Evening falls early and quite cold in Zuccotti Park. At the bottom, a yogi type was instructing a group (sitting) in some kind of relaxing breathing exercise. Everyone seemed pretty relaxed.
Archive for October 2011
Monday Evening in Zuccotti Park (Walking By “Occupying Wall Street”)
October 17, 2011
Wall Street Area – Very Much Occupied
October 16, 2011
South Side Zuccotti Park
Downtown NYC was very much occupied today.
I live to the West, so I first came to the entrance of the new visitors center at the old WTC. (Ground Zero to those who are not long-time New Yorkers.) This seems to have become one of the most popular tourist destinations in the City, with perpetual lines waiting to gain entrance to the walled-in Memorial Garden. The tourists, whether from Japan or Kansas, almost all have a certain look–scrubbed skin, khaki on some part of their body, and hats (often of the small bucket variety).
Then, I arrived at Occupy Wall Street. Zuccotti Square has become increasing crowded over the last few weeks, and sports an increased sense of good cheer. There seems also to be a much greater variety of people–a significantly higher percentage of middle-aged folks to dredlocks. (I’m not complaining about the dreds, just commenting.) Occupiers also have a certain look, but it is different from the tourist look. Rumpled. (The park is not a comfortable place to stay.)
Today, the complexity of the scene was magnified because there were not only tourists, occupiers, gawkers, construction workers,press and police–there were also the Lubavitchers! Those proselytizing in vans highlighting Succoth. They were dressed in Hasidic gear with wide-brimmed black hats (as opposed to the buckets) and several held large stalks of grain.
(This at Zuccotti Park)
(This one at Memorial Garden.)
And then (exciting!), we happened onto Jon Oliver, musing to the side of the park across the street. “Hey Jon!” I found myself calling and then felt surprised (and almost hurt) that he didn’t call back. (It is odd to think that someone can look so familiar and not know you at all.) We did speak very briefly and I would note that he seemed much better looking in person than on TV, and was extremely gracious.
Later, I saw some occupiers escaping over to my side of the West Side Highway. My guess is that the grass of Hudson River Park is a lot more comfortable for napping than Zuccotti’s concrete.
(Hard to See - People Napping on Napsacks.)
“Magpie Tales” – Ping and Less Ping.
October 16, 2011
In my ongoing exploration of online writing and poetry sites, I am participating today in Magpie Tales, a site, hosted by Tess Kincaid, that sets up an interesting picture prompt. The picture was a photograph of skewered ducks hanging in a Chinese restaurant, before a slightly smiling cook. (I like to use my own art work where possible so have done my own copy of it above.)
Here’s the poem:
At a Restaurant On Mott
There is something about the Chinese,
at least when it comes to
restaurants, that does not consider
Ping (the little white duck
of my childhood who wafted
paper-lantern-like down an
unscrolled Yangtze river, among
junks of pen, ink, watercolor.)
There is something that smiles
as wide as a ladle, that
gleams with anticipatory,
and unmitigated,
satisfaction
at the sight, for example, of a chicken’s foot
streaming with small galaxies
of golden globules.
There is something that doggedly
digests the dog-eat-dogness of this
world in a way that the limp cartilage of
my vegetarian fingers simply cannot grasp;
a realism as rooted as
galic/ginger/turnips/webbed feet/hooves,
which my Ping-popping
anemia could probably profit from.
Nonetheless, I’ll stick to the tofu.
Taboo? (Maybe…) Poem (Yes!) (“A Woman Needing to Pee”)
October 15, 2011
Woman Needing To.... (image by Diana Barco)
The below poem is posted as part of dVerse Poets Pub, Saturday Poetics prompt, hosted today by Kellie Elmore. The prompt was for a poem that is provocative or deals with a subject that’s taboo. As a (believe it or not!) slightly shy person, I find it very hard to post something both new and taboo, so am posting an older poem (one, that I’ve had time to get used to.)
A Woman Needing to Pee
A woman needing to pee,
she steps into the sea, knees
salt, a piercing balm, her
shaved legs grimace, gasp
cold, still she strolls thighward,
as far as she is able, needing to pee,
squats needing to hide it,
rubs water over her arms to hide it better,
acting out a woman too timid
to go out far, a woman
needing to cool herself. But
she craves warmth and secretes it,
a secret warmth, wet-warming
all the sea.
Stretching tall
and cold now only where air
licks skin, she dives
into the afterglow,
a woman who swims.
A little background: the poem was originally written as part of a “magnetic poetry exercise,” a kind of arbitrary but freeing exercise. It can be found in my first book of poetry, Going on Somewhere, poems by Karin Gustafson, pictures by Diana Barco, cover by Jason Martin. Check it out!
(PS – the new header above is from the cover of Going on Somewhere, by Jason Martin.)
Flash Friday 55 – Short Short – (Teacher?)
October 13, 2011
As part of my (kind of random!) exploration of online poetry and prose sites, I am making my first Flash Friday 55 post, which is a post somehow indelibly connected to the G Man, Mr. Know-it=all, and involves the writing of a 55 word story.
Teacher?
When they were good, she let them
color around the Bible verses they’d
copied out.
When they were bad, she had them
stand before the class, and
slap themselves, exhorting as they lapsed
(second graders get tired),
“harder, harder.”
A God-fearing woman, she felt
called to teach them much; the fear part,
they learned.
dVerse Poetics-Marlowe Revisited – Christopher not Phillip
October 13, 2011
The wonderful and very supportive dVerse Poets Pub suggests as a poetics prompt today that one imitate an admired poet. As host to the prompt, Victoria gives a great personalized version of the wonderful Wallace Stevens Thirteen Ways of Looking At A Blackbird. I would love to try my hand at Wallace Stevens, but shortness of time and several days into the long distance part of a long-distance relationship lead me instead to Christopher Marlowe, a poet whom I love and whose work I’ve already imitated. This is based on the wonderful “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love”. (“Come live with me and be my love.”)
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 morph their matters gray
into 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 to me 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–
I can’t quite manage it on the phone–
but come here soon and stay forever
and we’ll lay quietly together.
(Apologies to those who’ve read this poem before; it is edited a bit! I will try some Wallace Stevens soon.)
On the Political Side – Doing Something To Nudge Do-Nothings
October 12, 2011
Pearl's Wants To Help With All the Emails
As followers of this blog know, I’ve been writing a lot about poetry lately. (Even really morbid poetry is a lot easier to stomach than current politics.) But it’s pretty hard to pass up commenting on the congressional Republicans’ recent squelching of all debate on President Obama’s Jobs Act.
It’s ridiculous. The nixing of even debate suggests that congressional Republicans are out for the political jugular without regard to the fact that it IS, in fact, attached to the body politic.
Is governing all about election? The old tack was to characterize Obama as a rammer of legislation down the country’s throat; now they are ascribing their own implacable obstructionism to Obama’s lack of leadership. (Amazingly, the characterization of Obama veers between Attila the Hun and Professor Milquetoast). (I admit that Obama could be a more active leader, but their conduct makes it seem that it would hardly make a difference.)
So here is what I, a lowly non-pol who really doesn’t feel like sitting in Zucotti Park, thought I might do: write! To as many congressmen and senators as I can bear, even those outside my district. I know that it’s unlikely to do any good. When John Boehner sees, for example, that I am not from Ohio, he will probably not take my email very seriously. Still, writing it makes ME feel better.
P.S. I’m going for polite measured little notes. I realize it might help if I included a picture of Pearl, above–at least that might get passed around the Congressional office. But so far, I’ve kept Pearl above the fray, except as proofreader.
To Drafts! Revisions! Community! Poetry! Wine!
October 12, 2011
Drafts!
Kind of a funny evening after a very tense day. The tension I think was chemical–well, partly–modern life is so so busy it makes for tension even in the near comatose. (Also, in this day and age, if you are lucky enough to be employed, you tend to have an awful lot to do.) But I also took an herb this morning, Gingko Biloba, which is meant to protect against brain dulling, but I think, in my case, may have caused brain hypersensitivity.
Then came the evening, which was subsumed in several long and worrisome telephone calls. The great part of having aging parents is having aging parents; the difficult part is having aging parents. The great certainly far outweighs the difficult, but where there is a significant risk of loss, there is the significant fear of loss.
And then, for some reason, I started looking through old draft poems that are on this blog, but virtually in no other file of mine. Although I spent some energy on the drafts on the days I wrote each of them, I then virtually forgot about most of them, never refining, editing or even looking at them.
But tonight, perhaps because I should be working overtime on something else, all those unfinished poems suddenly beckoned.
Partly, this interest in old drafts has been sparked by my recent involvement in various online poetry websites and blogs, which really has been very inspiring.
The glass of wine I had with dinner also seemed to make the call of these old draft poems somewhat more eloquent.
Still! To old notebooks! Drafts! Unfinished manuscripts! Poetry blogs! (Here here!)
Young Palm – Adult Child
October 11, 2011
I am posting the new poem below for the dVerse Poets Pub “Open Link” night and also for Gooseberry Garden’s poetry picnic.
Adult Child
It seemed to her walking on a beachside street
near the home of aging parents
that she saw in the five feet
of a young palm, the slightly goofy grace
of a fawn or baby giraffe:
in the ridges of green trunk–
knock-knees; in the froth of
lime green frond–the soft bristle of
first-sprout hair; overall a sense of oversized
hooves, paws, the floppy underfooting of
fledgling wonder.
Yet even as she held the young palm
in the back of her mind, another childishness
crept to the forefront–a child’s
fear of death–not fear of the unknown, or
even loss, but of moist brown earth,
clods of non-human
clay, the closing-in of lonely terrible cold; a fear of death that does not
truly believe in death but does know darkness.
It clung to her through the visit
until, at the shore itself, after they had tossed in
a rough sea, which, in the power of that fear, was
almost intolerable to her, and her husband passed
a towel over the brilliance beading their skin,
she could not stop herself from reaching back to him
and whispering, oh please
don’t let me be buried, and he, confused,
wrapped strong limbs (a Northern person, he is so unlike a palm) around
her trunk, softly kissing and trying jokes, till she said again, please and
promise, and he did.
Then, determined to cast off the still-stalking fear, she darted awkwardly
to the surf and willed herself into a cartwheel
at the edge of the ocean-firmed sand, and when that one worked, another, and
another again, knowing that one cannot will ebullience, but also
that there is nothing
like turning upside down for clearing a head, and
another one, until blinking in the shine, they marveled, before
the next wave, at
the clarity of the palm prints, there, in the wedge of sand and sea,
spread wide, five-fingered.
As always, all rights reserved.
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