Joe Milford Returns!

Tonight I will post several poems by Joe Milford, a number of them being on classical and/or mythical themes.  These poems suit me well while I get ready for the fall semester and its classes.

Ithacan 

under the belly of the rancid sheep 

i keep asking myself how the hell 

did I get here—how far from the groves 

of olives and the cliff where I sired 

my first daughter, and now, as I hang 

here under this beast, a barbaric one- 

eyed mongoloid wants to eat me 

and my brethren as I follow a madman 

through his rites of passage—they 

should have never had let him read 

Campbell—I am going to die for his 

new tattoos, his new scars, his new 

sexcapades in foreign lands—that wild 

boar should have killed him as a boy,  

but he was loved by the gods—yet 

the rest of us are not so privileged 

and can’t even pay our union dues 

without these regular suicide voyages 

historian 

consciousness is its own rape. 

endless recovery—the fence builder 

fighting the gatekeeper. 

I held the grain of your DNA in my teeth 

and chewed you like papyri. 

we all eventually knelt 

at the factory. tell me how you broke 

your cage—then tell me did you 

make armor or bombs with the scrap? 

I want to be a boy again; I was more 

of a man then. pin a holocaust 

to a constellation. extracting the nails 

from the walls of museums. we fear 

that what could be left is a simpering 

squidesque cthulian moistness underneath 

which has eyes unable to focus. keep  

scribing until our backs are broken. 

heaven is a guitar you can’t break  

and hell is the never ending guitar solo. 

we will have taquitos in Valhalla. 

we will put down our pens, our ink-stained 

feathers so that they can maybe make  

wings again. for now, we keep cutting 

off the heads of the hydra, but no one 

is cauterizing. 

homo xenomorph

mishmash of sundials, weathervanes

historic monoliths, grave pillars and austere

iron gates that the drones fly over

like Orwellian mosquitoes

the two lovers on the beach made of sand

dissipating like the half-life of a radioactive

element the salt that is us all

the white gold alchemical that it is

the ash to come that the feathers

of the peacock will emulsify from

that the fangs of the python will

condensate from and the drones’

batteries failing and they are calling

home calling the laboratories

we are there speaking more robot

than sand, more phosphates and

polymorphs than gastropods or sapiens

monks of the holograms in anti-gravity

bliss above city basins and sprawling

valleys and the two lovers made of

pixels dissipating in phosphorous

filaments quivering under droning

moth volleys and neon breaths

of urban halitosis and salt-lamp halos

illuminating that coast of your plans

and your placements of silverware

during times of war and your salutations

feed the correspondents freeing them

to navigate the cul de sacs to provide

further gunshot reports coming back

with drones lodged in their mouths

you fall like a birdling from the nest

and bubble into pinestraw not lucky

enough to die from the impact

of being spit from the great grid

lying there staring up at the incredible

intricate latticework as shrapnel shatters

marble all around you and the sundials’

shadows splintering across your

hands full of scattering nanobots

like salt or sand that can feel

like a man, like what was human

ancient aliens and history channel 2

if ancient alien reptilian giants

the Annunaki and the Nephilim

planted our DNA here millennia

ago, then their agenda led to

reality TV shows, and so, I really

am not that impressed with

interstellar geneticists

summer affair

she stripped off my armor

and made it into luxuriant furniture

and lounged on it topless

with that knowing smile

later, after kissing her

goodbye, a lizard stares

up from the edge of the oil spot

left by her car

and I try to say

it’s no omen

classical

writing with pencils

made from the splintered ships

of Odysseus

postmodern edit

I can’t read birds or guts

To tell the future.

I’m no polymath.

I can’t remember the last time

I had butterflies in my stomach.

Tolerance is my favorite continent.

Piracy is my favorite city there.

I had a corporate venture last night,

And while all of you slept,

I replaced your hands with pianos

I replaced your eyes with planetariums

I replaced your mouths horns of brass

I replaced your ears with gramophones.

We can’t hear or see each other now,

But I do like our future.

Back to school means that it's time for me to go back to playing Art Blakey while I grade papers.  These songs will feature or at least include musicians born in the 1950s.

On this version of "Moanin'" from 1988, Robin Eubanks (b. 1955) plays trombone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwbTB_RX-j4 

This video is of a 1980 performance when Robin Eubanks, his brother Kevin (b. 1957), Bobby Watson (b. 1953), James Williams (1951-2004), and Charles Fambrough (1950-2011) were part of the Jazz Messengers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4yW9kN3bTE

Mulgrew Miller (1955-2013) appears on this version of "Tenderly": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RezwY8zAAIs

I'll finish with a 1986 version of "Little Man" with Charles Fambrough and Donald Brown (b. 1954):  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cU4y1zJx908

Enjoy!