What the Old Woman says ... Time, Promises and Poetry #1

 

I have found that I will always have a mindset that I cannot escape or even wants to escape the statement shared below. I was fortunate to have caught the last influential days of a family founded by immigrants. Images, sounds, smells linger constantly. I still hear the sizzle of eggplant in the cast iron pans and the frog legs popping. I still walk by the line of roses under the kitchen window, and anticipate the evening Sunday meal as the aroma of Rosie's sauce wafts deliciously out the window. 

 

I can't look at a mushroom without saying a prayer of thanks that Grandpa, Uncle Frank and Uncle John knew what they were doing on their treks to the Santa Cruz mountains to gather mushrooms to be pickled.

 

The lamb roasting on a huge bbq pit ...

 

The roasted pig in the center of the Christmas table with apple and daisies placed appropriately. 

 

The men speaking in Sicilian and playing cards while the women put their soul and love into the meal in Aunt Myrtle's kitchen.

 

Uncle Frank's and Uncle John's secret BBQ sauce, the one and only and the best I have ever tasted in my life .... their secret recipe taken to the grave. 

 

Me trying to hide under the kitchen table every time my grandmother (Rosie) gave me the awful raw egg and chocolate milk concoction at breakfast. 

 

So much of our life revolved around food ... and I thought every Italian/Sicilian grandmother ran in the kitchen. 

 

... and the mandatory kisses at every function. God forbid you leave someone out in the round of hello and goodbye kisses. 

 

Everybody's basement ... 

 

But mainly it was the "family" ... all the aunts and uncles ... all the cousins ... all the grandparents who weren't my grandparents who were nonetheless my grandparents ... and how anyone who wasn't Sicilian became Sicilian (an offer you couldn't refuse).

 

We had our village with all its pleasures ... all its open hugs ... all its faults and all its secrets.

 

When I reflect I feel so blessed I had my village, be it the last days of its existence. It saddens me that our family's new generation had only a taste of all the "sauces" ... their interest wains at the old stories. I can never erase the old country ... I am in my mind the old Sicilian women that surrounded me in my youth. 

 

I still feel the warmth of the old faces, the old days and as much as I am completely in the present, the old faces, the old voices, the old kisses are still the security blanket I pull up under my chin each night with a prayer of thanks.

 

PS ... I'm the little chubby one in the photo. 

 

 

 

The Cruel Account of My Monsieur Feuille de Papier

 by jeanne rené

Monsieur Feuille de Papier
you gawk at me
aloof and empty
blank
you mock my passion
these eyes prisoner
to your harsh and penetrating countenance
it sends chills
down my elastic spine

and i grovel
sup on the terror of your dismissal
my lucid sight grown transfixed at the hint
my red blood boiling
at the suggestion of making love to you

My Monsieur Feuille de Papier
i cannot exist without this making love to you
my lips to your pale face
give a barrage of manic kisses
writhe as i move you to my tango
my rhamba
my minuet of eloquence
of time
of place
of empathy
of the disgraced
Mon Monsieur dance
and laugh and drink this contemptible wine
i dare to spill

how you anger me
so fickle your affections
how you torture me
walking out
walking in
hours to days
when you abandon me
shriveled in some despairing universe
soused with only my disheveled name

then again
to return bounding into my quarters
just to kick my protruding stomach

i grow weak
  mais ce soir
  ce soir
  une page blanche . . . blanche
your face offers no clue
come
i beg, Mon Monsieur
come
dine on my fever
fulfill my rapture
prepare for me
a warm bath tapped with words dripping
from my severed vein


jeanne rené 11/04  

I Cannot Write Her Poetry

by jeanne rené 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The paper bag was fattened with unwanted information.
Requests for unavailable generosity,
political asylum at her kitchen table.
Fashions and recipes once flirtatious,
shredded by her own hand
as another wasteland bulged at her slippers.

But I could not write her poetry
as I brought her a bowl of vanilla ice cream.
I could not find the words to attack her world of solitude
and seal her smile.

So, I held her hand
and we’d walk up the steps to the old parlor.
She’d sit, talk while I stared at the shipwrecked life jacket, frame encased.
I'd wander into the kitchen with its heavy handle
and big hinged ice boxed gallery wall and listen.

I’d take her hand.
And we’d walk, pushing aside heavy curtains, dust illuminated,
making our way through the maze lit by red glass and tremulous flames.

At ninety-two if you asked her,
she’d laugh and throw up her hands, seizing her freedom
from the women who knew nothing, stepping outside her shelter.

But I cannot write her poetry,
I can only inhale the mystery filling my lungs.
I can only feel her warmth.

 

jeannerené  6/26

 

 

 

... with gratitude this Memorial Day 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ribbons

 

 

 

by jeanne rené 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ribbons ... 

 

I could not help the silly jokes

any less than our conversation

embraced with nostalgic punctuation.

Cosmic commas every blink of my eye,

every tap of my hand upon your memory,

with every prayer for the children you seeded.

Your delicate ribbons wrap round my wrist ... 

 

... and tug at my heart, tug at this illusion

lifting upwards with strength only met in the heavens,

unaffected by the passage of time.

Goodbye has never existed.

Goodbye was never an option.

 

jr 5/26 

 

 

 

Euphrates' Child

by jeanne rené

Image Credit: John Wreford

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Euphrates' Child  

Wrapped in the moth-eaten garments of my youth
I slept on the banks of my mother, Euphrates.
Upon her sweet and fruitful bosom I dreamt,
gems of amber grain spilling from out the thresholds
of mud shelters swollen with plenty.
Beneath the sorcery of the heavens
I drifted in my fancy near the savage spit of flame
as it shaped the will of the bronze,
harkening back to hum of the potter’s wheel
I had passed in the marketplace.

As my father’s light opened above the Tigris
unfolding the day between the two shores,
I stirred, as bleat my brothers and sisters,
they whose warm blanket I had pressed in the dark.
From the softness of their pillow,
I rose to tend, with reverence, the flock who clothed me,
provided my sustenance.
Knowing still, it would come to pass . . . as surely as each year’s flood,
that on this day ordained, upon the banks
of Ur to the slaughter, I would walk my sheep,
that mine should eat,
that mine should be cloaked,
and that, for this, I would give thanks
washing my hands in the mouth the rivers.

I thirsted
before I traveled,
and waded into the mother, who offered cool drink;
I threw her water against my cheeks.
Abandoning my flock
I closed my eyes to her sweetness, her caress seducing my meditation.
Her tongue lapped about my ankles,
and I swayed, rippling, her movement intruding upon my senses.

~ I am here, child. Ever here, child,
under your feet. You walk on me with enchanted eyes.
I remain, bottom waters vigilant, muddied with the first and the last.
I spill onto your valley, upon the son, onto the daughter.

The father’s light is held fast, child. Held steady
above my constant shores. Even diminished,
I remain, my joy, my grief, washing the bitters of your vengeance.
But, I rejoice in the eternal,
binding your feet to rock deep within my waters.
Virtue will not wend, prudence will not pass beyond my shores.~

Opening my eyes, I was blinded by the embrace of the father
shimmering upon the river's surface.
Newly made, an immortal babe, bound by decree,
I stood upon waters made clear,
and saw cradled in her soft bottom,
the stone to which I was joined.

Ever wakeful,
I have stood the centuries, watching
the river carry the sins of Babylon upon her back.
Weary and sick,
I have covered my nose with a ragged sleeve
at the stench of belly-bloated enemies washed ashore,
spewing from my own stomach their intrusive bile.
I have numbered an endless drift of bone . . . and gem,
book and song, geometry and sheep
half buried in the silt . . .

But I remain, absolute,
my ankles shackled to the depths of the Euphrates,
longing for the resurrection of her kiss.
A phantom of the millennia. . . I await my release. 

 

copyright jrw

The Euphrates River is still dying and predicted to be completely dried up by 2040.  It is named in the Bible as one of the rivers of Eden and a border of the promised land, with prophetic mentions regarding its drying. 

 

 

 

I discovered this poem in the 80's and it has been my favorite poem ever since ... written by Robert Penn Warren and first published in The New Yorker in 1981. At this point in my life ... almost 76 years ... it means even more ... and I'm listening. 

 

~What Voice at Moth-Hour

 

What voice at moth-hour did I hear calling

As I stood in the orchard while the white

Petals of apple blossoms were falling,

Whiter than moth-wing in that twilight?

 

What voice did I hear as I stood by the stream,

Bemused in the murmurous wisdom there uttered,

While ripples at stone, in their steely gleam,

Caught last light before it was shuttered?

 

What voice did I hear as I wandered alone

In a premature night of cedar, beech, oak,

Each foot set soft, then still as stone

Standing to wait while the first owl spoke?

 

The voice that I heard once at dew-fall, I now

Can hear by a simple trick. If I close

My eyes, in that dusk I again know

The feel of damp grass between bare toes,

 

Can see the last zigzag, sky-skittering, high,

Of a bullbat, and even hear, far off, from

Swamp-cover, the whip-o-will, and as I

Once heard, hear the voice: It's late! Come home.

 

 

Robert Penn Warren

The Hayfever Blues

by jeanne rené

 The Hay Fever Blues

Well I,
Get up outta bed,
Go straight tah the head,
My eyes are a itch’n,
And my nose is a twitch’n,
Man, it’s bewitch’n!
Cause I got . . . those hayfever bah - looze.
Lord so many ah - chooze.
I don’t know what tah dooze . . . ya see
Cause I got,
Cause I got . . . those . . . May fever,
Day fever. Say what fever?
Hay fever bah - looze.

Well I’m,
Up in front of the class,
Don’t give this teacher no sass!
My eyes are all leak’n,
My ears are ah tweek’n,
The tissues a seep’n . . . now . . .
Since I got these hayfever bah - looze.
Can ‘ford no tissue to looze
And I just don’t know what tah dooze,
Since I got,
Since I got . . . this scratch in my throat
Class, now don’t rock the boat!
Just let me emote. . . these hayfever blues.

Lordy, Lordy,

Well I,
Throw open my door,
Just can’t take no more,
Leave all that pollen behind
But, Lord, what do I find,
My man, he’s a itch’n . . .
And ain’t that his nose a twitch’n,
Guess we can’t be a fix’n
The sneeze’n and sniff’n . . . with these hayfever bah-looze,
We’re gonna die from all dem ah-chooze!
We don’t know what dah dooze . . .
Cause we got,
Cause we got . . . those May fever
Day fever. What you say fever?
Hay fever bah-looze.

Hey . . . Where you go’n with that box of tissue?
I may be your woman, but it ain’t all about that.
You come back here, now. You here me?

Now what I am I gonna dooze?
With these . . . with these. . .
Hay fever blues.

We're talk’n some serious ah-chooze here, baby! 

 

copyright jeanne rené 2004 

Thoughts of a Mother Weeping in Our Distance

by jeanne rené

photo jeanne rené

Monotonous rows walked.
Stench rising to shields of handkerchief,
she searches for the smell of perfumed soap
on his ash covered neck

I inhale, in gasps, the disbelief of a mother.

Plastic shrouds suggest dignity
to babies of a newborn holocaust,
forfeited in a combustion of hate.
Why?
Why this sight surreal taped to her scrapbook?
A woman searches with photographs enshrined
of eyes and lips kissed with love.

I know her.
I see with the eyes of a mother.

I walk in cosmic footsteps to her door,
beating my chest with the depths of her despair.
She will
make me deaf to explanations,
and let me hear only the pitch her wail.

Mother,
I place my hands beneath your child’s head,
and stay for an eternity
that never this sleeping face touch the barren earth.

Mother,
I take my cup to catch your thousand tears
and drink them for my morning tea
that I may suffer the taste of your bitterness.

I reason with the thoughts of a mother.
She dreams,
She lives from this day
always on the portal between life and death.
She is, as lost to this world,
as her child taken.
The hint of her child’s laughter,
the slight suggestion of a smile,
a perfect profile on a Sunday afternoon . . .
and she wanders in the shadows.

I pray in her name . . .
Witness her questions frozen for posterity
as she walks the line between rows of disbelief.
How do we not share
this mother’s world
in which love and hate are indefinable?

jeanne rené  9/04

upon the axis of perfection & to give (two poems)

by jeanne rené  

~upon the axis of perfection 

the sun rose
rivers fell into the oceans
oceans fed the heavens
and on our day
before this day . . .

Her
Times tossed out of rhyme
Sight defined ~
The blitz around the corner,
Upright pedal rush.
Speed bump curb into the driveway
Wheels dumped in crash abandon
Five-steps in a two-step sprint to the front door.

Vibrations radiate~
The marathon up the stairs,
Jumbled sensations of enthusiasm.
Baying forever feedback,
Manic
mad
unmelodious beat.

Cold stepping out
From refrigerator door open,
Banging.
Winged kiss on the cheek,
Spoiled
Devil-eyed wink
"Hi mom."

Time
Passages
Life
Toss of the dice
Visions undermined~
The cold shuffling down
The body torn.
Life pools a red halo
Conquering the weightless dust .
"I’m cold. . . so cold . . ."
Winged kiss on the wind
I love you, mom.

I love you, mom,
Carried home.
Spoils of war
In her womb.

She shakes . . . dreams tossed
Out of time. Out of life.
A hand wakes her sleep.
". . . It's time to go."

and with
this day new
rivers fall into the oceans
oceans feed the heavens
and the sun will set . . . .

the sun rises

the sun sets
Our sons die 

Daughters die
With our rising.


Copyright jeanne rené  

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To Give

They give their lives at nineteen . . . twenty.
Give their lives in years which do not hold the measure of evolution,
Lives that fly the course of intimacy with a definitive breath.
They give
    years whose run will no longer chase a callow heart,
    till that heart finds again a promised path.

To have
none but these unpolished days.
    Faithful silence,
    hold time before their sealed lids,
    the measure of what road laid ahead before this hour.

arms wrap around
a chest pounds
trickle of water over lips
     High sun blinds as he’s tossed into the air.
     Wiggling,
     laughing too loud
     he lands in his father’s hands.
     One more time Daddy. . . One more time.
sands sift through fingers

Give
Your tears.

Give
A prayer of evolution.


copyright jeanne rené