Poem Hammer: 2011

Thursday, 1 December 2011

Haiku For Vickie

Hidden grief locks tight

Chains fall, unexpected light

Sudden joy set free

Wednesday, 23 November 2011

I have ridden the fray,
lance couched to battle.
The holy Grail you guard so well
from lips of penitent knights –
humility does not crease me.
I come on bended knee
to drink.

Keeper of the Grail,
in Glastonbury your castle stands
with sinks and chairs
and mattresses.
Women who guard your walls
neither bow nor weep
but stand silent at the sides,
their sweet music heard only
by their ears and yours.

Cauldron of birth and rebirth
to which and from which
holy blood has flown,
to which and from which
all things have flown,
kept sacred from kneeling knights
that only sweet maidens may press
their lips to thine.

Copyright ©1997, 2008, and 2011 Daniel J. Bishop
Originally published in the Sangreal limited edition chapbook, 1997.

Agapé

When I kneel at your altar,

genuflecting, speaking in tongues,

my face anointed with sacred oils,

there will be absolution.

There is no repentance of sin.

All the saints and all the angels

look away.

You are the beatific vision

your cries a canticle

our words our confession.

There will be a resurrection.

This poem first appeared in the Sangreal limited edition chapbook.

Monday, 21 November 2011

Carole Ann

Carole Ann turns

skitters like leaves in an eddy

of dress-suit men and women

whose frustrations lie

more deeply hidden.

They do not look,

and I wonder how they ignore

the childlike wonder of Carole Ann

with the masks we wear

torn away.

This poem was written during a productive period some years ago, when I was working at BCE Place in downtown Toronto. It was inspired by a co-worker there who I observed, one day, trying to meet conflicting demands near the TD Tower elevators, being pulled in three directions at once, and , as the poem says, skittering like leaves in an eddy.

And we all feel like that sometimes, torn this way and that. She just showed it, with her face and her body, the frustration of different demands, and the pull to go everywhere at once. It was kind of touching, in a way, and kind of wonderful as well.

The other people there, if they saw, continued on their way without more than a glance, like the drafts that set the leaves to dancing. This swirl of motion, this individual momentarily laid bare for them to see the emotions on her face, revealed in her movements, stepped around and ignored.

I think that is kind of sad.

So I wrote about it.

Sunday, 30 October 2011

Halloween Prayer

Halloween is coming

And the dead slough off

Depression with yellow leaves.

She turns from him.

His rictus grim smiling

Through days, alone nights.

Time, too, has a skeleton smile

And yellow leaves fall,

Skeleton trees grow bare.

The children laugh and scream and fight

As children do,

Embodying the monsters they don

To scour the neighbourhood.

Their nights together spent

Alone, each to each,

Not so much loss as separation,

Not so much ending as transformation.

Let this be a costume, too.

Let it come and go for a season

Until the cold trick is spent

And the treat remains,

Sweetness enough for another year.

Let there be another spring

& love bloom again.

Monday, 24 October 2011

Parking Haiku

If joyous parking

Cannot be arranged Friday

Please ignore haiku

Where I work, I don't have regular parking. Sometimes, though, one can request parking, and, when possible, those requests are honoured.

After a long string of parking requests of the standard "Is it possible to get parking for tomorrow?" type, I ended up writing some more interesting requests.

Haikus. A sonnet. A limerick.

You really can have fun and be creative at work.

(Well, I guess that depends upon how your workplace responds!)

Monday, 10 October 2011

Untitled

We begin
hours of joy
cut by sharp pangs
of loneliness.

We end
hours of loneliness
cut by sharp pangs
of joy.

copyright (c) 2011 Daniel J. Bishop

Monday, 3 October 2011

Far Dance Thrilling

Through the cotillion of hours two strangers met and met

and

would your music have fractured like the glass of the

screen,

and would you have

gasped

as I kissed you

there

and there?

Wondering what your hair smells like fresh from the

shower or the

grains of your skin pressed backwards and up.

Can you exonerate me for letting you go

and for dancing with you under clouds and rain and

what does it matter if I let you?

Stars and explosions and yellow confessions crossing

Crucified decorated in yellow late at night on amber

screens,

moved me.

We wrote on the electrified walls and Jung synchronicity

and Jung exciting motion,

Brownian reflex motions,

charged strings pulling the universal

fabric pulled us too.

Willing, thrilling, cursor for cursor

we never met and the dancing was sweat, sweaty motion

that leads nowhere pacing around and around electric

walls

forever and nevermore words. Worlds.

Will you forgive me for being your friend?

Will you permit me to say it’s all right, to desire

another’s arms provide you where I had aspired for

mine?

Pleasure that motion of words to continue without the

sweet sweaty

dancing,

and what matters the sweetness when we never even

met?

By Daniel J. Bishop

This poem first appeared in Pandora's Box (ed. Mellissa Last) in the Fall 1994 issue. It was scheduled to appear in a "Best Of" issue of Pandora's Box, which, as far as I am aware, never came to pass. It was reprinted in the Sangreal Limited Edition chapbook.

The poem is about the nature of Internet/computer bulletin board relationships. Naturally, times have changed since it was written, and the computer can now supply far more than a monochrome amber experience! And we can share more than mere words, instantaneously, across the aether. We still have the cursor for chatrooms and instant messaging, though, and I think that the general gist of the poem remains true.

What matters the sweetness when we never even met?

Saturday, 24 September 2011

Cold Planet

That Messenger god, that playful god

I was Mercury whose ankles ferried

the passionate fire of fleshly suns

volcanoed up so long ago in butterflies

of star-candied bliss.

That trivial god I, the firefly,

winged close in wild eccentric orbits

until she pulled me close into her fire.

She unfurled around me through the long,

slow arc of hungry years,

igniting me with bittersweet berries

until I strangled on them and died.

So I blew her fires out

and she folded space to trap me

through long, slow aching revolutions

dusted by angry flares of hungry ashes

butterflying up like moths of coal.

This poem first appeared in the Sangreal Limited Edition Chapbook

Ghosts

Time passes, and time leaves ghosts,

ghosts came when the asteroids cooled in early seas.

Ghosts swirled the soup with ladles of molten ice,

shifting carbon and hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen

until single-celled life emerged and matured,

worms and bony fish and plated amphibians.

There are sea-ghosts of squids and lung fish.

Chambered nautiluses drift like spectres.

Forests remember change, distant shaking,

the tread of narrow-eyed, knob scaled kangaroos

and scurrying, egg-stealing mammals,

the meek would one day rule the world –

world rulers can be meek no more.

The skies remembered the asteroids.

The dinosaurs sprouted feathers

and remembered the skies.

This poem was first published in the Sangreal Limited Edition Chapbook

Evensong

No sour note its beauty marred;

I heard the music from afar

And hastened in the orchard night

To dancing candles of fox-fire light,

Where the heavy moon cast silver globes

Upon rings of mushrooms glistening fair

For faerie folk that held court there

Amid the drops of swirling light

In gossamer and cobweb-robes.

Faster and faster the fiddlers played,

Dancing within the enchanted glade.

Round and round the faeries whirled

And in the moonlight madly twirled

To the skirling of their magic song.

The apple trees waved with breeze

By mortals unfelt through autumn leaves

Until, slow-rising there came the dawn,

And with the night the host was gone.

In the orchard’s new-day glow,

I heard the music far below.

I heard the sound of dancing fair,

And wished aloud that I were there.

This poem was first published in the Winter 2002 edition of Fables

Monday, 19 September 2011

Touching You

between us and through

this smoky glass wall

I thought I saw you

clearly

clearly it was only glass-

distorted shadows playing god

with my subliminal desires

on funhouse mirrors

Thursday, 1 September 2011

Cold Planet

That Messenger god, that playful god
I was Mercury whose ankles ferried
the passionate fire of fleshly suns
volcanoed up so long ago in butterflies
of star-candied bliss.

That trivial god I, the firefly,
winged close in wild eccentric orbits
until she pulled me close into her fire.
She unfurled around me through the long,
slow arc of hungry years,
igniting me with bittersweet berries
until I strangled on them and died.

So I blew her fires out
and she folded space to trap me
through long, slow aching revolutions
dusted by angry flares of hungry ashes
butterflying up like moths of coal.

Copyright ©1997, 2008, and 2011 Daniel J. Bishop

Tuesday, 30 August 2011

Beast

He offered her beauty

and she knew the value of beauty,

so she accepted.

She thought that she had changed him,

that the animal had sloughed off

with the shape he had worn.

But even her beauty faded

and his beast remained –

she remembered that heavy step

from her first nights in the castle,

now creaking the stairs leading

to her daughter’s bedchamber.

Monday, 22 August 2011

To Frankenstein's Monster, With Love

Child of my mind,
I have pursued you,
worked my brain to fever for you,
and you, yellow cadaver, lie there.
How can I help but cringe?

The corpses I have exhumed for you
from the graves of dead poets
with wrinkled skin and sallow eyes,
the dry words that fashion your limbs,
the wet marrow of your bones –
when clay Adam sprawled motionless
did the living spark diminish his Creator?

Once the syllables are formed,
their pattern set,
it is irrevocable.
The fires galvanize you.
Electricity twitches your form.
You lurch forward to the page.

Oh, my love,
you are not human.
Less than nothing,
a voice I claimed as mine,
but you are not me,
and there is no immortality
in the lines you speak.

You are nothing,
but you are mine!
And I will love you
lurching and breathing
through your phrases
until the mobs come with torches
to burn your pages away.

copyright (c) Daniel J. Bishop 1998 and 2011

Scars

The depths of scars
scars in the sky
scars drifting around the moon
scars on you and me.
Thread and stitchwork crosses us within
like untidy Frankenstein’s monsters,
two mannequins stumbling around.
Scars with patchwork souls.
We are mountains of scars,
and seas of scars,
scars floating on waves,
reflecting the scars in the heavens
the scars in our private hell.
There have been wars, there have been cease-fires.
We’ve staged all the plays for the Generals.
We speak like jugglers doing tricks.
We open our mouths and knives spill out
falling, cut gashes in our flesh,
scars upon scars and scars,
and cut the scars apart.

Copyright ©1997, 2008, and 2011 Daniel J. Bishop

Java Man

I have been a vampire
for a cup of raw blackness.
I have scrounged like a ghoul
through pockets of change
to slink to the coffee-house
at midnight.

Copyright © 1998, 2008, and 2011 Daniel J. Bishop

Sunday, 21 August 2011

Hymn to Aphrodite

Black Aphrodite

fills Her doorway

with swaying breasts

and Neolithic hips,

jiggles when She bends

for the milk.

Scrawny Aphrodite

shows an armload of tattoos

asking waif-like for change.

Rings in nose and eyebrow

glitter like quarters and dimes.

Anything would help.

Aphrodite in the morning,

when the world is calling,

is warm against my back,

Her lips touch my shoulder

until the world is silent.

Aphrodite with a thousand cats

reveals Her dentures to the world.

Her skin is as wrinkled

as a newborn baby’s.

Her cats are Her children –

are Her lions – devouring the sun.

Aphrodite is hungry.

He dresses in drag

And haunts the clubs.

Because gods travel in disguise

He keeps on trying.

Aphrodite, in Her living room,

swallows.

I came from the cavern of Aphrodite.

I breathed Her ocean perfume

in the womb of the world.

We crawl across Her belly

to lie between Her breasts,

to suckle Her life then expire,

breath from Her lips.

Friday, 19 August 2011

Roses

Petals flushed pink

like delicate lips waiting to be kissed.

Everyone knows roses draw blood.

Everyone knows roses carry daggers.

Sweet fruit is hidden in their hips.

Their stems are sharp, cut from the earth.

Roses love you when you bleed.

So I bring you roses

to remind you of the daggers I carry.

And if the thorns have been removed,

that is to make you forget.

Tuesday, 16 August 2011

A Flumph With Waving Tentacles

I am the very model of a flumph with waving tentacles
I hang out with a fighter and a guy who plays with pentacles
I know the things of caverns, and I quote weapons historical
And all the monster manuals, in order categorical

I'm very well acquainted, too, with matters mathematical
I calculate the CRs and with buff spells I'm fanatical
About role-playing theorem I'm teeming with a lot o' news
With many cheerful facts about the best builds that you-can-use

With many cheerful facts about the best builds that you-can-use
With many cheerful facts about the best builds that you-can-use
With many cheerful facts about the best builds that you-can-choose-to-use

We met up in the dungeon though I’m not within the SRD
Invoking Rule 0 the DM tried quite hard to forbid me
I complained about “badfun” and DMing most tyrannical
And by these acts I forced my way into his campagnical

He complained about “badfun” and DMing most tyrannical
And by these acts he forced his way into the campagnical

When in town floating around the villagers all stare at me
Which helps to take attention off our ranger who’s a chimpanzee
Cities I’ve patrolled for more than gold or silly precious pearls
I’m trying to find where the DM hides all the anime schoolgirls.

I can tell templated illithids from krakentua and aboleths
I fought with several parties and survived where they met their deaths
I had them all raised up so they could fight as they had fought before
Up until the point in which they were all dead once more

Up until the point in which they were all dead once more
Up until the point in which they were all dead once more
Up until the point in which they were all dead once again a-more

I am a floating creature so pit traps do not bother me
With slides and chutes the point is moot due to my levity
I come in special armor though as a flumph I wear no pants
And I can make you flumph-touched with a very special dance

In short, with the fighter and the guy who plays with pentacles
He is the very model of a flumph with waving tentacles

If I roll low I think you know that I will call a mulligan
And if I miss I must insist I be allowed to roll again
The Core Rules just limit fools with no imagining
Of how to play a flumph with no stats below seventeen

I’ve been to Krynn and old Berlin and walked the streets of Waterdeep
And in Greyhawk my party walked in places where the dark things creep
I don’t care if my flumphing ways cause the DM much distress
“When in doubt, just say yes” is something that the rules stress

“Just say yes” the rules stress, or so says he
“Just say yes” the rules stress, or so says he
“Just say yes” the rules stress, be plucky and adventury

All the rules in all splatbooks are memorized and known to me
Though in a tight spot I might not remember to apply one or three
In our DM’s campaign world flumph PCs are now cannonical
My next PC I think shall be a LEGO man bionical!

But still, in all matters of driving his DM mental
He is the very model of a flumph with flailing tentacles

(To the tune of the H.M.S. Pinnafore)
copyright (c) 2006 and 2011 Daniel J. Bishop

Untitled

night enfolds breathless

in the clouds lightning flashes

jagged semaphore

Saturday, 13 August 2011

The Dragon

On the islands of Komodo,
Twixt Java and Timor,
Deer and men both tremble
When they hear the Dragon’s roar.

No wings grace Her pebbly back,
Nor does She mount the sky,
But slowly walks across the ground
Head swinging side to side.

Her forked tongue flicks yellow bright
And tastes the balmy air.
The wild water buffalo sooner flees
Than face Her baleful stare.

Hooves slip silent cross the stones
And once-proud heads held low
When antlered stag or horned goat
Comes thirsting to water’s flow.

With staccato thunder of Her feet,
Strikes the land crocodile.
Pestilence drips off dagger teeth
Gleaming in Her smile.

When the stars alight like burning ice
Komodo’s dread Mistress tires;
She rests Her head on golden sand
And dreams of breathing fire.

Evensong

No sour note its beauty marred;

I heard the music from afar

And hastened in the orchard night

To dancing candles of fox-fire light,

Where the heavy moon cast silver globes

Upon rings of mushrooms glistening fair

For faerie folk that held court there

Amid the drops of swirling light

In gossamer and cobweb-robes.

Faster and faster the fiddlers played,

Dancing within the enchanted glade.

Round and round the faeries whirled

And in the moonlight madly twirled

To the skirling of their magic song.

The apple trees waved with breeze

By mortals unfelt through autumn leaves

Until, slow-rising there came the dawn,

And with the night the host was gone.

In the orchard’s new-day glow,

I heard the music far below.

I heard the sound of dancing fair,

And wished aloud that I were there.

First published in Fables online.

Acheron

I buried my lover, deep,

under floorboards of

cinnamon dreams and

stale condoms.

The planking moves –

ambushed by time

as time snared me

when I was green,

unacquainted with

the monster we ride.

There is no paddle,

and rocks cascade through,

shattering lumps of wood

that corner us on the shards

of raft that remain.

I bury my lover.

There is nowhere else

for her to go.

She goes deep.

Shattered splinters shift,

break up,

and leave her behind.

If there is a god

he is a lover of steamboats

who goes under his own power

and plows through our barges,

leaving nothing.

This river is made of tears.

The salt of upstream romances

carry me, and my tears

carry funeral boats for buried flames.

There is nowhere for me either,

unless I enter that river,

go deep,

and drown.

Thursday, 11 August 2011

Emerald Alert

People of Oz slip inside

our citizens for their mischief.

They are all terrorists in Oz,

or worse.

It was the people from Oz,

tear-stained fathers would say.

The President calls the Army,

but soldiers only stand, vigilant,

while scarecrows slip into their bodies

and the heavens rain friendly fire.

Oz has blown off the maps

so the bombs cannot find it.

The terrorists of Oz

have already infiltrated Kansas.

You will know our true patriots

by the way they search your eyes

for flying monkeys, even now,

sneaking inside

Amber

beetles under petrified glass,

we became thick with sugary blood

pouring over us in a sluggish crawl

so slow we did not notice until,

like insects in golden ice,

we were frozen apart,

our passion congealed,

amber oil without warm engine motions

to make it run thinner than water

Angels of Babel

And he was afraid, and said, How dreadful is this place!

this is none other but the house of God,

and this is the gate of heaven.

– Genesis 28:17

I have assaulted Eden,

and wrestled with angels

beneath sweaty sheets

under the moon.

I have held my breath

and expelled great sighs.

Poetry has moved me.

Candlelight dancing on thighs

with each bobbling flame

has cut the barriers of time,

revealing depths and shadows

that made the world sublime.

Paradise came unexpected

in a kiss, in a whisper, in walks and philosophy.

For one to be part of two, to come again and again

together and apart, requires effort and will,

but Paradise is an oasis, a garden that protects,

that holds back the world without denying it,

and though I burn myself for you,

and you breathe incandescent for me,

there is always more, growing beyond our fires,

our hair in disarray and our bodies sweaty

and smelling of ecstasy and pain, and love.

You said “I love you,”

and I knew what you meant.

In every Paradise serpents crawl.

For what sins have I cast myself out?

The unwillingness to meet expectations I knew

but was unable to fulfill,

the all-too-many failings of flesh and breath.

My vision blurred.

I have walked the paths of Eden,

taken pleasure within her

and lain upon her silken grasses.

I have tasted also of good and evil,

and that fruit was sweetest, like honey

smeared upon my chin

forbidden by love and tasted in my kiss.

Call this poetry seduction,

call these words bricks,

and my tongue a mason

to build a tower that would reach heaven

and reclaim that Eden of my youth,

love that other desires set aside.

I wanted it to be said that angels ran unseen

up and down this edifice of words, this Babel of my tongue,

that time could run backwards, and I could believe

as I once had.

That Infernal Trinity of Id, Ego, and the oh-so-Holy Ghost

saw the women waiting to climb and descend,

those unchosen, unknown, or nonexistent fantasies,

those who danced along the edges of trembling sight,

and the Tower trembled, too.

Lust and desire shook it in an earthquake

of unrestrained longings.

Words faltered, and the masons fell silent.

I heard the angels singing

and the world broke into a thousand voices –

one million promises of one million Edens.

Your voice sang one prolonged note –

sweet and pure and strong, and I remembered

innocence, or what I believed it to be –

and we were lost to the music.

Words shattered, the sounds I was building

cold wind through trees

hungry baby cries

endless water falling

crumbled.

“I love you,” you whispered.

What did it mean?

I returned empty noises that sounded like

“I love you,” but I meant

I have no power over angels,

and I cannot make love stay golden.

I have wrestled angels

and found comfort in their shadows,

but time leads on, and the angels remain

lost in the past,

their human shells holding memories

and bittersweet memories

of what we were.