Writing
P
Phantom Amber Rose
Ana
Our wonderful 17 year old script supervisor was the inspiration for this poem. We were in Minsk, Belarus shooting “The Road to Glory”.
Stone whispers and a
Khamsin Wind
Beit She’an, Israel was the backdrop for the poem.
The Jungle
Ek Balam, the translation is Black Jaguar in the dialect of the Yucatan.
The Saskatoon
enders alley
Ashland, Oregon
Down the dark street by the alley that ends
At the house tightly boarded its people have gone
The sliver of moon and the light that descends
Writes ghostly whispers in moon shadow’s song.
Old tin upon tin not fitting at all
Where the creases and grooves all fight for distinction
The black cats and toms have slipped as they fall
End over end to clatter extinction.
The cans are more worn than the trash they contain
But the smell that emits when a lid is pried loose
No match for the nameless no name that remains
Wild in abandon spread vile with no shoes.
A raw row of tins in a dank columned file
Hid the bulk of his body in a dirt rumpled mess
Bare stumped were his feet from a newspaper file
A cheap bottle of wine, not far’d be my guess.
And the tale of his woe, now silenced but plain
Spearhead to Seattle…The Ten Forty Five
Them big business deals, All bluff but no gain
It’s a long way from home and the heart of alive.
And slowly but surely and bit by small bit
The “What is it that matters?” Don’t matter at all
The soldiers of mercy can take a big hit
While old Mothers, grown wild, may be gone by the fall.
And how did it happen and what was the reason
All saints to the front to do battle again.
For the souls that have faltered are crops out of season
And the sting of the rain felt more by these men.
Now where is the will for a life be well spent
For the ups and the downs, and the ebb and the flow
Saint Peter is crying “Too late to repent,”
For travelers come and travelers go.
Prairie Forms
and
Paws for poetry
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Please contact Flo at
ANA.....237-06-27
AND SO…
When my eyes grow dim as in the darkened storm
And breath of life is flowing out of me
I’ll not so eager look to the new morn
But know my spirit grows more wild and free.
The falsehoods of the dream the traveler saved
But secrets sliced the silent night in half
And change is certain as the falling blade
Its steel-eyed glint strips bare the fatted calf
What was it came into your life abrupt
In two directions pulled both dark and light
Your coltish youth corralled by dank corrupt
Who stole your soul in defense dead of night?
For night it was that flirted with the day
To offer up a short time for escape
But to fall by cuff or blade; no one to say
Had we all a hand, your breath of life to rape?
All down through the ages you may often hear,
The voice of the handmaiden; “I.”
I’ve been blessed with a curse, you may curse
That I bless the souls of the men who did die
By the hand of dismissal or the power that corrupts
As they lived their life as a lie.
For I am the voice of the Handmaiden.
I will tell you what I know.
I’ve been there when the olives were pressed to oil;
Gleaned wheat where it stood in a row.
I have plaited hair for royal heads,
Shone armor for pomp and for show.
I’ve stood under the arbor, heard plots with devise
And feared for my own life too.
Be it a mistress with candor, or a master with pride,
I’ve seen all emotional hue.
If it served best interest of who was in power
The plot might include killing you.
My curse to foretell, but with no one’s belief,
I see into the future: attest.
Where anger prevails and fear is the law,
Man cannot be at his best
Though millenniums passed, a new one to come,
Still there remains unrest.
You can hear me in places unseen or suspect,
In the crumble of marble or tile…
In the shadow of frieze or a lamp that burned oil
Or baths to sit for a while
Or a stretch of columns that once rose to the sky
Where they lay toppled o’er single file.
If these stone whispers or a khamsin wind
As it blows from a hot desert plain
Can stir in your soul a voice from your past
N’er to repeat force again,
Then my vision’s not dimmed nor my deeds be for naught,
And history will not stay the same.
For though each age had the smartest of men
That headed affairs of the state
They sailed and conquered and blustered about
And marveled to hear themselves prate
Though we all are descended from blood and bad deeds
To change is never too late.
Though I’m only the voice of the Handmaiden,
And speak through long ago
I appeal to your senses as I tried to do then
“Plenty abounds,” It is so.
To rob and to kill, defend and amass;
These are unnatural foe.
I hope somehow that you with honor be
Though wrapped in death’s unseemly unplanned shroud
Full seventeen, your path was wild and free
Through time’s short stay you stood out in the crowd.
I will meet you in the corridors of time
Though my many sleeps in rooms outnumbered yours
From muffled overcoats, hard passion’s fine
If change is real and opens locked closed doors.
Though I be granted years o’er just your few.
When time has run the sand down through the glass
Dare I to say, spirits meet in death’s renew
And your dark demise revealed will come to pass.
@Flo Lawrence Dec. 26,1996
For I am the voice of the Handmaiden
As I whisper from the stone
And I am the cry on a Khamsin Wind
Tempering earth before me to moan
As I fly in the cracks of your conscienceness now,
I still look to find a home.
Given tools of an era and thought of the time
We chipped and built away
How much was done with so little then
How much we could do today.
With power not force, our heart as a rose,
What could we then assay?
We’ve conquered about and bludgeoned to death
Those who did not think as we
We’ve hyped our religion “For God’s sakes,” we have said,
“This is the way it should be.”
We’ve banished and poisoned, but responsible choice,
Is the voice that’s in you and in me.
Although we’ve done much, of what is its use?
Still we proffer the killing of men!
Of ancient times, of might and of power,
Old cities resurrected again…
Avenging angel, Khamasin Wind, Stone Whispers
Cry out… cry out… cry out!...”WHEN?”
@Flo Lawrence
July 24, 1997 Caesarea, Israel
And I felt the cream smooth sun
Smiling through the vaporous green light
Things grew from where they were
Little at first
Breathless and at once naïve.
Smooth and wild and strong
While the engineers of gaiety,
Recorded
The strong moorings of the rich.
I felt the outrage of the peasants.
It grew too.
At first quiet
From where they were
Little at first
Breathless and at once naïve.
Then an undershouting
From the underbrush
Became a roar.
Fast and furious
Jungle growing.
The sun stayed cream smooth
And watched.
Supplied the armies
With strong sticks
To beat back the peasants.
But passions win out and power wears thin.
Passion is the calling.
More strong, more true.
Stronger than the strong sticks
In time
More strong.
Stronger than
The dictums from the order
The order of things, the order of Kings, All…
All become weak
Feasts for the underlings
And the Gods of Prayer
Answer the call.
Oh have they answered the call.
And the winds of time
And the winds of change
Fell the largest temples
Crumbled.
Crumbling in decay.
And the large sticks lay silent
Hidden
Covered over. They lay, covered over
With other things growing.
They grew from where they were
Little at first
Breathless and at once naive
Until they burst,
Smooth and wild and strong.
And the naked child
Lay sleeping
And the naked sapling
A strong stick grew
And the naked blade
Shone hard and cruel.
For a while…
Protected in their casings
Coaxed soon enough
Cocooned no more.
And made their choices too
Too long for the contentment
And the jungle roared once more.
And the cream smooth sun
Smiled through the vaporous green light.
May 9, 2005
Rancho Encantada
Lago Bacalar
Quintana Ru
Yucatan, Mexico
Astride an Arabian horse borrowed from two Arab boys in Nazareth
A stride
I am the fastest
And fleet of foot
Mud caked tractor grooves
Dried and turned to fine
Powder
In the lazy summer sun.
My summer feet bare
There.
In the fine powder.
Tracking warm prints
Five toes, high arch
Heel to toe padding down
Going everywhere
At once.
I am that deep tarnished smell
On the warm hide
Of my horse’s neck
Dry or in sweat
That smell that moves me to great heights
And carries me to conquering visions
We move
My horse and I
Together.
Faster than I can imagine
Astride with time
Beyond
And heroes that have soared
And crumpled on the battlefield
To leave history panting in excess.
We are the wind
That strove to carry the new seeds
Laid down
Unmatched.
Idyllic tunics softly blowing
In new breezes
Unrifled in our natal armies
Raw flesh to muscled hide.
Rippling with perfection.
We are the thunder in the rain
That quiets quaking aspen
Sunbaked earth
Returns to rivulets
From round the globe again.
My horse and I stand.
We are still
Silenced with the falling drops.
While kings and queens take
A gentle supper.
April 27, 2005
I watched from far away
The hillside across the valley floor
There were streams of riders
All making their way
In spirit song.
Wisps of smoke
Accompany them.
In mortal streams
As they move up river
Hoof beat matching drum.
Silent snowfall
As they move from summer song
To winter dross
And back again.
Ever moving
Unfolding time line
Restless quiet fury
Moving, moving, moving
Leaning forward into captured time
Without fear or dogged grit of jaw
For food they move
For freedom still they move
And for movement as they ride
Nomads of the earth they reach
Far into the sunset.
I watch.
I want to join them.
I know that for their winter pemmican
They will dry
And eat the Saskatoon.
I am too an ancient tribesman
I know the far hillside
The bushes loaded
With the ripe juice and
Ancient stories.
And I can stand there
With my Mother and my Sister.
We too are the hunter gatherers
Ancient purple sunsets
Ancient purple berries
Floating in the prayer of the Great Spirit.
For I am lost and found again
In the ripening way
Of my ancient brothers
Leaning into the ancient freedoms.
Riders streaming by
The hillside across the valley floor.
As they grow faint
I must act quickly
Or too late will I be
To take up and go with them.
I feel their breaths surround me
Feather and travois act as one.
I am pleased as I become
The rhythm of the great tribesmen
On the move there
Far away the hillside
Across the valley floor.
April 20, 2005
And somewhere on Fourth, not too far from Main
In a room dimly lit in a ramshackled home
On a soiled easy chair, an old woman’s frame
Dwarfed by the size and the emptiness grown.
Wild in abandon but silenced, alone…
Night shadows write their own play on her face
Out from the hollows old eyes set the tone
Of Sadness the Time and Pity the Place.
She sits and she stares off into the gloom.
Her old ruddy face and her gnarly old hand
Reaches to take the scotch in her room
In the glass on the table that is her night stand.
For sit there she did all through the day
And sit there she will for she is the dark night
The brethern and preachers have all gone to pray
No saving the souls who can’t get it right.
And through the dark pane a sliver of light
Catches the glass of a yellowed old frame
As she hastens to clutch to her bosom so tight
Like her son as she did years ago, much the same.
For something o’er swept, like a dark velvet cloak,
And what happened those years and the moments run by?
With shattering glass came death’s darkening stroke
Ghostly night whispers, her last heaving sigh.
And fortunes away and fortunes be gone
The room shivered cold in a swirl of grey mist
Not far down the alley the moon shadows long
Lingered an instant… on Enders to kiss.
Flo Lawrence
May 9, 2003.
Completed on Horizon Air on way to Ashland and to Tom
