Marching in Circles

March 2021-Recent gift from my brother from another mother Phillip Ancient Mariner Giambri. Admit to being flattened- flattered & flabbergasted. 

On Being Post-Beat

For Vincent

(03/05/2021)

Did we ever really exist

on those open mics

in the backrooms of dive bars

where culture hungry kids gathered

to feel or pretend to feel

what art was like?

 

We were there then

and we were links

to those past dreamers

who said it before us

and some say,

who said it better than us.

 

But we were there

and we said our truth

and tried to live it

until we couldn’t anymore.

Now there are new truths

wearing masks

and speaking thickly

in tongues we no longer understand.

Our time is gone.

Behold a post-pandemic world.

Phillip Giambri

 

 

 

*

One last one for the Short Dog with his tail between his legs-

February Evaporation Plan

In a plastic holder posted

on the calendars wall

is this emergency

evaporation plan

for February

a season entrapped

between the beginning

and the ending

Uneasy limbo

this long left over Fall

that never really left anyone

and rumors of a early Spring

yet to arrive.

So stumble in the numbness

of this brown grass with me

yawning in chilly silence.

Pity a month so very short

it stands up on tiptoe

to merely see the empty place

at the table set for it.

Deluded in preview

Obscured in past tense.

Silence marks the short days

towards the long March

away from a Winter that

declined to participate.

So now let the interchangeable

aspects of abandonment and embrace

cancel each on the way out

like fused lynch pins

pulling the freight

laden with baggage

transported from

one faceless depot

to

anothers’ eyes.

                                                                                2/2012    

Your Jar of Corks

 

…..is missing this lid

absent in the burning bridges

run out of rope

in the hangman’s shrug

the coarse fibers rub.

 

After the trial

after the Kangaroo court

is in recess

will the foreman please

read the verdict ?

 

Your honor

sir

we find

we are now

a hung jury

but clearly ready

to do our duty.

 

So let him dangle

till there is this

snap of the neck

of all his memories.

 

Suspend him upside

down in the town square

afterwards by his

Mussolini heels

and allow all the

sallow amusement in

the jeers and squeals.

 

and there will not

be any containment

further to consider

other then your

hand left snugly stuck

in a glass mouth

sealing it all off

reaching

for the corks at the bottom.        VQ circa