~this piece is written for & dedicated to my Mother~ ~Carroll Hart~
~7 September 1931~11 July 2004~
~I violin~ ~if the wood be my face~
~I would howl~
~I would~
~hasten myself toward glory~
~the grain of my skin~
~would tell where I’d been~
~the sweat & the tears of my story~
~tie your metal strings~
~turn them tight into wings~
~cross your bow~
~give me lavender voice~
~as each note sings my bones~
~a god come to own~
~me you play me~
~a song of your choice~
~as I die as~
~I violin~
~the last violin~ ~they said the night was behind us~
~whose tears had only begun~
~did you see the one they held pris’ner~
~did you hear the songs left unsung~
~& there just above morning~
~they danced decades gone by~
~lovers beyond this world of chance~
~caught in the winking moon’s eye~
~I hear the strains of the last violin~
~& the notes each chord while it plays~
~echoing through my mind ‘til it sings~
~the last violin of our days~
~sleep is the ghost we’ve been chasing~
~wearing faces left over again~
~strangers in masks of our choosing~
~haunting places we’ve never been~
~& time the present reminder~
~of pasts even yet to be shared~
~quicker than they are occurring~
~wonder were we really there~
~I hear the strains of the last violin~
~& the notes each chord while it plays~
~echoing through my mind ‘til it sings~~the last violin of our days~
~a symphony sings at your cradle~
~an Ozarks sweet serenade~
~rocking the night with his fiddle~
~the player whose aging chords fade~
~you’ve learned to dance on without him~
~an angel whose feet kiss the floor~
~& all the others stop dancing~
~the last violin plays no more~
~I hear the strains of the last violin~
~& the notes each chord while it plays~
~echoing through my mind ‘til it sings~~the last violin of our days~
http://wordwulf.com
WordWulf
Inquiries: tracy@traceliteraryagency.com & wordwulf@wordwulf.com
© artwork & words conceived by & property of Tom (WordWulf) Sterner ©
~soon after the turn of the century~
~Quodlibet won the Maria Cerjak award~
~for avant-garde/experimental writing~
~Quodlibet~
~The Hundred Bites~
~IX~
~the tiny old woman~
~wraps them in her housecoats~
~bunny slippers~
~dries their shaggy heads with a towel~
~you are old men now~
~in your fifties for god sake~
~you have no business~
~riding those damned machines~
~they sit on her couch shivering~
~smiling at each other~
~her two oldest sons~
~having ridden their Harleys~
~five hundred miles in the rain~
~to celebrate her birthday with her~
~she brings them hot coffee~
~loves them well~
~helps them roll their machines~
~into the dark warmth of her barn~
~the very next year~
~her bunny slippers are gone~
~& so is she~
~the brothers ride~
~their tears hide the rain~
~IX. A Tender Wrapping~
~standing up for pennies~
~all hail at a dollar down~
~these blankets~
~ a hundred pound weight~
~strive to earn alive a shroud~
~a safe place to bury your worried face~
~o children learn to walk away~
~plant your seeds~
~your garden of youth~
~be tall & kind to yourselves~
~those older whom look away~
~may be kind & understanding~
~ever useful in the odd circumstance~
~such as surviving under siege~
~construction of birthing & burial blankets~
http://wordwulf.com
WordWulf
Inquiries: tracy@traceliteraryagency.com
& wordwulf@wordwulf.com
©artwork & words conceived by & property of
Tom (WordWulf) Sterner©
Quodlibet was published by Howling Dog Press
~Quodlibet~
~The Hundred Bites~
~VI~~the son standing in the hallway~
~listening closely~
~ear to the door~
~waiting for a commercial~
~so he can ask momma’s permission~
~he wants to go play in the yard~
~mustn’t interrupt her program~
~he feels it winding up~
~an expert at timing~
~he nudges the door open~
~the telephone rings~
~she answers it~
~dismisses him with a wave of her hand~
~she is weeping~
~speaking with her mother on the phone~
~the pretty man in the show died~
~they are afraid for the commercial to end~
~how can life go on without him~
~the boy closes the door silently~
~lays down on the floor outside her door~
~puts a thumb in his mouth~
~begins to suckle & drifts away thinking~
~he doesn’t like her very much~
~his mother~
~VI. Television Dawn~
~window situated western~
~no thing as perfect~
~so television dawn~
~echoes as sideshow~
~four walls gone~
~her eyes are closed~
~ghosts play tag on her face~
~hide between lines of age~
~the dawn she misses runs there~
~view-screen reflected flesh~
~blue/gray in the afternoon~
~this last promise~
~a thing broken~
~even her ghosts abandon her~
~body slack & unvisited~
~no thing as perfect~
~so television dawn~
http://wordwulf.com
WordWulf
Inquiries: tracy@traceliteraryagency.com
& wordwulf@wordwulf.com
©artwork & words conceived by & property of
Tom (WordWulf) Sterner©
Quodlibet was published by Howling Dog Press
~The Moth/A Sign~
I took a day off work as a "preserve my sanity" day. I lost my Mother July 11, 2004. Her birthday was September 7th so I had Sunday to reminisce her. I'd been angry at her for choosing to leave and, on top of that, not sending me a sign as she had promised, from the other side. The eighteenth of July I was sitting in my midnight room writing, using a notebook of lines jotted down in 2003 for inspiration, written ten months before her death. A tiny moth alit on the arm of my glasses, its wings aflutter, caressing my right temple.
A feeling inside bid me resist the urge to bat it away. After a few moments, it flew over and landed on the sheet I was writing from. It lingered over a line that read: "A wee bit wicked and its impact was felt all the more in its brevity... there are Earth Angels who would name it sin... but what do they know of sin." I reached for my camera and took a few pictures of the tiny creature so I wouldn't convince myself later that it was a dream or a fantasy the likes of which I am inclined to conjure up. After our private photo shoot, it returned to perch on my glasses once more. They came then, a tender-weep if you will, tears waiting four years to call my name. The moth flew up and through the window of this old farmhouse in Arvada. Signs are signs, aren't they? There was nothing earth shattering as I might have expected, no falling stars or lightning striking through my window exciting my flesh.
I don't travel to exotic faraway lands or jump out of airplanes, nor feel the need to. I raised five wonderful children. Natives of Colorado all, we live in Arvada, Wheat Ridge, and Golden and quite like it here. I'm a simply complex man who likes to write and sing, make music with his sons and watch his daughters dance. The visit of a tiny moth is an epiphany to me, what some others might simply squash and toss into the wastebasket.
http://wordwulf.comWordWulf
Inquiries: tracy@traceliteraryagency.com & wordwulf@wordwulf.com
© artwork & words conceived by & property of Tom (WordWulf) Sterner ©
She lived a hard life in a world where survival was the everyday waterline of success. I left her in that white room six years ago to howl a lament in the hospital parking lot, what turned out to be her death song. My sister came to join me. “Momma’s pain is over,” she said, “She is lost to us now.” I hurried back to the room to visit Momma’s hollow corpse.
Some weeks later my good sister advised me that she, two of my brothers, and other two sisters were taking Momma’s ashes from Colorado to Wyoming. They intended to make a ceremonial goodbye, to loose Momma’s remains on the Wyoming wind as Momma had done with her husband, our stepfather, five years before. She released him to the garden and the small square of grass on their red dirt, moo cow, Wyoming ranch. My sister asked me, “Will you go with us?”
Oldest of seven children, Momma’s first son, I replied, “No, I’m not ready to say farewell to her and would never leave her with the monster man, our stepfather. The oldest of my brothers, fourteen months younger than myself, was “doing time” in the prison at Canon City. Momma never liked him much, favored me always. The two of us, my brother and me, knew a different kind of life than our siblings. We shared a love/hate bond because of the Momma dynamic. I asked my sister to divide Momma into seven parts. “Take them all to Wyoming and do what you will with five of them. Bring the two last back to Colorado after they have witnessed five degrees of separation. These two parts I will keep for myself.”
Life goes on. Six years later I found myself married to what finally felt like “the right woman” for me. She was sixth born in a middle-class family of seven children. Her father was a successful pharmacist and devoted father, her mother a good church woman and dedicated wife and mother. My wife regaled me with happy stories of family road trips and camp-outs, girl scouts and bible study. The younger man, me, would have become confused and angry listening to stories from that “other world.”
We live in California now, my wife and I, 1280 miles away from my five children in Colorado, each of those miles the one too far. Having spent her childhood in Washington and Oregon, many of my wife’s stories have the ocean as a backdrop, the most significant of those, in my opinion, were the two trips she and her siblings took, the singular dual ritual of releasing father and mother into the wind and vast deeps of the Pacific, a place they both admired, respected, and loved.
Recently I drove those 1280 miles to spend a couple of weeks with my children and grandchildren. My youngest son of twenty-three years returned to California with me to spend a few days visiting. Momma was with us in her plastic bag in the black plastic box with the lid that will never close.
My Colorado boy wanted to see the ocean and so off we went. My wife drove us the 150 squiggly miles to where California ends in the west. I took two pinches of Momma from the box, spread them on the sand-silt of the beach, pressed my fingers to my lips, tasted the silken residue of Momma’s ashes.
My son stood ankle deep in the tide. “Woo!hoo” he whooped ecstatic, speaking into his projector while filming the big water, his vast, endless and beautiful youth enveloped by and a-tempo with the terrible roar of the ages. I returned my gaze to the sand, water licking at my boots, and she was gone.
Momma was afraid of water. She took no comfort in its swell and weigh. Still I gave a bit of her back. She would have liked my wife’s people, her parents. The me I am now would have too. In another life where it was safe to let go we might have been regular folks, good people, like them.
My brother is bitter, wants no part of what is left of Momma. The ashes left are mine to do with whatever I choose. I’ll take her with us when we move back to Colorado, repeat the ocean ritual in those great Rocky Mountains we both loved so well. I might never let go of my Cherokee Mother, she will certainly never let go of me. If it were to be, the lid would close o’er that plastic box of Momma’s Ashes.
http://wordwulf.comWordWulfPacific Interlude
~The Moth/A Sign?~
I took a day off work as a "preserve my sanity" day. I lost my Mother July 11, 2004. Her birthday was September 7th so I had Sunday to reminisce her. I'd been angry at her for choosing to leave and, on top of that, not sending me a sign as she had promised, from the other side. The eighteenth of July I was sitting in my midnight room writing, using a notebook of lines from 2003 for inspiration, written ten months before her death. A tiny moth alit on the arm of my glasses, its wings aflutter, caressing my right temple.
A feeling inside bid me resist the urge to bat it away. After a few moments, it flew over and landed on the sheet I was writing from. It lingered over a line that read: "A wee bit wicked and its impact was felt all the more in its brevity... there are Earth Angels who would name it sin... but what do they know of sin." I reached for my camera and took a few pictures of the tiny creature so I wouldn't convince myself later that it was a dream or a fantasy the likes of which I am inclined to conjure up. After our private photo shoot, it returned to perch on my glasses once more. They came then, a tender-weep if you will, tears waiting four years to call my name. The moth flew up and through the window of this old farmhouse in Arvada. Signs are signs, aren't they? There was nothing earth shattering as I might have expected, no falling stars or lightning striking through my window exciting my flesh.
I don't travel to exotic faraway lands or jump out of airplanes, nor feel the need to. I raised five wonderful children. Natives of Colorado all, we live in Arvada, Wheat Ridge, and Golden and quite like it here. I'm a simply complex man who likes to write and sing, make music with his sons and watch his daughters dance. The visit of a tiny moth is an epiphany to me, what some others might simply squash and toss into the wastebasket.
a compilation of lies,useless information, bad jokes&little poems
For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.
It costs about 3 cents to make a $1 bill.
intent of counterpoint
duelists in the dawn
portrait silhouette
baby is crying
A 6-year-old boy opened the family bible. He was fascinated as he fingered through the thin pages. Suddenly, something fell out of the bible. He picked the object up and looked at it. It was an old leaf that had been pressed in between the pages. “Mom, look what I found,” he called out. “What have you got there?” she asked.
In an awe-struck voice, he answered, “I think it's Adam's underwear.”
Spiders never spin webs in or on
structures made of chestnut wood. That’s why so many tall European buildings were built with chestnut beams. Spider webs
on a 50-foot beamed ceiling are a pain to remove.
a city on the move
weeping of mountain
witless romantic
the emperor sighs
A 6-year-old girl had just finished her
first week of school. “I'm just wasting
my time Mom,” she said. “I can't read,
I can't write and they won't let me talk!”
The first Band-Aid Brand Adhesive Bandages were 3 inches wide and 18 inches long. You made your own bandage by cutting off as much as you needed.
legends of God-speak
thin binding flesh
Momma’s smoking a cigarette
laughter from the whiskey bar
a compilation of lies, useless information, bad jokes & little poems
If you think nobody cares about you, try missing a couple of car payments.
Ten thousand insects are required to feed a single toad during the course of a typical summer.
left and right crosses
requirements of requiem
asleep in the choir
voice deeper than stone
Drugs may lead to nowhere, but at least it's the scenic route.
A sneeze travels at a speed of over 100 m.p.h.
let us taste his beans
the door of opportunity
three winds in a vacuum
outside waiting four more
Bills make it through the mail at twice
the speed of checks.
Quaaludes, the sex drug of choice during the disco era, were first developed to
fight malaria.
we were passed by Dilbert
a tin-can tuna melt
tryin’ to live in the hills
a writer of camp songs
A fool and his money are soon partying.
The world's largest amphibian is the giant salamander. It can grow up to 5 ft. long.
she has fish eyes
ducks swimming ‘cross the sky
each drawer wears a masque
alone in the room
A clear conscience is usually the sign
of a bad memory.
Mosquitoes are attracted to the color
blue twice as much as to any other color.
life is a cross ties
footstep on the moon
sadder than spilt water
funnel of mercy
To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism. To steal from many
is known as research.
Ants stretch when they wake up. They
also appear to yawn like humans before taking up the tasks of the day.
she listens to voices
owls sleep in the afternoon
for a slice of white bread
dreams of the kill
a compilation of lies, useless information, bad jokes & little poems
I plan to be spontaneous tomorrow.
Captain Kangaroo, Bob Keeshan, was star of the first TV network kids’ show in the United States. CBS launched it in 1954.
decision to wear my motor
a free and separate passion
dizzying rain
dithery doo
The conscience is what hurts when all other parts feel good.
The human heart rests between beats. In the average lifetime of 70 years, the total resting time is estimated to be about 40 years.
unclear as stark light
a bug on the windscreen
this dream sequence
leggy bits of goo
42.7 percent of all statistics are made up on the spot.
It takes roughly 63,000 trees to make the newsprint for the average Sunday edition of The New York Times.
the cueing of partners
frazzle of thread bits
bananas on a plate
speaking of winter
99 percent of lawyers give the rest a bad name.
A crocodile can go through 2,000 to 3,000 teeth in a lifetime.
four times a dollar
quarters of century
ill spent years
praying for mother
Half the people you know are below average.
Each year, there are more than 40,000 toilet related injuries in the United States.
who will hold us up
robbers upon closing
death is a whip
nine bells down
Borrow money from pessimists.
They don't expect it back.
No president of the United States
was an only child.
prisoners of light
moth conspiracy
war men fan the flames
sense of dignity
While conducting a routine vandalism report at an elementary school, the policeman was interrupted by a 7-year-old girl. Staring at his uniform, she asked,
“Are you a cop?” “Yes,” he replied and continued writing his report. “My mother told me if I ever need help I should ask the police. Is that right?” “Yes,” he answered. “Okay then,” she said, extending her foot toward him, “Would
you please tie my shoe?”
The longest one syllable word in the English language is screeched.
fellow witnesses
all hail
bride of satan
to wings aspire
The guy was sitting in his living room having a beer when he heard a tiny
sound, tick, tick-tick. He got up and
went to the door, opened it up and
didn't see anything. The man returned
to his chair. No sooner had he gotten comfortable, he heard that aggravating sound again, tick, tick-tick. He got up
and opened the door again. This time
he looked more carefully and there at
his feet was a snail. He drew back
and kicked it as hard as he could.
Six months later the man was sitting in his living room having a beer, taking it easy. Tick, tick-tick. He jumped up and threw the door open. Sure enough, there was the snail. The snail said, "Why'd you do that?"
Singer Aretha Franklin is afraid of flying. She won’t travel on airplanes for concerts no matter where they are.
shallow aurora
shadow of eos
no time like now
some thing fishy swim
If everything seems to be going well, you’ve overlooked something.
Coprastasophobia is the fear of constipation.
I don’t understand you
thank you
your applause
might unearth me
When everything’s coming your way,
you're in the wrong lane.
Buttermilk does not contain any butter.
respite of tyrants
from mouths of babes
epithet
lullaby
Hard work pays off in the future.
Laziness pays off now.
A man’s brain is only 2 percent of his body weight, while a woman’s brain makes up 2.5 percent of her body weight, a full 25 percent more.
a mother to strangers
orphans of choice
voice of descent
six cubed down
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