Poetry by Tom/Ms G
upon reflection…#1
in the looking glass
we thought we saw ourselves
juxtaposed left for right
we thought it was a simple thing
moving to our right and looking left
such a difference between
knowing and understanding
factuals versus wisdom
presumptive laws undermined by
quantum spectacles: up, down, color, and strange
in the paired proteins
only nine nucleotides/sides
wrighting and re-writing
promoting and negating chains of this and that
on a time line with an end point
in the looking glass
we fail our reflections
seeing what we want to see
as variable copying underwrites our replications
mis-spelling our inheritance
addicted to complexity
brains feeding on thought
squirrel –cage repetitions:unity against duality
religion versus cracker-barrel philosophies
adding up and falling apart
internal/external ecologies
continuing evolution
transcriptive errors build
our bodies sag, mind flutters
seeking renewal
from microscopes to telescopes
mirrors mesmerize our sight
fractal light silhouettes our mythic mysteries
while our confabulated facts
grin from within the looking glass
© tom odegard 8/13/05
upon reflection… # 2
by accident sky glazed shop windows caught us
reflecting my mother’s and my Aunt’s faces
that’s my father’s sister; with rouge, lipstick,
too much powder, and a pillbox hat with veil
they blend and stare into my astonished gaze
what irony: my mother’s wished for daughter,
looking back at her second only son
unacknowledged in her lifetime
suspected only in his private dreams
residing in still water, in reflecting surfaces
are we the dreams that stuff are made from
projections from narcissus’s adoring looks
shaping us in reversals of the way things are
inside the spirit world, some say “gloom”, or
what physicist’s invoke as antimatter universe?
in the scheme of things, egocentric posturing
propounds images of self, appliquéd on others
thence mirrored back with emotions we nourish
accusing the others rather than ourselves
calling wrath upon their innocent reflection
in a life as hidden daughter, outward son
our yin/yang wisdom frightens men and women
intuitions inappropriate from our wingéd mercury
dim reflected trauma children from the other side
“too much information” they cry
“don’t look so deep, and please don’t tell”
“let us see as in the mirror so we may construct
that which we wish for rather than what’s there”
and we are come full circle to Aunt Hedda, Mom,
staring in amaze at nephew niece/daughter son
therefore we do not window shop,
fearing exposure and repercussive otherness
within/out ourselves, our friends, all of us
dissociated from our childhood histories,
hiding from our long lost love: our reflection
© tom odegard 3/03/06
Upon reflection… #3
there was always one voice outstanding
among the welter of whispered admonitions
she was always stronger than the others
firm with a strong sensual moonlit tide
and I let her guide my weirding tongue
she was a she before I self identified as him
aligning me with mother, mother’s friends,
their slips and hose calling cricket tunes
to my child skin, my narcissisus ‘flection
and thru her I was as fem as them…
in other times, ethnicities, civilizations,
we became the intercessionary guides
to reversed living, underworlds, and
mirrored spiritlands, laying on our hands
healing with a look, a mental wandering
today we are cast aside as freak, or
something to save a Doctorate, provide
a funding source for studies aimed at cures
or worse, prevention, throughout the world
or surgical normalization to make us fit
make us fit with hormones, steroids, gut
grafted into false vagina, imaginary penis
thus fantasies of overeducated minds
propose to “save” our differences by
terrifying “for our own goodisms”
and didn’t we just save our woeful world
from molestation, cruelty, abusive discipline
that turned a German Nation into holocaust?
Yet now, with mutilation we will turn a child
into a thing we want rather than what we have?
Gods be praised my multi-self remained hidden
my condition unrecognized without while within
we grew a panoply of selves to grope our way
into an evolutionary path, transforming us
step by step, from babe to child to teen to
young man lusting for his true self: woman
to meld selves into serial monogamies
and thence our wondrous now bound
together as “not two” that Eastern “nom”
for deity which recognizes everyone as God.
© tom odegard 3/03/06
I am that
imagine…
a foetal brain bathed in estrogen
turns female after normal genetic
decisions have built a male body… she,
swimming in the red-warm dark beneath
the beating heart of her unsuspecting mother
listening to family arguments thru womb walls
sensing sans understanding the disconnect
waiting in her future…
imagine…
she comes to know herself in a
family that calls her "John";
pushes hockey stick machismo
as appropriate for rising young men
living in their neighborhood; sister and
brothers devising exquisite tortures
to offend, poison, and bend her
growing feminine mystery.
imagine…
coming of age in jean, jackets and boots,
in gymnasiums full of cruel boys, and
oblivious girls, fighting a body that
in no way fits her conscious wish, her
unconscious dreams; every minute
her brain strives against
the body's energies, the penile drive,
those undesired erectile activities…
imagine…
seeking masculine sanity
in military uniforms, black belts,
sniper and commando training, desperate
search for camaraderie among men at arms
while fashion, color sense, connectivity,
empathic feeling searches for vulva, breast, hips,
a kind word, the proper pronoun,
social acceptance, emotional civility,
imagine…
a life filled up with contradiction
mental outlook versus physical aspiration
inside up/out, routs of misinterpretation
becoming suppressed yinful contagions
of grief, rage, lust, love, compassion
hoping against global and personal history
for companionship to support her
required surgical/medical transformation…
imagine…
the flared bell curve of gender;
flat lines reaching toward pure male/female
hardly a statistical blip at each extreme
most everyone rising/falling/searching
among viewpoints thru odd proclivities
opposite/same/intersex so secret intimacies
for love, trust, respectful congruency within
stabilities of partners or particular friends.
imagine…
a society of humans, accepting "other" as
identical to self; bearing witness
to the unity of life, mixed, matched,
burning with desire among infinite choices
ecstasies with random faults, sensuous design,
exquisite gentility happy to abide by a
universal etiquette: compassionate respect,
sincere support, and mutual consent.
imagine…
Parsifal
We can climb up syllabic conundrums
or kiss our sweet concepts goodbye
or march against every debasement
of Earth, Water, Fire, or Sky...
We can wander with wonder and wishes
or skip to the beat of DOW JONES
pretending we're richer than Midas
as we poison our brains with cell phones...
But the Sky absorbs all that we give it
as does Water, Fire, and Earth...
the accounting is cash on the minute
from the moment we climb in our berth...
If we dawdle with torpor and wishes
as we have for an eon or two
we'll be burned on the pyre of glitches
we've built up with pieces of truth.
So let's cease with our babble and construct
put down our sharp points and bleak jibes
this history of ours spans a minute
on the track of life's carnival ride.
Not separate are matter and spirit
nor distinct from life is the mind
and bodies are one with electrics
whether vegetable mineral or kind.
Come dance with the earth at the crossroads
there are forests and bridges nearby
the fete at the castle is waiting
for honorable guests to arrive.
Landings
We do 'em all the time...
in a manner of thinking, speaking,
romancing, acquaintanceship...
not so easily done anymore
not so practiced, so everyday normal as
when we talked to one another, face to face;
did foxtrots, waltzs, polkas, and
danced holding each other close
talked to one another in the barbershop
conversed likes and dislikes on dates,
in the car, at the beach, on a ferris wheel...
not so much of that anymore
with electronic go-betweens
chat rooms, e-mail. roam an' cell phones
video tape and jpgs
hardly a letter writer among us...
even at that we're barely literate
never literary...now, most everyone
can takeoff at the drop of a hat
but landings, ahh me, landings are hard
whether you're crabbing with pots, stars, or rings,
fishing with flasher, down riggers, or bait,
phone sex? Give me a break...
yeah... landings are just plain tough...
so much depends on nuance
the feel of the oncoming moment
tug of the line,
smooth steady lift from the water,
tone of voice, and the easy fluid moves
among speed, yaw, and pitch
wrapped up in the whole show
most of it over without time to think
we just don't get much practice
even when we're practicing
landings... 11/03
This Moment
Each moment is a seed planted...
millions of moments
millions of seeds
most will appear to yield futures
from whence their first cause will founder
in the opaqueness of memory
So futures are as malleable as
the mis-remembered past...
What a wonderful opportunity...
forget future
let go of past...
seize the moment
flow into no beginning,
no end...
We are leaves in torrents
or on swift smooth pools
On the water there are only edges
surfaces, eddies, waves, upwellings,
whirlpools, backwaters, wetlands,
bogs, and incipient meadows: moments
composting into futures
Leaves at a distance dance no meaning
we are content: calm in this moment
We consumate with poets in attendance
9/2003 Tom/Ms.G Odegard
Us "guys an' gals" have got to stay together...
there's so few of us who toe the line and keep up the pre tenses...
If only I could be as flamboyant as you my
sweet vision of artistic savviness
meeting in the mirror in the Beanery on an unexpected evening
flying the poetic speaking labyrinths with
that Minotaur and Pasiphae wishing her whole heart
for the bull again and Steve an' Us
We an' steve hunkering down under
the fusillade of too much dining room noise
no room for poetry
no room for service
no room.
It was serendipity plus,
it was textured like that,
meeting you and wishing you well
no I will not make it on Thursday
(that's Thor's day of course... and
He was an idiot with a hammer not much with girls I guess)
me, I'm more a Wodin's day or Sun Day or especially Frigga Day...
but the week has scrambled down to getting up at 7 to make a 9:45 am
flight out of sunny Oak Land into Drizzle wintry Pac. NW
all the I wishes aside you an' I
you an' we havin' each other on, on, on,
the oblivion express chuffing at the station
steam billowing from the overflow vents on the right side of the tracks
re-member the hurly burly of departing by rail
the "awwwlluhhh ahhhhboooArrrd love songs of black conductors lookin'
forward to pensioned off retirements
oh you love_gal… kissing miles of pell male
skin in dark venues seeking the light
while steve sings a mantra of chopinesque words
tumbling over themselves to reach the sea
We waiting pentup with our own worlds we hope
we can get out before we board the train
We relishing the minutes of wondrous everydays
the smoooth, on putting of clothes, off taking of same to slith/slithe
into crisp clean sheets our naked sins dancehappy in the dark
forgiving
we waiting for the bright stranger with
his bag of just right words ready
to launch us into the next next next love nest…
maybe it had nothing to do with serendipity…
maybe it was all written down in the master poets book long long ago
maybe and maybe not the happening of life is
simply that
this living planet's provender for in_ter_res_ting times
I wasn't ready for so much input
and you outputting all you were in song
for the dream of equal women/men,
every color strong in the right sans wrong.
Had we met before
fire work finales would have paled upon our bed of trust
you know I'm so much more at home with flesh
the slither skin of smooth against the run of fingerplays
and you too
we knew that right off the bat
you're fingering so ab so fucking lootely wright
precise on the button_holes of wood buttons, metal buckles,
cloth and flesh flutes drawing notes
from the dream of the original BANG!
And didn't we both say, eyes drowning in each other,
skin slip_sliding slushous among labials sucking our
unconsciousness up into the light of bright
didn't we both say – motoring home under the quasi dark sky –
the brighter stars rainbowing our thoughts
didn't we say, "Glory Hallellujah! In ecstatic We Oh!"
It was always true your love and mine ageless
not bound to trimesters, bimonthlies, semi-annuals,
perrenials, annuals, or other earthy divisions
not bound to comedies of taste, humoresques of moralities,
dramas of incessant yammer/natter
miss_takes and take_him-outs,
nor the endless guilt pleas of tragedy
no ma'am
our's is an outside love
a beyonder's pledge of deeper trust
a subterranean labyrinth of understanding
on the fringe of words.
Why do I go on? Why do we go on?
And you sitting for that instant completely clear
our father and lover present and totally absent
our lips mouthing, our mouths lipping
"Weloveyou-Iloveyoutoo"
Why do I go on? Why do We go on?
Even as the dark grows and
the apple slices dry
writing in your feminine voice.
It was another age ago,
you/I/we partners in a different scheme
you ascendent and I descendant as
here and now we might have been reversed genders,
because even then there was as much understanding
with/without the tapestry of skin to skin…
So this noise factory with puzzled barista
stands testament to the passing by of friends and
not so friends coming out of the wood_works
after a long summer of hiding…
while you and I exchange these vows
in the middle of the early fall,
in this glorious silent reflection
even as our respective compounding
fills up with the sound of Drumming…
In memory of our daughter, Anne (1960-08)
© tom odegard
I met my future daughter in '81,
she was 21 and I was 20 years ahead.
Back then, I hid my double nature from everyone,
though she would later say she'd read me from the start.
We were intimate at once, in an ICU in Lake Tahoe
a skiing accident - headfirst into a rock at Kirkwood Meadows
her mother and I were dating -
you know the drill, "your place or mine?"
The doctors reached us in the late evening and
we got there well before her father. Bon Chance.
I said I was her Dad and took command,
barring both tearful groaning parents from her room,
her head a basketball, her body restrained in a striker frame,
three days in a coma, doctors and nurses muttered
"one chance in a billion" I wouldn't have it -
"cut that shite" I said, "be positive or don't come in."
Seven days and they, not believing in miracles
stuck her feet with pins and she blew them away
pulling out the IV - demanding to be freed.
"No one," they said "has ever" I shut them up.
We were close without knowing until in this last decade
we understood - deep in that magical blood bone way
that daughters transform men into fathers - we did things together -
esp. art films, one night stand movies, zoo's and galleries,
sailing on our sloop SpeedQueen or Lake Merritt's rental boats,
we hugged a lot and we loved each other without conditions.
Abuse has so many faces - and the dead do not apologize -
in oh 3 her deranged grandmother on her father's side, died, to be followed
in oh six by that father who left undone the things he alone could do
and even though she'd consciously adopted us as her "real dad",
her grieving, angry child, raged on and coped in hidden ways.
In public she was ebullient and wise, stubborn, picky, and obtuse,
she suffered children meek or otherwise but never fools
and dictated when she might and how it had to look; she was for
choice, equal rights, peace, widespread prosperity; enjoyed ballet
modern dance, and supported her friends through their adversities.
Inside her home she stuffed herself and every room,
armoring her inner children against their fearful world.
We loved her actively and she gave as she received.
When we presented Tom/Ms. G she brought us skirts,
when we and her mother died in our 07 auto accident,
she called us back "Listen you three, you're not done yet ."
To her depressed mother and ourselves she spoke,
"It is what it is! Feeling sorry wastes precious time."
Now, we hear her speaking through our grief
telling us she did her best,
as we must do
blessing her life by living ours,
knowing she loved us and all her friends
as we and they loved her.
floating on ice © tom odegard 10/09
(this only took 49 years to write after the act)
Drunk in the dark
we tumbled down
drifts of snow to lie
facing huge sky
on lake ice
Stars stumbled above
amid light filled dust
or was it sand on the dark
matter – omigod “no matter!”
we uproared from frozen water
hobbled up on stalwart shoulders
we rose a thousand feet
to heap among friends’ fired
roasty toasty cheeks, hips, and lips
melting our star-full mind
now we share memories:
snow clad walls and ice
milkyway studding the sky
volcanic crater’s white expanse
bonfire, booze, and bibulous friends
we were drunk in the dark
tumbled down to
to thrust face into sky
lying still on ice
we are floating on Crater Lake
TWO for Intersex… © tom/ms.g (aka tom odegard) 10/09
One:
We met at a Sushi Bar,
oh my, unlimited sashimi,
tempura, not so great spring rolls,
plenty of beer, and jabber, jabber.
Four bodies and six minds bizzy, bizzy,
with their personnas cutting up
their oddities uncloaked
everything they thought, or thanked,
“out”
“far out” some might say,
but for us it was a brightsome
toothsome time to speak,
“My God, how far we’ve come…
to find our other, each and each,
and join them now yours and mine
and thereby be ours and in this moment
one.”
Two:
Steak and trez leche cake
spinach salad and potato salad too
we four plus two
took up where we’d last left off
teasing out each other’s secrets
the wherewithall we had or didn’t
everywhichway, “tri-sexual” we’d said,
forget hetero, and bi – we’d try anything
with our “raincheck” proviso-ed.
David/Iris and we agreed while Peter
remained observant on the side –
not quite neutral he (normalized they said)
read ”mutilated” in your bed under the covers
and if you don’t shudder freak then think
of baby girls their clits cut down to size
protecting parents, gym teachers and
future husbands from wild surmise.
Didn’t we touch all the bases
our philosophy “Nous sommes” (WE ARE)
leaving God’s scruples where they belong
in Dante’s frigid final circle of hell.
This one is still being uncovered...
They’re waiting up there,
Smith, Tubbs, Cogswell, and Crocker
their earthly remains are embalmed,
casketed, crypted, and tombed
in cold, cold, stone citadels of greek, roman,
medieval, or gothic miniature revivals
are they awaiting Tralfamadorean transport,
messianic trumpeting announcing salvation,
the Resurrection, eternal damnation… well,
probably not looking forward to Satan’s diabolique.
You’d think they’d prefer a shallow grave,
or ashes spread far and wide to be re-upped
before the notes blow from Gabriel’s Horn
who will burst their stone facades,
breach their biers and too solid caskets
to bring them forth to plead before God’s judgment.
We must presume their wealth and earthly powers
tangible to us in their too magnificent towers
are meant to sway Christ’s mercy in the end
despite the sins they promulgated here?
Do we suppose their wealth and earthly power
underwrites a future bliss? You’d think they’d
want to be out and about – not murred up
like so many casks of amontillado or brandy.
Didn’t Edgar Allen get it right with his Tell Tale Heart?
And Thurber’s There's A Unicorn in my Garden –
there’s no sign of humor in these stony rooms
but the views are mostly grand even in bad weather
and the lawns are mowed the bouquets swept up,
and best of all none of them complain of dogs,
walkers, runners, deer, raccoons, possums, and
an occasional streaker flitting from tomb to tomb
under a full moon brilliant city sky.
The Gulf between Order and Disorder…
6/10 © tom odegard
We are lived by powers we pretend to understand. W.H. Auden
Rereading Comedian as in the letter C
we presume to see ourselves locked in
the poet’s room overlooking a Hartford winter
while in mind Yucatan’s venereal green
plays bass riffs upon our hidden soul.
How from work to home Ser Stevens hid
his self from challenged wife and friends
yet dreamed such poignant fantasies as
Sunday Morning or Peter Quince, or all those
Carribe Keyes floating in their turquoise sea.
Those evocations of muscular divinity arose
from summer stays among inshore grassy dunes
to impounding beachy seas demanding sound,
from overspill of words. His syllabic froth
built fantasies of feelish fact and factual feel,
empathic intuitions broad or fine tuned
danced, sang, or played in every drop of light
indulging flights away from this staged world.
So his necessary angel sweeps us there with
An Emperor of Ice cream and Farewell to Florida.
Indeed we are now wallowed in that scream
and No Blue Guitar’s will reinvent the dream
of green-goings or Black Birds flying. We have
lost our humility in euphemistic data pretending
to understand the measure of divinity with tuning forks
that build our gyred tragedies toward this end:
our Crispin’s adored Keyes like Byzantine Suzannas
wait as oil plumed serpents ride the turquoise Gulf
to tar scaled, feathered, and grass topped beaches
bringing toxic grief to every southern shore. And lo,
our Comic speaks, “man was never master of his fate
nor yet a Socrates to snails.”
DSD
Are you a disorder
As in physical or mental?
It's a happenin' thing in some circles.
Academic hornswogglers and psycho-
Sexual ethicists are draggin the barrens
For categorical justifications to
eugenically abort non-heteros
Well, golly-gosh wouldn't it be nifty to
rid ourselves of femmish men and mannish fems
as well as those crazy intersex rads?
After all the crap we've dumped on them
wouldn't they prefer an end to their
medical questions? Oh yeah, Amen!
Once again then, we'll classify everyone
who varies a bit in crotch, hips, or chest
as either yes or not as for that queer gene,
we'll pretty soon happily indemnify
Mommy/Poppies against homo babies
And by the by, intersex, well
you didn't need to guess cause
they're physically disordered or
mentally screwed
and "screwed" is what we're going on about
can they take it or put it in according to Hoyle?
It's a binary two-step for Aryan Bandscapes
To create a world that's normal and straight.
'course hormones and pesticides will make their play
and kiddies will be varied in other ways
but these ethical wonks will assign a gender
based on pocket depth or pee pee timber
...when all will be well til she's 16 or 30
When she’ll question her assignment as down and dirty,
And the gender team will say without chagrin
You’ve got “gender identity disorder”, my friend!”
But shrinks and medicos have to fund their families
By prescribing exorbitant drugs and therapies
Cause helping the sick, the halt, and the lame
Is now passé against capitalism's money game
Just look at Bush and all his stinkers
who’ve suckered Christians as well as cross-dressers
Into muscular patronage and double billing
For anyone who’s willing to make a killing
With bombs, depleted uranium, and withheld food
While proclaiming themselves on the side of the good.
Dionysian Rituals...# 4
U taught me to engage
the admiration of my true friends
those ancient and newborn quirks
of circumstancemultiple fixed sorts
of genders, empathies and retorts
who uphold and support
my will.U introduced me to my skin
welcoming me from within, without,
nurturing old to very young
with sensual songsof many textured escapades
entangling limbs in bright parades
and warm debaucheries to grade
my life.U show me vistas of what is
revealing new geographies of selves
embracing my wizened babes, women,
and sweet menin soft double tongued desires
filling our minds with singing lyres
while dancing Dionysus gyres
our birth.© tom odegard 12/89
shadows...
our shadows move through us
scary to everyday egos
filling in blank paper reams
sensual in black cocktail dresses
or backlit see through cotton shifts
playing genderalities
even so young motherselves
dance cheek to cheek as shadows
spoken words: shadows of experience
drifting corpses in unconscious deeps
hysterical discoveries in dream time
shape changing when inner eyes focus
becoming morphic blurry monsters
even as our girlish figures
swing with Dionysus in the shaded woods
our shadows speak in vertigo
absence of meaning drives creation
wondering, we lean into each other's cool gaze
held attentive by bright inner light
my shadow whispers, "Love you!"
even as our sweet shy boys
sing vespers against their fear of night
slender I was, you are, past/future
you are, past/futuretogether we scare the others
walking in green summer
talking with, of, and oblivious to,
shadows
Ritual Sacrifice
The facts are these: you, me, everyone who's
stood against these whores of power
skanky men in expensive suits
writin' us off as un-necessary expense
givin' us over to all day suckers of Fear
we let 'em get away with it; we sucked up to comfort:
"cool" cars, sexy clothes, dumb songs, odorless armpits,
and "being all we can be"; yes ma'am we bought it,
hot coolness and cool hotness - exaggerated difference
from a bit o' skin to sex to facts an' opinions dividing us from
each other
we did it... fell for selfish pride - put ourselves ahead of
mother father sister brother neighbor friend and
would not, could not share a common goal
lest we lose our pay slip, our funding source.
Oh yeah, we did it - couldn't get enough of twin towering infernos
falling a million times over - sold us straight down dat ribber
to da highest bidder offerin' US of A securité, or better yet:
5 seconds of righteous indignation at some profiled piece of meat.
Whatta joke - Whatta a buncha patsies,
down right US of A dumb fucks... that's us -
We're the national secured state. Uh huh! You and me!
19% of us think we're in the top 1%
and 20% more think we'll get there, any day now...
That's the 39% that vote - well wouldn't you?
The rest of us gave that up years ago
just to show 'em...Show 'em what? And who's 'em anyway?
I guess 'em has got the message 'cause we're already livin' in
our own prisons
guarded by our fear of each other our fear of ourselves...
and when the Challenger explodes, Princess Diana becomes road kill,
the Columbia breaks apart at 200,000 feet we get
a little rush of sympathy mixed up with satisfaction;
once more innocence transforms to scapegoat.
The Ritual Sacrifice Returns -
Agamemnon sacrifices his daughter Iphegenia once more
for a "fair wind" to Troy,
and a twilight for Iraq!
Morning's mournings
© tom odegard 4/13/08
In the morning we were made one
with disordered men & women
labeled disingenuously to unite
us with each other's difference
into two: this type or that type
how we moaned - mourning our lost
independence, our unique variations,
lumped beneath a psycho-medical heel
as you parceled us among your own
binary dispositions: your yes or no
did you enjoy our squirming,
our resistant voiced complaining?
Invisible we must have been inaudible
as you used your power point to fit us
to your scientific screed: male or female
a wake is in the offing too many kind
are surfacing with odd concavities or
crude proclivities or phallic sensitivities
the whole against the pole without mayhap
defies adaptability and nature's zest for chance
so we deny singular dualities - in quanta
we resolve as color, strange, gluons, bosons,
and peripatetic quarks, neutrinos on the side
and we propose: leave disorder far behind
that we may welcome everyone to human-kind.
And below - another 4/13/08 offering occasioned by that biblical expression
....crying in the wilderness
Poets crying in the wilderness
shouting to their lost audience
audients adrift on political claptrap
and failing Dow Jones economies!
When did they listen?
Did they tire of poets
wielding words in the wildwoods
shrubberies, woodworks,
or whispering from caskets
listen... listen...
four horses are coming
slathered in oil, famine, disease, and war
four horsewomen: Irish Cerridwen,
Pig Goddess with Cauldron;
Cybele, Persian Isis and Bee Keeper;
Kali rolling Her Indian Juggernaut into our future;
Israel's monstrous Virgin and Her reckless crucified Son.
Never mind namings, legends, myths, and marvels
listen... listen... the poets are murmuring
"The dream is dead, long live the dream."
I o p e n e d t h e d o o r
2 / 0 8 t o m o d e g a r d
I o p e n e d t h e d o o r
a n d i n y o u c a m e
c l o t h e s s h a r p a n d c r i s p
a g a i n s t t h e f a i l i n g l i g h t
y o u w e r e s t r o n g w i t h a r m s
a r m s h e l d o u t , a l i t t l e b a c k
i n t h a t m o m e n t , i n t h a t l i g h t
p u z z l i n g a t y o u r a r m s i n f l i g h t
i n t h a t m o m e n t , I h e l d b a c k
I o p e n e d m y a r m s
I o p e n e d m y a r m s
a n d i n y o u c a m e
m y c l o t h e s s o f t a g a i n s t c r i s p
i n s i d e t h e f a i l i n g l i g h t
w e w e r e s t r o n g w i t h a r m s
i n t h a t m o m e n t i n t h a t f a i l i n g l i g h t
t h e p u z z l e s o l v e d i n m u t u a l f l i g h t
w h e n n e i t h e r y o u n o r I h e l d a n y t h i n g back
Pagan Dance © tom odegard 9/90
(To Edith and Jamie just because)
Sing a song of popinjays
lost to spirit mys-tery
witches drinking aconite
wizards riding ponies
ladies leaping willow wands
whips and daggers handy
all are in and all are out
"Come dare to be my dandy!"
Weirds and witches, wizards sing
songs that gambol, songs that wing,
drink the grape and ivy wine
laced with spice and resined pine.
Raise your cups and fly your brooms
far and wide on moonlight's looms
empty mind of plots and schemes
Empire's reach destroys our dreams.
Androgyne and intersex,
trans in trans or remaining set
normal folk with open minds
dance widdershins to drum and chime
stopped and started slow or fast
taken out of tick-tock's last
set in shoes to fit each person
to overcome the rigid parson
Back and forth, about, and round
marching up, and striding down,
dancing rapt in sacred groves
hear the henges rack and groan.
Let bodies fly and minds succumb
to the tambourine and drum
while poetry invests the throng
and every popinjay is gone.
Feelings: abstract future # 2
it was a compression wave of hatred
aimed at our one hundred years of contempt
driven by our unacknowledged God: Mammon
recipients: we preferred not to remember
black ooze of millenia consumed in seven score years
for a few comforts lasting a brief interval
after the fact we add insult: calling their revenge evil
casting our shock into missiles of escalating terror
our own "revenge" we style "good"...
speaking conundrums of violence: "war is peace",
"fear is liberty", "free speech through silence",
"suspicions are patriotic", "security justifies torture"
the skeletons of remaindered Americans are
ground into Yucca Mountain for bone_meal profits
while religions con the credullous with promised rapture
futures spin off into myriads of probablilities
somewhen, our great to the nth grand children sing,
honoring our love, our salvatory forebearance...
We be sexes
couplers, spooners,
enables, suspenders,
base pairs , over-achievers
with ambient dressings,
buffet side helpings.
Histories speak of threesomes,
foursomes who made do
but that's old witchies
scaring young grues.
No, really we're sexes
bundle bond buddies
emoting our sackfuls
in multi-tease static
to tweak, twist, and twill
our writhing in rue.
Were sexes
egrateful with job-hand,
constabular harts-horn,
pepper and nostrums,
in Dickensian moon.
We flitter on dark nights
with try-anything fingers
as skin does surrenders
on pliant boozooms
We're sexes
from reginas to rexes
opining in/e gresses;
don't fathom funk-shuns
gorge on feelie grunt-sums
we be inswell wallahs
or grisslee dangles
we got store-bought houris
with full-time passes.
Ya, ya, we be sexes
everykind slippery plexes
you pointy finger
we choppa offa!
So, you be smart stuff
stay offa our bloxes
less we put you in boxes
cause we be sexes
The Bambi story
© tom odegard 10/08
is about holding still
&/or learning to let
stillness come within and reach out to embrace the world.
>
So many of the old stories seem to stand in sharp contrast to the
banal idiocies that percolate thru the blue flicker in the living-room.
Those stories are little more than skeletal remains -
bones picked clean of the muscle of action,
the fat of stored energy,
the nervous excitement of thought and creative focus.
Beauty and the Beast
Cinder Ella
Snow White
Hansel and Gretel
WE could all do so much more than the Made for TV HBO chatter
with a few bare boned guides -
Walk to a crossroads - anyone will do
Wait for a stranger;
ask directions to nowhere.
Listen carefully and go left.
Follow the paths - animal trails.
Seek the forest - copse - shrubbery.
Find the chasm and cross it -
flying is okay though bridge building encourages focus.
Now go with your will o' the wisp guide to where ever you need to...
>
The Hunter is the bird on the branch
Bambi is the bird on the ground eating seeds of time
>
The hunter is the "other" and bambi is the other's "other".
>
The mother is the creatrix
She shaped them both and set the play in motion.
Somewhere she is browsing
or in another form smoking a joint and
living the rapture as a witness.
>
The only freedom from fear is self-satisfaction -
being at one with our other.
Dancing in moonlight with the one who will never leave us.
>
The tragedy is not binding with moonlight
not letting the sunlight penetrate the tree and
bathe the birds with rapture.
The tragedy is as old
as the King who would keep his daughter pure forever,
the prince who believes in "happy every afters",
The beast who would save the one from her other.
>
Underneath, around, above, and beyond the tragos - the crucified scapegoat
we are undone by the scattering of soul into disparate particles
waves canceling each other out
creating silence.
>
It is not wanting -
THAT is a synonym for greed
It is being...
dancing in the light and the dark
dancing with the other on the face of chaos...
Our grief is a huge upwelling bubble
a hot air balloon belched
from the depths of our spiritual body
We have held it too long
two years and more (our whole life?)
since a catastrophic avalanche swept us
off our plain trail on a sunny morning
there is no retraction
watching our lover/best friend/wife
struggle against and for life with despairing hope
hopeful despair, anguish and small triumphs
choice: I am, I am not
we are, we are not
each of us chose: being here, being now
our daughter's bright laugh and energy
sustained us against our own darkness
she compelled renewal
her mother's broken aging body
her father's cynicism, his double Xy chromosomes
at the end of last year
she left in an instant
on another bright sunny day
the telephone continues to ring
in that afternoon - before we knew
ringing as we struggled to understand
in the midst of this subsequent spring
Now: a gathering of memories from
more than we knew: her friends
more loved than we thought
her remembered laughter still supports our hope
her voice reminds us, "it is what it is".
the phone rings again; is it tinitus?
sweet adopted daughter's aneurysm burst
and we writhe hearing her surgical insults
we've walked that narrow corridor
propelled by professional compassion
bland seeming concern: deceitful happy faces
our bubble-grief rises up hissing away
another takes it's place
unspent tears are infinite
our body winds tight, tighter, holding on
storing tick-tocks it unwinds minutes
into days that wind us up again, again
but no,
there is no retraction
city surround sound, rumble-hum with sirens
everyone rushing to and away, up and down
no time where/when to realize planned futures
we are on the brink of indecision
afraid of determinations - re-criminations
no place/when to be: in or out
we are implosives exploding/explosives imploding
just passing through
we want you to be wondering again
your bare feet green from running on spring grass
your hands bread making or full of flowers
on the phone our familiar history underscores your voice
until it speaks from an empty room - a closed library
we often say, "we'd like to do that again"
forgetting the impossibility of repetition
once upon a time -we said, "Hello, & love you!"
spring comes each year, new, fresh, virginal
no part of it the same - we wish to kiss the bride
as son, consort, doomed King, mercurial child
Everyone says, "Grieve until you are empty."
We say, "grieve until you are full. There is no retraction."
WE keep our losses closeted in our minds
ready at a moments notice to wind another loop of fantasy
of how we'll meet, seduce each other's interest
and renew our infinite love: knowing there is no repetition.
© tom odegard 4/7/09
Self to Self (Circa 1972) © tom odegard
Self to self cannot lie,
culture wants a single "I"
one to which a coat is hung
name number work and fun.
But self is multiplicity
facetted by fantasies,
mother father lover rake
builder wrecker sadist fake,
winner loser, soldier girl,
miser sailor farmer churl.
All of these and many more
join at odds to build a core
meanest to the ones held dear;
optimism checked by fear;
animal that yearns to hunt
devours best the lesser runt,
feels the sun on flesh denied,
drives his sex with too much pride,
loves the joy of sex received,
gelded by the guilty deed.
These I are in isolation,
or rather they're in combination.
The sum of parts describes a plane
while multiplied the whole's insane
Relations infinte beyond our scope
ask whys to dim our I full hope.
Still I be a better me struggling on with all I be.
Someday soon time will discover
single hood is the devil's cover.
Women-inside © tom odegard (circa 1999)
Inside...
in the living room of my mind, my heart,
a dozen women sit and speak their secret lives
they're a coven of togetherness, well known to each other,
happy in their shared nuance, their facile grace,
the slippery smoothness of their limbs and language.
I and the men I am, provide the furnishings
and senses for sharing their chagrins,
their battle scars of 50 years of living life
amid misogyny, abuse, molestation, and
society's reflexive male domination.
How we love them, their sharp wit and
strong scent perfuming the air,
now rank and ruttish, now light and sweet,
now bitter with remembered slights, or sharp with grief.
These are our complements
our tenderhearted sidekicks
who will love us to the bitter and/or
glorious end no matter what
and we remain to them, protectors and
best friends.
Sometimes
we remove together to the abyssal pond to swim naked,
diving as deep as thought, as long as all the time we've lived
communing in darkest waters with creatures we have been
and, to some degree, remain - children born of slights,
misunderstood sights, sounds, and terrors, boys, and young men
daring each other to climb, jump, or run higher, further faster.
The women we have met, loved, lost, married and divorced,
are here as well, in these waters thick with remorse,
beatitudes of joy, and half remembered dreams...
Returning
into our living space we pair, and dance holding in our arms
each other as music spanning a thousand years fills
the spaces of our moves: waltzes, polkas, minuets,
line dances, jazz, punk, funk, and rock and roll
Here we are slithe and strong within the sanctity of
knowing how to be men in women, women in men,
grace with strength, beauty with pride...
At the door
we're permitted to share their public names:
Linda, Robin, Ruby, Diane,
Wendy, Sapphire, Grace, Irene,
Debby, Mary Sue, Laura, Connie,
restrained contained within powerful Ms. G.
Underneath their secret names remain
whispered to us in our inner beds,
or in our collective grave
beneath a new spring moon.
Then we are their sacred consorts,
brimming with renewal.
Then we take our places in the ritual
and speak sacred texts of transformation.
Outside
we are become polygendered human:
a colloquy of privileged men living with
a dozen special women.
4/04
Goat Song © tom odegard 2/07
The curtain's up, the stage is empty.
We enter as Hamlets seeking our right to be;
striving to get even with each other upon whom
we project our failed self-love:
killing the other, we stagger through
our last scene - what a tragedy.
The skin felt sound © tom odegard 1/10
The ploosh, plush, sloothe of warming waters drown
our skin surround, our plashing spatter flushing flesh
in stereo sound, and warming turns to hotter, hot, as
shampoo scums with soap release the felt night’s soil.
Even our dreams defy these body-full effects of
whelming active feel, unctuous in their moving place.
We are animalli lost in sensori-astic fluviums of too much
swoon in glowing glory. So we fall back to showering.
Is such a simple gerund full enough? Not! We prefer
full recognition of our experiential foils drinking in
rushes of hot on cooler flesh, warming trends, the clean
pop-op of soap withdrawn from cheeks, silky whatever
…bations on the skin, hair gleam, eyes closed as mind
slings metaphor astride and rides water down the drain.
Get with the po-gram © tom odegard 10/03
We’ve seen so many
the Germans put an abstractive, mechanistic,
shall we say, “high tech” blue-sky face on it…
but do they compare with 25 million plus in Meso-America
under Spanish swords? Of course it took them fifty years…
are we measuring the damn things against time?
If we count the you row peon invasions of the Americas north and
south, in 300 years we pretty much wiped out… the original habitants…
and subsequent to the end of the Russian/German trip Americans
got right to it again… not so much ethnic/racial cleansings
as across the board apocalyptic bomber pinpoint mayhem
mostly by client stooges bought, taught, and paid for
by US of A’s happyface consumptive SUV wonders
I guess for sheer numb brrrs Hitler’s 15 years
takes the prize and the way we paperclipped
his minions was a damn crime getting’ in
bed with ‘em for 55 more years
plantin’ ‘em in Huntsville Georgia
where nary a soul noticed -
puts a whole new complexion on
consenting adults.
Every one of us
ethnicity be damned
paid our taxes, supported the plan;
cheered for our side in SE Asia and scapegoated
yellow, black, brown, Jew, dyke, faggot, hermaphrodite, an’ Arab;
but
we’re gonna get even this time: the train’s leavin’ on the same track
so we can fire up the ovens without lookin’ back
and we’re gonna let freedom ring and liberty toll
for a solid half billion new holocaust souls. Who’ll
be together in a global mass grave to celebrate
our fundamental Christian rave:
Profit first, comfort second,
and wisdom dead last…
