Chris and Rollo

Chris and Rollo

Sunday, April 18, 2010

THE ALLEY

Shattered brick, brown rusted iron
Testify; the gutter, strewn with debris
To overflow with dark passion, fire of

Misplaced loyalty, seeking only to flee
When discovery is imminent,
Truth hangs overhead unimpeachably.

When blood and nerve flow and fray,
Glorified in their absence, mummified as the remains
Of a pitiable lie, then those blinded by it, sick enough to stay

Bonded, bound to putrefy as witness, the stains
Of darkened memory, free only of freedom's constraint,
When honor melts away, the heart grows faint.

The heart turned hollow, bloodless as stone
As the walls so blank and tall revile
The crawlers, the flesh, exposed bone

Bleaching white in the city's white heat
And the soul count mounts in a deathless pile
Where so much life becomes so much meat.

There are rats here and smaller crawling things
Leading barely an existence,
In instinctive prowlings, appetites soon bring

Untimely catastrophe to creatures void of sense
No disaster is great or small, only unfeeling consequence
Of having been done unto before doing so, a mindless penance.


© Celeste Plowden 2010

Saturday, April 17, 2010

WAITING IT OUT

The lingering is as always
Brooding, confidently patient
As what is expected
Shall turn and face, fully
Defiant, equally confident
As what is unexpected
Shall make itself scarce
Scarcely known, more to the point
Less available, for IT
Knows the lingering is static
Knows the waiting is forever
Knows the air is thick with distrust


The brooding is always
Lingering, darkly insufficient
To manifest a real hatred
To support any real love
In the turned face of seclusion
Hiding still in distant shadows
Unaware that the feeling has stopped
At the knees and the toes have numbed
And the disinterested in the cold
Unaware of fate's fatigue
Unaware of deep time's darkness
Unaware that sleep has been overcome.


© Celeste Plowden 2010

TOLD YOU SO

Friend, why whine and point
To where you thought you'd find
Dead certainties kept?
In some bleak and tenebrous place
Hidden so none would find
Save you; your anticipating face
Grown long and brooding, sick
With the nagging notion
That through all the commotion,
The swell and fury of your concealment
Amounts to naught, since
All you thought was for yourself
To lay tough claim to truth revealed
Though now you find it not in the dark
But in the light most clearly marked.


© Celeste Plowden 2010

THROUGH MY OWN EYE BACKWARDLY

Through my own eye
Backwardly thrust from brain to heart
Inwardly peering toward my life's star
The forgotten years cry
That I have yet to find
The bridge that spans the altruistic act
And the sadder and incontestable fact
That I care not for my own kind
Without a complaint to lodge
In any court or common rule the offender heeds
In everyday discourse ‘tis more his mindless need
That causes right be dodged.
That virtue needs to suffer
So in the shadow of grim purposes abstract,
Strange partnerships malign in unholy contract
Seems still I cannot buffer
Myself with thoughts of fond
Remembrance, trust in actions well intended
When contradiction places beliefs suspended
And my doubt I fail to reach beyond.

© Celeste Plowden 2010

SPRING

Through inhaling reeds,
Exhaling rushes, the bending
Voice in sweetness, moist
Music, directionless and poignant
In its unmaking, its
Unraveling melody
In perfect tonelessness
And inharmonic pureness,
The grand pristine fugue
Delivered on angels' rhythmic
Wingbeats, droning siren chants,
The singing rocks, warbling
Jetties and pool tones
Muted, hinted at by
Passing, cooing birds
A furry swish at hushed
Riverbank, soothing downward
Swallowing of mud and tall grass
The trout's glinting sunlit
Back, chimes of breaking water
Splash to shoreline patter
The heaving, swaying loom
The sparkling chatter of heron,
Loon, geese aloft
Unbounded tune, tonally
Unbridled, sweet and soft.

© Celeste Plowden 2010

SLEEPLESSNESS

Doubts and devils play mischief with the night,
Mispeakings linger in the ear otherwise deaf
As the dark is deep, quandaries better abandoned
To daylight, exposed to reason, than herewith
Struggled by Fear and Fright.

Breath too long kept imprisoned in the chest,
Faint heartbeat grown inexplicably louder As the distant walls begin to crowd
This expanding bed, comic refuge sought for rest.

Rest denied well into the early morning hour
Still so distant from first cock's crow or sunlight's grace,
An interminable, unbearably impatient place,
I'd drag the sun up from the depths had I the power.

With inadequate excuse did I seek sleep, Firstly to avoid fatigue come next day, Foolishly, untired to bed I went, then lay
Nervously awake, pray away to drift
the blissful Lethean deep.

Rise to pace the floor again, the room from end to end,
Skin cooling under vanishing to renewing dampness, beads
To vapor; stiff hot brandy could not now meet my needs,
A stubbed toe to tease, the pain forcing me to bend

At least, to a distraction, to break the brooding melancholy,
This flight from my own solitude, resigned
In panic to gorge the fear with food I find,
A feast in midnight's kitchen is double folly

The frets and furies of anxiously borne hours
Play wickedly my conscience, nagging,
Nagging over the last day's haggling,
The tastiest morsel in my mouth would sour.

Leave them back Get them gone
My yesterdays, like yours are over,
Yet they linger like some jilted lover,
Spurned, abandoned, left to suffer alone.

© Celeste Plowden 2010

SHE LIVED

She lived
after awhile
after the noise
had died down
after the rolling eyes
had squinted their last
measure of accusingly righteous revolt
dreams dashed, damned stunning jolt
her future, her past
rolling uncertainly loaded dice
having been around
knowing the boys
would smile
she lived.

© Celeste Plowden 2010

SHADOW PLAY

Divining away the shadow play
That frightens little children
And sorrowful old men when day
Comes to a fitful, crushing end
And the vaults are again locked

So children, aware they cannot get out
Souls fearfully aging may never again enter
The young have yet to loose their shouts
The old, gambled off and spent it here
At death's door awaiting the grim summons,
While the children look on in darkest common.

© Celeste Plowden 2010

ROAD TRIP

The road at noon is bright and dusty brown
Taking the turns in stride through each adobe town
Roadside shacks sprout drying jalapeno vines
Tall pines jut from solid rock withstanding Time's
Withering winds, scorching bad land sun ‘
Til mountain night calls hell's time done
As snake and scorpion emerge to dance
A desert jig, to slither and chance
The dark to gather darkness' loaded fates
Immune to conscience's loves and hates.
The road is dusty, barren brown,
Aromatic piney peppers from fences through town,
The mesa north, flat and wind worn
Looms ahead, as rocky peaks lurk forlorn,
Shadows false shade shall not provide
Sanctuary from the relentless sun's eye,
From blistering noonday heat, till climbing
Mountains seems no trouble like arriving
Into my worried ear in fretful half-dream
The ride should stay uneventful as a nap by the stream
To sooth my feet, to wash the dust
From my tired eyes,I do know I must
Get some sleep before I dare to test
The desert's lethal promise to unrested
Travelers, and durable spiders and snakes
Whose underestimations of danger are their last made mistakes

© Celeste Plowden 2010



RIVER FRONT

I used to walk the river front
At the foot of Cherry Street
‘Til morning, Sunday morning, rain or shine,
It was cleaner in the rain, I saw clearer in the puddles
In the brightly speckled windshields
Under street lamps 'neath the span
Among the cranes and the dump trucks,
The girders and the steel beams
Languishing ‘til Monday's varied uses found them
Undisturbed by my harmless trespass.
In the steel garden of corrugated weed
Twists of tin and molded alloy, piles of stone,
Barrels of debris and burnt things, once real objects
Gone to chunks and cinders that smell, that choke
And cake the nostrils with memory's poverty... briefly.
Then the rain ... the rain washes, the salt river rises
Rushing one night, lazy and stubborn
Next night, shimmering and glazed
Another night, the wide-mouthed bay
Welcomes whatever it has to bring along to the deep
The cold deep, this warm shower
Sunday soothing rough edges facing east
Glimmering greenish like old burnished metal
In the first dull hints of dawn
Imprints swept by rivulets to sewer grates,
Manhole eddies, the streetlights red yellow green
Pierce the relentless, unforgiving grey
Black and grey, and starless blue in the rain
Where the bridge overhead reigns, lords over
Everything in sight this night.

© Celeste Plowden 2010

ON WATCHING T.V.

In full view of your folded arms
It is not so much that I enjoy_
Watching television, its pain,
Absurdity and incalculable harm;
To watch absorbed is to employ,
To be witness to the agony sustained,
Confidentially critiquing each groan and gasp,
Whimper and whine, so that I might yet grasp
The completeness of the enthusiasm
For mindlessness, false iconoclasm,
So set on affirming each others' baseness,
To wallow in the marketplace of the commonplace,
Gurgling, drooling, graceless.


I need to know the state of things
So the breadth of the chasm between me and him
Is made understandable,
Why the call of one heart is incomprehensible
To another whose only sin
Is his dependence upon a wonderland sham,
Crammed with consumer traps,
While the brainwash is in the rinse cycle,
Being sapped away by electronic jingles,
Speed of light graphics so miraculously complex
So scatterbrained, so purely non-circumspect.

© Celeste Plowden 2010

ON A FIRST CARELESS READING OF A VERY BAD BOOK

My Lord, the words were hardly spoken,
Nearly never thought, so faint was my voice.
Mere curiosity, the utterance but token
Still shredded sanity, vanquished will and choice.

Abandoned me broken whilst those from beyond
Closed about; with unwelcomed love pressed
Themselves. I prayed - Be gone
But They, not You heard. Their caress

Grew warmer, greasier, from Hell
Their touch a loathsome, crawling clutch.
From within my skull the tales they'd tell
Were horrors no human thought could touch;

Of frozen plains and blackened suns,
Timeless abysses wherein dark souls gather
To worship with torn tongues the Old Ones
Who by their whim hold Hell together.

The Book, the damned old tome was written
Madly, and by madness rode the Days.
From ancient monsters' mouths the bitten,
Gnawed and twisted bones; the flesh flayed

Gleefully, the gluttonous soul carvers
Ate their fill through this their feeding universe,
Whilst remaining hidden from any further
Looking eye, but mine, unwitting, first

Caught a glimpse in those dark pages,
With a fanciful imagination cried Oh Great Dark Ones
And ignoring the warnings of prophets and sages
Recited, so softly, from dread Necronomicon

Whispered so lightly from hellish antiquity,
Gently, so absently coaxed from the pit,
The mindless, abominable, hell-spawn iniquity
From the cold sludge, a blind fit

Of wonton slaughter and sacrilege
Come to rest upon my back and tongue
To take for itself its granted privilege
And fury, now come to feast among

The innocents, whilst those who tampered
Pay up with dissected souls to serve
Their appetites, now fitfully whetted, unhampered
To run blood and souls together with demonic verve

© Celeste Plowden 2010

IN THE LIGHT`

Seen in time she glows in the dark,
Seen in reflected moonlight,
Prismatic, lit up in pale pink
Like Twiggy mod as Irish Brooklyn belle

Enshrined in the Wurlitzer glass.
Seen in light diffuse, pale eyes sway,
Sighs breath incense subdued,
Perfect fingers clasped, eyes gently gaze
Lace graces her hair under rich mosaic glass.

Seen in soft moonlight, drenched grass
In soft summer evening fog,
Subtle emerald over aqua,
Her reclining profile barely in focus,
Her short sweet breath mist envelopes the stars
Through eyelids that touch closed and flutter
The world suggested by a reflecting windshield
Speeding distantly through the night.

Seen in the light of a backdrop
Interior hallway, the goodnight for tonight
Ritual in a tenement alcove, illuminated
In clear glass, in mingled cigarette swirls
Among brass mailboxes, ancient chandeliers.

© Celeste Plowden 2010

HER ROOM

Blue smoke curling azure tenacity
At her fingertips a foretold lingering light shift
To darken the room (I assume) or to loosen
Like some grifter the consciousness from below,
Plying desperado-like in rhythmic modes
Softly seducing the air to curve about
In smoky ghosts before eyes that cannot
Believe themselves to have fashioned a truth
From spectral promise.

© Celeste Plowden 2010

FLIGHT

I vaulted the west wall and fled
Unpursued, save by my own haunts and dread
Across an absinthe sea of tall grasses
My heart driven, thumping twice,
Thrice with each fleeing footfall.

The treeless plain lay without contour
Tediously patient, deviously inviting
As though distant mountain, enormous
Looming purple phantom, great deceiver,
Was within reasonable reach.

To feel stone beneath my heel worn boot
Before my lungs would burst, heart quiver and fail
Before legs too stupid to realize too late
They were too slow, too weak to bear the load
Of vacant purpose set to winged flight.

The specters behind would bide their time
Overtaking before my purpose was uncovered
So well practiced they,
The teasing, tormenting ties
That held me down, tethered and bound.

The icy air bore nothing, no sound
Of parting grass; stinging western wind
Mute mountain's selfish blindness
Uncaring, silently refusing to say
What game was being played.

© Celeste Plowden 2010

EVENING PLAY

Banjo chrome in summer headlights
As the distant country road gently hums
Until no longer are we aware of how the road lies and runs
Consumed by the porch music moment, the gentle cricket night.

A sprightly toe tap, the knowing wink,
The smiling boy who will lead the way
With a strum and a whisper he begins to play
As the fiddle and the harp consider their link.

The dark growing deeper beyond-the porch step
As the light draws inward with each passing refrain,
The center of the world for the present maintained
So long as the rhythmic exchange is well kept.

So long as this endless evening sigh is placed
In harmony so sweetly in the air, tenderly felt,
Laughingly given forth as memory melts,
Recalling life's path, otherwise so certain erased.

If not once in a while a gentle toe taps
To a heartfelt remembrance of other times
For better or worse, and in at least a little rhyme,
Fiddle under chin, dobro steady in his lap,

Vibrating as the evening air hums,
And never mind, the sun certainly shall rise
Come morning when the crickets and the flies
Disappear, the country road off distant still runs.

© Celeste Plowden 2010

EVENING

In the sweet cool darkness, the moon
So low over the eastern wood,
A dog barks, a small snap in the
Gentle silence of winter dream scape.

Late geese aloft, invisible, their flight
By Doppler effect quickly ascertained as
Southbound, to the wetter flats
Below, their gaggling gone to airy nothing.

© Celeste Plowden 2010

THE COZY PLACE

The cozy place is out of the way,
Yet not too far that none dare go.
It smells of nuts and pine and sage
Along gravel paths nestled in birch groves.
To the main road not much more
than a stone's throw,
But such a long way to go
If such a measure be
Of the distance in mood, in the pace
as it slows
To a lazy walk, a pacing of tongue
Grown lucid, even subtle,
As the pearls are passed among
The nestlers of the out of the way,
Tables for two or four or more,
It is where we stay, and what we say
And pass the darkest hours of day,
Light the smallest hours of night
In the manner we've grown used to,
In a place we belong we hold court,
Holding each the other in display
The cozy place is out of the way.

© Celeste Plowden 2010

CONEY ISLAND, 7 A.M. SUNDAY

What are you waiting for?
In the dawn and crusty yellow sunbath
Of beach and rotting board
The fleas feast at the grim brink
Of land on the sludge and worldly remains
Of Saturday night at nature's septic sink
Stagnant sea laps at the sandy skirt
Moving to outrun the narrowing shadows;
They've got the goods, they know the dirt
And who is holding the keys tight
In a greasy grip, belching cigarette
Blown through cracked windows into the summer night
Weighted night, like concrete feet
And stars like burnished nails impale heaven's
Breast, a plot complete
With pre-ordained orphans and bloody thugs
Draw lines in sand awash with sweat
The clans watch over graves freshly dug
The prayers of living cadavers for dead ones condemned
To Sunday's ghoulish carnival mass
To mutter ghastly hymns, absurd amens.

© Celeste Plowden 2010

COFFEE TALK

No more for me, after three
Cups gone and a wounded crease
Had distressed his brow; a
Shrill interrogatory leaning
Toward a row had begun.
A clicking overhead fan failed
To stir the smoke from the greasy
Kitchen stove and the overstuffed ashtray
Between us as we talked, and
One cigarette more, and another
Cup of coffee to keep the talk off the floor,
To keep the buzz on; his talk turned
To war and the greedy multi-nationals
And mourning for the dead, the
Unnecessary dead; it’s the fear
And irrational that prevents
Our own perfectible nature,
So he says, from looming into light,
From canceling the debt
Of ages of despair, of countless injustice
And doubtless his own rage; the coffee
Does not help his burden to assuage.

© Celeste Plowden 2010

A WALK WITH AN OLD SCHOOL MATE

Through the tall yellowing grasses of autumn
Whose predicting bite of wind is enough
To remind that much time has passed,
We spoke of childhood's anticipation
Much diminished as the heart deepens,
Much forgotten as the hair grays.
My tall brown boots are hidden as I shuffle
To the rhythm of your increasingly shrill question,
Hoots whose leather once less cragged sharply clicked
On youthful stone en route to unrevealed
Possibilities, potentials, undefined paradigms,
Now softly trod in field earth far off any path
Aimlessly this way then that, aft invisible scowl
Warding off your persistence and prying.
“Why have you grown so uncaring?”
In so many words and others more obscure,
It is your point to make that I no longer
Share in your commitment to the world,
No longer wear the braid and medals
Of dedicated youth, of crimson spirit endeavor
In the teeth of the howling age, in spite
Of the vicious response, for the love
Of fighting when the fight is as futile
As the cause is beautiful, in the eye of the storm
In impossible proportion to our
Self-imposed limitations, and because of this
I beg your indulgence as I leave it
To the dusty past it inhabits, torments
And remains unresolvable even to imagination,
In our short time, or in all to come.

© Celeste Plowden 2010

APOLOGY

It was a figure of speech,
A tired fragment, a worn whimsy,
So worn I nearly dared not use it.
Please pardon, the rock thrown
Reached to bruise your skin, flimsy
And thin, but I still saw it fit.

I had run fresh out of blossoms,
Drained dry of honest pursuit,
Thought not for the safe or wholesome,
Or substitution with caring or cute.

If I could take it back I would not,
I've even less use for it than you,
So please allow it to rest where it landed.
We can ignore the stain, the lump, the blot,
But to discuss it any further would hardly do.
Forgiveness is welcomed, I'd detest to be branded

A crude deliverer of unpleasantry,
A rude misuser of levity,
A dutiful and respectful man I try to be,
How fruitful be my efforts we shall only see.

© Celeste Plowden 2010

ALARM

The bell is brass
Its somberness assures me
Its alarming frankness disturbs me
In the strange off hour
When few sleep
And fewer venture out of doors
The darkness' seething
Half stillness pierced
By the demanding call
Of the bell; the tower
Seems to rock, to sway
Under the big sound's weight
As the street fills achingly
With barefoot half-sleepers.
The horizon in illume of
Smoky pink unnatural light
As the bell rings alarm
To the ambling somnambulists in the square
The sky alight with fiery
Figures darting and dancing
Upon distant treetops
As the bell rings
The street is thick
With talk, with fright
And unnatural fiery light
From distant treetops
Dancing in the dead of night.

© Celeste Plowden 2010

AFTER SEEING HER SAFELY HOME

As far as my eye could see,
My eye, my frozen tearing, tired eye,
As it pleaded with the distances to close,
Down the empty expanse of Flatland’s Avenue
To the distant dark bay, no headlight
Broke the silent monotony of the snowy night,
No bus, no taxi, no motorist
Of any kind detected in my despairing view;
Thus, by no means, it seemed, except
By one frozen foot put forward, then the other,
Right, left, right, in turn one another,
Rhythm broken only in each frozen puddle leapt
Lest I should land ankle deep in the icy sludge
And then would I fear I should never again budge
From that spot that would bring my frigid death
This night so far from home, a victim
Of Love's gallant foolishness, to see the lady
Home in safety, knowing the long road home
Would be barren, lonely and cold,
Transport unplanned and unforthcoming
As all would-be venturers into the night
This night stayed home, risking not being stranded
Or worse, afoot in the ever deepening icy white,
Clinging wet, frosty bite of winter's nipping fang;
As all half-planned thought would assure
An alternative plan, Love's hasty nobility
Assures nothing but the worst fate could procure,
Which would be proof of love's fragility,
Its memory enough to warm my frost bitten toes.

© Celeste Plowden 2010

ADDICT ON THE TOWN

Installed by peerage of dubious descent
Upon a junkyard throne at rivers edge
The icy dark depths timelessly dredged
For hope in despair amongst the grimmest bent
Who come from outside bathed in light
Sequentially succumbed in the musical night
By false hope, heightened delight
And the smallest promise sidelong lent,
Step upon these rotting boards, these
Creaking timbers, drawn faced hoards
Who quietly step out of time, off epicenter,
Unholy compulsion and greasy caress,
Diamond hard that painfully flays the flesh
For so long as is required
To disallow any chance for appearances,
The emotional account in arrears, they retreat
For the first time aware of the sting
And the scarring setting in before the ring
Has left the swollen, reddened ear,
The tear-filled eye, salt-dried,
Brow beaten under tousled, matted hair,
The bleary eyes remembering in strobe effect
Within night time, city time,
Vicious soulless masquerade, faces etched
Deeply by the life, the chasing breath
Where engines race and slow,
Race and blow back the exposed face of death.

© Celeste Plowden 2010

A BALL

I dreamt a dreamy place
Whispering homages during ghostly
Sarabands, muted, in sacred breaths.

A soul saving sigh in rooms of light
Left cold in the night like stone
Alabaster, pale flame and ruined hosts

Who guessed, at first, I had interloped, a ghost
Who had no where else to haunt,
So dared intrude; the unsuspecting clan

Pinned to the marble by wings of ice,
The cold breath blown in gasps
And eyes of pale blue flame ignited.

One dance only, I ask is all you grant
And I will depart like vapor,
A dark cloud on a forgotten spring breeze.

© Celeste Plowden 2010

RIVERBANK

Never to smell the earthen
Darkness, the dank and murky
Muddy brownness of my riverbank

Where, having left curling
Sunken toes, fearless youthful
Longings and anguishing expectations

Did move on to the concrete
Fashion of a nervy steel world
To seek out the woman having lost the girl.

Forgotten the musky scent of water
Rushing reeds, distant hayloft
Yellow, drying in the sweet sun

To callous innocent hands
Scraped, torn tender-
On broken glass and rusty ruins.

The river mud, soft allure
Downwind of piney wood
Full moon peeks, breaks the gloom

Of fog shrouded, spirit haunted
Night, love’s sincerest
Blessed samples offered


Tender summer years spent
Bursting, longing, lovingly eyeing
Distant rippling tidal banks

And birds, blue jays jeering
Jokingly before frantic flight;
(as if anyone ordered them off)

And aloft, to shift the foggy
Bottom of morning, to disturb
The dancing sunlight rays.

But flight, a necessary
Mode of escape, pries at the toeholds
To loosen, are river washed again.

© Celeste Plowden 2010