Fleurs du Artie

"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.