"April is the cruelest month" (version filtered on Photogene)
End of National Poetry Month Haiku
Some say that April is the
cruelest month. They must
be people who write poems.
All rights reserved. Suggestions welcomed. Thanks much for checking in on all the draft poems this month!
"April is the cruelest month." (Unfiltered.)
Relic
Poets write of rust, decay, time wearing out or thin,
but time’s spin makes for a preciousness too, imparts
like dew, an aura, as seen around
Ty Cobb’s dentures, still firm, at The Baseball Hall
of Fame, George Washington’s at Mt. Vernon.
Even the belongings of the obscure
acquire the gild of treasure–the small green
rubber boots bought as a joke for my dog
found fifty years later in my mother’s garage.
And then there are objects that become relics
even before time’s passage. I think of
the chocolate Easter egg, kept in the freezer, that my grandmother took a nibble
from every night before her fall; she’d gotten less than
half-way through; my mother saved the remainder, still foil-wrapped
in blue, for years afterwards, the surface of the
chocolate whitening like the cataract over an eye, making it
harder and harder to see what was once so clearly
in front of you.
All rights reserved. Suggestions welcome.
I was having a hard time coming up with a draft poem tonight when suddenly the opening of Christopher Marlowe’s wonderful poem “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” came to mind. (“Come live with me and be my love.”)
A variation on the theme:
A Passionate Long-Distance Caller To Her Love
Come live with me, my sweet, my dear,
and we shall never echoes hear
of anxious longing, fearful cries,
of ‘why me?‘ woes or angry lies–
our ears won’t burn with cellphone’s ray,
our brains won’t change their matters gray
to tumors fed by conversations
that only serve to try our patience.
Oh please come here; stay right by me
so I can see you when I see
the sky, the window, the chair, the bed.
the pillow there beside my head,
for you are all of these and more,
my sun, my moon, my ceiling, floor,
the one I talk to, the one
for whom I’d be still–sweet Hon,
I know my silence is not much known–
it just won’t transmit on the phone–
but come here soon and stay forever
and we’ll lay quietly together.
All rights reserved. Suggestions welcomed, particularly as to last line–yes, I know “lay together” is not quite right, and should the quietly come earlier in the line? (Agh!)
On another poetical matter, my recently published book of poetry, Going on Somewhere, was very carefully and thoughtfully reviewed by fellow WordPress blogger Ashley Wiederhold on her blog Trees and Ink. Please check out Ashley’s review of my book (and other books) as well as checking out the book itself on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Very pleased with my iPad 2 drawing above! This one is of my dog Pearl, an old dog but very much extant. Draft poem of the day below.
Posting To The Other Side
You talk to me of waterfalls.
I think not so much of spray–well, yes, I think of
spray, splash, droplets, glasses bespeckled–
but what I think of most
is this side and that,
the icy flow of everchanging wall, the stillness
behind that wall, and how,
as a child, when my dog died
my first beloved dog, that is, the first
dog who felt truly younger than me, needful of my protection,
I tried, like Demeter, to reach beyond such a wall, to
communicate, as it were, with the other side–no easy task with a canine–
and how, since I was already being mystical, I wrote the dog a letter,
and since I was desperate in my grief, I posted that letter
in one of my Junior Britannicas, a cherry red series of volumes,
under the letter D, praying that the Dog (Deceased)
would find it, and how, for many months afterwards,
I was afraid to open that volume, to retrieve that carefully
folded piece of lined notepaper,
in case it was still there.
All rights reserved. Suggestions welcomed. (One question – “retrieved”. I like it because of the dogginess–but may be “seek” or “look for” would be better?)
I’m just too tired to write a poem tonight.
The old synapses lie limp and lumpy,
clotted with the vernacular; no sprite
darts from nerve to page, rather a frumpy
dim drags over observation, blotting
out comparison (much less caparison–
the embellishment of the plodding.)
In defense, I say my garrison,
my true home, is found in prose that cares not
how a rose would smell by other name,
but even my dull brain knows what is what,
and that a rose can never smell the same
once read, once heard, once lit by other’s light.
Oh–oh–oh, how I long for that insight.
With a combination of apps, I am slowly learning to do things on a digital device that are much much easier with good old-fashioned paints and paper, What fun!
Happy Easter! Happy Spring!
A visual poem? A busy day. Happy weekend all!
Here’s another poem written in my favorite venue and time – New York City subway car, a.m. just past rush hour. Today, however, I was not in the best mood. Here’s today’s draft poem, again in honor of National Poetry Month.
Sleep-deprived Ride
Three days of 2 AM
makes for a wan
morning commute.
Brain is mute;
colors blur along edges.
When a child screams–SCREAMS–
at the hedge of his
stroller, the brain
twists at its own edge,
or just pushed over,
‘my purse!’ it panics next;
awareness jerks
to the strap
over arm, wrist, lap,
that stolid mass of care that never
stays up past midnight, holds all.
Still there, thank God
(though barely sensed),
still, there.
All rights reserved. Suggestions welcomed
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