Alan Britt Starts off 2019

While I'm still on winter break, I'd like to post a few poems by Alan Britt, a professor at Towson University.  Enjoy!

VOLUNTEER

(For our Veterans)

He who volunteers, reckless 

while defending right 

from wrong as we observe 

history fashioned into marble lions,

harpies, satyrs, minotaurs, hydras,

& mythological winged creatures 

surviving well beyond the League 

of Nations’ shrapnel stripping British 

logos from doughboy helmets designed 

for rain but not much else.

He who volunteers is reggae

with a pinch of Christianity holding

strong since Constantine kick started

that religion to unite his empire.

But, today, a rusty bit cuts the corners

of the volunteer’s political mouth,

(laser eyes everywhere),

just ask he who volunteers,

he who recklessly defends right 

from wrong while remaining

head over heels in love

with the future.

Photograph by Kimse, 2008

RULES

There are no rules for this.

Unless one considers the man

beneath a camouflage backpack

& carefully crushed Che Guevara cap.

He’s obligatory!

Don’t nitpick.

I’m advised to spread a cloth of carnations

allowing moonlight to flood my chameleon soul

until dreams leave teeth marks

across the bones strewn beside my bed.

I’m told to relax and contemplate my legs

like two boa constrictors stretched out 

before me while night’s stainless steel fingers

knit a moonlit shroud above my canopy bed. 

I understand some mysteries—

how one day topples the next

like domino waves scudding my ankles, knees, hips, 

waist, before breaching my neck.

But once foam invades my chin . . .

So, I rely on simple words, words nourished 

by verbs whose vowels are swollen

with humidity & sag like a silken web strung 

between two ruby leaves of a plum tree.

I’m talking poems protected

by feathers & damaged scales,

poems dressed & undressed,

poems that weave glistening trails

across darkened concrete stoops at dawn,

poems entering and exiting my pupils that resemble 

black holes inhaling the chaos of my universe.

Poems dressed & undressed.

After all, what does one wear

upon entering the ether world?

There are no rules.

 I WON’T CONTINUE UNTIL I SEE A HEAD NOD

Sometimes it feels like the beginning

of the end or else the end of the beginning.

Shake your head if you’ve heard this one.

Sometimes it feels like latitude

has replaced longitude

during the 21^stcentury coffee wars.

I snap my woolen dog blanket

against a chilly December breeze.

Sometimes it feels like the end

of something or the beginning of it.

Other times it doesn’t feel

like anything at all.

GET THEE TO A HOUSE OF REPUTE

Boardwalk model’s twisted seaweed quaff— 

dragon tattoo DNA-ing her lower back

as spandex jiggles adventurous avocados 

inside one’s fecund imagination.  

I worshipped an Anglo-Saxon monarch eons 

ago & watched his Danish cousin lift her 

muddy skirt for a border guard during one 

particularly gruesome occupation.

I couldn’t help but help, so I dove headlong 

into her quartz blue & canary-speckled eyes

with nary a thought of looking back.

  

WHAT IT’S LIKE TO BE PARTIALLY ALIVE

Part of me knows nothing at all.

The rest of me even less, or a little.

I sway with Spanish moss, fluorescent

beard in 4^thAvenue lamplight, feeling

naked as a palm tree, limbs rooted

beneath cool grey sand.

Now, part of me knows this while

the rest of me waits in silence.

I burrow, bones covered by Modigliani skin,

beneath Florida soil fertilized by rain,

soil fertilized by an ancestry of crows,

plus salamanders under bronze moonlight.

Part of me knows nothing at all,

while the rest of me hears everything.

Prefering to "lean and loafe at his ease," Alan Britt is troubled by the corruption and ambivalence that permeates the Great Experiment, so politically speaking he has started the Commonsense Party, which ironically to some sounds radical. He believes the US should stop invading other countries to relieve them of their natural resources including tin, copper, bananas, diamonds, and oil, also that it’s time to eliminate corporate entitlements and reduce military spending in order to properly educate its citizenry, thereby reducing crime and strengthening the populace in the manner that the Constitution envisioned. He is quite fond of animals both wild and domestic and supports prosecuting animal abusers. As a member of PETA, he is disgusted by factory farming and decorative fur.

ALAN BRITT: Library of Congress Interview:

http://www.loc.gov/poetry/media/avfiles/poet-poem-alan-britt.mp3

Last night my husband and I went to see The Green Book, so I think I'll post some songs by Dr. Don Shirley.  Have you seen the movie yet?  I recommend it!

Here is Don Shirley's version of "Georgia on My Mind":  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWJJm2WJ-WA

He also covered "Bridge Over Troubled Water":  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDEyBw_N2bA

This is his version of "Lullaby of Birdland" with Richard Davis on the bass: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTeBgrY6MZA

I'll finish with the Don Shirley Trio's version of "Blue Skies":  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGrU0jAdeVs

Enjoy!