Day: September 3, 2022

Screams of Light

~ JezzieG

Screams of Light
Form: Chant Royal

Bright screams of light across the sky
Hurry, hurry get underground
Don’t ask, there is no time for why
Get underground as sirens sound
The screams of light are moving fast
Get underground before they blast
The city shaking again tonight
With children crying in their fright
And a babe wrapped in mother’s shawl
Stay underground and out of sight
Screams of light as the missiles fall
The strange forms of night chill the eye
Another child cannot be found
An innocent life’s left to die
Whispers echo beneath the ground
Just a name sent into the past
But this night will not be the last
More men are drafted into fight
Against the odds, against the night
For the innocent they give all
For families they left in plight
Screams of light as the missiles fall
In daylight see broken bodies lie
Victims whose names cannot be found
Yet by mass graves the women cry
For those they bury ‘neath the ground
For those for whom death came too fast
For those whose shadows no longer cast
There’s no comfort in the daylight
Just ruins, a burial site
Empty boxes on a roll call
That seeped their blood into the night
Screams of light as the missiles fall
Every day no time to cry
Finding food within the compound
To carry on a day goes by
Before rushing back underground
No time to cry or be downcast
The war goes on and time is fast
The outside world that knows their plight
Does nothing for living in fright
They say it’s wrong, they heard the call
But they will not do what is right
Screams of light as the missiles fall
Night falls as once more sirens cry
Hurry, hurry get underground
As screams of light take to the sky
Soon the city will echo sound
Familiar now, just a blast
Lives lost to fade into the past
Proving points of power and might
But who is keeping score tonight
In death can it be proved at all
Bullying ways are no fair fight
Screams of light as the missiles fall
Innocent lives, it’s not their fight
And power don’t make it alright
Yet the world ignoring them all
Is as guilty as sin tonight
Screams of light as the missiles fall

©JezzieGFarmer2022

The Pennycandystore Beyond The El by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

~ JezzieG

The Pennycandystore Beyond The El
1977

The pennycandystore beyond the El
is where I first
fell in love
with unreality
Jellybeans glowed in the semi-gloom
of that september afternoon
A cat upon the counter moved along
the licorice sticks
and tootsie rolls
and Oh Boy Gum

Outside the leaves were falling as they died

A wind had blown away the sun

A girl ran in
Her hair was rainy
Her breasts were breathless in the little room

Outside the leaves were falling
and they cried
Too soon! too soon!

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Born: 24 March 1919, New York, USA
Nationality: American
Died: 22 February 2021, California, USA

Ferlinghetti is a poet, socialist activist, painter and co-founder of Lights Booksellers and Publishers. He is best known for his collection of poems, A Coney Island of the Mind which has sold more than a million copies in nine different languages. In March 2019 he celebrated his 100th birthday and the city of San Francisco has proclaimed his birthday 24 March as Lawrence Ferlinghetti Day (as indeed it should be).

Where We Are Now (Who Are We Anyway) by Vito Acconci

~ JezzieG
Where We Are Now (Who Are We Anyway) by Vito Acconci

Where We Are Now (Who Are We Anyway)
1976
Performance Art
Installation (wooden table and stools, painted wall, 4-channel audio)
Sonnabend Gallery, New York, USA

Between 1974 and 1979 Acconci focused on installations incorporating sound and/or video. Moving on and away from the personal and erotic dynamics of his previous work “Where We Are Now (Who Are We Anyway)” turned the Sonnabend Gallery into a model public space, a meeting point for the open exchange of ideas, with all the possibilities and limitations of a gallery space.

Vito Acconci

Vito Acconci
Performance Art, Body Art, Video Art, Conceptual Art, Installation Art, Modern Architecture
Born: 24 January 1940, New York, USA
Nationality: American
Died: 27 April 2017, New York, USA

Acconci was a performance, video, and installation artist. His diverse practice included sculpture, architectural design, and landscape design. Characterized by existential unease his foundation performance and video work often involved exhibitionism, discomfort, provocation, and transgression as well as wit and audacity. Acconci often crossed boundaries such as public-private, consensual-non-consensual, and real-world-artworld. From the late 1970s, Acconci turned to sculpture, architecture, and design. Increasing the scale of his work, if not his art profile, over the next two decades he produced public artworks and parks, airport rest areas, and other architectural projects that embraced participation, change, and playfulness.

Sparrow Song

~ JezzieG

A Garret Poet

Sparrow Song
Form: Quatrains

The winter sun stays longer now,
Now as the seasons start to turn,
Returning life beneath the snow,
The snow that held the earth's sojourn.

A poet sits beneath a tree,
A willow tree bedecked with buds,
The buds of blooms waiting to be,
Beneath the tree, my heart now thuds.

The goddess works her magic round,
Around the earth she calls for life,
The living seeds burst in the ground
Upon the ground, the signs are rife.

The sparrow sings its mating call,
A call to love and dance again,
Once again, the earth lives for all,
And for all ends the winter's reign

©JezzieGFarmer2012

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Sonnet September: The thriftless thread which pampered beauty spins by George Gascoigne

~ JezzieG
George Gascoigne 1542-1577

The thriftless thread which pampered beauty spins
In thraldom binds the foolish gazing eyes,
As cruel spiders with their crafty gins
In worthless webs do snare the simple flies.
The garments gay, the glittering golden gite,
The ticing talk which floweth from Pallas’ pools,
The painted pale, the too much red made white,
Are smiling baits to fish for loving fools.
But lo, when eld in toothless mouth appears,
And hoary hairs in stead of beauty’s blaze,
Then, had I wist, doth teach repenting years
The tickle track of crafty Cupid’s maze
Twixt fair and foul, therefore, twixt great and small,
A lovely nutbrown face is best of all.