Sunday

Four AM

Across the river, over the village

Clouds have drawn a blanket

Silencing starlight

So quiet, pockets of white snow

tented under street lights, porch lights

(children flashlight reading undercovers)

Silent night

Even the occasional vehicle

Soundless fireflies

Disappearing into the black

The world, capable, every night

Of peace

around this great globe

Somewhere it is noon, evening

4 in the afternoon

Somewhere someone is going

Echoing or going beyond/beneath my knowledge

I recall those years

The clock roostering the 4 o’clock morn

Aroused readying for work

To break the night’s fast

For a town by the sea

Or the long drive

To study the thoughts of children

Other nights to caress with eyes

your lover’s prone figure

Asleep, comforted by

the warmth of that body near

that being that loves you

In another room, so quiet

The soft breath of your loved ones

Or the purr, or sniffle, the snore of a furry beast

And in the warm months, the exotic

Always exotic melody of birdsong

Or the howl or scream

Of night creatures

The erotic coyote

The victorious fox

The hoot of the owl

The snore of the neighbor

In the apartment next door

How precious is life at 4 am

Our blessings to count

When not cowered in fear

The shiver of a muted jet

The silence of a drone

true threat, or pious paranoia

The night knows that

As the world can slumber together

And go about the produce of the day

To plant, to grow

To bake and cook

To sip and laugh

At 4 am we are whole

United by the nation of sleep

4:32 am January 21, 2018

Witness Forty

Bright Blue of Young Stars, Watercolor, 1979 or 1980 (Pittsburgh, PA) 

I witness, outside myself

 You laughing

the room lighting up

the moment I first saw you

across the room

Sporting in Boston

lifting a glass

your hair African wild

I witnessed a beauty

desire, in April

In a summer outdoor cafe

sitting w/my poet friend

you walked by laughing with your friends

I witnessed myself, out of my body

walking too, knowing I wanted

to walk with you the rest of my life

On Christmas night

I witnessed a miracle

you, walking into playland bar

under a garland of white starry lights

surprised, recalling your name

a walking gift, under the ribbons

of light on the boston common

you came home with me

40 years ago it was

now, home in our Vermont

I am witness to a happy life

always surprised that it is mine

bearing witness to the love

 that is You. 

                                                                                     

Happy Anniversary, my Chuck 2018

Lotus of Compassion, a  gift window for Chuck, 2018

The Eternal Pursuit of Happiness

Craving

After the first breath

The desire, the need for food

To be held, embraced

Hugged back into the warmth of the body

The whole of life, craving

Seeking that from which we were withdrawn

And that which is new

To crawl, walk, talk

Fed, to feed, on our own

Never, no, never are we free

Of craving, of desire

Food, yes, the necessity,  food, the delight

The special, the taste sublime

The physical, always we crave

Someone to nurture, to hold, to cuddle us

No matter what age

So often so misunderstood, misaligned

Targeting the wrong desire

The most essential, the most needed

Blinded by the irrational

Fighting for a rational mind

So easily hiding it, biding another

So many, so far from the womb

So far from the touch of gentleness

That destruction becomes the lust

The seed to destroy, not grow, not fertilize

The need, the beating of the heart

Better to stop it, than not find the mother

Norishment calls again and again

the mother father in all,

 male female one

loves, nurtures

All we imbibe, physical, mental, moral

Seeks only to wake to life

To find the holy womb

Of our eternal child

Until it quiets in natural sleep

In natural quiet

In natural birth

In natural death

Reflections on thoughts that were clearer at 3 am last night

12/25/2017

Desires, watercolor @1975, So. Russell St., Beacon Hill

JTR III Today You Would Be 75

JTRIII, Taken at Bay State Road, Boston, Fall 1970

Today you would be 75

Oh, Jack

You changed my life

Turned it upside down

& right-side up

So glad I took that job

At Allen Bookoff Studios

On 25^th Street, Baltimore

Passionate lovers

Wild lovers

Clumsy lovers

Brilliant and Brittle

Such bad lovers

Inept, uncertain

So unknowing of how

Of what

Outcast, bred out of our love

Our need to love each other

Yet love we did

The poetry

The Art

You awoke the me in me

Bursting with a quest for

Knowledge

Movies became cinema

Books, discovery tours

Music, centuries old

Brand new

Fluid and explosive

Gentle

 Dancing with rhythms

I knew not before

No longer just

 teenage mating calls

Personally, sexually

Still forming social selves

We still had, like cooking

Housekeeping, to learn

How, and who, to love

So mired in religion to know

The book of love unwritten

Stumbling, while escaping, running

Down the forbidden path

Destroying lives

In soap opera drama

Throwing out the order of things

Babies thrown aside

Women, mothers scored

And scorning, admired, loved, scorning

As un  that which is our nature

Joy Street in Boston

Home of the Appalachian Club

House of bishops

In the Shadow of the State House

And the Whorehouse

Where black suited government workers

spent lunch & breaks

Across from the Red Shed of Kennedy studios

Our last attempt to live together

The battles raged

The chair, the beautiful art nouveau chair

So lovingly restored

So powerfully broken over my back

The police called,

Calming us down, not intervening

In domestic affairs until tragedy happened

Their kindness keeping us from bodily harm

The injury replaced with sorrow

That we could not

Control the flood

Setting sail apart

To Washington for you

For me Pittsburgh, Newburyport

And North, ever North

Always, brothers in love

The thick and the thin

Nourished and whetted

We were too much

And not enough

For each other                                                     

John Tyler Ricketts III 1942-2011

st. jean 1973

Jmf-w

50  years Ago

So glad I took that job

Harassment on High

Funny Man

Funny

sit-com society,

On a Jerry Springer stage

Society scorns sanctified sex roles

Honed for years, for eons

Since the finger first pointed to Eve

In the common legend

Now points at men

Who played the game

Set for them, even in jest

Now fingers point

One step from picking up the stone

First to toss at the culprit

Madwomen armed in a hotel room

frazzled femininity a high-heeled cause

While the Chief Finger

Know of tiny hands

Tweet venom to male and female alike

Lynching up with his little round mount

And prissy voice, the judgment of the king

Changing capitals of tiny kingdoms

To appease his commanding worshiping godmen

Fitfully bringing apocalypse they so adore

Wishing holy hell on the sinful poor

Holy Richeousness Pensive with bright—eyed hate

Saint Donald, the Revelator

Dancing on the pole

Nailing the cross of Jerusalem

                                                                                                                                Christmastide 2017

Media Fanning the Flames of Miscontent

(aka Forked Tongue Fox)

A Mother Eats her Son

"My darling monkeyboy, Momma loves you so much I could just eat you all up."

12" x 15" x 2", Enameled, foiled cardstock  June 2016

Lyrics from a traditional Traditional Sephardic song after the Lamentations of Jerimiah, translated by Hamete Benengeli

Una Madre Comio Asado (a Mother Roasted Her Child):

And a mother roasted

and ate her cherished son

“Look at my eyes, mother.

I learned the law with them

Look at my forehead, mother
I wore the phylacteries there

Look at my mouth, mother:

I learned the law with it.”

Lyrics from a traditional Traditional Sephardic song after the Lamentations of Jerimiah, translated by Hamete Benengeli

From an interview with the composer, Osvaldo Golijov :

“That’s another incredible thing.  I said,  “What is this?”  How can one come up with a lyric like this?  “A mother roasted her cherished son, and then the son says:  ‘Look at my eyes, mother, I learned the Torah with them.  Look at my mouth I learned the law with it.”

”It alludes to the Lamentations of Jeremiah, which basically says:   Look at the city that stood so proud, and now mothers are eating their children.  That’s what happens when war ravages a region.  To me the marriage of these words and the beautiful melody are tremendous.” 

Here are links to two versions of this song, the first, w/Dawn Upshaw singing Golijov's adaption, the second of Sephardic origin by The Renaissance Singers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGQmJkvmSPE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tv_S_AShG88

The Kitchen of Words

A Poem

is a recipe

a list

 of ingredients

some savory

some sweet

a spicy twist of ideas

to pause the heart

ignite the mind

breathe air, rise and fall

baked, fried

raw or wrapped

stir quickly

 slow cooked

to enhance, enrich

sustain

the wholeness

the reasons

of Life

3 August 2017  jmf-w