Delicate Negociations

The Knight of the Besmirched Countenance has invited a delegation from the Sisterhood of the Pointy Heels to discuss the nature of the Bilateral Treaty of Mutual Advantage...
Kick off your shoes, ladies, make yourselves comfortable....

Just a thought...

Red Dirt Girl left a comment on my pic of a chariot of fire, a burning bicycle, that
it thus means Elijah went heavenward on a burning bicycle, and Jesus may return on one. Quite a thought... I thought he might come back on his horse.

Warpath, by Ario Farin

Warpath

Autumn comes late in the mountains.
The transmission cables connecting
the cottages and the farms,
the solitary skyscrapers and frozen churches,
are set ablaze for a day or two
by the singeing wings of scouting kestrels,
swallows flying below radar in the pink glow.
No one is injured, bunkers remain intact,
but we skulk in the furrows,
set trap after trap.

Then the renditions began, first from the cities,
chalky white cliffs in the first long night,
to Babylon, to Qom, to Amsterdam, to London:
Paris no longer exists it is said in the papers
that lie spread along the green hillsides
among the trumpet chanterels and the imploding toadstools.
Extraordinary scenes: canals luminous with ghosts,
the motorways silent for weeks except for
the rotating blades of military hovercraft,
cutting the empty road ahead into slices of routes.

Then, amid the last blue flash
of headlights, the fading glint
of a cat’s eye burrowed into the molten tarmac,
she dances, snapping her fingers
amid the flurry of fog and exhaust gases
from God knows where, she dances
to a delusional beat, half asleep
and half howling to a sonar beep,
falling like a raindrop
On a brown-red leaf.

I mentioned this poem, a couple of posts back, as the one that spurred me to look up 'The Horses', by Edwin Muir.

It was on a blog called Scribblings and Sketches, and is the work of one Ario Farin, who says:-

"My actual name is Arioborzine Farin. I was born in Isfahan in 1977 to a Dutch mother and Iranian father. I have lived in Iran, the Netherlands, the UK and now in Germany. English is not my native language. I am not sure I have one. My nationality is Dutch though. I work as an English teacher for adults and translator in Leipzig."

I, a native speaker of english can not write anything in any way as accomplished as this poem, yet Ario is almost apologetic about placing these poems before us, as if feeling them unworthy.

I asked permission to post this, when I posted 'Horses', The reply only just got to me, giving permission to do so. I was going to add it to the Edwin Muir post, but thought again.

The poem deserves a post of its own.

Please comment, you poetry readers and poets, I really would like to hear your views, lurkers, take a chance, step out of the shadows and speak, it won't hurt, I promise.

Click on the links, go visit Ario Farin at Scribblings and Sketches.

My meanderings on the internet have led me to many rewarding discoveries. So many self-publishing writers and poets, I feel humbled.

And jealous.

Bring Me My Chariot of Fire

Listen

Seven Angels on a Bicycle,
Carrie Rodriguez, with Chip Taylor.

Go get what you want my love
Go get what you need my love
I am with you
I am with you
Go get what you want my love
Go get what you need my love
I am with you
I am with you
This will not turn me away
This will not turn me away
I am with you
I am with you
Go get what you want my love
Go get what you need my love
I am with you

Brooklyn Bridge on a bicycle
Brooklyn Bridge on a bicycle
Don’t he look good
Don’t he look good
Follow him right into town
Follow him right into town
Don’t this feel good
Don’t he look good

Taking pictures on a subway
Enchiladas on a Sunday
Lets get drunk
We’ll all play
Your fancy guitar
Don’t this feel good
Don’t he look good

Seven angels on a bicycle
Seven angels on a bicycle
I am with you
I am with you
Seven angels on a bicycle
Seven angels on a bicycle
I am with you
I am with you

Go get what you want my love
Go get what you need my love
I am with you
I am with you

Go get what you want my love
Go get what you need my love

I am with you

Deep Cleansing. Ed Reiss

Found in the hospital, -a poem.

The Horses - Edwin Muir

I remember reading this poem many years ago. -I grew up in the shadow of the cold war.
I remember the great V-Bombers, Vulcans thundering down the valley, practising, always practising that low level flight, infiltration under the radar, a suicide mission to drop their bombs on Russian landscapes, where at the same time, Russian crews were practising the same thing.
Five-minute-warning.
The Distant Early Warning Line. Global war was real. Expected, even.
Nobody knew what the aftermath would be. Who might survive. What sort of life might there be.
I read science fiction.
Then at college, I read Muir.
This poem, which says so much.

A few days ago, I read a poem called 'Warpath', which I liked, on a blog called Scribblings & Sketches.
Do go over there, and read, if you like poetry.
After reading, I wondered for some days what old memory that poem was tugging at.
Here it is,

The Horses, By Edwin Muir.

Barely a twelvemonth after
The seven days war that put the world to sleep,
Late in the evening the strange horses came.
By then we had made our covenant with silence,
But in the first few days it was so still
We listened to our breathing and were afraid.
On the second day
The radios failed; we turned the knobs, no answer.
On the third day a warship passed us, headed north,
Dead bodies piled on the deck. On the sixth day
A plane plunged over us into the sea. Thereafter
Nothing. The radios dumb;
And still they stand in corners of our kitchens,
And stand, perhaps, turned on, in a million rooms
All over the world. But now if they should speak,
If on a sudden they should speak again,
If on the stroke of noon a voice should speak,
We would not listen, we would not let it bring
That old bad world that swallowed its children quick
At one great gulp. We would not have it again.
Sometimes we think of the nations lying asleep,
Curled blindly in impenetrable sorrow,
And then the thought confounds us with its strangeness.
The tractors lie about our fields; at evening
They look like dank sea-monsters crouched and waiting.
We leave them where they are and let them rust:
"They'll molder away and be like other loam."
We make our oxen drag our rusty plows,
Long laid aside. We have gone back
Far past our fathers' land.
And then, that evening
Late in the summer the strange horses came.
We heard a distant tapping on the road,
A deepening drumming; it stopped, went on again
And at the corner changed to hollow thunder.
We saw the heads
Like a wild wave charging and were afraid.
We had sold our horses in our fathers' time
To buy new tractors. Now they were strange to us
As fabulous steeds set on an ancient shield
Or illustrations in a book of knights.
We did not dare go near them. Yet they waited,
Stubborn and shy, as if they had been sent
By an old command to find our whereabouts
And that long-lost archaic companionship.
In the first moment we had never a thought
That they were creatures to be owned and used.
Among them were some half a dozen colts
Dropped in some wilderness of the broken world,
Yet new as if they had come from their own Eden.
Since then they have pulled our plows and borne our loads,
But that free servitude still can pierce our hearts.
Our life is changed; their coming our beginning.

Edwin Muir

Tankchair:- An Engineer's token of Love.

Awesome! Tankchair
Built by a very talented man, after his wife was injured in an accident, he sought to make a chair that would enable her to enjoy the woods, hiking, the places she had loved when she was able to walk. It can cope with mud, streams, snow, gravel, soft ground, all those things that are impossible for an ordinary wheelchair.
It can even climb stairs!
(though I bet that's scary for the pilot)

Their website says "For every 10 chairs sold, TankChair is going to donate one to a fire department in a rural area so that they can give it away to someone who would not normally be able to afford one. The first is going to go to Parker Fire Department in Arizona. This is our hometown and they were the ones who rescued my wife, my kids, and myself when we got in the accident that put her in the chair."

When I read their website I was so impressed at how he has striven to give his wife back the freedom of the outdoors.
If ever I need a wheelchair, I'll beg for one of these.