by Jack Ramey | Feb 10, 2017 | Art, Jack Ramey, Poetry
. . . . . . . . . Withered willows in the Fall . . . . . . . .. . whither go thy leaves? The layers of oversight have been changed. Bare ruined choirs stain the landscape dripping with rain in late November. The 21st century limited exists in tandem with the 16th and the 1st when early Christians walked the earth, were persecuted for forsaking Jupiter and Roma and Nero the Living God. The 23rd century is here too with its impossible robotic perfection swelling above the iron trees and glass domes that cover still self-functioning cities :– emotion sensors in every room to quickly suss out layers of psychic stress and oversight with an always watchful awe-full eye toward change and maxi-fluidity winking above the intersections of streets and hallways: Is this not the Ides of March asks Brutus and Shakespeare writes this down in his panoptical play that plays with time simultaneously perceived: a clock in ancient Rome, chimney tops above the Tiber (or is it really the Thames?) and a pulpit for Antony’s flaming speech. In 200 years will mourning doves and deer searching together for acorns and seeds seem an anachronism too silly to speak or think, as silly as Newton’s planets still towing the same old millennial line, elliptical routes gone haywire the way of the dino and dodo? But they will (of necessity) still be there by definition in the quantum merging of past, present, and future all rolled into one jelly evenly spread on slices of the time-space continuum likened to a universal loaf of wonder bread...
by Jack Ramey | Jan 12, 2017 | Jack Ramey, plato, Poetry
Look at the light beams pouring down from the sun:– slicing through morning fog and mist like a million surgeons’ carefully sharpened knives in a medieval cathedral of medicine, where patients wait patiently, supine on the mossy floor of love in the nave of, in the name of, the greater synagogue of creation. Just look at the dew-strewn leaves and petals gleaming through mist:– up-turned lips waiting to be touched by Dawn’s rosy-fingered first caress not unlike those aforementioned metaphorical patients floored by the glory of their great mother’s lovely smile after two days of her tears, gray rain nourishing the roots of their being, crying down on her children her lachrymose blessing, her forgiveness for those who hurt her daily with chemical needles and warlike drones that daily rain down their own brutal tears on her innocent body and the bodies of children who one day may just stop, who already seem to have stopped evolving toward some greater understanding. Look at the river valley still hugged in fluff, puffed up with cloudy stuff masking the flow of her borderless destiny, her spiral world without beginning or ending, her always striving movement toward the sea. from Eavesdropping in Plato’s Café Featured Print: Found at Sea by Linda Lyke Newfoundland Paintings: Found at Sea 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...
by Jack Ramey | Jan 6, 2017 | Jack Ramey, Poetry
The world was made of black and white. Carnivore description bears their names written on the launching pad: David Ghost, Astronaut. Nathan Faltoon, pilot. Zackadu Monguenski, bombardier. They knew what they had to do and they did it all for the red, white, and blue and the 1945 Chinese Girls Drill Team. The Enola Gay was waiting props up and belly heavy with death on an airstrip not far away. The upper right side of her fuselage bore a new inscription: BURNT ALMONDS it said. David Ghost, Astronaut, had painted it in large red letters. Faltoon was having a drink looking smart in the officer’s club Dondi was lost in Europe the Yankees were on a losing streak and Zackadu Monguenski was jerking off in the men’s room of Peter Wong’s Cafe G.I. to a picture of June Lockhart getting her family lost in space; a photo which David Ghost, Astronaut, had given him in a moment of sincere hostility. “Hurry up boys it’s time.” The Enola Gay is going into labor wants to take an atomic shit on the world or at least Hiroshima. In Sweden Albert Einstein and Werner Von Braun disguised as Captain Kangaroo and Mister Greenjeans accept the Nobel Peace Prize: “Peace cannot exist without War Neither can tranquility without disturbance Order without Chaos and so it is with humble heart in this spirit that I accept this etcetera, etcetera, etcetera…” Nathan Faltoon stepped outside of the officer’s club looking smart in the sunshine which hurt his perfect ice-blue eyes and made them squint. He lit a Lucky Strike took a deep drag, coughed twice...
by Jack Ramey | Mar 1, 2016 | Poetry
Pagans, Christians, Muslims, Jews: You are all the sons of blood. Worshippers of Mithras Of Horus, of Isis, or Mars: You are all covered in blood: The blood of sacrificial bulls And lambs and doves, Crucified messiahs and saints Lining the Appian Way For miles (miles in Latin meaning soldier) Soldier coming from solidus, Those who are paid in coin To perform certain actions Like eliminating the target Wasting the offal, icing Forever the unwanted presence Like angry Achilles dragging Hector Behind his chariot like a piece Of bleeding prime rib ripening In the Trojan sun. Or Lt. Calley And Company C in Vietnam lighting up Some poor “gook” villagers in a ditch In the hamlet of My Lai In Son My village, So’n Tihn District Beside some burning banyan trees Napalm clinging to their limbs And to the limbs of naked children Running up and down burning lanes While their few remaining loved ones Weep and scream and keen And pray to their ancestors For some rational answer To the specter of death and horror That has curtained their lives. Or protestors of that very same war, Students at a Midwestern college campus In Kent Ohio on a bright spring day In May 1970, shot down in cold blood Like criminals by soldiers of the state By the orders of a mad governor And a Chief Executive so paranoid and afraid Of dissent that he decided to wipe it off the map. Or jihadists beheading Christian Spies on the drone-blasted sands of Syria, An ancient land drowned in centuries Of blood since Alexander and Augustus, Or Templars...
by Jack Ramey | Feb 29, 2016 | Jack Ramey, Poetry
Something white floats on the water Close to the opposite shore: White like floating paint or a ghost Made flesh, hanging there, unmoved by the current. A white plastic bag hangs high in a tree, A vacant soul blown by a swirling wind: Breathing in and breathing out Like a broken balloon on a naked limb. Whose life is this, anyway? The loudest towboat on the Ohio Owned by American Electric Power — (AEP) emblazoned on the oval smoke stack Now the fourth largest barge operator With 1,800 barges and 45 tow boats (Are they all as loud as this one?) Pushes a load of rip-rap rock and gravel Sending a loud steady groan That echoes through the town And up and down the long-hilled valley. Her stern engines churn the brown water white As she makes time, makes fast time, boys, Past Madison to ports north and east: Sunrise Indiana, Cin City, ship that Appalachia Coal to Pittsburgh Pennsylvane-I-eh: “Our barge line will move roughly 50 million Tons of bulk commodities including cement, Fertilizer, salt, construction materials, Forestry products and ores along the Ohio, Mississippi and Illinois rivers to generate Additional revenue,” said Dwayne Hart, Senior vice president of business Development and strategy for AEP. Hart would not disclose revenue or earnings, But AEP’s recent acquisitions have been Profitable, he said: “Wholesale investments Including the Houston Pipe Line, the MEMCO Barge line, the AEP coal mines, push us “Goll-durned through the roof,” he said. Five fires burning on the opposite shore. Whose life is this anyway? Down in eastern Kentucky And western West Virginia Descendants of the Hatfields...
by Jack Ramey | Feb 28, 2016 | Jack Ramey, Poetry
. A white plastic bag hangs high in a tree,A vacant soul blown by a swirling wind:Breathing in and breathing outLike a broken balloon on a naked limb. Whose life is this, anyway?The loudest towboat on the OhioOwned by American Electric Power —(AEP) emblazoned on the oval smoke stackNow the fourth largest barge operatorWith 1,800 barges and 45 tow boatsPushes a load of black Kentucky coalSending a loud steady groanThat echoes through the townAnd up and down the long-hilled valley. Her stern engines churn the brown water whiteAs she makes time past Madison to ports north and east:Sunrise Indiana, Cin City, ship that AppalachiaCoal to Pittsburgh Pennsylvane-I-eh: Whose life is this anyway?Down in eastern KentuckyAnd western West VirginiaDescendants of the Hatfields and McCoysTry to keep their heads aboveThe arsenic and mercury floodOf thousands of acres of coal sludge: Non-biodegradable mining byproductsHeld in ponds that periodically break looseAnd come cascading downIn rivers of thick gray slurryCreeping and burbling upTo windows and back doorsTaking over the rusty sliding boardsAnd bar-b-ques, the jungle gymsCovered with slick poison slime: “Thank God the economy is back in swingAnd we’re ripping out enough coalTo make some sludge,”Said the head of the local EnvironmentalProtection Agency, himselfA former mine owner. Whose life is this anyway?Not those folks whose houses back up toA river of coal slurryWhose kids are afraid to go to sleep at nightWhose property is worth zero:Forget that catfish pole,Young man, break it over your knee,And the swimming hole of your youth,Old boy: all that 1900s crap is history; Get with the scheduled program,Tune in to the new millennium:You gots to live in virtual reality...
