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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
Saturday, April 17, 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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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