DOUG TANOURY                                                                      bottom

Sage With Umbrella & Other Poems

Sage With Umbrella
Watches The Collapse
Of The Modern Age

I remember
It was a perfect summer day
The kind that only seems to occur
In early September,
With a sky so azure
It seemed to glow with some
Inner luminescence
And the vivid color finish
They spray on new cars in Detroit,
The ice blue sports cars and
Peacock blue sedans.

A day so temperate that
The air feels perfect against the skin.
It is more an absence of temperature,
As if both hot and cold have somehow slipped
Below the point of perception and the air
Itself has become imperceptible.

Ah, such a day
Of blue placid beauty.
And then the rains began.
In ways fitting for our age,
In abstract and surreal images,
In some post modernistic vision,
With glass and concrete towers
Intertwined with airplanes,
Add to that the obligatory apocalyptic
Flames and smoke and you have a work that
Dali would paint, a Warhol or a Max.
And the rain began.

It rained paper and desks,
Chairs and tables,
All the mundane debris
Of daily life.
And it rained people,
Arm flailing,
Legs kicking,
It rained fire,
It rained rock,
It rained dust.

And I find myself in a Peter Max
Oil on canvass, entitled:
"Sage With Umbrella
Watches The Collapse
Of The Modern Age"

________________________________________________

The Physics of Tea

Sitting in the living room
Drinking tea with her and
Talking about special relativity
And the fact that the most distant
Galaxies are racing away from us
At 80% of the speed of light and
As she considers this

Pulling a wayward strand of hair
From her face, she begins to twirl it,
Worrying it between her fingers, and
I am touched by the girlishness
Of this gesture, as she says very seriously:
"Gravity is a fear of being alone"
I laugh

Setting my tea down on the table
Hearing the percussion click
Of a china cup meeting the saucer and
As she smiles the freckles on her cheeks
Gravitate together in Newtonian fashion
And I know now that
What holds everything together
Is simply deep attraction.

________________________________________________

Winter Solstice

The snow
Falls feather light
In large down flakes tonight
And I feel
That the only warmth
I will find
Is if I kiss her neck
Somewhere between her earlobe
And where it meets her bare shoulder.

In the tender
Right angle of her perfect posture
I will place my face
And breathe deeply for a moment
The warm fruit and
Flower fragrance
Of her
And find some inane reason
To celebrate these long night.

________________________________________________

Schrodinger's Cat

Like Schrodinger's cat
I find myself in two different states at once.
You see,
It's all rather confused
And uncertain,
At the same moment
I love her,
And yet
I do not.

In the hard determinism
Of Saturday morning breakfast,
She sips her tea,
And I spread my jam slowly
Across a slice of toast,
Pondering
My choices
And reforming my past.

In the solipsism
Of my most solitary and selfish thoughts,
At the point
Where all possible histories
And futures meet,
There is another woman
With a different smile
Asking me to pass the cream.

________________________________________________

Overture

When I think of him, I hear Offenbach's
Overture To Orpheus In The Underworld.
Don't ask me why, I simply don't know.
Thoughts are more often a mystery to me and
At other times merely troubling impositions.
The violin with a voice so clear and plaintive,
That sinks to notes so sad,
The melody slow and mellifluous, but
More likely it is a lone clarinet that
Calls him to mind, or
Maybe it is the rising to crescendo,
The grand sweeping movements
That culminates in the riotous
Racing heartbeat tempo of a can-can.
An overture of such irresistible drive
That can no more be controlled
Than one's own thoughts.
I think of him
With the same deep despondency and great glee
That endears this music to me,
The mad fluid and dizzy spinning blend of contradictions
That is as puzzling
As the people we love.

________________________________________________

My grandfather
Worked nights in a steel mill in Detroit,
And as a young child, it was always my goal
To stay up just long enough to see him
When he came home.
Most of the time I failed and fell asleep waiting,
But sometimes I was successful
And was waiting for him wide eyed and awake
At the front door as he entered.

It is always his boots that I remember most
And only incidentally his black metal lunch pail.
It seems I was always on the floor at his feet
On which he wore big black work boots
Their toes gray smudged with soot and ash
A swirling mixture of light and dark
That somehow now seems to me to be like
Moonlight shining across the clouds
On a November night.

________________________________________________

Melancholy Ode

I have come to see
That love has seasons
All it own,
Of great growth and warmth
And deep dormancy and coolness
Quite apart and independent
Of what I want or will.

And I think seasons have meaning
Only in their changing,
The sweetness of summer
Awakens on January mornings,
As I now see us
Not based on what we are,
But on what we once were.

So let these lines of melancholy verse
Mark this changing season,
The bare trees and gray grasses,
The iced-over silence
That falls betweens us
When we meet
And all the words unspoken

For us in this season
Of restraint and holding back,
Of dormant longings,
Long pauses
And periods of quiet resentment
Between us that will no doubt grow
Like springs flowers Into abundant regrets
In some future season.

________________________________________________

Ash Leaves

Overnight,
The ash leaves have changed
To ochre.
Occasionally, one will drop to the lawn
I'll watch
Its feathered fall that is more a floating,
A delicate
Drifting in zigzags to the ground,
Spinning and twisting
In sailing motions like a fishing spoon
Swimming
In clear Spring waters.

This is
The season of change and letting go,
Of quiet
Release and things shed in gentle winds.
There is
Alchemy in Autumn mornings
That turn
Base things golden and paints in
Brilliant and
Burning pigments upon each branch
The stored up prismed
And spectrumed light of August Sunsets.

________________________________________________

Prelude To A Tempest

I walked down on the pier today,
The one that stretches out far into the lake.
The wind grew stronger the farther I went.
The sailboats weathering the squall
In the shelter of their wells,
All wobbling and rocking slightly,
Ropes slapping against their metal masts
With a rhythm and percussion
Made from the music of a primitive dance.

The surface so fully textured,
Wind swept and rolling,
All of it alive with motion
In a wild rippling and rising,
Bursting and breaking,
That is water raised to a full boil,
With the whistling swoosh,
That is this prelude to a tempest,
I stood at the very edge of the pier,
And faced the approaching storm.

The water is a mixture
Of grays and greens
Blended with a painter's knife
On an artist's palette,
And pasted thick in sweeping strokes
Onto what has become the lake today,
And alone on the pier,
Wanting only to see and hear,
Taste and smell,
And fully feel the wild sensation
Of being taken deep within
A passing storm.

________________________________________________

Autumn Rain

The rain began today
Before the sunrise.
It came down hard
With the swoosh
That sounds like traffic
Speeding along the interstate.

It must have been the dark
And the grayscale of the morning sky,
That made me think of her
With regret and a certain sadness,
Bittersweet like the days in late September
That signals the slow transition of season.

More than our words,
It is the long pauses,
The extended silence
That has moved in to occupy the distance
And to fill the empty space
Between us
That foreshadows the future
For me.

The rain fell hard
With the loud and constant hiss
And crackle of radio static,
That is no more that the soft percussion
Of droplets in the street
That will soon fade
In gradual steps,
From downpour,
To drizzle,
To mist and
Full silence.

                              top 

SALEM SULERI (two poems)

A Letter to The President

Dear president
let us have a talk
some candid talk
under the candid sky
let us open our hear's doors 'n casements
please forget all rules 'n regulations
sit by our side 'n open your auditory ventilation.

We have a lot to talk about the Golden Bengal
Do you know here all that glitters are imitation
'n no longer gold?
men 'n their mind are as barren as
the drought stricken North Bengal
this lustrous land has
a famine of pomes' plots
thus, I've none but you to call;
at least for the sake of immaculate poetry
let us build a rhythmic n' separate world.

Wanna write poetry of calm n' murderless nights
wanna write poetry of smiling dames n' not burnt faces
wanna write poetry, but not of skeletal babes
wanna write poetry but not of demonstrations n' blood soaked streets

Not only the mini marathons
but from the streets to the alleys
are open to you all,
on the country's back
they're as straight as emaciated spinal cord
where you keep on your eternal trampling
with your shoes on,
once, only once dear President
with the courage of simple village's humble peasants
encounter us in our cherished meeting

Dear President
minus all pause-comma-bracket
-the rags n' bones of punctuation
in our mother tongue we've a lot to talk
please, dear President
forget all rules n' regulations
sit by our side n' open your auditory ventilation.

The Custodian

"Alas! couldn't save the goal"
You still bewail papa
'n kick around memoir's football.
The mind goes back
to the excited crowd at dusk
in the day that celebrates
the end of war
the crowd with expectation looking around
but the clouds come in rain,'n frustrate them all
"at that moment-the very moment
came the ball"-you still incant ate
the same poetics papa
'n drench
with poor private tears
your spectacles, your eyes 'n all

Two 'n twenty anxious souls
running pell-mell
after one mere ball
yet the El-dorado
eludes them all
'n soon fades
the players, the field 'n the ball
'n go back where they belong
but in front of net
in loose shorts
stands only you- alone
the family's custodian
who tried 'n tried 'n almost did
but alas ! couldn't reap the harvest of sunset
couldn't save it at all.                                                                    top

Rumours in the Majhi Fishermen's Village

When rumors spread in the village
that the stars had drowned in the river
he headed off with his hook
in the early hours of dawn

Above all he felt
a profound love for the north star
because peering through his wicker portal
the north star always spilled over his bed
No matter if it was a night of sleeping in hunger
no matter if it was a night of sleeping glutted on booze
the north star would stay on his forehead
and he would light up, aglow

Resolute
at the heart of the river
he was casting his hook
when from far away
a crowd of children came in fun and mirth
'Majhi-dai, Majhi-dai
we found the shit of the stars.'
As a finale
they shouted in chorus,
'Star shit looks a lot like rocks.'

Without rest
he kept casting his hook
but never did a star get trapped in it
many fishes got trapped
and soon there was stew enough
to feed everyone in the village.
By now
determined to fish out the north star
he wouldn't stop sporting his hook
even as he ferried people across the river on his dinghy
The children started raising a fuss on the shores-
'Majhi-dai, Majhi-dai
fish out the stars for us fast.'

It was but the season of rains
One night
there was a great flood
and this unkind flood swept off
the one who was so practiced at fishing for stars
and it reached him far away
The next morning
in the early hours of dawn
another rumor spread in the village-
'An alluring moon
has also drowned in the river.'

Translated by Manjushree Thapa                                                    top

Hymn To Princess Diana

Your Thyness,
public blond sister,
royal neurotic of

smile tabloidal
and coif sustained
by old colonies:

chunneled by Charon
in mangled Mercedes
to beauty salon

of endless chairs:
while printed millions
mourn your slim beak
in frontpage dolor.

Finale

At the end, precision is important.
your oak or cherrywood (or piny) box
is measured at the factory
to hold you and no more:
pre-mourned to the millimeter.

Inspirited by computer,
saw, lathe, conveyor count and account,
toe wiggle, hair grease,wrinkle fix;
all are inched to let you lie
in last certitude.

The minister (or rabbi, imam, or other
penguinized priest} has clocked his chores
with equally sliced hours
(in some venues his pay is included).
Everything has been timed -
except eternity.

East Of Eden

Sumatra was the joinpoint where the poor
could be exotic or the other way
around. The giant rats wore holy orders.
For rice, a jungle of oil-colored legs
load rice-heavy jute; or rhythm-fingered
little women, air-tooling like crazy, build television torpor.
Choice of two seasons -
monsoon and muggy, water on the skin,
kneesick in paddywet, old before age.

The rounded priests in temples bell bronze,
holyboned, poppy dross and dumb belief,
while legs select tatters in temporary hours
granted by unanointing gods in empty
heavens reflecting expended skin.

High above heat and holy the affluent
whisky their blood white-suited afternoons
against the coming other bells,
iron tongues tolling bluesuit ending
inert and oblong in a bed of box.
respectively.                                                                                 top