Poetry Archives
Matthew Rabuzzi
from Volume 10 Issue 1
Matthew Rabuzzi was born on February 1, 1961. After a nine and a half
year struggle with lymphoma, he died on May 31, 2003. A software engineer
by profession, Matt identified himself exclusively as a poet in the final months
of his life. He was also the devoted father of two sons, Patrick and Terence,
a published lexicographer, a marathoner, weightlifter, and a legendary cook
who delighted in home brewing beer. Ever the inveterate traveler, he reached
five of the seven continents, and enjoyed hair-raising adventures on each.
His wife writes: Everyone who knew Matt recalls his love of food. He enjoyed
cooking for friends and trying new recipes, particularly those that involved a
lot of spice. A sign in his kitchen read: Food isn't properly seasoned unless
it's painful to eat . He also delighted in discovering new and unusual foods
while traveling, such as fried crickets at a bazaar in Thailand . Upon trying
them, he grinned and exclaimed, “Mmm, they're like potato chips with legs!”
Matt read widely and was known in the neighborhood as the man who
“walked with a book,” even in the rain, protecting his paperback with a
plastic bag. He was a lover of words and delighted on coming upon new
ones, which he looked up in several dictionaries, including the shelfspanning
multi-volume OED at the local library. He'd study its derivation,
mull it over, and like as not use it in a title-page quote on a technical paper,
as a pun in his email tag line, or even at work as a variable name in a
computer program. He would sometimes lose himself for days in an
intriguing branch of inquiry, such as the time he researched why there
seemed to be so little commonality across different languages for the word
butterfly (papillon, schmetterling, mariposa etc.). This lead to an article on
Butterfly Etymology published in the November 1997 issue of Cultural
Entomology Digest.
As his health waned, he particularly enjoyed continuing education classes on
literature and writing. In addition to reading the assigned texts, he spent
hours on the internet, researching the author, contemporary history, and
related works. He looked forward to sharing his insights with fellow students
and always came home glowing from the spirited exchanges in class.
When he turned to poetry, he researched and tried his hand at a number of
different rhymed forms including the sonnet, rondel, tercet, villanelle,
rubaiyat and ghazal. His inspirations drew from his illness, his love of
literature and words, nature, political events, dreams, friends and family. He
usually worked on a single poem at a time, jotting down phrases or imagery
on scraps of paper as the poem slowly formed in his mind. Some poems
came to him all at once, and others he worked on for a month or two.
Matt was also a devoted and loving father. He'd take his sons out to parks
in the rain to go puddle stomping, then come home to the hot chocolate he
made. When doing laundry, he would call “HOT LAUNDRY!”, tossing hot from-
the-dryer clothes onto his sons sitting on the couch, then wrap his arms
around them to seal the warmth in. He enjoyed taking his family on hikes in
the nearby foothills and to local orienteering events where he taught them
how to follow maps and cheered them on as they crossed the finish line.
Matt always seemed to have a unique approach to life – such as “fixing” a
crooked gatepost by cutting off the top corner of the gate at an angle to
match the crooked post. Then there was his use of chocolate wrappers as
letter stationery, combining his love of chocolate, his frugality and his sense
of eco-responsibility. And few can forget his wild, colorful clothing, signature
clogs, or his collection of large, dangly, and very colorful earrings. |
|
|
|
Six Months Seismic
“You've got six months to live,” the doctor said.
That's such a fucking cliché.
I hate marching to the beat, or being led.
Even my blood and bone need to go their own way.
“Enjoy life, let me do the worrying instead,”
Was the preceding years' refrain.
“It's time to start worrying.” Hands spread
In mantling concern. The new terrain
I scry across this pitiless watershed.
It's no longer a globe – the world's gone flat–
Horizon is visible – death makes my bed.
My Asia and Europe ooze off the edge.
Columbus was brave; I'm soon just an ex-pat.
Beyond the Pale (villanelle)
There, another pale is passed.
Breathe in on the other side air of a different space.
It seems too early, but none of us can last.
The first years you spend at mother's mast,
Steeped in love, and your own born grace.
There, another pale is passed.
School's hoops and pickets hurtle by fast,
Pursuit of knowledge, friends, and lovers a heady chase.
It seems too early, but none of us can last.
A career, a sport, a woman hold you completely possessed.
Exaltedly you vow to never turn away your face.
There, another pale is passed.
Something tragic blossoms within you, or some accidental
savage blast
Catapults you forward to the last stages of the race.
It seems too early, but none of us can last.
You're at the last fence, but you can't turn back
Nor can you sit still in a hiding place.
All those pales are truly past.
You wait, savoring the simple things, like breakfast
With your children. Their eager artless happiness gives you
a joyous taste.
Soon, the final pale will be passed.
It is damn' early, but no one of us can last.
At the Coming of the Cocqcigrues
(rondeau redoubl?)
“That good time coming, when every mystery shall be cleared up.”
- Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, 1898 .
See Gargantua and Pantagruel, episode of King Picrochole and the
Coquecigrues or Cocklicranes.
...Those rooster-crane birds of ancient miscegenation and
imagination...
At the coming of the cocqcigrues,
All mystery will be made clear.
In that golden period of sweet swift news,
All secrets will be revealed.
What rhymes with “orange”, where Blackbeard's treasure is concealed,
Where Amelia Earhart went, and the Marie Celeste's crews,
To be or not to be, and who wrote Shakespeare,
Will be known at the coming of the cocqcigrues.
The sound of one hand clapping, if she loves you,
Do plants have souls, who is the unknown soldier,
Whether it's pronounced “art nuvo” or “art novu”,
All mystery will be made clear.
What is the meaning of life, do I dare
To eat a peach, where is it that the other sock goes,
Why does pain exist? The answer is there
In that golden period of sweet swift news.
The last digit of pi, a cure for the blues,
How consciousness works, why must there be war,
If a tree falls in the forest, what Maisie knew,
All secrets will be revealed.
Is there balm in Gilead , how did they the pyramids build,
Why does the Mona Lisa smile, which is the proper fork to use,
Where you left your car keys, who had J.F.K. killed –
Solutions we may have but only as dreams and as d?j? vus
Till the coming of the cocqcigrues.
Interplanetary
I am Mars: I once held life
And love held me
Elliptically traveling.
I found I was slowing in my orbit,
I tasted the undimensionable listless vacuum.
The cold of absence rubbed against the heat of grief,
Grinding kibes into my heels and hills and headlands.
All my hearts cracked and sobbed, from the fleas' to the tigers', the
deer's
to the trees'.
Flocks of feelings fell to ground, exaltations of lust found no
sustenance,
Extinction wafted over jungles, leaving withered heath.
Gone was the vitality of mighty-thewed Barsoom.
Tears and magma flowed in my canals, mountains
heaved in motions
metamorphic.
In gentle reprieve, an eclipse quiesced my lips.
I am Malacandra: out of the silent planet I discover wonder
renewed.
With my thinning air and ecosystems failing
I am content with memories burning fair and comforting.
The meteor showers I miss, but accept without hurting.
There are admiring auroras and asteroids in my view.
Two fearless young moonlets frisk and skim and race
My surface, spin my tides. My spherical wisdom I must give them.
I shall recede to the tarry deeps of outer space
Trusting that my hopes, their ideals, our love – they will live them.
I am Mars: at the far end of my telescope
Centrifugally traveling.
[Barsoom: the Mars of Edgar Rice Burroughs.
Malacandra: the Mars of C.S. Lewis.]
Learning to Read
The word flew up from the page to my face
Begging recognition, speciation, classification
A bony black butterfly wafting its meanings through my eyes
Instants ago an impenetrable cocoon
A golden bright bumblebee buzzing its identitity and quiddity
Trailing honeyed knowledge
A grasshopper of sudden realization did handsprings over my nose
Bringing fresh green joy of discovery
Sentences swam and cemented themselves as strings of pearls
Dolphins sang their sorites with leaps of logic and flips of magic
Ancient sea turtle offered a Promethean calipash of story, a pasha's
genealogy
Sinbad and Crusoe swapped swords and swift words at McElligott's Pool
Foaming with fantasy
Face shining with accomplishment
And praise in my ear
Not from the page but from the lambent enfolding arms and soft lap
Of the source of my existence, fount of all things I know
Eve – Lucy – my Mom
An ever-infusing surround of love and praise
This is the best story of all.
Candle/Supernova (rondeau, a
troubadour verse form that can
be sung)
In my loved ones' hearts I must burn bright.
Before I go, I must send a light
And a beaming warmth that will kindle and last
Throughout their future while I stay in the past.
I beacon day in falling night.
My love and pride to them I plight
Whene'er I have them in sound or sight.
I wish to behold and to be held fast
In my loved ones' hearts.
They're sleeping now while here I write,
An exploding sun about to ignite
A storm of remembrance, a bittersweet blast.
As fading cinder, I have amassed
Wavefronts of feelings that will unite
In my loved ones' hearts. |
|
|
