July92010
Photo: © Carnival by Giles Heather
Hot as Aztec orange and gold
Passion turned to rust
Your love once pure as sunlight
Reduced to simple lust.
Passion found the dark and brooding night
Covered with lies and self-fulfillment.
Alienated from your talent and delight,
You cried out for enrichment.
So stole the gems from Earth’s great store
To emulate the light.
The display within your halls
Blinded everybody’s sight.
In citrine crested walls with diamond ceiling stars
You dance alone on a polished amber floor,
Enchanted in that rubied chamber of your heart
You believe it’s the same as love before.
You dwell there still
Beguiled beyond illusion,
Thinking brilliant days and tranquil nights
Are not just mere delusion.
© Gay Reiser Cannon All Rights Reserved
8PM
There’s no one as old as we are, sir, or as young.
We ride horses in the forest and their manes stretch away
from us becoming like the trunks of trees.
My husband died and left me feeling not as old
as my grandchild’s birth.
I grab the mane and ride toward youth.
You had no markers in that wasteland to measure out your age.
I think you’re young, as young as when we mounted, sir,
but when I glimpse you now your face folds in against the bone
like knees upon the Cypress trees and still we ride
to a place we know where flowers once would open to the sun
and need no shade.
Then your pace was quicker, sir, and
your face like a flower paled by moon.
We seek beginnings in autumn and ride wild and unbridled now
upon the burnished leaves.
We reach for life and find its span,
aging as the trees we’ve known.
8PM
Deck Chairs at Brighton
To Derek Walcott
You snatch them as though they were pebbles
Found on the beach at Brighton,
Easy and at hand, to keep or skim across the waves,
For the sea to polish brighter,
As though they weren’t brilliant already.
Unlike me who’d find one and rejoice
In its color or roundness or desired composition.
I’d take it home, put it in a frame to admire
And hope that others would think me
So fine to have found it.
But should you come to see me,
You’d laugh and drop a pocket full,
Each perfect, on the table saying,
“These are free, surely you can’t have
That much trouble finding good ones.”
© Gay Reiser Cannon All Rights Reserved
July82010
Red Cannas by Georgia O’Keefe
Keep me as I leave you
In the chamber of your love.
Smell my sleep that penetrates
The fibers of your sheets.
Taste my mouth as invisible
The memory lingers on yours.
Hear my song as my rhythms
Take up syncopation with your heart.
See me framed in your mind
Spinning in the sunlight.
Remember me–
Our intrinsic words
Our inherent hearts
Our intuitive eyes.
And know wherever
I am
You swell within me
I quake with expectant desire
And I want you.
Not just yourself
but the music
in your body
And the fire
deep inside
your
soul.
© Gay Reiser Cannon 2010 All Rights Reserved
July52010
Photo Unknown from Furniture Site
These shards of a mirror
Once hung above our mantle.
We dwelled there intermittently
Until stepping through, you
Broke it.
Cracked parts of faces, passing by
Flashbacks of us, standing,
Abstract shades in impressionist
Colors, expressions, shapes of noses, arms
Toes entering shoes, the back of
Your neck, pieces of our lives—
Nude, dressed for the theater,
Ready for work, closing the door.
The cats played through its time and space
Not marring the smiles and smirks and jeers
Of visitors who spoke their history in past tenses,
Posing such absurd pretenses. Then our knowing
Smiles became an archway to possibilities.
Days of bright, glittering ambitions
Last checks before work and meetings.
Reflected nights by glimmering votives
When silvered sheets shrouded burning
Need, there somewhat cooled by glass.
Objects remain without aging
Still as the disconnected stereo.
A bank of cracked memories,
Like distorted cubist pieces,
Memories in a gilded frame.
Throwing out the shattered bits
Forces recognition of change;
The broken likenesses alter our
Reality as well as all my dreams.
© Gay Reiser Cannon All Rights Reserved
2PM
Manhattan from the Ferry to Ellis Island Halloween 2002
She gazed through the window,
tall buildings and trees
blocked her view of the bridge,
the bridge to her dreams.
He let the newspaper crumple onto his chest,
“I’ve been thinking about algebra,” he said.
Ignoring this remark, she thought
how time took them farther than distance.
“Remember when we were in high school?
They said we’d use it every day.
What if it’s deeper than they said.
The numbers, things we don’t understand
and the letters, the things we know.
Wonder if I could learn it again, figure it out,
see if it answers the questions we don’t know?”
She put down her cup. “Or maybe equations
of letters and numbers simply represent the abstract,”
“The mysteries exist in both or neither.” She sighed.
“Perhaps there’s no formula for a dream.”
© Gay Reiser Cannon 2010 All Rights Reserved
July32010
Apartment Living by Gay Reiser Cannon
She knows dumpster food
And dying from two stories up.
Everyday she sees death
In the faces of people and in the trees.
She’s haunted by love and death
and by slow disease,
Every lost case, kitten and child.
Makes her fear she’s dying
Sleepily with drugs,
Like granny wasting away,
Or quick
Blood running down her neck.
She’d like to use drugs
To remember or forget.
She’d like to use
Sex like a drug to keep
Fear at a distance
But there’s disease in blood heat.
It’s safer to ache.
It’s a war and there’s
Only so much pain she will
Bear on the street.
So she sleeps
And again her brother falls
To his death
Wrapped and waiting for the morgue
In white sheets.
She cries
And pleads
How much goodness is required,
How much magic
Can she manage to
Survive this ordeal—
Another day?
© Gay Reiser Cannon - All Rights Reserved
July22010
Falling Into You by Gay Reiser Cannon
neon nights
glowing signs
shocking messages in pinks
luring in green phosphorescent
those night heralded fluid blues
rub up against you
rising from the gratings
flowing in the air to grab you.
excite your skin while walking
hear that swish and sssh swinging
in new silky nylons
hear that jazz – you’re dancing
hear that jazz – your heart’s racing
its vibrations ham-ham-hammerin’ away
set up a rhythmic stirring that
sets you on a slinky goose pimple edge
evening’s lost to starlight
fills you with excitement of the night
fills your body - longing
with the rustles of desire
bouncing sounds of movement
lonesome seeking music
thrill you with a fire
a moment so intense
you think it can’t increase.
yeah, dreamchasings you invent
each day by sunlight,
spent tonight by barlight
as you murmur goodnight,
good night!
© Gay Reiser Cannon All Rights Reserved
12PM
The Blues by Gay Reiser Cannon
GOT NO SIMILES HONEY, THE “LIKES” AND “AS” ARE GONE
GOT NO SIMILES ANYMORE, JUST “HOW’S” IS ALL THAT COME;
CAN’T FIND NO BETTER WAY THAN JUST TO SAY I’M DONE.
GOT THE METAPHORIC BLUES, WAILIN’ THE IMAGES AWAY,
GOT THE METAPHORIC BLUES, BEGGIN’ FOR A GOOD WAY TO SAY,
THAT THE WORLD’S MADE ME SAD & YOU PROBLY FEEL THE SAME.
I KNOW SOME CAN FIND ADJECTIVES THAT ARE VITAL AND NEW,
I ONLY FIND OLD CLICHES—VERY TRIED, HARDLY TRUE.
LOOKIN’ EVERY DAY FOR A BRIGHT THOUGHT; CONTEMPLATIN’ NAVY BLUE.
GOT THE METAPHORIC BLUES, MY SYMBOLS ALL TORN DOWN,
GOT THE METAPHORIC BLUES—CRACKED CLAY POTS ON THE GROUND
ALL MY WORDS BROKEN FLOWERS THAT’S BEEN STREWN AROUND.
I GOT NO MONEY AND NO THOUGHTS ARE WORTH A DIME
IDEAS OF RUBBER NOT EVEN A PLASTIC SHINE,
AND EVERY SONG I SING IS JUST A LOW-DOWN CRIME.
GOT THE METPHORIC BLUES, I’D LIKE TO FIND A TREASURE STORE
OF UNUSED SOUNDS THAT WOULD ECHO MORE
THAN THOSE THE SMART FOLKS SPENT BEFORE I WAS BORN.
(YEAH, THOSE POETS SPENT MY WORDS AND THEY JUST LEFT ME POOR,
IF I DON’T FIND MY VOICE, I CAN’T SING NO MORE.)
© Gay Reiser Cannon All Rights Reserved
July12010
Photo of Tintagel from the Tintagel Website
I will leave this place tomorrow
Passing through its fragile portals
Leaving battles for the mortals
Each must come and seems must go.
I seek a smaller lodge
I’ll write myself upon its spaces
And hide from those who watch.
I’ll stay alone on sunny days.
There odd songs call me
To watch the shuttle on the loom
And in some lonely distant evening
Learn a lesson from the moon.
© Gay Reiser Cannon. All Rights Reserved
6PM
Gliding
Seagulls
Cry
In response to each wave’s spray
Salt
Sea
Tears
For the whooping cranes
That fly from Aransas Pass.
New
Hazy
Night
Why must they leave?
The rhythmic water
Slaps the white sand,
Brown and green reeds
Join all nature to play this symphony.
Can it not preserve the ballet,
These shadowed cranes against
A bone-white porcelain moon?
© Gay Reiser Cannon. All Rights Reserved
