spacesbetween

[dr_con]

spacesbetween

 

Gate One Watching the Corpse

 

Transient workers from across the globe

washed up on brutal Alaskan shores

waiting for the pink gold run to dissect a living

Tents among the cannery gravel pits time spent

hustling communing between layers of marijuana

alcohol the eternal party underneath the heavy un-mythable

gaze of volcanic mountains- their solidity and reality

makes ours uncertain far from taught homes acceptable

conversations

---------------------Why did the bosses come looking to hire

only on mornings when the party had gone so well

------------the Dark inside

was greater than the summer twilight

----------------reduced to meat machines

 

without past or ambition

called to clean haul and preserve endless tons of salmon

entombed flesh giving life all along the Pacific Rim

 

Gate Two The One who Watches the Corpse

 

A friend called me a Stunning Collection of Habits

My addiction to addiction my need to help to be a father

while inside my mother speaks loudly she’s harder to reach

but no less hungry- Many of my ancestors were fishermen

honest workers lime kiln owners and military men farmers

and their wives passing down through the generations

ever increasing expectations Children mocked me

when I told them Mary Queen of the Scots

was part of my lineage afraid I’d abandon

the common ground of secondary roles

become a prophet or a messiah

claim some sort of divinity

out of history’s loam-

 

the transubstantiation of dirt into soil

Our complicity in these lies still hurts

 

Gate Three Stripping the Corpse

 

I had friends who couldn’t eat cut tomatoes with bloodred insides raw undone

They taught me the beauty of a rare steak- just warmed blood mixing freely

with starch and coddled eggs---------------I have known poets who see only imperfection

revolted by the vagrancy of form

This practice of a lifetime still ends in death

Between muscle sinew and bone

a knife can still cut

when wielded by one who has practiced

slicing the gap between

 

honest----truth.

Edited September 7, 2010 by dr_con

[tonyv]

I enjoyed the Arctic/Pacific Northwest setting and imagery:

 

Transient workers from across the globe

washed up on brutal Alaskan shores

waiting for the pink gold run to dissect a living

Tents among the cannery gravel pits time spent

hustling communing between layers of marijuana

alcohol the eternal party underneath the heavy un-mythable

gaze of volcanic mountains- their solidity and reality

makes ours uncertain far from taught homes acceptable

conversations ...

 

without past or ambition

called to clean haul and preserve endless tons of salmon

entombed flesh giving life all along the Pacific Rim ...

and how you introduced the human equation into it with particular attention to the evolving role of the matriarchs:

 

---------------------Why did the bosses come looking to hire

only on mornings when the party had gone so well

------------the Dark inside

was greater than the summer twilight

----------------reduced to meat machines

 

... Many of my ancestors were fishermen

honest workers lime kiln owners and military men farmers

and their wives passing down through the generations

ever increasing expectations ... [emphasis mine]

From all of it I get a sense of "everything changes yet everything stays the same." For despite technology, primitiveness still takes first chair:

 

I had friends who couldn’t eat cut tomatoes with bloodred insides raw undone

They taught me the beauty of a rare steak- just warmed blood mixing freely

with starch and coddled eggs ...

The "spacebetween" the words in the last line effectively drives the point home:

 

This practice of a lifetime still ends in death

Between muscle sinew and bone

a knife can still cut

when wielded by one who has practiced

slicing the gap between

 

honest----truth.

Honest ... truth ... paradox.

 

Tony

[dr_con]

Thank You Tony for your penetrating insight- special thanks for helping me get this posted in its 'form.' ! :D Of course, the end is a paradox, but one which quickly dissolves when one reflects on the times of honesty which somehow still covered the 'truth.';-)

 

 

DC&J