"sometimes" , by Sheelah Pugh For you in 2013: a graceful and realistic and secular blessing

Sometimes things don’t go, after all
from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel
faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don’t fail,
sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.

A people sometimes will step back from war;
elect an honest man; decide they care
enough, that they can’t leave some stranger poor.
Some men become what they were born for.

Sometimes our best efforts do not go
amiss; sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard and frozen: may it happen for you.

”

—	Sheenagh Pugh, Sometimes ...Is there anything better than a realistic blessing?... Sending you love, wishing you joy, in 2013. Peri Lyons  xoxo

Breaking The Lake: Winter Solstice, 1 A.M.

Breaking The Lake: Winter Solstice, 1 A.M.

                                                                            c Peri Lyons, 2012. 

Walked to the center of this frozen lake.

It's one A.M.    -I've carried out this stone.

I'm calling out God's dare. So, okay, God:

Your Wish is to be Known- and stay Unknown?

-I'll call that bluff.-Let's see if I'm alone.

This stone's from stars I see and cannot see.

This ice invites a stumble or a glide.

The ice is water still, but not to me:

While, underneath, fish hide, and do not hide.

I drop the stone. I listen to the "crack!".

The stone, which breaks the silence and the lake:

Has its own journey now, has its own act.

It makes a noise like gunshot. Now the lake

Cracks open shore to shore, beneath my stand:

And suddenly this dare has higher stakes:

Because I dared to open both these hands.

The moon smirks as i stumble back to shore.

The moon laughs at this drama, now it's done:

Tomorrow all I'll know, and know no more:

This will be kept a secret, by the sun.

PL 12/23/12 xo

****************************************

From "Dawdle: New Poems for Old." due out 3/18/14  c Peri Lyons 2012

Monogram Memories: A Christmas, Um, Thing. [Greatest Hits]

This time,some years ago,your humble correspondent was working at the Louis Vuitton Flagship Store. Here are some notes from that time: my Last Days Of Retail.
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If you are a store, and you're French (which I'm going to assume you, dear reader, are not), here is how you assert your Frenchness during the Christmas retail season:

1) Leave your front doors open when it's 22 degrees out, ensuring that people shopping for $1600 handbags can see their own breath as they utter the words "I'll t-t-t-take it".
Expecting to be warm indoors during a luxury shopping experience is simply not chic. One must suffer for beauty. Also? We don't like you. Or care. And your hair is funny.

2) Refuse to play Christmas music. Instead, play depressing emo girls wailing about how their lovers have left them and it's probably their own fault, but if said lover doesn't return to make thm miserable again, they will probably either take pills or continue wailing. Or both. "Rudolph the RedNose Reindeer" is a bourgouis construct, and has been denounced by LeviStrauss in his famous tract "The Deconstruction of Rudolf de la Nez Rouge"., in which reindeer are proven to be a failed neo-Marxist syllogism.Parce-que: Christmas music at Christmas is so...predictable.

3) Refuse to have sales. Sneer openly at those customers who ask. Sneer openly at customers who don't ask, for their lack of courage. Sneer openly at anyone who happens to be walking by and within sneering distance. Nous sneerairons.

4) We spit on the concept of Christmas decorations. Instead, we have a conceptual artist who walks around the store before it's open and murmurs the single word "holly". So spare. So simple. So chic.

5) Your hair is funny and your shoes are a laughable relic of the former life you have now outgrown. Your children are sad and your wife has a lover. Do not ask me what is the price of this purse. You can not purchase back the strayed affection of your spouse, who is sleeping with a german art student who moonlights as a garbage man in order to impress his marxist, much younger other girlfriend, with a $420 beach towel. Do not try, either to do the first thing I suggested or to understand the structure of this sentence. Pah- I spit on conventional sentence structure.

There ya go. If you ever want to be a huge, French, luxury retail store at Christmas, you now know everything you ned to be a huge success with people who would not want to belong to any club that would have them as a member. I.e., all of humanity.

What Is The Journey But Our View

 (Note: The 18th Century Russian Empress Catherine The Great, wanted to take a tour of Russia.  In order to keep her happily assured that everything in Russia was absolutely FINE- which it most assuredly was NOT--her lover and prime minister, Potemkin, erected an astonishing series of village facades , for Catherine to ride past. She was happily fooled, and Potemkin kept his power. The villages were burned as soon as she passed.)

What Is The Journey But Our View  (lyrics)            Peri Lyons   c 2012 ASCAP

There was a Russian Empress

Who said she had to see

What was going on

With her Russian Peasantry

So: She rode out in state for a year and a day

And her minister Potemkin rode ahead.

Potemkin rode ahead... to build

The fronts of houses -but not the houses

The fronts of villages -but no villages

He hired handsome peasants to stand outside

and Catherine

Was satisfied

When Catherine the Great looked at the view

She saw what Potemkin intended her to

No trouble, no starvation and no poverty

Potemkin Villages as far as she could see

Potemkin rode ahead to build

The fronts of houses but not the houses

The fronts of villages but no villages

He hired handsome peasants to stand outside

and Catherine

Was satisfied

And Catherine’s sleep was untroubled

And Catherine’s mind was untroubled

 I fear we are too untroubled

in our complacency

Potemkin Villages are all that we will see

when Catherine the Great rode past and on her way

Potemkin Villages were burned down the same day

That lying architecture, had to go away

No one could make a home there anyway

Potemkin rode behind to burn

The fronts of houses- burned like houses

The fronts of village-s burned like villages

The handsome peasants had already moved on

And Catherine

was long gone

I sing this song to say the burning hurts the same

The fake and the real all burn, with just as hot a flame

But this complacency is turning into shame

I did not see

The Potemkin Villages you put up just for me

My darling, you rode ahead to build

The fronts of houses but not our house

The fronts of villages but not our village

And everywhere you lied

and I

Was satisfied

And yes my sleep was untroubled

And yes my mind was untroubled

 I fear we’re all too untroubled

in our complacency

Potemkin Villages are all that we will see:

That heedless wreckage ,is our legacy.