For Hilda

Bach's Well-Tempered Klavier

preceded Beethoven's Apassionata

and Mozart carefully but barely contained madness

In just a trill, it seemed, Eine Kleine Nachtmusik

evolved into discordant cries of torment

and eerie screams for breath.

If you visit Berlin go to the Bebelplatz and you will read

Heinrich Heine's 1821 prescient verse that

"Dort, wo man Buecher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen."

Had I not read those first awkward textbook conversations

in teenaged self-consciousness and curiosity, "Ich spiele gerne Schach,"

how would I have grown to understand those chilling lines?

(They translate, roughly, as,

Where men burn books

in the end they also will burn people.)

The Bibliothek at Bebelplatz lies underground,

under Unter den Linden, and its hollow space

is filled wih empty bookshelves defying Marx -- G-d is not dead.

There hover oh so many unwritten, end-jambed poems,

hopes that exploded into shards

like shop windows and human trust on Kristallnacht.

Today glass towers rise even in far-off Boston, in the land

that would not take the broken souls despite the words that 

circle her proud lady's feet in the New York harbor.

In Berlin, just off the Ku-damm, where burlesque and Eiscafe still co-exist,

and gaps between the buildings shudder in the winter wind

stands the Kaiserwilhemskirche, stretching skyward, unrepaired, a bombed-out Gedaechtnis.

Novalis, in his Hymns to the Night, wrote that in daylight 

he lived his faith but in the night he died in fire.

But to him, it was a lost romance -- he kept his life.

How can one explain it? It's drawn me to the language and the land

for a lifetime. But one who lost her father, mother, brother, all, said she believed

her father when he said, "An educated people wouldn't do that."

That? That unspeakable "that," which the rumors whispered,

the boots struck, the dogs barked, the guns rang out,

and the chimneys spouted.

Despite it all, for her, night once again turned into day,

just like grass again grows where her feet once shuffled.

She awakens daily celebrating bread and water in her kitchen.

But when they, like she, who never forgot how to love, or how to teach us,

have at last left us behind, who will remind the next that, like in Grimm, 

the human wolf is always at the door?

It's so simple, really.

His icy breath blows down our own houses,

howling its never-ending untruth:

If they don't go, if they don't go,

it will be we, it will be we

who'll ride the rails to ashes.

Lisa E. Paige

March, 2009

Copyrighted material

Valentine's Day for the Dodo Bird

Have you ever seen a peacock spread his tail feathers? Poor peahen has no chance. You might not think of turkeys as quite so … appealing, off the platter. But the male – called a gobbler, or a Tom – must have something going for him. He’s polygamous. That’s a euphemism, like for Saudis, whose cloaked and covered women outnumber even the camels that were their price. Toms strut in pairs and they can change the colors of their heads. Plus their wattles can enlarge. You can see why they will score. Now how about the falcon? Every year, the assignation at his and his mate’s urban aerie. Same time next year. All that flapping, like Leda with her swan. Could they be celebrating that they’re not extinct? But hey, at least he helps her incubate the eggs. Not at night, though. Then he hunts. So what of men – are they not birds of prey? The rule imposed on the poor fellows, Western, anyhow, is monogamy, which of course goes contrary to their nature. Like turkeys, Americanus Commonus struts in pairs, only hoping for a harem (unless he’s Mormon). Most heads have just one color hair – that is, if they’ve got any. And he’s gotta have a wing man, who will take one for the flock. In the human species, the man’s wallet the label on his jacket the table he can get the Porsche or Audi and the way he knows the somalier are important. But it’s the Western woman’s job to let real finery burst forth. Oh, the plumped and glossy lips. The collagen, push-up silky bras, satin vaginal floss. The mani-pedis, hair foils, tweezing, waxing, micro-dermabrasion, white-meat implants. Oh, the fishnets that we cast. And the stilettos, from which we just as surely gracelessly will stumble as from our self-esteem. For what? A dozen roses once a year? And protestations Hallmark bought from two-bit writers trained by afternoon TV? Or worse, the ever-popular post-coital “I love you”? (Which we all know really means, ’cause Harry told us, “Oh shit, how long before I can get out of here?” Or worse, “I’m gonna chew my arm off now.”) Under all these inhuman behaviors hides the lonely human. Hungry to be seen, heard, held. Men and women both. I know this, because I have a son. Maybe it’s not the lack of feathers, but the beating of the human heart that distinguishes man from vulture, and all the rest of nature, too. Sex isn’t love, mate, unless the love precedes the mating. So look, guys, don’t send her flowers on V-Day. (Oh, any other time is fine.) And women, hope for this: That they clothe themselves in goatskins, light a bonfire, fan it, let it flame into the night sky, harness the winds, name a star for you. And if either of you writes a poem, please remember: It’s the content, not the form. Lisa E. Paige February 2009 Copyrighted material

The Masters

The artist saw in her

all the colors he

could ever paint,

but she saw azure freedom

blazing o'er his shoulder.

Another's slippers

tapped out quarter notes

and triplets, dipping to

her partner in the waltz,

smiling, with a curtsy.

Yet another photographed

the world in black and white

to mimic his bleak inner landscape.

When she felt his cold contrasts

she wrapped herself

in shadow both for warmth and

to avoid the lens.

Like us, the pigment fades.

The gloves are wrapped in tissue.

Where is the hope

of tasting the sweet longing

of another, or of healing

someone's broken wing?

Oh, a few play jazzy sevenths

echoing the discord

between Vermeer and his young subject

painting her so bright that

the girl is not diminished

but immortal made,

and the moment, too.

How can we join the masters,

let our rhythm burst forth blindly

from our brushes,

close the shutter

against the driving rain,

awaken pulsing in the catwings

of every foggy morning

like dawn never came before?

Dear Abby

The fire smolders in the wood stove illuminating the bound letters of Abigail Adams on my lap. She penned these daily to her husband John who spent years among Parisians while she weathered winters and Revolutions American and other. Six years of letters, nary a sonnet nor an ode, yet she quoted Milton and Shakespeare like a child playing Für Elise from memory. She called him Lysander, her friend, as friends indeed it all commenced, and later correspondents were. She wrote so many more letters than did he, like today’s friend who cannot help herself from emailing thoughts as soon as they occur, untempered by any lack of response. Despite their early prim ardor, the letters feel platonic. No heaving bosoms, no Gothic castles’ secret stairways like in the romance genre of the time, so like today’s except in what then went unsaid. She wrote as if walled away behind brick upon brick of battles and politics and miles of Atlantic. Proximity would have prevented that – but then – the best we’d have of her would be a few stray invitations, or thank you notes, assuming even those survived. How is it that Jane Austen, then just a girl in Chawton wrote characters like Abigail, and even lived like her the days of parched habits and nights that led to solitary wakings. A sea apart, they pined patiently for passion while patriarchy and patriotism alike quieted their pulse. Yet Jane wrote satirically of insincerity and imagined answers to all lack. Was John a Mr. Knightley? The older, kinder, safer choice? Sometimes months passed between the sailing of ships carrying letters writer to reader, wife to husband. The news was old before it got there, and she too early born to have read Wollstonecraft, Fuller, Dickinson, Chopin, Woolf. She had no women’s lines to cite, no styles to imitate, to unbind her mind. (Yet Abigail put no stones in her pockets.) Unlike these activist authors she never broke convention, but to her husband dutifully wrote, and wrote, and wrote. My fire’s burning low. So many centuries of dying embers. So many women waiting for their heroes to appear from the hunt, the war, from exploration or conquests unimaginable from beside the hearth. Perhaps more than once she crumpled a blotted page for kindling. So I toss my first rough version of this poem among the coals and rise to get a log. This I can do. I see her in her gown, laying her quill upon the desk beside the inkpot, folding the letter, carefully sealing it shut with melted wax. I lift my ballpoint pen and reach for a clean sheet, more sustaining even in its near weightlessness than an email. As I wait now not for heroes but for words to come, I hear the water outside rushing madly, wearing down the banks of summer’s peaceful wandering stream. The wind rattles windowpanes, wailing wildly, then whispering, return, return, return. Lisa E. Paige Copyrighted Material 2008

Blurds

Clearly unintentional spoonerisms and newly coined words are plentiful in this Great Age of Misspeak. But my followers (that sounds so like sycophants, but I assure you is not -- more my friends who are devilled by my alternating obliqueness and transparency) are requesting space on this otherwise so serious-minded blog to encourage readers to create and submit some that are both intentional and humorous. Note: Verbifying is strictly verboten (such hideous affronts to the language as the recent, "It's time to progress this country" come to mind). Some examples beyond "blog" to get you going: One of my family's favorite spoonerisms at home arose from years of squabbles among the children about whose turn it was to take on the nasty task of cleaning up after kitty. The end result: "It's your turn to clean the bat cox." Then there's the "portmanteau" word made famous by Lewis Carroll, such as "chortle," a combo of chuckle and snort. The persistent among us can actually introduce these words into the vernacular and experience great pride as they take hold. Although not my invention, I experienced delight many years ago in adding "frust" to my family's vocabulary (Definition: that annoying line of dust that you can't get into the dustpan with the brush). These well-blended words of course deserve a term of their own, hence the title of today's post. So, I challenge you to submit your suggestions by entering your brilliant spoonerisms or portmanteaus (and definitions!) as comments. An objective committee with vast linguistic knowledge and sharp wit will determine which will get posted. Due to the celebrity status of this committee, I am unable to share their names publicly. Keep in mind that whereas there is no requirement that these clever coinages be either scatological or ribald, neither is discouraged. To get you started, here is one born yesterday and deemed acceptable: Lamentainment: n. Story of one's life that is so absurdly pathetic and/or self-pitying that it makes others amused. Usage: Ron's repetitive recounting of his recent rejection provided lamentainment for his relations. (Note: Alliteration not required in definition) Related terms: Seflamentainment, exlamentainment (the former being sefexplantory and the latter close in meaning to the German Schadenfreude, but limited to the spontaneous if non-karmic laughter resulting from being privy to gossip re. the sufferings of one's ex-boy- or girlfriend, spouse, co-worker, or boss.) Reminder: to be considered, these blurds must be original and creative. Under no circumstances will you get away with either Bidenizing (yikes! I verbed!) or simple-mindedly gluing a string of words together as if you were a bureaucrat from Berlin. p.s. Please let me know if you want credit, by name or pseudonym (specified), for your submission.

Orecchio

You are a mushroom, but not just any old fungus. The kind that, in Italian, is called Orecchio, which means ear. It’s because you look like one – a human one, that is. Yes, human, yet wild, and proud of both. But you’re not the kind of mushroom to preen under harsh fluorescent lighting in an organic supermarket aisle between 12 types of tofu and bread so wholesome that it tastes like bark. No. You are a ruffle on a courtesan’s neck, though leathery, and only casually adorning the dark side of a tree. Still, you are so powerful that forest animals both large and small fear you. You try to keep it quiet that you are dependent on that tree. It’s not weakness, no! You’re intertwined with other life! Oh, how you two together thrive despite the many menaces out there. You’ve learned you share your forest with a certain stealthy someone – another survivor of so much hazardous wasted talk that his ears have grown so fine-tuned he can detect the fairy footfall of a fawn behind the quiet rustle of autumn. He wouldn’t believe that you have oftentimes detected his expert hunter’s feet, nearly soundless on your carpet of pine needles. He approaches. You recognize him, but wonder: Is he friend or foe? Suddenly, unceremoniously, he slices you from all you’ve known, deposits you with some loose screws, a bottle cap, and other random effluvia that have found their way into his jacket pocket. It’s only fitting. He’s been outed; now you have, too. And you thought you were so well hidden there, in the early winter light so dim it may as well be night. The next time you see anything you’re tossed onto a counter, trimmed, washed, and shoved to the edge of a cold stainless steel vessel. You have no way to fight it. But would you if you could? It takes some humans a lifetime to know what you learned in a summer. You accept. You submit. You don’t take it personally. It is all you have been given, it is all you have to give. It has to be enough. For in the end, those who would have sniffed at you as dull, dangerous, or even deadly, will never taste your texture, never see the beauty of your lying there exposed, exotic, wet and shiny against the unmoved sink – sacrificed for flavors that are so much more complex than brown or gray alone – never run a fingertip along your sheen of tussah silk. Lisa E. Paige Copyrighted material, December 2008

Flying Lessons

The door slides open to an azure world. Loose strands of fear hang from my jump suit. A rush of empty space and drop in pressure blast my thoughts right open. Teetering on the edge between new birth and death, once sure I could only jump in tandem, I glance timidly, surreptitiously at the pilot. His slow smile says Close your eyes and leap. Several seconds later, I am floating, not falling, my eyes open to the miracle of all I can see. That’s when I shrug off my harness which plummets to the earth like the crutches of the healed, and for the first time, I believe. Dear sweet Jesus, Mother Mary, so it is like the story goes. What a surprise that in the end we all have the power to defy gravity. Lisa E. Paige Copyrighted material December 2008