Unken Forishluff

Original Artwork - © Gay Reiser Cannon

Indegar unt Iglepood
Abetu wella loo,
Binkelfad unk willergwid
Hefertu sela goo.
Dwersi panechi deferfel
Unken forishluff.

As qwersit ander too
Ach elomosh ef retherpock
Ast sheller funtil sku.
En interpods ohr pollenpas
Eth quinkel lasta du,
Und losterpas in arcas flot
A piscal werfel tu.

Que sheller werst a bin
Whaf last a purgle gough;
Est bersahi unt ardflets
Ermershet pas adeuff.
Den Indegar unt Iglepood
Verked in a forishluff,
Aspert unt werfel bak
Ashricked a bensen wuff.

Classen huntes asterbye
Assadi unk shriken dee.
Refellut indo askepie
Alloo, alloo, hallee.
Saferent minbo forishluff
Kumperse a modocry
Hallur! Hallur!
Astun dusten aye!

Purten desen de Indegar
A fruntel Iglepood,
Abetus enter enterpods
Lasta quinkel wella loo.
Lama zinga losterpas
Adim eth purgle gough;
Manol lesay und werfel bak,
Namol a bensen wuff.

© Gay Reiser Cannon
Posted for Poetics @d'VersePoets
Prompt:  Foreign Language or made-up language

This is my poem in a made-up language
A kind of dark mythic sound experiment.

Well although I had only outlines of a story
in my mind when I wrote this, I think it might translate very loosely thus: (remember it was for sounds)

Indegar and Iglepood went out for a stroll beyond their village walls They found a pleasant spot To contemplate the day Near to a forest In a while friends passed by And told them about things (in the forest) there Only a short way into the place They could find mushrooms and berries It wouldn't take them long- but beware of strange animals – an arcas and a werfel could be dangerous They thought why not and soon were following a burbling brook Birds were roosting in the trees And shadows scared them at times Then Indegar and Iglepood turned deep into the forest They heard the werfel's sound Also the roar of the bensen wuff Strange forest people lived within the wood The couple's shouts brought them near They asked what the trouble was And why they shouted. They said danger was everywhere But they listened for unusual sounds Cry out for us (twice) For we are always here Before long a peace came to Indegar But Iglepood shook with fear He looked for the mushrooms And found them and berries by the brook As they left the forest relieved not to meet a werfel Again they heard the bensen wuff.

Left In Coole

Migrating Wild Swans   © Winnipeg Free Press

I wake to find the swans have flown away;
their honking calls have ceased; the rushes stilled.
No more their graceful glides upon the lake;
now autumn's passed, my aging body's chilled.

The conversation's brief, no warmth of love.
I wake to find the swans have flown away;
I search for sounds of wheeling up above,
but only hear soft chirps of birds who stay.

Cold floorboards creak, the grate emits no flame.
I wrap my doubts within my old gray shawl --
I wake to find the swans have flown away
beyond the feathered clouds, the castle's wall.

I wait within and bear the solitude;
the window frost conceals my masquerade.
The wind and trees sing frozen winter tunes,
I wake to find the swans have flown away.

© Gay Reiser Cannon * All Rights Reserved
Preview for FormForAll @dVersePoets Pub
12/6/2012 - posted for #OLN

Variation on a Quatern - where five meets four
four stanzas - four lines - five feet iambic pentameter
Refrain line derived from W.B. Yeats'
Wild Swans at Coole

PEACE

© Gay Reiser Cannon * 11/10/2012

Posted for dVersePoetsPub

Poetics hosted by Karin Gustafson

SILK

Courtesy © serialkillerstock

Silk next to skin,

worn for sin too;

both thin and thick

might feel slick or

rough; pick a weave

that may cleave light,

deceive eyes. Show,

prismed rose bleeds.

Silk glows design--

textured fine threads

bleached, dyed jeweled

colors held precious

withheld from all

but royalty

'til now when you

wrapped in blue silk

walk through to me.

© Gay Reiser Cannon

11/8/2012

Posted today as Chained Than Bauk

@dVersePoets Pub hosted

by Raivenne

in FormForAll

Aliens Among Us

Out of the corner…
                           shadows, stay out of
your eyes stare
                                     their eyes, there
where
                    did you look
                                        away? stay,
                                                        ay
glasswindowreflectionsdistort
                                         where did it come
              falling,
                      falling,
Roswell…in 1947 47 57 47 57 47 57 47 57
                    YES
T H A N K S G I V I N G at the SMITH’s
T urkey
            & Prayers, Basketball & Prayers
A ngels, dirt fields, free throws a kid in weird glasses
        6 perfect free throw baskets
            Pleasantville never loses at B-ball??
P A R K I N G makingoutkissinggropingpetting
               in a cottonfieldinsummer WHEN……
  LIGHT  LIGHT 3 LIGHTS STOPPED AND STAYED
the am radio changed stations when the lights whirred
              Whirring away blasting ein klein nachtmusik
carnivalcoloredcandylightsrollingandrocking Mozart
       switching back TO Elvis – DON’T BE CRUEL
Clod..kept saying…clod, I’m a clod, don’t think much of it
She said he’slikesomekinda/alien thing – geek  “uhhuh
I might marry him.”
                           I said..”did you find him in the corner?”
Out of the corner of my eye
                                      a sandstorm blew over TexasTech
blinded me,
               I slept, and woke up…I was 70 and alone
O N  THE MANTLE, pictures of grown children with their children
              and in the center a picture of that boy
                  in geek glasses
                       &
behindhimwere3coloredlights                     
                        he was grinning at me.

© Gay Reiser Cannon * 11/2/2012 * All Rights Reserved

Posted For Anna Montgomery’s Meeting The Bar @dVersePoets

Transporting Pirates of Penzance for Battle of the Bulge

Wiki-Common Image run thru Pixlrmatic
Paddington Station: Bronze statue of Paddington Bear, by Marcus Cornish

My own clockwork reset when I arrived;
seems that I'm shaped as man-sized teddy bear.
I had expected 1945,
But arrivals read 1954.

Not Paris gare but London's Paddington
with a ticket in my pocket for Penzance.
Was met by contact Sir Frank Henry Brown.
It's cover for the pirates; quite a dance

transporting crew and major general
back to the front by small domed time machine.
Their craft awaits them on the River Rhine.
I left with Brown a robot replica
to act as children's torch in case I'm seen;
Who'd guess such fun would come from that design.

(c) Gay Reiser Cannon * 10/30/2012 * All Rights Reservd

This is my "attempt" at a steampunk poem. Not exactly Victorian; but growing out of the Torchwood, Dr.Who steampunk
vocabulary. Also from the gratification I now have that since my first trip to Paddington station, when finding NO Paddington bears there.  I asked the station master why there was no kiosk for the famous bear, and why the only statue was to the man who started the Great Western Railway.  I also asked the same question in Penzance. Apparently I didn't pose it to the right person there.  At least now there is a Paddington store and statue in the London station.  Hurrah!

This Is Me

Self Portrait shot by me

The Irish troubles brewed within me until they blew each other apart.

See my Irish blue eyes, my earth eyes, my eyes like marble earth.

Catholic and Protestant (and Celtic old) frozen into Germanic strength.

Through these eyes, these hurt eyes, these wizened eyes

I saw Rome, the Rome of men, the Rome of crosses, I crossed

the earth to see it, I'd always wanted to, and I saw the burning

crosses of war, of persecution, of execution affixed to churches

in every piazza and I knew they burned inside of me killing

mankind, persecuting people, creating prejudice that had lived

since tribal times..bound in flaxen cords, bound with the wisps

of my fair hair bleached from lack of sunlight in caves. There

were the people, my people removed from blackest Africa to

Northern climes; oh yes, check out the road maps on my palms

the wanderlust imprinted there.   I followed those roads out of the

heartland where the Irish had come, out of Missouri and Oklahoma

away to Texas to a native place and to Louisiana to soak up that

Frenchness that is only a small percent of my crooked smile, my

need for richness, for design, for beauty, for the odd, the curious,

the weird, the occult, (oh the celtic call was strong in New Orleans)

there there I found another part of me, the time traveler, the wizard,

the artist. On across the nation where I was born, traveler of place

state to state, time to time, ice to glacier, hope to city, energy to

corn field, gold leaves to mountains, green granite to desert flame.

Where in my face can you see love, tenderness and kindness; I

suppose it's there though my brow claims intelligence first, and last.

My sturdy body would have wanted stronger legs and feet, though

never fast they moved over many roads, and up to highest stars.

Can you see my partners, my consorts, my friends hiding behind me?

They're only shadows leaving their hopes, designs, and needs on me.

But I come forward to say that there is order, it's written on my

freckled countenance and that order comes from courage to change,
and will to protect, to care, to construct, not to tear down, not to
do harm, not to put myself first, but to change for good, to give, to love.

© Gay Reiser Cannon – 10/27/2012 * All Rights Reserved

THE JAZZ AGE AND

     WHAT          HAPPENS          NOWXT

This is a rough first draft I had an idea about. I don't know if it meets Anna's criteria, but I'm putting it up at the eleventh hour because I wanted to see if this is an anything. I am hoping to  make it have a jazz feel and capture that burst of creativity that brought to life a true revolution and a modern world.


 Dancing like two becomes three (dimensions)
                     Painting that SINgs color
                             Writing:
                                    —If anyone thinks 
                                     that I amn't divine 
                                  He'll get no free drinks 
                                when I'm making the wine 

But have to drink water 
and wish it were plain 
That I make when the wine 
becomes water again. 
                                  
        He tugged swiftly at Stephen's ashplant in farewell and, 
        running forward to a brow of the cliff, fluttered his hands 
        at his sides like fins or wings of one about 
        to rise in the air, and chanted: 

                  —Goodbye, now, goodbye! 
                   Write down all I said 
                   And tell Tom, Dick and Harry 
                   I rose from the dead. 

What's bred in the bone 
cannot fail me to fly 
And Olivet's breezy... 
Goodbye, now, goodbye! *
  

Crazy, crazy great     
        crazily met and yet wait
                    everything hovers like heat   
           shimmers on the hot summer day   (wish I could)
            a threshold of every
               thing....
                            new, novel, novelay         

                                                              
Critical
    genius
         old bumping new on against and again wen|new
   Catalogs of good (deemed mediocre) bumped
         up against never {and even still doesn't} exist and would
           it
            bangety bang BE ever be that NEW again.
How long had 
             ideas brewed?
Since the dawn of time...
   Let's see...........at night
      OK
       Let's talk......long distance
               how, let's use that light thing
What'll work? For what...a fair, a carnival, a whore house, 
                   a city                                            
                                          OF LIGHTS
Exposition.........we need lights...gas, then electric
                                                                          
Ben Franklin could let go of the kite...
  Ol' Ben be shocked, ol' Ben be shocked
         He'd be knocked, knocked, knocked offa his feet
                                knockin' me out! (Wow!)
                                                                                              
                               Edison was figuring things on a farm in
Nova Scotia....................................      "can you hear me now"
                                                                                        (Leads to something new)
                  Oh there were a million things already in place
farm machinery, assembly lines, automobiles, singersewing
sewingsewingandtheywere... sewing, in Paris sewing, Coco sewing
sewing fashions, crazy fashions, skin-tight fashions, sexy fashions,
hair's a bobbing, skirts a rising, knees a knockin "can you hear me now!"
                                                                                    (on heaven's door)
                               crazy
                                     yet (don't forget
                                        it couldn't all be good)'

Coco Chanel caught that crazy
     Chaplin, chaplin singing silent trampin' crazy trampin' crazy
            That crazy crazy was PICTURESmovingmovingPICTURES
TRAINS a choochooing into your seats...all  a screaming
                      Screaming and reading and reading not
just what happened, and who said what and got into 
someone else's 
     well business but into his ohmygoodness CRAZY
                          thoughts (now that's a
            NOVEL) and it was all novel...what! an AMERICAN girl in a shop
                  getting Joyce INto print 
       Black people were moving from the states to Paris
                  It was all happening
Clothes, ragtime - meeting dance, 
Pounded on the table,
Beat an empty barrel with the handle of a broom,
Hard as they were able,
Boom, boom, BOOM........the African rhythms
The Carribeans currents
THEN I had religion, THEN I had a vision.
I could not turn from their revel in derision
 freeing Josephine Baker
           and Isadora
                 (Scott Joplin dead but not forgotten)
THEN I SAW THE CONGO, CREEPING THROUGH THE BLACK,
CUTTING THROUGH THE FOREST WITH A GOLDEN TRACK.
Then along that riverbank
A thousand miles
Tattooed cannibals danced in files;
Then I heard the boom of the blood-lust song  **   
           
Graceful melodies in tinkling syncopation played
background to the highest glamour the world will
ever know,
          to the extreme inventions,
                  to the wildest thoughts
                         to artists with new
                                  actions ...in fact new
new new new new new and crazy 
fou 
     fou 
              fou were all the rage ...in every sentence
crazy fun
             fun
                 fun.....
crazy fast
             fast
               fast
crazy smart
              smart
                smart
Revolution..turning...revolution in the air [in Russia]...REVOLUTION...back in the USSR
  Kill the Czar and keep those dazzling Fabergé eggs
                  That's so inventive, so crazy, such a way to find
                              a crazy revolving worldwide rocknrollin' high!

    * (James Joyce. Ulysses)
    ** (Vachel Lindsay, The Congo)

© Gay Reiser Cannon * 10/5/2012

A MURDER OF CROWS

Four Crows 

It is January and there are crows like black flowers on the snow.                                       (1)
The temple where crow worships walks forward in tall, black grass                                   (2)
God, disgusted with man turned towards heaven, and man, disgusted with God, 
turned towards Eve, but Crow ........Crow nailed them together,                                         (3)
never plaintive nor appealing, quite at home when ..stealing,
"I kill where I please because it is all mine. There is no sophistry in my body:
My manners are tearing off heads."                                                                                     (4)

So man cried, but with God's voice
And God bled with man's voice.
Crow grinned crying "This is my Creation" Flying the black flag of himself.                            (5)

And comes that other fall we name the fall. The bird would cease and be
as other birds, but that he knows in singing not to sing.                                                          (6)
The question that he frames in all but words is what to make of a diminished thing.                 (7)
The free bird leaps on the back of the wind and floats downstream
till the current ends and dips his wings in the orange sun rays and dares to claim
the sky. (8) Among twenty snowy mountains, the only moving thing .. the eye of the
blackbird. A man and a woman are one, a man and a woman and a blackbird
are one. (9)  And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?                                      (10)
Splashes of pepper
        Spice an empty blue bowl--                                                                                           (11)
                     How the crows dream of you, caught at last in their black beaks. Dream of you
leaking your life away. Your wings crumbling like old bark. Feathers falling from your breast 
like leaves, and your eyes two bolts of lightning gone to sleep.The litany of lonesomeness leaves 
nothing left for the crow's rosary to be counted on.  In the weepdusk, he cries in a deafening 
crowd,
"Carry on waiting, carrion.  Carrion waiting!"                                                                          (12)
Wings dark as midnight glittering on snow ...harsh crude mocking cries...faint whispers
of ..knotty sheen..ever ...wait -- patiently in darkened clefts of ...gray green yews.                   (13)
Finally, just under the clouds...streaming across the sky, its feet like black leaves                     (14)
            When the blackbird flies out of sight, It marks the edge 
                                                                                         of one of many circles.                    (9)

A Cento for FormForAll hosted today by the illustrious Sam Peralta @dVersePoets Pub 
Compiled by Gay Reiser Cannon * 9/27/2012

Attributions:
(1)   Crows, 1990 © Mary Oliver
(2)   Crow Law, 1993 © Linda Hogan
(3)   Crow Blacker Than Ever © Ted Hughes
(4)   Hawk Roosting © Ted Hughes
(5)   Crows © Ted Hughes
(6)   The Crow © John Burroughs
(7)   The Oven Bird © Robert Frost
(8)   I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings © Maya Angelou
(9)   Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird I, IV, IX © Wallace Stevens
(10)  Crow's Rosary, 1987, Scott Edward Anderson
(11)  The Blackbird © John Clare
(12)  In The Pine Woods Crow & Owl, © Mary Oliver
(13)  Crows, 1998 © Michael Collings
(14)  The Swan © Mary Oliver

In Solitude

Composite Eglantines, Celandines, Larkspurs

My solitude creates an aura full
of efflorescent pink and yellow-green;
inspired by painted thoughts, pale eglantine
ideas wind through myths and madrigals.

Rosettes of stories start to twist and curl
where colors shine like sunlit celandines.
Then legends filled with plotted serpentines
take shape, replace and populate my world.

In rainbow tinted songs I'll juxtapose
new poems where my sunlit histories
will soften dark adumbral older lines.
I'll wash away the blackened martyr's clothes
once stained by false and shameful mysteries.
With larkspur's hymns I'll break the paradigm.

© Gay Reiser Cannon * 9/25/12* All Rights Reserved