sw00908v-55.poem53

Venturings



 The Poem

                        for Galway Kinnell

" . . . by the light
from the joined hemispheres of the spider's eyes,"
I make my meeter,
old peppermint fate  /  barber pole;
and there is no way I go
he does not guide me,
sweet          & sure.
Whatever ringlets grow
on the planes of the common,
the innocence and violence
of this child
will never fade: constantly/ he calls me
in, bids me taste,
and believe he offers absolute support.
Oh all the elms are carrot tops;
the oaks/ trained tomatoes.
In the bleariest jungles of my dreams,
he shows.
Sense, nonsense, void,
he sings me a phrase to discover from:
My grandmother washed her sins on rocks   (or)
Tra-la-la in a quaint, merry town               (or)
I know what I've felt          & the shadows cry.
There is never an end;
the images tumble
as though they were
in a turning cage,
and are bright as/ an island of stars.
Though I cower in the shadows of emerald and jade,
in the steam born of leaf-eaten sun,
thump,
there are only beginnings.
And the beginnings/ come from me
because I'm awake,
and the beginnings come from he who meets
because he/ owns my heart;
and all the endings that ever come
are fashioned/ by the mind.
I am wrapped in linen;
I am wrapped in blood.
Take care.  Take care.  Take care.

                                                       6-18-71



Brian A. J. Salchert

sw00907v-54.poem52

Venturings



 Angle of Vision


Ready to travel
the miles north,

we two,
about to part

another time,
twice kiss;

i do not walk her
to the door;

but from the bedroom
watch until

she's back in view
three stories below

and sits upon
her red suitcase

so placed
on the main walk

the patio's post
eclipses them,

and with her await
the maroon taxi

& move the suitcase
back a little

& pace &
check the time

and open its door
& lift onto

its back seat
the troubling case

& get in
& look up

& smile & wave
& wave & smile

because we want to
because we can.




          circa 1986
          Brian Salchert

sw00902v-OdysseusSongs10

Venturings



"Interlude"


The leaf of the sea 
with its serrated edge 
and its surface roughened and cracking 
and its shadowy veins 
and veins of white 
locked in a dance 
rocks on the earth 
like the tormented spirit 
of someone dying 
or dead 

The skin of the sea 
with its curved horizon 
trembles like the head of a drum 
or a shook note 
or a frightened finger 
whose quaking 
cannot so much be seen 
as felt, 
the curious blessings of distance 
in our eyes. 

I see, my friends, 
though I see not; 
my ears challenge 
the ears of birds; 
the good and evil 
that ride in the winds 
I know as well 
as a teller of truth; 
my eager tastebuds 
imagine the food of gods. 




- 
Brian A. J. Salchert

sw00901v-OdysseusSongs09

Venturings



"Under the Cyclops"


Giant's eye:
a shot in the light
to put in the dark.


Polyphemus,
he's no genius,
ho, ho, ho.

O, Polyphemus,
O, O, Polyphemus,
ate of my men,
two, four, six, ten,
ho, ho, ho.

Now Polyphemus
cannot find us
in the wool.

So long, monster,
we know you're glad to
see us go.




-
Brian A. J. Salchert

sw00900v-OdysseusSongs08

Venturings



"Trials"


One-eyed nightmare
devourer of men

Island witch
wander of men into swine

Voices of illusion
entrancers

Envious men of Odysseus
opening the sack from Aeolus
in sight of your homeland's stubble fires
my head lowers
loosers of evil winds

Rock   whirlpool
batterer   anemone of water

Ghosts in the land of constant dark
revealers of sorrows

Fair Calypso's Ogygian
strander of a man




-
Brian A. J. Salchert

sw00899v-OdysseusSongs07

Venturings



"Praying by the Sea"


Swimming
in the gray dawn,
Telemachus,
his fingers combing the waves,
shifts his shaking body,
crouched on a rock,
and calls to Pallas Athena;

                     (music depicting call for courage)


she answers him.

                  (music depicting the giving of courage)




-
Brian A. J. Salchert

sw00898v-OdysseusSongs06

Venturings



"Preparing to Find Odysseus"


Overhead, two eagles, fiercely fighting,
Halitherses, reader of omens, warns:
Though twenty years absent, Odysseus,
to the sorrow of some, will return.

And Telemachus, by Minerva urged and aided,
makes ready to find his father,
and his faithful mother, Penelope,
to spite her brash suitors, leave behind.

   Let the sun be your food,
   the wind your clothes,
   the earth your shelter,
   and the water,
   let the water answer your heart.

But the suitors, led by Eurymachus,
having so long vied for this prize,
this Penelope, this woman rare,
are not about to go home.

So Eurymachus chides Halitherses
and tells him they fear no man
and will continue to live off Telemachus
until Penelope quits her game.

   Boom     boom     boom
   Eee-tool     eee-ew-tool     eee-tool

Telemachus, then, addressing them
and asking for a ship and twenty men
to look here and there for his father:
Sparta, Pylos, wherever his spirit leads,

says that for another twelve months
he will suffer their wasting
if he hears his father's alive;
but if not, will quickly come back.

   Let the sun be your food,
   the wind your clothes,
   the earth your shelter,
   and the water,
   let the water answer your heart.

And will ritualize Odysseus' death
as is proper and as he desires,
and build to his memory a barrow,
and command his mother to marry again.

But the suitors, through Leiocritus,
do not believe he will leave; and his Mentor,
having railed the Ithacans for fearing to care,
put down, as a moon that would brighten a day.

   Boom     boom     boom
   Eee-tool     eee-ew-tool     eee-tool




-
Brian A. J. Salchert

sw00897v-OdysseusSongs05

Venturings



"His Presence"


Now the mightiest gods watch
and allow Odysseus trials
while Telemachus,
his one and glorious son,
by Minerva made most comely,
strides forth
with his sword and dogs,
and marvels all.




-
Brian A. J. Salchert

sw00896v-OdysseusSongs04

Venturings



"Passages"


Aeneas gone
the dream of someone else
I image how Odysseus
and his foolish men
foolish because they ate of the cattle
Of Hyperion   god of the sun
and so not allowed to get back home

across the proud water

The Trojans gone
their dreams their bloodied lives
I image how Old Neptune
shakes Odysseus' prows
to revenge for his son  Polyphemus
the loss of his one eye
to crack the Achaeans' hearts   crack them mad

across the proud water

The long war gone
dreams answered   dreams denied
I image how the gods and men
twisted by fates   by whims
attempt to straighten   to begin anew
vainly strive to become   
better than today   better than they are

across the proud water

dance as the moon
dance as the sun
dance as the fish-hunting gulls

across the proud water

sream in the storms
weep in the winds
die in the deserts of hopelessness

across the proud water




-
Brian A. J. Salchert

sw00895v-OdysseusSongs03

Venturings



"Singing the Man"


Odysseus   Odysseus
over the war and its wounds
you are the man
who with this seventh rising
my heart and the gods
have drawn
to the center of my myth

you are the man
protected in battle
while so many
died around you
who bolstered every Achaean
by your firm stance
and the deep green of your words

and whose cunning
kept you well
and will keep you
through journeys
not even I yet know
who with this voice
chant to any who will hear me

across our Aegean
and all the waters
of angry Neptune
as Dawn now
in her saffron robes
disappears
from us and you   Odysseus




-
Brian A. J. Salchert

sw00894v-OdysseusSongs02

Venturings



"Remembering"


On this jutting of rock,
my hair weaving,
I watch for this seventh day in a row
how the rosy-fingered Dawn floats
on our cold Aegean
in my dark eyes

   O the exploits of that Trojan
   honorable and proud
   Hector   the light of Priam

And the flashing of spears
before me
hold my aged face
and the clever and patient
Achaeans
move my aged voice

   O the glories of Achilles
   blessed and unblessed
   shining in his dream

Birds of prey




-
Brian A. J. Salchert

sw00893v-OdysseusSongs01

  Re-found these ten circa 1983 pieces yesterday.  Am including
them as a section in Venturings.


Odysseus Songs


Entrance

Part I:  Odysseus
               Remembering
               Singing the Man
               Passages

Part II:  Telemachus
               His Presence
               Preparing to Find Odysseus
               Praying by the Sea

Part III:  Odysseus at Sea
               Trials
               Under the Cyclops
               Interlude


~ ~ ~ 


"Entrance"


Leaving his woman,
his servants, his son,
and his carefully acquired possessions,

Odysseus, to help defend Achaean honor
by rescuing Helen from Priam's Paris,
gathering the warriors of his realm,

sails the unpredictable
waves of times not come
of water and gods and men:
                                       sails to Troy.

But a strong spirit
can live through
any loved one's absence,

feel the winds of sadness
in his bowels,
and still look up;

and clever and wise,
still make his dreams do,
still move out and on and in.





-
Brian A. J. Salchert

sw00862v-43.poem41

Venturings



 World Without


What it was and why it was no one knew.
For unknown years it had been there.
Unbothered, it seemed/ it could stay/ centuries more.

Building, mountain, boulevard, trail, the sun rolls round
while over snow south of its range a Snowy Owl
rises/ off a fence post/ and floats beyond.

Neither time, nor reason, nor an empty heart
jostles the neurons of desire in this fantasm.
What lingers, lingers; what departs, departs.  Nod.



-
Brian A. J. Salchert

sw00842v-42.poem40

Venturings



 The Guardian


How shall he sing with dangled tongue
Our vibrant warrior roundelay;
War in rags and sleep in dung;
Scurry as though the bees had stung,
When we are other cares away?
"How can his back be glad, though wrung,"
Where he must sing with dangled tongue
Our vibrant warrior roundelay
And pommel jungles in dismay
Or cough up sand from stifled lung
Or butted, fall to naked clay?
Oh how in that foul disarray,
How shall he sing with dangled tongue
Our vibrant warrior roundelay?


                                        (????)



-
Brian A. J. Salchert

sw00841v-41.poem39

Venturings



Holy Saturday 2008-03-22


And though He had
not yet risen,
the Lord Jesus
went to that place
wherein He would
interact with
certain waiting
human spirits,
telling them that
the time was near
for them to be
taken from there
into that realm
beyond the need
for patient hope
and ardent faith

And I am not
and I am not
and I am not
and I am not
and I am not
and I am not
and I am not
and I am not
and I am not
and I am not
and I am not 
and I am not
and I am not
and I am not
until I am
alive in Love



!
Brian A. J. Salchert

sw00831v-40.poem38

Venturings



 Commencement


Still must I contend with vanity, and lose.
For certain matters matter past all will,
And though a poet would desire to die
In purer worlds and there renew his life,
The paradox reverses in its time.
So days like this bring scratchings on a page
With more important scribblings of mistakes,
What then?  But questions are irrelevant,
The patron says.  And so this little frame
Sweats out its dusty task and cultivates
A desert for his race, and so this youth
Expends some thousand minutes swinging blanks
Against a vaporous crowd; and so, at last, 
He really dies (his brothers will not miss
Him though a few may hang his picture on
Their inner walls); yet there's the patron, friend,
And even if I were an angel low
There'd be a ceiling to repair, a cell
Which I could not escape but by a hard
And satisfactory epic sky and cramps
An old marine would rather not recall.
But I procrastinate, as all our pseud-
O intellectuals say.  I must begin.

Four years for most; still, nothing has an end,
And we are what we make and what makes us;
And if our senses slice through every realm
Or every realm attacks and slashes them,
Those days that rolled the snow across our eyes
Or dropped the sun a certain million miles
Are both our gain and never once our loss.
How I despise these platitudes I raise
Though they may well be truer than we feel
(A spider's web could say as much; perhaps
Much more); but there's the patron, sir, and though
A mallow or a friendly wink would soothe
In better ways anachronistic bones
As these of mine, the world must check and mate
Me if I ever hint at such a move.
A grave iconoclasm now prevails
Which, somehow, each of us must shatter out:
But there are years and trees and many births--
Yet not a billionth of a spark of time--
For us.  So where is our commencement won
If not beyond these wrinkled vines, if not
Beyond these growing stones, if not beyond?
Someone will speak of orbs to us, but we
Do not want orbs but herbs; but we do not
Want herbs but love: learning all our lives.


                                                (1965-1982)



-
Brian A. J. Salchert

sw00830v-39.poem37

Venturings



 Stages


One day when I was tricycling free through air
And summer came the "whom" of drums, the "where"
Of brass.  Wonder wheeling response to both,
I prayed they would march till distance was bare;
Prayed they would march till melodious growth--
Mysterious as the varying shade
I peddled through--could no longer be loath
To share its faraway goads, goads who played
Near railroad yards in suits of blood and blade.

And again today I remember fields
Whose star-white blooms brought o strawberry yields
We sunk ourselves into with laughing joy;
We plucked, we pressed, we smeared.  How wild the wields
Of berries crushed!  How cool and pink each boy!
Neat screams: chaste girls who ran through weeds; who fell
On clumps of razor grass: new queens of Troy
For us to save, new tears to wipe on hell.
How soon we lost our hearts beneath that spell!

So, as eleven solar orbits turned
Me toward a special pine, those hopes I spurned
On music's board began, somehow, on art's 
To climb; and I, rejoicing, deeply yearned
The miracle of canvas life.  My heart's
Impatience gathered oils.  My fingers strained
For the mixing knife; grasped released the darts
That tell. . . .  And so I brushed and stained
My tree: all that was lost; all that was gained.

But time allowed another turn, and I
Allowed my paints to crack till knowing why
The notes would not; nor would the brushes' strokes,
Long last.  For days this self, a foreign sigh,
Appeared to be, as if a webbing's spokes
Destroyed by some invader hard about
And the webber forced to hide, spinning jokes
For its survival, jokes which could not shout:
Each word must be a pebble ringing out.


                                                         (1964-197?)



-
Brian A. J. Salchert

sw00796v-38.poem36

Venturings



 Retrenchment


Out and about,
over and in
he'd scout
and spin

through darks and brights
beyond his breath/
until it broke
into his brain

he needed space
to breathe and flow,
not case
and stow.




-
Brian A. J. Salchert

sw00790v-37.poem35

Venturings
                    [ the following is an exhortation, but always use your best judgment ]


 Remember This


Unless one makes the most of each moment,
opportunities, experiences, one later/ wishes and wishes
one had had, will be lost in the bin of could-have-been;
and that person who/ lived a life parallel to yours/
but not as yours/ will have had the joys you let pass.

Stand.  Be bold those times when not being bold
does nothing more than confirm your impotence.
What use is a silence that engenders nothing.
Better an act, a voice, that engenders nothing
since from the latter/ empowerings might rise.

Often, often, an opportunity once only/ comes,
and you must not only be there for it, but
recognize it for what it is, and seize upon it.
There is no accounting for those signal mysteries
that occur/ as lightning occurs, but occur as blessings,

watch-God-moments, gifts from the universe;
yet I have witnessed them time after time,
and have many times/ said yes to them, and
too many other times/ said no.  Right into winter,
if positioned to, dandelions bloom.  Likewise rise.


                                                                    01-25/26-2008



-
Brian A. J. Salchert                    

sw00788v-36.poem34

Venturings
                    [ The following may be a poem prose piece. ]


 Dead in Time


Emptiness surrounds my heart.
Emptiness pervades my mind.
It's as if/ I've passed beyond.
I feel as though I've ten times said
all I care to say.  Count me out.
For even though I intend to
ramble on, it will be about nothing.

Several mornings ago/ under/ a clear sky
frost clung in the grass, and on the roof
of the building directly north/ sparkled
as if studded with white gems.  A passing
passenger jet/ left only a/ brief trail.
A lone icicle/ from that building's eaves trough stretched.
This morning/ the sturdy bush's cardinal/ twice sang.

Recently I read/ every choice a human makes
is of no consequence because every human life
is of no consequence.  Emptiness, and not 
that kind some proclaim one ought to seek,
haunts and haunts and haunts and haunts;
for even though I cannot prove/ certain choices
I have made/ markedly trashed my life, I feel they did.

Therefore every move I make is just that:
a move I make.  My left thumb fiddling with
the telephone cord.  My right hand/ holding the pen
that scratches upon the legal pad/ these
nothing words.  Follow me?  What for?
Do morbid ghosts intrigue you?  My self-
hatred ought to end me, but it won't.  Change:

Time and circumstances I know not of
are what will end me.  Until then I,
by the force of my desires, will measure on.
No dark night, no vacancy, will sunder me.
Whate'er my errant choices, I/ will press ahead,
adrift in the nothings I have spun.  Accept,
accept, accept, accept, this leftover shall.

Peanut butter, a heaping/ tablespoon of,
I just had/ with a Calcium / K / D pill.
Earlier today, while flossing, part of/ another tooth
may have broken off.  Looking at the two pieces
placed on a section of toilet tissue, I could not tell.
Squeezing them, I could not tell.  Perhaps they were part
of an old filling, or a nut.  The tooth is too far back to inspect.


                                                                                    01-24-2008



-
Brian A. J. Salchert