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The Blog Bog
The Mag Rack
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THE GARDEN IN EXTREMIS
Sheltered behind a high stone wall
from the noise of the highway's raucous path,
even from the sight pollution of the hideous terrain,
the fantasy of bucolic purity might be preserved.
Here in this moist and leafy grove,
down narrow paths, woodland flowers thrive
in the tenuous urban cocoon.
The ugly, darkened, contaminated streets
are negated in this compacted idyll
so that the urban carcinoma is obviated
in this bubble of earthly delight.
Arnold Skemer
THE PROSPECT
Even the solitary house contains within itself
the long expanse of deserted streets,
thoroughfares leading inexorably
to squares of perplexity crowned by pediments
of mysterious allure where statues stand,
portraits of mad philosophers, military failures
in heroic cast, obscure politicos of no achievement.
It is the internal texture of the imprisoned mind
trapped in the dwelling place of frustration,
covered by the grey granite of urban dignity.
How can the inhabitants break free from the oppression?
It weighs upon them even in their hours of sleep.
They must burst forth from the walls caked with blood
and run the opaque puddles of the mysterious streets
there to encounter the flights of strange birds,
the hideous mammals of savage irruption
and the recondite banners of surrender.
Only then will the spell be broken
and time permit the clear air to descend
uncontaminated by the volcano spewing its sulfurous smoke
of vile and never ending threat.
Arnold Skemer
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THE STILLNESS OF THE MORIBUND CITY
A spark ignites in the sleeping brain
and he awakes in the uncertain night.
He thinks he hears the sound
of a far off train hurtling through the darkness,
its metallic rumble breaking through the cold air.
He can't move from the uterine warmth
of his blankets as he audits with foreboding
the fearsome augury of the train of prophesy
that seeps into the chill of the predawn.
And then the sound waves diminish
until they disappear into the abiding silence.
It is only then that he considers
the stillness of the moribund city.
He knows what it looks like
from the mouth of his cocoon,
his mind ranging over the frigid streets
feeble in their brittleness, without motion,
in the deathlike grip of entropy.
He has been there often enough
to know their essence. Residing in his mind
is always the remembrance of the hollowness,
the empty spaces, the cold death
of the city in its death spiral.
Arnold Skemer
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RETURN TO THE CITY OF STRANGERS
He is moving into the city center
and in the unfolding streets
sees revelations of the past
whose tinctures fall upon him
with the gripping teeth of recollection.
Memories tremble to break free
from out of the molds of dead time.
Tiny pinpricks stimulate the brain
seeing intimations of the past return
in haphazard trajectories.
The streets and the very buildings are familiar.
Names of businesses come back to him haltingly,
the names of the streets, the templates of familiarity
in a vast opening up of enclosed existence
twisted in upon itself, folded in the choking embrace
of strata of compressed obscurity
like an undifferentiated morass of peat,
of coal sludge packed solid into a valley,
all perspective lost in the hidden layers
of earth, pebbles and vegetative rot
laying under the baking sun.
And then he entered the streets in their depths
and saw the faces and manners of a certain strangeness.
Those that he saw were not natives of the land
but creatures of different tribes,
bizarre individuals wandering the byways
of the familiar streets of yore.
He walked down the passages of the metropolis
and saw strange names on the street signs in barbaric tongues.
He felt that he was an interloper in the city of his remembrance,
a prodigal son in the city of strangers.
Arnold Skemer
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