OLYMPIAN CHESS

(screen capture from the film "Jason And The Argonauts")

A whale is swimming
In the wine glass
On the chessboard.
Zeus takes a sip,
Puts the glass back.
The whale, startled,
Thrashes its tail,
Spurts a geyser of wine
From its blow hole.
Unlike Zeus, the whale
Is getting drunk, drunker and drunker
With each breath it takes.

Elsewhere on the board,
The gladiator, angel, duck and frog
Are plotting their escape in whispers.
Zeus, who knows everything,
Finds this amusing
To no end. But he makes a mental note
Not to give the pieces
Consciousness next time.

Across the board, Hera –
Whose mind he cannot read,
Since she’s a woman and his equal –
Cooks up her own plot,
And discusses it
With no one.


-- © 2011 by Jack Veasey

(All rights reserved. This work may not be reproduced or duplicated in any form without the author's written permission. )

ABOUT THE ANGELS

(Photo: Engel auf dem Friedhot, Sandramat, Oct. 2006, GNU Free Documentation License)

ABOUT THE ANGELS


Long ago,
Before the New Age vogue for them,
I heard a bearded poet
In a battered leather jacket
Say he “had a thing for them;”
He loved the marble statues of them,
Sad and solemn,
Posed forever among tombstones
In the old Louisiana cemeteries.

More recently, I heard
The spoiled young daughter
Of a well-to-do churchgoer
Say she “hated” them;
Anyone who’d own an image of one
Had no taste. She looked smug
In this judgment.

When I was younger
And more literal,
I pictured them
With feathers; they were men
Whose shoulders sprouted
Giant pigeon wings –- no, gull wings,
All white, made
Of bone and muscle, and yet
Giving off faint light.
I wondered if they made a sound
Like birds.

Now that I have seen them,
I know better
Than to try to fit their likeness
Into words.
All I know
Is that you only call on them
When you are really desperate,
And that the sight of them
Will turn a young man grey,
And that the shattering vibrations
One feels when drenched in their presence
Leave you deeply shaken,
And forever chastened.


-- (C) 2011 by Jack Veasey

(All rights reserved. This work may not be reproduced or duplicated in any form without the author's written permission. )

…AND SOMETIMES Y

I am the first letter
In the Holy Hebrew
Secret name of God.

In that ancient language,
I look like
A tongue of flame –

The kind that hovers
Over someone’s head
Sometimes in paintings

Of the people
Some call “saints”.
In English,

I can be a consonant
Or vowel. But
Vowels in Hebrew

Are not written down –
One has to breathe them out,
For they are a word’s soul.

Consonants provide a shape,
Define the limits,
But you can’t speak out loud

Till the Spirit moves you.
In practice, I am
As much consonant as vowel,

Shaping the fire that
Springs from my own
Spark, and then

Descending like
Hands into wet clay
As it spins. Open

Your arms to the sky
And feel my energy
Come down, infusing
Everything
With both its start
And ending.

The question “Why”
Contains me as
Both breath, and answer.


-- © 2011 by Jack Veasey

(All rights reserved. This work may not be reproduced or duplicated in any form without the author's written permission. )