Ahab's tale never gets old. Changes by way of perspective.

 

Ahab's white whale, courtesy of the NYTimes.

The Avoirdupois Chic

More than once did he put forth the faint blossom of a look, which, in any other man, would have soon flowered out in a smile. – Melville

My depraved indifference to death
sets Ahab to thumping his peg
against my leg so we’ll perchance into
that which precedes an heir bearing
his bi-syllabic surname on banners bright
through the belly of the whale warm as
mutton and potatoes tea towel-topped.
If you can’t bear a son, at least a splinter
Mr. Ahab says, for use against blubbery
blowhard though how, you might puzzle.
No intimate to his intricacies am I
who harbor soft-spots for heavyweights
fat as concubines, the avoirdupois chic.
Given the length of a life in nautical miles
there’s hardly time for history to congeal
for the slain to raise kin underskin the
abandoned to banshee dreams as locust
swoop hover and hum desert-side
Ahab Uno’s tent on palmy summer eves.
Ecstasy is all it’s cracked up to be,
insufficient, a means to a cul-de-sac.
Are locust merely in love with love?
Starting soon, let’s no longer be afraid.
The locust are at the door, dear. 
Well, set a plate for the happy couples! 
Tomorrow Ahab goes with his gut,
with its celiac flora.  Sing a seafaring
song of fish fingers, ladies, avast! ahoy!
Childhood fosters the eternal orphan.
God wants what God wants.
You, my dear Ahab, merely want,
though That Can Change, a sea battle
dispatch, a motto conceived of
circumstance and truth, life’s sequels,
now ebooks or available for download
at a workstation near me.  Near you.

by Sarah Sarai. first published in Berfrois in 2011.

Berfrois (https://www.berfrois.com) remains a remarkable amalgam of idea, narrative, poetry, perspective, philosophy, natural history, science, art, architecture, you-name-it-ism. 

A Rhetorical Inquiry Into The Moral Certitude Of Cause And Effect [#poem] [#ElevenEleven]

A Rhetorical Inquiry Into The Moral Certitude Of Cause And Effect

Today we picked tulips and

 

stubbed our big toe and went

 

to war and lost a bunch a arms

 

and feet and shit and gunned

 

down a dozen fifty people

 

and got tired and took a nap

 

and had a family and raised

 

a mess a kids and picked

 

daffodils and scratched our

 

finger bad and then we went

 

to war. We blew up some big

 

stuff and little stuff and people

 

tall and stupid crying babies

and a whole lot a us puked

and we were buried or they

put us on these lame cots and

we got better and met girls

 

and boys and had families and

 

glued pink fuzzy bunny ears

 

on our sister’s headband for

 

spring assembly and then we

 

killed a whole lot more people

 

cause we had to go to war cause

 

we picked lilies and sneezed and

 

after you pick lilies and sneeze

 

or something they send you to

 

war. Don’t you know anything?

 

by Sarah Sarai. First published in Eleven Eleven, Issue 5.

Anti-war. Not anti-soldier.

Poem: As Xantippe Whispered Into Idle Socrates' Ear

Stereoscopic views documenting the building of the brooklyn bridge

As Xantippe Whispered Into Idle Socrates’ Ear

Engineering.
This has to do with mathematical
divination of earth and metal
bearing us through the daily
occupation of life which
is preparing
for death
which is the true occupation of life.

Engineering.
This has to do with compression
and strength so elegant
tresses are unfazed
by heavy progress
across spans
calculated
to hold march of elephants and time.

Engineering.
This has to do with sweet Ophelia’s
schematically heartbreaking
death by distraction
or alienation
or a branch
snapping
and a river sucking her in with lust.

Engineering.
This has to do with shattered parts
revealed in a blueprint
of the draftsman’s
conception of
wretched
sorrow
as a workable means to create us whole.

_____________
Sarah Sarai, Published in Ghoti (o.p.) and included in The Future Is Happy (2009) which is available at Amazon and Small Press Distribution.

Poem: Smiles of a Summer Night

The Times' Sunday Magazine included a tribute to Ingmar Bergman shortly after his death. He'd taken years to connect gut and body, to weather a personal climate of emotions. Finding purchase on myself was similar; a long haul. I remember being fascinated with the life cycle, care and feeding of emotions--how were they ingested and released? Were we all supposed to feel? Feel? I had not a clue.

The other notable Bergman/Sarai connection is strawberries. Best dessert of childhood--from my all-Swede ma (born in Queens): strawberries smashed on buttered bread and sprinkled with sugar.

Smiles of a Summer Night

Until age 39,
Ingmar Bergman
couldn’t feel,
and then I’d bet
sluice gates
were spared
a flood. In
mysterious space,
Earth sets back of Moon.
Planets notably hang,
or glide ellipses,
without rest, with-
out holidays or joy.

It isn’t so bad,
being human.

I was 34 when I
noncomprehended
my cartographer’s
etched landform
bobbing in waters
restless with monsters.
I was mass, the equal
of height and weight.
I floated, hemispheric,
in myself. No sluice
here either, but,
with age, something
to educate dreams.
Rest, Ingmar Bergman, now silent and learning.

Sarah Sarai; pub. in Flaneur Foundry, 2009

& included in The Future Is Happy, available from SPD or Amazon.