Poem for Cassandra, September 18, 2013

Poem for Cassandra

        All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,

        And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

                    -- Walt Whitman

At the end of another August,

maple leaves flutter

in a welcome breeze,

sighing shade in soft smiles

over the sidewalks,

over the mown lawns and gleaming dogs,

proud on the ends of their leashes,

over the neighbor

who pinches a last delicate rose

from its thorny stem,

over children who dive and swoop

across the grass

like sparrows,

still free

but smelling the hot start

of September

with its chalky classrooms,

their arithmetic drone

like the buzz

of a thousand bees.

In this drowsy comfort,

we might feel the shape

of your body’s absence --

a delicate silhouette,

a sudden shadow

in the shape of an angel,

slipping past overhead --

we might feel the shape of your absence

and shiver,

imagining the human things

you might now be doing …

Like reading a French novel

in your backyard,

and sipping a glass of iced tea,

or sitting at a table in a sunny café

in some foreign country

where time is a bit thicker

and words fall more slowly,

leaning forward to laugh

with a friend,

the sound rising up

like white wings,

so that the woman sitting by herself

next to the window

looks up at you

and smiles,

bathed in that light.

These dreams of you in your body

are beautiful and sad,

like the mellow end of summer

stretched in tree shadows

across our gardens --

but only for us,

still bound to a single time and place,

still tied

to the crushing wheel of time,

to loneliness and anger

and falling out of love,

to the inevitable disappointment

that collects as dust

on all of our human possessions.

You, after all,

are still beautiful

and never sad.  

You are everything

and everywhere

all at once –

You are silver and gold and rubies,

you are laughter

and velvet grass underfoot --

you are peony petals beaded with rain

and a whisper

that tickles the ear,

you are swans and dancers

and poets in parks,

you are rivers feeding the oceans,

and clouds shaped like goldfish,

you are snowfall glittering in cherry orchards,

and tulip bulbs

keeping their secrets

under February’s freeze.

You are your father’s smile,

your mother’s grace,

your sisters’ and brother’s clear eyes.

You are dreams and memories and songs

floating through our minds

like breath,

and you are the hands that have touched you,

and the spirits you’ve shaped –

You are the bricks and glass and mortar

in this building,

and you are the thousands

who will laugh and love

inside it –

You are the space above us

and the ground beneath us –

the very air contains you

and yet

you are free,

you exceed us,

like a million years of starlight

stretching forwards

and backwards --

the purest love

we can never

fully imagine.

                September 18, 2013

                Laurie MacDiarmid

A Lovely Short Poem by Ted Kooser: "Starlight"

To finish off poetry month, let's turn to Ted Kooser, a master of simplicity and economy.  I highly recommend him.

*

Starlight

All night, this soft rain from the distant past.
No wonder I sometimes waken as a child.

30 poems in 30 days: 30!

The Last Poem

Who will write
the last poem?

Maybe she'll be
crouched
on the beach,
the edge of the
Pacific, as the tide
rolls out
for the last time,
yellow and red,
pulling with it
empty boats
and broken houses
and silver waves
of dead fish,
into a purple sun
big enough to
swallow the earth,

maybe she'll
scratch the poem
into black sand
with a burnt stick,
writing fast as
she can, trying to
remember the shapes
of the words
as her skin tightens
and smokes,
sending up
wisps of soul
before she explodes,
super nova.

And the poem
will be
her name.

A Prose Poem by Francis Ponge: "The Pleasures of the Door"

The Pleasures of the Door

 

Francis Ponge (translated by C.K. Williams)

 

Kings never touch doors.

 

They’re not familiar with this happiness: to push, gently or roughly before you one of these great friendly panels, to turn towards it to put it back in place — to hold a door in your arms.

 

The happiness of seizing one of these tall barriers to a room by the porcelain knob of its belly; this quick hand-to-hand, during which your progress slows for a moment, your eye opens up and your whole body adapts to its new apartment.

 

With a friendly hand you hold on a bit longer, before firmly pushing it back and shutting yourself in — of which you are agreeably assured by the click of the powerful, well-oiled latch.

30 poems in 30 days: 29

Word Play

I like polysyllabic words like "obsequious"
and "sexuality" because they squish in my mouth
and also because they point to aspects of life
that make some listeners cringe.

"Cringe" is another wonderful word --
it sounds like what it is -- and "whinge,"
which rhymes, makes me smirk. There are days
when I seem to be on a cringe mission, my assignment

to disturb whoever crosses my path.  "Disturb" and
"disturbing," in fact, have often been applied to me
and my work by cringing whingeing patriarchs, unsettled
daddies who would like to paint me as deranged

rather than as the voice of another (and better)
reason.  "Derange" is another word that interests me,
as does "disgruntled."  What does it mean to be
"gruntled," I wonder?  And who is?  And if

I can be "deranged," does that mean, like a buffalo,
that I've been deleted from the range?  "Delete"
is a wonderful word, come to think of it, perhaps
a uniquely 21st century verb, like "defriend."

Verbs and nouns are essential words for any
literary project.  No ideas but in things, baby, and
make shit happen.  In my book, adverbs are evil,
like termites chewing the house down behind

the wainscoting.  "Wainscoting" is a weird word.
Adjectives, to continue the architectural metaphors,
are like dust bunnies. They collect under the beds,
along the baseboards, in the corners.  Sometimes,

I just want to sweep them out and wonder if
I could knit a sweater from them.  To end this poem,
let's consider the word "sweater."  Why would you
want to put on something designed to sweat you?

That's not very sexy.  In fact, that impinges a little
on sexuality.  Obsequious cringers wear argyle
sweaters and bow ties.  They whinge about feminists
in deranged talk shows. I just want to sweep them

out from under my bed and knit a sweater from them.
But then, I'm just a no-ideas-but-in-things making-
shit-happen deranged kind of woman, a noun and
verb bitch, a buffalo screaming "delete, delete, delete!"

A Poem by Elizabeth Bishop: "One Art"

One Art

Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied.  It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

The art of losing isn't hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster. Lose something every day. Accept the fluster of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. The art of losing isn't hard to master. Then practice losing farther, losing faster: places, and names, and where it was you meant to travel. None of these will bring disaster. I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or next-to-last, of three loved houses went. The art of losing isn't hard to master. I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster, some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent. I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster. —Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident the art of losing's not too hard to master though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster. - See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15212#sthash.bHPHG4ji.dpuf

The art of losing isn't hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster. Lose something every day. Accept the fluster of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. The art of losing isn't hard to master. Then practice losing farther, losing faster: places, and names, and where it was you meant to travel. None of these will bring disaster. I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or next-to-last, of three loved houses went. The art of losing isn't hard to master. I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster, some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent. I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster. —Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident the art of losing's not too hard to master though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster. - See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15212#sthash.bHPHG4ji.dpuf

One Art

  by Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant 
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.


—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied.  It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

- See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15212#sthash.bHPHG4ji.dpuf

One Art

  by Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant 
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.


—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied.  It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

- See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15212#sthash.bHPHG4ji.dpuf

30 poems in 30 days: 28

I have to wonder how much of my poetic inspiration derives from darkness, frustration and irritation.  Today, the weather is glorious.  I'm relatively happy.  My hangover has subsided. I'm looking forward to dinner with family and friends.  Therefore (?), my poetic inclinations/inspiration are at 25%.

I'm tempted to write a poem that starts "roses are red and violets are blue."

*

Roses are Red, Gender is Blue

The way roses are red, and gender is blue,
sometimes I'm tempted to go through

insane intellectual contortions in order
to prove an arcane point on the border

of human intelligence, but I pretend
it's just obvious, duh, like, you know, gender

is meant to be bent, ya'll, and love equals roses
dyed red ( or blue) -- because it's just a pose,

nothing more than a social construction, and
thus subject to continual re- and deconstruction.

Oh to be alive and writing this silly palaver
on a Sunday, when sun shines like hammered silver

over the genderless shoots of daffodils,
and neutered pets on leashes finally get their fill

of the neighborhood, strolling past socially scripted
males washing their trucks, and socially scripted

females raking the dead leaves from their lawns,
their faces a dull study. This line will end in "yawn."

Except of course for those guys who are raking,
and those chicks inside houses, refusing to bake,

and neutered apartment dwellers, yard free, smoking
on their stoops, and smirking.  Squirrels poke

through the sexless branches of maple trees,
the crocus and daffodil push up, unqueeny bees

get ready for another season of mindless work,
and I'm writing this ridiculous poem, shirking

a list of chores that may or may not be dictated
by gender requirements, the whole thing instigated

by the idea that roses are red and gender is blue, or,
you know, kinda fluid, but sticky, like super glue.

A Poem by e. e. cummings: "O sweet spontaneous"

I wonder if it's true that what we put into our brains changes what flows out into our veins.

*

O sweet spontaneous
earth how often have
the
doting

              fingers of
prurient philosophers pinched
and
poked

thee
,has the naughty thumb
of science prodded
thy

       beauty       .how
often have religions taken
thee upon their scraggy knees
squeezing and

buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive
gods
        (but
true

to the incomparable
couch of death thy
rhythmic
lover

               thou answerest


 them only with


                      spring)

-- e. e. cummings 

30 Poems in 30 Days: 27

Unfortunately, I had too much fun last night. And I paid for that fun early this morning.  Again and again and again.

But nothing will stop me from my self appointed poetry rounds.

Hangover Poem

Last night I got buzzed, drunk,
bent, stewed, really tied one on,
spanked, snookered, sloshed,
smoked, smashed, screwed up,
slaughtered, shitfaced, tight, twisted,
shellacked, bombed off my ass,
ripped to the tits, wasted, tore up,
hasta atras, hammered, blasted,
tanked, whacked, kootered,
plastered, annihilated, three
sheets to the wind, pie-eyed,
pickled, messed up, mangled,
lubricated, loose, loaded, juiced,
hellified, gassed, roasted, totally
pissed, zooted, wrecked, trashed --
in short: fucked up.

And then fell into bed unwashed,
makeup smeared, dirty toothed, bra
and turtleneck on, to wake up
in a freezing sweat around 2:00,
feeling quite dire, and stumble
into the can just in time to blow
chow, barf, boot, ralph, kiss the
porcelain god, kack, fergle, gack,
honk smurfs, whistle beef, woof,
yack, toss my tacos, hork,
-- in short: puke my guts out
in a series of technicolor yawns.

And I wish I could say I felt
immediately better, emptied, and then
finally melted into dreamland, but
this was just the first of several
increasingly painful yakking sessions,
a total body rejection, and I knew
I'd poisoned myself and was now
dying, one heave at a time, and
they'd find me in the morning
curled like a giant fetus on the floor
around the toilet, pizza vomit
glued into my oily hair.

I won't go on -- I'm sure you get
the disgusting picture by now,
and this is supposed to be a poem --
and, from a position of moral superiority,
sober arms crossed over your pristine
white button down, you have judged me
deserving of my fate, having brought it
down upon my own head one glass of
cheap wine at a time.  

Besides, I saw sparks dance in
the shower, the back of my nose
tastes like a clot of sick upchuck snot,
the right side of my brain has been
cooking into bread pudding behind
my eye, and I can't keep an aspirin
down.  In fact, the toast and tea
I forced myself to swallow about
an hour ago lies at the bottom of
my stomach like a restless pack of
ants, and any minute now they'd take
a notion to head north.

I've learned my lesson, folks.
If my brain ever shrinks back
to actual size, I'll never drink
again. At least not that rot-gut
brand of white zin that someone
snuck to me in the middle of our
mindless booze orgy. I blame
peer pressure.  In fact, from now on,
I will only drink alone.
And limit myself to two, or three,
glasses of the highest quality.
No mixing.  And I'll skip
the red peppers on my pizza.

30 poems in 30 days: 26

Though the clouds are threatening in the background, the sun is out, the temps are up, the trees must be budding (because it's a sneeze fest), I see plants thrusting up from the newly manured earth -- it's looking like it might ACTUALLY be Spring around here.  For real.

Someone said in the cafeteria, though, that graduation might be 39 degrees with sludgy rain. What?

I am going to put that gossip out of my mind and write my 26th poem.

*

Resurrection

Late April, the campus waking

at last, sod breaking into

green fingers, I see through dirty windows

a squadron of sleek pelicans,

five or six of them flying in formation,

long white wings dipped in black,

soaring and diving in tight figure 8s

over an invisible river,

moving together in the sky’s sudden blue like

a joyful promise, a liquid arrow,

a map for the spirit, irrefutable proof of some 
grand and casual design.

A Poem by Adrienne Rich: "Diving into the Wreck"

Diving into the Wreck

Adrienne Rich

First having read the book of myths,
and loaded the camera,
and checked the edge of the knife-blade,
I put on
the body-armor of black rubber
the absurd flippers
the grave and awkward mask.
I am having to do this
not like Cousteau with his
assiduous team
aboard the sun-flooded schooner
but here alone.

There is a ladder.
The ladder is always there
hanging innocently
close to the side of the schooner.
We know what it is for,
we who have used it.
Otherwise
it is a piece of maritime floss
some sundry equipment.

I go down.
Rung after rung and still
the oxygen immerses me
the blue light
the clear atoms
of our human air.
I go down.
My flippers cripple me,
I crawl like an insect down the ladder
and there is no one
to tell me when the ocean
will begin.

First the air is glue and then
it is bluer and then green and then
black I am blacking out and yet
my mask is powerful
it pumps my blood with power
the sea is another story
the sea is not a question of power
I have to learn alone
to turn my body without force
in the deep element.

And now: it is easy to forget
what I came for
among so many who have always
lived here
swaying their crenellated fans
between the reefs
and besides
you breathe differently down here.

I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes.
The words are maps.
I came to see the damage that was done
and the treasures that prevail.
I stroke the beam of my lamp
slowly along the flank
of something more permanent
than fish or weed

the thing I came for:
the wreck and not the story of the wreck
the thing itself and not the myth
the drowned face always staring
toward the sun
the evidence of damage
worn by salt and sway into this tread bare beauty
the ribs of the disaster
curving their assertion
among the tentative haunters.

This is the place.
And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair
streams black, the merman in his armored body.
We circle silently
about the wreck
we dive into the hold.
I am she: I am he

whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes
whose breasts still bear the stress
whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies
obscurely inside barrels
half-wedged and left to rot
we are the half-destroyed instruments
that once held to a course
the water-eaten log
the fouled compass

We are, I am, you are
by cowardice or courage
the one who find our way
back to this scene
carrying a knife, a camera
a book of myths
in which
our names do not appear.

30 poems in 30 days: 25

I hate haiku.  And since tonight is my literary awards, and it's 6 PM (the bells in the church are tolling the hour), and I've got a stack of quizzes to grade, and I just attended a goodbye reception for a dear friend who's moving to Scotland soon, and since at that reception I had 1.5 glasses of Pinot Grigio, and since I also popped a Xanax and am thus feeling only a theoretical emotional pain at the moment, I am going to write a gang of haiku.

Gang of Haiku


I miss the sound of
the foghorn in Half Moon Bay,
and the blue light bed.

*

Once I saw Grandma
lift her shirt over her head:
two white scars. No breasts.

*

While Grandma napped we
searched for shells and sand dollars
on the highway beach.

*

I was ten when she
finally died.  Mom cried, said:
"One day. One more day."

*

I remember they
burned her coffin and we watched
it go down the chute.

*

But of course that's wrong.
Who would let three children watch
their grandmother burn?

*

I miss the salt smell
of the El Granada air.
I miss Grandpa's laugh.

*

Now that house falls down.
The highway beach is private.
California is

*

lost to the past, locked
long ago, far away, with
fog and moon and wet

*

sand, jellyfish, sea-
weed, breasts, burning, horns, moon, his
laugh, a small bed, death.

A Poem by Walt Whitman: "One Hour to Madness and Joy"

Okay. So I'm flipping out today. I mean, the hamster in my brain is going 65 mph, my stomach's in a knot, my head's swimming, my blood seems to be frothed in my veins, and even though I took a Xanax to chill me right the hell out it seems to have done nothing more than to make me yawn amidst all of this freaking.

Why, you ask, am I so worked up? What's the buzz?  The buzz is simple: tonight is our literary awards ceremony. Every year I "plan" this event and every year I get more worked up, if that's possible, before it happens, even though I've tried to make it low key and to put it into perspective.  This morning I woke up, ding, at 4:45 and my brain said, shit, and then, hell, it's just an event, what's the worst that'll happen?  No one will show.  None of the winners will be in the audience.  And so you'll get to hang out with the incomparable Rebecca Meacham, eat cookies and dessert bars, drink lemonade, and generally diss on the world together.

Too bad I don't really listen to my brain.

Seems like I need a shot of the incomparable Walt to put me into the right frame of reference.

I'll re-read this at 6:30.

*

One Hour to Madness and Joy

Walt Whitman

One hour to madness and joy!
O furious! O confine me not!
(What is this that frees me so in storms?
What do my shouts amid lightnings and raging winds mean?)

O to drink the mystic deliria deeper than any other man!
O savage and tender achings!
(I bequeath them to you, my children,
I tell them to you, for reasons, O bridegroom and bride.)

O to be yielded to you, whoever you are, and you to be yielded to me, in defiance of the world!
O to return to paradise! O bashful and feminine!
O to draw you to me! -- to plant on you for the first time the lips of a determin'd man!

O the puzzle -- the thrice-tied knot -- the deep and dark pool! O all untied and illumin'd!
O to speed where there is space enough and air enough at last!
O to be absolv'd from previous ties and conventions -- I from mine, and you from yours!
O to find a new unthought-of nonchalance with the best of nature!
O to have the gag remov'd from one's mouth!
O to have the feeling, to-day or any day, I am sufficient as I am!

O something unprov'd! something in a trance!
O madness amorous! O trembling!

O to escape utterly from others' anchors and holds!
To drive free! to love free! to dash reckless and dangerous!
To court destruction with taunts -- with invitations!
To ascend -- to leap to the heavens of love indicated to me!
To rise thither with my inebriate Soul!
To be lost, if it must be so!
To feed the remainder of life with one hour of fulness and freedom!
With one brief hour of madness and joy.

30 poems in 30 days: 24

Black Hole

I wonder if a
body's molecules
take on weight as it
ages, infinitesimally
accreting memory's
dust, unspent
emotions, paths
untaken, chores
left undone,

and if this process
accelerates after
a body passes
the middle of its
lifespan, drawing
energy inward,
sucking whatever
passes close
into its dense
center,

increasing in
gravity, becoming
a rapacious mouth
in space as it
begins the long
slow slide into
decomposition

A Poem by Czeslaw Milosz: "A Song on the End of the World"

A Song on the End of the World

Czeslaw Milosz

On the day the world ends
A bee circles a clover,
A fisherman mends a glimmering net.
Happy porpoises jump in the sea,
By the rainspout young sparrows are playing
And the snake is gold-skinned as it should always be.

On the day the world ends
Women walk through the fields under their umbrellas,
A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn,
Vegetable peddlers shout in the street
And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island,
The voice of a violin lasts in the air
And leads into a starry night.

And those who expected lightening and thunder
Are disappointed.
And those who expected signs and archangels' trumps
Do not believe it is happening now.
As long as the sun and moon are above,
As long as the bumblebee visits a rose,
As long as rosy infants are born
No one believes it is happening now.

Only a white-haired old man, who would be a prophet
Yet is not a prophet, for he's much too busy,
Repeats while he binds his tomatoes:
There will be no other end of the world,
There will be no other end of the world.

Warsaw, 1944

30 poems in 30 days: 23

Where Have All the Happy Poems Gone?

I heard something about a rave -- none of us
received an invitation, of course -- heard they

were headed downtown tonight, to an empty warehouse
along the river, one of those high ceilinged spaces

manic with graffiti and cooing pigeons that flutter
like celestial doves in shafts of sunset, where broken

glass and crushed concrete manages to be artistic
rather than menacing.  A grrrrrl band with blue hair

and lots of feedback will jam electric under
the pulsing lights, screaming "no sleep tonight,"

and of course the poems will get high, ecstatically
mindless, slipping a new designer drug, P, that leaves

no trace, no hangover, in its wake, into their bottles
of expensive spring water -- floating, weightless,

sweating clear joy as they bob and shake and grind
together in a frenzy of sexy fellow feeling.

In the morning, it will be as if they never existed --
just an empty plastic bottle or two rolling in the rising

sunlight, a forgotten glow stick on the gum spattered
sidewalk, fading bright green to blue to gray.

A Poem by Marge Piercy: "Barbie Doll"

Thinking about what happens to girls when they hit adolescence and, no matter how hard they struggle against the prevailing culture, it seems they get chewed up in the objectification mill.  Even the sassiest girl loses some of her sparkle -- and if she doesn't, if she refuses, she's made the odd girl out.

So here's this classic by Marge Piercy:

Barbie Doll

Marge Piercy

This girlchild was born as usual
and presented dolls that did pee-pee
and miniature GE stoves and irons
and wee lipsticks the color of cherry candy.
Then in the magic of puberty, a classmate said:
You have a great big nose and fat legs. 

She was healthy, tested intelligent,
possessed strong arms and back,
abundant sexual drive and manual dexterity.
She went to and fro apologizing.
Everyone saw a fat nose on thick legs. 

She was advised to play coy,
exhorted to come on hearty,
exercise, diet, smile and wheedle.
Her good nature wore out
like a fan belt.
So she cut off her nose and her legs
and offered them up. 

In the casket displayed on satin she lay
with the undertaker's cosmetics painted on,
a turned-up putty nose,
dressed in a pink and white nightie.
Doesn't she look pretty? everyone said.
Consummation at last.
To every woman a happy ending.

30 poems in 30 days: 22

Running on empty, ya'll.

Surrealism?

Always wanted to write something that doesn't make sense. But the sense making apparatus is so strong, in me at least, that I always end up in some familiar (pedestrian) place.

I'm going to try to do what the Talking Heads advise me to do, to Stop Making Sense.

*

Magnets, Snow, Rust

Perhaps later, you said, we'll drive 
into the desert to melt in the moonlight
Like watches on blue rocks.  It's true

that you only needed to turn back time,
fold it neatly at the foot of your
hospital bed. Those wooly blankets,

smelling of campfire and sweat,
atomic bombs and stray dogs,
scratched me raw though I never

used them.  You lied when you promised
to leave a foil-wrapped memory, something
small and bitter, on my pillow.

I only found a lock of your hair,
sprouting from the back of my head.  
Death, you said, is just an illusion.   

We swim backward.
Too bad. The last thing I want
is to repeat the stages of my youth.

Somehow I remember you
cradled me against your neck and I
licked your skin:

salt, oranges, dust.

A Poem by Chuck Rybak: "Outbreak"

Yesterday I got to give a poetry reading with fabulous poet Chuck Rybak, who also teaches at UWGB.  I wanted to print out his "Liketown" poem, but can't find my copy of Tongue and Groove in my office. Must be at home... 

You can find this poem where it belongs, in the fine poetry journal, Paper Darts:

http://paperdarts.org/literary-magazine/poetry-chuck-rybak.html

But here it is, again, in all of its glory:

Outbreak

Chuck Rybak

Reports indicate a virulent bitch outbreak
at the daycare, code-red profanity scare.
The plague began in a clan of four-year-olds,
whose hot-zone words flew deadly-virus airborne,
jumping across the room
to six circular kids on their butts who chanted
Bitch-Bitch-Bitch like they were playing Duck-Duck-Goose.

Horrified come pick-up time,
we parents caught a whiff of bitch
and demanded our TinyTown spin
the sirens, bus in the hazmat crew,
their press conference of proof and containment:
We have scrubbed their little mouths with soap
and hosed them down from head to shoe.
We assure you, they will eat vegetables tonight.

Such epidemics take me back to high school
and the outbreak of bitches there that attacked
the student body, two thousand strong.
This Newtonian curse-word universe
saw bitches who could neither be created nor destroyed,
saw bitch actions have equal,
opposite bitch reactions
until every orbiting bitch was caught
in the bold gravity of exponential maternity:
“I’m not a bitch. Your momma’s a bitch.”

The science of that Babylon was all wrong.
My mother is not a bitch,
she is old-school divinity
who makes Moses look lazy.
A mystery, mother lived
immune from all bitchy
outbreaks—a walking, talking,
white blood cell
without the proper mouth to form
four letter words (or five,
when keeping bitch in mind).
She never spoke curse words
of any kind, not one
that I can recall. She merely
parted the Red Sea
of her family’s profanity, then marched
her matriarchal self away
from our frog-filled mouths,
our language scarfed with locusts,
marched into freedom, into lands
of linguistic milk and honey.
We children had no choice but to follow
through fields of gee whiz and golly,
through row upon row of awshucks
into orchards where we plucked whillikers
right from their weighty branches—
with full bellies we rejected
the unclean, cast them out
preaching I don’t give a hoot
because you’re a giant horse’s patoot.
But I am no such prophet.

I cinch my daughters in their seats,
their lips still wet with bitch,
drown them on the way home
in wave after wave of
Thou shalt not
Thou shalt not

All rights reserved to Chuck Rybak.

30 poems in 30 days: 21

Wish

I'll admit it --

when you were little
your sass and independence
was more often than not
frustrating and
blood boiling

"I do it myself!"
grabbing the stroller 
tipping it onto its back wheels
stumbling behind it with a
stubborn pout
plowing through mall walkers
towing us behind
grumbling and burning
in your righteous and
achingly slow wake

ripping the dress off
the one I picked for you
and socks and shoes
at the front door
"I hate it!"
three minutes before
we have to go
my head about to
lift off my shoulders
evaporate

but now that you're sixteen
more often than not
your shoulders slump
into a profound silence
tears you hide from us
frozen just under the surface
of your downcast eyes

I wish that little girl
would come back
to stand in front of the door
ready to face the world
naked
hands on hips
chest out
head thrown back
stripped down to
a deep and crazy will

a flame of individual desire
infuriating unquenchable
stark unstoppable
lovely