Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it.
- Bertolt Brecht.

Poetry

These are really old, but I'm posting them anyway, and adding to them at some point. College yearbook photos of sorts. A lot of these are about dealing with depression. In case anyone can relate. Click on each title to read the poem.



Solstice

This is a sonnet that I literally composed in my sleep and remembered almost in its entirety in about 2012. I found it years later scrawled on the back of a page of jewelry designs I was working on. I was thinking about how our brightest, longest days are the shortest, darkest ones for the Australians, and how everything has another side to it.


        The seeds of age and death are sown in youth.

        It's in the pitchest black that fire's spark

        Will brightest glow, illuminating truth

        The yin-yang knows: no light without the dark.



        Each victor's triumph, some other's defeat.

        Each bliss some sorrow's shadow will consume.

        The sun itself collapse, its light retreat.

        The night is day's inevitable tomb.



        Though spring is born from winter's silent frost,

        Each month the darkness swallows whole the moon.

        The balance of the equinoxes lost

        To unseen cruelty solstice casts in June.



        For even summer sun's most brilliant height

        Is some most distant stranger's darkest night.

    
The Lovesong of Mr. Dhuyvetter

Sophomore Honors English: 8:50 – 9:30 AM. An homage to my geeky, bow-tied and bespectacled English teacher, Mr. Dhuyvetter. I'll never forget him reading this Eliot poem, one of my favorites, written when Eliot was only 26 (amazing). This won't make sense without reading T.S. Eliot's The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock and Edward Arlington Robinson's Richard Cory.


        His jacket is penny loafer brown today.

        Not the tweed one he usually wore

        The one that hinted at pipe smoke

        And derailed dreams of Ivy League tenor.

        His bow tie same as always.

        Richard Cory he was to me

        crisp, well-dressed,

        "Clean favored and imperially slim."

        Too boring for the bullet though.

        Void of drama, just a void.

        Straight edge for a smile.

        

        But this morning he stood at the nicked podium

        Like Martin Luther King – to testify:

        "Come to tell you all."

        His bow tie barely restraining the words

        Throttled in his throat. "I have come to tell you all."

        The patron saint of Honors English

        Where peons were poets, and the promise

        That under the acne and warbled villanelles

        Were smooth skin and sleek verse...

        

        But the bullet sang today.

        At the podium, the book – then he

        Fell open. Open to his private confession,

        "The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock."

        The pages parted and the spine bent so easily

        There. As if they knew. But it was useless

        The book I mean. Because he knew every line

        As though he’d read it – lived it

        A thousand awkward nights. The peon stood before us

        With the desperate dignity, the passion

        Of a man frayed and fallen

        And unraveled himself with every line.

        

        Second in his class... almost, almost

        The vice president. The fumbling friend

        Who drove the ugly girl home after the party

        He wasn’t invited to because of some small oversight.

        His name misspelled (or absent) on every guest list.

        Dorothy Parker’s "Minor Poet"

        And don’t you think he didn’t know it.

        Forced to read again, again, immortal words

        His pen just wouldn’t write.

        

        "I am not prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be."

        

        And the semesters roll on and into each other

        Nudging him forward as his hairline recedes.

        And the students flicker in and out

        And onto books he’ll never write

        (But there’s still time! There’s still time!)

        And into circles he’ll never know

        (But he can say, "I knew him when…!")

        And – one by one – check off the To Do List

        Of things he’ll leave undone.

        And his wastebasket filled with failed attempts.

        

        "That’s not what I meant, at all."

                
Diary of Frances Bean

"The next day, I went for a run along the ocean... Twenty minutes in, I stopped beside some wood - you know, planks - that someone had made to spell BYE KURT. I took a breath, looked up at Seattle, and wondered: What didn't he see? And if I've ever been to a vigil, I guess. . . that . . . was it." - Bruce McCulloch on the Cobain vigil in Seattle.

I remember where I was when MTV announced that Kurt Cobain had been found dead. My roommate was watching the TV and I was in my room half-asleep. I thought I'd dreamed it and staggered into the living room to discover the sad truth. I thought about his daughter - forced to grow up in his shadow, with his ghost.


        My infant eye too weak to make the imprint of your face, 

        I’m left to gather the fragments of your splattered genius. 

        Sound bites and photographs arranged to forge your shadow 

        They smell of bleach and dust, not Daddy. 

        Your disciples pose in straight and patient lines 

        Exchanging flannels for silk 

        Eyes motionless, their glint of rebellion now glossed with stupor. 

        They dismiss me 

        Unaware that in my genes lie dormant 

        Their expelled demons and evaporated youth. 

        You are their forgotten legacy, as I am yours. 

        As I grow old, you become my child 

        In death forever young 

        In youth forever dead. 

        Groping in the darkness for memory 

        At the threshold of slumber 

        I let your fingers brush my forehead 

        Their smell of Pampers and hot gun metal. 

        You sing me to sleep tonight 

        Much as you did then. 

        Daddy with a volume control.

             
Jack-o-lantern

        my head scraped to the very last seed 

        I slunk on my mental porch 

        powerless to move 

        limbless and lightless 

        my candle extinguished 

        by the night’s numbing winds. 

        

        the eleventh month strikes 

        and I am left to rot 

        amidst the bitter wrappers 

        of others’ sweets. winter whistles 

        through my eyes and nostrils 

        vacant triangles cruelly carved 

        now pointless, lidless and defenseless 

        against starvation of the senses. 

        

        the flickering flame they guarded 

        fluttered with the slightest breath 

        but boldly flung its fragile brilliance 

        through their paneless portholes. 

        the world in fire and shadow cast 

        the evening a kaleidoscope 

        of autumn scents and visitors 

        and the warmth of a capricious light 

        that bathed them all in flecks of life 

        

        but wax grows tired and wicks burn out 

        and the candle, snuffed, is useless 

        as the eyes and nose it glimmered through 

        now windows to a tomb.                 

                
Trigger

        a cause

        a resolution

        an explanation

        forever sealed in

        that impenetrable moment before

        the switchbang distortion that bends the tv

        into techicolor taffy- foozy drizzles of electronic snow

        that twink your lashes and slack the muscles in your neck

        nitrous trampoline high then (blink) dropsleet blanket

        that smothers you -silent - in nuclear winter.

        chemical warfare’s latest mutation

        emotional mitosis

        mental arsenals

        align at either

        pole, each hoping

        to blast his estranged brother

        across enemy lines into the stratosphere

        poles shift, North and South, floor and ceiling

        you burrow and claw through shag-rug and shingles

        toward an inner equator, once a wide haven of equilibruim

        now pinched to a corset by your cold and angry Artics

        whose cruel latitudes sprout only skyscrapers

        of frost. and what black winter blizzards

        bring, a meager summer sun

        can never melt away,

        only bleach an ever

        more blinding white.

        but that was yesterday.

        Today your pigtails are pointing North.

        You remember exploding like a drop-kicked soda

        when examined and grilled like a three-legged pig. but now

        you ask, nerves raw, cells burnt. ‘A just cause?’ -No, just ‘cause.

        “chisel a smile, pigtails, someday you’ll grow enough to

        reach things like locks, switches and doorknobs.”

        but the horizon is a yawning chorus line

        of todays. so you watch

        sleet-eyed, tongue-tied

        as the carousel whrils

        and the dizzying mirrors

        reflect a disjointed fun-house smear

        of a dark horse and queasy rider hurdling thin air

        as though it were a thorny hedge. how ridiculous you look

        a girl tied to a horse tied to a pole tied to a caroucel that circles

        and circles and circles like a weary hound but never stops

        and curls to sleep. a frenetic duet of marionettes

        at a flea circus that never ends - but

        it’s an easy jump when the

        horse is low on the pole.

        Point and Shoot.

        the Nikon answer

        for the complicated made easy:

        curl of a finger and everything stops in mid-

                
Scars

        Life's tattoos and rites of passage 

        Diaries etched in code whose lines erode

        and slowly slough with time. 

        Their rough and raw descendants form in kind. 

        A badge of courage, mark of shame, an overzealous dare 

        Remembered there. A symbol of the guts to play the game. 

        

        Mysteries to unravel, leather keloid gemstones

        Kicked among the gravel of the battlefield my body has become. 

        I've auctioned off my breasts and flung my legs like easy scissors 

        But their rough and ruddy ridges remain mine and mine alone 

        Their beauty’s merely skin deep,

        but their downright ugly penetrates the bone. 

        

        Haloed discs and jagged lines, Kandinsky's palette 

        Written in my flesh. Symbols of man and woman dueling for dominion. 

        They attest to every cigarette burn, drunken tumble,

        careless slice with a rusty knife. 

        The elements of life 

        That carve my unfolding biography

        in my mismatched topography. 

        

        When once in ten or twenty years 

        One altogether up and disappears from view 

        Like often, as a child, I had hoped they might 

        Its phantom lingers like a missing limb or severed finger 

        To remind me there was something there. An episode of life.                    

            
Swingers

        my father’s right hand smells of sweat and raw leather

        when it drops the tennis racket and wraps its calluses

        around an ice-clouded mug of beer

        his grip burns the frost from the handle

        its white film receding like a glacier in summer’s heat

        my hands smell of chain link and tree sap

        too small to hold a pencil, they are callused

        (a row of islands or little pitcher’s mounds)

        only by the metal hoops of my very own swing set

        two posts and a crossbeam of splintery wood

        that crackles in the August sun like the prow of an old pirate’s ship

        wood dark and dry as Indian clay, nailed together with my father’s hands

        that sling a duffel over his shoulder as he heads for the court

        and toss themselves high in mock despair when he returns to find me

        still the happy pendulum marking the hours - 10 a.m. till three, or five

        a kite kicking the leaves down the back bank

        beyond the row of shrubs that divide worlds like turnstiles.

        below, vines weave their way down the weedy hillside

        a net to trap a small animal

        who dares extend a paw or a patent leather shoe.

        but my bare feet swoop above the trees

        catch their transparent leaves with my toes

        my curls sweep the grass as I stiffen like a plank

        stretching my toes toward the sky, taking aim

        the way Babe Ruth pointed to the cheap seats

        before he launched the ball into orbit.

            
Trenches

        Somewhere or other I fold myself

        Crumpled into the atmosphere

        Of xeroxed days

        Whose margins soften, blend,

        Then harden again into timeless boulders

        That push up the hill

        only to roll indifferently down again,

        Carving trenches, dissolving into epochs

        Whose weight crawls over my back

        The procession of equinoxes

        Marching relentlessly up my spine.

        It curls me forward

        My face to the grass

        The sun-warmed blades touch my eyes

        That flutter awake to see your name

        Scraped and carved into the tanned back

        Of one empty hand,

        Carefully etched

        Deeply, desperately by the other.                    

            
Dear

        Take back your gifts. 

        What good is inspiration wrapped in paralysis? 

        You kidnapped me, a reluctant bride

        Forever saddled with the weight of your name,

        The fickle whip of your passion

        That may claim my talents (my life?), but never my consent.

        

        Winds shift and I wake to the smell

        Of the hunt. The air thick with betrayal.

        Breaking and entering, searching and hovering 

        You crawl into the cave of your familiar prey. 

        Your two faces veiled in a thicket of shadows.

        One fist beats me senseless, the other full of flowers 

        Knowing I'll bend to keep you from breaking. 

        And while I'm bent, your hoof on my back 

        You skin me and offer me my own hide 

        Draping my shoulders as though it were a gift. 

        

        My refuge and my assassin, a walking paradox 

        So deep in my blood, without you I am not I. 

        And what if nothing could close the hole of your absence? 

        Is it better to be sometimes tortured than always pedestrian?

        I've grown accustomed to you 

        Comfortable baggage whose weight I bear 

        In hopes the cramped and wrinkled visions within 

        may someday iron out. A bad habit I relish 

        Destined to wander your mountains and valleys

        With flowers in my hair and thorns in my feet.

        Your are a perennial weed 

        that strangles my buds to make them bloom.

        

        Let me loose but not go 

        Slip your grasp from my neck to my hand 

        And let me stumble a mile in my shoes. 

        Our chemistry my bond of faith 

        By you alone forever chased and chaste. 

        Be not stranger or lover but treasured and intolerable guest. 

        My doors locked, windows open for your present return. 

        And if time and space spawn a bridge to reconcilement 

        That leads you in my direction 

        Tell me when you're stopping by 

        And I will clear a path that 

        Someday we may walk on even ground.

            
The Punctured Buoy

        Among the ocean’s waves and white-capped thorns 

        a bouyant world its bobbing head afloat 

        within its walls a punctured buoy born 

        and tossed, to tread for life, from reason’s boat. 

        

        Caught in circadian riptides, I can feel 

        the lactic acids build. I struggle though 

        my exiled ancestors clip at my heels 

        my flailing mute against the undertow. 

        

        Surrendering, I slide, though keep in sight 

        the water’s waning surface, senses loath 

        to choose between the polar days and nights 

        but foolish indecision loses both. 

        

        Loose-limbed and languid, hovering in the death 

        between two lives, afraid to err in choice 

        I hear the liquid anesthesia’s breath: 

        it’s here you drown, inert, without a voice. 

        

        My dormant gills retrieved, I dive below 

        my cradle in the sea floor’s ancient sands 

        once boulders of torment, that long ago 

        collapsed to dirt, the first marrow of man. 

        

        Above, the ocean’s canvas, black and still 

        to hurl my inner world upon. A new 

        and violent physics reigns that bends to will 

        and madness, painting them the hue of truth. 

        

        Yet closer here to life and death. Terrrain 

        that heightens and compels the senses’ crest 

        and final breath to conflict in the veins 

        that nourish life’s intense romance with death. 

        

        The earth’s a sphere of mirrors - sky and sea 

        a symbiotic whole, yet each to each 

        appears a fractured non-reality 

        incomprehensible and out of reach. 

        

        Some float, blue-skinned and bloated, to the shore 

        with minds none could dissect, cure or control. 

        I’ll take my chances nearer the earth’s core 

        praying for an amphibious soul.                    

            
harpdream

        drift. . . shift. . . consciousness sifts. . . 

        the optic slideshow twisted inward for the night’s digestion 

        slips through an open link in a chain of thought 

        succumbs to black suggestion. 

        the process is subverted, the images inverted 

        and smeared across the wicked spleen of the unconscious 

        and unseen compartments of the prostrate brain. 

        Their shadows flicker, spastic flames 

        on the black canopy that enshrouds a nightmare. 

        alchemy. . . sorcery. . . shadows to mist 

        a phantasmic cloud 

        with the slithered twists of a gaseous snake 

        slanks along the underbelly 

        snickering and hissing and crashes your party 

        sneaking you awake. 

        its shadow fades, and in its place 

        the fragmented splinters of an ancient scream 

        rise like steam 

        from the crevice between carpet and bedroom door 

        come closer. . . closer. . . smell the core. . . 

        lingering in the open threshold 

        shallow breath, trembling flesh 

        pink pajamas on the cusp of the cosmos. 

        voices escape like noxious fumes 

        and curl their spiraling plumes of orphaned tongues 

        around your dangling toes 

        that poke into the stratosphere. 

        their origins unclear. 

        . . . and out of the mist floats the mothership 

        pregnant-hipped, colossal planet 

        angel’s golden throat to the tongues that sing 

        an ivoryswirl harp of a thousand strings 

        or so it seemed. . . 

        for the mist congeals into a ghostly hand 

        whose brittlebone fingers pluck away 

        the human strings, the souls that linger 

        neither saved nor damned. 

        emaciated torsos, taffy limbs stretched taut 

        and bound at either end with hair turned wire. 

        Lucifer‘s choir, a host of agonies 

        caught between here and hereafter 

        a multitude who squeal on key 

        at the demonic whim of their master.

                    

            
Supermarket

        Another weekly midnight ride past scattered, darkened mini-marts

        toward my fluorescent haven whose sprawling murals

        promise consumer salvation: Pea Soup $.69

        everything as it appeared on television

        under the bzzzz of a sickly alien light whose green sallows the skin

        but makes the asparagus look delicious.

        my cart a skeleton to flesh with fish and blue light specials,

        I wander through a Technicolor tunnel of detergents

        that promise to make America white again.

        And at the back, in voyeur’s windows, pre-packaged flesh - breasts, thighs

        their moist and meaty pinks and reds gift-wrapped in cellophane.

        

        The single shoppers saché through the fresh vegetable lounge

        amidst stale music, voluptuous honeydews, mist from the lettuce-hose boys.

        a beetle-browed potato-skinned widower spies his match:

        old, pickled, with alfalfa hair, her tan purse stuffed with radishes.

        she fumbles with coupons as a pony-tailed waitress

        sniffs the anus of a cantaloupe, then tosses it

        onto a disheveled heap of Scotch and diet products -

        her cart slowly resembles her like a dog its owner.

        we retrench our unconscious tracks around the maze

        of vegetable bins that bumble us toward each other

        in an absurd ballet of 3-point turns.

        

        A price check jars me into reality, launching my pilgrimage to aisle 7

        hemmed in by carts and sacred rubber grocery dividers

        I contemplate a last mad dash for deodorant

        calculate time-distance formulas.

        someone drops a can of beets and shatters the polite elevator silence

        a three-piece suit, seizing his chance, furtively eyes the Soap Opera Digest

        an uneasy boyfriend stalks the maxi-pad aisle.

        they UPC, I ATM, and I am funneled past the red-light district

        with its cigarettes, magazines, and candy racks of oral pleasures

        into the food-gorged evening air.

        I arrange my bouquet of doubled plastic bags

        by an inverse scale of weight and fragility

        adjusting for the total cubic volume of my trunk.

        I feel American.

        

        (purged and discarded, my lonely cart wanders aimlessly toward a Mercedes Benz)

                        

                
Overexposure (never finished)

        I walked around the bend today 

        something in the air; crickets bickering, the scent of apocalypse 

        a plump, hair-sprayed housewife bursts into flames near a pay phone 

        the first hint of something slightly amiss at the mini-mall 

        I inspect the change return for quarters but my balance is shaken 

        rabid pets rush by me and loot the shops, cats and dogs conspire 

        and make away with high quality, MIDI-compatible stereo equipment 

        Grade A chickens, recently escaped from the smoldering market 

        peel and eat each other raw. they speak in Southern accents 

        and tear each other's skeletons, vying for wishbones 

        religions and discount stores catch fire 

        and K-Mart shoppers barbecue their marshmallow enemies 

        I run back for graham crackers and fudge squares 

        but I am blocked by giggling children playing hopscotch 

        in the chalk outlines of their murdered parents 

        gingerly avoiding the cracks in the parking lot 

        cars at the station shoot themselves up with gasoline 

        and swerve off into the nitrous oxide sunset 

        their cheap vinyl seats split open

        to reveal foam yellow guts and stale cheerios 

        horns laughing green like angry mallards taunt me as I run home 

        tripping over skyscrapers and TV cameras 

        the dam by the nuclear plant stoops to examine the racket 

        and spills a floodlane conveyor belt 

        of dining room tables and smashed in mailboxes by our soggy garage 

        families bob for VCRs, three-headed fish practice synchronized swimming 

        a toupeed game show host dispenses salvation and imitation pork hot dogs

        and we climb on our roofs to look down toward the city 

        snooping for dry chips and the odd catastrophe

                                  

                    
All materials copyright 2019 by Kristin Fiore.