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Thinking of GOP Candidates — Auguries of Disingenuousness

December 15, 2015

Auguries of Disingenuousness
(US  GOP Presidential Candidates as of December 2015) 

To see a world in a grain of sand,
don’t make it glow with carpet-bombs.
To flower heaven in your hand,
don’t turn strewn rocks into lined tombstones.

Eternity’s cut by every hour
that we barter off the soul–
the harlot’s cry quite overpowered
by those who’d hawk our all.

Burnishing our fears with bling,
combing bald hates with shine,
they boast they’ll get us everything,
snaking oil o’er twists of spine.

But the grains that hold the world they see
are measurements of ammo–
Oh good lord, please save me
from their deserts of glow-woe,
from their plasticked deserts of woe.

(Optional refrain:  oh-glow-woe-woh-woh-woh-woh/oh-glow-woe-woh-woh-woh=woh–)

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Not sure about the rhythms at the end of this one, but here’s a poem originally inspired by Kerry O’Connor’s Real Toads prompt and based very very very loosely on William Blake’s poem, the Auguries of Innocence (that begins with “to see the world in a grain of sand”–and finding heaven in a wildflower and moves on to the winding sheet woven by the harlot’s cry.)  My offering for Real Toads Open Link Platform. 

The pic is mine; not sand, but detailed (ha.) 

Process notes–a grain is a weight used for measurement of propellant in bullets and other projectile weaponry; plastic refers to all kinds of things of course, but also certain explosives. 

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Comments: 8 Comments

Bell

December 13, 2015

Version 2

Bell

I am nothing, I am taught–vagina a brand
of absence.  Not true–
I am something, I am taught,
in the way that the chair you sit upon is something, or the cot
where you throw yourself down, or that fine pinky ring that one day
you will pawn–but when I am taught
something else–even just the writing of these words,
the chair will stand, the cot straighten, and print everywhere
will ring out to me, inked clappers pealing
this whole damned, whole blesséd, world.

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

This – yes, I’m calling it a draft, as it is early in the morning here-was written for Kerry O’Connor’s prompt on Real Toads on micro-poetry.  I am afraid it is micro-prose if micro-anything. Kerry asked us to think of seeing the world through a grain of sand–here I was thinking of something that sounds perhaps small–girls’ education–but is huge.  And really, it could be the education of any child, boy or girl–

The pic is an old one taken by me many years ago in Nepal (early 80’s)–I happen to have that pic, I don’t think that girls’ education is particularly worse in Nepal than in many many other parts of the world. 

PS – of course, I am not referring to my personal experience here–lucky enough to grow up in a place and time where although women were under certain obstacles, they were allowed to thrive. 

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized
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Comments: 13 Comments

Field

December 11, 2015

DSC00373

Field

What can I write of?
That I remember the blood red of the planks of the back yard picnic table
that Celeste sat upon, Celeste who stretched to the skies when I was small and measured myself by
brick walls.

How is life so sad and yet so ample?
Ramon
Fernandez who spoke to Wallace Stevens
cannot help me,
only the dusk with its mustards and blues can say
anything and it insists

that I am beautiful, and that you
are beautiful too–

And that, honestly,
does not correspond to
the blink of
a letter,
rather to the word “mainly”
and “plants”,
and, also, maybe, “green,”
but only that green that is no longer
green as night falls, and the”‘mainly” that means
inevitable
and the plants that will grow
regardless,
even if no one visits our graves,
the ones with the frayed
fronds that remember us
as birds and our flight
as directional–

yes, those; yes, that
Celeste–

************
A poem of sorts.  Unprompted.

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Comments: 5 Comments

And the Sixth Element’s the Page

December 11, 2015

And the Sixth Element’s the Page

Terry Pratchett says the fifth element’s
surprise–this, to me, seems the most prevalent:
surprise that earth is not what you thought it would be,
or is; surprise that air can still feel free
or doesn’t–is there, but, like a boa,
ties upon your chest a knot of woe, a
chest of not, an anti-treasure.
Surprise that fire is lately measured
by the thousands of acres, or the double
digit pulls of a trigger finger.  Trouble
so often spelled as water, but–surprise too–
that its flow still washes us anew. Oh, wise, you,
Sir Terry, and your inky types, who know
to prise smiles from mere words, mere us, this now.

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

Draft daft poem.  Inspired by Bjorn Rudberg to think of a sonnet (sort of) and by the Real Toads prompt by Hannah Gosselin on the classical elements–earth, air, water, fire.  My favorite writer who discusses the elements–actually my favorite writer when he discusses anything–Sir Terry Pratchett–added in the element of surprise. 

I’m not sure why I am using this picture– the little dog seems hardly surprised!  But it’s a pic I did that makes me smile so put it here.  All rights reserved.  

Categories: dog, poetry, Uncategorized
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Comments: 15 Comments

December Morning (55)

December 6, 2015

December Morning

The frost sprouts violets in the field today,
seeds stars,
makes proof of the universality of
the universe–
that is, what I saw in the sky pre-dawn
now shows itself
upon the ground.

In the sparked blinks
of that bright dew
how can we fear
dissolution,
we who so long
to be found
beautiful.

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Here’s one came out in 55 words first go–I did trade a couple of initial words “after-go”–but it really kind of arrived. Unfortunately, it is really hard to capture a good picture of frost.  The one I am posting shows it furring apple trees and not the glisten.

This is a second poem for Hedgewitch’s 55 prompt on Real Toads, based on holly and ivy and pairing–I can try to justify this, but will just apologize and post.  k.

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Comments: 20 Comments

Teeth Brushed by Leaves on the Way Out

December 5, 2015

Teeth Brushed by Leaves on the Way Out

I’d like to speak sometimes
in Tree–
pronouncing branches
that catch, when splintering,
in your limbs;

or Dawn,
my words, enlightened;
detailing, without wooden exposition,
those branches held
in a crux of you.

Other times (though too rarely)
I’d speak
in Listen,
the tenses of bark
muted by that past, that present, that sweet
imperfect.

 

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A draft flash 55-word poem for the marvelous Hedgewitch’s (Joy Ann Jones) prompt (based on the flash 55 meme by the inimitable G-Man) on With Real Toads.  Special bonus for a pairing.  Not sure this qualifies!  (Photo is mine–all rights reserved.) 

This is actually from a much longer poem written today, with other verses, but maybe better to keep this short version!  Hurrah for editing.  

Speaking of editing, I mistyped the title on first posting!  Agh! 

Categories: 55, poetry, Uncategorized
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Comments: 16 Comments

Fear of Failing (Dread Aftermath)

November 27, 2015

20151127-094831-35311199.jpgFear of Failing (Dread Aftermath)

Exposure of your inadequacy
is like that hand you don’t want
diddling you;
it has pushed itself down your pants
or up–
you can smell the grimed lines
of the thick-stumped digits; your face
burns–

somehow, it is all
your fault–maybe you allowed
your arms to fall asleep
so they could be rolled, logs,
then cinched
behind your back–

Logs joined in the child’s set you
keep picturing
start a foundation, corner
a little brown house-
but you don’t see how your arms, so skewed,
could build anything
that might stand.

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

Draftish poem for Fireblossom‘s (Shay Simmons) prompt on With Real Toads to write about dread, this, about the exposure of failure. 

 

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Comments: 19 Comments

Doll Legs

November 21, 2015

5530182938_8da9ff6d76_b

Doll Legs

I had, you said, little doll legs,
and you, curved ankled,
which meant, though it rankled,
that you would always be the woman
and me, the child.

Tonight, the sky is striated with clouds
that look like scars
or maybe mouths, made to stay straight
rather than curve down, clown frown–
that kind of cry
sometimes found
in sky.

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

A poem of sorts–you can call it a draft–for Margaret Bednar’s referential “Play it Again Sam” prompt on with Real Toads, based in my case, on Kerry O’Connor’s prompt about the great South African poet,  Ingrid Junkar.

The above pic is of Betty Grable, who supposedly had “curved ankle” legs.  You will note them.  Photo from flicker–no copyright infringement intended. 

 

 

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Comments: 15 Comments

When I Only Thought To Write of Paris

November 14, 2015

IMG_3504

When I only thought to write of Paris

I remember when I only thought to write of Paris
when I wanted to wallow in the blue sky
of the basement breakfast room
of our cheap hotel near the velvet of
La Dame de La LIcorne,
or when I allowed myself to taste
good but half-limp croissants like those shoved
to the peeling door
of our bed-sized room near Notre Dame where,
already broken-up,
we wept–

And when I thought the World Trade Center
was horribly gaudy
with its fluted gold columns, burnished fake
as a plastic fire,
its red carpets thick
as the Donald’s wished-for bangs, its long swish
of many
trooped flags–

And later how strange it felt
when my children’s PC New York school
hung the Stars and Stripes over its door,
and how, this time, when we wept
it was like Jesus, not
for ourselves–

And I remember–was it September 16?–
singing in the alcove behind the altar, our West Village church
(because of the crowd)
and how then when we wept, we did not
feel like Jesus but
sorrowful little children, who,
no matter how tightly their hands are clasped
cannot bear the streets ahead
or any more
dark nights–

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

Another poem for my prompt on Real Toads about writing to an exercise.  I don’t know quite how to express my sadness and fraternite with what is going on in France–a start, I guess–

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Comments: 19 Comments

Angora, or a Female Baby Boomer Looks Back

November 14, 2015

Angora, or a Female Baby Boomer Looks Back

I do not remember this grey
ghosting our days,
gaunting the grass below
childhood windows,

though the air was thick
as boughs then too,
air that could be cut into blocks, stacked
like igloos, only warm.

Still, we slipped
through its chinks, able, so young, to think
a back slide sideways,
to glide from the yawn of bed
(barefoot, or flexing Keds)
to the blood red wood of

next door’s back yard table
where we sparred the way girls do–
in slouching talk and prancing walk–
thighs planking the picnicked planks,
too big, we assumed,
to slip through those cracks–

not understanding that it was not the dark
beneath the wood we should
have feared, but something much more fuzzy

that seems to me after years
like the shawl of this fall morning,
whose sharpness pricks
as sure but fine as that rabbit fur sometimes woven
into wool,
or the itch of the sheep itself–

Why could we not
stand up for ourselves?
(Or, maybe, I only write
of me.)

 

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My rather convoluted attempt at my own prompt on With Real Toads to make a poem from a writing exercise.  Please visit and try for yourself. 

I’m not sure the pic goes with the poem–but I like it–it is my photo taken of leaves falling from the sky.

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized
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Comments: 15 Comments

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