#NAPOMO #GUESTPOST APRIL #POETRY SIX POEMS by RICHARD LANCE SCOW WILLIAMS for #NATIONALPOETRYMONTH2017

SIX POEMS

"pelts"

pelts & feathers

dead things

o my god

the thunder

says: you lit

me up then you

left me alone in the dark

or how you cannot remember

how the sea took you from shore

the dead in the streets of your heaven

suddenly underwater sign this with red seeds

with the leathery face of a madman aged in a day

the thin men in their gray mourning jackets

backs like wings of sullen angels

he did not want this distance

(but the distance knew)

the wheels turn

until only

the wisdom

of invisible light

reveals the stain of

having been the blood

removed without a longing

©2017  “pelts” Richard Lance Scow Williams  mythopoetry.com
All Rights Reserved

CARNIVAL

a sea side carnival

the gaudy against the grey

no one on the boardwalk save

a few lonely ghosts—shadows hunched—

hurrying to appointments more mundane than sinister

all the rides locked tight—the barker’s voice replaced by gull’s cry

inside the tunnels the ghouls & zombies wait for their electric trip

no screams no giggles no nervous laughter to reward a patience

of plastic steel enamel paint the peeling of their cause

we imagine murder rape assault on body & soul

but no teenage fright fest hero today—worse—

a distance—a foreboding emptiness

the waves a hundred yards away

relentlessly pulled back

©2017 CARNIVAL Richard Lance Scow Williams mythopoetry.com
All Rights Reserved

Tortoises

tortoises bleeding

eggs calcified

Ramona

reports on

her exotic

charges

how to

keep

the wild

inside a cage

without damaging

what makes the wild wild

you don’t—you adapt

you make excuses

you wince & say

this is not

the end

& you act

as if you are listening

to a voice that is so familiar

but you have heard it so often

that when the world ends

it is like you never knew

the tortoise crossing

that finish line

the hare long

given up

for dead

falling falling

into a boiling pot

black iron deep & vast

it does not matter the stars

for at that distance they are already asleep


©2017 Tortoises Richard Lance Scow Williams mythopoetry.com
All Rights Reserved

Sparkle Pony

Sparkle Pony was the name of a one-woman folk singer in the TV series Portlandia

those episodes were excruciating to watch in that they hewed close to the truth

i think of Antonio Salieri as portrayed in the movie Amadeus

of talent & near talent & no talent but ambition

an ambition to be seen as beloved

in & thru all time all space

you matter you glitter

your life is as wide

as you imagine

the depth of

all that is

fairy dust

sparkly

unicorns

magic princesses

knights in shining armor

deafening applause never ending

your name writ larger than Ozymandias

o ghosts of the nameless tell me you are

like blooms of stars to offer my small ego your coat

let me burn with you in the eternity of galaxies yet born

Sparkle Pony parades of countless knights & innumerable princesses

what matter the nature of a a burning truth

burn with me like time itself

burn burn Sparkle Pony


©2017 Sparkle Pony Richard Lance Scow Williams mythopoetry.com
All Rights Reserved

SCAR

many can wound

do wound &

pick at

the scars

& you wince

wondering what

mercy could harm

the history of abuse

my friend says

we come now

to the end

of such

things

the world

now suppurating

in wounds too many to count

more than ready to form a weaving of scars

i do not want to look away from it all

i want to rub my scars

& remember

how kind

the flesh

to love

me enough

to remind me

we live in a world

that is always ready to heal


“scar” from Helga, ©2015, Bite Press,available from Amazon


©2017 SCAR Richard Lance Scow Williams mythopoetry.com
All Rights Reserved

THE FIREPLACE HAS A MESSAGE

shoveling ash from the fireplace into a metal bucket to take to the garden & pour it on the frozen ground—pour it or dump or deposit it (to pour seems more sacred)—my father said ash is good for roses (he knew about the growing of roses)—there are still some glowing embers—fist-sized pieces of char—when a human is cremated bits of bone can remain—bone & teeth perhaps & nail—my father’s ashes are in a box on the nightstand next to my mother’s bed—i do not know where we’ll take them & hers when she goes—Arkansas likely—Fouke or Texarkana north off Highway 71 or 82—my father when he would pass his grandfather’s grave (on Hwy. 82) would say, “i’ll smoke a Lucky for you” & turn to me smiling, “LSMFT—Lucky Strike means fine tobacco”

cigarette ash is not as fine as the seasoned oak piñon pine & cedar

that burns to a dust in our fireplace—bed of ashes still warm twelve

hours later—turning the bucket upside down the mountain winds

carry a cloud of the dusty ash north past the wooden garden gate—some ash still clings to my boots as i walk back thru the snow to fill the metal bucket again

©2017 THE FIREPLACE HAS A MESSAGE
Richard Lance Scow Williams
mythopoetry.com All Rights Reserved

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Richard "Ric" Lance Scow Williams was an associate editor for The Austin Chronicle from 1988-2012. In 2007, his, the secret book of god was chosen by Robert Bonazzi of the San Antonio Express-News as "The Best Book of Poetry by a Poet Living in Texas." He lives in Glorieta, New Mexico, with his wife, astrologer Helga Scow Williams, and two cats, Bat and Mouse. His latest books are Helga (2015) and Jealousy Cured: Cancer & Other Invisible Matters (2016), both from Bite Press. His collaborations with David Jewell are and their latest 52 Pickup: Last Word/First Word: Volume 2 (2017), both also from Bite Press.



For Book Titles On Amazon

Helga, Bite Press, 2015

Last Word/ First Word: Volume 1 BitePress, 2015

Jealousy Cured: Cancer & Other Invisible Matters Bite Press, 2016

secret book of god, 2007

UNDER THE SPELL OF HORSES

RED AT NIGHT BOTH BLACK AND WHITE

You and I at sunset
inherit racism
our blackness

a christic night― white mythology
feeding horses red adam
in a descending series.

The horses know we must
see how they see
the apples that have us?

Those horses re cognize
our appetitive eros― have
we must

& should & ought & our parentalisms peal without pea(r)l
peal unpeeled (still red outside and white within the spell as if)
retracing her trace, red at night and winged

what part of monism doesn't have all of us
rose from the sea
falling from above

©2016 Under The Spell of Horses stephanie pope mythopoetry.com


notes1. A response to the poem, I Fall Drowsy (March 1, 2016)by Richard Lance Scow Williams.

i fall drowsy
the horses
know i
have
apples
i know i
must feel
sweetly indebted
to things enclosed
all those cages
locked doors
barred windows
barbed wire electric fences
prisons jails lock ups dungeons
we tell stories that justify our violence
as a natural consequence
of being an animal
reverse engineer
in a line that
reinforces
a predilection
proving simultaneously
our exceptionalism & our being
subject to brutal but natural impulses
o stories that we tell stories to
i protested that a photo
posted on FaceBook
seemed to be at
hard odds with
Christian values
a responder said:
    stop using Jesus
i asked: against racism?
the link went quiet
drowsy America
Tarot has it
the chains
on the Devil
are always loose
meaning one can slip
out of illusion at any time
i grab a bag of apples
& walk to the field

2.  Under The Spell Of Horses is sparked by both the line in the poem, I Fall Drowsy, "stop using Jesus" and a photo of the funeral service for the late Justice Anthony Scalia. On the altar cloth is a reference to Jesus as the logos spermatikos. It reads, "The seed is the word of god." Justice Clarence Thomas is speaking.

When I saw the line in the poem "stop using jesus" I had the thought that it may not refer to racism. That is, it may not be to the sorry business of racism to which this line refers but to a certain psychic, archetypal pattern, a mythic dominant interpreted as conferring divine status to certain men on earth, privileging a certain interpretation from which is created a rule of law. The archetypal pattern to which I refer is, of course, the logos spermatikos. This archetypal pattern is the one some scholars say is that to which the Platonic Dialogues address calling this form of eros "socratic".  It is what first recognizes the "I don't know" you and I and everyone else doesn't yet know...which is like the flea that tells us the apple is rotten. The socratic gadfly wakes us up. What we have lost is the sense of twoness to which the logos spermatikos refers, knowing and loving. What law can put god in your heart?

Supposedly Plato recognizes in the Socratic form of erotic loving  that knowing and loving are somehow the same thing and more than an appetitive eros, erotic loving is not about having something.  It is about being something. This is "logos spermatikos".  Be a sensual place in your natural depths.

Supposedly, too, theological scholars suggest this pattern that is the birth of philosophy was known to the biblical John and written into John's gospel which then attributes this pattern to the historical Jesus imaginally.  In your natural death, your sensual place is like the rotting seed in the dark earth giving rise to Psyche's orchard, psyche-making, a second Aphrodite.


This suggests to me now we can all reach this state of eros inherited imaginally by turning back this past still present in ourselves, soul as that killing into being within ourselves; psyche's psyche-making rising up in the life force. This must be the timeless sea of the world to which the night garden returns us.

There is an old story that Aphrodite spends her early years with a playmate in the sea of the world during the time before time.  When Zeus calls her to Olympos she gives her playmate, Nerites a pair of wings to try and coax him to go with her. He refuses.  It is then she reclaims her wings and, rising from the sea, gives them to Eros of Olympos.  Those wings!  They are hers!  Early Aphrodite...  a winged woman; the world sea, Aphrodite's vulva is world time not of earth but of the virgin's garden out of which grows the logos spermatikos, her desirable apple orchard. That makes Psyche of the tale, Psyche & Eros this site where loving and knowing unite in oneself while remaining not one's ego soul at the same time. This site acknowledges twoness. In our twoness I and the other are one deeply feminine and we are reborn lifted up in rich soil like the branches of a tree lift having risen out of the sensual place in its natural depths.