Oops, Not the Last...

I goofed. It seems that I took up pencil again in 2007 to write this ode (or whatever) to Raoul Wallenberg (if you don't know who he is, shame on you -- leave this site at once and go look him up!). It seems that I also wrote a rather bitter American Ballad in no less than 7 parts, but I'm not willing to stick that anywhere until I read it a few dozen more times to see if it's acceptable for human consumption....

If you are interested you might see if you can find my references to Wim Wenders (well, OK, that's a gimme), Mel Brooks (should be pretty easy), Thomas Pynchon (a little tricky) and Raoul's (official) profession -- although, actually, his only profession that really mattered was HERO.…

1932, Prescient Homage to Raoul Wallenberg

In Berlin, Hitler rules in the warming Spring

Jews and Gypsies walk verdant parks

Smell the trees not yet blossoming, but soon

(Perhaps not Gypsies... and, Jews, well.... be discrete!)

In a decade... or so... they’ll be dead, roasted

or, shot, or, occasionally, hanged

or, more often, poisoned, then roasted

Efficient folk, the murderers will keep good records

Names, numbers, details of scars, shoe sizes and styles of glasses

In Berlin, Wim Wenders hasn’t been born, but...

There's’ a raffish fellow, a Swede, visiting El Norte

(What precisely did Raoul Wallenberg study in America

The waft and woof of a building... Yes

The smell of the World’s Fair... Yes)

Perhaps he met a dark-eyed Jewess who immunized him

Against incipient bland hatred

Whilst listening to tinkling starry music

An aristocrat with pale eyes, blond hair - Aryan pure

In a decade .... or so.... will stand with Nazis

And say, here there be Swedes while

waving a pale hand toward the cattle cars

packed with Jews, Gypsies, Fags and Retards

(off to the Schlachthof... hinky dinky doo)

While chums, equally pale, wispy, Aryan pure, Swedes

Wandering along the tracks writing names on pure blank sheets

Creating, as they walked, new, pure, dark complected non-Aryan Swedes

Making the cattle cars wait, here there be Swedes

Until finally, “Yes, yes. Take them. Go. We have schedules...”

How many will he save, this ne'er-do-well

Blond Aryan lad now playing in the spring sun?

One hundred thousand?

Until - one last train to catch and delay -

He is now to be, to have been, caught in the Zone

(evolving to Soviet Germany)

And will disappear....

Blame Stalin - might as well - blame me or Wim

We weren’t born yet... so blame us... blame the wind

Blowing from the East or South... warming ‘things’ in that

Spring Summer (to be) in the Zone where - poof, pop

So many. This one at least. Hero. Disappeared.

Jim FitzPatrick

2 March 2007

rev. May 2007

The First and The Last (so far)

Not so much the first poem I ever wrote, but the first I ever considered keeping….

Web

At the edge of my garden

Is a fluorescent matrix

And I lie angling the sun to see it,

this pattern of geometric progression,

a regression ever back onto itself.

Inside. Outside. A living mobius strip

reflecting a form of the universe.

Complete. Timeless. Tangled in its own purpose;

Which was this: to be broken,

just now, by the fly’s struggle.

-- 1983

I took up the pen (pencil, actually…) again in 2001 (after 9-11) and for the next two years produced 1 or 2 poems a month (Marshall University’s Joan Adkins would be proud, if, perhaps a bit critical, of the result…), culminating in the one below. Curiously enough, most of the 21^st century poems are largely biographical or autobiographical in nature. This last one drifts from that pattern a bit, I believe…. I hope….

Silua si

Silua si, the fairy host, gambols alongside

Drawing potency, sniffling silent

Along this dark edged pathway, strewn with

Pale shadowed night bloom -- wavering lustily

Amid a negligible breeze, wafting spectacular

Nose perks - as unto a pleasant reminiscence

‘What if,’ I wonder-think, ‘the Gaelic predisposition

For emotional substrate proved to be true!’

Fantazy! Projected upon ancient innocence

‘It seems, sir!, that you propose…’

Propositional parenthetical pretentious Proportionate

‘… Propose an unnatural supremacy of --

Non -- I say, NON! - intellectual superiority’

So I leaned -- just a bit, adjusting for a draft --

And tapped him briskly - knuckle to nose

Noisy wheezing muffed gasping non-sobs

Bleeding a bit, staining (upon drying)

A bit of snotrag to a chocolatey, red-brown

A heightening of color --

Redolent of something

Fragrance upon the breeze, brisk downwind

A feeling! --

Not the wrist -- karmically sprained by its violent exertions

Upon the now stanched nose uptilted and bracketed

With two chunks of cloth-wrapped rectangular ices

Silua si -- a troupe of children, so they seemed

Shigging noiseless through the twilight

Yes, a misty haziness shadowed

These, my cousins in time

‘Where from does Ossian come?’

I hear them singing -- voices raucous yet beautiful

One, stepping nearer,

Points my way, smiling --

A wagged finger

‘No, sirrah - not yet for thee’

Then there happens -- a drifting unmoving

Till only One remains -

Red-haired -- swelling in size

Blue veined -- emerging from the dimness

Long tapered fingers -- a smell of jasmine

Vaguely feminine -- floating emergent

Then when one last pretension remains

What passes before me as within me

All mine recognized, claimed, cherished

-- 26 September to 7 November 2003