Archive for June 2012
Summer begins in earnest (with Elephant and Dog)
June 20, 2012Two Step (Completely Revised, Renewed, Sorry)
June 20, 2012Revised Two Step
For those interested in a writer’s process: writers (at least writers like me) sometimes overwork things and completely mess them up – especially at 2 in the morning. So below is a poem previously posted in a much different version. I’ve gone back to something more like the original; it’s a Father’s Day poem which is probably why it was difficult.
Two Step
You could never really manage more than a two-step and even that stumbled to its own chuckled beat, your movements accented with a panache of abashment.
And I would watch from the sidelines, sometimes with my own more snarky embarrassment, being young and indentured to the Gods of Cool.
But the truth is I didn’t snipe much, knowing even as a teen that I could never embody such goodness, my edges just too sharp, like my mother’s nose, my own elbows.
The only time I even came close was later, when you could no longer walk, barely stand, and I brought you those old songs (Glenn Miller, your remembered sound of hope in hard times, having made it across the Channel ’44), and your feet, though unable to truly press the floor, would shuffle in that same old just-off beat, arms lifted.
And whether or not heaven is an actual place–I hate to say that I have my doubts== at least I’m not sure about one with dance floors–I feel your pulse in my head today, Father’s Day, the air around me as tuneful as those hollowed instruments = and am mindful of the resurrection of love, that incredible two step of gift and receipt only in your case it was giving mainly –that’s what you did, and perhaps why your movements always seemed a bit unbalanced, dancing.
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(I am reposting this for dVerse Poets Pub Open Link Night and Tess Kincaid’s MagPie Tales. The picture is Tess’s prompt by M.C. Escher. I am also linking to Emily Wierenga’s Imperfect Prose .)
Two Step (Go to Next Revised Post)
June 20, 2012FOR THE CORRECTED POST – GO HERE. (https://manicddaily.wordpress.com/2012/06/20/two-step-completely-revised-renewed-sorry/)
Luminous
June 18, 2012
At Joyce’s Tower, Dublin; Happening Onto a Robust Woman – Celtic Quatrain
June 17, 2012
Supposed to be Irish Soda Breads
At Joyce’s Tower, Dublin; Happening Onto a Robust Woman
Who’d Just Bathed In the Sea
Irish soda bread for real
lined shelves at shops’ rush hour;
clothes, that she had shed or peeled,
buffed feet, Martello Tower.
Pink her cheeks as plum blossom;
dimpled her skin about the midst.
Ah…. Ah… (her fulsome bosom)–
to call it else would be remiss.
‘Twas–did I forget to say?
Winter–even sun was damp,
gave us not a lot of day.
She, she shone, her own dugs lamps–
Whiteness shimmering shimmied
by a hand towel that she rubbed
staunch (like that ringing hymn we’d
sung when “Onward” sounded scrubbed
and squeaky clean), her panties
stretching wide like grin-full face,
hair wet in sea-curled shanties,
thick bare legs a true soul place
beyond Joyce, at least, for me,
that day, that year, that winter,
when what had been a history
of whole slipped into splinter.
How I got there? Roundabout.
From up to down, high to low.
Though by that sea, brown as stout,
somehow footing firmed below.
Failure, that had tolled my doom,
seemed instead part of life’s flow,
which would make a bold try room,
allow hope oar along strife’s row.
At my side, a waxen pouch,
fingered crumbs that shed or peeled–
caraway, raisins (yes, and such)–
Irish soda bread for real.
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The above is supposed to be a poem drafted in Celtic Quatrains in response to a challenge from Kerry at Imaginary Garden With Real Toads. I don’t think it’s so successful, but it was great fun to try. Thanks also to Hedgewitch (Joy Ann Jones) who wrote a great one and encouraged me to try.
At any rate, this form, the Celtic Quatrain, is supposed to have interlocking rhymes – with triple rhymes (i.e. three syllables) in the first and third lines; and double rhymes in the second and fourth. Also, there are supposed to be seven syllables a line. I tried to stay true to the rhyme scheme (more or less( but found the syllabic limit very difficult and I’m not sure that enjambment is allowed! At any rate, try one yourself! To learn more, check out Kerry’s informative post.
“Banishing Act” – The “X-Aisle”
June 16, 2012
Banishing Act
Refusing
to grant her even a corner of his gaze,
he sent her into the X-aisle, not
the realm of the somewhat magical, but the dim
dead-end of the inferior–all those Brands X that
always fail, that
will forever be passed over.
The only way that she could tell
that she too was still in the room
(and not stocked in that
far corridor) was the slight swell of the carotid
at his throat, and, periodically, a shadow grasping
the skin that sheathed
his temple.
She tried to use
that stretch of artery as
a lifeline; that glisten at his brow
as a compass to replace
eyes’ mirroring; but even
the autonomic
seemed to turn its back on her, not easy
for someone raised
to please.
When he relented, admitting her again
into his realm, she found that she could not
readily reclaim her spot, but
rather like the wife of Lot (not able to not
look back) would dissolve periodically into salt
and distance, re-collection
a double-edged sword.
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The above is my offering for the Poetics Challenge on Exile (and other things, some of which have to do with James Joyce and Bloomsday) at dVerse Poets Pub. I am hosting! Check it out!
Also, if you have time, please please please check out my books: Children’s counting book 1 Mississippi -for lovers of rivers, light and pachyderms. Or, if you in the mood for something older, check out Going on Somewhere, poetry, and Nose Dive, escapist but very fun fluff.
June Kitchen
June 15, 2012
“Writing Exercises” – Triversen?
June 14, 2012
Writing Exercises
The wheel cannot willfully–
not new as still-nude dawn–
be invented every day.
Still we work our brains,
poetry our chin-up bar,
re-wrought words our reps.
Expecting (regularly) Inspiration–
she, gartered, glad-handing,
as we, gripping pens, grapple.
Whips away, stockings running;
our words whistle after,
wheezing poetic (at least in part).
We moon till next dawn dawns,
but this time wisps of sibilance
blinker pink and blue.
Thumping rhythmically below,
a flat–tired, but still rolling–
yet another poem.
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What do you write about when you have nothing to write about? Writing!
A triversen is a form I’ve never heard of that was apparently developed by William Carlos Williams. The above is my attempt (ha!), inspired by the challenge (very well-explained) by Gay Reiser Cannon at dVerse Poets Pub for as part of its “Form for All” series. If you are interested in the form, check out Gay’s wonderful article.
Shel Adelson (iPad Portrait)
June 13, 2012
Meet Sheldon Adelson (in my primitive iPad portrait), Las Vegas Casino Billionaire who (with his wife) has so far donated $25 million to super pacs supporting certain Republican presidential candidates, $10 million promoting Newt Gingrich and now $10 million promoting Mitt Romney. ‘
In an interview with Forbes Magazine, Mr. Adelson expressed a willingness to donate up to $100 million in the presidential campaign in order to defeat President Obama.
Ironically, some have estimated that Mr. Adelson has made more money than any other American during the years of the Obama administration (gambling apparently being a relatively recession-proof industry.)
I’m not sure how exactly Mr. Adelson’s ability to make such large political contributions fits in with the Supreme Court’s “Citizens United” decision, which allowed corporations to be treated as persons for purposes of campaign donations. Mr. Adelson is not a corporation. Moreover, his ability to give such large sums does not feel exactly like an example of an action of “citizens united” but rather, one citizen having an overweighted financial influence. (But maybe that’s just me.)
“Untucked”
June 12, 2012
Untucked
When he’s away (increasingly,
these days), she
sleeps at the foot
of the bed. It’s for the light, she
tells him, or rather
the turning off of the light,
the lone lamp that sits on a
dwarfed file cabinet at the bed’s
bottom, not the best configuration, but rooms
are not always perfect for the
furniture people bring to them.
It was hard at first
to find a spot down there; hard to tug the top
sheet from its tuck, and even once uprooted,
to squeeze into its tight pocket, her limbs
a swaddled ricochet of angled waist, hips,
knees, aimed to keep her feet from
the opposite dangle.
I miss you too, he replies,
but he, someone who sleeps when tired, eats
when hungry, does not quite understand her fidget
around burning vacancy, the twist and turn of one
so defended she
can only meet need through
a maze, or over
a parapet.
It’s for the light, she tells him, the turning off
of the light, trying to describe the purgatory of
the doggedly dwindling, but
the truth, of course, is
more complex.
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Here’s an older poem posted for dVerse Poets Pub Open Link Night, hosted by the wonderful Hedgewitch a/k/a Joy Ann Jones. I am also linking this post to Imperfect Prose, hosted by Emily Wierenga.
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