Archive for the ‘poetry’ category

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A Curse Upon

May 29, 2014

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A Curse Upon

A curse upon my make-do heart,
that pursed-lips part
that controls the whole,
taking its toll.

A hex upon her
who sets the bar
barring the exit ramp,
sits her double-knits
in the collection booth
(taking the toll).

The make-do heart
that makes my s-peg parts
fit
the square hole,
makes my whole
be still and be quiet,
binds me to a diet
of regurgitated shell–
she means well,
like a brooding mother–
but when, as moving dot
on that fixed spot,
I hear the knell
of hours passed,
whole years–
oh, I feel the toll.

Tube lights buzz above her/me,
while in the distance we
see glow.

************************************
A draft poem of sorts for Izzy Gruye’s very interesting Out of Standard prompt on Real Toads to write a poem as a curse.

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The Overachiever Lugging Rocks

May 26, 2014

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The Overachiever Lugging Rocks

I carry rocks,
which is the kind of work
I always think I like,
only I find these rocks
so heavy that I end up dragging them
with my right arm,
which I think of as my strong one
though it isn’t truly, I can actually lug them
with my left,

in the same way that I think of you inside
as the true me,
the one who has all these things
she must do=
things she lives
to achieve–
only she doesn’t actually live at all
just as my right arm,
pretending dominance,
lets the rocks drag, relying on the strength
of canvas bag and the soft slope
of grassy hill, the sun so hot
that the green
buzzes.

Someday I wonder
whether that you inside, which right this minute
I think of as “her,”
but is also me  always, the one who wants
so much,
will accept the one
that just likes to lug rocks,
that is just happy
getting them to a garden
where they will fit with whatever
is there already, making a place
for themselves, as large rocks do, some kind
of order.

 

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

A draft poem of sorts.  Yes, a bit weird.  About the divided self.  And rock-lugging. 

 

Above is a photo I took today that doesn’t exactly go with the poem, but that a like–a snake between two large rock stairs. 

 

I am linking this to With Real Toads open link night.  

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Comments: 6 Comments

Plumbed

May 24, 2014

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Plumbed

There’s a leak in my consciousness
where the heavy flows go,
the bury ‘em and the can’t-
bear-it–
the swirled sediment of this world
(as I take it in.)

Until that gelid effluence, trapped
in the elbow of heart,
swells beyond pool,
and every pipe, full to bursting,
breaks into a fugue of requiem–

Slowly the overflow
is over, the roar absorbed
into a sussurus
of sad here now.

It is just the way it is
for some,
the tune borne,
the one they were born
to whistle.

 

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

A poem for Play It Again, Sam on With Real Toads, hosted by the wonderful Margaret Bednar (with pictures by her talented daughter–this is not one.)  The prompt I have used was one  about figurative language.

 

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Retreat–After Some Time Spent Macrobiotic

May 22, 2014

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Retreat–After Some Time Spent Macrobiotic

I wanted to control fate, tried my diet.
I wanted you to not be lying
when you said you loved me, so looked to yin
and yang for answers, as if the singing
of souls might be harmonized and made bright
simply by eschewing milk–it made one cry–
supposedly–even if not spilt–
just as other foods were dogma-bilked
to make one cold, hot, mad. So, I would eat
and not-eat myself to some high state
of calm you would adore. But then we stayed
where cheese was melted much, meditated
for days silently–yogurt–and I,
for reasons too painful to describe,
really needed it–your back, your profile
telling me even across still walkways, halls,
that I could not be your one and only–
I wept, sobbed, knowing it was not the dairy.

*********************************
A drafty poem, written with slant rhyme (or imperfect rhyme) for my prompt on dVerse Poets Pub and for Kerry O’ Connor’s prompt on With Real Toads, about pathetic fallacy. Check out the prompts and the wonderful poems they’ve generated.

Process Note–Macrobiotics was/is a dietary program based very loosely/vaguely/dogmatically on ideas of yin and yang and balance, with the idea that certain foods (other than brown rice, and certain lesser amounts of beans, seaweed, locally grown vegetables, pickles) are best avoided for physical, mental and emotional health. The picture above is supposed to be brown rice in a cup/bowl.

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“Some lady thinks this is the quiet car–“

May 21, 2014

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“Some lady thinks this is the quiet car–”
Anonymous but not unplumbed passenger

Dear man, the back of whose head is crew-
cut in front of me.
I really don’t want to hear about
your relationship with your father
Memorial Days–
how he only cared about himself
and you were stuck doing nothing
except that one time you stayed over
a drug store in Rehobeth
and your grandma came too
and she told him a thing or two–

I’m also not truly interested
in your brother who just
took off, had friends/adventures unlike you, who didn’t,
so you say, know how to socialize.
(Why am I not surprised
to hear that?)

Or how you love car trips
(believe me, from this train seat where
I was sleeping till your cell rang,
I wish you could achieve that love.)

I’m sorry but your trip to Rome doesn’t actually sound so fabulous,
not even the FANTASTIC Vatican–

Nor do I much care
about the person on the end of your line who is helping
with your healing process–

I confess that it bothers me that I am so eager
to shut down your narrative since it involves matters
that I myself might write of at some length–

Outside, the crinkled surface of blue water shines with a startling brilliance
through trees, their limbs managing delicacy
despite the blur, the green glowing by–but you have your curtain drawn–
oh, why would you want a window to distract you
from your flow–
and I wonder, with as much focus as my disrupted
internal monologue can muster, if I am trying to shut out
your landscape of gab
in some parallel (if not striped woven)
way—-

“That’s what I said,” you throw in,
and yes, I think, we know.

*********************************
A poem written on an Amtrak train for Mary’s “quotation” prompt on Dverse Poets Pub.

I’m sorry; it’s an old picture that doesn’t quite fit. All rights reserved though.

ps==this poem slightly edited since first posting.

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Across the Bridge (the day before giving birth)

May 18, 2014

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Across the Bridge (the day before giving birth)

 

I walked and walked the whole day through to give
my baby the idea that Brooklyn
was pretty nice, a place she’d like to live.

Even with the fear of bladder buckling,
I crossed the Williamsburg–quite a feat–
no baby was I.  Still, dear Brooklyn,

I whispered, at the water’s wished retreat
(as belly nosed its way to other shore.)
Yes, crossed the Williamsburg on swollen feet,

but baby still stuck fast; she needed more
than just the span of river crossed to coax
her belly to nose its way to other shore–

So, sure, I told her, we would be good folks,
and promised too all I could of this side’s world–
spans that were just, rivers not too cross to coax–

for I so wanted to know you, little girl,
I walked and walked the whole day through to give
a promise I could not make–that this my world
was pretty nice, a place you’d like to live.

 

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

Here’s kind of a weird poem–a terzanelle, which is combination terza rima and villanelle (meaning that it has interlocking rhymes and lines)  written for Kerry O’Connor’s prompt on With Real Toads. Check out Kerry’s prompt and her own poem for a much better explanation and version of the form. 

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The morning before a funeral for another–out for some air

May 17, 2014

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The morning before a funeral for another–out for some air

From its handsomeness
and smallish size, I know
it must have been hers
and hesitate.
But it’s a raincoat
left in the hall closet
and it’s raining too hard
for no cover, so
I put on what’s not been worn
for ten years
and jog/walk out.

Buttoning the collar–it’s cold
in the rain–I catch the scent
of her lipstick–
a perfume of waxed
flowers–not
a favorite scent, but I inhale
as much as I can, so that my breath
is out of sync with the
slow fall of my feet
through the sluiced streets,
then the damp tow path.

Though, even as I’m conscious
of the particularity of her
in that scent,
I know that what I’m really trying to find
is life itself, life
after death–
some whisper from the ghost
of lipstick ten years gone
of the soul’s
perseverance.

As I turn
towards the river, a cardinal settles crimson
on the misted rail that separates the walk
from the muddy flow, less
than an arm’s breadth
away–
Just on, come roses,
a profusion of pink-red,
and beyond, a perfect cadmium line hangs
like a sign
from a man’s neck–the leash
of the dogs he lets roam-

and I see now in the scent at my own neck,
her smile, a bright crescent whose shape
I try to compare to a sliver
of sideways moon, but that I realize,
as I jog on, is more truly like
the outline of a child’s palm cupped
to receive wonder–

suddenly there is a surfeit of water
everywhere–the path gleaming,
the river swollen, a fountain someone forgot
to turn off, and there–
and there–
a splash in the current
of something adept at surfacing
and diving again
that I never quite
catch sight of.

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Here’s a draft poem, written just for myself, that I am also posting to With Real Toads Open Link Night.  I call it a draft.  I have a strong inclination to take out the entire third stanza.  It’s also been suggested to me that I should take out the leash!  Any thoughts from readers would be much appreciated.  

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Fault Lines

May 14, 2014

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Fault Lines

Mea culpa mea culpa mea maxima culpa–
mostly, I say it sans latinate hoopla.
I’m sorry, my fault, like the big San Andreas,
cracks me in two–the scales that do weigh us
find me as lacking, as far from perfection,
as star from Mariana’s entrenched mid-section–
it’s not generalized failing–that much I know–
but what wrong I’ve done, I will not say now.

*****************
A poem of sorts for Mama Zen’s Words Count on With Real Toads--to write a confession in 65 words (or less.) Just made it, without title.

Process note–the Mariana’s Trench–deepest place in the ocean.

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What I love– (painting oranges from the imagined perspective of Seraphine Louis, an outsider artist)

May 11, 2014
By Seraphine Louis

By Seraphine Louis

 

What I love–  (painting oranges from the imagined perspective of Seraphine Louis, an outsider artist)

–That when I hold a brush
I go away,
that only the eyes
stay.

And the orange.

As a child, I’d pull the sheet full-up
so that no one else could see
the pale blue me
breathing shallowly cloth’s suffocated folds,
but this moment’s neither muffled blue
nor me, but the airy light of orange,
where canvas is freely taut and breath
comes in the easy vein
of leaves, vining.

Sometimes, they are one eye
that inhales the altogether,
but mostly the eyes are many–
they peer from my grip
on the brush and from the tip
of the brush itself,
as it redampens in the blink
of pigment,
and as it looks up too,
in the quickened stare
of the I that is not there.

The tip circles up, around,
a twirl that could dance the sun, the moon,
that could pirouette any
planet, but arcs right now
an orange,
this truly and forever only orange,
until the next one.

The peekhole of the orange looks out at me,
that place that once connected it
to green,
the peekholes of all the oranges.
I don’t need to press them to my eye
knowing as I do what they do hold–the souls
of oranges-
able, with brush in hand,
to see into them
from arm’s length, and maybe even
from a greater distance.

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

I’m calling this one a draft.  It is written belatedly  for the prompt of  Fireblossom, (Shay of Shay’s Word Garden)  on With Real Toads to write about an image of Seraphine Louiw, a naive/outsider artist, who ended life in a mental institution, not painting.  Look at Shay’s wonderful prompt to read more, but the poem really has to do with painting, I think, and its absorptions, especially for someone who approaches it without all the concerns of a more established/professional painter.  

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What he spoke of

May 10, 2014

 

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What he spoke of

My father did not talk much
except to say, “listen to Momma,” or,
more commonly, “look at Momma,”
for my mother,
a bit of a child inhabiting her,
mandated many
look-at-me moments,
her favorite when she modeled old clothes
to show that they still fit,
or didn’t–
”gee,” holding the two flaps of
zip across a hump
of underwear-covered
hip–”was I thin back then,
or what?”

Though what he said even more frequently, to her, to me,
was “let me give you a kiss,”
which, as illness nestled throughout
his body, stoppering his
throat, bogging down
his mouth, was not always
a pure pleasure,
yet also was–
sweetness way
outweighing decay–

What he did not talk of much
was God–
This was not because he didn’t believe
but because he believed
so strongly.

Oh, he talked of Him before meals–
the Lord,
“who has given us
this bounty,”
but not the Lord
after death–the Lord, who not only giveth
but taketh away-

Because, I think, he didn’t much believe
in the “taketh away” part.

Not that he had not lost things.

But he had no doubt that what was lost
would be found.

So that when that nestling illness reared
its head, and there was talk
of next
decisions–going to the hospital or staying home
to die,
staying at the hospital or coming home
to die–
his only question ever–
“but what will happen
to Momma?”
Even in the moment that he died–
and, believe me, dying
is hard, not-breathing not
what the body
desires–it was her
he patted, consoled–knowing that she
did not hold inside
that same sure light–

I think this morning about stars,
partly because they rhyme with “are”,
and, like being and not being,
are wonders of the universe,
but too, because of a certain kind
of love (”of course, I miss him terribly,”
she says each time life’s
being managed)
whose light is seen, even after
it might be
extinguished–
these are not things that
can be readily taken off or completely
grown out of,
thankfully.

 

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

A poem for Claudia Schoenfeld‘s prompt on dVerse Poets Pub about using conversation/dialogue in poetry. (I’m not sure the picture quite fits, and also sorry about the rather gloomy posts, a death in my extended family this week, not of my father who died a couple of years ago, but of my very-much-loved father-in-law. I don’t feel comfortable writing of that, but it has made me think of my own dear father.)   

  

Categories: elephants, poetry
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Comments: 27 Comments

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