Grendel's Glossary Phase 1: A random groupings of words that will crop up in my poetry.

HARANO: “Something like a shadow has fallen between present and past, an abyss wide as war that cannot be bridged by any tangible connection, so that memory is undermined and the image of our beginnings is betrayed, dissolved, rendered not mythical but illusory. We have connived in the murder of our own origins.” - Edward Abbey

The Pain of Loss

---

In the quote above, Edward Abbey, famed wilderness advocate, curmudgeon and spiritual father of direct-action ecological protest, complains of the loss of primal beginnings: his childhood, when he roamed backwoods and fields, carefree and intensely in love with the landscape around him. Beyond being a cry against the loss of wilderness itself, it seems a cry against adulthood and the discerning mind that accompanies it - the mature mind, somehow separate and discreet from its upbringing in Eden. It is a cry of anger and of the loss of something that can never be regained.

ULLAGONE: An ullagone is a funeral lament or a cry of lamentation.

POLITICHRISTIAN: A catch-all word for individuals who profess to be Christians in order to further a political agenda, or people who automatically associate a political agenda or party with Christianity. The former rely on the gullibility of the latter to secure their positions of power, at which point the guise of Christianity is maintained while they further their worship of Mammon . . . at the taxpayer's expense, of course.

F'WAH: Fwah, also spelled "F'wah," is a cosmic sound made by the Universe. Sort of like, "Om," but less dignified. It can also be used as a sort of enthusiastic greeting, usually immediately following the person's name. Also known as an emotion of impending disaster.

"Galactus! F'wah!"
"This cosmic notion fills me with a great sense of fwah."
"F'wah! I just dropped a live grenade into a bathtub full of scorpions!"

MUH: Similar in ways to F'wah (q.v.), but more versatile. Originally, "muh" was a contraction of "muwahahaha," a sort of quick way of adding diabolical laughter to a phrase. It now has a number of meanings, and is often used as a random interjection, or just dispersed throughout a sentence. At the end of a sentence, it adds an emphatic note to the whole. Standing alone as an adjective, it means something so bizarre or intrisically unique that it can't be described any other way. In front of an adjective or adverb, it acts as an intensifier. Muh is also associated with a pink paranoid chihuahua, although experts haven't yet determined just how this applies. Muh can also be used as a greeting, a challenge, a threat, or just something fun to scream at the top of your lungs (an act referred to as a "screamuh").

"Now, I will destroy the space station with my positronic ray! MUH!"
"That woman has muh hair."
"This was the most muh delicious dessert I've ever eaten."
"MUH!"

ENPHOENIXED: A metaphorical rebirth, rekindling of passions and emotions that were thought to be lost. A counterpoint to Harano (q.v.)

WARRIOR MOMENT: Similar in many ways to an epiphany, or an incident of satori. These moments are difficult to describe, and in many ways can only be alluded to through metaphor. Instances occur, but are not limited to, incidents of artistic or creative breakthrough, and may be parallel to "Eureka!" as often expressed in the sciences. It is an event wherein the person suddenly realizes that he or she sees, or understands, things on a much higher level than before, almost a mental/emotional orgasm without the sexual component. (See my earlier blog entry on my first "Warrior Moment.")


This is part 1 of a series. I'll add more entries as necessary.

New Poem: The Wrong Side of the Rainbow

The Wrong Side of the Rainbow
***
crash landed, stranded, here on
the wrong side of the rainbow
where i live,
and this twister
ain't your magic bus
to the Emerald City
wallpapered in your favorite shade of green;
those greenbacks you're backing
have backed you against the wall,
and won't even stand you the price of a ticket,
so keep punching that clock
and i'll punch your ticket
and kick you around the block.
you don't want to go
over any rainbow
where you can't buy indigo
and put a down payment on purple;
this one'll sure pull you down
to the underground, the wrong side of town,
show you around the Slum of Oz
where the munchkins have fangs
of chromium steel, and still
look more human than you do;
they'll punch a hole in your soul
and see if you can bleed for real
when you've bartered your last swindle
for a half-decent meal
and there's nothing left for you to steel
because everyone's a broke as you . . .
you know, everyone goes through hell,
some people just have to stay,
and that ticket you bought is just one-way,
and you'll punch a clock THERE too, sucker,
but don't hold your breath for a payday,
because everything adds up to paybacks,
and you know what THEY are.
that tribe that lived on the backside of your rainbow--
the ones you refused to lend, give, or rent to--
won't be building tracks
for your runaway train now more.
hock your ruby slippers and blue suede shoes,
no matter who wins at the game you played, you lose.
they'll fold the monopoly board up around you;
no Emerald City, here . . . maybe,
if you're lucky,
they'll leave a tenement on Baltic for you . . .
all the graffiti artists who bombed and tagged
back on the block
have gone away, and
there won't be anyone to paint a rainbow
on your walls of leaden gray.

New Poem: Know the Refrain

Know the Refrain
***
it's like howling at the moon, and hearing it howl back
it's like watching the trees move in the breeze,
and feeling your veins do the same thing
it's like being tested by fire a hundred times
until only a core of diamonds remains
it's like listening to the same song a hundred times
just to hear the refrain

you wonder if you missed the train
reaching for a grip that slips out of your grasp
nothing but a gasp between you and forever
a well you're falling into
and something in the night calls your name
a phone ringing at midnight
with bad news breathing down your neck
a wreck of something you might have been
and you'll never build anything from the ruins
that won't fall down again
ashes, ashes, we all
fall down.

you can make your home look like a picture in a magazine
you can stake all your hopes on the American dream
you can break a thousand hearts looking for the right one
you can take from everybody you meet and not gain a thing.

something's missing.
meter, rhythm, rhyme
cadence and design
pages full of words that--
distilled into their purest form--
only repeat
LISTEN.
PLEASE LISTEN.
ARE YOU LISTENING?

Jesus saw us as sheep
and they nailed Him to a cross.
Paul called us idiots
and they locked him in a prison.
Socrates drank a poison cup
because he woke too many dreamers up.
Martin and Malcolm took a bullet
that was fired by 200 years of hate.

You're more likely to die for doing the right thing
and more likely to earn a profit for doing the wrong thing
and there's all these things laying around
radioactive, poisonous, dangerous
littering the ground we call history
but it's nobody's story but our own.
You wrote it.
I wrote it.
Worse yet, we let people we hardly knew
write it for us,
and our silence gave them consent
as long as we were kept content.

You've listen to this same song a hundred times . . .
i think by now
you know the refrain.

Poem: Untitled 10/03/09

Untitled: 10/03/09
***
to bend the untiring ear that listens,
you want to stand in the wind and scream silently,
mouth open as if
you would swallow the moon whole
and become something for coyotes to sing about.
why mourn the loss of things you never had;
when opportunity knocks, only to apologize
that it's mistaken your door for someone
more important, more deserving,
and wouldn't you feel better giving them a handout
like dharma-bum wannabes
who live their entire lives
in a state of mind
that they call "Zen," but is as easily achieved
by pharmaceutical accidents and moldy cheese?
something like a fever crawls just
below your eyebrows, behind your eyes,
an animal thing that crept down
from the aurora borealis
to lay its eggs in your frontal lobe.
when the temperate rainforest changes its garb,
trees shedding green for scarlets and yellows
that burn away so rapidly,
and you hate the sight of clocks
and feel the eyes of something stalking you,
as it eyes that connection between brain and spine
where the animal and the archetype meet . . .
that thing might be a poem with a dagger in its teeth,
or the last breath, last drink, last cigarette, last
sharp inhalation of breath for a scream
you'll never give birth to.
it doesn't matter. the impossible never happens
when you're waiting for it.
there's no recliner in which to view apocalypse,
and CNN isn't going to bring you hourly updates
on the burning of human souls
as you reach for the remote to switch
to a more comfortable channel.
consumers are a commodity, just something else
that is ultimately consumed.
autumn is here, the children locked in schools,
men and women locked in jobs
where fake fall foliage is decking their stalls,
a failed attempt at levity in a place
where the counting of heavy metals
only increases the gravity,
and the moon is getting closer every night,
but the coyotes are blind
and only the poets can howl.