Enter Home Planet News Poetry of Issue #5                        Page 11
                                   
Table of
Contents



Major Boner and the Mythel Gap

Marla McGivers Enterprise historian opined
“From the northern India area, I'd guess.
Probably a Sikh. They were the most fantastic warriors.”

Khan will win in mushroom billows
rush beyond the blue horizon
sucking earth above the fruited plain
reign of broken molecules and fleeing electrons
waves and waves and waves and waves
piling in pretty patterns past the slits
past the next phase new wave dance craze anyways
its still quantum fuzz to me.

Or move the vioceless fricative over
and maybe it’s Kahn
thinking the unthinkable in a tank
thinking fall out shelters
thinking breeding in caves
while the dust settles
after ten thousand years
of waiting for resilient ecological
will zur macht to reconstitute
habitability.

What then is habitability?
What are the minimum standards of habitability?
Are they the moral equivalent of Paradise
from which humans barely escaped
by the skin of their pons?
That of course is another story.

What about the myth part,
where does that come in?
Right here it turns out
and don’t try to tell me it’s a coincidence
because I know there must be intention
in the little world this poem is becoming
and some one or some thing
is directing every sparrow fall
and has some plan in mind
whether poor characters
strutting and fretting
on the stage
can discern it or not
because as Nietzsche said
“You’ll never get the herd to cry Hosanna
until you ride into town sitting on your ass.”

  John Marvin __

never rive

in the dust of summer riverbeds
     where heat melts an afternoon sun
     and Greek footprints have eroded
     and dry season winds from mountains
     and withered plains roll and swirl
gurus still tell of ancient battles
gurus still tell of blood flowing
     toward empty channels
     of summer rivers

in the parched throats of listeners
     where a drink is barely remembered
     and early morning dew forgotten
     and listening far simpler than speaking
     and breathing slow and soft
storied heroes seem so distant
storied courage of another time
     a time elders remember
     a time of water

as afternoon revolves away toward
     where mountain tops hover
     and white floats above grey
     and sun settles upon icy summits
     and seems to slake a thirst
acquired during high listening
an artifact of memory and imagination
     colored in tales of battles
     softened by dust

even as it reddens and swells
     there a setting sun suckles
     and nurtures upon distant breasts
     and colors the white horizon hues
     and shadings never imagined by
legendary heroes who laid swords and shields
in the dust knowing that very sun had found
     rest in a place they would
     never reach in time
  John Marvin__

Uneasy Lies the Book of Lies

agon assembled to compete requires
discourse of course across the great divide
draining to the east of us and
draining to the west of us and
never intertwining in meandering streams
of consciousness or beneath the level
of telling that great fiction we tell so well

listen to my fable each entreats while
discordant harmonies klang down channels
tingling one another’s finger tips
slipping on the corners of the dry pages
of ancient dusty tomes dragged down
from shelves built by carpenters of Ghent
or Reims or other towns near river highways

brown Rhine or red Danube or isotope trope
awaiting a half life for glowing growing flesh
like spirit sparkle neither here nor there
as Hilda had her Helen on walls and banks
of the silted delta Protean writhing between
worlds the existence of either of which
being problematic in a Derridean sense

puzzle me nary a cross word across or down
just tell me why such a large brain OK
is it just to have room to keep track of lies
lies in epic lyrical drama lies harmonious
lies dissonant and grating lies… but does it matter
because it isn’t raining rain you know
and who would ever believe that

First published in Nerve Cowboy

  John Marvin__

The unheimlich Maneuver

so the question will vortex around
some point in the not so distant future
where the recollections of original zen
are either molyfied trainsubstationally
or sot through with absorption of partrickulate
accreations of the searealized origin of splices
not to mention the hissing echglo
of the roiling geniusing of spice and thyme
healping smooth the sting of descent
including the expulsion of Eve
first scientist and actual savior savoir
from the hell of paradoze where bliss is ignorance
perpenistrated in the comeintommy paulor
preyeasts shredding blood to massculineyes
by making whore or virgin the only choice
other than queen bee pinned to the wax bed
of our lady of perpetual birthing
leggs spread spewing venereal disanddonts
to the bands bends binds bonds bunds
where the lonely world can’t care
and the lonely stage stripped bare
because the vortex spins away o yea
the vortex spins away

  John Marvin__