BY JAN HAAG

ART & POETRY - ACCUMULATIONS

POETRY + ESSAYS + MUSIC + TRAVEL + FICTION + TEXTILE ART

INTRODUCTION + HAAG'S BIO


The Desolation Poems


Poetic Forms Used in English





#300 EPYLLION, dactylic hexameters

10-14/15/16/17-98


God -- each one dies and revives, and the world moves on swiftly in timelessness.
God is a theory of time, the creation of time, the slow ticking of

manifestation, the vast spilling forth of pale imagery cast on the
scrim where the puppets would dance, had they time, without fear, had they voices in

loneliness. Victims of Gods, from the mists they jump forth, from the sorrow seen
every new night, and among the fresh budding, sweet smelling, cool fruitlessness.

Once, one would think, losing ten times ten score and a God would be adequate
reason to not do it many more times. Who is it that so loves warmth and

blood? Is it those who created the wild Gods, or the Gods who created man?
Pain is the freedom of life. Slow, still death is reward for each new being.

Stand! let us praise the pure trumpets that beckon the creatures to come again.
Praise to the God, who, like markets, exchanges, unnecessary oddments

perseveres. Timon was born of a Shakespeare as man was to be born of
limited powers of God. Today strike the green rock, set forth life. Onto

life's scene came microbes and humans. The microbes seem happier swimming still
minus our conscious efforts to relate and to speak and to kill others.

"Join me in Paradise," cried the new mind of an old and quite lost creature,
God. And so humans were born unto Earth and began the long climb toward one

goal: to deny in their freedom their nature with rules then attributed
staunchly to God. Thus mild Onan would fructify Earth with his seed, shedding

genesis deep in corruptible life. Then for thousands and thousands of
years the inventors of rules stood by harshly to condemn the tragic ones

falling, as all were conceived in dark failure according to plan. Would a
hero or heroine come to receive from the Gods words defining the

nature of humans and folly? Is death the true nature of humans, and
life but a passing affair? Then along came Hukarma, Tukarma and

Joylessness destined for suicide. Then came Hukarma, Tukarma to
God, and the holiest Lord shrugged. "I did what I could, but you humans have

plans of your own. You can pursue them freely, but spare me your wailing. You
came from my pleasure and you have made pain. Wallow humans and fight, wallow

humans, I will not destroy you. In time you'll destroy yourselves. Joylessness
kept from her death by mis-called, sly, compassion now faces you eternally.




#301 DYFALU

10-18-98


The child who ate, housed in a body of blubbering storms,
outranking the whale for depth, hid in the midst of the weeds
that bend brilliant tendrils whispering, flail gasping fishes.

The child who ate, ranked with the conflagration by fire,
consuming the rices and riches, devouring the sweets of the moon's
soft light, gobbling the dates of the day, only to vomit

up the too much, too many, too long absences from life
with the mirror of truth shining in the motionless silent pool.
The child who ate let me go, let me wander free, tasting

the Krishna blue cherries, the plums, the apricots
of the pillowed stars between the spaces of awful darkness
that yet have no solution, no untangling beneath the twisted

skeins, where life peers in and light pours out, illuminating
the child who eats to cover her fears, to cover her headlong
flight from approaching tides, the tsunami of new deaths

surrounding the breathing and blowing, the spewing of pumice
strands of black volcanic hair, fire, now free
from God's threat of immortality. The alien child died.




#302 WELSH FORM

After Dayfdd ap Gwilym's address to a seagull
10-12-98


White and full, the seagulls roam,
crimson sunned, they've spun from home.
Swift they skim, safe from the sea,
burnt stem, barren settee, me.




#303 GESTE

10-20-98


A gesture a lampoon, a tale, a journey,
hospitality, its return, chivalry,
romance and action, blowing in the windy

world. Tossing trees, hair. Geste of vitality,
sparklingly, with charismatic vanity
riding out the fantastical horse, rosy

cheeked. Have you no shame? Seeing nothing worthy
of words and song, but the coupling of every
creatures bones, splittings of DNA, merry

romps, unquiet nights, fusions in the daily
round. The leaves turn crimson, gold and quietly
fall to the frosted ground, mulch, become loamy,

rich, deep earth. Death, the last geste of an airy
life, like a bird with stroke in a cloudlessly
blue, crimson, sunny sky, falling soundlessly.




#304 CONCRETE POEM -- ideogrammic spatials

10-21-98


FALL



                               A twigless tree on a
	 				
					s
	 				k
	 				i
	 				n
	 				n
	 				y
				
	 				t
	 				r
 	 				u
	 				n	   	  
	 				k
		       
						      QUIET sleeping
				      		    a                cat	 
				
    little mous e
  a


sidewalk                                                          sidewalk
         side walk
                 si de wa lk                           side walk
                           s i d e w a l k                            
             		                 si de wa lk




#305 SIRVENTES I

10-22-98


The death and destruction in the world
eventually make you tired, like a flag furled.

There is no flapping or freedom felt
in the bitter wet wind upon the black pelt.

Cry for us God, even a child cries --
its doll lying broken with unblinking eyes.




#306 SIRVENTES II, rhyme scheme after Bertran de Born

10-23-98


Fly around the world without fail
Watch your desires grow deathly pale
Set the world on fire with garlic
Reprimand your life with tonic
Is life nothing but doctored coin
The boom was golden and sonic
Until it backfired in the groin

Stand, look into the wild gale
All the beaches have turned to shale
Move through your life in a panic
Ticketed for the Titanic
Figure in worldly history's quoin
Avoid the leisurely picnic
Time was created to purloin

Life's one great unimagined tale
A thristy dog wagging its tail
There's no way to avoid its trick
Whatever is done is too thick
Forever its horrors conjoin
Hide your head beneath a frolic
Pleasure will get you in the loin

From the boat remember to bail
Those hard little nuggets are hail
White cold stones they're force to mimic
So the clock continues to tick
With the slow blood of time enjoin
Posses it, your merry sidekick
God's dream, like it or not, you join




#307 SIRVENTES III, after Bertans de Born

10-24/25-98


Life begins with a progress of evasion
after slow long death of desire by pursuasion
to participate in the awful occasion
after rooting out all nature's motivation
come hear the hullabloo for time's omission
while the strange weak
clock runs down and black space suffers a compresssion
quite unable to speak.

Death begins with the creeping of a small lesion
into a great wound of despairand illusion
gashes like rows in a plowed field of erosion
dread fears and anxieties spiral implosion
mis-naming fierce disappointment as progression
while the strange creek
flows from the heart-land's calamitous suspension
persuaded not to seek.

Diamonds begin as plants and a premonition
pressures growing, dinosaurs strolling, privation
of light, the world and appropriate lustration
building rare brilliance from nigresceous accretion
scarcity courtesy de Beers and frustration
while the strange beak
pecks at corn from the New World's annihilation
from slaughters left to reek.

History begins, note, with a written notation
which accident confined to wars and aggression
but life takes place on a vast plain of mutation
and death takes place by quotidian quotation
and diamonds are mined from a strange coalition
while the strange peek
into humans' self-justifying sedition
for a media leak.




#308 LAMENT

10-27-98


I do understand the rage of God
and the wail in the wind,
the cyclone of hopes and desires
swept up like fallen leaves.

The soul breathes in depth and the wild whirl
of the winds and the leaves
and the spirals of colors, yellow
crimson and gold, bright green.

No one can cling before the wind of
calamity's swift boon.
There will be rage and there will be deep
sparkling peace from the chill --

and warmth to warn you that ease will come
soon, lead you among bare
branches, tall, platinum grass grown brown,
great lilies trampled down.




#309 PASTORELA

10-28-98


Wouldst thou have me, thou fool full wind?
Wouldst thou flatten the long white grass
of the praire and spin bleak in
the weak-willed sunlight of winter?
Wouldst thou adorn me with flying geese
and the leaves all spattered with crimson
and thorned through from bushes that were rose?

O, pay a mind to thy blowing,
and pay heed to the charnal ground.
Circle the cemetary's gust.
Fly the ribbons of faith forlorn.
Pay heed to the winter's soft white snow.
The bones last year were covered with spring.
They cavorted and danced out summer.

Listen, impetuous wild wind.
Listen to me cry by the moon.
Distill the stars' clear crystal tears.
Gather my sheep and hold them, Shepherd.
Listen to their bleat and their baleful
moan at the wind and stars. Remember!
Wouldst thou listen or pay winds to blow?




#310 ELEGY

10-29/31-98


Who'd have thought that, skimming along in the kissing sun
in a blue convertible listening to "Lemon tree
very prretty," would lie in your memory as youth
in the Angel's wide blue-skyed City, epitomized.

As you stand aging on earth less affected by gravity
like an astronaut, losing muscle mass and bone marrow, filled
with a bubbling mirth for man's "achievements," you know you will soon
drift off -- tumbling through black space's depth to immortality.

Lightly dancing among stars, along lemon-colored
sun beams bodilessness's gift, O Devayani,
will be yours, and comprehensive thoughts about all that
was will dissolve, lose their leaden goalish importance.

But for now, think of the charm of the dawn at Varanasi,
think of the red rising sun, the drift of the river and song,
women in their veils in their saris pacing against the flow
of corpse strewn Ganges, past magical towers built of human whim.

Stare into the sun's rising beams fingering their way
across the sand, the empty sand, the ancient wisdom,
its flood plain gift from the builders of Varanasi --
Stand with gravity. Jump the lightening bonds of life.




#311 IDYL

10-31-98


Late in life I discovered the incandescent plants:
a cleodendron, fushia and blue; a naked plant
with purple berries small as headed pins intensely
gleaming, the rain-drop wonder of late afternoon blue-
as-the-sky-after-rain, the bliss of a quiet death.




#312 DIRGE in Fourteeners

11-5/7-98


The sun reincarnates in the leaves of a rainy fall
like a lover's last embrace scorning death's new arrival.

Blood red is the Acer palmatum awaiting spring's brawl,
verging round necrophilia, dropping her verdant shawl.




#313 AFTER DHARMAKIRTI AFTER PAZ

11-14-98


His skin is flowing obsidian
eyes gleaming as a wild elk.

The goddess who made him, why would she
let him wander free? To trust?

This fancy is not inconsequence:
he is man, rooted, a tree.

Shiva, Shakti, dance worlds together,
a phantasmagoria.




PAZ AFTER DHARMAKIRTI

In Light of India, p. 142


Her skin, saffron toasted in the sun,
eyes darting like a gazelle.

-- That god who made her, how could he
have let her go? Was he blind?

-- This wonder is not the result of blindness
she is a woman, and a sinuous vine.

The Buddha's doctrine thus is proved:
nothing in this world was created.




Octavio Paz cites Dharmakirti as an example "...of this disconcerting union of thinking and sensuality, abstraction and delight in the senses." Paz's remark seems odd, as this "union" is, it seems to me, the very soul of thinking, sensuality, abstraction and delight, i.e. for each to marry their contrary, to defeat the illusions, one of the other. Anything less would seem rigidity and a lack of appreciation for the wonder of this world and the necessity behind the urge to create, i.e. write, scuplt, make buildings, movies, science, be president. (see Paul Valery)

What is odd about Dharmakirti is that: "He left seven treatises on logic, various commentaries on the sutras, and [only!] a handful of erotic poems." Did his Buddha buddies "lose" the rest?




#314 TENSON


(after an anonymous poem -- possibly by Countess Dia and/or Raimbaut d'Orange)
11-15-98


They turn golden leaves to copper
corpses slippery as banana,
beauty into dross forever,
and rake away from autumn air
red-hued leaves, foxes in their lair,
that danced a mourning madrigal
in loud wind greyed by seagulls' call.

Lest the sodden death, slipperier,
requires lilies of canna
by bed or grave or groveler
fixed upon a shining repair
of avoidable loose despair.
Do not entreat in jest for all
weak things that might your ease forestall.

The golden leaves are prettier
than the naked ground. Like manna,
they rush with gusts of windier
days, shaken with the shock so rare
of wild contingencies which dare
to light the shuffled sombre fall
of footsteps fading down the hall.

Let loose, let loose, let the greener
tinge of coppered roofs patina
your heart and divide the terror.
Conceal all that we still do share.
Light candles. Let their charred wicks flare,
forgetting what you might recall
of the gold, minuet-ed ball.

I shall not, will not, you raker
of leaves, creating Janaardana,
from blue-black Krishna, tormentor
of people, from one once so fair.
I am not your mare, I'll yet tear
your spite from my heart, leaves that gall
the drainage from gutters too small.

I love the sweet with the tart-er.
Let's dance to the concertina
of our obsessions, and letter
the walls of prisons high and bare,
maximize and dully compare
my fair, my sweet angel, my doll
whatever your horror may scrawl.

Leaves in the wind, dark trees sparer,
you blot out the light of jnaana
that, destined to arise fairer,
has become sullied, debonair,
by the curse and the cruel care
of your transformation to pall
the light, the rain, the interval.

I'll rake up leaves from the gutter.
I'll spin the great wheel of prana
I'll flame from the candles sputter
whose virtue and radiant glare
will skitter like a running hare.
Find me in hell's great laughing brawl
in fire or the leaf flinging squall.




Glossary:

Janaardanaan -- an aspect of Krishna meaning "tormentor of people"
jnaana -- knowledge, wisdom (Sanskrit)
prana -- breath (Sanskrit)




#315 SANSKRIT DIDATIC II

11-15-98




SANSKRIT

(upon doing very very poorly on my first mid-term test)

So far it's worn no grooves, chiseled
no paths through memory's older
territories of moksha-mind.
Nothing Little of sri loka remains.




Glossary:

moksha-mind -- liberation, desiring release from rebirth
sri loka -- "noble, holy, venerated world"




#316 EVENSONG

11-17-98


Did God choose me as a messenger
to report the curtain behind my bed?
-- to pray for the red bird, lattice-like,
with boots like shoes.

-- to pray at the sixth of the seven
canonical hours
-- for the curtain of smiling faces
within jars, plant-like animals,
-- they, too, with feet
and shoes,

-- all red and purple, like one's night
dreams, with gold edges
-- and a cast of a nightmare hue
of -- is it green?

But how are red and purple green?
How can the fecundity
of the Persian
curtain hang forever
-- behind my bed,
-- over my sleep?

Slipping like sleep through my dreams
of twined vines,
-- or,
last night, a needle injected

by a stranger,
-- a missed flight,
-- somewhat with fright,
but also with ease. Is the green
a twilit lawn? -- a reign or rains
from the curtain behind my bed?

-- with squares filled
with dried-blood flowers,
fat vines, preening
purple birds.

God's background is dead green
-- by a slim moon
-- in a forest,
silent, darker
than the blue
of space.




#317 QUATRAIN III, Irregular

11-17-98


Seeing the trees rooted in the leaves
the burls, like bears, clinging to the trees,
nut-cheeked squirrels running up the bears,
Devayani walks.




#318 ALLEGORY


KAT BLACK

(satyam)

For Kat Murphy

(satyam varanane satyam)

11-17/22 to 12-16-98


Her name was Kat Black, and the way she felt
about it, she might have come from outer
space. She was too old to remember the
time at the belly, though, no doubt, having
been a kitten once, there had been a time
at the belly.
(maya)
But then she arrived by
the scruff of the neck, falling through flower
gardens, onto a doorstep.
(samsara)
Sometimes, in
a blue mood, a red mood or a white hot
mood, Yes! white hot in lust for her mistress'
hand that petted her belly, "Ah, who could"
-- Kat Black thought -- "resist her soft belly?"
(karma)
They
tried to train her to vegetarian
tastes, but she liked strawberries, she became
a fruititarian,
(phala)
and nurtured the
wild grapes of her wrath.
(kama)
There were other cats
there -- wherever there was -- big and little,
(mahamaya)
blue, purple and green.
(mahakarma)
But Kat Black sat a-
lone on the seashore, changing her stripes in
the sunset, longing, longing...



    • (bindu)
    One evening,
    while Kat Black was out swimming, Little Cat
    jumped in too -- into the sea. The tides rolled
    in and the tides rolled out and the fishes swam
    underneath.
    (samadhi)
    Rescue! rescue! was all Kat
    Black thought of as the great trees on the shore
    became twigs. But Little cat kept swimming --
    and laughing.
    (idam ch'dam cha)
    Then there was a great lapse in
    memory. And then Kat Black woke up in
    paradise -- wild with flowers and fresh with
    trees -- purring.
    (ananda)
    But she remained a divi-
    ded cat. Should she miss her past? Or enjoy
    the flowers? And where was Little Cat!
    (samsaya)
    She
    rolled on her back and a great hand stroked her
    belly.
    (nirvana)


    Click here to see KAT BLACK with Cattipoints in Color




    #319 DOUBLE BALLADE SUPREME

    11-28/29-98


    The hips hurt like the devil's red forked tail.
    The peering eyes are fogged with thick white smoke.
    The head feels dark and heavy like a jail.
    Rising to meet the day seems like a joke.
    The trunk slips from the covers like an oak.
    On sleep and dreams having not fully dined,
    "Why am I still alive?" cries the tired mind.
    Is there some good cheer beneath the moaning?
    Surely a prolonged sleep is far more kind
    for the body so stiff in the morning.

    But the days come right up under the sail --
    boats skiffing along as if to provoke
    rampaging winds in the blood of a snail.
    It can't be much fun to hear the low croak
    of a dying old frog under its yoke.
    Yet God's in his heaven ready to grind
    another day from these bones which declined
    to soften in sleep under the groaning.
    He's got new pain in mind, polished, refined,
    for the body so stiff in the morning

    Sunshine and the colors of autumn's gale
    are offered and relied upon to stoke
    the old heart and dry skin, pasty and pale.
    But brittle old bones crave only to soak
    in a warm tub, to lie back and invoke
    nepenthe hours that can be safely mined
    from a ravished time. Memories entwined
    crave gentle mercy from the low droning.
    What tender design was Goddess enshrined
    for the body so stiff in the morning?

    The big doughy stomach is sour and stale.
    The fragile wing bones cry not to be woke.
    Before the questions one tries not to quail.
    What has become of my life and my folk?
    What will I do when I'm totally broke?
    The knees do not bend, the toes don't remind
    the foot to explore the treacherous vined
    and inclined slope. From here to regaining
    lost Lethe shores, there is nothing but rind
    for the body so stiff in the morning.

    There's no worse myth than Heaven in a pail
    for the goody, deceived, hard working bloke.
    His height has shrunken and his heart may fail
    He may even pray for a winning stroke
    to carry him far beyond and revoke
    the steel attachments that have thus far lined
    his life. Near to death, I've heard it opined,
    one, like a chicken, submits to boning,
    toning -- almost anything to unwind
    from the body so stiff in the morning

    Nirvana's for me, a draught of sweet ale.
    Like a silk velveteen, brilliant red toque
    I'll wear it with glee to balance the scale.
    I'll wrap myself up tight, hide in my cloak,
    resist nature's request to prod and poke
    each new failure of the limbs to stay twined.
    I'll consider it the century's find
    if I can go off fairly soon, crooning.
    I'd scamper away if I could, a hind,
    from the body so stiff in the morning

    I'm not inclined to be bound or fined
    for nature's perpetual need to wind
    our suceptible flesh up for stoning.
    Nor am I for more company inclined
    from the body so stiff in the morning.




    #320 EPISTLE

    12-02-98


    Dear One:

    The problem with writing is
    to catch an idea
    and extend it through time, stick
    with it, believe in it
    for at least a poem's length,
    a thought's eternity.

    Yesterday, the landlord died.
    Fell off a roof and died.
    In just four days I will be
    sixty-five. The rain pours,
    the wind challenges even
    the biggest umbrella.

    Stroll off the end of the pier,
    master grammar -- or not.
    Conceal your aches and great pain,
    conceal the mild things, too.
    Hop onto the boat with glee
    bow your knee to the gale.

    Continuing in space and in
    time as body, corpse or
    molecule. Prana, they say
    is "all". "Live" is the cry
    Forget the hanging horror
    of past selves. Jump the rail.

    And die. Or not. Just as you
    believe. The world is at
    sixes and sevens. The years
    pass to oblivion.
    The light exceeds time and love.
    Forgetfullness does win.




    #321

    1998/1999/2001


    COMING SOON




    #322 PASTORAL ELEGY

    12-16/28-98

    "...time in an allegory of itself imparts to us lessons of wisdom
    which the moment they are formulated are immediately destroyed..."
    Paz, The Monkey Grammarian, p. 49


    Writing is a way of keeping the dark thoughts at bay
    that make of my world an evil thing in an evil way.

    Yes, life is a corridor, long, narrow and barely
    enhanced by the decoration of ancient gardens, old

    walks. Who would not choose to exist in invisible
    cyberspace? To walk only the vast ballrooms of the mind?

    The screech and scream of living has become its own death.
    I pass by the trees of autumn glimmering gold, unseen

    by the harried eye. I breath, refreshed, the negative
    ions from the running brooks of the mind. There! there, there

    remain froths and falls of white water, light splashing tides.
    In my mind's eye, within my computer screen, reflected

    by, absorbed in unseen thoughts, I dream of a world that
    no longer exists, never existed. My mind is blank

    as a Barragan wall, beauty to feed the horses,
    wild beasts of the mind. Only within nothingness can I

    live. Having built a world excluding ourselves, Shiva
    dances blue space, a tarnished looking-glass through which we fall

    into timelessness where the gardens of the mind still
    grow, the tangles beneath the snow still flourish, may emerge

    after the deaths of humans. The dinosaurs became
    birds, humans will become... Time is an allegory

    of wisdom: forming, crystallized, dissolving. Now gone.




    #323 NURSERY RHYME

    12-04-98/1-22-99


    Hoeky Pokey Nanny Joe
    tossed a winner to the crow
    black and stocky hard to know
    there's all but nothing in the toe.




    #324 (need form name)

    12/02-28/98 & 1/22/99


    With the help of eight or nine
    commodius little verbs,
    called auxillary verbs
    we babble the world into being.

    One never utters the same
    sentence twice. Why eat chicken
    caccitore again when one can try
    satay.




    #325 PAEAN

    1-22/23-99


    Witch hazel, all abloom
    like sunshine in the winter woods,
    touched my cheek, touched my glove.

    Scented for the coming
    spring, witch hazel, flickering torch-
    light in the winter woods.

    Healer! Goddess! Protect
    us in the freezing winter rain.
    Lend your scent to knowledge,

    your light to careful time.
    Heal the riffs of darkness, spread balm
    before the cool of dawn.




    #326 SONG, after Blake's Songs of Experience

    2-3/6-99


    He swept across the sun and wept.
    Into the shroud without help he leapt.
    Eager, wild and crying loud,
    pleased with earth and not with cloud.

    Sleeping, dying, blood for hands,
    just now released from Satan's bands,
    while he'd leap and laugh to best
    a frightened creature from its breast.




    #327 BLESSING

    2-10-99


    DEAR KATHERINE:


    You're sixty now, get over your angst,
    your problems of men and of money. Let a new
    day dawn, of peace, centeredness and attention.
    Do what you think you want to do. Get rid of the
    "think". Do what you do each moment. You will find
    what you want to do. Do it, whatever you are doing.
    Let it satisfy your vision and dreams. As you are
    alone, do it alone. Do it for God. Go in peace.
    Conclude the drama. Life is as silent as the
    spring, as quiet as a daffodil unfurling.
    Know that "someday" arrived today.
    You'll not live to 120, so
    you're more than half-
    way home.

    Happy Birthday.




    #328 BURLESQUE

    2-11/12-99


    Once more into the breach, dear friends,
    once more, we must subponea Monica and Bill
    to re-enact for us on the Senate floor,
    the scene of the crime so we can look
    into their eyes, judge each for himself
    their motives. Bring down these breeches
    once more, dear friends, while the GOPi lie.




    #329 CATCH

    2-13-99


    O: My heart flutters with terror
    Ah: Moment to moment

    O: What terror, long hidden, will I discover
    Ah: Today or today

    O: Shushing through the falling leaves
    Ah: Darker and darker

    O: Slipping, sliding, slithering, still I have rushed
    Ah: Slowly, more slowly


    Go: O come!


    O: My heart hisses flames
    Ah: Expect to catch ichneumon or a mongoos

    O: Fearful thoughts fearful
    Ah: Tempting taste trembling shudders

    O: An instant of flames
    Ah: Devour the house, devour the dark hospice soul

    O: Catch fire! O catch life!
    Ah: Lost in the careful soul


    Come: Ah go!




    #330 CHANT

    3-13-99


    In the dark of the night
    In the heat of the day
    In the sweat of the work
    In the sveltness of sex
    In the way of the world
    In the way of the light
    Lyrical, lugubrious, lingering, laughter
    Rings in the amber dawn
    Drums out the golden sun
    Praise be, praise be, praise be
    In the dark
    In the heat
    Shiva via Shakti
    Tala tala
    In the lash of the wind
    In the drops of the rain
    In the calm of the storm
    In the heart of the gale
    In the way of the weather
    In the way of the world
    Radiant, tumultuous, splintering, showers
    Ring in the amber dawn
    Drum out the golden sun
    Praise be, praise be, praise be
    In the lash
    In the drops
    Shiva sans Shakti
    Tala tala
    In the pain of life
    In the joy of death
    In the vale of tears
    In the rage of lust
    In the calm of the dark
    In the way of the light
    Shimmering, calamitous, shadowing, shudders
    Ring in the amber dawn
    Drum out the golden sun
    Praise be, praise be, praise be
    In the pain
    In the joy
    Shiva is Shakti
    Tala tala tala




    #331 CHANTE-FABLE

    3-14-99


    May fey slay lay but pay ray
    Bay crave the day brave shay say
    Sway sway tame clay shame lame way
    Yeah yeah repay replay gay
    Kat Curl Come Kit Care

    Cat: I am the exegesis of orange cats in the full moon slumbering
    in my brightness.

    Kit: Tumbling from the tipped crescent do not howl for my sympathy,
    O red-yellow feline grinning.


    Bet set let better yet fret
    Crept slept debt fete splet met get
    Wretched fetch it regret it
    Hex it pet it whet it wet
    Curl Come Kit Care Cat

    Kit: With hairy little feet of fair divine origin step aground, send fairies
    in your stead.

    Cat: Keep your distance, keep your cat, keep the rise of the moon your
    silent scat.


    If bif sift shift riffs a cliff
    Fie eye cry ply by rely
    Retract re-tool re-see be
    Did amid grid hid jib jive
    Care Cat Come Kit Curl

    Cat: Secret silver lines led half around the block and back again to steak
    and clams.

    Kit: Mice milling have been known to turn up missing and messed up
    seeds future fortunes.


    Moe woe my toe foe O Joe
    A bow show co doe and low
    Go go hoe aloe no no
    Aloha aloha so
    Kit Care Kat Come Curl

    Cat: The cats within the picture frame whisk their whiskers to and fro,
    and fan moons.

    Kit: Prevent swoons. Curtain the moon, patent the purr, patent the paws,
    step high and lightly.


    You sue me-u few imbue
    Cue dew ewes grew blue in hue
    Jewel Kew lewd new rue rue
    Sough sough tune soon view Whew!
    Come Kit Kat Curl Care




    #332 CHANTY

    3-15-99


    We set out to sea to catch logs and debris.
    The styrofoam boat drifts free.
    The dish-towel sail is slumped and still.
    We'll catch a white gull and make a thin quill.

    With a hook to haul logs and roots and trees
    we'll write our legend in lashing lees.
    We'll build big structures and maybe a mill
    and up the mossy, blooming hill we'll garden till

    the sun goes down and the owls come out to screech.
    We'll anchor our boat with big rocks on the beach,
    sleep under a twiggy roof, watch stars fill
    the dipper with wishes and sleep sound to prevent a spill.




    #333 CHARM

    3-28/4-11-99/10-06-01


    Envying the cherry blossoms, great weather gods
    rain, hail, romp with frigid winds.
    Blossoms in darkened pink, shivering,
    fragile lace against the bark,
    enjoy the tempest, dredging molecular, white-
    capped memories upon roiling seas.

    Weather gods would wound long-stemmed, fragrant daffodils,
    would knock about woodroses,
    drown translucent, snow-white crocuses
    cupped low, sodden, would beat to
    earth each face turned to seagulls' shimmer, refreshing
    sunlight's, moonlight's frothing new year's scent.

    But even gods, charmed by compliant flora, let
    their giant zypher-cheeks turn
    warm, benign, comatose with lilac's
    singular scent, yielding their
    anger to the wild, dancing, shadowed, light-pressured,
    wind-persuaded, unstoppable spring.



    #334





    Copyright © 2002 Jan Haag
    ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

    Jan Haag may be reached via e-mail: jhaag@janhaag.com or jhaag@u.washington.edu





    ALPHABETICAL INDEX BY FORM

    of

    POETRY FORMS USED IN ENGLISH



    BY JAN HAAG

    ART & POETRY - ACCUMULATIONS

    POETRY + MUSIC + ESSAYS + TRAVEL + FICTION + TEXTILE ART

    INTRODUCTION + HAAG'S BIO



    21st CENTURY ART, C.E. - B.C., A Context