8 SONGS from EDWARD MYCUE (Ghana)

Songs —

— from experiences knowing the languages of flowers and waves under which great ships sailed, floundered, and sank at San Francisco shores and the Golden Gates at the rocks there where the seals would bark in the nights —

1. Van Rijn, Obidiah, Doug, Margaret
2. Back Time Comes Forward
3. Sea Songs Slumber In A Morning At Sea
4. Acceptance Speech
5. Back Even Before The Time Of Set
6. To The San Francisco Mint On A Lonely Road
7. Peace Corps History Drifts
8. Word Thumb

• • •

l. VAN RIJN, OBIDIAH, DOUG, MARGARET

Cats may have no intentions.
Except for her eyes, Obidiah is white
as the commode bowl.
Van Rijn, smaller than Doug’s boot,
is black.  That boot
has great intentions.
When Margaret sees Van Rijn
she’ll say she ‘loves’ him.
Large word: ‘love’.
Margaret’s no mapmaker.
She wanders that country.
Doug ‘digs’ the oceans.
Margaret will come back,
pass out of range, of love
full of tears, enthusiasm
for things were truth known
full of rain, storms.
Doug never gets past Seal Rocks,
but he’s gone again
to walk through park to sea.
Obidiah is white.
Van Rijn is black.
The boot had great intentions.

2. BACK TIME COMES FORWARD

Life, death sentences remain.
Unfinished, some memories throb.
Reveries, wheels, rush remembering.
Cardinal directions play sorrow missions.
We animals, who remember, smile a little too.

3. SEA SONGS SLUMBER IN A MORNING AT SEA

The swimmers shine in coral sunshine
Sails adorn the realms of burning light

Strong wind clad with lightning shower
Kiss my lips claims my speedy speaking
Mixed fire together we wandered here
As a burglar hiding within a ghost town

4. ACCEPTANCE SPEECH

I accept my ears that used to stick out
& my chef-boss at Joseph’s in Boston
called me “Clark” after Clark Gable
(when I could hear better; are now closer to my balding head).

I accept my once nimble feet,
the bottoms of which feel like cardboard in bed
(I am glad however i have a nice bed).

I accept my polka-dotting memory
called brown-outs or senior moments
(it may be all-for-the-best for some of them).

I accept the diabetes, the strictures, poor breathing,
getting headaches + other aches
(but I can still walk, eat, care).

I think of all the songs we sang with our folks
with dad thinking we seven kids
were his very own barber-shop harmonizers;
& had I died young I could have avoided
problems that arise in my life
but that life of mine says more to me
than any of my lists of sorrows & joys.

5. BACK EVEN BEFORE THE TIME OF SET

-1. The most symmetrical objects seen
Sideways look mainly asymmetrical.

-2. Sheep ate the shepherd, locked in
a clarity of language connections.

-3. An egg a splendid cage’s mobius ribbon-like

-4. Failed we feel safe from Armageddon,
from the wolf of the magic town.

-5. Identity loops dream to  reality.

-6. Dark blossoms in the swimming night
keep the eyes out as the curtain, as
the curtain, rises onto a lost world.

-7. We make all kinds of distress calls to
share something deeper to extend.

-8. Turning tables doing it now, interning.

6. TO THE SAN FRANCISCO MINT ON A LONELY ROAD

Seven miles north from the Seven Mile House
Into San Francisco to the Ferry Building while
East a central California valley morning Tule fog
Burned-off into a sun’s golden angel rushing over
The clown face remembered as history westering
Above the City and out over the Pacific Ocean’s
Far scattered Island kingdoms into the Asian Orient.
But first come back to San Francisco’s Bay edge
To those flats where a pony express stopped and
Might have stayed overnight at seven Mile House.

It’s still there since 1853 on Bayshore still a lonely
Boulevard at San Francisco’s southern end where
Today Brisbane begins at Geneva Avenue. Go north
Seven Miles to the Ferry Building and Mission street.
Then go west up a mile to the Old San Francisco Mint
Where Wells-Fargo stagecoaches changed the payloads
Having first pawed and paused at seven Mile House
Maybe stayed the night, delivered the mail, exchanged
Passengers, fed and watered the hard-pressed horses
Setting-out again into a night or dawn hooves pounding
On that still lonely Bayshore road from and to San Francisco.

7. PEACE CORPS HISTORY DRIFTS

We these early volunteers
New in so many following
Early growth vanishing
Spanning a century in our ages
Bettering our worlds listening
Time paper thin growing curious
From fires facts fictions
Drift stilling sailing away
Followed into the wind
As I hear in that wind
Long gone voices
New phantoms, mustardstars
Paper thin our world and its desolve
Curious silences with a dream.

8. WORD THUMB

Sin and simple pleasures, reality and symbols
person & personification, allegory & metaphor
fables  taught me about looking over a four-leaf
clover, 3 coins in a fountain, about loving you
eternally, and about loving a sailor’s bellbottom
trousers and coat of navy blue and a lot of other

songs my brother David sang and my dad sang
and that I learned to sing and my little brother
Peter and sisters Margo, Cookie, Janey, & Arda
learned to sing, too.  But not our mother Ruth
Daddy (Jack) crooned his high baritone to her
and us (he said “tenor”—tenors get the girl!)
took us to movies with Rita, Ava, Veronica
(Hayworth, Gardner, Lake–and Judy Garland)

brought us a radiance of life’s simple pleasures

I carry in me a singing man my father gave me.

• • •

(C) Copyright  Edward Mycue  December 28, 2021

*for Ghana One 1961: 50 Peace Corps Volunteers at August’s ending, from the White House to Accra

(C) Copyright  Edward Mycue  December 28, 2021