by Jack Ramey | May 12, 2015 | Art, Jack Ramey, plato, Poetry
[Poem]
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
by Jack Ramey | May 2, 2015 | Poetry
[Poem]
Oh America,
you never got over your youth –
All those slap-happy penny dreadful
tales of Billy the Kid & Wild Bill H.
went to your head and stayed there
like lead poisoning. You talkin’ to me?
You must be talkin to me cause they
ain’t nobody else – Draw! And two
Lone Star College students shoot it out
in the O.K. Cafeteria letting some air into
each other and plugging a janitor who
got in de way.
Oh America,
what teenage boyhood fantasies
roll round in yo’ empty head. Bang Bang
yer dead. Yer one dead injun and I’m
the rootin-tootin cowboy on this block
with my cap gun and my Glock.
[/Poem]
from Eavesdropping in Plato’s Café
Featured Print: Kent State 1970 by Linda Lyke
Linda Lyke, a faculty member in the School of Art at Kent State in 1970, created the above print in response to the horror of the Kent State shootings.
by Jack Ramey | May 1, 2015 | Jack Ramey, plato, Poetry
…
[Poem]
And when the thousand years are expired,
Satan shall be loosed out of his prison,
And shall go out and deceive the nations
Which are in the four quarters of the earth,
Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle:
The number of whom is as the sand of the sea.
Revelations 20: 7-8
Living in the Land of Gog
we see but dimly
as through scrim of fog.
So much is hidden
from our privy
view, daily we are bidden
to rise up and listen long
to our leaders talk
as they talk through strong
martial voices, intermediaries
on screens chalked
with pie charts and actuaries
whose heads bob and prophesy
war, disaster, horror for
a future we must prepare for by
making sacrifice, keeping ever
vigilant eye out for terror
planned by dark, silent neighbors,
spies of our enemies, the dogs
who live in the Land of Magog
and worship the false god.
Living in the Land of Gog
we must bow to the One God
who knows and sees all: Aygog.
Aygog the All Mighty, who chose
to live among us as common sod
who nightly burned like us and daily froze
and bled Himself for us so that we
lowly might eat and drink of Him,
suffer with Him to make ourselves free
of all that is earthly, all unclean
unseemly habits, unprescribed behavior,
all action not writ down from His dream :
the Great Dream of Aygog that screams
out the aweful name of the Savior
while we are shaken awake, the teaming
multitudes down on their knees
facing the West while the heathen choir
of Magog bow down to the East
and we all chant as one our prayer,
our plea for cleansing war and fire :
for the legions to sweep down where
the forces of Magog gather
and to drown them all in a sea of blood,
a burning sea from the mouth of our Father.
Living in the Land of Gog, we
are lucky to have thinking machines
that do our cleaning, our fighting,
sweep clear the battlefields of bomb
and enemy, sweep our homes clean
from dirt, dust, and sin that come
from the skins of our children
whose lives are fraught and lean
who sweat through the thin
seconds of demand and duty
we must perforce lay upon them
to make them brave and worthy
to run the machines that drop
death upon the heads of the dogs
of Devil-worshipping Magog,
pilotless drones whose eyes
are the fingertips of our offspring
flipping the switch, clicking the keys
that drive our robotic justice over
heathen terrain to do His will,
for we are Aygog’s servants forever
and forever will we bend the knee
in duty, in obeisance, vow to kill
all those who, in enmity, follow His enemy
and we greet each morning as the crow
caws gladly his orison shrill,
his prayer to Aygog cleansing his craw,
as the great vulture circles the sky
gliding, ceaselessly watching,
silent of cry, glittering red eye
wide open, dilated nostril breathing
always alert to do Gog’s bidding
above the river of Gog, bequeathing
such quietus to morning’s gray chill
like a battlefield after the drones
and droids have left it clean and still.
There is a river that flows wide
and long through the Land of Gog,
a river of blood whose high tide
washes up the bodies of those few
who are unholy, unfaithful; traitors who
have not washed themselves in the true
life’s blood of He Who Bleeds For All
He Whose Blood is a River:
Aygog, the All-Knowing, vengeful
God of Gog who will destroy
the False God of Magog
like a child who steps on a toy.
And we are all so lucky
living in the Land of Gog
to be democratic and free
unlike the enemy infidel who dwell
in sand beside no cleansing river
whose red tides may dispel
the pall of the mortal curse
by baptism in eternal water.
We sit by these shores and rehearse
the final coming of the Lord
Aygog unto this earth
to free our souls by fiery sword
to raise us up after the final battle
when our killing machines give birth
to Death for our enemies, hot metal
spitting forth righteous grape-shot
and two hundred rounds per second
bi-cameral eye scanning parking lots
and blind alley ways; apartment
hallways, office corridors beckon
them forth to the final judgment,
the bloody reckoning foretold
as it was etched on golden pages
by the gray prophets of old
now in the land of shadow and fog,
the land of shades where holy sages go
after faithfully serving great Aygog :
our reward to see as through scrim
or dark glass the visage grim
of eternity glimpsed through a curtain.
[/Poem]
from Eavesdropping in Plato’s Café
Featured Print: Drone Warfare by Linda Lyke
Drone Series: Drone Warfare is from a series of prints about the one of the world’s most controversial technologies: unmanned drones.
by Jack Ramey | Apr 27, 2015 | Art, Jack Ramey, plato, Poetry
[Poem]
XXVII
Simonides of Keos
inventor of the art of memory
said that painting is silent poetry
and poetry is painting that speaks.
He knew the true poet’s wish:
to make a poem whose images speak
to so many people that its words
live on forever.
But forever is much too long
a time. Just ask poor Sappho whose poems
cannot be found except in tiny scraps:
one stuck here, one stuck there,
one found wrapped around a mummy’s head,
recycled to preserve a politician’s memory.
[/Poem]
from Eavesdropping in Plato’s Café
by Jack Ramey | Apr 25, 2015 | Jack Ramey, plato, Poetry
[Poem]
Sometimes
I want to be like Wang Wei
or any other Chinese poet
silent on a cold mountain top
looking down on corrupt
civilization and the brutality
of all species struggling to live
out their days feeding on others.
Sometimes
I want to be like Bruce Wayne
with a dark secret identity
using my mind and pop-techno-toys
to fight evil and crime.
But what is evil? And who
decides what acts are crimes?
The hive-mind? Or the unseen
rulers of the world who have
held us all in thrall for centuries?
Sometimes
I want to be like Jesus
walking sandaled across the land
healing the sick and raising the dead
but then again I do not want to die hanging
on a cross after flogging and torture
and all your friends deserting you
because they do not want to die like you.
Sometimes
I want to be like Orpheus or Saint Francis
with birds landing all over my head
and shoulders and fingers and arms
all the dark gentle creatures
of the forest come around to talk to me,
to walk with me as I tell them
about the joys of poetry
and meditation, the devotion
of ecstasy and rapture – things that they
actually already know in their furry
feathered minds, and they then teach me
how to be in the world,
simple and holy and pure,
without wanting to be someone else.
[/Poem]
from Eavesdropping in Plato’s Café
Featured Painting: Poet on a Mountaintop by Shěn Zhōu, 1427-1509
Related Review: The Selected Poems of Wang Wei
by Jack Ramey | Feb 16, 2015 | Jack Ramey, plato, Poetry
[Poem]
After reading the morning news
Such properties as these do make me funk.
I shall go outside and become one with ducks,
who must for now remain invisible,
even though they seem indivisible
from my poor twisted psyche today
in a world full of grand plans and final disarray.
The drama and dharma of the purple iris
petal, and the innocence of the wild daisy’s kiss
all attest to this: there is a power deep down things
a leafy testament from grass to trunk to bird wings
lighting on branch tips swinging in the breeze
of spring’s morning lifting light alike to ants and me
and all of creation. A rare honey bee at my window
becomes an ageless Blakean angel reborn in aura-glow
of all seven colors of chakra’s rainbow :
her buzz a mantra hymn to what is holy now
and always will remain so: the tidal flow
of connected electrons that spin and show
how vital and how sacral is the soul of earth
the grand cycle of birth and life and death
here on this plane of existence where we
wrestle with sorrow and joy, doubt and belief.
Are we really here on this struggling planet or
do we dream this brief butterfly dream for
only a moment, mate then with the pleading
cry of our mother; die, and rise up again, bleeding,
whole and free? Will we discover a new creed,
a covenant covered in green leaves that breed
forth regeneration, resurgent song sprung from
the great well of divine imagination spun from
the words and mind of the holy multiverse that dives
and swims through all planes of existence, thrives
on the blood of the poet, the aura of angels, the high
and low call of all thrumming, humming, trumpeting life
seen in the heart of a flower, the vein of a leaf,
the blood-filled arteries in lungs that breathe with the beat
and pulse of the heart of the stars, fire of our godlike sun,
our goddess moon that shine down their brilliant sum
of enlightenment upon our heads, ready to wed, to meld
with earth, with air, with water, with all things living, cold
with all things dead, in the mold of clay we are shaped with
in the crystalline air that is our stairway that we escape with :
one at last with the encompassing matrix of existence.
[/Poem]
…
from Eavesdropping in Plato’s Café
Featured Print: Arroyo Vista by Linda Lyke
Arroyo Images: Arroyo Vista is from a series of prints focused on the contradiction between the densely populated areas that surround the Arroyo and its pristine isolation, illustrating a fragmenting of nature and city.
