Wednesday, October 14, 2015

                                   Lesbia whispered

                                              to Catullus

                         I

       you must learn to enjoy
       my hands caressing you
            your skin rippling

         my nails small knives
         dissecting you
flame frost both creating and killing
           in my fingertips 

             let you shudder
                      there
                quiver there
                 tremble
                          
       moan while I’m loving you
         while my hands undo
      all the knots of your body
           & your bones melt
            & you yield to me

            come to me now
                 then my love
          come into the cosmos
              œther of stars’ gap
                  fills my lungs

          my heels move galaxies
my thighs are pathways to the universe

                  my moment
                time caught
                    time spent
        
                  time flows
                      away me
                         away

                        me


                                      he was as intimate with her
    as crab lice during copulation
            she who stole fish
         who shrewdly calculated
         how to become bankrupt
               with credit cards

      went off to Paris to spend money
        gave expensive gifts to friends
          even left him with a Nikon
     he sold for a fraction of its worth
               careless of money

          now memories flicker in
                  consciousness
            where tendrils of light
        flash in forests of neurons
                        long
       carbon chain molecules hunt
      through his subterranean brain
          working to remove stains
     from a carpet never finding  those
  remnants   filaments of fiber encoded
                 generations ago

         all that Lesbia once was

         mythology is like a stain
         no chemicals can remove
          its archetypes embedded
           seashells in a fishnet
          impossible to untangle
            intrinsic to its design

         she will always be there
                waiting for him
                    at the shore




                                         © Dick Russell, 2015

Saturday, September 19, 2015

                   For Those Who Fought and Died

                                                With My Grandfather

                                           

 

In Memory of Henry Friend Russell
                      Killed in France, May 23rd, 1918


much loved grape vines pendant with purple fruit
hands reaching to harvest through fragrant air
reaching two meters down those long rows root
vines heavy with palpable pinot noir

savoring sweet juice plucked for first pressing
for champagne pinot gris battlefields not far

daylight starlight touching forgotten names
arms out stretched forever upwards
never reaching sunlight feeling moonlight
all babies nursed once at a mother's breast
war dead in Alsace war dead at Verdun
roots fed by lives lost where trenches were run




Copyright © Dick Russell
Richard Michael Friend Russell
              2018






 


Monday, July 6, 2015

                            Coal Train Raga

                                                        for Jay Inslee

                                                                               on his reelection and his recent speech to the UN


           first an oil train
         longer than a mile
           then a coal train
         wider than your smile
           both going north
       both bringing warmth
   I wish you were here baby
       for my coal train blues

                rumbling by
            longer than a mile
               first an oil train
                       then
                  a coal train
               going fast baby
         pounding the rails baby
       both bringing warmth baby
        I wish you were here baby
            for my Coltrane blues

                   lullaby baby
               it’s a lullaby baby
            those trains rumbling by
          bringing some warmth baby
            both bringing warmth baby
              I wish you here baby
                playing your blues



those more pious living in the East
believing water springs for their own good
demanding from us who live out West
some sober sacrifice be made like youth…
that we should sacrifice children to their god
to profit their buffet routing coal trains past
our borders of common sense oil trains too
that sometimes explode traveling too fast…

Wyoming coal baby Dakota oil
a mile of best coal from Wyoming stripped
on its way to China on its way to hell
we sold our coal for a song and a dance
at the stock exchange bell at risk of a knell
they sold our best coal so now we've been flipped

           first an oil train
         longer than a mile
           then a coal train
         wider than your smile
           both going north
       both bringing warmth
   I wish you were here baby
       for my coal train blues

                rumbling by
            longer than a mile
               first an oil train
                       then
                  a coal train 
               going fast baby
         pounding the rails baby
       both bringing warmth baby
        I wish you were here baby
            for my Coltrane blues

                 lullaby baby
             it’s a lullaby baby
          those trains rumbling by
      bringing some warmth baby
        both bringing warmth baby
             I wish you here baby
              playing your blues
  


          copyright © Dick Russell, 2015, 2019

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