Mocking shadows tug

Mocking shadows tug
ragged cuffs of worn-out eyes
guide sidelong glances
to stitch tightly patterned stares
patching ghostly absences

One lonely star

One lonely star set
within a cobalt sea, blinks
its sad tale, leaving

Captive Wave

What would a frog want?

Ever-after wishing
for magical

transformations, and
one to follow

closely, by the book,
she rolls lace sleeves,

plunging icy hands
into pond's brown

murk, with a talent
for fetching out.

Finger-wrapped, fearing
pursed leather lips,

her slime-green captive
gives squirmy croak:

"What would a frog want
to do with you?"

— Francis Scudellari

---

This poem is a "fractured fairy tale" inspired by a spam email I received with the subject line of "What would a frog want with you?"

Ink and blood mixed

Ink and blood mixed, smudged
Newspaper rolled, tossed aside
six-legged murder

Clad in thicket's mail

Clad in thicket's mail
thwarted wounding finds a way
to gnaw, inside out

Today demands

Today demands
I change
everything, but tomorrow
always sits, cross-
legged, patiently
waiting

Her closeted pain

Her closeted pain,
a ruby talisman
she pulls out for falling dusk
its thumbs rubbing facets, to wish
a gentler awakening

Scofflaw Christ

A scofflaw Christ, he mounts the wrought
balcony to sermonize between bites of fruit.

His musty words cast out, over
an impoverished lot, its multitudes lost
among clumps of grass, weed and clover.

This day's gospel topic: the waiting-to-be
attitudes of a conformist flock he extols
from their meeker paths in vague hope
to inherit a less unkempt earth.

Black rail receiving the leaned weight
of narrow hips, this mock Jesus extends only
one arm, and with graceful arc tosses
a twice-bitten plum, to bounce and roll
where his disciples might some day stand.

Till that coming time, when craned necks await
his offerings to remedy sleeping hungers,
these peels, husks and wrappers of half-eaten
confections, his pittances, will lay in stead,
as he withdraws from reverie's limelight,
to a kitchen well-stocked with sweetness to impart.

— Francis Scudellari

---

This poem is written in response to Read Write Prompt #92: Word Gems at Read Write Poem. The 13 words from the challenge are italicized to ease their spotting.

Undiscerning tongue

Undiscerning tongue
held and bitten too often,
lures the incisors
to pink meat for a hard chomp.
Its lopped-off tip flopping free

A Toady Haunt

The bathroom faucet drips hurried footsteps,
carrying him back to dappled wood buried

in repeated dreams: a brushed ritual
circle hasty ringed by displaced logs, bark bit

by lichens; their sacrilege tools — hammer's
rotted-wood grip, nails with rusty shafts — littered

about a stump-altar where brothers met,
made not-so-secret sacrifice, to abash

their god; still suffering toad, random
picked to endure this mock passion play ending

on cross-tied twigs. Its yet resurrected
eyes stare at him, ask simple but damning "why?"

No Samaritan, good or bad, among
pretend Romans, ever stayed their hands to help.

— Francis Scudellari

---

This is my second poem (finally) written in response to Read Write Prompt #91 at Read Write Poem.

The trapped candle's blushing

The trapped candle's blushing
light escapes its cracked
crystal, tinting the gold
caps on his irregularly
stacked teeth an eerie red

Brad awaits the blow

Brad awaits the blow
gracefully, but when it falls
awkward, the neck kinks

Two Souls: Gathering

I finally was able to complete the next installment of my cycle Two Souls, Twin Lives (a title I may eventually change).

IX. Gathering
By Francis Scudellari

Two legs find horizons
cracked-wide, the hours
of likened now made unlike
when, heavy cloaked
in thickets' hair-cloth prickling,
she-he slip out
into lusty gatherings
of clutched sticks fixed
with sharpened stones, prancing
down hooted trails
painted fresh by scents, singing
of sun-drenched tang,
slain muscle torn from bone

Taxed computer fan

Taxed computer fan
choked by age and dust, labors
with more clunk than whir

Tiny explorers

Tiny explorers
equipped with twirled antennae,
hard shells, grippy legs
squeeze through crevices, scale walls,
reach for human peeks

Waxed black floss

Waxed black floss, sharp-edged
cuts crooked nose from curled lips:
a facial fraction

Love's spectral faces

Love's spectral faces
refracted in each splashed drop
of a sunkissed rain

Mere Kids

Mere kids, we probe the distant
sky, anxious to touch
glimmers of a wink, peaking
out from rain-dropped curtains,

their slow thinning, allowing
pale fingers to rip
glad gaps through which we tumble
as we plunge from sliding glass

doors smudged with our fingerprint
smiles. Mere kids, we skip
slippery slopes, trail run-off's
trickle down to bubbling beds,

careless steps raising sweet scents,
the decay of leaves
and years falling away thick
from a canopy's stout arms,

criss-crossed rays sneaking through, hatch
us to muddy ponds
breathing out black, buzzing clouds,
then drinking in an unseen

pursuer disguised in plops
and ripples. Mere kids,
we muck bent knees to spread small
hands chasing backward crayfish,

who scurry red-brown under
slime-licked rocks, too poor
cover against nimble eyes,
as armored backs with pinched claws

we snatch and drop into jars
sealed shut with clear minds,
plastic moments stretched to last
an over-fancied lifetime

— Francis Scudellari

---

This poem was written in response to Read Write Prompt #91 at Read Write Poem. It was a bit of a challenge for me, and there's another draft poem from the exercise that I'll try to post soon.

Heart-hungry shadow

Heart-hungry shadow,
love's drawn-out silence, blinding
as fire, it consumes

Trash

Gun metal gray,
this pigeon grasps
at current strung black
across a brick-
bounded back alley

edgy eyes on
uneven piles—
disposable
artifacts of people
caught in-between—

it trills its plea,
a directionless
directive to throw
away smaller,
more edible, trash

—Francis Scudellari

Still supple necks

Still supple necks strip

to beseech the reaper's blade

inclining to tempt

his crescent keenly purposed

to sever their spectre's stalks

Rock spine's arched crumbling

Rock spine's arched crumbling

looms at warped, gnawed planks' end

thresholds to forgot

Steely beaked cranes

Steely beaked cranes swoop

to pluck shallow souls lost in

dreaming's swift current

Prompted: My song to fire

This Is My Song To Fire
By Francis Scudellari

This is my song to fire
imagined gods, tipping the balance
of an eight-pointed star;
spirited tongues that orange-blue dance

lost stories of ancient's
mother whose land-distending belly
gave violent blood birth,
spitting forth choleric streams to crawl.

Molten fingers capped by
cruel mouths, gurgle cryptic paths down
humped and wooded back, till
reaching the lip of a plunging slope,

their fierce heads droop, roiling
limpid pools to release snake-coiled steam
and entreat ill-favors
from a jealous, flood-fathering moon.

This is my song to douse
fancied demons, speeding the tumble
of an eight pointed star;
frenzied frolics to blur waking myths.

---

This poem was written in response to Read Write Prompt #90 at Read Write Poem. The challenge was to take inspiration from a photo of a street performer balancing a metal frame tipped with eight flames (click the prompt link above to see it).

Heaven's lidless eye

Heaven's lidless eye

drinks deep velvet scapes, eager

to taste liquid sparks

Hour-swept stage

Hour-swept stage, bare-faced

follows uncounted costumed

bows, taken before

a fixing flood's painted gaze

washes bound acts to pale light

Unborn

She's there, I'll find her, hasty
piecing together
this twilight's sparkling
caught in splintered hazel shards
I gather close, then spin to

cast kaleidoscope stencils
of stained eyes, dripping
twin-hearted hours, glass
tears slipping away, snapping,
spilling out timeless

grains push-pulled by moistened breaths
to dune round lank reeds
clutched in shallow sipping
the clouded puddles
of a leaky shore. That's where

I'll be, dipping abandoned
shells I'll put to ear
to listen for the whispered
tides baring see-saw fables:
her life, still unborn.

— Francis Scudellari

Lid of mottled grays

Lid of mottled grays
snapped tightly over, casting
moods to scuttle by

In that voided space

In that voided space
where mingling, light and dust danced
then fled, long-ago
heavens slowed by age, collide
a dull thud, low-pitched echoes

Low, milky vapors

Low, milky vapors
raised by the sun's softened tears
sprawl across paved stones
hissing wispy blue ballads
of their head-consuming tales

Twin hourglass tears drop

Twin hourglass tears drop,
snap to spill out timeless grains
wish-filled accounting

Chasm's sculpted edge

Chasm's sculpted edge, poised
turquoise calm pooled below, tempts
foolish leaps, joy's falls

Sadie

Blind night offers

Blind night offers end-
less forms, spirits swirl till switched
light sets its boxed traps

We all go round in circles

By Francis Scudellari

"We all go round in circles,"
science has weighed in.
Its confusion-clear voice
lithely concluding:

Leave us to walk blindfolded
in a clueless traveling,
going far enough, we'll end
where we started.

That may not surprise,
all of us tied down so long
to this marbled mother-sphere's
endless spinning,

but if science recalibrated
to measure perhaps,
it would find our orbits
are elliptic

and, like the greater bodies,
our movements, a revolving;
pulled around by someone, or
something, we love

This poem was written in response to Read Write Prompt #89 at Read Write Poem. The "challenge" is to take a news headline as inspiration. For mine, I used the story We all go round in circles by Emma Woollacott.

Not a haiku

This poem might have
seventeen syllables, but
it's not a haiku

Knobbed twigs, puppet arms

Knobbed twigs, puppet arms
string-pulled to a snared center
tap out glassy rhythms

Silence's blank weaves

Silence's blank weaves
haircloth coves, sanguine pricking
beads of when, why's drops

And an alternate take...

Silence - woven blank
rough-spun cloth draping, pricking
beads of when, why's drops

I prefer the first, others seem to like the second. Feel free to weigh in through comments...

Warm and Fuzzy

There are those moments
warm and fuzzy, when
walking my fawning pugs,
Albert pushes that flat,

wet nose to nuzzle
the muzzle of his house-mate
Lucy, as if to say:
"Hi, and bye the bye,

I'm always right here!"
After seven years, each
time he reaches for her,
I still smile and sigh.

— Francis Scudellari

If I could steal it

If I could steal it
your sadness, I'd swallow it
whole and deep, keep it
where blind, trapped, never would it
twist its dark ways back to you

Rushing low whispers

Rushing low whispers
gurgle of foreign lands, push
away loose pebbles

Sky splashed blood-orange

Sky splashed blood-orange
awe strikes the waking earth mute
webbed eyes still glued, shut
till one warbling voice sings out
a silent needing, broken

Unsugared absence

Unsugared absence
lumped in quick-gulped memories
turns a full stomach

A kissed randomness

This is another poem born of a structured randomness. The words were mostly provided by the Twitter Magnets Web application, but I embellished, smoothed and stretched them out. I think of it as a variation on the idea of "found poetry." Here's the final result:

Wholesome clouded kiss
By Francis Scudellari

In a wholesome clouded kiss,
her puffed pink lips lock
to the hardened lines
of this wandering,
thunder-headed stranger

The heavy blanketing peace
of her color-blinded sadness
woolly pulls apart
to here's frayed-edges,
their bitter-quilted coupling

Pale moon's crescent glance

Pale moon's crescent glance
side-long, unfocused, pushes
my heart to the shore

Prompted: Coiled Rope

Coiled rope
By Francis Scudellari

With a swollen tongue,
years saturated in bile,
he rolls and flings frothy tales
tinged rancid yellow,
coating his tight lip's corners
already primed spittle white;

These sing-song rants he chants
in a cursing elocution
over salacious beats
that ride the tangled ribbons
of his long-ago committed
8-track mind, slow unreeling...

gifts to a sore gullet
caked-up with coagulate
black grease, moldy dust;
The spoon-fed, eager gulps
of plastic pablum soothing
tumbled down disturbances—

deep-belly laughs captured
in photographs he clips sun-bleached
to mouthy, drooped lines
stringing together a coarse film
painted electric by diodes
snapped off fragile circuits. Bored,

his motor idles outside
belching exhausted breezes
that strum stained curtains
in a melodic bustle
to hustle clutter on a hitch
and pull the coiled rope, homeward

This poem is written in response to the Read Write Poem Prompt #88, which suggested 14 words to build a verse around. It was a difficult challenge met. If you haven't yet checked out Read Write Poem, it's well worth a look:

Cream colored canvas

Cream colored canvas
black dots not painted, crawling
beetle invasion

This abetting night

This abetting night
spills out, an indigo stain
my sins smudged inky

Lunar moth

A rather simple depiction of a lunar moth inspired by my poem Elixir.

Tweetku, Twaiku, Tweeku... how about Tweetanka?

The Twitterverse hasn't yet settled on a name for Tweeted Haiku, but that won't stop me from posting the 17 syllable mini-poems. Nor will it keep me from tooting my own horn about a most surprising development. Check out my "ranking" in this article at Chicago Now's Breaking Tweets Chicago: Top Haiku Twitter accounts in Chicago. Many thanks to Craig Kanalley for the honor.

It inspired the following haiku:

Slow-creeping, pink blush
false humility's dyed mask
smiles, overwhelming

Meanwhile, here's my attempt at the 5-7-5-7-7 structure of a tanka, which I tweeted yesterday in response to the word prompt "weary":

Mid-summer sunlight's
wavy, white radiation
fans glass-print petals
pushes shut moon-weary lids
burns a crimson path inward

Tweetku: The calendar turns...

The calendar turns
its astral spoked wheel blurring
seasonal palette

Learning from Randomness

This is another poetic exercise born of my Twittering. Through a fellow poet's tweeted stream, I discovered a Web app called Twitter Magnets. It's the Internet's version of the poetry game that used refrigerator magnets to build poems from a random selection of words.

I tried to use as many of the words and punctuation offered as I could without going over the 120-character limit. This is what I came up with:

soft yesterday of reproach, always present
picks cold heart
i growl glass,
two-fist embrace it.
flick needle?

I really liked some of the unusual word combinations it forced me to use. I liked them so much, in fact, I decided to build on the skeleton of that magnet exercise to create the following slightly longer poem.

Needle
By Francis Scudellari

A soft yesterday's sharp reproach,
always present,
pricks my calloused heart

I growl out glass
caught between gritted teeth
and two-fisted embrace it

Pulling the knot tight,
I flick this needle's glint
a spiked drop, acceptance

Tweetku?

Because Twitter imposes a 140 character limit, there are a lot of tweet-poets reviving the Japanese poetry forms of haiku, tanka and senryū. To see some good examples, just search on those tags at Twitter.

This new-fangled adaptation will probably rankle the literary purists, but they're the sort to always get rankled about something. I've tried my hand at writing a few of what I'll call tweetku — since I'm sure they don't rise to the level of haiku. They're a nice diversion. Back to longer form poetry soon.

Soft-breeze dawn voices
ripple curtains glowing rose
hint at worlds beyond

This ripe, round moment
dangles tantalizing, close
then shrivels, too soon

Ripe plum once bitten
sits wound-up on back-stairs rail
offering to birds?

Cajoling bird songs
backed by dissonant chorus
five fan blades abuzz

Both Sapped and Nourished

There's a prickly feeling tucked deep inside this verse, but I've camouflaged it well enough to confuse its prey.

Nectars
By Francis Scudellari

Sprinkled in her snowy cup
there's a powder-sweet wish
for this passing shade
who with shifting stripes, dappled shell,
and feather-creased skin
fractures the dawn
in a soft-buzzed calling
to sip at nectars
tendered, nestled deep
in conic blossoms...

Will he suckle to nourish,
and tasting such sweet water
abide the day?

Then with whimsied leaving
his barbed tail twitches and jumps
as he dashes away
in careless seeking
distant other's untapped blooms
and these supple leaves
once so pertly pricked,
grown thick in wing-beat light,
droop and trail
after the lilting dusk...

Till a stemming sap
recalls her blush
to the morning he visits again.

Two Souls, Hunched Up

This is part eight of my mythic poem-cycle Two Souls, Twin Lives. You can check out the other seven parts by clicking here (note that they're listed in reverse order, most recent first).

VIII. Hunched
By Francis Scudellari

Willful drawn, down to clay
ruts choked with grass,
edged by berried brambles
whose thorny twists
bend to a lowering sky
as its grumble
stabs open wounds, gushing
muddy instants
to puddle, pool, swell, swallow
the black-humped plains,
and force he-she up, hunched
to scour trappings
of craggy, gouged rock skins

Magic potions

This poem is about tranformation, or the desire for it. It's a bit magical in tone, as it's informed by the Alchemist's concept of the Elixir of Life (with special thanks to fellow poet Jemfyr for the inspiration).

Elixir
By Francis Scudellari

This Elixir of light,
distilled from lime-green tears
of lunar moth
moved by the monthly turning
of his mistress'
full and silvery back,

drops dripped from ducts
to vial, to tongue
and is sealed with pursed lips
that push back the fluorescent
waves washing down
to stir a still larval heart...

stretching, yawning, a flame.
Dancing particles
of iridescent powder
carried on one thousand tiny wings
twirl back through my mouth
to enliven a sleep-thicketed forest

with the fluttered speaking
of her name

Feeding, frenzied

Don't ask me about meaning. There is no meaning. There are only the words...

Faithful Feeders
By Francis Scudellari

It's not the sweetness
coursing crimson inside
that these faithful feeders seek
drawn darkly
by the midnight blue
currents we wade across

Nor is it the pink flesh
of tensed muscles
closely cupped to catch
a filtered fire
slow-dripped till clear
through the morning's lucent mist

No, they feast instead
at noon's shallow edges
with greased hands that tear spines
from fathomless tomes
of hobbled scriptures
to suck the pasty marrow

Head like a turnip

Here is a drawing I did to illustrate my poem Rutabaga.

Two Souls, Hollowed out

Here's the seventh part of my poem cycle Two Souls, Twin Lives (the previous six can all be found on my eponymous Website).

VII. Hollow
By Francis Scudellari

Fed by over-ripe knowing
the cloying tastes
of acid hued morsels
shrivel and blanch
squeezed by hasty, restless
new appetites
and she-he's clasping hands
let seconds slip
tumbling to hollow thump
moss covered mounds
whose stretched backs pull the nose
with aromas
of more savory blood

An untimely Tinkering

Another poem that takes its inspiration from an off-hand tweet, which was a failed attempt at observational humor.

Tinkering
By Francis Scudellari

Finger tips splattered and smudged
by a black oozing
from this vain
pursuit that litters
his workshop:
white, crimped-edge faces
torn and strewn...
bent, clutched hands
hacked and slid...
rusted spring innards
uncoiled and rolled...
among the chipped teeth
snapped off old gears
that he's stripped smooth
grunting untimely breaths
as he takes apart
countless clocks
tinkering with mechanisms
to invent a knob
to dial it all back
the swing, sway and grind
that spins his life forward
in an ever gathering
haste

To the bots, with love

This is a bit of silliness I wrote to honor the "spam bots" who at times seem more interested in reading my poetry than a human audience. As it's meant to be a twisted sort of love poem, the title is a play on the word aubade.

Au bots
By Francis Scudellari

I tender confessions
of the not so, secret
infatuations:
these bots, those little bits
of code much maligned
who so tartly
tease us in human veneers
falsely lashed
to digital spines
they drag and drop
as they bump along
tangling the silken strands
of a Web that snatches
our writhing lives and loves
while weaving its own

They're always found out
these bots, those bits
so poorly exposed
by the hairy Nets and white gloves
that wipe things clean
till new ones emerge
in viral vestments
and insinuate themselves
into irreverent streams
leaving: us to pray
(their infection becomes cure);
me to opine
(their next dawning lack);
as I open up my veins
and draw them back in

A Starlit Poem

Trying to keep up the frantic poetic pace... this piece began its life as an odd bit of observation embeded in one of my Twitter posts. Sometimes an interesting phrase will burrow its way into my mind and compel me to expand upon the theme.

Mothering Starlight
By Francis Scudellari

The endless starlight streams
down from ever's sprawling heaven
unseen

but feeling our atoms
flutter, a son's fond eagerness
recharged

bouncing, stretching, burning
to touch mothering particles
fallen

connections to distance,
memories of our own birthing
untimed

Rutabaga, a sweet-bitter end

This is the conclusion of my poem Rutabaga (here are Part I and Part II). I'll post the full version, perhaps slightly amended, to my Website soon.

Rutabaga
By Francis Scudellari

III.

And run up against blunted tip
of his hooked nose cast aslant,
drooping down over broken-lines
of brown, wormy lips with edges
that snag on tilted-maggot teeth
and gobble up the urge to smile
he keeps sealed in the cramped cloister
of black-white habits, his nun's heart

Where he now pulls stiff-backed photos
just stolen from a local shop,
lifting to tattered light reveal
the blue noted compositions
that sing of men so neatly garbed
in fair-taut skin and glad-rag years --
the polished, scripted texts he studies
to re-limn life in pleasing shapes

A Smile, this time in words

This poem owes its title and its stylistic playfulness to my last drawing. It's a bit backwards to write the poem after its illustration, but I'm an unconventional sort.

A Smile
By Francis Scudellari

A smile,
left unguarded
against the vices
of mischievous
and prying fingers
can be twisted
at the corners
or tugged or pulled
or even pinched
till drooping
in the middle
it becomes
a mouth full
of strange bits,
put all together:
indifferent

Smile

I admit indulging a bit of my childish side in creating this cartoonish face, but it makes me smile and the process relaxes my mind so forgive me a guilty pleasure. It reminds me of Joker from Batman if he were genetically modified with a Brussels sprout's DNA. The apparent happiness lightens the obvious freakishness.

Cut to the middle of my Rutabaga

Here's the middle part of my poem Rutabaga (the first part is here). Its ending is still vaguely shaped, but coming together. I always wonder if I rush to the finish of these.

Rutabaga
By Francis Scudellari

II.

Pushing him on over-turned pail
to begin a costumed hour's stare
at the filthy, rag-wiped middle
of his lean hut's filmy mirror
giving it back the reddish glow
of his rheumy and pinched eyes
so deeply tucked in the pockets
of his un-swept bristle-brush brows

His tooth-torn nails tracing features
dully scooped out rather than carved
from the opaque and spongy flesh -
a sickly root's yellowish white;
its deep ridges marked by dense maps
of blackened constellations:
the oblong blotches, bumps and moles
that pimple rippling, stubbled cheeks

Two Souls, Focused

After a long interlude, here's the next installment of my poem cycle Two Souls, Twin Lives (although I may change that name). You can read the previous five poems on my eponymous Website.

VI. Near sight
By Francis Scudellari

He-she shed circling lives
as they build bulk
and with nimbler digits
clutch airy roosts
where they're kept ill company
by sly creatures
who slip between branches
to spit and spell
old tales of mimicked fruit
and poisoned tongues
that transfix keen focus
on the too near
while long ago lessens

New vegetables

This is the first part of my latest-poem in progress — Rutabaga. It's also the 700th post of this blog, which is a milestone of sorts (insert self-congratulatory back slap here). I still have more installments of my poem Two Souls to post, plus a new drawing called Smile. I do tend to get easily sidetracked.

Rutabaga
By Francis Scudellari

I.

In a loose fit hood, he hides
his big, rutabaga head
plus a too-close-tucked secret
whose pouty, bent-lip outlines
you might spy while skulking late
in dimly lit alleyways
and assume the dastardly
not knowing his wishful theft

Only as a half-hinged door
pushes the night behind him
does he lift the thick gray wool
and scratch his crown's screwed-up stem
of patchy brown leaves that flop
and fall over bulbous back
to the spur of a chin knocked
crooked by time and man's hands

Trying to keep things simple...

In my current mood, simple and reflective are the proper forms of expression. The title of this piece was actually inspired by a dream.

In it, someone who I don't know called me on the phone to recite a poem called "Linger Back" that I had written and they found touching. Of course I can't recall the words of the dream poem, but I think the sentiment is the same.

Linger Back
By Francis Scudellari

Linger back
a few short moments
with me,
soft-edged times
when life is simple,
happy
or seems, so
stay, don't race ahead
just yet
to certain
futures, we both know
won't be

Swarms

By Francis Scudellari

Swarms, swarms
everywhere
birds, toads
the swarms
of bees
of ants
of thoughts
that something is
not right

Recasting Alice

This is a poem that started out as a Twitter post, but grew into something quite different. I offer it to you with all due apologies to Lewis Carroll, whose Alice I've always admired and whose credit I've repaid poorly here.

My Alice
By Francis Scudellari

Her short, wintry youth,
a fair tale's ending
she windy followed
at the blue-white tip
of a buttoned nose
reaching this fine point
to a bent-fork path
where she stands, then sits
on the glassy edge
of iced-over pond
and looks less than dives
in, to grow unfrocked
by wonders re-versed

Immaterial
things, once-thought, awkward,
perhaps too-weighty,
are pulled thin, stretched tall
and golden snake give
her skeletons form,
a key gently grasped
that she inward turns
unclocking spun minds
to lithely chime up,
out of darkly twists
where they holey lay
fixed, for her "so-long"

Two Souls: Flabby mimics

After the last long-winded and prosaic post about the movie FRESH, a return to sparser verse and the next installment of my poem Two Souls. I may yet however revisit the idea of "monocultures" within a different context.

Two Souls, Twin Lives
By Francis Scudellari

V. Flabby mimics

She-he, un-mated flames
half to fading,
slip on fatted layers,
flabby mimics
of trees' up-craning trunks,
pained limbs that twist
when ten bony barbs burst
through soft pink nubs,
new claws they file against
rough-surfaced stones
to climb the greening heights,
feast on sweet-meats,
and sugary speed the cycles

FRESH: Return farming to its roots

Last night, I had the pleasure of watching a thought-provoking new food documentary: FRESH by ana Sofia joanes. There are two characteristics that make the film particularly interesting.

First, there is its depiction of a new breed of farmers from around the country who combine the latest technology with age-old farming techniques in trying to combat industrialization and bring some sanity back to the way we produce our food.

Second, there's the fact that the film currently lacks a distributor and showings of it are being organized at a grass-roots level by community members who have been energized around the new food politics through movies like Food, Inc. and books such as The Omnivore's Dilemma (authored by Michael Pollan, who is featured in the film).

Here in my Rogers Park neighborhood, the film was shown to a packed house at the No Exit Cafe, a venue known more for its musical theater performances. The collection of both already committed food activists and the more recently mobilized information seekers, were drawn to the event thanks largely to promotion done on social networking services such as Twitter and Facebook.

The film's appeal definitely lies in its hopeful message. Early on, we meet Joel Salatin whose father rejected the best advice of both government and corporate agricultural experts about how to best increase productivity on the over-exploited, cheap plot of land he had bought. He instead pursued methods of farming that were informed by Nature's own patterns, rather than bottom-line calculations and economies of scale.

One of the images that stuck with me from the film's opening is Salatin watching over a hog as it joyfully rolls in the mud to cool off. Contrast that with the penned-in pigs of industrial farms, which are kept in such close-quarters that they have to have their tails snipped off.

Carrying on in his father's footsteps, Salatin tells us how he allows his animals to express their natures; or as he describes it, a cow's "cowness" and a chicken's "chickenness." Cows, being herbivores, are meant to graze on grass (not grain mixed with animal byproducts) and they're also meant to do so while being constantly herded (not stuck in stalls). Chickens have beaks and claws in order to root through the fields seeking out larvae for food.

In keeping with those Nature-given qualities, Salatin runs his cows over grasslands and then brings the chickens in after them to peck over the herd's leavings. He describes how this labor "honors" the chickens, giving them a valuable role in the life of the farm beyond the laying of eggs. It certainly benefits them (and us the consumer) much more than the cramped cages and beak-removal they experience at most industrial-scale farms in the United States.

Pollan picks up on the point of our unnatural food practices by discussing the concept of "monocultures." He points out that Nature dislikes a lack of variety in species, which has become the norm in our agriculture. In fact, the plagues of pests and disease that afflict such production can be directly attributed to Nature's attempts to defeat the monocultures that our industrial farms create by planting undifferentiated crops on wides swaths of land and by housing the same breeds of animals in over-crowded complexes.

This gives the truth to the lie that farming needs these pesticides and antibiotics in order to increase productivity. They actually rely on the chemicals in order to maintain their unnatural practices, and to feed the bottom lines of the large corporations who sell them, and the others that profit from single-species production. Such a system also turns animal waste into a pollutant, rather than the nutrient it is in an organic cycle, creating an unnecessary social cost.

There are other hidden costs built into our industrial methods of farming, such as driving down the wages of the workers involved at all levels of production and decreasing the nutritional value of the food sold. Not only are these practices unsustainable, but we learn later in the film that statistics actually show mid-sized organic farms to be more productive than their industrial counterparts.

This just touches the surface of the interesting people and ideas you'll discover in the film; another is Will Allen, who runs Growing Power, Inc. in Milwaukee where he tries to win new converts to sustainability by demonstrating the benefits of composting and urban farming.

To experience it all for yourself, see the documentary. You can find out where it's playing, and how to organize a local showing, by visiting the Fresh the movie Website.

Io, Mid-transformation

This is the second illustration I've done for my poem Argus & Io. It depicts the nymph Io as both woman and cow. I like the way I interpreted her bovine side much better.

Newspapering, and self-promotion

As I may have mentioned on this blog before, I've been working with some friends to get a small newspaper off the ground here in Rogers Park, the Chicago community where I live. We're still growing and improving after 7 months of learning on the job.

In the current issue, which hits local newsstands tomorrow but is on the Web now, I contributed an essay of sorts that I find quite amusing (yes, shameless self-promotion to follow). It deals with the joys of jury duty and draws from my literary past. It's called One Day, One Trial, One Bounced Check. Here's a small taste, but please do read the whole thing if you find the tease worthy:

On a crisp early morning last April, I made the trek down to the Daley Center to perform a civic duty that fills most Chicagoans with more dread than pride. I had been summoned by the Court to sit through a process of jury selection that seems patterned after the most angst-inspiring metaphors of our best existential writers.

Our County of Cook has christened its system “One Day, One Trial” based on the fact that you need to endure either a single day of rejection or the more dire sentence of empaneling on a single trial’s jury. The solitariness of the moniker is fitting, as the whole experience engenders feelings of isolation and anxiety.

Two Souls: New Hair

Continuing on where my poem Two Souls takes me, this is the fourth installment. I've decided to subtitle each part. In case you haven't been following along, the first three parts are I. Exile, II. Slow Drift, and III. Fleshy.

Two Souls, Twin Lives
By Francis Scudellari

IV. New Hair

On nests spread far between
parallel paths
These two of never's name,
a restless lie,
let time's shortened shadow
fall across bald,
scaled shoulders, its darkness
seeding new hair
and cunning to endure
seasons become
changeling, drawn to leafy coves
where they gobble
shoots that taste of lost light

Two Souls, Fleshy Promises

This is the third installment of my latest poem, which I think may grow past my initial imaginings. The developing story is gaining complexity in my mind.

Two Souls, Twin Lives
By Francis Scudellari

III.

Then removed, with miles lapsed,
separate sames
each stubby-leg crawl up
on greening clumps
of floated rock and root
that warm harbor
creatures also exiled,
bumping along
blindly to seek their like,
prodded past sleep
by hints of shapeless eterns
traded for fleets
of fleshy promises

The illusion of time

Catching up on my New Yorker reading, I came across a passage from Salman Rushdie's wonderful short story In the South that held particular resonance within the context of my previous post on Biocentrism. I'm likely assigning it a different meaning than the author intended, but regardless of that, it's a lovely piece of writing.

In the front yard they paused briefly by the golden-shower tree that stood there. They had watched it grow from a tiny shoot to its present sixty-foot grandeur. It had grown quickly, and, though they did not say so, this rapid growth had disturbed them, suggesting, as it did, the speed of the passing of the years. The Indian laburnum: that was another name for it, a name among many names. It was konrai in their own, southern language, amaltas in the tongue of the north, Cassia fistula in the language of flowers and trees. “It has stopped growing now,” Junior said, approvingly, “having understood that eternity is better than progress. In the eye of God, time is eternal. This even animals and trees can comprehend. Only men have the illusion that time moves.”

Briefly back to the philosophical

Interrupting my in-progress poem Two Souls, I want to make a more-than-mental note of a couple ideas brought to my recent attention. Each hearkens me back to the series of posts I began a few months ago (and unfortunately dropped due to distractions) regarding the necessity for a new 21st Century Ethos.

I'll try to incorporate both into the continuation of that discussion, which I hope to pick up again very soon.

First, there's a very interesting article in June's Wired Magazine, which features a discussion of the New New Economy. The article is called "The New Socialism: Global Collectivist Society Is Coming Online." Its title is sure to provoke a negative response from Americans who for sixty years have been taught to recoil at the mere mention of the "S" word. Getting beyond that first reaction, it's very much worth reading for its examination of the new forms of social media and how they are creating a greater tendency toward and preference for collaboration and collective action.

The next idea that caught my fancy is the concept of Biocentrism that a friend referenced in a Tweet last week. Below is a passage pulled from Wikipedia that lays out the main points, but I encourage you to read the full article on Biocentrism:

According to Robert Lanza biocentrism has seven principles.

1. What we perceive as reality is a process that involves our consciousness. An "external" reality, if it existed, would by definition have to exist in space. But this is meaningless, because space and time are not absolute realities but rather tools of the human and animal mind.

2. Our external and internal perceptions are inextricably intertwined. They are different sides of the same coin and cannot be divorced from one another.

3. The behavior of subatomic particles, indeed all particles and objects, is inextricably linked to the presence of an observer. Without the presence of a conscious observer, they at best exist in an undetermined state of probability waves.

4. Without consciousness, "matter" dwells in an undetermined state of probability. Any universe that could have preceded consciousness only existed in a probability state.

5. The structure of the universe is explainable only through biocentrism. The universe is fine-tuned for life, which makes perfect sense as life creates the universe, not the other way around. The "universe" is simply the complete spatio-temporal logic of the self.

6. Time does not have a real existence outside of animal-sense perception. It is the process by which we perceive changes in the universe.

7. Space, like time, is not an object or a thing. Space is another form of our animal understanding and does not have an independent reality. We carry space and time around with us like turtles with shells. Thus, there is no absolute self-existing matrix in which physical events occur independent of life.

Two Souls, Exhausted

This is the second part of my latest in-progress poem. I finished composing it while sleep-deprived, so it may not make much sense.

Two Souls, Twin Lives
By Francis Scudellari

II.

Their arced escape route etched
with quick silver
on velvet, ends tap'ring
to finger tips
that will trace a path back
one day, but now's
distance exhausted, they
splash in blue soup,
swirled till cooled in a cup
of moth'ring clay,
and, nourished on forgetting,
grow buoyant limbs
to slowly drift apart

Two souls, at first birthing

This is the first part of a poem that I'm currently working on. I'm not yet sure how large it will become, but I'm expecting at least three more parts. 

Two souls, twin lives
By Francis Scudellari

I.

Two souls, twin lives conceived
and long dwelling
within the mingling storm
of light and dust
that delicate danced 'round
goddess sisters'
gaseous split-crown heads
until cast out,
paired molten tears spit-shed
in the blinking
of ageless eyes, not angry
but grown weary
with the weight of shared lids

Many-eyed giant

This is my attempt to depict Argus, although I'm quite a few eyes short. I think that I erred on the silly side with this one.

720 Clocks, in full measure

This is the full poem that I teased in my last post. It's a long one, which I'll use as my excuse for it taking some time to finish. Please let me know if you can easily understand what's going on in the narrative.

720 Clocks
By Francis Scudellari

Seven hundred nineteen
clocks plus one new-bought she
loving cups in pale hands
before it takes its time-
saved place among pieces
atop two dozen shelves--
blond-skinned particle board
framed by squat book cases
that dust-free stand before
her, patient for this day

Clocks with wood-grain finish,
cased chrome, or dyed plastic;
topped with never clanked bells
or kid's cartoon figures--
an endlessly spun chase
round faces, oval, square
her favorite tight sealed
within black cat's belly;
tick-waved paw, twitch-tocked tail
each short minute stroking

It's a lucky number
A very special time
When you can make a wish
For anything you want, and
it will come true , some day...

The mothering low words
circling back, she surveys
her measures collected
for four and twenty years
stretching from right to left
Each now properly wound,
batteries freshly charged
to call up magic twice
this day, filling it full
of her wished for minutes

Whether old-time displayed
by mismatched bandy lengths--
pointed, ornate, and spare
that sweep ever forward
through inward notched halos;
or mechanical marked
between flipping black tiles;
or more modern counted
by re-posed bits of eight
light arranged from behind

Oh. But is it the time
that's very magical,
or the sight of numbers
all lined up, standing tall,
each pointing at the sky?

Her childish answer swings
upon her as she twists
the gray ridged, clicking knob
of the purchased blue cube
set one minute before
its right-neighbor to form
a well-tuned chorus of
seven hundred twenty
clocks to barbed-ripple read
eleven: eleven

This last one pushed into
its first awaiting slot
she sits, slow scans the shelves,
a day's worth of wishes;
the same whispered, wanting
words that she will repeat
one thousand, four hundred
forty times, in constant
chanted hope for lives lost
by four and twenty years

Another poetic tease

Yes, this is one of my lame posts where I tell you how busy I am and promise you the world if you'll just wait for it.

I do have several poems in mid-birth, and a number of other story ideas that are still only a twinkling in the eye of conception. I just need to find a life's time to sit at the computer and bang them all out.

Until the genius grant money comes rolling in, however, ample writing time isn't going to happen on a consistent basis. So, as a holdover I give you a tiny taste of the poem furthest along in my queue: 720 Clocks.

round faces and square

ornate and spare

one favorite embedded in

a black cat's belly
with tick-waved paws

and twitch-tocked tails

Fractured Foot, finally finished

Here is the colored and shaded iteration of my drawing Fractured Foot. Because of the more muted color choices, I don't think it's that strikingly different from the nude version that I posted a couple weeks back. It's meant to be a companion illustration to my poem Footsteps.

Argus & Io: Birthing a conclusion

This is the conclusion to my poem Argus & Io. It's a bit more open-ended than the original myth, but I always prefer ambiguity over certainty. Visual art next, so stick around.

Argus & Io
By Francis Scudellari

IV.

She,
twisted
metal dragged
in clanked tangle
behind, unguarded
ahead, halting first steps
toward un-purposed
paths that spoke out
a blurred wheel
beyond
her
sentry's
fallen-trunk
malodorous
conjuring descent
of cloud effacing pests
tasked by sky-seated
mistress to goad
Io on
knowing
words
non-sensed
by veined beats
a buzzed babble
of wing-confused flight
that leads still too-cowed thoughts
in mad-apparent
earthbound wander
to find love
birthing
time

Argus & Io: The watcher foiled

Continuing on, this is the penultimate part of my latest poem. I hope to have it completed within the next few days.

Argus & Io
By Francis Scudellari

III.

He
a-fog
spies early
morning ride in
rosy on curled backs
of a low-rising mist
pushed by one errand-
spelling breeze's
deceitful
lyrics
blow-
whispered
to drowse with
threaded tunes spun
by humming needle-
sharp leaves, olive clatter
drummed as owning twigs
knock, lulling shut
his hundred
eyes, close-
kept
charge loosed
in whiting
flash, thunder's clap
and Argus quick-caught
by writ-mischief's lean hands
foiling-wrapped within
tight, re-coiled tales
his never
slipping
free

Argus & Io, halfway home

This is the second part of my poem Argus & Io. It focuses on the female half of that mythical dyad. I don't know if familiarity with that story's details improves or lessens the impact of the my words...

Argus & Io
By Francis Scudellari

II.

She
ill-changed
by light, blind
rage-punishment
unearned for baring
another's intentions,
his wont of too much
never sought for
or seeking
her was-
nymph's
once so
sleek, well-drawn
lines pulled wide, smudged
till broken, transformed
to a dark spotted bulk
she awkward carries
on four legs, mind
always led
circling
back
tethered
to a gnarled
soil-clutching tree
with taut-stretched chain's forged
gray, heavy iron links
slow dragged, in-cutting
circumscribed arcs
through bitter,
narrow
blades

Argus & Io, Part One

This is the first part of my new poem inspired by another classical myth. To read a little background on the story that informed it, check out the Wikipedia article on Argus Panoptes (all-seeing Argus).

Argus and Io
By Francis Scudellari

I.

He
put on
cocky watch
towering stands,
long-reaching throws off
shadows of square-cut limbs
loose-draped in rough skin
to guard against
dawn's thick air
creeping,
chilled
his own
flagging strength
braced by sipped fire
sharpening fifty
paired eyes that monstrous ring
his still, uncrowned head
each visited
by just one
moment's
sleep
well-timed
in rolling
blinked-lid cascade
to stop-frame project
scenes from dewy-green fields
keeping a beast for
the jealousy
of too quick-
fading
robes

Flibber T. Gibbet

I don't know exactly how I'll use it yet, or whether it's even very original, but I'm considering building a series of short verses around a recurring character named Flibber T. Gibbet.

I'm envisioning a spritely young woman with the general appearance of my Feeling Green drawing. This is all a very sudden inspiration, so it's still percolating. I may even use her for something else entirely.

A naked foot first

I've been a bit busy and haven't set aside the time to finish up my latest drawing. I thought it might be interesting, however, to show off what one of my sketches looks like before I begin adding the colors.

Here's my "Fractured Foot" in the nude. I like the starkness of it, so I'm glad I can capture it for posterity here before altering it on the page.

Piecing together scraps

This is the first poem promised in the last post, albeit a bit tardy. I may yet alter it some, but I think it's mostly finished.

Stunning ephemera
By Francis Scudellari

His head open, unfolds...

Silk-tongue blossoms
lip-pressed snugly
between shuffled pages
with bindings worn
by salted drops
their liquid words loosed; a splashing
of seeded gusts

the handy, clipped moments...

Beading sounds dripped,
funneled, threaded
on dangled, thinning strings
that stretch too far
prismatic break
in many faceted spilling
of feathered light

black-white, pasted faces...

Eye-caught baubles
picked up and tucked
in pocketing cocoons
that ripen at
random ages
and burst forth in a clattering
of flitful wings

all collected, thought lost

His life's timing
a frayed patchwork
of ephemeral he
tattered-edge weaves
stitching a mind,
full of disconnected dreams joined
to memories

Teasing works in progress

Because my creative process is taking longer than expected, I thought I'd write a quick tease post about the work that's currently in progress. A poem I'm calling Stunning Ephemera is being built around the following lines:

Eye-caught baubles
picked up and tucked
in pocketing cocoons
that ripen at random ages
and burst forth with a clattering
of flit-full wings

The title is a phrase that quite literally popped in my head while lying in bed one morning. I have no idea what prompted it, but it struck me as interesting. Due to some strange serendipity I experienced around the writing of it, finishing this one is my current highest priority.

The second poem, Argus, is much less further along, but it's another of my attempts to modernize the characters from a classic myth. The idea of the watcher with one-hundred eyes has always captivated me.

Finally, I've begun a drawing inspired by my last poem Footsteps.

Footsteps, reworked

I re-worked the fragment from my last post, and I think this is how it will stay... a bit simple, but I like it.

Footsteps
By Francis Scudellari

A vision of footsteps
long ago's seeming faded
now beckoning, to-be retraced
with a trembling, unsteady finger

What if I was started tomorrow
anew by going back in time
to re-place myself then, first,
most, altar the future

Fragmentary pondering

While pondering things beyond my ken, perhaps too much, the following lines came to me. For now it's just a fragment, but I may some day soon expand on it.

I have a vision, of footsteps
long ago's seeming faded
now beckoning, to be retraced
with a trembling but steady finger

What If I were to,
tomorrow, start anew
by going back in time
and re-place myself, first

Feeling green

My latest drawing... not much else to say about it.

Another dream, another poem

This is another of my poems very loosely inspired by a dream. It's been taken out of that sleepy context, if dreams can be said to really have context.

Mismatched Messenger
By Francis Scudellari

A mismatch-making messenger --
its painted Kewpie doll's head
crudely glued to dovish body --
she frees from a tinfoil-wrapped cage

The bipolar-white wings outspread
to affect a slow-creeping glide
as this at-odds stranger descends
in clockwork-countering spirals

Its too pretty, rounded features
tooled on delicate ceramic
sharpen in edgy marked contrasts,
drawing never closer to me

The lifeless blue star-speckled eyes
string-pulled open by black bar brows;
the twin, red-dotted cheeks pushing
pursed lips not meant to kiss, but peck

Wire-thin, coiled pink talons grasping
a tightly rolled note, loose string-tied
and filled with her mock-poison words
penned at the tip of flaming tongue

The latest targeted missive
that it so precisely drops to
sweet trickle and prod me onward
in love bitterly imagined

Illustrative strangeness

This cartoonish portrait was meant to illustrate the line "flopped gold curls mopping a wide pink brow" from Oranges for Three Loves. It obviously took a bit of a twisted turn, but I'm growing fond of these imaginary faces.

Oranges, concluded with a dream

Finally, here is the last part of my poem Oranges for Three Loves (read the complete poem here). I may yet make some small changes to it, and please feel free to offer suggested tweaks. I should have another drawing or two based on it upcoming as well.

IV. Evening dreamed

As jagged-tooth fence-post's shadow lengthens,
a sudden unthinking appetite grows.
He grabs the last orange, gobbling it all
but a lone slick seed that sticks in his cheek

His magic seeming sadly lost, the kernel
he takes, finger-pushes it in topped soil,
then lays his head next to single-seed bed
and sleeps, drowsed by a soft-chirped serenade

That night, a tree sprouts of strange banded fruit;
perched among its branches, waking he spies
a fairy's green tossed locks, and dreamy she
with limpid hazel gaze smiles back at him