Archive for April 2015

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To a Forefather

April 10, 2015

IMG_3767

To a Forefather

Dear Nameless Here,

She always says you could tell a joke–
not the canned kind–you know,
something you’d heard–
but the kind you made up to fit
the moment,
there, right on the spot.

She calls it your sharp wit
and speaks of it as
admirable–oh, but yours
must have been
very sharp,
cutting as the pried lid of the can
that you pressed down on her. for it’s sure held her
long enough–
long even
after you’ve gone.

How is such pressure applied
where there also must
be love?
How is it preserved,
passed on?

I think of peaches sunken
in a tin, saved
in a cellar.
Peaches that are no longer exactly
peaches
after their best-use date,
assuming they ever had one,
assuming, too,
that they were once peaches.

But they must have been—oh yes—
only cut perhaps
before they sweetened,
cooked green,
hard,
sharp,
never allowed to be what someone might press
to her own soft cheek, breath in, seeking succor.

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Draft poem 10th in 10 days, for With Real Toads prompt by the truly terrific and always sharp (in the best of ways) Mama Zen who blogs at Another Damn Poetry Blog.   (With a recycled pic of mine.)

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Some things I Admire about Anselm Keifer

April 9, 2015

333-eventpage-keifer_500-2

“When, at the end of the 1960s,I became interested in the Nazi era, it was a taboo subject in Germany. No one spoke about it anymore, no more in my house than anywhere else.”  Anselm Kiefer

Some things I Admire about Anselm Keifer

Words were meant to carry meaning
like a cart or car,
a sigh or song,
but make crude vehicles
when meaning’s gone
or when it’s grown so vast we gasp, crushed as grass,
boot/tank/shrapnel-tramped, seeded
with mortar or mine–

Paint too
has limitations;
even with its leads, its cadmiums,
burnt umber–
how does line define
meaning’s capsize?
catch the copse where the cart collapsed?
the tracks where the trains did not derail?
the field where the sun was buried?

What pallet of straw, stick, gloam can make us see
the world blown down?

Something very big, with a difficult surface,
something we have to get a distance from
to really see,
something we try to get close to
to really see,
something we are seen by–what?
all that we don’t do in the world
all that we have done–
the huge don’t/done, mud
bloodied–

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A poem of sorts.  9th for this April, 2015 National Poetry Month.  Inspired by a Real Toads Prompt by Ella of Ella’s Edge, to write about the better depictor–as it were–visual art or language–  The artist that came to mind for me is Anselm Kiefer, a great great (I think) German artist who makes extremely large paintings using a variety of materials including, and other than, paint.  He was born in 1945.

I wasn’t actually particularly thinking of the painting above in doing the poem, but this is one I’ve seen in person at an exhibition at Mass Moca (from which I’ve taken this image, without intending any copyright infringement.)  Images of Kiefer’s work can be found here.  Quotes here.

Note that when I first posted this, I did not put in a quote as asked by the prompt. (I forgot about it and only added this morning-Sorry, Ella!)   Kiefer has many great quotes about art and history, and I only chose this because it gives a context to the work .

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Between A Hard Place

April 8, 2015

Between a Rock and a Hard Place
Between a Hard Place

He had not meant to go
for the jugular.
He’d just aimed for the cheap shot,
the kind of thing
that might nick a wing.

The others’ laughter rippled
a shallow pool,
but the face she would not turn to him
was like the face of a stone he’d sometimes kick
the way home, as a child,
the sun burning through his bangs, for he was mad,
mad that he could keep that stone
to his curbed path, but not roll back
the day.

Truly, any rock would do,
but he found his shoe searching
for one of those round smooth stones, that kind that looked long soothed
by blue water, and sometimes, when he found a good one
he’d pick it up at last, rubbing his thumb and forefinger over its coolness, imagining
some soft stroke back.

More often, he’d pick up what he kicked
and throw it at a sign or car until
the rattle spun so loud it shot him
into a flight whose speed alone near petrified him; he tried then
to ape insouciance, but would end
in a side-armed lope that made him
look the nicked one,
the wounded.

Now, he tried
to make her look at him,
but it was like making a stone
look back and the heart that wanted to fly to her
soon wanted to throw something, tightening
like a fist around
what that might be–what beat at him.

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8th sort-of-poem (yes, I know it’s really a draft story, not a draft poem–sorry! ) for April, 2015 National Poetry Month for Marian’s prompt on With Real Toads to write about a poem one regrets.  I really just could not write about that subject right now but went with words that one regrets. 

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Submarine (WWI)

April 7, 2015

20150407-061741-22661252.jpgSubmarine (WWI)

The men would scurry from one end of the canister
to the other, human ballast for flow
or torpedo, as he, captain, peered out the short tower
through a glower of misted glass; his task: to make sure
of not-missing, though they did not miss much
at the range submergence admitted.

There were many seamen, of course.
able-bodied no longer, and passengers he justified
with rue.  But what he most remembered was
the horse, the spidered dapple of twitching flanks,
the waves of quake and pulse as it was push-pulled towards
a leap onto a metal lifeboat–how the sky over the
North Atlantic–he seemed to see the whole
through the small skewed scope–
bunched grey as the clouded flesh, bucking teeth yellowed
as sea foam, wild eyes red-blackened
as oiled flames, the darkened forelegs battering the clatter
like swung clubs of the falling night.

He ordered the U-boat down
shouting you, you, at men who needed to move
to keep the balance,
only it was not exactly you in German,
and the tramp of their bare feet less
like hooves–

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A poem of sorts for the 7th day of this April – 2015 National Poetry Month–linked to Real Toads Open Platform.  A German U-boat was a submarine–I think the official name was “untersee boot.”   The above photograph is not mine, and all rights are reserved to the holder.  (In my poem, the men are scurrying around inside the U-boat, not on the top, but I just loved that photograph.)

 

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What She Pictured Then (Gogo Dancer)

April 6, 2015

What She Pictured Then (Gogo Dancer)

The boredom was what crushed most.  She pictured then
her nipples as satellites, revolving
around their own little–in her case–decent-
sized orbits, ignoring the long-lolling
blur below her cage, for the disco ball,
a million mirrored surfaces of death star
that held her as its ward of light and fall,
casting a fierce laser certain to sear
any worm of flesh that dared squiggle
slobber close, till even so fortified,
she could no longer linger in wiggle;
mind simply had to step away.  Then she tried
to find a way home, a spring when brown dead stalk
gleaned flakes of true star, late snow’s cold clean walk.

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Here’s a drafty sort of poem–a sonnet (my go-to form when what I’m thinking of isn’t very poetic)–for the 6th day of this April 2015 National Poetry Month, and also my own prompt on With Real Toads to write about seeing stars.   I appreciate that squiggle and wiggle push the envelope in a way that could be deemed mocking here, which I do not mean, but hey!  this is a month of experimentation–

 

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Easter

April 5, 2015

Easter —

For me, the humanity was wrapped up
in the swaddling cloths,
that weaving of dust
that returns to dust,
warp of the born that must then
be borne, the thread-bared–
linen holding to its folds
like a clasp of fingers, ribs,
as if even the unsewn strived
for the shape of flesh, bone, forgiveness–

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Here’s another poem for April 2015, National Poetry Month (I think my fifth).  This one has 55 words and is posted for the Real Toads prompt hosted by the wonderful Kerry O’Connor.  The pic was taken by me of a stained glass window in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

It snowed much of last night and all day long in the mountains where I live. The good part is that I went skiing.  The bad part is that I went skiing.  (I am a rather terrified skier, who also finds it trying to have to focus on keeping upright, when I want to go off in one of my habitual dazes.  But I survived!)  I wish you all a happy day. 

 

 

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My Mother’s Coat Easter Sunday (After Gertrude Stein)

April 4, 2015

My Mother’s Coat Easter Sunday (After Gertrude Stein)

The salmon coat was not a fish out of water but a stucco of the sun the son.

I know that my redeemer liveth steepled also as the sidewalks, refusing to take sides, isoscolesed up front, fingers not-eased into short gloves treed as white as sycamores sideways,

with fireflies to come, only this was South so lightning bugs were what would bubble soon enough as hyacinths or coffee bubbled that morning, a morning without mourning, purple, pink or even blue as new as–

Salmon an unlikely shade, only pink in the way that a marigold is not yellow, a lipsticked kiss against a cheek as wet as trumpets, as dry as the sun the son through high stained glass.

And though she knew that our redeemer liveth, and would stand at the end in a flesh that might almost be salmon-colored, she could not believe that none had died.  Even as the clouds rolled and the stone rolled and her coat leapt high as a fish above the sidewalk, my mother’s cheeks were damp.  It was not a day you could not remember in.

So that I, a child of her flesh, a child of not yet death, took her by our short gloves, to swim the concrete, to roll us through the clouds and stone, the hyacinthed coffee, and some night soon, fireflies.

Though we did not think of them just then, of how they would lighten us, of how they would electrify our warm bare darknesses.

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Here’s a sort of poem for Easter, for the 4th day (I think) of this April 2015 National Poetry Month, and for the wonderful Izy Gruye’s prompt on Real Toads to write something inspired by Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons. 

The above is a pic of my mother’s coat. 

I have edited this a few times since posting!   

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“It’s a Great Life” – Song Recording

April 3, 2015

Here’s the “song” I wrote today for third day of National Poetry Month for Shay/Fireblossom’s prompt on Real Toads.  I came up with rather dirge like music and my first go round was so slow that I made this second one super fast– but I am not a composer or a singer!  (And there’s no bridge, refrain, etc. etc.)  Still, if you are interested, here it is.

Please excuse voice, music, everything that can be excused!  And thanks for your indulgence.

(Words to the song and a cute picture of elephant guitarists can be found at my previous post.)

 

 

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“It’s a Great Life” – Third Day of National Poetry Month

April 3, 2015

It’s a Great Life

It’s a great life, if you don’t weaken–
so mama said, her face grown pale.
It’s a great life, if you don’t weaken,
but oh lord help, if you should fail.

I gave my love my heart’s safe-keeping
I gave my love my heart to hold:
oh it’s a great life, if you don’t weaken–
my love, he took that heart once whole.

Love’s just so grand until it weakens,
sun shines so bright on your travails,
But when skies dim and leave no beacon,
then tears are all that fill this vale.

That man, he gave my heart a beating
though it beat fast as any bird’s,
oh it’s a great life, if you don’t weaken,
If I but heard my mama’s words–

But life was loud when love was spoken,
and his hands’ touch–it felt so true–
It’s a great life, when vows aren’t broken,
but oh lord help, when love is through.

I gave that man my heart as token
of how I loved him through and through
It’s a great life, till we are broken
now, my heart’s gone, lord help me do.
It’s a great life, till we are broken,
now my heart’s gone, lord help me do.

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Here’s a song as my third poem for April 2015 National Poetry Month, and written for Shay (Fireblossom)’s prompt on With Real Toads.  I can sing this in my head, and it sings country. 

ps- I have edited this slightly since first posting.  I also came up with a very dirge like tune, which I have sung (ha!) and recorded here. 

 

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In the Crawl Spaces, Bush and Shrub

April 2, 2015

Block035

In the Crawl Spaces, Bush and Shrub

The house that built her had no bricks to spare;
a bit of mortar all that could be rubbed
into use; a sore task with hands bare,
but doable with even just a stub
of spoon–the type of thing a prisoner might
secrete who’s not allowed sharp edges, prongs,
whose meat must be cut for her.  So, in the night,
when scrapes could pass as branches’ throaty songs
or the rusty wheeling of extincted stars
whose shining hasn’t caught up to their deaths,
she whittled grit and lime from the brick-lined bars
that fixed the grid; belly pressed to ground, her breasts,
hiding, to collect her daily ration
of crumble–there, by the roots, the foundation. 

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Here’s my second poem (draft!) for April, 2015 National Poetry Month.  I’m pleased to say this is also the second poem I wrote this morning–the first one being one of those long narrative childhoody poems I seem to write all the time and that I’m worried you may be getting sick of!  (Despite that, I will probably use it one of the days this month.)

But I really did want to go further away from myself, so tried a sonnet.  Form, for me, is always a great way to get out of memoir.   Note that in my sonnets, a break should only be taken where actually punctuated–by a comma or dash or colon–line breaks are not intended as pauses.  (Yes, it’s a way of cheating with the form.) 

This one for Mama Zen’s cool prompt on with Real Toads to write about the house that built you.  

The picture above is Diana Barco, from our book “Going on Somewhere.”  The houses should have bushes in front! 

 

 

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