John Lambremont. Sr. - Poet

   February 8, 2013

   Here we are on the eve of both Chinese New Year and Mardi Gras, and it is somewhat unusual that both fall so close this year. As a lifetime native of south Louisiana, I've always enjoyed Mardi Gras for its parades, pageantry, and revelry. Most towns and cities have celebrations, and the small-town Mardi Gras celebrations are more family-oriented and laid-back than is the festive frenzy of Carnival in New Orleans.

   Chinese New Year has become part of my life as the result of my 32-year marriage to my lovely wife, Nhu-y, as she and her family are Vietnamese and Buddhists. The Vietnamese celebrate Tet every year for three days, and it is the most important day of their year. Here is an acrostic poem I wrote for the occasion a few years back, when Chinese New Year fell on February 14th, Valentine's Day. This is the first public appearance of this poem.

DOUBLE HOLIDAY (an acrostic) 

Hearts and flowers aren't the only things today, my dears,
Always seems there is more than to what the eye appears;
Prayers are due to ancestors that went before us here,
Peaceful thoughts for them in grace, try to hold back the tears;
Yes, it is the time that comes one time this time of year.

Char the pig on open coals and savor the best slice,
Have a piece with skin attached, the flavor's very nice;
Itsies run around and wave red money envelopes,
New bills folded for good luck are carefully enclosed;

Elders sit on lawn chairs and exchange their fondest hopes,
Sisters watch the gambling games, and teach the kids the ropes,
Everyone is happy, as this holiday's the most.

Now the sun is setting, and I slip out for a smoke;
Evening is beautiful, although it is still cold;
Wishing I could wait here for the rising moon of gold.

Yelps are coming from the house as fireworks begin,
Even longer strings of poppers than I've ever seen;
All are cheering as we chase the bad spirits away,
Really, it's the best way to enjoy this joyful day.

   It has been quite an experience being the "foreigner" in an immigrant family, and has prompted a lot of poems from me. Here's another, which appeared in my first book, Whiskey, Whimsy, & Rhymes (2009), which is available at Amazon.com and most major bookstore websites. This poem was one of the first I wrote when my muse re-descended in 2008:

TEMPLE AT SUNSET

Lady Buddha rises,
alabaster gleaming
over coi lake reflecting
embers of a dying sun.

Higher than an elm,
her face in silhouette,
her smile is all mystery.

Chanting from the temple,
our ceremony done,
another underway;

Our vegetarian repast
passed among us,
satisfying,
but missing Grandma and Grandpa.

I am the foreigner here,
once shunned, later to become
Uncle John (you know,
the American one).

A monk clangs a bell
to signal the sun has sunk.

The Lady is nearly dark now,
but ever presiding
over these holy grounds.

I slip away to
peruse her majesty,
and in a golden glow,
to myself I say:

'Mom' and 'Dad,'
I took your daughter away,
but that choice was yours.
Thanks for learning to forgive,
for treating your daughter's lover
like a son or a brother;
in return I gave to thee
beloved grandchildren, three.

   As far as recent news goes, since my last post, I have had several poems accepted for publication. My poem "Passages" has been accepted for the 2013 issue of the Indian River Review, the literature review of Indian River State College in Fort Pierce, Florida. "Enmity" and "Now Hear This" were accepted for the 2013 issue of The Mayo Review of Texas A&M University-Commerce. Local Gems Poetry Press of Long Island is compiling an anthology titled Retail Woes, which will be released shortly, and which will include my acrostic poem "Quality People Wanted" and my short poem "The Finding." My poems "Still Waiting" and "A Big Land" were picked up by Lost Tower Publications of the U.K. for their upcoming Hope Springs A Turtle anthology; and lastly, "Upon Discovering Your Own Corpse" will appear in Diogen Pro-Culture Magazine of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, late this month. I still have three full-length collections under submission, so please continue to wish me luck.

   This Asian-influenced poem appeared in the fall 2012 issue of San Pedro River Review. Special thanks to co-editors Jeffrey Alfier and Tobi Cogswell.

THE SENTINELS

Two tiny dog lions preside

over my back door, harbingers

of menace to patio invaders, 

refugees of a trailer park yard sale,

burnished brick plastic now blistered 

by years of burning summer sun

and misery-wet winters,

slowly bleached near-bone white,

more than teeth exposed.

They are unremarkable replicas

of their hand-carved hallowed ancestors

seen still in moving depictions of temples,

pagodas, and shrines of Laos or Burma

or my dear bride's Ancien Hue,

set in stone repose at the front gates,

large unarmed guards meant to prevent 

the evil spirits of passing millenia

from entering.

One toils under climbing impatiens,

half-buried in a dead ant-bed,

awaiting their inevitable return.

The other is my smoking buddy,

but tonight his grimace is fixed

on a place somewhere beyond me;

he glares through me soundlessly,

his pug face snarling in ill- 

concealed contempt. I turn quickly

to see what he sees: the fireflies

gathered in late unseasonal swarm.

   Next, we have the second in my trilogy of poems published in Romania in Nazar Look's Extraterrestrial Life anthology:

IN THE AFTERMATH 

(from Dali’s Three Young Surrealist Women Holding 

   in Their Arms the Skins of an Orchestra – 1936)         

The bed of the Ulinary is desiccate,
devoid of its black tar flow now drying
in pools atop the surrounding bluffs
and outcrops of boulders and rocks,
a danger still to children and small animals.
The newer moon, so near in orbit
to cause the cataclysmic uprising,
reflects light so brightly that the night
is negated and the stars darkened.

Three Jacceba women, chosen
muses of the Citadel of Ancient Discovery,
are in search of exhibits swept away
by the dark toxic tide, their heads covered
to preserve their hair hues, but breasts bared
to absorb the beneficial moon
radiation, said to be lactary.

Two hold wooden torture instruments
thought to be from the Era of Insanity,
but the amalgahyde of the flood fluids
has rendered both pieces rubbery, while
the alloy sound weapon has brittled,
and will disintegrate when touched.

The third waves to the Sajan’s sitwas
waiting on a nearby ridge, a signal
for them to lower the ropes and nets
from their pulleys.

   Finally, here is installment four in my series about the misadventures of The Holy Grand Poo-Bah, a diminutive despot from a far-away planet:

A BIG INSPECTION

Grand Poo-Bah still high

on his fat fluffalump,

swaying unsteadily,

already drunk,

inspecting the Boo-pahs

and the Poo ammo dumps;

and then as he lifed

his small Poo-Bah ass,

the great beast’s weight shifted

and shattered his flask.

Poo-Bah’s thigh glass-tattered,

and minding the matter,

he slid down the trunk 

and landed with a grunt.

Bleeding profusely,

his stomach in quease,

he heard one young Boo-pah

just cackling with glee.

They grabbed the offender,

and he went to his knees,

no longer laughing

as he begged apologies.

“It’s all right, my son;

I, too, was once young.”

Then Poo-Bah dispatched him

with a blasting Poo gun.

“Oh, well! What the hell,

I’ve got other sons

from where that one came from.”

   That's all for now. Thanks for reading and for your comments. Don't forget to check out our poetry review, Big River Poetry Review, at bigriverpoetry.com.

Happy Tet 2013!

John Lambremont, Sr.

2/8/2013

December 7,2012

John Lambremont. Sr. - Poet

   A lot has transpired since my last blog post in September. My poem "The Trick to Elevation" has been accepted for publication in The Chaffin Journal, the literary magazine of Eastern Kentucky University. Three of my poems were published in Romania in Nazar Look's "Extraterrestrial Life" anthology. These poems will be featured here, starting with the first in the series, below. Five of my poems will appear in next year's Cantos, the literary magazine of Missouri Baptist University. My poem "To My Octogenarian", which appeared on the blog previously, was re-published in England in "The Poetic Bond II" anthology compiled and edited by Trevor Maynard. And lastly, three of my full-length poetry collections are under submission to book publishers, so please keep your fingers crossed for me


Now, here's some poems for you. With winter coming soon, here's a poem about early winter in my home state of Louisiana, which appeared previously in Cave Moon Press' "Broken Circles" anthology:

DEEP DELTA FREEZE

The fishes stare up, pie-eyed,

sideways in the ice,

the brackish marshes frozen,

the satsumas in blight.

She fusses over grommets,

bungee cords and tarps,

and mutters to the smudge-pots

that they won't save her crops.

The tangerines are freezing,

and won't survive the night;

she glares skyward so angrily

she gives her God a fright.

The tall bananas wither,

their fruit hangs dead and brown,

so shriveled up and ruined,

one boot would bring them down,

but she won't do it now.

Now that the holidays are upon us, we can count on enjoying a variety of galas, both personal and televised. Here's a poem about a different type of gala, published previously in Sugar House Review:

VARIETY GALA

Watch the fishes walk their bones

and shake them down below.

The yellowfader elfin hands

make broom-stands on the swaying stage,

their seven kneels to the peacocks' three,

the larvate magnates praised.

The excesses of fetch and rend

have spent the fish in somberness,

the strings cut loose from the pupas,

the audience transfixed, as two denuded apples

stare out foolishly, stripped to the core.

Here is my first poem in the "Extraterrestrial Life" anthology by Nazar Look. Like many of my poems, this other-wordly tale is dream-derived.

ULINARY UPRISING

The first earth wave takes you by surprise,

and grabs you by the ankles,

the Ulinary undercurrent never stronger,

its waters thick and black as tar.

You know you must flee immediately,

or succumb.

You curse inwardly for having

dismissed your sitwas, and brace yourself

for an arduous escape.

The second earth wave takes you

by the thighs as you reach the crusted mounds,

wrapping its dark arms around you

to suck you in.

You claw your hands into the dried clay,

and strain for your life,

an inchworm pulling itself

from the muck of primordia.

You will not survive

the third earth wave.

The third wave breaks as

you free yourself and run for the cliffs

from the deadly tide.

From around the bend,

you can hear the cries of your subjects

on the public beaches.

You have climbed these bluffs

Since you were The Young Sajan, and know

all the footholds and handholds,

so you reach a safe height quickly,

then hear your name being called.

Below you on a sliver of ledge

are your wife and daughter.

You give them instructions,

but your wife is stupid

and the girl is timid,

and they stare up blankly,

not comprehending; but your sitwas arrive

with cords, pulleys, and rope chairs,

and you can turn your efforts to the horde

of sun seekers bolting up the dirt path

back to the city, some stained                                                             

by their own brushes

with death.

At the end of the trail

is a high rock outcropping,

and the commoners are fighting

over the ropes. A Fatweh woman

pushed perilously close to the edge

recognizes you, and whispers,

"Help me, Sajan,"

as the ground beneath her gives way,

and she falls backward to her demise,

her robes flapping

in the updrafts.

You must take control,

so you run to the rock,

climbing it without a rope,

and shout, "This way!"

Others begin to follow

as you reach the city overlook station,

grunting in exertion and relief;

then you groan inwardly as you peer down

at violent bedlam in your streets;

the Fatwehs and the Jaccebas are warring

again.

Finally, here's installment 3 in my humorous series about the Holy Grand Poo-Bah, the diminutive alien despot of a far-away planet:

A Big Parade

Grand Poo-Bah rode high

on his best fluffalump,

but the beast’s hump

was chafing his rump.

Swaying and nauseated,

small coppers he tossed,

the crowd below seeing

his Soul was now lost.

Excesses of everything

and the ebb tides of war

had made him lose conscience,

his reign now a blur:

“Oh, well! What the hell,

not every little thing 

calls for a cure…”

That's all for now. Your comments, as always, are appreciated. Don't forget to send your poems to our review,
Big River Poetry Review, at bigriverpoetry.com.

John Lambremont, Sr.

John Lambremont. Sr. - Poet
September 19, 2012

Hurricane Isaac has come and gone, and caused a lot of damage in south Louisiana, but we were lucky and were spared for the most part. Thanks to you all for your prayers and good wishes.

Speaking of wishes, here's a little poem of mine that got to "hit lead-off" in this summer's issue of Words & Images, the lit mag of the University of Southern Maine.


WHAT WE NEED

What we need is
auto bodies and parts
that are edible.

What we need is
is an instrument that
will make useless measurements
like the distance between
two nipples.

What we need is
velcro fasteners
between our knees and
a way of voiding
without the fuss, and

what we need is
a scenic overlook
of ourselves
that can be had
without leaving the car.



The recent hurricane did give us a lot of high winds. In a swirling tropical storm, the winds come in different directions at different times; in Isaac, the winds came first from the south, then from the east at the height of the storm, from the north after the center had passed, and from the west as the residual bands passed through.

This windy poem appeared previously in Acreage Journal:

THE EVOKER

Wind chimes at my window
a sextet in D,
long, silver cylinders,
no trinkets, these,
lull me into blissful nod
or cudgel me from sleep.

No thoughts can they compose,
but respond they to the wind rose;
they cannot distinguish
Boreas from Notus,
nor Zephyrus from Eurus,
who often anger to tempest in
gusts that send discord clanking
off the glass panes, or leave
in a huff for days, withholding
propulsion in disgust.

Like snowflakes, each sound-scape
is different; yet, some-how,
The Song Remains the Same,
whether mild or strident,
violent or quiet.

Sometimes, these Bells of
Rhymney are sounded in
drunken symphony by a rapt
conductor-poet.

It looks like the litigation involving the B.P. oil spill of two years ago that killed thirteen good people and harmed tens of thousands more is winding its way toward the end. I thus reprint this angry visual poem/rant that the disaster prompted in me, which was previously published in the U.K. in Disingenuous Twaddle:

DON'T GO THERE

                             I        &

                             am    no,

                             the   not

                              guy you,

                                who

                                can

                                 see

                                  all

                                   the

                                   rot

                                   and

                                   the

                                  bad

                                 men

                                who

                                lie

                               and

                               try

                           to pass it

                        off as pure truth.

                       I have lived in the

                     shadow of the Big River

                    all of my days, and I know

                   the scent of the sea. I know

                  rivers, lakes, bayous, creeks,

                  marshes and swamps and canals,

                 oxbows, borrow pits, and oceans.

                  I have hiked the levees of the

                   muddy Mississippi , peed into

                   its currents, and crapped on

                    its banks. I have been and

                     am still a fisherman in

                      paradise. I have been

                       through hurricanes,

                        tornadoes, floods.

                         Now I don't know

                         if I should vent

                         or just go mad,

                        as once again we

                        are in the way,

                        and told it is

                       our own damned

                        fault for being

                        such dumb fools.

                        I remember the day

                        our Paulie, then age

                         four, fell into the

                          Mississippi River in

                           a final, nearly fatal

                            attempt to skip a rock

                             more than three times.

                              We'd finished our throws

                               and I said "Let's go now,"

                                and turned our backs, then

                                 heard a loud splash, and

                                 found Paulie in the water

                                  clinging grimly to a small

                                   patch of rocky ground, his

                                    feet swaying in the eddies.

                                    We pulled him out okay, and

                                    made a conscious decision not

                                    to tell his mom about it, no

                                   need to scare her with a thing

                                   that did not happen. We kept

                                  this secret for fifteen years.

                                 Many years laters, I found a

                                brass bust of Shiva, the god

                               of rivers, in a curio shop

                              in the French Quarter. His

                             hair was all snakes, and I

                            found his stern glare was

                           interesting. The price was

                          right, so I bought him and

                         took him home, and hung

                        him on our living room

                       wall. Everything then

                      turned immediately to

                     crap. No money would

                    come in, and no new

                   work could be found,

                  so quarrels ensued.

                 Then one night over

                Sunday dinner, the

                 tale about Paulie's

                  dip in the big river

                   was revealed, and his

                    poor mom was mortified.

                     She said we should have

                      told her about it right

                       away; she would have, as

                        would any wise Buddhist,

                         have set up an altar at

                          the point of his entry,

                           burned joss sticks and

                            offered flowers to the

                             kind river god for not

                              taking away her child.

                               No wonder, she told us,

                                that Paulie had been so

                                 beset with psoriasis and

                                  adolescent obesity; the

                                   god of the river wrought

                                    his revenge on Paul for

                                    our rude lack of thanks.

                                     I thought about this for

                                    many days, and I was well-

                                   determined to make amends.

                                  I took the Shiva with me

                                 downtown to the same spot

                                where Paul had taken his

                               plunge. I clasped Shiva

                              between my palms, and

                             I bowed and kow-towed 

                            ten times, giving the

                           god of the river our

                          thanks for sparing my

                         son, adding my true

                       apologies as I asked

                      for his blessings.

                      Then I hurled the

                     Shiva into the big

                      river as far as it

                       would go, and watched

                        it splash into the deep

                         water beyond the eddies.

                          Everything then took an

                           sudden turn for the better,

                             but my wife said I was silly.

                              I worked the tugs and crew boats

                               as a youth, through the canals and

                                in and out to the massive oil rigs

                                 we supported. I have seen injury

                                 and death come from mankind's

                                 pursuit of the almighty crude.

                                 The man-made canals were a

                                large part of the intrusion

                              of sea water that caused the

                             levees to fail after Katrina

                            barely touched New Orleans ;

                           but, through the greed and

                          short-sightedeness of our

                         so-called leaders, most

                        of The City That Care

                       Forgot went under ten

                      feet of water, and we

                      wonder still if anyone

                     cares, as much of Haiti

                     is being re-built faster

                      than is New Orleans East.

                       So now we have an "oil leak"

                        in the Gulf below the mouth

                         of the river due to the cheap

                          Charlies that run Blimey Petrol

                           and the rig-wrasslin' cowboys of

                            Holy Burton. This "leak" made an

                             oil slick bigger than Rhode Island ,

                              but where is the hue and cry like

                             we heard for the Exxon Valdez? Of

                             course, that was pristine Alaska

                            shore-line invaded, not a grubby,

                           trashy, Louisiana waste pit that

                          has nothing to offer but gators,

                         swamp rats, and mosquitos "as

                        big as birds," according to

                       one Alabama ass-clown's Net

                       missive. Oh, wait. The winds

                       are shifting. Mobile Bay and

                        the Emerald Coast are next.

                        

                         You may have to cancel

                          your trip. That is a

                           real catastrophe,

                           eff the shrimpers,

                           fishers, crabbers,

                            processors, and

                            vendors at the

                             butt of the

                             food chain.

                              Your fish

                               sandwich

                                you want 

                                  fresh,

                                   nice

                                    and

                                     hot,

                                      and

                                       so

                                        do

                                         I.

Finally, I close with the second installment in my series about the foibles of the Holy Grand Poo-Bah, which was published previously in my first book, Whiskey, Whimsy, & Rhymes, available on Amazon.com and all major bookstore websites. (Book disclaimer: "The aging lawyer/warrior resuscitates his Muse to try to assuage his tired mind and aching soul, with mixed but interesting results.")

A BIG SLAUGHTER

Grand Pooh-Bah did send
his troops to the fields
then to the Holy Gods
he faithfully kneeled

"Give us the strength, Lords
to conquer our enemies
please hear my words
and harken to my pleas!"

But the Boo-pahs fell back
again and again
mortally wounded
friend among friend

the Grand Poo-Bah looked on
and gnawed on his thumb
"Oh, well! What the hell,
plenty more where they came from."

That's all for now. Please send in your comments and critiques, and thanks.

John Lambremont, Sr.

P.S. Don't forget to visit our review, Big River Poetry Review, at bigriverpoetry.com!