An Occasional Damage of Roses

by James Victor Anderson

Overview

The purpose of Anderson’s poetry is not to try to seek that which is already within us but that which we have always known since infancy as a viable factor in where we have arrived. And still we travel, discover, and grow with the speed of dawn. Poetry which merely tells a story or points to a deeper meaning does not have the power of taking you by the leash and unfastening it. That alone should frighten a traveler. The art of poetry itself is never a saving factor but is merely a voice found in the heart of one who has never given up in spite of the beatings. Doesn’t this explain most of us still on the journey? The traveler who has found his or her inner voice will understand Anderson’s poetry through personal experience, but to others, it may be nothing more than indecipherable marks on an abandoned wall. And may have, through no fault of their own, no need of it. Whichever the case, relish the disturbance and enjoyment of things that have always been yours and your right to reclaim them. This book is best embraced in some quiet, private place of comfort far away from the things that sent you there.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781496936035
Publisher:	AuthorHouse
Publication date:	08/28/2014
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	128
File size:	248 KB

About the Author

James Victor Anderson has written and published under previous book titles as Not Unlike a Madman in Cheap Sandals, Dance Without a Rack of Bones Within, The Heart Has a Homely Face, and Immersion Into Quantum Creek. His current work is a continuation of the Taoist perspective through which the common human experience becomes extraordinary. If we demanded God to reveal himself the very best, what he might do is tell us to look into water and see what it means. In our own reflection we cannot enter or grasp him at all by means of our intellectual illusions or even faith that water can hold us up. When a Taoist says "There is no God where there is only God" he is insubordinate to all schools of thought, East or West, which try to put the highest deity in an observable container or dismiss it as an irrelevant anachronism.

Read an Excerpt

An Occasional Damage of Roses

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By James Victor Anderson

AuthorHouse LLC

Copyright © 2014 James Victor Anderson
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4969-3602-8

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CHAPTER 1

QUAN YIN

to see into the eyes of woman's love
shakes the deepest roots of ancient trees
that hold this earth together


MOMENT

While we're in this moment
as of everything that ever was
a sleight of time,
and pulled you from a high silk hat,

let's disregard its meaning in a maze
that's nothing in the overview
as one who searches inside out
for answers that can best be called escape.

There's no escaping from a single moment
where we dreamed of ancient forests
in our eons of ascension from historic bogs,
and theater successful with illusions.

But if one falling snowflake had imprinted
in its crystal maze a message that all things
have happened in this moment
that you caught it on your tongue,
could you also have the presence
of a simpleton before a trout
that leaps the sun bright ripples washing
through your moment
fading now?


BONES

white
without permission
cleaned and bleached

dejected bones
expound in silence
like an optimistic faith
is undermined
where future goes

nothing lives there now
amongst the stripped
and barren jumble trapping
sand behind its barricade

blanching in the sun
calcium is more
than bad comparison
to Roman ruins

bones are left
to show remains
of all the unacceptable
pared down to simple means

and nothing grows there
after that but glory
of the fiction we were fed

son of man
can these bones walk?


PAINTED LIGHT

Light is only deeper than reflecting water,
and shapes our movement in its passing.
I beheld your form for just a minute of today,
and all the light and dark of you diminished
as I turned another page.
It wasn't that you passed into another turning
of this world, and then vanished into evening
and its clustered starpoints,
nebulizing where we cannot go.
It's here the sun is painting whom we are,
and all we are is light and shadows moving
in our moments filled with tedium and toil.
Stillness in that passing second genuflects
in reverence to the light upon your face,
and tells me that your heart is lighter
than the feather it is weighed against.
I watched you walking through the turning day,
and I knew you only by the brushing sound
of thunder that I feel
through deafening silence of light.


BAMBOO

clean fallen
smooth dropping
segments holding altogether
swiftly scything wind

and archers bending
bowstrings
to a distant morning
whistling hollow shafts
to birds unhindered

sudden unseen blades
already through their slashing
mark how certainly
the future has arrived

we danced among the parallels
of leaning light
and waved to evenings gathering
gusts of passing leaves

so quickly
in the brittle snap
of cleanly severed lines
a shining wind has thrust its steel
into the exquisite


APPLE ORCHARD

Light is never lost among a shadow.
Arching limbs prepare their gathering hold
on sun rays over spending blossoms.
A heavy hum of bees
defy those darkening stripes of shadow
as if they were a ghost of prisons
fading in the memory of the free.
Overpowering scent of blooms pervade
and overcome the soberest constitutions,
making drunkards rue the falsity that passed
for what they would have loved.

Two lovers run
through petal-falling streams of light,
impounding better sense that hides behind
my dark arthritic pain and cynic heart.
Still they have the power
to convey their dreams
and leave behind the shades of better sense.
Shadows would have been their home
had not a silliness of scented love
staved off appointed guardians
whose injuries become our own.

Foolishness shall reign
while orchards bloom before the apples
in their rooted sense.
Propriety and ethos will suspend themselves.
Fruit of ripened succulence
makes passionate breath avail,
and birth brings forth a sagely elder,
slightly with a grin.

Light was never lost among the shadows.
At worst it flickers at the moment of our birth,
exploding into novas as we breathe our last,
and settles into memories of apple sunsets
touching on an orchard-filled
discrepancy of blooms.


THINGS WE KNOW

There are some things we know
that mount upon a cornerstone
of summer melting candle wax.
Once we knew what lit our way
and told our children twice today
of labor that we dignified with pain.
Nothing worth a kippered herring
bares itself as easy as a random theft,
or honesty is something spoken
once upon a temple
made of broken stone.
These things we knew
before the risen tide had covered paths
we passed for certain in the trusted dark,
but face the daylight not the same
as shadows that have moved again.

There are some things we know
that never change in cycles
as a spiral risen skyward
like an axle free of wheels that turn
toward places that are left to burn.
Some things we know
that never have a name
still hover over fingers on the keys
unlocking music from imprisoned pain.
Somewhere under bones that fail
we know these things are palpable
as polished stones that hide beneath
a surface of illusionary light.


TAO CANNOT BE TOLD

particles of dust
lifting in a pane of light

a withering daffodil
that knows eternity

the sudden gust of air
from dragonflies

but that's not it either

it's more like here
than where it came from

and imitates organic feelings
like you couldn't stop the wind

or stones that seek a distance
far from those who throw

innocence reclaimed
from slaughtered youth

respect for women's tears
in ragged gardens

memory in a field of fox glove

revenge exacting everything
we never were

something breathing silently
wants to tag along

even when you try to kill it

always someone tries
to name the obvious
to be remembered

then disappears
into a toppled idol


MANCHILD

Where do children go when we are grown?
Do they fall asleep in places we have left behind,
or fade away like colors left on windowsills?
Are they lost in photo shadows of a certain day
that move too quickly into aftermaths of gray?

And even now some children's hands
are always playing with our work
as if to disobey our stern directive to go on,
go outside and find some other thing to do.
Where do they come from in those moments
when we learn to use a magic stick to turn
a turnip into something we can fly?

Where are children going if they never die?
Why does the tall perspective of an alder
bring a heightened recognition of an answer
so outlandish as a tree house floating somewhere
in the stars?

And every child we know will wait until you're gone
to go against the grain of what we should presume.
Where did we go when once we sought to grow
beyond where children know they're left behind?
They haunt us through the houses
we have bought to sell,
and rifle through our treasures hidden well.

Where do children go when we are grown?
Are they living in a place where we have yet to come?
At times we recognize their stares from water pools,
wondering if we drowned in our prepared escape
from something we were told we must outgrow.
How do we once again become the child we know?


BAD BOY

Wanted,
one pre-teen male
with skateboard and balloon
to jump the gap between our age
and land without arthritic pain,
balanced on sane wheels,
but not let go that silly blue
cartoon balloon that says
"the child is father to the man."

Well, he can't know where
he's going if he wants to end up
where he's never been before,
but, he likes to say conditions
therefore preexist to be imposed
like it's legal when a turkey lays an egg.

And it's only those obedient
to rules who are selected
for the next great venture
into outer space.
We can't take chances.
How can we risk with innovations
like the ones we see in skateboard parks?
Those kinds of people only end up
winning wars,
and we've passed legislation to remove
that sort of thing.

From here on out
adults shall be complete upon arrival,
having skirted all the accidents of youth,
like grapes of knowledge
and their vintage wisdom,
irrelevant in a world of chance,

or who cares about a place called Mars?


PRECOGNITION

Transfixed in wild commotion
made by seven little girls
in Dutch boy cuts
and billowing sailcloth pinafores,
a boy of five on errand to the store
was conjured by their voices piercing
morning's quiet platitudes.

Like little witches riding fear
upon a dusty whirlwind, they stopped
for just a moment in eternity
with flailing brooms to swat each other
in a matriarchal ritual of war
to fan the fear of men who go astray.

As sudden
as their mocking warfare ceased,
they turned and rode away
upon a crunching lane of shell and gravel,
grinding ears like ogres chewing bones.

Girlish screams died out
upon a gust of wind
along with little feet that turned
the corner of their weathered home.

In the quietness that followed
one startled boy moved cautiously
toward what he knew was waiting.


WHEN SCHOOL BEGINS

I miss the slow molasses child
who oozed inside of me like trees
in late October gone to sleep
while I was entering wintry wood
in high and drafty public school.

All day the wind imposed itself,
surrounded eaves and shaking windows, haunting me beneath the numbers,
counting words across my maple desk,
and there I felt the snare of knowing
these will come as my tomorrows.

When school was out, I felt the fear
of freedom that required my return again,
but home was just a one mile step
into a lovely frame of standing woods
with boughs fulfilled in seaborne autumn.

I had a race with sweeping fog, and wagered
I could make it home before its ice-gray fingers
could erase the giant Douglas firs
and lose me on my way to known direction.
But always would I bet upon the dreamy mist
and lose.

Always toward that wooden tower on the hill
I made return, and night had drawn the fog
so I would see the schoolhouse waiting
in the regimented morning of its foreign mind.
How I longed to be the idler of a perfect day.

Still I hope to race the fog against my years
before it has surrounded all my limbs with cold,
and whitens me with swirling wisps
about the profile of our learned ways.

Erosion by the wind and solvency in mist
prevail upon the stratagems my life has been,
and then there'll be no separate place
when school begins, and once again
the pupil shall surpass his education.


SCISSORS, PAPER AND ROCK

Scissors, paper and rock,
and children know that one
succeeds the other.
We learned anticipation
at the hands of giggling friends,
and jumped to cover simple rules
by means of odds expressing ends.

We began with what was fair.
And when the dying off of pals
continued through the graying
of our hair,
we saw how paper covered rock
as scissors cut obituaries, failing
at their mortal clock.

Time to head for home,
familiar voices say,
but not before the rock
that smashes scissors
dulls the shearing edge,
and stored away in closets hidden
deep where time requires a dredge.

Saying first that paper covers
rock and scissors
doesn't make it so, nor will it bring
our laughing children closer than
a cane that props our vertigo.

We win when no one's left to play,
and stretch our legs into today
that's sunny with the trees so full.
Who cares who got the upper hand
or shot you with a rubber band,
so long ago.

Of all the bluff and broken rules
we used as our advancing tools,
none there were that broke the lock
like scissors, paper and a rock.


REMEMBERING GIRLS WITH BRAIDS

Simplicity was lovely as girls who wore their hair in braids,
as fingers lithely figuring the strands that play a woman's song.
Standing boldly by the rocks in rippled streams and falling hair,
stretched in arms of laundered care she weaves her careless locks.
A coarsely woven homemade skirt curves beneath her snowy blouse
in balance with unraveling hair she gathers in unpainted hands.
Sisters never leave another faltering in the midst of change,
stepping forward, lifting there, nimbly gathering fallen length.
Tresses woven with descended strength that falls from women's lore
wind about the fingers like a cat's cradle is passed before.
The braiding goes on quietly and secret as a garden spider's silent spin,
then smiling eyes turn to meet each other's flickering brace of heart.

Emerging from the brook are braids that curl upon the head as pastry
hanging in a bakery window; others hang like crullers frosted shiny
with a sweetness unbecoming of a homely face,
and loads of hand-washed clothing in denial of her handicraft.
Another braid is wrapped about a freckled forehead, like Freya
counting stars as many as there are the dreams of changing girls
who long to wear their hair a crown of glory.
And how they dream of what may never come, though how they sit
and groom each other like a prayer of what they hope will surely be.
How deeply cling these covenants of braided sisters to their bonding
near the last of what it is for girls whose lives forever change.


OCTOBER IN A GLASS OF RUM

Ragged-hanging mist falls lightly,
sweeping old and worn-out blankets
trailing thread-loose memories in shreds.
Covered up with warmly bundled arms
and peeking out eye-level under wraps,
a heavy fog drifts quietly as slumbering ice
spreads isinglass across a window dream.
A puff of steamy breath emerges from a yawn
complaining to the coldness of the necessary
tossing of the quilt from nestled limbs,
and startled at the marching orders carried
by the soles across an unawakened floor.

Fog has blurred the trees and lanes, expecting
in a vision where the warmer days would realign
familiar landmarks suddenly enshrouded
in the memory of a tilting earth.
New warmth arises from a shivering hand igniting
light where once a distant star had shared its own.
The wind requires a moving act that tells the owls
and burrowing things of fortune in a shadow sleep,
while those igniting winter's fires remain with tandem
killing rime and crackling flame to play its concert
once again for star-blown haze.

Knowing that the onset of October has fulfilled again
the straw-man's dangling offering of withered corn,
and placed there by its owner like a sacrifice,
we placate demigods who play an act that we ourselves
have strut upon this very stage we truly live upon.


PUDDLE WIZARDS

The universe belongs to us,
gazers of mud puddle worlds
from whence we learned
our way to the stars.
Losing ourselves at school,
we can't get home by way of that,
unless we stop at a puddling place,
preferably
earthen roads and fields
that give beneath the curious feet.

Mysterious shapes below thin water
held our fascination to an afterworld
where things that lived upon the air
became an index referencing
the contents of our puddled hearts.

We knew that world,
those funny little things that swam
and hopped so close beneath our skins,
we carry every particle today.

We are the puddle wizards moving
as we may with shining water circles
in concaves of mortal flesh,
and anywhere we go we skip the stones
and sail our scrapwood boats
across a universe far strewn above
an opposite of things we've known.

And so you'll know yourself
if no one else shows up
to join your ripples of reflection,
that reason only wonders how
it's going to raise us
from the dust we are.
It's all there written in the puddle,
if you brought it with you.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from An Occasional Damage of Roses by James Victor Anderson. Copyright © 2014 James Victor Anderson. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Contents

Introduction, vii,
Quan Yin, 1,
Moment, 2,
Bones, 3,
Painted Light, 5,
Bamboo, 6,
Apple Orchard, 7,
Things We Know, 9,
Tao Cannot Be Told, 11,
Manchild, 13,
Bad Boy, 15,
Precognition, 17,
When School Begins, 19,
Scissors, Paper and Rock, 21,
Remembering Girls With Braids, 23,
October in a Glass of Rum, 24,
Puddle Wizards, 26,
Night Shore, 28,
Come Visit While I Slip Away, 29,
Open Windows, 32,
Me and Jack Smile Back, 33,
Halloween Night, 35,
Frankenstein, 37,
Passing Through November, 39,
Madman, 41,
It's Raining, 45,
Fall Water, 47,
An Occasional Damage of Roses, 49,
Branches into Winter, 52,
Can't Find, 54,
Transition, 56,
Lunch with Joe, 58,
1945, A Dog of Dust, 60,
Imaginata, 62,
Old Man Lost Young, 64,
Mourning Suzanne, 66,
Barbara's Kiss, 68,
The Measure of Pain, 70,
The Light Bearer's Eve, 71,
Singers, 73,
The Pythagorean Shopping Cart, 75,
Good Friday, 77,
Housebroken Dreams, 79,
Illusion, 81,
Air Terminal, 83,
Eat It By the Fire, 85,
Eulogy, 87,
Blue Fjord, 89,
As I Turn to Leave, 90,
Trench Knife, 92,
To a Fat Ugly Girl in a Purple Tee, 98,
We Toast Her Cavalcade, 100,
When I Was Daniel Boone, 102,
Wine Critique, 104,
Simpson Park, 105,
Forest Path, 107,
Forest of the Heavy Mist, 109,
Forest Storm, 111,
Riding on the Forest, 113,
Forest Passage, 115,
Consciousness, 117,
Inveterate Peace, 119,