"Randall Stephens is a poet owing more to Rambo than to Rimbaud."
Well that's an idea for a poem, I thought. Or maybe ten. Thanks Randall!
ARTHUR RAMBO - POEMS
Fancies
Smoke twines around, about the bar
I peer at bodies through the haze
And seem to dream -
of paratroopers
Storming villages with guns
And military operations
In quaint, remote and foreign lands.
The water comes. I order coffee:
Long and black. The music plays,
Fantastic filigrees of sound -
I fall into a swoon again:
I pull the pin on yet another
Hand-grenade, and hurl it in the blaze.
A soldier screams - in pain or rage -
I shoot some automatic rounds
Into the point that made the sounds.
And, like a doctor's distant cough,
Someone fires a bazooka off.
And so I dream, and so I seem
To spy these visions through the steam.
Oh! Sweet fancies of the evening air!
I sigh and fall back on my chair!
Nostalgia
Oh do you remember
The first you dismembered?
I do.
And the horrifying memories of that traumatic incident haunt me to this very day.
Pastorella
Sweet nymph of the waters,
Clearly-running waters
Daughter of the waters
Smiling on the shore,
Pure and demure nymph,
I yearn for you to say
Where you keep your hi-tech
Military weapon store.
Your rockets and your launchers,
Your landmines and grenades,
Your automatic weaponry,
And of course hand-guns,
Machetes swords and sabres,
Dynamite and bombs,
By the clearly flowing waters
Of the river as it runs?
Goddess of the rivers,
Ever running, ever laughing,
Lying like a dream
Upon its sandy bank,
I burn for you! I pine!
Say quick where we can arm
Before we all get blasted
By that fucking armoured tank!
Illumination 1
Such interplay of light and shade!
Paratroopers on a raid.
Illumination 2
A delicate secluded glade -
Then someone throws a hand-grenade.
Flowers are evil!
In the cafe
Music playing
And I hear
Fine blue petals,
Perfumed petals
Fall upon my ear.
Nectarine mist,
Purple odours,
Fragrant rain,
A bird sings
And I shudder
As in pain.
Don't worry,
It's just
A recurrence of post traumatic stress disorder yet again.
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4 comments:
Oh..
oh, oh, oh...
*APPLAUSE*
So good my sides have split, and this wee reward for you fell out:
http://www.en.origami-club.com/abc/index.html
"Themes of this little known 19th-century French poet include guns, slaughter, blood, vengeance, paramilitary exercises, and the delicate transience and existential mystery of all of life."
I might also note that, for a 19th-century French poet, Artie Rambo sure does know a lot about warfare in the 1980s...
That's a fabulous link &Duck - I could be a while exploring that site!
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