We want to present some of the many Philomene Long poems that have appeared in the Mirror, however, since they are lengthy (and brilliant, of course), some have been edited. It’s not that we want to mess with the great words of the great Beat Queen of Venice, it’s just that we want to print a nice sampling of her work. We truly hope Philomene, wherever she is, is okay with that. We chose two works – “Nuptial Tanka” and “The Ghosts of Venice West” – that never appeared in the Mirror, but seemed appropriate to print here. She penned the essay “On Beauty in the Face and Hands of a Reader” for us in 2005.
In selecting the poems, we tended towards the familial, and included poems about (or for) her late husband, John, daughter Maureen, son Patrick, grandson Aidan, granddaughter Tara, her beloved ancestral homeland Ireland, Easter, and even a wedding poem for the publisher and editor of this newspaper.
Cold Ellison I (complete poem)
I, who once was proud
That they called me
“The Queen of Bohemia”
Now blush, ashamed
“John Thomas!” I call
“I’m trying to bring myself
Out of something –
To nothing…
I’m going to pray
To embrace this poverty!”
“Pray to embrace silence
We already have poverty!” he says.
“Hey. We’re doing pretty well
For a tired old man
And a crazy lady.
Tomorrow I’ll get you
A crown of rhinestones.
Do I give you enough?”
“John, to have you
For my companion
Through the glass centuries
Your diamond body
Calm, enormous land –
This is the only center
That I seek.”
* * * *
Nuptial Tanka
For Laurie & Michael
(complete poem)
Bright marriage banners
On April twenty-second
Streaming in sea breeze
Wedding mirror sways gently
In the mirror, two are one
Philomene Long
John Thomas
* * * *
Ireland (excerpt)
Ireland
The land itself
A phantom
Of grass and stone
As if dropped
From the sky
From what rain
What mystic’s ecstasy
From what stern night
Celtic crosses strewn
Across Ireland
Like stone blades
Wind into stone
Into grass
Over Ireland’s first dead
Queen over
King over
Warrior
The gilded dead
The clamorous dead
Druid beside Viking
Anglo, Norman
The grass received them all
The blood ran
The blood ran
The land was drenched
With this blood
The land burst
Into tears
Mist rising
From the grass
* * * *
Can A Bug Be Smug?
for Aidan Sandman-Long at four years old (excerpt)
Can a bug be smug?
Usually bugs are not smug
Although they have every right to be
They’ve been here on earth
Much longer than we
Why are bugs small and not tall?
There would be no tall if there was no small
And when you are small, you might recall
You can crawl
Into many interesting places
Can bugs bite?
Some bugs bite
I think because they are small
Can you hug a bug?
Possibly. But I have yet to find a way to do it
Perhaps you can
Because it is sad, so sad, that
You can’t hug a bug
* * * *
Celtic Nursery Rhyme
for Tara Sandman-Long (complete poem)
I had a mother
Whose name was Maureen
Who dressed me in white
And taught me to sing
Songs of fairies
That lay over my head
And she read to me stories of Queens
I have a daughter
Whom I call Maureen
Who likes to wear white
And to sing
And be Queen
And she tells me of things
In the sky that she’s seen
Now my daughter has a daughter
Whom she calls Tara
After the olden Celtic Seat of Power
In her eyes there are miles and miles
Of skies
And in her smiles I often see
That Ancient Golden City
* * * *
The Nativity (A Litany)
(complete poem)
Impossible white hush of winter
The complete forgiveness of snow
Golden blade of sunrise
Burning grape
Seed of wheat and wind
Incurable wound of compassion
A blossom, poor as the moon
And then the small revelation
Is forgotten, but AH!
The sleeping arrow
The love that flashed
Through the air!
* * * *
Ancient Buddhas Then and Now (complete poem)
As a young boy
My son Patrick
Saved the lives
Of neighborhood
Insects
Once I saw him
Press on
A drowning beetles’s
Abdomen
A bubble popped out
Of its tiny mouth
It lived
And always, with him
There were the frogs
Each would gaze
At the other
Silently
And for a long time
Then the boy
Would extend
His gentle hand
And the frog
Leap lightly
Into his open palm
Patrick would exclaim:
“We love crickets
So there are crickets!”
Patrick cried:
“You just stepped on the best
Worm I ever had!”
Patrick sang:
“I feel like a hippopotamus
On a diet
In the spring.”
Patrick philosophized:
“If you wake up
And don’t touch anything
It won’t be a real day.”
The pounding machinery
Of religious ideas
Deafens me
It was from rugged mountains
And still waters
That the Zen ancestors first emerged
It is there I would return
And to my son, Patrick
Whose lightness of being
Outweighs theology
* * * *
Easter (complete poem)
Death is in collision
With life
His ripped palms and feet
Luminous
Both flesh and spirit
This ascent of Love
This sudden spark
Which leaped
This day
Leaves the world
Guttering
Like a dying candle
Transparent
All smoke and
Smoldering dreams
* * * *
The Ghosts of Venice West
(complete poem)
They are already ghosts
John and Philomene
As they pass
Along the Boardwalk
Where ghosts and poets overlap
As they pass, the gulls
Ghosting above their shadows
Everything’s haunting everything
Already ghosts
John and Philomene
Under the ghostly lampposts
Of Venice West
Their cadence
The breath of sleep
At rest
Lost at the edge of America
Already ghosts
And each poem
Already a farewell
Everything’s haunting everything
The sea is the ghost of the world
* * * *
On Beauty in the Face and Hands of a Reader
The image of someone reading a book, in my mind, is one of the most beautiful in the world. But why? Physically, the physiology of it suggests all the factors in enlightenment. I wrote these down and every one of them is visible in the face and hands of a reader: mindfulness, investigation, energy, rapture, tranquility, concentration, and equanimity.
The life of imagination is to live at the heart of oneself and others. I can see this, the image nation of our culture, the city of imagination, in the face and hands of a reader, in the act of picking up books, holding them, carrying them, taking them out of pockets, sitting, one person handing a book to another. Reading involves the hands. The hands become the tools of enlightenment. The image, alone, of someone with their head in a book, a book they are holding in their hands, is the image of enlightened mind and enlightened body. Both are equanimous – quiet feeling / complete feeling – arising in the term “gentle reader.” Gentility arises while one reads, seen reading by others. The four-year-old and the 48-year-old: the back straight or bent, and holding the book at a distance the hand gently touching a phrase or gripping it, turning pages, a bear hug, devouring.
The quiet act of reading is not only freedom of mind embodied – required for a democracy – it is free, beyond all categories of age, economics, gender, degrees. It is both selfless and self-contained; you’re entering an author, the whole world, another time and place. Some might see it as selfish, but at its core it is all-inclusive. It is the gentle and tumultuous flow of images that build and deepen the mind, giving birth to the individual. It is not by chance that, at the moment of the formation of our constitution, libraries were being created everywhere. Free books, for free. The spread of democracy is the spread of reading and the spread of freedom. It is the spread of mindfulness.
Sor Juana Inez (The tenth Muse of Mexico) walking the streets of Los Angeles, Bashos, Borges, Lorcas, Dickinsons, Yeatses… Los Angelinos all over the city picking up, reading a book, reading a poem – embodying thoughtful spirits, revealed by radiant faces, even if just a line, all in motion. Living with lines of poems moving through us – giving each other appropriate time… We ask: “And what line are you in today?” Not the one at the supermarket or the insurance company any more, and perhaps even there!
The image of someone reading is contagious. It resonates and deepens beneath the barrage of media and events. It cannot be stopped. It has the power to create readers everywhere – a city with its citizens going through their dailyness with immortal words and phrases running through, stirring their minds and faces to life. Perhaps, will you, gentle reader, consider this line of mine:
There is one book, one writer
And the reader, the writer, the book
Are one
