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.
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
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.
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.
Monday, April 29, 2013
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!"
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!"
Sunday, April 28, 2013
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.
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 BishopThe 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 BishopThe 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.
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.
Saturday, April 27, 2013
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
*
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.
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.
Friday, April 26, 2013
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
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
grand
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.
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.
Thursday, April 25, 2013
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.
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.
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.
Wednesday, April 24, 2013
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
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
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
Tuesday, April 23, 2013
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.
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
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.
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.
Monday, April 22, 2013
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.
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.
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.
Sunday, April 21, 2013
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
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
A Poem by James Wright: "A Blessing"
Though it's fairly sentimental, I've always not so secretly liked this poem for its unabashed emotion. It's like a Bread song.
*
A Blessing
James Wright
Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
*
A Blessing
James Wright
Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more,
They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.
Saturday, April 20, 2013
30 poems in 30 days: 20
To Whom It May Concern
I would like to
lodge
a formal complaint.
On the morning of
April 20, 2013,
it should not be
a mere
29 degrees,
the flood puddle
in the back
frozen solid.
Nothing good
can come
of this. No doubt
the fruit trees
are freaking,
their sap curdled
in their veins.
They won't blossom,
I fear,
and dark clouds will
descend,
bringing with them
more sideways snow
to trouble
our Friday windows.
In this kind of
weather, the chill
settles into
nature's bones,
concentrating itself
into a meanness
that inevitably
turns murderous.
I would like to
lodge
a formal complaint.
On the morning of
April 20, 2013,
it should not be
a mere
29 degrees,
the flood puddle
in the back
frozen solid.
Nothing good
can come
of this. No doubt
the fruit trees
are freaking,
their sap curdled
in their veins.
They won't blossom,
I fear,
and dark clouds will
descend,
bringing with them
more sideways snow
to trouble
our Friday windows.
In this kind of
weather, the chill
settles into
nature's bones,
concentrating itself
into a meanness
that inevitably
turns murderous.
A Poem by W. B. Yeats: "The Second Coming"
All of the current madness in this country has got me thinking of apocalypse. And this poem by William Butler Yeats captures the feeling of anxious, horrifying expectation so perfectly.
The Second Coming
W. B. Yeats
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
The Second Coming
W. B. Yeats
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Friday, April 19, 2013
30 poems in 30 days: 19
I can't believe I've made it this far. As a result, today I promise to write something that not only isn't a poem, but doesn't even resemble one from far away. It will be (obscure Brit pop culture reference coming, wait for it) hopelessly dribbly, can't write for toffee,
crappy poetry weed.
So here goes.
Poetry Weed
-- for Linda
Wouldn't it be marvelous, darling, if we could
pop a poetry pill, or better yet grow and then
smoke a magical poetry plant that would
all of a sudden remove the veils from our eyes,
drill down into our muddled gray matter to
peel back all that hopeless encoding, that
material translation, that confusing blah blah,
that it usually throws over things as they are,
and wah-freaking-lah, my friend, we'd be looking
at the world through the purple 3D lenses of
pure poetry?
In the fall, I'd plant a wall of that herb
all along my back fence, the spongy dip
where rainwater collects in sludgy ponds,
and harvest it in June, smiling all the while
at gray-haired Ruby, standing arms akimbo
in her rubber gardening boots, squinting,
suspicious, by her compost bin.
I'd hang and dry it, and sometime in July,
you'd come over. I'd cook up a big pot of
red beans and rice, lay in a supply of good
red wine, and we'd eat and drink ourselves
into a near coma. And then, by some miracle
of human transportation, we'd get you out of that
damn chair and up onto the kitchen roof,
where we'd sit and look through the maple tree
into the clusters of stars, both of us hale and
relatively hearty, mentally alert, but definitely
mellow -- at peace with the world and our
places in it. And we'd puff on big
poetry cigars together, exhaling poetry in
smelly gusts over the rustling maple leaves,
molecule by molecule adding poetry to
the darkening air, the clouds of unhurried
insects, the click and throb of crickets,
molecule by molecule leaking our poetry
out over the sleepy city.
So here goes.
Poetry Weed
-- for Linda
Wouldn't it be marvelous, darling, if we could
pop a poetry pill, or better yet grow and then
smoke a magical poetry plant that would
all of a sudden remove the veils from our eyes,
drill down into our muddled gray matter to
peel back all that hopeless encoding, that
material translation, that confusing blah blah,
that it usually throws over things as they are,
and wah-freaking-lah, my friend, we'd be looking
at the world through the purple 3D lenses of
pure poetry?
In the fall, I'd plant a wall of that herb
all along my back fence, the spongy dip
where rainwater collects in sludgy ponds,
and harvest it in June, smiling all the while
at gray-haired Ruby, standing arms akimbo
in her rubber gardening boots, squinting,
suspicious, by her compost bin.
I'd hang and dry it, and sometime in July,
you'd come over. I'd cook up a big pot of
red beans and rice, lay in a supply of good
red wine, and we'd eat and drink ourselves
into a near coma. And then, by some miracle
of human transportation, we'd get you out of that
damn chair and up onto the kitchen roof,
where we'd sit and look through the maple tree
into the clusters of stars, both of us hale and
relatively hearty, mentally alert, but definitely
mellow -- at peace with the world and our
places in it. And we'd puff on big
poetry cigars together, exhaling poetry in
smelly gusts over the rustling maple leaves,
molecule by molecule adding poetry to
the darkening air, the clouds of unhurried
insects, the click and throb of crickets,
molecule by molecule leaking our poetry
out over the sleepy city.
A Poem by William Carlos Williams: "The Widow's Lament in Springtime"
I've had WCW on my mind for days now, so today is his day to shine. I should have written my dissertation on him, rather than his old nemesis, T. S. Eliot. His crazy inappropriateness is closer to my own than TSE's. The poem I've chosen, however, is not inappropriate -- just sad, and beautiful, and has to do with the spring. And it has always given me shivers.
The Widow's Lament in Springtime
Sorrow is my own yard
where the new grass
flames as it has flamed
often before but not
with the cold fire
that closes round me this year.
Thirtyfive years
I lived with my husband.
The plumtree is white today
with masses of flowers.
Masses of flowers
load the cherry branches
and color some bushes
yellow and some red
but the grief in my heart
is stronger than they
for though they were my joy
formerly, today I notice them
and turn away forgetting.
Today my son told me
that in the meadows,
at the edge of the heavy woods
in the distance, he saw
trees of white flowers.
I feel I would like
to go there
and fall into those flowers
and sink into the marsh near them.
The Widow's Lament in Springtime
Sorrow is my own yard
where the new grass
flames as it has flamed
often before but not
with the cold fire
that closes round me this year.
Thirtyfive years
I lived with my husband.
The plumtree is white today
with masses of flowers.
Masses of flowers
load the cherry branches
and color some bushes
yellow and some red
but the grief in my heart
is stronger than they
for though they were my joy
formerly, today I notice them
and turn away forgetting.
Today my son told me
that in the meadows,
at the edge of the heavy woods
in the distance, he saw
trees of white flowers.
I feel I would like
to go there
and fall into those flowers
and sink into the marsh near them.
Sorrow is my own yard
where the new grass
flames as it has flamed
often before but not
with the cold fire
that closes round me this year.
Thirtyfive years
I lived with my husband.
The plumtree is white today
with masses of flowers.
Masses of flowers
load the cherry branches
and color some bushes
yellow and some red
but the grief in my heart
is stronger than they
for though they were my joy
formerly, today I notice them
and turn away forgetting.
Today my son told me
that in the meadows,
at the edge of the heavy woods
in the distance, he saw
trees of white flowers.
I feel that I would like
to go there
and fall into those flowers
and sink into the marsh near them. - See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/21674#sthash.jf2oPqUe.dpuf
Sorrow is my own yard
where the new grass
flames as it has flamed
often before but not
with the cold fire
that closes round me this year.
Thirtyfive years
I lived with my husband.
The plumtree is white today
with masses of flowers.
Masses of flowers
load the cherry branches
and color some bushes
yellow and some red
but the grief in my heart
is stronger than they
for though they were my joy
formerly, today I notice them
and turn away forgetting.
Today my son told me
that in the meadows,
at the edge of the heavy woods
in the distance, he saw
trees of white flowers.
I feel that I would like
to go there
and fall into those flowers
and sink into the marsh near them. - See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/21674#sthash.jf2oPqUe.dpuf
Sorrow is my own yard
where the new grass
flames as it has flamed
often before but not
with the cold fire
that closes round me this year.
Thirtyfive years
I lived with my husband.
The plumtree is white today
with masses of flowers.
Masses of flowers
load the cherry branches
and color some bushes
yellow and some red
but the grief in my heart
is stronger than they
for though they were my joy
formerly, today I notice them
and turn away forgetting.
Today my son told me
that in the meadows,
at the edge of the heavy woods
in the distance, he saw
trees of white flowers.
I feel that I would like
to go there
and fall into those flowers
and sink into the marsh near them. - See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/21674#sthash.jf2oPqUe.dpuf
Thursday, April 18, 2013
30 poems in 30 days: 18
Time to try it.
Ghazal
Travel to the last room of the mind -- find a raven
waiting on a bony ledge. The soul is a raven.
I like to bury my hand in my dog's fur: hot silk,
black and sleek, gleaming like the wet wing of a raven.
In China and Japan, the black bird feeds its parents.
To find land, Noah sent a silent eye, a raven.
If I ride a motorcycle, it will be throaty
black, growling hot between my thighs, fly like a raven.
An ambulance wails across the bridge. The sky burns gray.
Tight buds coat the trees. At the top of one -- a raven.
MacDiarmid is the Campbell clan, and means "crooked mouth."
Laurie bends laurels, twists leaves into atomic ravens.
*
Damn, that was hard. Took me for flipping ever.
Ghazal
Travel to the last room of the mind -- find a raven
waiting on a bony ledge. The soul is a raven.
I like to bury my hand in my dog's fur: hot silk,
black and sleek, gleaming like the wet wing of a raven.
In China and Japan, the black bird feeds its parents.
To find land, Noah sent a silent eye, a raven.
If I ride a motorcycle, it will be throaty
black, growling hot between my thighs, fly like a raven.
An ambulance wails across the bridge. The sky burns gray.
Tight buds coat the trees. At the top of one -- a raven.
MacDiarmid is the Campbell clan, and means "crooked mouth."
Laurie bends laurels, twists leaves into atomic ravens.
*
Damn, that was hard. Took me for flipping ever.
A Poem by Karla Huston and Cathryn Cofell: "Split Personality"
Last night I got a chance to reconnect with a local poet, Karla Huston, whose poetry, energy and easy grace in the world amaze and inspire me. At one point last night she said, "I didn't start writing poetry until I was in my 40s" -- and since I've known her for over 10 years, and she looks barely out of her 40s now, I was pretty damn shocked ... on a number of levels. You go, Karla! Lookin good!
Karla and her friend and collaborator, Cathryn Cofell have published a little book of poems written together, Split Personality. I thought I'd give you the title poem today, so you can see what a wealth of poetry we have here in our own backyard, and to give you the idea that poetry can be a love child created by friends, rather than a nasty little secret performed alone in a garret.
*
Split Personality
Karla Huston and Cathryn Cofell
I'm a swift walker
a queen bed rocker
a girdle stalker
a spider smacker
a monkey pile
a trip down that girl's aisle,
a stay at home mom-o-phile.
Shape shifter, beauty grifter,
sexual drifter
watch me jiggle and whistle,
I'm built like a missle.
I'm waiting for you, tucked in lush grass.
Or maybe I'm a little slimmer
a moon-y glimmer, a blinking
swimmer in an old fish eye.
The one you wish for,
the one you'd hiss for, so
pack this cellulite
in your momma's sigh.
I'm nearly darling, a timeless
starling, a little more care --
less than free.
So bring us the hum,
a symphony of drums, the rumble
of a good epiphany.
sunnyoutside press, 2012
Karla and her friend and collaborator, Cathryn Cofell have published a little book of poems written together, Split Personality. I thought I'd give you the title poem today, so you can see what a wealth of poetry we have here in our own backyard, and to give you the idea that poetry can be a love child created by friends, rather than a nasty little secret performed alone in a garret.
*
Split Personality
Karla Huston and Cathryn Cofell
I'm a swift walker
a queen bed rocker
a girdle stalker
a spider smacker
a monkey pile
a trip down that girl's aisle,
a stay at home mom-o-phile.
Shape shifter, beauty grifter,
sexual drifter
watch me jiggle and whistle,
I'm built like a missle.
I'm waiting for you, tucked in lush grass.
Or maybe I'm a little slimmer
a moon-y glimmer, a blinking
swimmer in an old fish eye.
The one you wish for,
the one you'd hiss for, so
pack this cellulite
in your momma's sigh.
I'm nearly darling, a timeless
starling, a little more care --
less than free.
So bring us the hum,
a symphony of drums, the rumble
of a good epiphany.
sunnyoutside press, 2012
Wednesday, April 17, 2013
30 poems in 30 days: 17
Tonight I'm slated to drive to Appleton and announce the winners of a local poetry contest that I judged. As part of the hoopla, I am to read 2 or so of my own poems, talk for about 5 minutes about the process of writing poetry, and then announce the winners.
I woke up feeling a horrible thick syrupy lassitude, a general reluctance to go anywhere out of my home zone of Green Bay and De Pere. Why can't I enjoy a comfortable obscurity? I thought.
So that will be (something like) my first line today.
Also, I just got a message from the IT powers here at the College that Google is having global difficulties. If I lose this, so be it.
*
Now That I've Perhaps Exceeded the Middle of My Life
Now that I've perhaps exceeded the middle of my life, I want to enjoy
a comfortable obscurity.
Dreams of fortune and fame are long behind me. I'm fairly sure
no bestseller lurks in my saggy brain. The novels inside me
lack endings. And I don't want to serve as an aging poetry rock star,
followed down the streets by my hipster entourage, retro chic,
called to the podium at smoky NYC bars to rant into the microphone
about the good old days in the Village -- schizophrenic sex
and psychedelic cocktails, mental orgies at all the famous Universities --
a jazzy combo weaving single malt Scotch into my familiar
complaints. I don't want young poets to chase me home in the hopes
that my success will rub off on them, like my shabby gray hair,
like my alcoholic excess.
I don't want an agent, I don't want to go on international tours,
I don't want to sit for hours at a book-signing, flashbulbs popping,
hand cramping. God forbid I should be reviewed in the New York Times,
or quoted ad nauseam, "Laureate" attached to my title.
I don't want to my rumpled mug in People magazine,
standing next to David Bowie or Elvis Costello, my newest
best friends.
I don't even want to grade this latest batch of papers.
In fact, I'm pleased that when I get out of my car at the supermarket,
no one knows my name, that frowning people in winter coats
barely glance up from their lists to acknowledge my presence.
There's something reassuring in their hurried indifference, in
my ability to slip through their quotidian world virtually
unnoticed. They have no idea what I do for a living, that I
should be capturing the divine essence in this Wednesday morning and
publishing it in a poem that maybe 15 friends will read,
instead of contemplating a cup of coffee and a donut.
I woke up feeling a horrible thick syrupy lassitude, a general reluctance to go anywhere out of my home zone of Green Bay and De Pere. Why can't I enjoy a comfortable obscurity? I thought.
So that will be (something like) my first line today.
Also, I just got a message from the IT powers here at the College that Google is having global difficulties. If I lose this, so be it.
*
Now That I've Perhaps Exceeded the Middle of My Life
Now that I've perhaps exceeded the middle of my life, I want to enjoy
a comfortable obscurity.
Dreams of fortune and fame are long behind me. I'm fairly sure
no bestseller lurks in my saggy brain. The novels inside me
lack endings. And I don't want to serve as an aging poetry rock star,
followed down the streets by my hipster entourage, retro chic,
called to the podium at smoky NYC bars to rant into the microphone
about the good old days in the Village -- schizophrenic sex
and psychedelic cocktails, mental orgies at all the famous Universities --
a jazzy combo weaving single malt Scotch into my familiar
complaints. I don't want young poets to chase me home in the hopes
that my success will rub off on them, like my shabby gray hair,
like my alcoholic excess.
I don't want an agent, I don't want to go on international tours,
I don't want to sit for hours at a book-signing, flashbulbs popping,
hand cramping. God forbid I should be reviewed in the New York Times,
or quoted ad nauseam, "Laureate" attached to my title.
I don't want to my rumpled mug in People magazine,
standing next to David Bowie or Elvis Costello, my newest
best friends.
I don't even want to grade this latest batch of papers.
In fact, I'm pleased that when I get out of my car at the supermarket,
no one knows my name, that frowning people in winter coats
barely glance up from their lists to acknowledge my presence.
There's something reassuring in their hurried indifference, in
my ability to slip through their quotidian world virtually
unnoticed. They have no idea what I do for a living, that I
should be capturing the divine essence in this Wednesday morning and
publishing it in a poem that maybe 15 friends will read,
instead of contemplating a cup of coffee and a donut.
A Poem by Patricia Clark: "The Sound of a Mother Scolding her Grown Daughter"
Patricia is my friend, so I'm even more connected to her poetry. I can hear her lovely voice in my head, like honey and dark chocolate.
The Sound of a Mother Scolding her Grown Daughter
Tonight the wind rises on Orcas Island, snapping lines
against masts where sailboats clatter at the docks,
and roosters crow at odd hours in voices pitched
too high, where the brightly colored mushrooms of tents
sprout among trees and blooming goatsbeard
in Moran State Park, where toads hop through the parking lot
and scare away the deer. I haven't felt this vulnerable
in years, pierced again by her sharp tongue, and tonight
I'm driving away. The color of water as it evaporates
on the highway, rising up as lost souls must, ethereal,
tendriled, is a veil I drive through at fifty-five anadnow,
ghostly enough myself in my gray hooded sweatshirt,
jeans, I stop along the road where I pretend to be reading
a map--but I'm hunched over, trying to stop my hands
from shaking, doing what I can to wash the taste
of her words from my mouth.
What lovely imagery, and how well the poem captures that shaky feeling only a mother's disapproval can can evoke.
The Sound of a Mother Scolding her Grown Daughter
Tonight the wind rises on Orcas Island, snapping lines
against masts where sailboats clatter at the docks,
and roosters crow at odd hours in voices pitched
too high, where the brightly colored mushrooms of tents
sprout among trees and blooming goatsbeard
in Moran State Park, where toads hop through the parking lot
and scare away the deer. I haven't felt this vulnerable
in years, pierced again by her sharp tongue, and tonight
I'm driving away. The color of water as it evaporates
on the highway, rising up as lost souls must, ethereal,
tendriled, is a veil I drive through at fifty-five anadnow,
ghostly enough myself in my gray hooded sweatshirt,
jeans, I stop along the road where I pretend to be reading
a map--but I'm hunched over, trying to stop my hands
from shaking, doing what I can to wash the taste
of her words from my mouth.
What lovely imagery, and how well the poem captures that shaky feeling only a mother's disapproval can can evoke.
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
30 poems in 30 days: 16
Running low on inspirational gas again, so I'm dipping into another exercise book. Opening The Practice of Poetry (Behn and Twitchell, eds) randomly, I find an exercise I've never tried, "The Poetry Obstacle Course," by Marcia Southwick:
*
Instructions
Leave the cat asleep on the blue bedspread.
Get in your dirty silver car and back down
the narrow drive, fast as you can,
but don't hit the pink bicycle
left by the neighbor girl on the gray lawn.
At the end of the street, turn right.
Watch for schoolchildren, huddled
beneath backpacks, trudging to Lincoln Elementary.
Wave to the crossing guard in his neon vest.
Slip past the rows of sooty houses
that crowd up to the lip of the football stadium,
say goodbye to the shopping mall,
say adios to the rows of cars lined up already
in front of the waking stores.
For the moment, obey the posted limits.
Ignore the mountains of half melted black snow,
don't look at them, even if screaming mouths
press up against their crusty skins.
Forget the clouds in the forecast. Forget
Persephone, languishing in the underworld, her
long vacation, taking a vow of silence,
hiding beneath frozen concrete.
Point your car toward the freeway
and stomp on it, honey.
Head south -- follow
the fleeing geese.
Write a poem in which you include approximately one object and one action per line. Each individual line should make sense in and of itself, but don't worry about connecting one line logically to the next.Challenge accepted.
*
Instructions
Leave the cat asleep on the blue bedspread.
Get in your dirty silver car and back down
the narrow drive, fast as you can,
but don't hit the pink bicycle
left by the neighbor girl on the gray lawn.
At the end of the street, turn right.
Watch for schoolchildren, huddled
beneath backpacks, trudging to Lincoln Elementary.
Wave to the crossing guard in his neon vest.
Slip past the rows of sooty houses
that crowd up to the lip of the football stadium,
say goodbye to the shopping mall,
say adios to the rows of cars lined up already
in front of the waking stores.
For the moment, obey the posted limits.
Ignore the mountains of half melted black snow,
don't look at them, even if screaming mouths
press up against their crusty skins.
Forget the clouds in the forecast. Forget
Persephone, languishing in the underworld, her
long vacation, taking a vow of silence,
hiding beneath frozen concrete.
Point your car toward the freeway
and stomp on it, honey.
Head south -- follow
the fleeing geese.
A Poem by Nicanor Parra: "Young Poets"
Young Poets
Write as you will
In whatever style you like
Too much blood has run under the bridge
To go on believing
That only one road is right.
In poetry everything is permitted.
With only this condition of course,
You have to improve the blank page.
(trans. by Miller Williams)
In whatever style you like
Too much blood has run under the bridge
To go on believing
That only one road is right.
In poetry everything is permitted.
With only this condition of course,
You have to improve the blank page.
(trans. by Miller Williams)
Nicanor Parra
*
Here it is in Spanish, as it was meant to be. And it's part of a larger work, of course... Why do we take things out of context all the time? We are cherry-picking bastardos... And who added those lines about conditions? Whose brilliant plan was that? Mr. Williams'?
The piece is #5 in "Letters from the Poet who Sleeps in a Chair."
CARTAS DEL POETA QUE DUERME EN UNA SILLA
V.
Jóvenes
Escriban lo que quieran
En el estilo que les parezca mejor
Ha pasado demasiada sangre bajo los puentes
Para seguir creyendo --creo yo
Que sólo se puede seguir un camino:
En poesÃa se permite todo.
*
Here it is in Spanish, as it was meant to be. And it's part of a larger work, of course... Why do we take things out of context all the time? We are cherry-picking bastardos... And who added those lines about conditions? Whose brilliant plan was that? Mr. Williams'?
The piece is #5 in "Letters from the Poet who Sleeps in a Chair."
CARTAS DEL POETA QUE DUERME EN UNA SILLA
V.
Escriban lo que quieran
En el estilo que les parezca mejor
Ha pasado demasiada sangre bajo los puentes
Para seguir creyendo --creo yo
Que sólo se puede seguir un camino:
En poesÃa se permite todo.
Monday, April 15, 2013
30 poems in 30 days: 15
A Poem Sort of In the Style of Charles Bukowski
it is tax day across this great nation.
and as a result it seems the sun, after hiding itself
behind rain and snow for days,
has decided to appear
perhaps in order to mark
the occasion as somehow
grand.
in addition, 3 pelicans
in formation
just soared past my office window
like a squadron
in advance of spring.
the sky has achieved a blue
approaching clarity.
perhaps there are even buds
on the trees that waves
tall fingers
by the science building
they are in the process
of remodeling.
it would seem that change
is finally happening.
indeed, a massive hole
grows daily under this window,
tractors growl and huff,
men in neon green bend over
their machines
with metal tools,
altering the landscape
in the name of future
experimentation.
perhaps someone in that building
will find a cure for
cancer.
or maybe a way to
melt fat
off a woman's bones
without killing her.
somewhere, a man with
lots of money
sits back in his expensive suit
in a glass office
high over a bustling city,
and mentally pockets
the profits
from that
awesome discovery.
I suspect he has
armies of lawyers
at his disposal
to ensure that he
pays as little as possible
in taxes.
in case you were wondering, I
have already
paid my taxes,
more than a week ago,
(my husband
paid our taxes)
and
rain mixed with snow
is forecast
for Friday.
it is tax day across this great nation.
and as a result it seems the sun, after hiding itself
behind rain and snow for days,
has decided to appear
perhaps in order to mark
the occasion as somehow
grand.
in addition, 3 pelicans
in formation
just soared past my office window
like a squadron
in advance of spring.
the sky has achieved a blue
approaching clarity.
perhaps there are even buds
on the trees that waves
tall fingers
by the science building
they are in the process
of remodeling.
it would seem that change
is finally happening.
indeed, a massive hole
grows daily under this window,
tractors growl and huff,
men in neon green bend over
their machines
with metal tools,
altering the landscape
in the name of future
experimentation.
perhaps someone in that building
will find a cure for
cancer.
or maybe a way to
melt fat
off a woman's bones
without killing her.
somewhere, a man with
lots of money
sits back in his expensive suit
in a glass office
high over a bustling city,
and mentally pockets
the profits
from that
awesome discovery.
I suspect he has
armies of lawyers
at his disposal
to ensure that he
pays as little as possible
in taxes.
in case you were wondering, I
have already
paid my taxes,
more than a week ago,
(my husband
paid our taxes)
and
rain mixed with snow
is forecast
for Friday.
A Poem by Philip Larkin: "This Be the Verse"
I've been holding back from posting this poem for, well, weeks it feels like. This is, for me, an oldie and a goodie. Lines from it float through my head fairly regularly, especially now that I'm a parent myself. And it's one of the few poems that I can practically recite from memory. Best use of the ef word in a poem, too.
*
This Be the Verse
Philip Larkin
*
This Be the Verse
Philip Larkin
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.
Sunday, April 14, 2013
30 poems in 30 days: 14
Taking Time Out From Cleaning the House
Taking time out from cleaning the house
to write a poem,
even this hurried poem,
feels a little like getting away with a
vague crime -- maybe
shoplifting a hug,
or racing in front of an off-duty cop --
and so I'm
savoring it, perhaps even more
than the idea that I might
type toward a flash of
transcendence,
find just the right metaphor to
capture the flavor of
melancholy (wood smoke?).
And perhaps this clutter,
and the clots of fur dotting
the wine-stained carpet,
are also metaphors, and by
cleaning them up I will
erase a crucial sign of
divine energy,
by removing the spill of life from
our sticky surfaces I will
obliterate a bit of our
collective soul,
the messy breath that makes us
a family,
dismantle the comfortable nest
we've shredded from
the ever-loving world.
In fact, it could be that the
tide of chaos
I'm just now not dealing with is
really the poem itself,
and cleaning then
a dark impulse always
to eradicate
a divine energy --
bleaching and vacuuming and wiping
the anti-poem,
the devilish need to put into order
what God has created
perfect in its
holy disorder.
Taking time out from cleaning the house
to write a poem,
even this hurried poem,
feels a little like getting away with a
vague crime -- maybe
shoplifting a hug,
or racing in front of an off-duty cop --
and so I'm
savoring it, perhaps even more
than the idea that I might
type toward a flash of
transcendence,
find just the right metaphor to
capture the flavor of
melancholy (wood smoke?).
And perhaps this clutter,
and the clots of fur dotting
the wine-stained carpet,
are also metaphors, and by
cleaning them up I will
erase a crucial sign of
divine energy,
by removing the spill of life from
our sticky surfaces I will
obliterate a bit of our
collective soul,
the messy breath that makes us
a family,
dismantle the comfortable nest
we've shredded from
the ever-loving world.
In fact, it could be that the
tide of chaos
I'm just now not dealing with is
really the poem itself,
and cleaning then
a dark impulse always
to eradicate
a divine energy --
bleaching and vacuuming and wiping
the anti-poem,
the devilish need to put into order
what God has created
perfect in its
holy disorder.
A Poem by Sharon Olds: "I Go Back to May 1937"
I Go Back to May 1937 (from The Gold Cell)
Sharon Olds
I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges,
I see my father strolling out
under the ochre sandstone arch, the
red tiles glinting like bent
plates of blood behind his head, I
see my mother with a few light books at her hip
standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks with the
wrought-iron gate still open behind her, its
sword-tips black in the May air,
they are about to graduate, they are about to get married,
they are kids, they are dumb, all they know is they are
innocent, they would never hurt anybody.
I want to go up to them and say Stop,
don't do it--she's the wrong woman,
he's the wrong man, you are going to do things
you cannot imagine you would ever do,
you are going to do bad things to children,
you are going to suffer in ways you never heard of,
you are going to want to die. I want to go
up to them there in the late May sunlight and say it,
her hungry pretty blank face turning to me,
her pitiful beautiful untouched body,
his arrogant handsome blind face turning to me,
his pitiful beautiful untouched body,
but I don't do it. I want to live. I
take them up like the male and female
paper dolls and bang them together
at the hips like chips of flint as if to
strike sparks from them, I say
Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it.
Sharon Olds
I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges,
I see my father strolling out
under the ochre sandstone arch, the
red tiles glinting like bent
plates of blood behind his head, I
see my mother with a few light books at her hip
standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks with the
wrought-iron gate still open behind her, its
sword-tips black in the May air,
they are about to graduate, they are about to get married,
they are kids, they are dumb, all they know is they are
innocent, they would never hurt anybody.
I want to go up to them and say Stop,
don't do it--she's the wrong woman,
he's the wrong man, you are going to do things
you cannot imagine you would ever do,
you are going to do bad things to children,
you are going to suffer in ways you never heard of,
you are going to want to die. I want to go
up to them there in the late May sunlight and say it,
her hungry pretty blank face turning to me,
her pitiful beautiful untouched body,
his arrogant handsome blind face turning to me,
his pitiful beautiful untouched body,
but I don't do it. I want to live. I
take them up like the male and female
paper dolls and bang them together
at the hips like chips of flint as if to
strike sparks from them, I say
Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it.
Saturday, April 13, 2013
30 poems in 30 days: 13
Q. and A.
Q. When will you die?
A. Not this morning not in the middle of April
snow hanging
like periods no like ellipses in gray air troubling
the kitchen window
Two birds leap from
branch to branch showering snow
on frozen puddles
Curled onto the loveseat
the dog
thumps her tail in a dream
eyes rolled into her skull
Q. What is your purpose?
A. I must disturb the order of people and things
I need to make trouble
After all nothing itches more under my skin
than a classroom full of silent students their eyes cast
down or trained on empty windows
hands loose on the tables
Q. Is there a god?
A. Sometimes I watch Lizzie
while she bends
smiling over a book or her phone or her computer
long neck her father's neck lit yellow
by soft lamplight
gaze melted into herself
generous lips her father's lips pursed into a small smile
long thick hair her father's hair spilling down
wide shoulders my shoulders my narrow eyes
her father's cornflower blue
and before she looks up
before she catches me
trying to memorize her beautiful face
I shout at her in my mind:
hey kid sweetie darling
sugar pie I hope you know how much I
love you so much I want to crack myself open
and bleed all over the world
Q. When will you die?
A. Not this morning not in the middle of April
snow hanging
like periods no like ellipses in gray air troubling
the kitchen window
Two birds leap from
branch to branch showering snow
on frozen puddles
Curled onto the loveseat
the dog
thumps her tail in a dream
eyes rolled into her skull
Q. What is your purpose?
A. I must disturb the order of people and things
I need to make trouble
After all nothing itches more under my skin
than a classroom full of silent students their eyes cast
down or trained on empty windows
hands loose on the tables
Q. Is there a god?
A. Sometimes I watch Lizzie
while she bends
smiling over a book or her phone or her computer
long neck her father's neck lit yellow
by soft lamplight
gaze melted into herself
generous lips her father's lips pursed into a small smile
long thick hair her father's hair spilling down
wide shoulders my shoulders my narrow eyes
her father's cornflower blue
and before she looks up
before she catches me
trying to memorize her beautiful face
I shout at her in my mind:
hey kid sweetie darling
sugar pie I hope you know how much I
love you so much I want to crack myself open
and bleed all over the world
A Poem by Taylor Mali: "What Teachers Make"
This one never gets old. We should listen to or read it, or both, at least once a year. I've had to add some of the nonverbal cues to the poem in brackets, which is an indication that you need to experience the poem for its full effect. So watch Mali perform the poem here: What Teachers Make .
*
What Teachers Make
by Taylor Mali
He says the problem with teachers is
What’s a kid going to learn
from someone who decided his best option in life
was to become a teacher?
He reminds the other dinner guests that it’s true
what they say about teachers:
Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.
I decide to bite my tongue instead of his
and resist the temptation to remind the dinner guests
that it’s also true what they say about lawyers.
Because we’re eating, after all, and this is polite conversation.
I mean, you’re a teacher, Taylor.
Be honest. What do you make?
And I wish he hadn’t done that— asked me to be honest—
because, you see, I have this policy about honesty and ass-‐kicking:
if you ask for it, then I have to let you have it.
You want to know what I make?
I make kids work harder than they ever thought they could.
I can make a C+ feel like a Congressional Medal of Honor
and an A-‐ feel like a slap in the face.
How dare you waste my time
with anything less than your very best.
I make kids sit through 40 minutes of study hall
in absolute silence. No, you may not work in groups.
No, you may not ask a question.
Why won’t I let you go to the bathroom?
Because you’re bored.
And you don’t really have to go to the bathroom, do you?
I make parents tremble in fear when I call home:
Hi. This is Mr. Mali. I hope I haven’t called at a bad time,
I just wanted to talk to you about something your son said today.
To the biggest bully in the grade, he said,
“Leave the kid alone. I still cry sometimes, don’t you?
It’s no big deal.”
And that was noblest act of courage I have ever seen.
I make parents see their children for who they are
and what they can be.
You want to know what I make? I make kids wonder,
I make them question.
I make them criticize.
I make them apologize and mean it.
I make them write.
I make them read, read, read.
I make them spell definitely beautiful, definitely beautiful, definitely beautiful
over and over and over again until they will never misspell
either one of those words again.
I make them show all their work in math
and hide it on their final drafts in English.
I make them understand that if you’ve got this [points to head],
then you follow this [points to heart],
and if someone ever tries to judge you
by what you make, you give them this [flips the bird].
Here, let me break it down for you, so you know what I say is true:
Teachers make a goddamn difference! Now what about you?
Mali. Taylor. “What Teachers Make.” What Learning Leaves. Newtown, CT: Hanover Press, 2002. Print. (ISBN: 1-‐887012-‐17-‐6)
*
What Teachers Make
by Taylor Mali
He says the problem with teachers is
What’s a kid going to learn
from someone who decided his best option in life
was to become a teacher?
He reminds the other dinner guests that it’s true
what they say about teachers:
Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.
I decide to bite my tongue instead of his
and resist the temptation to remind the dinner guests
that it’s also true what they say about lawyers.
Because we’re eating, after all, and this is polite conversation.
I mean, you’re a teacher, Taylor.
Be honest. What do you make?
And I wish he hadn’t done that— asked me to be honest—
because, you see, I have this policy about honesty and ass-‐kicking:
if you ask for it, then I have to let you have it.
You want to know what I make?
I make kids work harder than they ever thought they could.
I can make a C+ feel like a Congressional Medal of Honor
and an A-‐ feel like a slap in the face.
How dare you waste my time
with anything less than your very best.
I make kids sit through 40 minutes of study hall
in absolute silence. No, you may not work in groups.
No, you may not ask a question.
Why won’t I let you go to the bathroom?
Because you’re bored.
And you don’t really have to go to the bathroom, do you?
I make parents tremble in fear when I call home:
Hi. This is Mr. Mali. I hope I haven’t called at a bad time,
I just wanted to talk to you about something your son said today.
To the biggest bully in the grade, he said,
“Leave the kid alone. I still cry sometimes, don’t you?
It’s no big deal.”
And that was noblest act of courage I have ever seen.
I make parents see their children for who they are
and what they can be.
You want to know what I make? I make kids wonder,
I make them question.
I make them criticize.
I make them apologize and mean it.
I make them write.
I make them read, read, read.
I make them spell definitely beautiful, definitely beautiful, definitely beautiful
over and over and over again until they will never misspell
either one of those words again.
I make them show all their work in math
and hide it on their final drafts in English.
I make them understand that if you’ve got this [points to head],
then you follow this [points to heart],
and if someone ever tries to judge you
by what you make, you give them this [flips the bird].
Here, let me break it down for you, so you know what I say is true:
Teachers make a goddamn difference! Now what about you?
Mali. Taylor. “What Teachers Make.” What Learning Leaves. Newtown, CT: Hanover Press, 2002. Print. (ISBN: 1-‐887012-‐17-‐6)
Friday, April 12, 2013
30 poems in 30 days: 12
Wow. I'm almost halfway through this challenge. I can't believe that -- and at the same time, I practically expect these kinds of miracles from my Poetry Workshoppers every year, so welcome, Laurie, to HypocriteLand.
Another snowy day in the middle of April has not only sapped me of imagination and good feeling, but it has drained my imagination. So I'm going to cadge from an assignment book -- open Kim Addonizio's Ordinary Genius at random and make myself do whatever assignment comes up.
Okay. The assignment is to wake up a cliche. So, the first one that comes to mind is: My heart is broken.
*
Damage
The muscle nestled in the middle
of my chest
the thump-thump lump
of airy gristle
a minute ago fluttered at my ribs
feathery feet and hollow shell
but when you stopped smiling
when you refused to talk
when you curled your fingers
into fists
it slowed and swelled and
filled with bitter blood
then popped like
a pinched tick
Another snowy day in the middle of April has not only sapped me of imagination and good feeling, but it has drained my imagination. So I'm going to cadge from an assignment book -- open Kim Addonizio's Ordinary Genius at random and make myself do whatever assignment comes up.
Okay. The assignment is to wake up a cliche. So, the first one that comes to mind is: My heart is broken.
*
Damage
The muscle nestled in the middle
of my chest
the thump-thump lump
of airy gristle
a minute ago fluttered at my ribs
feathery feet and hollow shell
but when you stopped smiling
when you refused to talk
when you curled your fingers
into fists
it slowed and swelled and
filled with bitter blood
then popped like
a pinched tick
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)