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What Is It With Torpedoing Efforts For Peace? (Poem)

March 12, 2015
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They like to make it seem as if there’s just one way.

What Is It With Torpedoing Efforts For Peace?

What is it with these tit-for-tatters,
who would tear the world to tatters?
Let-others-die-hard pipsqueak ratters
who strut about like big-league batters,
but want to strike pre-emptively,
talk “take-out” empty-headedly,
not caring if their bangs rat-tat
give rise to endless big hits back–
But I don’t have the tit for that
(for it’s not my head that carries fat)
and refuse to see more children sent
to hellish war by those hell-bent–

Only let me be little clearer–
there’s no good godly god holds dearer
one side’s missile over one side’s land,
this sand over that other sand–
so, don’t confuse a plan divine
with your bloody idiotic kind– 

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Here’s a kind of irritated poem, probably linked belatedly and as a second poem to Real Toads Open Forum.  Thanks.

When you get older, you view everyone else as children. 

 

 

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Another Time a GOP Politico Interfered with Treaty Negotiations

March 11, 2015

Another Time a GOP Politico Directly Contacted a Foreign Government
Re Treaty Negotiations

In 1968, campaigning for president through rubber jowls
Richard Nixon declared he had a secret plan
to win the war,
a secret plan that was sure, he said,
to succeed.

If it was such a great plan,
I thought (in the shadow of my long
hair, school locker, and the lottery for
my older brother), why
didn’t he tell someone, stop
the killing right
away.

What I didn’t get
was that Nixon’s operative word was “win”
(not end),
and that it wasn’t the war
he had a secret plan for, but
the election.

Though he did tell someone
a plan–South Vietnamese
government officials–through a dusky-bosomed
agent (little flower dragon lady), and in his own meeting with them too,
urging absence
from the Paris peace talks, writing
“we are going to win” (meaning again,
the election), promising
more and better
props–

But the war, after Nixon’s election,
slogged on for seven years,
cost twenty thousand more
U.S. lives–
I don’t even know
how many more
Vietnamese,
or the tally
in spirit, limb,
napalm,
skin,
cultivable
land.

Only that I acknowledge freely that it is my ignorance
that does not know these numbers–they are
no secret–

 

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A poem of sorts–I’m sorry–in my disgust at all kinds of things right now it is hard to write very poetically–for With Real Toads Tuesday Open Platform.

Further information on Nixon and the “Chennault Affair,” which supposedly led to Nixon’s obsession with the Pentagon Papers (detailing classified information about the U.S. war in Vietnam, with arranging a break-in force to get documents from the Brookings Institution related to LBJ’s bombing halt in 1968 that Nixon thought included information concerning his pre-election interference with the peace process, and which led to the creation of “Plumbers” unit, and eventually the Watergate break-in, can be found in a variety of places.  Here are two:

http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/146770

http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2014-08-15/news/bal-a-darker-cloud-falls-over-nixon-commentary-20140814_1_nixon-tapes-the-nixon-watergate

The reference to lottery is to the draft lottery. 

Also, this made me think of pitching my book Nice, which takes place in 1968, is a really cool book–especially for anyone interested in this era–, and can be gotten in paper copy cheaply, or on kindle for 99 cents. 

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Garlic

March 7, 2015

Toril Colaboration Garlic 2

Garlic

I.
Sitting at the computer,
I feel that I should write about
despair–the darkness of blood,
the darkness of women’s blood especially, un-spun clots
of loss and over-lording,
the web around a newborn’s head, the
hemorrhage of the will-be dead, all manner
of bloated belly–

That I should write about
what I know to be important, the windows black
that look out from
my room, the histrionic
screen, but I can hardly stand
to look at that dark glass, so write instead
about garlic, something
to hand–

I admire garlic–it was ever
a close-knit bunch–I say this not
to be flippant– but because of the way
the cloves cleave
one to its others, the sole backing
the whole, as if understanding
their collective (that is, non-collective) fate–to be cleaved
apart, each turned into
a reification of tears;
to also (oddly) when chopped–I’m at a wooden board right now–
serve as a postcard
of unpillowed baby teeth, as if proffered for safekeeping
by a host of stubby fingers, gapped-toothed grins–

but how to reconcile blood and
baby teeth, burn and savor,
of soil and despoiled, so many little
bulbs of light–

II.
When I was pregnant with my first child, I was haunted by a deep
weakness which was identified at last as a couple of trips past
to India, from which I brought home in my inner carry-on (snuck
past customs), amoeba–both in blobs and tubes,
that splayed me on a neighbor-given
sofa, both of us
frayed, until I was prescribed, finally,
garlic, mini-scimitars swallowed
to do battle with the worms, so many that I smelled
like a salami from down the street–

Oh garlic, how do I use you so
ungently–haphazard in my peel and mince,
you who, only asking for
a wince, gave me
your all–

III.
A singular
plural.
Kind of smelly but
alive.
Doing battle
with worms–

I know there is despair and
I know that what I know
of it is nothing, me
with a whole
child, body.

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A second and belated poem of sorts–very very sorry about the length–for Margaret Bednar’s prompt on With Real Toads--about the art work of Toril Fisher.  Above a picture of garlic that is a collaboration of Toril and Tully (whose full name I don’t know.)  

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Questioning The Idea of Heaven

March 6, 2015

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Questioning the Idea of Heaven

Can it be true
that I’ll not see you
again?

That all will never be
as it always should
have been?

Will we not laugh
at trivial cruelties, which you
will allow me to call
every single one?

Match memory for memory
like one might measure height
in penciled lines by the side
of a door, the pine jamb varnished yellow
as a child-drawn sun?

We did have the door,
the pine,
the sun–

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A poem of sorts for Margaret Bednar’s prompt Artistic Interpretations on With Real Toads to make a poem using an image by Toril Fisher, this one called California Poppy Glow. Margaret has many lovely pictures of Toril’s work on the Real Toads website–the color in these flowers oddly made me think of sun.  (I may post another one re garlic–but haven’t quite done that one yet.) 

 

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Mined

March 3, 2015

Mined

Crystallized clots of gritted ice
collated by plow,
queue like geodes on display
along the valley road.

Snow truly does
sparkle; another instance
of the heady availability
of beauty
that we humans have
at our hand’s eye–

and I wonder, as I wonder at
great stretches of iridescence,
whether it’s not the plant in us
that is so awed by diamonds–that part evolved
from what seeks water, thirsts
for sun,
and whether poets shouldn’t always describe jewels
as glistening like snow,
gems glimmering like
a river; some form of H2O wearing the diadem
rather than the reverse–

Some will disagree,
humans having developed a greed
beyond the most rapacious weed.

Still, this, I say (if only
to myself):
watch
when you turn on the tap;
catch
those flashes of splash;
hold a glass
to the sunlight;
drink deep.

 

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Posted a little late for Real Toads Tuesday Open Platform, hosted by the wonderful Marian Kent.  I wasn’t quite able to take the picture I wanted due to the cold! 

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Waking In Winter

March 1, 2015

Waking in Winter

Where my flank rests
against your thigh,
I see the color
of closed eyes,
an undercover shade of leg
lidding buttock,
a grey marked
by morning–blurred purple
awaiting rumple–the space slow
to unstick.  Sky outside lighter,
though grey enough,
above the field’s bright sheet,
as it lays down
more snow.

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A poem of sorts in 55 words continuing the tradition of the G-Man, Mr. Know-it-all, for Kerry O’Connor’s prompt on With Real Toads; in this case, Kerry asked us also to think about a color.

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Passage

February 28, 2015

Passage

The passageway to warmth
is as wide as it need be–
the breadth of your body, the breath
of your body–
sighs sized to stretch us both
into foreshortened
longing–
a night narrow
as two spoons.

But when, feeling lone,
the brain becomes a dislocated bone,
when crevices hutch stone, darkness thickens
and even walls pass judgment,
one confuses ways-away.

Some mistake an unlit oven
for possible passage (the speckle
of its inner midnight misread
as splotches of star),
consider cuts channels, purge
as release, oblivion
a coveted tease–

when–I have to believe–
if time could just be waited upon,
warmth might alight in windowed panes,
great trapezoids of sun winnowed
from the meanest cracks,
brightnesses to bring us back
into blink and dazzle,
a radiance that lets us wear
its raiment as our own, quickening
whatever lists into its frame and, too,
what simply looks on.

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Here’s a poem originally written for a personal challenge given to me by Corey Rowley  (Herotomost) on Real Toads, and posted there.  I have edited the enjambment a little and am re-posting on my own blog and also for dVerse Poets Pub open link day, hosted by the wonderful Claudia Schoenfeldt as Claudia and Brian Miller pass a torch at dVerse Poets Pub to Bjorn Rudberg.  Brian and Claudia have definitely offered a passageway to warmth for me in all their online poetic endeavors and have my heartfelt gratitude.  

 

 

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Revelators

February 27, 2015

Revelators

I.

Dawn always.

The first taste (and, okay, also the aftertaste)
of dark chocolate.

The undersides of leaves
blown back
when the wind blows leaves silver,
then slack.

Eyes that care for you.
Eyes that reflect a light you had not known
you carried.

II.

But why, I ask myself,
in this poem that moves
among the revelations of dawn
and the back-leafing
of silver,
do you keep in
the chocolate?
You who never eats
chocolate–

All I can think of
is how sweetness
must always be
re-learned–how else
can some of us remember
the recognizing of it?

And of a treat
I was sometimes given as a child–a bonanza,
it was called–ice cream haloed
by bananas in a swim
of dark and shiny–
and of how that hot fudge sheen,
lathered by crenellated cream,
is now a palpable layer
in my father’s remembered smile,
as if he sometimes spoke
in Sundae.

And though this memory is surely–if anything is–
an aftertaste, this poem is not
about comfort food but about whatever pools
in the spoon of the senses,
lighting an opening
that your caught, dim, heart
might some day
sight–

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A poem of sorts for Marian Kent’s prompt on Real Toads based on a song by Gillian Welch called Time (The Revelator).  Another one that should probably end at the first stanza.  The pic above is of dawn looking out over Central Park in good old NYC.  The bottom pic an old one, made by me.

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Medieval Mother And Child (Carved Somehow)

February 25, 2015

 

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Medieval Mother And Child (Somehow Carved)

I don’t know why it is
my babe’s a little man,
nor why he stands so perched
upon my arm and hand–

nor why I mayn’t be touched
by any other,
only that when he suckles,
he’s certain babe enough–

and man.  Then, that my breast
turns round as the sky’s sun,
hard and sturdy-stemmed,
in his fine-fingered palm,

as a pomegranate;
I fear then–oh, I fear—
that such rubied pride will burst
in fountained drops near

crimson, prisming the air
in their first flood,
but darking to a sluice
of side-slid blood,

our every round gullied
by its rivulets.
No babe can be so held
as to tourniquet

that flow; nor arms so braced
to hold off sorrow’s touch.
This, I know. Yet, e’en the wood
in me craves so much;
where stone, I long,
where bone, I mourn.

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A draft poem of sorts, written belatedly for the wonderful Brian Miller’s prompt on dVerse Poets Pub asking for something medieval.  I am also posting for With Real Toads Tuesday Platform.   Above is the picture (copyright infringement not intended) of a medieval German madonna and child from New York City Metropolitan Museum.  Below is a non-medieval madonna and child in Uruguay, whose pic was taken by yours truly. 

 

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To B

February 22, 2015

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To “B”  (Letter to the Letter to B)

Oh, you’re Bad.
You Ball Bearing Bugle
of Boldface.
You Barrel-Breasted
Buster-Out-Of-Blankness;
you Bombolino
Bird of Bray!

Just look at you!  So Brassy
when in Block!
With so much Bleep
from Brow to Base–those Blatant
Buttucks– (or maybe they’re of
the Bosom Bersuasion)–
which, in our Bargaining with
Being, don’t even make
us Blink.

Though in the itty-bitty case (your
bijou brand)–you nearly bury
your bullet, bearing your bubble
as a boot or bashful beard,
braiding your boons and banes
in bismuthed ballyhoo—

Oh B,
how you do Belt out, beguile–
no matter the bull and bile–
as all the while,
you still book beats,
beak banter,
bale
the blues–
you bestest ever
(ever
bouncing
back–)

 

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A ditty of sorts for Margaret Bednar’s prompt Play It Again, Sam on With Real Toads, where Margaret asks us to pick an archived challenge.  In this case, I am writing to Kerry’s challenge to write an open letter.  I realized on reviewing this that I’d written a letter to the letter “A” on the first go-round, so thought I’d try “B” this time. 

I was at the Metropolitan Museum last night and took pictures of various “B” things–from beards to boddhisatva–above and below.  

PS – I have a poem up over at Real Toads right now in answer to a personal challenge by Corey of Herotomost. I will probably post it here tomorrow, but if you want to see it, in advance:  Passage. 

 

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Categories: poetry, Uncategorized

Comments: 18 Comments

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