PoemTree6

My poems are a way of working through issues, discussing with myself and others the nature of life experience. Some ways of being force us to really stretch, and here my poems take twists and turns into abstract escapism. Finding images to release the individual from tension is not always easy. Others may relate and give their own interpretations to my poetry, just as they do to others’.

This is all part and parcel of the game and art of poetry. What a reader or listener finds in words is for their own benefit. Sometimes they’ll be unable to find common ground at all. Then they can either just appreciate the rhythmic flows and patterns, the occasional rhyme, the concocted verbs verbatim, the shining, glimmery phrases and stanzas or depart vehemently to the race of human humdrum.

A general feeling may be all that one can get from a poem. This is great. Go ahead, live in that vision of an alternate reality. It may take the place of a sorrow or a pain. It may help in gaining distance from a crazy experience. All these ways of appreciating or dialoguing with someone else’s wordforms are fine. There is no right way to read a poem.

Feel free to comment if you wish, or be inspired to write some verse of your own, and share it with others, or hide it in your attic.

Welcome to my poetry site. Here is a selection from my writings. Please contact me about the Rest

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Photo by Jim Blair

something just snapped
and I stopped doing it for them
and started doing it for you
something just snapped
and I stopped curtailing my self
and began doing it for me
Somewhere over the night mare
a fairy feathered her wings
over vain and glorious things
somewhere the rainbow doesn’t end
and the hands that build
are not torn, but healed
Somehow in the hand-made quilt
rest is had
sleep is felt, and dreams come
somehow where the waves loll
in the sand
rejuvenation sends her wealthy arms
somewhat strange
cool and gently bold
like a Dream awakening
somewhat like fairies chattering
lifting their wings
in strange music
something filling
a bold new music
a big full song
something like Learjet
cool as flight
bright as a table in sunshine
somewhere
in a room
filled with window
somewhere
in southern light
and white crossbeams
somehow lifegiving
wild and gentle
solid and serene
somehow big
healing perfectly
bringing warm light
somewhat strange
and new
freeing
somewhat silent
yet providing strains of music
in the soul

© 1994 Rudolf Penner

My imaginary children Cinneroth & Rajasthan
are coming through the Living room to play with me
on the carpet, the Persian wing
huge in its flying
like an angel on leave from combat duty

I’m sunk in my soft couch
watch me play
in days of never
All the sunny
smiling leaves
of their adjacent forms
longing for the laughter, the screaming
and stench of baby poo
and bleach, the nausea
of jars of predigested babyfood

alltogether we would sing away
and go on adventure tours thru the wooden branches of the forest,
our hiking sacks sticking to trees
as we walked up the incline
Then, in next generations
trees would bloom
and the plume of the Mina bird would be the resurrection of the proud
louder than Nazareth*
in funky caverns we hid with/our minds as beavers
spanning crevices as spiders
long-legged and black, forgotten
webs of intimacy,
silly creational playing,
sidetracked from lopsided life
supping with the saviour
his hands now flesh and bone
drinking the wine of the Father
his feast in heaven, waiting
pertaining to our collective unconscious.
All trouble is a ceaseless battle here.

*note: a reference to rock group Nazareth of the 70s, purported to have been one of the loudest bands. Had an album in 1974 entitled Loud ‘N’ Proud

It’s easy to imagine yourself a millionaire
with the Rolling Stones playing in the background
and Mick’s coaching on the Goddess album
I am the Master of My Own Money coming In
A 30 day meditation of 20 minutes each
I pretend I go to the London School of Economics myself
Read books on how to succeed in business
Bridges to Babylon and the hanging gardens
just keep doing the same things over and over
Roll your eyeballs around in piles of money
Chew on it, fill your mouth with money
Sweeten up honey, I’ll fill your bed with money
And especially my shoes, my secondhand shoes
– I’ll crumple bills –
stuff them with money to make them hold their shape

Be Open to every Opportunity to make
Write them Down after You think of Them

– Pigeons still – she wrote, upon her note to Gordon Airth
the quiet room became a birdcage
melancholy blue
the soft flutter of wings and chummy hum of cooing
we woke every morning
to the sounds
the soft friendly feathery fawning
mites would enter in at our window
we thought
curious glowing-marble-eyes heads would crane their necks and watch into our window
she thought they would fly in
but they never did, their unconscious
thoughts subtracting heaven from eleven,
professor-like stepping to and fro
above the facia
free they were, but stuck together
inside our bedroom walls they
shuffled and hopped
wondering if one was stuck, I mentioned it
they were our ghosts for awhile
that haunted gently, the winter nights
and gaze in our eyes green purple and grey, brown eyes like a hollow spirit
just climbing down from its tree
we get up and make tea
and those fluttering pigeons
take lift off the roof corner and disappear in the vanishing point near a cloud
as grey as our sofa.

© 1995  Rudolf Penner

Outrageous disasters of history.
Mister don’t throw away your tie.
Welcome blue moons
and yellow moons or parts of moons
and empty pouches.
Empty kangaroos, and empty ears
reflectively reflecting eyes
Outriggers of history.
Mister don’t throw away your hat.
Just give it to the cat, and maybe
welcome blue moons
and pink moons, or sections of the moon
and green cheese of the moon
Empty fringe eyes-of-the-moon
empty salvation lies of the moon
Outfielders of history.
Missus don’t lay down on that bed.
give it to the cat, and that
welcome howling from your insides.
and pink moons and pink daisies
travelling side-by-side to the moon at noon.)

© 1989  Rudolf Penner

We are the Parents of the poor
we give them food
and offer them free lessons in humility
if there were a chance
we could say “Jump”
and the thrill of responsive action
would lurk there
as our reward. Maybe if it rains.

On snowy days
Act like you’re giving alot
when you’re actually giving hardly anything at all
But the purple haze commands
And 13,000 more people without jobs
The doors of Eatons close forever
And the blanket of white powdery covers everything over.

A nice sunny sometime
with a rainbow and a pot of gold
and a tussle here brings us to the realization
in a New Day of Creation
Where the makers are they themselves
and the Cowboys all have earrings
riding over sagebrush widely in the country
That the sting of the thing is it don’t help.

© 1999  Rudolf Penner

See Sandor sign
his new painting sings of wine
betrothals to Nature
the walls of the Old Garden
crumpling, overgrowing themselves with leavy trees
the green leaves drooping over ochre
the moist branches draping lower portions of the sky
twelve baskets hanging form the widest virtues
the sinewous worms stretching from their ground
earth feelers ,  gummy unfettered naturals
letting themselves be brick red and the
flowers of the sun, casting their seeds to
the breeze of gentle summer
The Northern Sampson sees clearly, his mountains
a brilliant sapphire ,  blue as the snows on Kilimanjaro
a coyote hunting in the orchard, the apple
he took too peachy red
For the painting grows as the garden glows
The adventure of painting never finished
The woman sitting on the natural wall
diffused earth ochres her bare feet
motioned by the wind
Her smooth back is a rest
the greyest panther ever walked calm & wild
towards her circumlocution
the apprentice ,  sits and stares at the scene

© 1995  Rudolf Penner

We called it Red
The colour of true love
On scenic faces in the sun
Our hearts would cry and yearn for one
The shades of night came far too soon
The sun and sky to tread

We called it Red
A lollipop
That glowed a crimson glow
Like all those poppies row on row
Foreshadowing the flaming suns
Resounding in my head

We called it red
The blood that flows
On thousand Flanders fields
Who knows what seeded blood will yield
Perhaps for blackened crows

© Rudolf Penner