swamp

BACKSEAT GUITAR

Backseat guitar
Limp in humidity
Who can love them
Music twangs
Instead of sounding
Sweet
But it loyally lies
Waiting
Ready to steady me
When I need a break
When my head feels the
Whomp
From the 2-stroke roar
Of an ATV
Cutting through my swamp
After midnight…

HALLOWED SWAMP

Ghost of a song
Echoing down dirt lanes
Ectoplasming past my tin home
Dead-ended in the swamp
Classical Spanish music
Evolving into Flamenco
Three in the morning
More dangerous than midnight
Traditional Chinese Medicine
Proclaims it the ruling of lungs
Emergency Medical Services
Named it the heart attack hour
Both are right

Call and response
Tenor guitar slung on my shoulder
Wisp of a ghost, maybe two
No fear from me
I strum with the shadows
Exercising my lungs
In the dark, I sing
That moment
That moment one’s percussive heart
Keeps time with the melody
Music taking wing
Jolted by the strings
Controlled by invisible fingers
Chords seducing their
Gaggles of ghosts
Who suddenly surge
Down the road, into the muck

Last Quarter Moon glimmers
Through a pellucid sky
Glitters on wet swamp earth revealing
A crucifix, dirty yet untarnished gold
Wipe it on my long black shirt
Treasure forced to the surface
From heavy rain
Overflowing swamp

And I see a long line led by
A history book explorer
Hernando DeSoto, I’m sure
Once memorized for a test
In a long-ago inner city school:
620 men from 9 ships
220 horses
Priests, farmers, soldiers
Up from Tampa Bay
Hiking through Safety Harbor’s burial mound*
To the Weeden Island Cultures’ mound**
A few miles from me
In New Port Richey
Mound to Mound

Looking down on the ground
Kicking with my black combats
Scattering pottery, human remains
Two skulls head to head
Holding hands
In moldy bed
Since 1539
Buried in a swamp of time
Forbidden love?
Oh, yes
In the shadows
An armored man
A doe-skinned woman
Holding hands
As a priestly spectre
Waving a crucifix
Shouts heathens must die
And they collapse
To the tune of soldiers’ muskets
Loudly exploding, drowning out the music
And the lovers become history
In a piece of Florida swamp
Encroaching on my future backyard
As earth is kicked over
Hiding the pair
Guitar notes evaporating

And the moon silently wanes
After a final wail
From wraiths
I pale
Among ancient bones and faded gold
Alone and not dreaming…

(c) 2018 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja), Blogetressa: Shambolic Poetry
IMAGE: Hallowed Swamp and Tenor Guitar /DeSoto’s map 10-1-18

* http://seesafetyharbor.com/Philippe-Park/Indian-Mound/
** https://www.pascocountyfl.net/1193/Oelsner-Indian-Mound

NATURE’S MUSIC

*scroll down for a YouTube video*

Magical Mulberry
Playing baritone ukulele
In stark sand instead of snow
Live Oaks sheltering
Woodpeckers and Crows
Do we get what we need?
The Stones’ Jagger thinks so

Years living in the city
Happiness was a vacation
Tent, fire and scenery so pretty
Mountains in the Poconos
Brandywine River nights
Drinking coffee and cocoa

Now I live in a tin camper
Surrounded by trees and swamp
Small, only two lots
Didn’t get what I wanted
(Victorian home with gingerbread
And secret passages to mysterious rooms)
But wouldn’t trade what I have today
24-7 camping life
What a way
To spend these holidays
On Nature’s 2-lot beauty
Rewarded in my old age…

*YouTube video You Can’t Always Get What You Want, Rolling Stones

FLYING FINGERS IN A STORM

DEDICATED TO DENISE FLETCHER & JAMES CORBESIA

Resonator road
Tin shack swamped
Sinking beneath
Vines and moss
Dueling guitars
Electronic sizzling
Thrift store treasure
Shoulda stayed there
But it competes against
Lightning spears
Searching the ground
In a wet backyard
Here’s the star
My acoustic tenor guitar
Smug and safe
No connections with
The storm
Although thunder roars louder
Than metal strings
But electric unplugs
Acoustic wins the
Aging game
With a hot patch
On osteo knobs
And now the music
Under the aegis of
Modern medical heat
Allows delicate fingers and tendons
To play and sing
For at least an hour
Lost in the bower
Of the space time forgot…

SEASONAL CONVERGENCE

Picking my way through the swamp
Stomping in useless suede cloth boots
Sand spurs sticking to tights
Shouting to warn unbrumating snakes
All for the picture
And the metaphor
Of seeing the palm tree
Juxtaposed with the Queen Anne’s Lace
But by the time I hike into the
Out of control greens and browns
Hang up my guitar for the arty effect
The photo just isn’t there
At least not by phone camera
That I swear has no zoom-in
The sun hovers between East and South
Washing out the white flowers
If I move forward
The deep swamp will suck me down
It’s not really evil
Just has a sense of humor
And I seem to be the only one fascinated
With its loveliness
So I make it two photos
But the poem in my mind
Is gone
The metaphor was
The convergence of seasons
Palm tree
That never lost its greenery
Because of the warm winter
Queen Anne’s Lace
So Philly and Jersey summer
From my youth
The only flowers
Besides the Sunflower
That I’d occasionally see
In the concrete city
North meets South
Spring meets Summer
No, better go
Before the Water Moccasins
Slither over
And in May
The gators walk all day
Looking to mate
Bad enough a Blue Jay
Almost crashed into me
On my elliptical
This morning, outside
Pedaling to
Of all tunes
“Florida”

EXCLUDED

No one approaches

The edge of the swamp

I, alone

Am the sojourner…

IMAGE: Edge Of My Swamp

OBSESSING, NATURALLY…

(photo from FB Memory set me off about leaving on Thursday)

Morning

Exhausted

From little to no sleep

I’m a mass of

White-pink-gray-blue

Brains or intestines or

Pile of pythons

Primal soup solidified

Try to untangle

Thrown into the void

Falling

Dogs desert me

As I hurl myself to safety

Thoroughly awakening

To what type of day?

Oh, no, I’m going away

From the swamp

From the ginger

From the dogs

From the music…

What makes people

Want to travel?

Is it easier with

Sister or Brother

Friend or Lover?

I’m used to being alone

Will eventually feel okay

Do wish, though

There was someone to hold onto

While wading through strangeness

And strangers

Oh no, I’m going away

From the swamp

From the ginger

From the dogs

From the music…

Image: CS from FB Memory 2014 with ginger

FOREVER FRIENDS

Through two decades

A dead Live Oak

Stood upright

Perch for families

Of Florida Black Vultures

What sights I’ve seen

On that stage

Young buzzards courting

Males competing for

The belle of the bough

Married couple kissing

Passing food between beaks

Here they are with baby

Showing him how to perch

And search

For newly-made swamp corpses

Other days watching them

Wings outspread

Drying out stormy feathers

One day the mom and dad gone

Baby sat for three days

Finally the smaller one returned

Maybe dad creamed by a car

While cleaning up the road kill

In the middle of city streets

Then the other day

A muffled crash in the swamp

Perch finally fell

And here I go in pursuit of my “art”

Worrying about Water Moccasins

And other snakes

As I wade through the grass

Snap, snap

On smart phone

That does no justice

To the thumbnails of Nature

Suddenly recalling last week

Vulture in my yard

Broken wing

Hopping around

Looking for a way out

I opened the gate and tried shooing him

But he didn’t get it

He did find a pile of tables and plants

Climbed up over the fence

Relieved he escaped

Yet what are the chances

A bird will live safely

With a damaged wing

Birds

Trees

Life yet death symbols for me

And I recall sitting under

Another Live Oak

Many years ago

And it splitting

For no good reason

Phone ringing, me running

My mother’s voice funereal

My favorite uncle died

The trees never lie

But do I think a tree

Can actually be

A psychopomp?

Birds play that role for me

But would a bird

Lead a bird

To the afterlife

Or does the tree’s soul

Take control?

After all

They were friends for so many years…

IMAGES: Live Oak perch fallen in my swamp and FL Black Vulture on the perch in my swamp

TIME LAPSE

Air potatoes in indistinct moonlight

Like modern Winchcombe Grotesques

Fortifying the overgrowth of summer vines

Chills in the heat, dancing along my spine

Monstrous night

Dogs plastered to the fence

Growling at an undone rope

A rope unwound

Hanging on a spindly tree

Gulf Coast wind winding up to

A shrieking Banshee force

Is it the 3 a.m. heart attack

Or a dream

Can’t recall rolling out of bed

Sliding through the glass door

Suddenly soaking suede cloth boots

I think, Well, that feels real

Surreal similarity of when I was four

High on my uncle’s shoulders

Defying the Atlantic Ocean

Then slapped by a wave

Drowning

But still breathing

Under the sea

Thinking

Well, this is it

Then feeling him find me

Scoop me up

Carry me back to Atlantic City sounds

Of ice cream men walking the beach

Of children shouting, alive and laughing

All a blank after that, like now

And I fall on sleeping red-ant villages

On the beach of my back yard

Mosquitoes glued to skin welting up

My smallest dog jumps onto my back

As if we’re in bed

And suddenly my head

Clears in the darkness

Despite humidity and drizzle

It’s real, I rise

Clap my hands demanding the dogs to follow

Maybe they, as nocturnals, belong here

But no place for me

At three

In the unearthly morning

Of moon madness

Brought on, I surmise

From OD-ing on chamomile tea

And vomit-smelling valerian drops

All in the name of at least

A good two hours sleep

But back in the cool air conditioned bed

Insomniac thoughts reverberate in my head

How’d I get there without remembering

And, most importantly

Who hung that freaking rope

Who hung on it…

IMAGES: Rope in my swamp, medieval Winchcombe Grotesque

HEARTS OF PALM

Flaming flamingos

Content in their colonies

Monogamously settled

While I fly

To the edge of a swamp

Finding amongst riotous,

Deciduous trees

A lone palm

Said to conceal the cure

For a broken heart

Inside the bark

Sleeps a mystery

Magic elixir

Hearts of palms

Calling to me

Musically

Strip away the wood

Revealing vulnerable vegetation

Intent on the source

I miss the landing

At last look up

There you are

Smiling down at me

Musically

Singing

Share your heart

And I know it’s a start

For capturing

Elusive love…

IMAGE: Flamingos seeking solace in my swamp

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