Evening falls early and quite cold in Zuccotti Park. At the bottom, a yogi type was instructing a group (sitting) in some kind of relaxing breathing exercise. Everyone seemed pretty relaxed.
Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ category
Monday Evening in Zuccotti Park (Walking By “Occupying Wall Street”)
October 17, 2011
“Magpie Tales” – Ping and Less Ping.
October 16, 2011
In my ongoing exploration of online writing and poetry sites, I am participating today in Magpie Tales, a site, hosted by Tess Kincaid, that sets up an interesting picture prompt. The picture was a photograph of skewered ducks hanging in a Chinese restaurant, before a slightly smiling cook. (I like to use my own art work where possible so have done my own copy of it above.)
Here’s the poem:
At a Restaurant On Mott
There is something about the Chinese,
at least when it comes to
restaurants, that does not consider
Ping (the little white duck
of my childhood who wafted
paper-lantern-like down an
unscrolled Yangtze river, among
junks of pen, ink, watercolor.)
There is something that smiles
as wide as a ladle, that
gleams with anticipatory,
and unmitigated,
satisfaction
at the sight, for example, of a chicken’s foot
streaming with small galaxies
of golden globules.
There is something that doggedly
digests the dog-eat-dogness of this
world in a way that the limp cartilage of
my vegetarian fingers simply cannot grasp;
a realism as rooted as
galic/ginger/turnips/webbed feet/hooves,
which my Ping-popping
anemia could probably profit from.
Nonetheless, I’ll stick to the tofu.
Flash Friday 55 – Short Short – (Teacher?)
October 13, 2011
As part of my (kind of random!) exploration of online poetry and prose sites, I am making my first Flash Friday 55 post, which is a post somehow indelibly connected to the G Man, Mr. Know-it=all, and involves the writing of a 55 word story.
Teacher?
When they were good, she let them
color around the Bible verses they’d
copied out.
When they were bad, she had them
stand before the class, and
slap themselves, exhorting as they lapsed
(second graders get tired),
“harder, harder.”
A God-fearing woman, she felt
called to teach them much; the fear part,
they learned.
To Drafts! Revisions! Community! Poetry! Wine!
October 12, 2011
Drafts!
Kind of a funny evening after a very tense day. The tension I think was chemical–well, partly–modern life is so so busy it makes for tension even in the near comatose. (Also, in this day and age, if you are lucky enough to be employed, you tend to have an awful lot to do.) But I also took an herb this morning, Gingko Biloba, which is meant to protect against brain dulling, but I think, in my case, may have caused brain hypersensitivity.
Then came the evening, which was subsumed in several long and worrisome telephone calls. The great part of having aging parents is having aging parents; the difficult part is having aging parents. The great certainly far outweighs the difficult, but where there is a significant risk of loss, there is the significant fear of loss.
And then, for some reason, I started looking through old draft poems that are on this blog, but virtually in no other file of mine. Although I spent some energy on the drafts on the days I wrote each of them, I then virtually forgot about most of them, never refining, editing or even looking at them.
But tonight, perhaps because I should be working overtime on something else, all those unfinished poems suddenly beckoned.
Partly, this interest in old drafts has been sparked by my recent involvement in various online poetry websites and blogs, which really has been very inspiring.
The glass of wine I had with dinner also seemed to make the call of these old draft poems somewhat more eloquent.
Still! To old notebooks! Drafts! Unfinished manuscripts! Poetry blogs! (Here here!)
Young Palm – Adult Child
October 11, 2011
I am posting the new poem below for the dVerse Poets Pub “Open Link” night and also for Gooseberry Garden’s poetry picnic.
Adult Child
It seemed to her walking on a beachside street
near the home of aging parents
that she saw in the five feet
of a young palm, the slightly goofy grace
of a fawn or baby giraffe:
in the ridges of green trunk–
knock-knees; in the froth of
lime green frond–the soft bristle of
first-sprout hair; overall a sense of oversized
hooves, paws, the floppy underfooting of
fledgling wonder.
Yet even as she held the young palm
in the back of her mind, another childishness
crept to the forefront–a child’s
fear of death–not fear of the unknown, or
even loss, but of moist brown earth,
clods of non-human
clay, the closing-in of lonely terrible cold; a fear of death that does not
truly believe in death but does know darkness.
It clung to her through the visit
until, at the shore itself, after they had tossed in
a rough sea, which, in the power of that fear, was
almost intolerable to her, and her husband passed
a towel over the brilliance beading their skin,
she could not stop herself from reaching back to him
and whispering, oh please
don’t let me be buried, and he, confused,
wrapped strong limbs (a Northern person, he is so unlike a palm) around
her trunk, softly kissing and trying jokes, till she said again, please and
promise, and he did.
Then, determined to cast off the still-stalking fear, she darted awkwardly
to the surf and willed herself into a cartwheel
at the edge of the ocean-firmed sand, and when that one worked, another, and
another again, knowing that one cannot will ebullience, but also
that there is nothing
like turning upside down for clearing a head, and
another one, until blinking in the shine, they marveled, before
the next wave, at
the clarity of the palm prints, there, in the wedge of sand and sea,
spread wide, five-fingered.
As always, all rights reserved.
One more tribute to Steve Jobs- iPhoning the Moon.
October 10, 2011
Dear Steve, thank you for catching me the moon. Thanks for letting me put it in my pocket.
More than than that, thanks for equipping me to somehow see it better.
Yes, I know all about being here and now. (I know about it as a concept at least) And I know about the barriers the digital world makes to the real world. (Very very real barriers that can definitely get into this woman’s way.)
And yet, and yet…when I look at that moon with iPhone in hand, I really do look at it. And yes, I know I could have done that through a regular camera, but I never did.
And now I do. I joyously ponder and snap pictures of the moon on the same implement that was just used to speak repeatedly to the woman who’s helping my aging parents (my dad fell, but he’s okay), the same implement just used to send emails to my boss (no, I didn’t finish everything I planned) and the same implement used to check the exact name of Rilke’s wonderful poem ” The Lay of the Life and Death of the Cornet Christopher Rilke,” which reminds me of Rilke’s beautiful descriptions of soldiers’ faces as they speak of home, and, well, somehow, I find myself taking even more pictures of the moon, and really really valuing then.
So, thank you, Steve, and goodnight, Moon.
Bumper Sticker Poem (Live Free or Die?) (Thinking of Germany and Bad Times)
October 8, 2011
This is a fresh-off-the-brain-press poem written for dVerse Poets Pub poetics prompt. Today, it is to write something inspired by a bumper sticker.
So What if You Really Did Live in Germany in the 1930’s?
‘Live free or die’
easy enough to sigh
‘let me be me’
when it’s not really a choice
of to be or not to be,
but the voicing of
a complaint, the price
of sainted gas
is too damn–
(kind of half-assed,
if important in its way),
but what if your neighbor,
even the guy you’re sore at,
who plays the tuba at two,
and happens to be a Jew,
is dragged off in the night?
In your window, the light
of a seering torch;
on your porch
the pound of booted step;
and your wife has wept
with fear, your
children so very near,
and you know,
yes, although you know,
it’s terribly wrong,
and you long
(somewhere)
(somehow)
to dare
not to bow
to whatever inner voice
now says, the choice
is not your own.
Okay, you’ve got a gun
but you’ve also got
a son, and
they’ve taken his,
that neighbor–who–
he had one too–
not yours,
yours, who purrs
as he sleeps,
you see the peeps
of dreams beneath his eyelids–
what do you do then?
Repetition Raises A Villanelle (“Shattering”)
September 24, 2011
This is another post inspired by dVerse Poets Pub, a really supportive website for online poets. The prompt this time concerned poems that deal in repetition. As followers of this blog know, I’m devoted to the villanelle, a poetic form that is based on repeating line sequences. This villanelle is part of a pair–its companion piece, “Burned Soldier” may be found here, as well as a discussion of how to write a villanelle. Both poems were inspired by the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Any thoughts or suggestions most welcome.
Shattering
The shattering of lives should take some time.
It shouldn’t come in flashes, clods of dirt,
no moment for altered course, for change of mind.
The actual choice ahead should be well-signed–
pre-emptive smoke, perhaps a blood-soaked shirt–
the shattering of lives should take some time.
He knew that road was risky, heard a whine,
but in the end those warnings were too curt,
no moment for altered course, for change of mind.
Hard to foresee your own true body lined
with metal plates and plastic tubes of hurt;
the shattering of lives should take some time.
So many hours after to refine
what happened in that second’s blinding lurch,
no moment for altered course or change of mind.
Or was it fate? A studied path, not whim?
His heart tried hard to measure out the worth
of shattering lives. It would take some time,
with no moment for altering course or mind.
(All rights reserved.)
P.S. – I’ve posted a lot of villanelles, which is a favorite form for many years. I love the music- and yet, the repetition. They can be found by checking out that category from home page.
Another Sestina (Sigh….) “Vacuum”
September 23, 2011
(Supposed to be cigarette smoke)
This is a poem, a sestina, that I’ve posted before, but I’m linking it tonight to the liv2write2day blog of Victoria Ceretto-Slotto, in which she asks for poems writtenabout the dark, or shadowed, self. I’ve written a lot of dark poems lately, so could not quite bear a new one, but this poem deals with these issues, at least for its characters.
The sestina is a fairly complex form which uses six six-line stanzas, each line ending one of six repeating words, closing with a three-line “envoie” that uses all six repeating words. (More about the form in yesterday’s post.) It’s a challenging form; the goal is to make the repeated words hypnotic, ironic, thought-provoking, meaningful rather than formulaic or forced.
Hah!
I’ve posted another sestina called “Pink” which is really a better poem then the one below. This one was my first attempt and, although it uses the form, it does so by using fairly generic repeating words. So, it’s a bit of a cheat. (See, I’m already going to dark places!)
The poem tells a story, but keep in mind that it’s a creative work, which, in my case, at least, means it has large elements of fiction, dramatization, exaggeration.
Vacuum
When my aunt came to visit, they talked
of old times, my aunt hunching over
her cigarette, her heavy breasts held up
by an arm across her middle, my mother
smoking as well, her cheeks like a vacuum
cleaner, puffing out. She only smoked when
her sister came, then turned into a teen when
the folks are out. Gestures sullen, she talked
the rebel, as if to fill the vacuum
of her youth, when she never thought she’d get over
all the obstacles they’d set, her own mother
not understanding, no wonder she got fed up.
She loved them, yes, but everything was up
from there–farm life. Especially then, when
owning land was something, not, like her mother
thought, everything. You were still talked
about, looked down on, passed over,
a farm not bringing cash to fill the vacuum
of nice clothes, furniture, rugs to vacuum.
Though what they remembered–that night they stayed up–
was when the government took their land, building over
their farm a munitions plant for the war, and when
their father went north to rawer land, and they talked
of joining him when their own grandmother
was “stronger.” (So they said.) Loved by my mother,
the grandma favored her in turn, filling a vacuum
in the heart of the middle child, the child who talked
of appearances, sticking her nose up
the others thought, the grandma protecting her when
they mocked, but sick now, her life nearly over.
They worked shifts at the plant, then each took over
the grandma’s care–aunt, their mom, my mother.
‘But who was with her,” my aunt asked, eyes round, “when
she died?” My mother thought: “I had out the vacuum,
I remember that. Pulled it out after ringing up
the doctor,” my mother smoking hard now as she talked.
“So it was you,” my aunt said, “when—” “I tried to vacuum
fast.” But slowly my mother spoke, smoke rising up
like traces of what could not be done over, slowly she talked.
P.S. I am also linking this piece to Imperfect Prose for Thursdays. 
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