Burbank was covered in thick and placid
frost;
Shadows off the glow of the forlorn crags were soft and weeping along the distant ice;
dusting the
furrows of forgotten
rains; and falling upon
windmills of the giants, who gave up on their Arks; certain that Noah was again
Drunk and Angry.
Forgiveness of wild skies, that considered the rainbow
reasonable remains of
The Inert and The Faithful carpenters of the night, who toiled until the rows
of two began wandering down Melrose and Parkplace; guided by guise on Sunset and
Happenstance, that watched as the final couples; the giraffes and the young calves,
who we’re burning
and guilded as they passed in the bright golds of the
Arabian vendors, whose Mercedes were coated
in the slick and haloed
wings
of the snow
before the flood.
The first snowman in eighty years was smiling through dripping coals, in the
last light that met the high currents
of air
with a brilliant
and
curving spectrum.
Don Quixote marches;
selling silver lamps
in silence;
as life leaks
from the forefathers
gently spinning fans.
The last Noah will know the last raincloud, over the last
skyline, above the last
couples, caught in the last
light;
to see the last sands
and
cry over
their glow.
About Epoch Awareness. Writer, J.D. Hughes
I write.
Do you read?
I write.
I write words:
Carefully and consistently, and chaotically, from the deep pulsar unison of the still mind (or the violent undoing of the still mind);
Sometimes I resemble Robert Zimmerman (my hair uncut, my mind uncut, all unregulated thoughts, wind haphazard along a pale american brow too).
Sometimes,
Sometimes words are fragments of paragraphs and you find them eschew in and from time, and with care, in the long ribbon fabric or one single unsealed cosmic spiral, and then they burn wild like black-holes ( birthing voids built the milky way);
Still there are words so heavy and pure that they anchor fast the mind to the mere memory of their syllables in the quiet echoes, in and around, the deep violet sea of the questioning readers inner-mind.
I write sentences:
In strands, like silk, or links in chains, or diamond arranged compressed carbon coal electrons, or the frequency of more intimately woven atoms;
In intricate quilts of reason, and warmly glowing sheets of cotton fiction that cover you at 4 am on a Sunday (with the sun bright and a bastard, soon to be hitting your face from the slats in the window shades);
I write paragraphs, and as such I consider it a duty of the considerate and conflicted human to consider their conflicts human, and consider:
In airports, in churches, in penthouses in Hollywood (who overlook the homeless mountains and the slanting fogs of debilitated industries, and the vacuum seduction, and lifeless Angel City in the Wests bleached blonde sand, and lids of imagery cover sad vacant eyes), in station wagons, in deep wood temples in Maine, near the Androscoginn River, where the Native Americans caught silver fish and eternity lived off communal tides to the distant ocean, which is now more black than the sky from our waste, now wrought with the studied three-headed-demon-fish, (but still a holy place Maine, it glows);
In any meaningful medium, known or noun, imaginable is mans only true duty. It is mans only Deity (For what was with God, what was God? The Word was, In The Beginning).
To chase the promise that reality and truth are not yet only relative devices, and leaving these scriptures: On brains, and on paper, and on papyrus, and old plaster, and on the backs of old Polaroids (once someone did at least), the thin skin on wet hands who ru
Well done, JD. Your bio looks enticing. I will be back to read it. Meanwhile …
Welcome to Thursday Poets Rally and thank you for such a fine poem…
Snow in Burbank … ah, how are all those swimming pools holding up! LOL! 🙂
Thank you very much!
I would love to be a part of it, I really appreciate the feedback.
The pools have thawed out and they’re covered in the warm California sun!
Keep me posted on Thursday Poets Rally!
J.D. Hughes
welcome…
please visit me and read the post for week 39, follow the instruction to link your entry in..
if you need help, you can leave your entry under my post.
thanks.
I believe I left it all on the right page, If not I’ll link again. Thank you very much for your intrest, and for your consideration!
Yes to all agreements!
Thanks,
J.D. Hughes
Also let me know what you think of this piece, I think its right up your alley:
Really good. I felt it.
smart words..
love your style.
smiles.
as life leaks
from the forefathers
gently spinning fans….
your way with words are outstanding..
keep it up.
🙂
given you directions under your comment, please check and also link your entry to the blogger account via linkz…
have fun! welcome and thanks for the lovely contribution.
🙂
Sad. I liked it very much
found you from the forums: very imaginative and very far reaching. Did it take you a long time?
Thank you, I really appreciate you stopping by.
Im always interested in getting feedback.
As for how long it took its hard to really say. It took about an hour and a half to be satisfied withthe writing of it, but honestly, I am not entirely sure what a usual timetable for a poem of this construction is considered to be;
It ended up flowing out as a large and uncut swath after the first images I compiled in my mind,
I publish these directly from a WPress APP for this blog, so once I submit it once its hard to go back with all the codeing from the mobile, if that makes any sense;
but all together there’s days upon days of noticed things, and needed things, and good books, and bad books, and new minutes starring off down the lamps of the alley, or the falling sunlight of the same, or reading religions, or poetry, reading all old legends (all essential and futile things when hungry), or learning of new ones latenight Downtown Hollywood – new End Times Jives , sinners and sinners and saints ordained nightly, and then there was the faces of awe, and glee, and doom ( Im from Maine, I chuckled) on the citizens of Burbank – LA as the first snows fell on adobe slatts and melted, and the hail
sheeteted mountains I can see from the yard of the house I just moved into, or the remains of the same hills
a day of sun behind them.
Im sorry to give such a long response, in short, it took a very long time to feel and collect the necessary parts, and it came together in an even stream of thematic and structured imagery that unified the central themes in a way I didn’t feel the need to change apart from grammatical revision.
I loved your answer. I’ll never again doubt that you are indeed a complex person. Count me a subscriber!
Haha well I don’t know about any of that complexity business myself, but I sincerely appreciate the subscription 🙂
I hope you continue to like what you read,
Thank you!
Wonderful poem……Portraying so wide array of images……they are just coming visually……
Thank you for visiting and commenting…..
Wow! 😉 Your choice of words is just superb. Very thoughtful poem. Love the last lines:
‘The last Noah will know the last raincloud, over the last
skyline, above the last
couples, caught in the last
light;
to see the last sands
and
cry over
their glow.’
Thank you :), I appreciate the read!
Let me know what you think of the rest of them, if your feeling like a read.
Come back anytime!
I read this three times, I think it’s very good and very smart! You have a creative, distinctive ability for metaphor. I think you should keep that up. Your last three lines were perfect, I thought. I was SO there.
Thank you,
Im truly glad you enjoyed reading it. I always love writing.
Haha, also as the writer its always good to know Im not the only one who reads them more than once!
Thanks, come read anytime!
Hey JD, I enjoy your style of threading the words together. As I am quite a newbie at this, I did have some problems trying to understand your entry. Maybe I can start with some questions – Is there a particular location for your poem and how does the title relate to the contents?
Thanks in advance for your patience!:)
First of all,
thanks you very much for reading.
The nature of the imagery is not static in the sense of each specific image, rather the movement of the images revolve around central locations that blend the characters including elements of: metaphor, personifacation, allusion, and the returning landscape of the Burbank Hills.
I wrote it the day after the only snow that fell in Burbank in almost 80 years ( startling and terribly approximate, I apologize ) looking out over the hot and sunny hills the following day,
so the tone of the narrative is reflective.
The initial location is the vast and stretching hilltops of Burbank California remembered as covered in sweeping white snow.
The rain has been forgotten by the incredible occurrence of the snows. ( yet truly it itself is water, and no more or less deserving of praise)
Then we follow the images into the Allusion and personification elements of a Miguel Cervantes piece , which is placed directly below the hills.
Then following Religious and literary references that illustrate the nature of Saviors and The Everyman(carpenters), Hollywood, the faithful and the prudent, and the sadness of deferred potentials, and the fleeting nature of all life,
which is all mirrored in the temporary, brilliant, and unlovable ice, set against the wide visual scope, and timlessness of the forlorn images of the Earth (Hills).
We travel along these images to the loading of the ark trailing down the intersection of Melrose and Parkplace ( (Cultural reference, metaphor, Melrose is very real, and acts as a modern beatnick- hipster assylum, for the art and culture of the wayside)
Sunset Blvd and Happenstance (metaphorical intersection )
Then rows of lavished pawnbrokers and shimmering cars along the processions path along Hollywood from Sunset.
Imagery of additional Allusion of religious and artistic nature ( Salvador Dali, The Bible) coupled with a metaphorical guilding with gold by our culture by the pawnbroker ( to whom all is borrowed and truly never his, as all mankind until death )
Then the dusting of natures eternal frost on the temporary kingdoms of man (Mercedes) and we are swooped back to Burbank, where now enough has fallen for a young girl to build a dying and sorrowful snowman, and above, the reocurrence of the rainbow (Gods Promise Of Forgiveness in Genesis, despite ourselves) born from the icy air above. ( seemingly a desolate place with little to offer, ironically the source of our vision of Gods promise)
All culminating in images of the final hours of man, ending in the image of the final glowing sands before the final culling flood.
The title is an affirmation of the Occurance of an unbelievable thing (snow).
Without the glow of the white snowcover on the Hilltops, one would never know the truth of the Icy winds that guide them. Which is essentially a statement on Faith and the nature of unknown currents that maintain our every moment.
So I apologize in advance for the length, let me know if any of that makes sense. I did not mean to overwhelm you, but I think it may help with your understanding of the progression, as the peice more or less revolves around philosophical, Emotional, and societal ” locations”, gathered along a set of colliding imagery, as opposed to set and solely phisical ones.
Hope it helps, please let me know if it does.
Thanks for the read,
Come back anytime!
J.D. Hughes
Also forgive my unforgivable and blatant spelling and grammatical errors
Still love this one. The Images are superb.
One thing, though, since you mentioned grammatical errors, the word “affirm” in the title should be “affirms”, because snow affirms the glow. This part, “On the Hills”, is dependent on the main sentence, which is “Snow Affirms the Glow of Frozen Winds.”
Just a thought.
All my best,
K. Shawn Edgar
Thank you very much!
I am still at odds with that aswell, but have decided tense to be an unspoken sister of poetic license :),
Affirm is the present tense, and the poems reflective nature draws on the testament of a day prior… but actually…
Please!!! I implore you! Being the scatter brain writer that I am, I ask if ever you find the time or are so inclined, I would love to have your editing thoughts on any and all works,
I’m always quite desperate in this regard!
Thank you,
Come back anytime,
J. D. Hughes
Greetings:
Hope all is well.
Noting that you have been part of poets rally in the year of 2011,
what an achievement, thanks for your outstanding contribution to us
along the way, keep up the excellence. Best!
Come join our poetry rally today if you wish to mingle and get inspired!
A poem of your choice or a free verse is accepted.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
Looking forward to seeing you share.
Respect and hugs.
xoxox