Archive for April 2016

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Inner Elephant

April 21, 2016

IMG_3294Inner Elephant

I’m so mad.
I’m so sad.
Here’s the thing–my inner elephant
is matriarchal
and its bony spine, bellying up through its back
like that dark line from the navel
that forever defines a woman
who’s given birth
is sick of bowing, sick
of bundled sticks, sick
of switches–and, though it likes, in fact,
to sweep, it (my back) is sick of being suited
with a broom as an
accoutrement.

Sick of being bulled, it wants
to keep its slightly sunken calf
between its legs,
doesn’t care if it must trumpet dust, wants just
to strumpet, let
me be, says my

inner elephant,
wrinkle kneed,
thick toe-nailed, trunked
like a blubbery eel–stop
telling me what
to feel

let me wobble,
all my loosening body parts
in loose tow,
so creased my whole being pleats
like an old neck, what
the heck—

here’s the other thing–when you, female,
are an inner elephant,
you somehow forget
about being physically
overpowered.

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Very much of a draft poem, some number for April, and for Shay’s (Fireblossom’s) prompt on With Real Toads about elephants.  I actually have a couple for this prompt, but not sure I’ll get my other one together (or that this one is together particularly.)

I’m sorry by the way if late returning comments–a really busy week.  Sorry also that the drawing is a recycled one.  Just a hard week. 

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Comments: 11 Comments

One Teenage Girl

April 20, 2016

Christina's pictures 204One Teenage Girl

She wished some nights
she’d just die.
She’d see them all
at her wake
where she would lie
(dead but awake)
and through closed eyes
follow their remorse–
that sorrow surely forced
by their prior
shallowness–

Her grin within the crimped
pink satin
would be mistaken
for a slip
of the lipstick (thankfully, the dead
do not guffaw).

Sometimes, the vision seemed so real,
she could make out the granules
of her make-up–blusher clinging
to her cheeks like fuzz
on a peach,
her friends’s hands
over their mouths in the pow
of disbelief, the glint
of their shined nails.

Oh, then,
they’d be sorry.

**************************

Some numbered April poem for Magaly Guerrero’s prompt on Real Toads about a wish gone wrong.  I’m not sure if this one really did GO wrong–seems a bit wrong from the start.  The pic is a terrible photo of a really interesting piece (part of a series) by my daughter, Christina Martin. 

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Comments: 15 Comments

Not I(sle)

April 19, 2016

20110611-035530.jpg

Not I(sle)

I will not go as I arise
to till another glade
though its clay be good for bean rows
and bees may have it made.

I don’t care to find some peace there–
it won’t happen if we’re there too–
not because we drop things–
but because I’m me, you’re you.

You’re sorry about the singing–
I know–you have explained–
and in bed, you hate that purple glow–
(though I dim my phone when you complain.)

Still, I’ll not go when I arise
for always night and day;
I want your side close-lapping
especially, by the way,

when I’m in the City,
upon the pavement gray,
also when in the country
where linnets’ wings hold sway.

I want your side close-lapping
as we shift limbs old and sore,
even through the fleece and flannel,
to feel your deep heart’s core.

*****************************************

poem of sorts of some number for April–for Brendan’s wonderful prompt on Real Toads about turning something on its tail, poetic surprise.  I fear I’ve cheated a bit here, cribbing  from one of my very favorite (and much mined) poems, The  Lake Isle of Innisfree by Yeats.   Recycling older pic too.  (Any port in a storm.)  All rights reserved.

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Blackbirds, Horses

April 18, 2016

Blackbirds, Horses

I was of three minds
like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.
–Wallace Stevens,  Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

I was of three hearts
like a wooden horse painted red;
I trotted him about the floor
and kept him by my bed.

Gave one heart to my mother,
another to my youth’s love,
but oh the last it carried me
to places I knew nought of.

There, I saw a horse a’heave
legs painted high with red
as it stepped right fearsomely
over bloats of limb and head.

The rider said, call me Captain,
but my voice had flown away;
it perched upon the crooked pitch
of what had been tree one day.

There, it joined its fellows,
birds of ebon wing
and if they knew what I might do–
of this, they did not sing.

Just so, my last heart slackened,
sank in a stew of trench
where horses can only founder
unmanned by rot and stench;

where what was wood inside me
melted equal with the flesh;
where captain’s curse can’t find me
no more can any breath.

Three hearts were painted on the horse
I trotted about the floor–
I rue the one whose beating
saddled me with war.

I’ve no more mind for blackbirds
who caw but cannot sing
for what was me no longer
can hear a single thing.

*****************************

Agh.  Draft poem of sorts for the wonderful Hedgewitch’s wonderful prompt on Real Toads to write poetry raised to the power of three.  I think this is 19th for April.  

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After a Long Day and Funeral

April 17, 2016

leonardo_pre_rest_last_sup_adj_web-1

After a Long Day and Funeral

I think today
of the leftovers
of the Last Supper.
The crusts–did someone have the wit to save
the bits, not
for future investment–to sit in some gilded coffer–
but like my mother saved the chocolate Easter egg
my grandmother was working on
at the time of her
last fall,
for love–

I think of all those little rolls of Leonardo,
oval as children’s drawings
of mice.

I think of my grandmother nibbling
(so nicely), the dishes done, my mother
making tea.

They would certainly
have finished the wine, circlets ringing the bottoms
of their glasses–Leonardo paints a brown wine–
it might preserve better
if I call it amber–

The tempera itself
hardly lasted, fading, flecking, a mold maybe
seeming to eat
the apostles–I think
of the mottled darkness below
the table–the robed legs, the possible
crumbs–

They broke off each night
one piece of chocolate shell–
that’s it, they said,
and then, when that was done,
they always, yes,
had a little bit more.

I think of what
we wish for.

*********************************

Draft poem for my own prompt on Real Toads about remains.  I’m not sure what this one is–18? for this month.
The painting is Leonardo Da Vinci’s Last Supper, before it was restored.  The pic below is one I took at New York’s Met Museum.  I believe it is Greek (agh–I didn’t take notes of the origin.) 

img_3625

 

 

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At a Bar Where they’ve Read Some Eliot

April 16, 2016

20120927-104235.jpg

At a Bar Where they’ve Read Some Eliot

So, I says to that wreck of an Archduke, I says,
hurry up please it’s time.

and he says to me, leaning across the bar, belly dragging through these slimy stumps
of vegetation ( why he don’t eat the olives, I just
don’t know) 
jug jug jug jug tereu–

and I says, I’m Madame
to you; I don’t care what
they says at Kew.

But then he gets so quiet–one of  those frosty
silences–I couldn’t even get a chirp,
so, I says, at last, what you need man,
is some water,
and on the rocks, he shouts,
(and even then I have to hold it
to his lips–
swallow swallow)

only in a flash, he goes
all mad again, breaking into some deep
sea shanty
mixed with London Bridge–

and if this is how
the unguented live—
cause I tells you he still did smell good
under the gin–
let me stick
to my people, the humble
people.  (One has to be
so careful these days.)

******************

17th draft poem for April.  This belated for Angie’s prompt on With Real Toads, to write an upbeat poem based on words for Eliot’s The Waste Land.  I’m in a real rush today so posting much re-cycled pic–supposed to be based on Prufrock.   Thanks.

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The Year of Weeping Dangerously

April 14, 2016

The Year of Weeping Dangerously

It made it hard to see
where she was going,
harder to see
where she’d been.

When she walked, she seemed
to squeegie,
shoe leather sodden,
even rubber soles
losing their grip.

Old friends stayed out of her way,
only animals
never strayed,
liking, she assumed,
the salt.

These things tend to come in waves,
maybe because we’re part sea
and Time part sand (the other part tide).

But caught in that divide,
she cried,
sometimes beside
herself, sometimes,
like a small animal,
beside herself.

**************************

16th draft poem for April National Poetry Month.  This one for Kerry O’ Connor’s wonderful prompt “in other words” on Real Toads about using bits of a title–in this case, The Year of Living Dangerously. 

This has been super hectic/dismal work week so very sorry to be late returning comments. Also pic not really right–but there it is. (Mine, all rights reserved.) 

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My Inner Confessional – If Its Walls Could Talk

April 13, 2016

jamie_exhibit-32My Inner Confessional – If Its Walls Could Talk

If walls would say what they should–I do not mean
if walls would just stick
to the script, but rather

if walls would speak
what was in their hearts, that is,
their I-beams, that is,
the borne cross of inner
rebar and all that zig-zag
of wood-should–

that is, if walls would say aloud
what they whisper
into their pillars,
these walls
could not help but speak
of forgiveness,

for these walls, whatever you want to say,
about their speech, are per force
good listeners,
and no wall listening to even my faked

remorse
could mistake the sadness
behind all that sinning and sensed
sinning–

(So, maybe the walls I like to imagine
are softer than the walls
of the archetypical confessional–
mine having been weakened
by an awful lot of headbanging–)

my walls, if I would but cede them words,
would say some wall-talk equivalent of
the laying on of hands
(you know, wall hands)–

I can still feel that cool plaster, when, as a child,
I ran my feet up up the stretched expanse
at the side of my mother’s bed; it was like
the soothing
of my aching head,
only she’d be sleeping then, her arms about
her middle,
and it was, actually, well
a wall.

*******************************

15th drafty poem for April, National Poetry Month.  I wrote this one for Mama Zen’s prompt on Real Toads about if walls could talk.  Pic was posted by MZ–not sure it equates to my “inner confessional” but close enough. 

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Leaf No

April 13, 2016

Leaf No

When I was a seed,
all I needed was
some grounding.

But even rooted,
all I wanted was
to shoot.

When I shot up,
I seethed to leave
(not understanding what
the “F”–)

And climbed way out upon a limb
where swaying with each passing wind,
I fell to the ground again
(and here I am, and here I am).

Now, I’ve had some time to learn
more than I’d lief know
of what it means to be sown, oh yes,
and what it is to grow.

*********************

Yes, tired.  Yes, eminently drafty.  14th poem for the month of April.  Posted belated in Real Toads Open Platform, hosted by the wonderful Kerry O’Connor.  This one influenced by a song she posted whose title is Seven Years.

Pic is mine taken this morning of Central Park, modified.  Sorry if late returning comments; will be there!

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Under the Carapace (13 for April)

April 12, 2016

Under the Carapace

Under the carapace
of strait shirtwaist,
her breasts nestled
like turtle doves.
In his grey wold
of rim and wheel, they were all
that made the world round.
He found his lips seeking
their tips, as if his mouth were the shell
of an ear that sought
bird song–or maybe it was ocean–he had no notion what
he heard–only that he wanted to curl
into the orbit of that roar/coo, wresting
dawn’s aureole from night’s fall, though, truly,
just resting.

 

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13th poem for April National Poetry Month belatedly for Izy’s prompt on Real Toads about Soviet Kitsch, an old USSR sci-fi poster above.  (I don’t have the information re creators and copyright, but I believe it’s free use.)  I may be a bit late returning comments, as very busy right now. 

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Comments: 9 Comments

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