Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ category

« ManicDDaily home page
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Out of the Box

April 13, 2015

screenshot 2015-04-12 11.25.54.png

Out of the Box

“I closed the box and put it in a closet.”  Joan Didion.

Blood will out.
Maybe not as anticipated.
To date, DNA has exonerated
over 300 people post-
conviction in the U.S.,
more than twenty on
death row.
The total of time wrongly served–
4,505 years.

“Out out damn spot,”
the police shout,
though they use
other terminology:  “Fuck
your breath.”

Death ensues.
People try
to sue.
The black cat bricked up behind the wall,
while quick,
snarls, yowls.
Thank God for cell phone cameras.

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

Here’s a sort of poem for the 13th (I’m guessing) day of April, 2015 National Poetry Month.  This is for Susie Clevenger’s prompt on With Real Toads to write about a Joan Didion quotation.  My figures are taken from the “Innocence Project,” which is a charitable organization in the U.S. that devotes itself to the exoneration of persons wrongfully incarcerated. The quote “fuck your breath” comes from the case of a  recent shooting death in Tulsa, Oklahoma, perpetrated by a “deputy” to the Tulsa Police Department, who is a man who donated large amounts of money to that police department and was allowed to serve as a reserve police member.  He ended up shooting Eric Harris, claiming the death was accidental; that he had only meant to taser Mr. Harris.  (Question–why would he taser the guy anyway?)  The case is reminiscent of the Eric Garner case in Staten Island, New York, in which an African-American man who was suspected of selling loose cigarettes without paying the sales tax on the cigarettes was pressed down into the sidewalk until he died, all the way protesting, I can’t breathe.    

Honestly, I should write a poem about how I’ve bricked all this up myself, really not conscience of all that has been going on in the criminal “justice” world and the war on drugs, despite my childhood in what was then the South – D.C. and Maryland.  Another poem when I can stomach it. 

Screen shot is from the New York Daily News. 

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , , ,

Comments: 11 Comments

Thirteen Ways of Remembering Red Baby Shoes

April 12, 2015

Thirteen Ways of Remembering Red Baby Shoes

I.
His head was a sunny hill that knelt before her
and also (though he was the emperor of children’s footwear)
before the beautiful red shoes.

II.
Garnets hold no lights
nor darknesses
compared to the deep
red shoes.

III.
Her feet were little clumps of dough
made human by
red shoes.

IV.
The red shoes stared up
at the world; the world
could not stop
looking back.

V.
There are red shoes with sharp
heels; there are red shoes cut
on a bias like one
lipsticked lip; there are shoes
that movies are made of, that spin
ruby-starred dreams.

Such shoes are perfectly valid; they too
mark their rosy rhythms
on the street.

But these are not the red shoes
of which I speak.

VI.
The voice of even small red shoes
cannot be silenced.

VII.
The pulse in a young child’s thumbs,
fingertips, fits one moment into the next
like the stitching
of first ever shoes, threaded red. 

VIII.
Some joke that big shoes mean
a good understanding,

But to understand little shoes that are the dark red of even
the unbitter heart, the wearer must bend
to their very soles.

IX.
What steer gave its life
for the red shoes? What bull, what sweet-eyed
long-lashed cow?  their tongues as tuneful as any offered
to Ulysses’s gods–

The aiglets of the red shoes
are as dark with sorrow
as sorrow.
The laces try to tie off those vacuums
in a weave
of ox blood.

X.
How is the heart so heavy
when somewhere walk
red shoes?

XI.
The red shoes were not cherry red, which is not the red
of cherries, meaning that the red shoes
were cherry; the rest of the world
their stone.

The red shoes seemed to
understand this, or maybe they just
didn’t worry about it.

XII.
Oh red shoes even tied tight
you were as soft as a hand crossing the street,
as firm as a hand
crossing.  

XIII.
In the whole of life,
there was only one pair
of red shoes.
Somewhere a sunny hill still kneels before them
one or both knees bent.

 

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

Another drafty poem with my drafty drawing, my 12th for this April 2016 National Poetry Month.  This one was written for Grace’s wonderful prompt on With Real Toads to write something inspired by Wallace Stevens.  Some of the Stevens’ poems that I thought of writing this was “Anecdote of the Jar,” “The Emperor of Ice Cream,” and, of course, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.”  Again so sorry for the length.   Thanks for your patience!

PS have edited slightly since first posting. 

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , ,

Comments: 31 Comments

Under the Apple

April 11, 2015

IMG_5119

Under the Apple

I lay under an apple tree,
Susie, my neighbor, next to me,
the boughs so low we would collide
with green knobs but for backward slide.

It was more or less 1964,
and I was worrying about world war–
twenty years since numbers One and Two
it felt like we were surely due,
while Susie fiddled with her bangs
which over her headband (orange) did hang.
also stood about her face
stuck in a growing-out weird phase.

Later that summer, my dear dog died,
beneath a much much taller tree
my missed catch, the bounced throw bent-
killed by me by accident–
In my weeping, all my woe,
I don’t think I thought any more
about world wars.

So, we veer, we career,
between the world’s cares
and our own–

I walk a hill now, mostly brown,
slip on ice slips that splice the ground,
stop to look at mists across,
the fog that at the top takes pause,
rests its arms on mountain’s brow
or perhaps the fog’s the sky’s low bough,
as the slopes, they lay themselves down.

And how beautiful even what keeps us from seeing can be,
I think,
if we really look.

I realize then that I have booked
fifty years since that low tree,
and despite the fears of Susie, me,
there hasn’t been that conflagration,
that cataclysm of every nation,
rather a series of smaller spasms–
though I suspect I would reflect
differently on all that loss
if I’d been one of those full tossed,
dismembered in those red divisions;
my head low bowed by deadly schisms.

I push my hair back walking home,
my other hand touching milk weed down–
last year’s stalks, without seed pod,
I hardly touch them, do not prod-
but they’re so hollow, black with rot
they just fall as like as not–
that’s just what they do–
fall–

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

A very very drafty poem for the prompt by Sherry Blue Sky on With Real Toads to write about balance and what helps you get through a world of chaos.   (I swear this was inspired by the prompt though I appreciate that it is a very strange take on it. )  This is also my 11th poem of April for this 2015 National Poetry Month.  Sorry for the length! 

PS – the photo is taken in the fall, not now–so there’s a different quality of light and milk weed!  Sorry!  Also have edited since first posting. 

 

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , , ,

Comments: 15 Comments

Submarine (WWI)

April 7, 2015

20150407-061741-22661252.jpgSubmarine (WWI)

The men would scurry from one end of the canister
to the other, human ballast for flow
or torpedo, as he, captain, peered out the short tower
through a glower of misted glass; his task: to make sure
of not-missing, though they did not miss much
at the range submergence admitted.

There were many seamen, of course.
able-bodied no longer, and passengers he justified
with rue.  But what he most remembered was
the horse, the spidered dapple of twitching flanks,
the waves of quake and pulse as it was push-pulled towards
a leap onto a metal lifeboat–how the sky over the
North Atlantic–he seemed to see the whole
through the small skewed scope–
bunched grey as the clouded flesh, bucking teeth yellowed
as sea foam, wild eyes red-blackened
as oiled flames, the darkened forelegs battering the clatter
like swung clubs of the falling night.

He ordered the U-boat down
shouting you, you, at men who needed to move
to keep the balance,
only it was not exactly you in German,
and the tramp of their bare feet less
like hooves–

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

A poem of sorts for the 7th day of this April – 2015 National Poetry Month–linked to Real Toads Open Platform.  A German U-boat was a submarine–I think the official name was “untersee boot.”   The above photograph is not mine, and all rights are reserved to the holder.  (In my poem, the men are scurrying around inside the U-boat, not on the top, but I just loved that photograph.)

 

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , ,

Comments: 21 Comments

What She Pictured Then (Gogo Dancer)

April 6, 2015

What She Pictured Then (Gogo Dancer)

The boredom was what crushed most.  She pictured then
her nipples as satellites, revolving
around their own little–in her case–decent-
sized orbits, ignoring the long-lolling
blur below her cage, for the disco ball,
a million mirrored surfaces of death star
that held her as its ward of light and fall,
casting a fierce laser certain to sear
any worm of flesh that dared squiggle
slobber close, till even so fortified,
she could no longer linger in wiggle;
mind simply had to step away.  Then she tried
to find a way home, a spring when brown dead stalk
gleaned flakes of true star, late snow’s cold clean walk.

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

Here’s a drafty sort of poem–a sonnet (my go-to form when what I’m thinking of isn’t very poetic)–for the 6th day of this April 2015 National Poetry Month, and also my own prompt on With Real Toads to write about seeing stars.   I appreciate that squiggle and wiggle push the envelope in a way that could be deemed mocking here, which I do not mean, but hey!  this is a month of experimentation–

 

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , ,

Comments: 19 Comments

Easter

April 5, 2015

Easter —

For me, the humanity was wrapped up
in the swaddling cloths,
that weaving of dust
that returns to dust,
warp of the born that must then
be borne, the thread-bared–
linen holding to its folds
like a clasp of fingers, ribs,
as if even the unsewn strived
for the shape of flesh, bone, forgiveness–

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

Here’s another poem for April 2015, National Poetry Month (I think my fifth).  This one has 55 words and is posted for the Real Toads prompt hosted by the wonderful Kerry O’Connor.  The pic was taken by me of a stained glass window in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

It snowed much of last night and all day long in the mountains where I live. The good part is that I went skiing.  The bad part is that I went skiing.  (I am a rather terrified skier, who also finds it trying to have to focus on keeping upright, when I want to go off in one of my habitual dazes.  But I survived!)  I wish you all a happy day. 

 

 

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , ,

Comments: 16 Comments

My Mother’s Coat Easter Sunday (After Gertrude Stein)

April 4, 2015

My Mother’s Coat Easter Sunday (After Gertrude Stein)

The salmon coat was not a fish out of water but a stucco of the sun the son.

I know that my redeemer liveth steepled also as the sidewalks, refusing to take sides, isoscolesed up front, fingers not-eased into short gloves treed as white as sycamores sideways,

with fireflies to come, only this was South so lightning bugs were what would bubble soon enough as hyacinths or coffee bubbled that morning, a morning without mourning, purple, pink or even blue as new as–

Salmon an unlikely shade, only pink in the way that a marigold is not yellow, a lipsticked kiss against a cheek as wet as trumpets, as dry as the sun the son through high stained glass.

And though she knew that our redeemer liveth, and would stand at the end in a flesh that might almost be salmon-colored, she could not believe that none had died.  Even as the clouds rolled and the stone rolled and her coat leapt high as a fish above the sidewalk, my mother’s cheeks were damp.  It was not a day you could not remember in.

So that I, a child of her flesh, a child of not yet death, took her by our short gloves, to swim the concrete, to roll us through the clouds and stone, the hyacinthed coffee, and some night soon, fireflies.

Though we did not think of them just then, of how they would lighten us, of how they would electrify our warm bare darknesses.

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

Here’s a sort of poem for Easter, for the 4th day (I think) of this April 2015 National Poetry Month, and for the wonderful Izy Gruye’s prompt on Real Toads to write something inspired by Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons. 

The above is a pic of my mother’s coat. 

I have edited this a few times since posting!   

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , ,

Comments: 34 Comments

“It’s a Great Life” – Song Recording

April 3, 2015

Here’s the “song” I wrote today for third day of National Poetry Month for Shay/Fireblossom’s prompt on Real Toads.  I came up with rather dirge like music and my first go round was so slow that I made this second one super fast– but I am not a composer or a singer!  (And there’s no bridge, refrain, etc. etc.)  Still, if you are interested, here it is.

Please excuse voice, music, everything that can be excused!  And thanks for your indulgence.

(Words to the song and a cute picture of elephant guitarists can be found at my previous post.)

 

 

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , ,

Comments: 13 Comments

“It’s a Great Life” – Third Day of National Poetry Month

April 3, 2015

It’s a Great Life

It’s a great life, if you don’t weaken–
so mama said, her face grown pale.
It’s a great life, if you don’t weaken,
but oh lord help, if you should fail.

I gave my love my heart’s safe-keeping
I gave my love my heart to hold:
oh it’s a great life, if you don’t weaken–
my love, he took that heart once whole.

Love’s just so grand until it weakens,
sun shines so bright on your travails,
But when skies dim and leave no beacon,
then tears are all that fill this vale.

That man, he gave my heart a beating
though it beat fast as any bird’s,
oh it’s a great life, if you don’t weaken,
If I but heard my mama’s words–

But life was loud when love was spoken,
and his hands’ touch–it felt so true–
It’s a great life, when vows aren’t broken,
but oh lord help, when love is through.

I gave that man my heart as token
of how I loved him through and through
It’s a great life, till we are broken
now, my heart’s gone, lord help me do.
It’s a great life, till we are broken,
now my heart’s gone, lord help me do.

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

Here’s a song as my third poem for April 2015 National Poetry Month, and written for Shay (Fireblossom)’s prompt on With Real Toads.  I can sing this in my head, and it sings country. 

ps- I have edited this slightly since first posting.  I also came up with a very dirge like tune, which I have sung (ha!) and recorded here. 

 

Categories: elephants, poetry, Uncategorized
Tags: , , , ,

Comments: 18 Comments

Poet’s Tree (Entering A New World) (Also Learning Of John Updike)

April 1, 2015

Poet’s Tree (Entering New World)  (Also Learning Of John Updike)

I don’t know that I’d ever actually been
in such a house before, the ceilings tall
between thick walls, a measured leisure dappling the halls
like sun through leaves–one could imagine an Intellect sitting
in a Georgian chair–the pink sponge of brain oddly suited to
dark varnished slats–as in, not oozing–and on the brick veranda, a woman
(my friend’s mom) her waved hair parted
like a woodcut of a classical sea, sighting some bird
of jeweled plumage, her fingers raised
as if to stop its flight, time too–

and in the little breakfast nook, painted yellow
as a stamen or a yolk, where green shone
through a warp of bright glass antique enough
to have run, sat
a slender book of poetry,
on the counter where we drank tea, itself
a new experience–at least, for me–having
grown up in a working-class suburb drinking
I don’t know what–
in which the poet wrote
of telephone poles.

Of course, I knew that poetry was not all unrequited love, fates’s
vagaries–but up till then
only Romeo and Juliet and Robert Frost
had been sandwiched in–you know–
between the Get Smart and Bewitched, Mr. Ed
and smidgeons
of Clark Gable–
and somehow I’d never thought
about telephone poles.

“What other tree can you climb,” the poet wrote,
“where the birds twitter/unscrambled,
in English?”

I was already pretty sure that no out-sized ceilings would ever
house me, nor Georgian chair seat
my sponge, but this song–homage
to a plebian totem–found in me
some resonating hum, vibrating with almost the same
unnoticed stolidity as those dark lines overhead,
and, later, the blue ones on the blank page
I myself would try to perch upon
as a translated sparrow.

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

First poem (draft!) for April 2015–written for Magaly Guerrero’s prompt on Real Toads to write of our first poetic sources.  The poet I quote here is John Updike.

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , ,

Comments: 16 Comments

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »