey | Nov 14, 2018 | Jack Ramey, Poetry
Today light conquers darkness good triumphs over evil knowledge beats ignorance as millions of Hindus light lamps and decorate floors with colored rice and sand and flour designs designed to banish the dark side of the universe from their little corner of it where they are doing all they can to push back darkness and ignorance and evil into the far corners of the rooms they live in. This high holy day and festival cries out to be celebrated here in The Land of Creeping Ignorance the land of ten million guns the land of double talk and new- speak, of hatred and intolerance of violence and daily death in school yards and churches and nightclubs. We all need to light some lamps and make mandalas on our living room floors. Today please. This darkness that surrounds us, will drown us all. Featured Art: Indian girls lighting candle and clay lamps for the Hindu Festival of Light via Wikimedia Commons Khokarahman [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)] Related Article: What is India’s Diwali Festival? Diwali is India’s ‘Festival of Light’, a time when people come together to celebrate good conquering evil, light conquering...
by Jack Ramey | Jun 27, 2018 | Jack Ramey, Poetry
By the Villa Borghese park and the statues Of Lord Byron and Goethe, I wait for a bus And watch two old homeless Roman women Sitting on a bench on the street opposite me Sorting through their ragged belongings, Plastic bags and shopping bags and blankets. It is cold. Christmas time in Rome, the city Of Christian light, of hope, of faith, of charity. They know that tonight like last night Will be dark and long and cold, huddled Together on the steps of a church, cuddling Each other for warmth. They are not begging Yet, like so many one sees around the Vatican Kneeling with head down and only hands holding A styrofoam begging bowl, or shaking one Or two cent coins in their cup murmuring Per favore, Signore, per favore. But here there is no favor, no permission, Only the gross peccata mundi, the mortal sins Of the world left naked, without remission....
