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Three Poems - Keith Millea - 24-10-2009
It was a nice surprise to see this on the net this morning.Leonard is the Brother of my ex wifes first husband.Great guy.......
http://www.counterpunch.org/poems10232009.html
Miracle Maker
by LEONARD CIRINO
homage Fadhil Al-Azzawi
Born with stones in his mouth, he cried in silenceand built with pebbles what seemed like towers
but they were only landscapes of wind he adorned
with jewels of stream foam, little pearls of music,
houses, stars and circles marked on his teeth,
girls tattooed on his thighs. He was forbidden
to talk with strangers but loved his nonna
with the taste of garlic on her lips. She seemed
all he ever wanted, an artist of sorts,
but she never drew a thing except well water
and her husband’s slippers from the closet.
One time, the tree to the east thrilled him
like the past he was so fond of. But then
the soldiers came and slaughtered the goats
and his favorite pet. They took him to prison
and tortured his teeth. When they released him
he left, and left behind the twin rivers,
his siblings, that curl back into each other
like the towers he structures with words.
(previously published at The Other Voice International Project)
The Future Torturers
by LEONARD CIRINO
after Sándor Csoóri
If you see my shadow waking, and hear
the clock ring thirteen, then you’ve witnessed
their crimes against imagination:
the men and women with dwarfish thoughts
who swarm among the classical ruins:
white-faced gods arming themselves in secret,
with papers, summons, writs, and decrees.
At bay, the harbor pumps decay, debris,
rivers choke and fish flush, belly-up.
At the pubs, the well-groomed patrons,
push, shove, and posture, drink exotic beer,
as their ringed fingers fondle the glasses.
They trade their fantasies of expensive
women for weapons shipped to the east,
grin and snort, like those without eyes
who hear the smells, eat their hearts.
They own this day, and the future, they say.
Who knows why the fearful passersby
fly to the distance with a pigeon’s grace.
(previously published in The Bitter Oleander)
Mother Country
by LEONARD CIRINO
after Rimma Kazakova
Just before dawn a woman goes to her shadow,
bent on learning what she doesn’t know.
The rain sets runlets glowing, the sun drones
like bees in summer. When has she spent
a more perfect time than late at night
in the meadow, under the moon’s spell,
while slowly gathering the field’s flowers?
With sideways looks that challenge fate,
she finds no words in these starry nights
that can speak the joy she feels. She knows
the world is lovely and walks barefoot
with unflinching eyes and an easy gait.
With all the courage she can muster, she lifts
her skirt and hides her children underneath.
Leonard J. Cirino (1943) is the author of twenty chapbooks and fourteen full-length collections of poetry since 1987 from numerous small presses. He lives in Springfield, Oregon, where he is retired, does home care for his 95 year-old mother, and works full-time as a poet. His book, Omphalos: Poems 2007, will be published by Cervena Barva Press in December, 2009. His collection, after Yang Chi & others, is from March Street Press, May, 2009. His 52-page chapbook, Russian Matinee, is from Cedar Hill Publications in November, 2009. His 88-page collection, Chinese Masters, is from March Street press in November, 2009.
Three Poems - Paul Rigby - 24-10-2009
Keith Millea Wrote:It was a nice surprise to see this on the net this morning.Leonard is the Brother of my ex wifes first husband.Great guy.......
Mother Country
by LEONARD CIRINO
after Rimma KazakovaJust before dawn a woman goes to her shadow,
bent on learning what she doesn’t know.
Terrific opening lines, while the simile that follows..."The rain sets runlets glowing, the sun drones like bees in summer"...reminds me of a wonderful poem which appeared in the New Statesman sometime in the mid-1980s. I forget the title and author, and have long since mislaid the edition in question, but the line "...the days tick like a metal in the stillness" has stayed with me ever since.
Noel Coward famously commented on the potency of "cheap music": Good poetry is even more powerful.
Three Poems - Paul Rigby - 24-10-2009
The internet really is something else...
Quote:Mr. Wakefield on Interstate 90
by Donald Hall
“Now I will abandon the route of my life
as my shadowy wives abandon me, taking my children.
I will stop. I will park in a summer street
where the days tick like metal in the stillness.
Then I will rent the room over Bert’s Modern Barbershop
where the TO LET sign leans in the plateglass window;
or I will buy the brown BUNGALOW FOR SALE.
“I will work forty hours a week clerking at the paintstore.
On Fridays I will cash my paycheck at Six Rivers Bank
and stop at Harvey’s Market and talk with Harvey.
Walking on Maple Street I will speak to everyone.
At basketball games I will cheer for my neighbors’ sons.
I will watch my neighbors’ daughters grow up, marry,
raise children. The joints of my fingers will stiffen.
“There will be no room inside me for other places.
I will attend funerals regularly and weddings.
I will chat with the mailman when he comes on Saturdays.
I will shake my head when I hear of the florist
who drops dead in the greenhouse over a flat of pansies;
I spoke with her only yesterday . . .
When lawyer elopes with babysitter I will shake my head.
“When Harvey’s boy enlists in the Navy
I will wave goodbye at the Trailways Depot with the others.
I will applaud the valedictorian at graduation,
and wish her well, as she goes away to the University,
and weep, as she goes away. I will live in a steady joy;
I will exult in the ecstasy of my concealment.
The only mystery is the mystery of the ordinary.”
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=AiEq7VTaKK4C&pg=PA190&lpg=PA190&dq=%22Now+I+will+abandon+the+route+of+my+life%22&source=bl&ots=8BTn4aWN28&sig=IlfRcgHnsrSn0tDYXha5jbdxbLA&hl=en&ei=kGbjStGHNMeJ4QbovLSCAg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CA8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22Now%20I%20will%20abandon%20the%20route%20of%20my%20life%22&f=false
Three Poems - Ed Jewett - 25-10-2009
Well, talk about degrees of separation... Donald Hall was a classmate of my father's sister's daughter. I sense a poetry section to be grown soon. Good poetry is like finding a freshly-ripened fruit on the tree aside the long path you're on.
Three Poems - Paul Rigby - 25-10-2009
Ed Jewett Wrote:Well, talk about degrees of separation... Donald Hall was a classmate of my father's sister's daughter.
The world gets smaller - and more interesting - by the internet day.
Ed Jewett Wrote:I sense a poetry section to be grown soon.
Exclude me in.
Ed Jewett Wrote:Good poetry is like finding a freshly-ripened fruit on the tree aside the long path you're on.
Especially when you're on the road less travelled.
Three Poems - Keith Millea - 27-10-2009
My favorite poet.I'm biased though because he's an old friend.
NO MOON CEREMONY
Barefoot prankster sits in half-lotus
beside hardwood fire brewing peyote
on mountaintop.Ruby horizon fades
into cloudless pastels: perfect
world in all directions.
Night's first star whispers
through purple.Prankster gives her
a name.Fire dies
no moon will rise
coyotes howl across the miles
prankster recognizes Roland Kirk.
From lush hillsides where coyotes sing
prankster appears to be a glowing star
blowing suggestive harmonies
from mountaintop.The coyotes are not
surprised.They have played
with stars before.
Poem by J.T. Gillett
Subterranean Rumors
Homunculus Press 1982
Three Poems - Keith Millea - 27-10-2009
Evolutionary Predicament
Monkeys press distorted faces against
stained glass windows.
Itchy vibrations climb from wood-grain linoleum
and squirt like lizards' tongues across
the sharkskin thighs of the twentieth century.
Empty bottles of Anacin.The drugstores are closed.
Pull the blinds! Louder music!
Choke the screaming night with 100 watts!
Capitalize the T in technology until it turns
into a cross then nail your existence to it
like a faded ticket to the latest crucifixion.
Call it predestination. Divine will.
Watch the hero piss in the dusty crossroads,
village idiots fight to float their boats
around the shrinking islands of logic.
History laughs hysterically at catatonic revolution.
Suicidal technocrats ecstatic with apocalystic daydreams
are anxious to pull nuclear strings
let the loaded dice roll down the parabolic edge.
Saviors wait for high noon in the Hollywood hills
reading Sanskrit translations of Playboy.
A child of progress rolls in the womb
dreams of bouncing from a plastic cage
crawling apelike into a melancholy thicket.
Mad poets throw stones at the moon.
Nobody sees the ones that hit
through the veil of falling objects.
J.T. Gillett
Subterranean Rumors
Homunculus Press-1982
Three Poems - Keith Millea - 15-02-2010
Another poem from Leonard.
http://www.counterpunch.org/poems01292010.html
The Bag
By LEONARD CIRINO
The self in the south of oppression,By LEONARD CIRINO
where one sees shrapnel in the eyes
and chest of a young girl. To the north,
stains on the mirror of humanity,
where civility reigns with propaganda
as its idol. No truth allowed, speak
the oppressors. No words of dissent
or foreign tongues. Don’t even think.
I breathe-in this deathlike dogma
and spit. My tongue lags like a dog
run to extreme. In your words I find
small flashes of lightning that spread.
The wind gallops past, a riderless horse.
All I can put in the bag of this poem.
Leonard J. Cirino (1943) is the author of twenty chapbooks and fourteen full-length collections of poetry since 1987 from numerous small presses. He lives in Springfield, Oregon, where he is retired, does home care for his 95-year-old-mother, and works full-time as a poet. His book, Omphalos: Poems 2007, will be published by Cervena Barva Press in early 2010. His collection, after Yang Chi & others, is from March Street Press, 2009. His chapbook, Russian Matinee, is from Cedar Hill Publications, 2009. His full-length collection, Chinese Masters, is from March Street Press, 2009. Cirino will be the featured poet at the Outsiders’ Art Festival, Lincoln, NE, in August 2010.
Three Poems - Keith Millea - 10-03-2012
I just wanted to bump these few poems that I posted in this thread by Leonard Cirino.Sadly,Leonard passed away yesterday from his battle with cancer.We will all miss you Leonard....
Three Poems - Keith Millea - 17-03-2012
Counterpunch has been so kind to memorialize Leonard.
Weekend Edition March 16-18, 2012
Leonard Cirino (1943-2012)
by POETS' BASEMENT
Leonard Cirino, long-time regular contributor to the Poets' Basement (and inspiration to many other contributors) passed away on March 9. Like most who have been inspired and uplifted by Leonard's poems, I've never met him in person, but he was someone who drew you in with his language to the point where you couldn't call him anything less than "friend." We here at Poets' Basement and CounterPunch send our condolences to all those who did know Leonard personally, and wish to let you know because of his poetry, his support of his fellow-writers and fellow-travelers both known and unknown, and his steadfast truth-speaking, Leonard's circle of friends is boundless.
Marc Beaudin
The Turtle's Shadow
by LEONARD CIRINO
after Tomas Transtromer
Climbing this silence, the sky
looks blue but smells like the sea
that is green as a turtle's shell
carrying all that fern and algae
while the rest of the world pumps out
smoke and fumes. The turtle's shadow
is dark as the inside of a deep box
hidden under the full glare of summer
that bleeds on the flowers
where heaven becomes earth,
and humans, who are gods' fodder,
move toward night, hoping for light
in the distance, the silence of morning,
when mules pack the dead across borders.
(Published in Poets' Basement 19 November 2010)
He was an original, non-derivative poet who went to school with the masters, rather than going to grad school for an MFA in poetry. His poems will survive in our psyches long after we have laid his pages away. And we will, no doubt, return to his pages. He was that good a poet.
Leo Yankevich
Mother Country
by LEONARD CIRINO
after Rimma Kazakova
Just before dawn a woman goes to her shadow,
bent on learning what she doesn't know.
The rain sets runlets glowing, the sun drones
like bees in summer. When has she spent
a more perfect time than late at night
in the meadow, under the moon's spell,
while slowly gathering the field's flowers?
With sideways looks that challenge fate,
she finds no words in these starry nights
that can speak the joy she feels. She knows
the world is lovely and walks barefoot
with unflinching eyes and an easy gait.
With all the courage she can muster, she lifts
her skirt and hides her children underneath.
(Published in Poet's Basement 23 October 2009)
Every once in a while I've run into what I call a "pure poet" all the dross burned away someone whose only desire is to tune in, and to help others tune in, to the source of poetry. I love these people. Leonard Cirino was one of them.
Leonard taught himself poetry while he was an inmate in an institution for the criminally insane. He learned it by reading and writing. When he found a good thing, he ran with it, using the words of those he considered masters as springboards into his own work.
He made poetry with the rain and wind. He took fragments of a cup that had been dropped and broken and made them into a vessel to carry living water. Leonard has gone into the great silence, but the words he left behind keep echoing.
Barbara LaMorticella
The Lonely
by LEONARD CIRINO
With passion the dead ring their bones
sweetly, as in a tune from under the earth.
The living seem intent on staring
at jewels, their eyes speckled with envy.
In between, ghosts read their watches
waiting for the time to strike back.
All of them lonely, wanting the skies,
an old sofa, anything that remains;
the moon and stars, their ongoing tears,
shed for the world they once knew, that was.
(Published in Poets' Basement 24 June 2011)
One never should accept Leonard Cirino as gone that can never be. A cosmic internet friend, I am for one merely puzzled as to where the great L.A.-born poet is headed what astral-civilization art-form, maybe a Jupiter-tree, to which Cirino is attracted? Imprisoned, still struggling with the knowledge of good & evil, wanting what is not needed, I will try to remain free to feed from the tree of Leo's good works.
Charles Orloski
Sweet Dreams
by CHARLES ORLOSKI
(for Leonard Cirino)
Moment of opiate crazy,
Spring lifetimes in Chinese gardens,
He wept like violins backstage at Russian matinees,
his father in heaven carried mail-bags in California rain,
shaved-Leonard set ear close to A. M. radio,
Patsy Cline screamed, crazy, crazy,
her voice levitated Leonard above L.A. Freeway,
& Betsy scratched a door, howled
she wanted to pee, fetch a tattered ball,
play second base on Babe Ruth's All-Star team,
more graceful than I ever could.
You know, yesterday I got hospice news from Ava
I imagined white-cloaked Leonard dropping back to a fence,
pursuing a mysterious fly ball,
mother Marjorie begging him to slow down, catch breath,
and the ball traveled until dropping into his brother's farm.
Speechless, Leonard searched grasslands, let the ball rest in peace,
got involved with lotus Free Speech Movements,
fly-weight wings flapped, & Leonard healed all asylum wounds
with errant Muse, lounging in "the shelter of tributary shadows."
His poetry told me something,
Leo needed merely a cool, dry place to sleep,
pencil and paper, Betsy supine on floor.
Eventually maybe a Senior trailer park would do?
Something maybe far from noise, Bangkok lights?
A doctor's grim prognosis, eternity's silent reading room,
close to Merton, Dorothy Day, Crazy Horse, Thoreau;
Jesus Christ could be present too, ask over & over,
shhhhhh,
"Do you believe in me Leonard Cirino?"
Christ it's four A.M., Ava's email in my inbox,
it's cold and raining in Oregon, are there any unspoken wounds?
I insert trembling fingers into Cirino's beautiful word,
look, look, grinning caterpillars try to move his stone.
Charles Orloski lives in Taylor, Pennsylvania. He never met Leo Cirino, only exchanged emails. Orloski can be reached at CCDJOrlov@aol.com.
Redwoods
by LEONARD CIRINO
after Ron Rash
It's wise to know a memory
deep and historical as water,
called down from the sky to nest
among leaves where the wind slopes
and stirs the leaves, thinks of roots
in the past, back to the time of Christ,
when this clearcut was a grove, limbs
large and sensate, fertile and strong.
It's the vanquished who have the last say,
knowing their absence will go on forever.
Leonard J. Cirino is the author of numerous collections of poetry, since from several small presses, most recently The Instrument of Others from Lummox Press. He lived in Springfield, Oregon. A very nice write-up on Leonard and his poetry is on Poetry Dispatch.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/03/16/leonard-cirino-1943-2012/