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One Way of Looking At Thirteen Blackbirds? (“Homage To Wallace Et Al.”)

April 7, 2012

Photo by Tracy Grumach

Homage to Wallace Stevens and His Thirteen-Sided Bird

I.

One problem with the way I sometimes live in
this small-cubicled, cylindrical-chuted,
left-brained world is that
instead of finding thirteen ways
of looking at a blackbird, I get stuck
in one way of looking at thirteen blackbirds.

II.

Other times, like the thin men of Haddam, I look for golden
birds, and fail to enjoy the ebon sheen
of present wings, or worse, mistake them for the shadow
of my own equipage.

III.

O Wallace, Sage of Hartford–Connect(itcut) me
with nothing that is not there, and also
the nothing that is;
the path flown by the
blackbird, hard to miss, harder
still to trace.

IV.

I often revisit
regrets.
Blackbirds circle
the chaff-strewn field, cawing
when they land.

V.

“Should” is a word to which
no blackbird
pays much mind.

VI.

My mind, when sad,
ia like a tree in which
there are no
blackbirds.

VII.

Sometimes the heart takes flight, sighting, hawk-like,
the bright eye of an idea.
Other times the heart takes flight
simply because it has seen
a blackbird.

VIII.

A man and a woman are one.
A man, a woman and a blackbird
are a man, a woman and a blackbird.

IX.

No blackbird will ever
be baked into one
of my pies.

X.

Blackbird singing in the dead of night,
thank you.

XI.

When I want to see a blackbird, I just shut
my eyes.  It helps if there’s bright
sun.

XII.

In city rains, each droplet carries one small speck
of
blackbird.

XIII.

The tree trunks stretch limbs of jet black wing;
my heart expands and constricts at once;
in this, it is like
the blackbird.

The blackbird, wings beating, labors,
then soars; in this, it is like
my heart.

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

The above is a poem (or draft poem) inspired by the the beautiful photograph of  Tracy Grumbach, above, a dVerse Poets Pub Poetics prompt, and also, of course, “Thirteen Ways of Looking At A Blackbird” by the incomparable Wallace Stevens.  I am not sure if Tracy’s photograph is really of blackbirds–they look more like raptors to me–but the Stevens came to mind, so I used a bit of poetic and ornithologic license.

This is  also my draft poem written for the 7th day of National Poetry Month. 

Have a lovely holiday–Easter or Passover.  And thanks much for all your kind support.  

Categories: poetry
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Comments: 28 Comments

Flash Fiction 55 – “Getting Out the Vote” – 6th day of National Poetry Month

April 6, 2012

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Getting Out the Vote

 

Squinting into our list (registered voters), we wander
squeezed checkerboard (row-house, alley).
Big belly (in somehow-suspended shorts) answers
our next knock,
holding a machete amidst curls
at the cleve of his navel, also
a mango.

Wrong address, he says.  We’re all
felons in this house.

We apologize profusely
for taking up
his time. 

The above is my (draft) poem for the 6th day of National Poetry Month!  The poem itself (excluding title) is also exactly 55 words.  So, please tell it to the G-Man!  Also, try the game yourself!

Also, also…. have a Good Friday.

Categories: iPad art, poetry, Uncategorized

Comments: 11 Comments

“On Commuter” (The Rubaiyat, It Is Not!)

April 5, 2012

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On Commuter

The leaf buds veil, like a thin chemise,
a window of near naked trees
while the train I ride both clacks and squeaks
as I think of ways to earn my fees.

It’s not that I am truly venal
(though these urges aren’t exactly vernal)–
it’s just that I must make my keep
with day job–no, make that diurnal.

Of course, I’d rather live by rhyming.
My vocab’s good and so’s my timing.
But, alas most poets don’t get paid;
must spend their lives in nickel-diming.

So, here I stew and here I scheme,
as brain wheels spin and train wheels scream,
while just outside Spring springs pristine,
its force consumed in purer green.

Ha!  Here’s my poem for the fifth day of National Poetry Month and also for dVerse Poet Pub’s “Form for All” challenge, hosted by Sam Peralta, a/k/a Semaphore.  (The form is a Rubiyat Quatrain.)   I am also linking this post to the Purple Treehouse.

Happy Holidays All!

AND PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE, IF YOU ARE IN THE MOOD FOR FUN, CHECK OUT “NOSE DIVE,” my very silly comic novel, only 99 cents on Kindle and about ten times that in print!

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized
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Comments: 26 Comments

“Heart of Stone” – Thinking About the Stone (4th day of National Poetry Month)

April 4, 2012

Heart of Stone

One of the miracles of Easter, it increasingly
seems to me, is that the stone
at the tomb was moved.
Stones
are heavy; they tend,
in stories of great import,
to be obstinate.
(Think of the re-roller of Sisyphus, the innumerable boulders
that hound Wiley Coyote, the uncaring pyramid of Aida.) 

But this stone
was moved–
not with grunts and conniptions, chains tied
to a flatbed, crushed toes or blistering hands
(shaken in thin air to take away the
sting)– 

I am not particularly devout.  I am sometimes even
suspicious of religion (especially when
capitalized).  But I’ve also been closed out
by death, my loves shut down, and know that if I were
a stone, the sorrow of each loss would crack me right
to the crystal, squeeze out sanded tears that would wash
the feet of any who came near, break
the heart of heart in me, turn shale to dust, till we
together, my loves and I, could mingle one more time.

No wonder the stone was moved, and yet,
yes, wonder. 

 

The above, which I first called “Heart of Heart”, is my draft poem for the 4th day of National Poetry Month.  (I am writing a draft poem a day this April, but refuse to call the exercise “Napowrimo”, as I just can’t stand the sound of that name.)  It’s been a bit hard to come up with inspiration, especially since I am very busy with my “day job” right now, so what I’ve found useful is to look at draft poems done in prior year.   This was based on an absolutely different draft poem written two years on the 4th day of April–it  is pretty rough but, if you are interested, it can be found here.  
Also, if you are interested, check out my first published book of poetry GOING ON SOMEWHERE.   Thanks much!

Categories: poetry
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Comments: 9 Comments

“Sparrow Dreams” (Revisited) – Third Day of National Poetry Month

April 3, 2012

Sparrow Dreams

My child is a sparrow.

The other women hold their babes in arms; I cup mine in my palms, gently, for she is a sparrow, so fragile that I am afraid that I will crush her if I hug, though sometimes I run my forefinger over her small brown head, feeling the soft downiness above brittle skull.

We sit on a bench at Rockefeller Center; it is a grey day, the air only a few shades lighter than the buildings.  Our concrete bench is also grey, speckled with black grains, like crumbs of tar, sand, black hole, mixed with the cement; the sculpted box hedge at my back has, at its hollow depths, silvery branches.

She is not even a baby bird.  As I hold her in my palm, she tilts her head, her eyes bead bright, while the babies of the women around me goggle fleshily; their mothers cooing over them with full-echo cheeks.

I try not to feel less significant.  So, my child is a sparrow.

Then, suddenly, for some reason I cannot  place, I put her down, there, at my side, on the grey stone bench.  I stand, brush my hair back from my face, breath in a space of grey white air.  When I turn about again, she is gone; her soft keel of breast and wing nowhere to be seen.

I search the bench, the bushes; I tug the arms of the women who mill about me.

I cry, I weep, I despair.   The fact that she is a bird means nothing to me now, only that she is gone, my child, my only, my dear.

I wake up weeping. My hands, in the velvet grey of night-morn sheets, trace the soft hard curve of my belly, which is still there, still pregnant.

But all is changed, all is forever different, and I weep on, for I know now that what I am being given is something which may be lost, and that it is a loss that, unlike the child itself, I will not ever be able to bear.

And how, I wonder, will I be able to hold her when she comes–for I know that I must not grip tightly, though she can take flight–

So hard my heart is beating, so fast–

National Poetry Month!  Open Link Night at DVerse Poets Pub!  (Check it out!)  The above which I’m calling a prose poem for these purposes is actually based on a draft poem that I wrote the third day of LAST YEAR’s National Poetry Month.  To view the original, click here!  

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Comments: 43 Comments

“Meeting of the Minds” – Day 2 of National Poetry Month

April 2, 2012

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In past Aprils on this blog, I have posted a draft poem a day in honor of National Poetry Month.  Some of the poems are pretty rough, but the commitment is a fun tool to get one writing poetry and I urge you to join in on the exercise.  Here’s today’s:

Meeting of the Minds 

I never knew, she says, that a body stayed warm
so long. You know.

Me neither, I say.  I didn’t know
either. 

Now we are silent, confirmed in
what we both know, but without a clue
as to what comes
next.  


As always, I welcome and very much appreciate your comments and suggestions, particularly since many of the poems I will be posting this month will be still-in-progress!  That said, if you want to read work of mine that is finished, please please please check out:  my very silly but fun novel, NOSE DIVE,  my book of poetry, GOING ON SOMEWHERE, or my children’s counting book 1 MISSISSIPPI. )

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Comments: 8 Comments

“Man Nesting”- Finding Inner Child (The Crawling Didn’t Quite Do the Trick)

April 1, 2012

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The above is my pictorial take of Tess Kincaid’s photo prompt for The Mag this week;  the original photo was by ParkeHarrison.  And here’s my verbal take:

Man Nesting

He felt like an idiot.

They’d taught him to crawl again; now this.

The crawling had been a bitch; he’d ruined three perfectly good pairs of pants–(yes, they said wear knee pads.  Yes, they’d suggested jeans.)  But the jeans chafed, and who has knee pads hanging around–

You need to find your inner child, she’d insisted.

You need to find your inner adult, he’d hissed back.

But she’d wheedled, wept, then even moved out for a couple of weeks, and had the softest skin ever at the nape of her neck, and a smell that even now as he shut his eyes over the brittle earth scent of mud-crusted stick–(the words “bird spittle” flashed for a single alarming instant)–

–that, even now as he shut his eyes over the scratch of crusted twig, made his whole being ache, rejoice–the feel of her side beneath his palms. He  held the nest sides gently to not further crush the construct, feeling the callouses at the sides of his hands as if he himself were the branches, broken, bound together —

–even as he shut his eyes, lowering this last still-good pair of pants into the wound wood curves—it was a nest, yes, a one-man nest–where did they come up with such things? 

He had said, please, when he found her–he had said, don’t leave me; he had said, ever.  (He hadn’t been able to help himself, the anger whooshing instantly into need).  He had taken her face in those slightly roughened palms–

Tracked with tears, that face had nodded; his own eyes filled too, like a child’s.

So, now, he settled his crooked pants over the annoyance of straw, clod, bristle, knowing knowing knowing, even without this further lesson, that when he went home afterwards, she’d assure him, with both arms, that she saw a difference already.

(Have a great Sunday–check out all the great writing at the Mag, and if you’ve got time, please please  also check out my comic novel, NOSE DIVE,  available on Kindle for just 99 cents and in print for just a bit more.)

Categories: iPad art, poetry, Uncategorized, Vicissitudes of Life
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Comments: 32 Comments

Not Prosaic Nightmare – “Clammed Up”

March 31, 2012

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The wonderful DVerse Poets Pub, hosted by Stu McPherson and the very energetic and diversely prolific Brian Miller, has a Poetics prompt on “nightmare” today.  Below is sort of a prose poem that came to mind; above my drawing.

Clammed up

She is pregnant. It seems that he had something on his finger, something bad. Her mom once joked about an aunt who’d gotten pregnant from her leg.  It must have been something like that.

The worst part is that she’ll have to tell now.  The worst part is that they’ll know.

She turns her bare back to the mirror, craning head over shoulder, though it’s easy enough to see, her eyes lodged in a crack in the ceiling.

The skin is smooth as ever between the shoulder blades, until it isn’t.  The pregnancy shows itself in the sprout of green-white stems.

They are tubular, waxen, like those on a potted plant that sits above the kitchen sink, the dirty dishes.  Only now the sprouts have grown into vines, long tangled ones that dangle from the skin around her spine; and now they are blossoming, clam shell blossoms that pull and weight them.

She knows they can’t truly be clam shells–each holds, within its crust, a cluster of soft violet petals, a yellow stamen–and yet, they are ribbed, hard, grey.

She thinks to cut the vines off.   At least, then, she could wear a t-shirt.

With scissors? A knife?

But she is too scared to cut.  And what about the grove of naked stems?  The dry hard roots?  She pictures a bristled section of lawn, the again and again of her dad’s mower.

Better to uproot.

But how can she tug them out?  They are embedded in her own skin.  She is too scared, too frightened.

And what about the baby?

As she walks from the mirror, she feels the vines following her, the clam shells thumping against her back.

She thinks of tin cans following the car of newlyweds, tin cans and shaving cream and big lipstick kisses.  She went to a wedding once; she was the flower girl.

But the vines are not like tin cans, newlyweds.  They do not clang, but rustle; for no matter how hard the shells themselves might be, they hit bare skin.

(As always, all rights reserved.  And as always, if you’re in the mood for something more humorous, check out my comic novel, NOSE DIVE,  available on Kindle for just 99 cents and in print for just a bit more.)  

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized
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Comments: 17 Comments

Friday Wanting a Nap 55

March 30, 2012

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Friday Afternoon Poem

Actions are louder than words, especially if
the action involves a fall asleep at your desk, in which case,
actions can be quite a bit quieter
than words, unless the fall takes you down
to the floor, keyboard clanging
after you, in which case,
maybe you better shut
the office door
first.

Just a joke, boss!

Here are 55 words for Friday’s Flash 55.  I need to wake up and tell it to the G-Man!  Rest up and have a great weekend.

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Comments: 12 Comments

Some Insist on Living By the Sea – Others Not So Much

March 30, 2012
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Lorenzo Ghiberti (1430-1508), "Christ in the Storm" (Bronze Relief, The Florence Baptistry)

Some Insist On Living By The Sea

Some insist on living by the sea,
waves, even without the wade of Jesus, soothing
the storm in their souls.  Some sleep
to the shush of a stream; some to the silence
of deep pine.  A few–hardy
types, who harken to the habitual–find reassurance
in the clickety rhythmics of nearby rails.
But I wake today in the sure understanding
that my residential pre-requisite
is a dumpster, or
two, whose persistent groans, extended yaws,
hyena bursts of hydraulics, are scheduled (always)
just a bit too early for my alarm.

I should, perhaps,
feel gratitude–they have followed me so
loyally, these dumpsters (trailed by trucks
and cartage contracts)–from apartment to
apartment, neighborhood to neighborhood,
like a stray (huge) cat that I must feed
(unwittingly) in some forgotten but
recurring dream, where we meet on a midnight
curb–me, with my bags
of recyclables, it
with its deep green mountainsides.
And I do–as my back leans against the wall, as the dove softness
of the hour slips to
sheet level, as everything above
tilts, sprawls, clumps,
like so much wadded detritus–feel thankful, yes,
that, in this particular bedroom, I can’t quite smell
the exhaust.

I’m posting this for dVerse Poets Pub’s “Meeting the Bar” challenge to be in the moment; this prompt hosted by Victoria C. Slotto.

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized
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Comments: 16 Comments

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