Paul Klee "Mask of Fear"

well, it doesn't come in on little cat feet does it?

---

Sheffer Crossword Puzzle Poem Draft 9/30/08, First Go

When even peacocks dress in drab

come in from damp

office days in a daze no craze for debs

to don what they do not have. Aloe,

as they say on phones in India. Ill

winds blow or was that trickle down?

Nero never learned to fiddle, Rome

burned. Ideas too and passions, our

urge to act up or whine like nine

year olds when you don't send me

where we wanted to go in our Volvos.

Oh we're drab enough now that hope

has fallen in the dunning ditch and

which of us takes the blame? Have

we grown this tame, heads hung low

and laughing all at once as though

the curtain doesn't billow for me

and you. Too. Rub our heads for luck

till we go bald. Trim our sails

for diapers. Should have kept the van

fantan man. TV shows for true

but we are here or were and near

to seeing or we will before we set.

And yet.

Portrait of an Artist by Paul Klee

A Coney Island of the Mind

Poem 15

Constantly risking absurdity

and death

whenever he performs

above the heads

of his audience

the poet like an acrobat

climbs on rime

to a high wire of his own making

and balancing on eyebeams

above a sea of faces

paces his way

to the other side of day

performing entrechats

and sleight-of-foot tricks

and other high theatrics

and all without mistaking

any thing

for what it may not be

For he's the super realist

who must perforce perceive

taut truth

before the taking of each stance or step

in his supposed advance

toward that still higher perch

where Beauty stands and waits

with gravity

to start her death-defying leap

And he

a little charleychaplin man

who may or may not catch

her fair eternal form

spreadeagled in the empty air

of existence

-Lawrence Ferlinghetti

----

Klee and Ferlinghetti together, this makes me happy!

Last night a shot in the arm to innoculate me against my dis-ease

with my own poetry. Thank you Rebecca, Beth, Martha, Pat, Kelly.

It is so easy to get lost and give up. Nothing like Anisakis worms

to perk a girl back up. I don't want to die anymore. I acknowledge

my slow fevered grinding, taunt night and star-shove my head through.

Thank you!

Paul Klee, Battle Scene from the Comic Fantastic Opera "The Seafarer" 1923

Battle-Scene
From the Comic Operatic Fantasy The Seafarer

It beguiles--
This little Odyssey
In pink and lavender
Over a surface of gently-
Graded turquoise tiles
That represent a sea
With chequered waves and gaily
Bear up the seafarer,
Gaily, gaily,
In his pink plume and armor.

A lantern-frail
Gondola of paper
Ferries the fishpond Sindbad
Who poises his pastel spear
Toward three pinky-purple
Monsters which uprear
Off the ocean-floor
With fanged and dreadful head.
Beware, beware
The whale, the shark, the squid.

But fins and scales
Of each scrolled sea-beast
Troll no slime, no weed.
They are polished for the joust,
They gleam like easter eggshells,
Rose and amethyst.
Ahab, fulfill your boast:
Bring home each storied head.
One thrust, one thrust,
One thrust: and they are sped.

So fables go.
And so all children sing
Their bathtub battles deep,
Hazardous and long,
But oh, sage grownups know
Sea-dragon for sofa, fang
For pasteboard, and siren-song
For fever in a sleep.
Laughing, laughing
Of graybeards wakes us up.

-Sylvia Plath (1958)

Insula Dulcamara (1938)

I insulate myself from my inner beast --

blur my vision, hear the Muzak, practice scat.

You sing me Cain and what he did to Abel

as if we never had a dealing with Jack Welch.

I remember Carolyn and her mother Cora

Dore and throw them in my brain in front of Tito

but what do I know, I hear the crowd aroar

there's more to cooking geese than ovens.

Do we remember what we must not do unto

the meek? You tell me I am ... breaking up.

Cats extend their knives, the birds flock, etc.

USA Today has no pie chart for this, no arc

that makes any, ...can you hear me now?

I sing I love technology, loud and yet again

while nonsense calls me like a loving Dada.

Ostriches and chickens offer eggs, in coop

or praire what they give are ova over arias

unt uber allas what do we know but Mt. Etna

every one Vesuvial, every Dick and hairy Tom.

Beauty was a wall flower, her petals open

bruised and underused, our disapproval tacit

a tisket a tasket, you say, ...I didn't catch that.

The lights are bright at MSN and AOL

and do not make them diamonds, mhyrr, ore,

yet all you say to me ..., I'll try redialing.