A Few More Fold-Out Postcard Sonnets - 6/23

Good morning all, & time for more of Marlowe's misadventures. After looking today’s sonnet over this morning, I'd have to say it may be the weakest entry in the sequence—the extended simile in the first quatrain gets a bit jumbled in its surreality & grammar, but yes, it is the coughdrop that’s gasping. An everyday occurrence in Marlowe’s life? Perhaps….

In case you haven’t been keeping track, this is the tenth sonnet in the sequence, which means there are seven more yet to come: one more in June (6/30), five in July & one in August. Other coming distractions here on Robert Frost’s Banjo: tomorrow: Moon June Spoon, while on Thursday Eberle asks the question, “Who Did the Laundry at Walden Pond?”

Hope you enjoy it.

6/23


A blue coughdrop lost in the depths of Marlowe’s
sport coat pocket like a spelunker run out of
luck amongst vampire bats & subterranean
phone numbers no one answers gives up the ghost

gasping We are such stuff as dreams are etc. &
sinks like a mollusk that’s lost it’s shell into the
godforsaken depths of a lachrymose pre-socratic
tidal pool tastes like a stale Carling Black Label

& it wasn’t so long ago either Jekyl Island GA
June 1988 Jane did the australian crawl in a
lukewarm ocean of interminable love or at least

sex with loads of good will behind it like
a water bed on castors with a burnt clutch lurching
like the subway Marlowe now stumbles into

© John Hayes 1996-2009

A Few More Fold-Out Postcard Sonnets - 6/21

Last week was one of those. Today starts a new one, & we'll be hoping for better things; & we get to start it out with Original Poetry Sunday. My offering today is one of the 1996 sonnets, written on this date thirteen years ago (as has been pointed out this is not "new original poetry Sunday," a good thing for me).

Please check out these other participants (based on previous weeks):

Amazing Voyages of the Turtle
Apogee Poet
Poetikat Invisible Keepsakes
Premium T.
Secret Poems from the Times Literary Supplement
Yes is Red

I'd also like to point you to an original poem posted last Sunday on the very interesting luthier site, WhiteSalmonGuitar. I'm sorry to have missed Craig's offering until later last week, & would like to give it a shout out here. The actual poem post is at this link, but do give a look over the site; the luthier craft is a fascinating topic, & Mr Wilson presents it in an engaging way.

& finally: I know others have given this a more timely boost, but in case you've missed it, please do yourself a favor & check out TotalFeckingEejit's post about his "hippo on a motorcycle" garden sculpture here. It's just the sort of garden art we love around these parts. & I've just noticed that Mr Eejit has posted a poem on Original Poetry Sunday, at least in lots of places in the world; please check that out here.

Enjoy - & I'll even be here to answer comments! Sorry to have been so incommunicado.

UPDATE: I found another poem that most certainly deserves a mention on a blog that frequently posts poetry, & which I invariably find intriguing & thought-provoking. That would be Dave King's Pics & Poems. Mr King's solstice poem (which he terms a "rough draft" & I term a darned good rough draft) is here.

6/21


A deuce of hearts misplaced in the arms of a
VT forsythia bush the other blossoms of course a
sort of raincoat yellow & the heart inside the coat’s
sort of sputtering like a buckwheat pancake on a

griddle in a Mojave truck stop in the middle of 100 miles of
yucca & borax & bleak fortune cookie sticking their
paper tongues out like so many 5¢ Chinatown
postcards Marlowe’s penning return address un-

known tho it could be the North Pole for that matter
someplace he couldn’t escape from like a snapshot mis-
placed long ago in a bungalow run aground long after the

Mendelssohn wedding recessional shed white yellow
blue pink scads of umblicial blossoms scattering ev-
eryplace as tho the mailbox had blown up at last


© John Hayes 1996-2009

A Few More Fold-Out Postcards - 6/20

Here's the next in line of the San Francisco 1996 "Postcard" sonnets. Hope you enjoy it!

6/20

The sunset just looks like radioactive chicken soup
iridescent & pissed-off & splashing across the flat-top
Victorians lurking Dear Diary like water glasses
in a diner whose whole herd of stainless butterknives

will slice fluorescent light into butter & harmonicas &
Marlowe’s jukebox breakfast on another tomorrow with its odor of
sex & Ivory soap floating across the Pacific amongst
almighty Holsteins chewing & lolling like trawlers

It all looked like a vinyl tablecloth spreading a classical
picnic in the ruins of the Parthenon where Maggie’s
sipping her 5th milky espresso & the moon by then

spilling its milk across the table
spilling its milk across Marlowe who’s feeling about as bucolic
as a hospital bed sleeping it off in Dolores Park

© John Hayes 1996-2009

A Few More Foldout Postcard Sonnets - 6/13

Here’s the next in sequence from my 1996 sonnets. Hope you enjoy it. This afternoon: Moon June Spoon #3!

6/13


A black umbrella wobbling above blue yellow &
purple gingerbread houses thru sheets of
rain with its maple sap half life & an avenue meantime menaced by
black rotary phones & princess phones & the stained

glass doors guarded by dachshunds with
bobbing heads & the only fish that swim past Marlowe sport
big black dew laps like Jerry Lewis bow ties tho
Marlowe feels like a kite doing the deadman’s float tho

Nantucket is pretty far off still &
Maggie’s flickering there like a lovely black haired candle a
smattering of black-eyed Susans blooming across her

black scuffed combat boots tho as usual she’s a
concertina exuding Nino Rota
tho the wedding got rained out in the 2nd inning

John Hayes
© 1996-2009

A Few More Foldout Postcards - 6/9

Back-to-back “Fold-Out Postcard Sonnets?” Yes, I must have been typing away feverishly 13 years ago. On the non-poetic front, there will be another post this afternoon. In the meantime, more of Marlowe’s disembodied cogitations….

6/9


The blue cars sighing a little like zippers
unzipped in a breathless studio apt in the midst of
this miserable sonofabitch effluvial moonlight that’s
sweating like a bottle of Mexican Coca Cola in the

Sacramento bus station May 1988 It felt like
a country radio station sobbing sucrose &
Dear John letters & Pictures from Life’s Other Side across a
Formica counter in the midst of Marlowe’s nervous

collapse like a red dwarf star’s collapse like the
red tip of Alice’s Marlboro collapsing into an ashtray amidst a
fistful of ocotillos when it was too late after all & Marlowe

feels like Ambrose Bierce in the midst of
Mexico D.F. in the midst of life & so forth & after all darling
the blue cars come to a stop at the stop sign

John Hayes
© 1996-2009

A Few More Foldout Postcard Sonnets - 6/8

For your morning diversion: the next in sequence of my 1996 sonnets. I do expect to be posting again, tho, probably mid-afternoon out here in spacious Mountain Time.

Hope you enjoy it.


6/8


Marlowe at 1-something a m on a worknight’s
like a typewriter with a case of yellow fever
a ‘56 Chevy Bel Air rusting in
a humongous ice rink

like a cigarette butt with hepatitis B a
rheumatic 2-slice toaster clogged with
poached eggs & who crammed the
poached eggs into the slot

In the dream Marlowe’d rather have for breakfast
he tells Charlotte all the relevant stuff
like a wedding band made of lips

like a peach crate come down with textbook melancholia
& Spring is springing like nothing off a trampoline
in a wood-paneled rec room

John Hayes
© 1996-2009

A Few More Fold-out Postcard Sonnets - 5/30

Here’s the next sonnet in the Fold-Out Postcard Sonnet sequence. Not much to say about this one except that, as I mentioned in the first post about this sequence of poems (which were written at this time of year in 1996), state names are “spelled” as abbreviations but pronounced as the state—TX for Texas (not “T for Texas” as Jimmie Rodgers would have it) & VT for Vermont in this particular poem.

In other news: I’ll be playing my monthly craft fair/farmer’s market gig in Council today from late morning until early afternoon, & I’m looking forward to adding a few old standards to the set list: “It Had To Be You,” “It’s Only a Paper Moon,” & “Bye Bye Blues.” It’ll be a pretty eclectic batch of songs, ranging from the old Appalachian tune “I Wish I Was a Mole in the Ground” to the aforementioned standards, with lots of blues & old country in between. The weather? Fair & hot!

Be sure to drop in for Original Poetry Sunday tomorrow—in case you don’t know, Original Poetry Sunday was initiated by Sandra Leigh of the fabulous Amazing Voyages of the Turtle blog. More on this tomorrow. In the meantime—enjoy the following:


5/30


A cigarette drowns in a strawberry milkshake its
last words being Save the last dance for me as the
tumbleweeds waltz a Brahms waltz under a life
preserver orange TX sun May 1988

& Marlowe walks smack into the future into a
telephone booth misplaced in a spaghetti western an
unruly Rorsarch blot smearing the western horizon like
a down sleeping bag with egyptian dreams

But a few things are true at present a slice of
strawberry rhubarb pie drenched in melted vanilla
ice cream a dial tone chirping Waltzing Matilda

& Marlowe growing a little bit older as VT
sinks like a beer bottle in a stagnant beaver pond
whether or not Marlowe actually uses the phone

© John Hayes 1996-2009

A Few More Fold-Out Postcards - 5/27

For Wednesday—the next Fold-Out Postcard Sonnet. I’ve written about Strauss’ setting of Beim Schlafengehen here before, & of course Hank Williams fans will get the “Kaw-Liga” reference.

In other news—I’ve been doing a bit of housecleaning here on the blog—consolidating mostly. So, for instance, rather than having a separate link for each of the Dad’s Photos posts, you can get to all of them by clicking on the link in the left-hand frame. I also removed the Musical Questions pix, tho you can see all the musicians involved in a slideshow at the bottom of the page, & you can get to all the Musical Questions posts by clicking on the banjo graphic.

Enjoy!

5/27

A quart of clamato & a wrecked green
canoe amongst loads of other stuff a stuffed
orange easy chair going up in smoke to the tune of
Beim Schlafengehen set by Richard Strauss sung by

Ms Melodramatic Archaic Ocean tragic as the
rain in Charlotte NC raining mandolins & buttons &
Vitamin B complex something Marlowe longs for
like a cigar store indian with a breathtaking crush

So Marlowe wants to unscrew his lid
& spill it There’re so many dishes surfacing in the
sink the toy boats have all run freaking aground like

an onslaught of words starring dirty windows like a
wishing well smashed with wooden nickels like a
waterlogged Kaw-Liga in a bonfire


© John Hayes 1996-2009

A Few More Fold-Out Postcard Sonnets – 5/23

Rules are, as they say, made to be broken. Tho I’ve previously only posted one of my poems as the Saturday Weekly Poem, here’s the second of the Fold-Out Postcard Sonnets from the spring & summer of 1996. I’ll stick to the dates on posting these, & let the chips fall where they may.

During this time I lived in San Francisco’s Western Addition, just a couple blocks north of the Panhandle, the narrow strip of park that stretches east from Golden Gate Park & is bordered by Oak Street to the south & Fell Street to the North. Once you’re on the south side of the Panhandle you’re in the Haight district—to the north is the Western Addition—though I understand that these days developers are calling this “North of Panhandle” or “NoPa” in an attempt to gentrify the area.

The Western Addition (as I’ll always think of it) was a wonderful area. It was a working class neighborhood & traditionally had been an African-American neighborhood, tho by the mid-90s a fair amount of boho types such as myself were living there because the rents were still (by San Francisco standards) low. I loved walking its tree-lined streets, going to the markets & cafés & exploring Divisidero, the neighborhood’s major street that ran north-south. I lived there from June of 1994 until January 1998, when I moved to Idaho, & wrote some of my best San Francisco poems in my studio apartment there.


5/23


Tweed birds— sporting thought balloons too thinking
gadzooks an unmanageable rainbow landing at the bus terminal—
& other wooly entities in the bottlebrush trees &
tea kettles whistling thru Marlowe’s paranoia

So much for Wednesday’s red desert floribunda
with its debonair hopeless yodeling
The cigarette smoke’s a gray sky white planes
penetrate What could they be hunting down

A wool NY Yankees cap misplaced under a quilt
or somewhere equally stifling
17 weeks of Sneaky Pete & smoke not to mention

oceanic dreams about steamships & icebergs emerging
under a hairy evening star that’s recuperating
like a fright wig floating above Point Lobos

© John Hayes 1996-2009

A Few More Fold-Out Postcard Sonnets - 5/21

A Few More Fold-Out Postcard Sonnets were written over a bit less than three months in 1996; the date on each poem indicates when it was written. I remember them as being pretty spontaneous overall. As I mentioned earlier this month, I'll post these sonnets here on the dates they were written as a sort of 13 year anniversary.

I’m sure I envisioned more than seventeen sonnets, which is an odd number to end on, literally & otherwise, but in August I hit a wall. The poem dated 8/1 was the last thing wrote until writing “She Sells Seashells” in 2002; I then “put down the pen” again (only figuratively—I’ve pretty much only written on a computer keyboard for a number of years) until the spring of 2008.

The summer of 96 was significant to me both because I was nearing my 40th birthday in September (I think decade birthdays tend to be times of reflection), & also because I traveled from San Francisco back to Charlottesville, VA in July. I believe the 7/18 & 7/23 sonnets both were written on that trip. Since my time in Charlottesville (from 84-89) had been filled with all sorts of psychic commotion, the trip was a bit of a pilgrimage. Of course, the past—as always—had slipped away from any sort of tangibility into memory, where it’s both lost & ever present….

Some people assumed at the time the sonnets were being written that the character “Marlowe” was literally intended to be Raymond Chandler’s Phillip Marlowe character. Though I am a big Chandler fan & read him a lot around this time, this was at most a piece of the puzzle. I liked the name in general, & I also had the (reputedly) dissolute Elizabethan poet in mind along with the fictional LA detective. There also are both autobiographical & imagined details contained in the character quite separate from either of those two figures.

One final note—just because I liked the way it looked, I abbreviated state names in these poems: VT=Vermont, VA=Virginia, etc. When I gave readings I would say the state name, not the abbreviation. It seems a little confusing when used for Vermont because I don’t believe town names are ever mentioned alongside the abbreviation. I still keep this quirk up, along with my passion for dashes as sole punctuation & a few spellings that I like but some may or may not find like a tic; same goes for me & ampersands!

The streets referred to are in San Francisco, mostly either in the Mission or the Western Addition (or betwixt & between the two)— the places I loved to hang out & live in those days.

The first sonnet was dated 5/21. Here it is:

5/21


A badminton net in a VT backyard afflicted with a
Rosicrucian sunset & an outbreak of communist mosquitos
buzzing a Manachevitz buzz in Mr Marlowe’s a-
symmetrical ears— & a transistor radio

perched in a scotch pine sporting superfluous
shades & crooning Blue Bayou— which is likewise
superfluous— as Baltimore Orioles
swooping into the hedge to roost make Marlowe think

Descartes was right for no particular reason
except he’s cadaverous drunk & shouldn’t be lounging
in the tattered green & white lawn chair after all

his eyes floating westward plasmic inside a spectacular
bronze Chevy Malibu 15 miles east of Needles
where shuttlecocks & fortune cookies are likewise dissolving

© John Hayes 1996-2009