Okay, okay… like the proverbial lemming, I am going to also do a review list for 2017. For a few days near the end of every year we are beset with end-of-the year lists and reviews about what was hot-or-not for this-and-that as the nearly finished year approaches the cliff of a final calendar page. Well, I might as well do a list too, and no doubt it will make the list of the least-read-lists-of-the-year (LRLOTY) for 2017 (which list is itself on that list in a recursive loop). There were many wonderful things that happened in 2017, but mostly I am looking forward with hope to the future with the caveat that I would like to request to any all-powerful wizard that might be out there that it might be nice to just skip to November 2020… but that wizard, whoever they are, probably is not able to find the time to read something that is on the LRLOTY list, so this request, like the plaintive begging of our local church choir director for more tenors, is certain to fall on deaf ears.
My list is simply a review of my poems I have posted on the blog for the nearly-vanished year. That is basically it. The poems are the most basic part of my heart, even though they are not the most prominent part of the blog in terms of word count. After MY poems I have included a reference to a really great poem by Joseph Brodsky on a New Year theme… AND A FABULOUS (if by fabulous you mean quirky, tangential, and obscure) CONTEST FOR MY READERS WHO ARE SECOND LIFE RESIDENTS. Okey doke.. so if you like to be in a Poet’s Corner and are not merely a Poet Scorner… here goes.
Desert Crossroads at Dusk.
If we had thought
At this interim,
Where he plants
His graveled head
Lifts his back
And carves the sifted plain
To greet our tread,
That surety were
Merely the lengthened
Shadow of our sweetest dreams.
Then had each herself
Her own heart reprieved.
Whether her path into the darkness
Or the sinking fire led.
- Lona Gynt, 1989.
How the Artist considered the Tulip
It seems strange,
She did not paint
The voluptuous velvet shell,
Nor did she trace
The fimbriated lines
Of delicate leaves
Weaving in suspended air.
Rather,
She dared to pierce
With her brush
Into the very center
Of the beautiful creature,
Where muddy loam
Mixed with sunlight laden rain
To sculpt a fiery heart
Thrusting a blinding
Flash of color back to the
Cold blue sky of
Failing winter, crying out
In desperate measure:
Here I am, Pick me!
Oh, here I am,
Pick me.
- Lona Gynt. November 2015
Dysphoria
I know it might sound silly,
But in that moment
When I craved
Your hands above
The casings of my heart,
You would not touch me there,
For my good,
Or who I am to you,
Or perhaps because you might be right,
And I may really need your love
More than the sweet embrace
Of affirmation.
But in that moment
When I craved
Your hands above
The casings of my heart,
You would not touch me there,
For my good,
Or who I am to you,
Or perhaps because you might be right,
And I may really need your love
More than the sweet embrace
Of affirmation.
And yet,
I must confess…
In that moment
I Felt the crisp snapping of a stem
Leaving neither root nor branch
But only dessicated petals,
Pressed between the dusty pages
Of a lonely silent book.
I must confess…
In that moment
I Felt the crisp snapping of a stem
Leaving neither root nor branch
But only dessicated petals,
Pressed between the dusty pages
Of a lonely silent book.
·
– Lona Gynt. July, 2015
Rain in the Door
Gentle remembrances
Wash the whited frame.
I know this place,
Where young lovers meet,
And old friends
Sit quietly outside the gate.
Somewhere behind me,
Perhaps on the mantle,
Or the wall,
A stone face keeps vigilance.
Meting out each embrace,
Striking in the rise and fall.
Wash the whited frame.
I know this place,
Where young lovers meet,
And old friends
Sit quietly outside the gate.
Somewhere behind me,
Perhaps on the mantle,
Or the wall,
A stone face keeps vigilance.
Meting out each embrace,
Striking in the rise and fall.
·
– Lona Gynt. May 1992
Memory’s Shingle Jingle
There is really no single
Pain like a shingle
It simply just hurts like sin.
You’re feeling quite fine
While it hides in your spine
“Til it treks out a road to your skin.
Pain like a shingle
It simply just hurts like sin.
You’re feeling quite fine
While it hides in your spine
“Til it treks out a road to your skin.
·
It sets up a home
On your poor dermatome
As it runs to get out to the air.
Soon you are yearning
For a day without burning
And the fight hardly even seems fair.
On your poor dermatome
As it runs to get out to the air.
Soon you are yearning
For a day without burning
And the fight hardly even seems fair.
·
Until you are better
You can’t wear a good sweater
Cuz you itch and you scratch at the touch.
And the girl who confesses
To shoulderless dresses
Finds they don’t cover the red rash by much.
You can’t wear a good sweater
Cuz you itch and you scratch at the touch.
And the girl who confesses
To shoulderless dresses
Finds they don’t cover the red rash by much.
·
The whole basic gist here
Is it give you a blister
Lined up like red little soldiers.
At first it’s just itchin’
“Til the whole crew does pitch in
In a file from your neck to your shoulders.
Is it give you a blister
Lined up like red little soldiers.
At first it’s just itchin’
“Til the whole crew does pitch in
In a file from your neck to your shoulders.
·
It’s been studied afar
By scholars gold-star
From Aukland and London and Emory.
But this verse is a spell
To hope you are well,
And drive this plague far from our Memory.
By scholars gold-star
From Aukland and London and Emory.
But this verse is a spell
To hope you are well,
And drive this plague far from our Memory.
·
– Lona Gynt. Summer 2015
Stages of Life
We love to watch the
Monarchs when they are young,
Inching along the edges of their
Milkweed world
Devouring their green nursery with a
Grim and fervent appetite.
We thrill to see them fly
When they are grown,
Flitting in the edges
Of our gardens and
Lighting the dark corners of
The groves until they
Rise together against the
Coming frosts finally to
Gather and intertwine to drape
The sharp-needled evergreeens
For a season with a crawling
Gown of autumn fire.
·
But I, myself, hold the
Chrysalis most tender to my heart,
Where a skin of leathered jade
Is wrapped tight beneath
A translucent membrane
Of papered expectation,
Bound by a solitary
Golden chain and a sprinkling
Of shimmering diadems
Clinging by the most tenuous
Of threads to the wider web of life,
But mostly just hanging…
Just hanging there
Surrounded by the atmosphere and
Sunlight, and merely the very
Cosmos whirring in oblivious
Disregard around this
Point of breathing stillness,
Where silent wings simply
Lie enfolded upon a
Slowly beating heart.
·
-Lona Gynt, April 2016.
·
Check out the beautiful translation of Christmas Ballad by Joseph Brodsky from 1962 for my currently favorite New Years poem. This link brings you to a printing of his poem in his memoir on Google Books – but you can get a print to order bound copy of all of his Nativity Poems (mine was 11 dollars at Barnes and Noble). Isolation temepered by the hope and wonder in his poems made me cry on an airplane trip home this season. The poor person next to me may have thought I was having a fear-of-flying induced panic attack, while in reality Brodsky’s words were making me fly higher than the jet I was planted in. Here is the link:
NOW THE CONTEST: This contest promises to be arduous and certainly not worth it, but it still might be fun if you are into that sort of thing. The rules of this contest are simple and dictatorial. Anyone can play, but you have to be a resident of Linden Labs Second Life to collect the prize. Simply scour through my 2017 posts to find a dry, wry, tangential, obscure, little joke in honor of Walt Whitman. If you message me in comments or IM me on Second Life with the correct answer, I will have my accountant HarveyCat send you 5000 Lindens. This is akin to a game that my clinical professors used to play that was called “guess what I am thinking” and in that same spirit, my word on the correct answer is final and absolute. If you find an answer that is not what I intended and if it is better than my own answer, I will think (like my former professors did) that you are just showing off, but I might consider giving you a consolation prize. The contest will close only when either I leave Second Life for good, or when someone claims the prize, or when I become senile and can no longer recall that I ever made these promises or can no longer remember the correct answer, so hurry if you want the prize.
May all of you come well into the New Year. Love Y’all
Lona.
