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Brain Freeze

February 17, 2015

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Brain Freeze

It is negative nine.
Minus nine.
Nine
below zero. 

Or maybe ten–this,
on the thermometer, whose little lines
are too fine
for my sure read–

but determine to go out–
feel, then, negative
nearly ten–hike
some wool long underwear under
my flannel night gown, channel arms into
deep down coat,
tie fur hat below chin, zip
myself in–

The white world is unimpressed
by my quick bulk.
Where nightgown opens (under cover of downed neck)
feels naked as the half moon that hovers
at the trees’ bared heads
(the trees’ bared limbs, that is,
trees not having heads,
except for broccolis, which aren’t
true trees.)

Eyes slip over
the ellipses of a hare
who was apparently just there, at least
his paws were,
pause upon the ice,
glasses also
fogging.

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

Here’s a little ditty from one of the warmer days we’ve had in that there was no significant wind chill–the last few days have actually been very difficult to go out in without proper gear–I have even at moments taken to wearing goggles over my glasses (which I hate) to try to protect eye fluids from freezing.  (It was supposedly negative 40 the day before yesterday and yesterday morning. This is Farenheit.  I do not know how they calculate wind chill, but it was certainly cold.)

Posting for Real Toads Tuesday Open Forum. 

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Comments: 16 Comments

On Valentine’s

February 14, 2015

Heart Out of the Box

On Valentine’s

I tell him that a friend has told her son
just to put her in a room
with paper and glue
but I don’t make collages,
so he should stick to the stones.

He says,
“what if I just smother you?”
I think for a second, washing potatoes,
then say, “no, I don’t think smothering
would be good,”
and he says, “what if I smother you
with love?” sending
his best crooked smile, but I, paying it no mind,
pour the potatoes in a sieve, then douse them
with water, then, as a stream pours down
the cabinet–”look, see
what I mean–”

“You were just distracted,” he says,
“talking about me smothering you–you had them near
the sink,” and I say, “no, I actually forgot
it was a sieve,”
and he shrugs and I wipe the floor,
trying to console myself with the fact
that there wasn’t that much
water, and say, “no, you shouldn’t
smother me; that would seem
so aggressive,”
and he says, “you think?”
“It might upset me,” I say, “the last thing I see being
you smothering me,”
and he says, “I’m not
going to smother you,”
and I say, “just put the stones
in my pockets and aim me
for the pond–it would be
like a game,” but he
is doing the crossword now,
and I’m pretty sure can’t be counted on
even for the stones.

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

I couldn’t resist posting this as a second poem for my prompt on With Real Toads, about promises. The above is a not-very-good photograph of a light sculpture by my dear husband, Jason Martin. 

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Ode To Morning

February 14, 2015

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Ode to Morning

You promise less and less–
oh, there’s tea.
You still pull that
out from under your half-closed lids
like some energizing
brown rabbit=though now, my own eyes are so damned dry
by the time you wake me, and the whole thing so
old hat, that I leave cups
barely drunk–the leaf muck cold,
as the bag half-sunken, half-afloat, peers up
like a desolate manatee, blinding,
in a circular swamp.

Not like the way tea used to be,
I think curmudgeonly–ly,

which takes me to that first apartment,
its grey moldings trowel-molded by so many layers of paint
that even a Bic gouging at the jambs
(in boredom or plain old pique)
wouldn’t get down
to the wood–
the rooms about ten feet
wide, could fit
a bed. I’d sit in one at the top of Mott
looking over
Houston (I’m talking NYC),
drinking three cups at a shot, hot
and metallically sweet, my pink packets
of Sweet and Low on the ever-ready–
sweet and high–
not on anything, truly, but the sixth floor
of that crumbling walk-up,
and the way your light
was magnified by all the warps—you know, those windows

whose glass proves it’s a liquid, the kind that make the whole world
seem secretly fluid, no matter that it’s hard and shiny
as the hood of a yellow cab, a sunned fender bending
brake lights, calf-fitted boots or someone else’s
cash,
the sky sky-blue, best days, from upmost arc
to the pitch of those water towers, soot-black
as a witch’s roofed hat–oh, what
enchantment!

Habituated to the saccharine, I could not even taste
the fakeness of its sweet, just ripped and poured,
sipped and poured, one cup after
another, as if tea
were a talisman and talismen could be ingested
for timed-release–

I like to think that if I knew then
what I know now
I’d have done something
differently, but all I can come up with
is that I would have drunk
at least one
more cup.

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

Here’s a poem of sorts written for my prompt on With Real Toads, to write about something promising or relating to a promise.  Process notes!  Re pic–I tend to get English tea bags that don’t have strings!  That is supposed to be one of them above.  And I don’t have coasters–so I use an old program (that I never quite get with) to protect my night table.

Lastly, Houston–the street in New York–is pronounced House-ton, like the Doctor or a residence.
And, since I have your attention, check out my books!  (I’ve not done an actual author page, but that link will lead you to them.) Thanks! 

 

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Comments: 29 Comments

A Gamble, Love

February 13, 2015

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A Gamble, Love

If I profane with my unworthiest hand
this holy shrine, the gentle sin is this,
my lips two blushing pilgrims ready stand
to smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss–
————–William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet.

 

“The cards–they turned against me, baby–
though every single one I played for you–
‘cause you deserve the best–you, my best lady–
the best a man could have, and that’s for true.”

He bends to kiss my belly with near beard,
shuffling belly, beard and smooth and rough so well,
a warmth is dealt that pays no mind to word,
a heat of coupled past, skin-wanded spell–

and the heap of ash–my heart an hour before,
waiting, stirs as with sharp sticks or flinted stones
as stubble apes a spark—”Not like that whore,
damned queen. I would have had a flush–” he groans–

“You lost it all?” My whisper asks his hair.
Lips to nipple, his reply.  ”All?” I ask
again, voice lower. His fingers mouth despair
and slow.  And, as head lifts, cold finds a path,

a gap between the rise of his chest, chin,
a gulf between my breasts, and seeps to where
hips join, a lunar plexus of thin
chill–“I had great hands,” he says; I stare.

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

This is both a kind of draft poem and completely fictional!  Ha!  But I was thinking of Kerry O’ Connor’s wonderful prompt on With Real Toads that quoted Shakespeare –”love is a tender thing”–from Romeo and Juliet- and asked for poems on a varied theme of love and enmity.  I thought of these other lines from Romeo and Juliet, which led to a different idea of a hand.   The poem has so many odd breaks, I feel like I should do a reading to make the sound clearer, but life will not make that possible today.  One thing, in my poetry, breaks are only intended to be taken where punctuated–i.e. by a comma or period–and not at the end of a line–  Thanks!   Have a great weekend and Valentine’s Day–

 

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Gain-said

February 12, 2015
gregdan

Art by Danny Gregory–

Gain-said

There is so much pain
that cannot be
gain-said,
disease not easable, loss that can’t
be found, accidents that will not
unhappen,
an unavoidable heaviness of being
that won’t be breathed away
even if we tried–

But we don’t try
terribly hard–make miseries like mud-pies
as if they were something
to eat, foment
discontent, substitute the non-essential
for the existential, court
drama–

Oh, we Cartesians, who think therefore
we be–we bees who harbor
honey, buzz about it,
sting–

Oh, we shopping Cartesians,
we non-stopping Cartesians,
we go-Cartesians,
we blow-by-blow Cartesians,
we donkey Cartesians,
we flog-a-dead-horse Cartesians,
we artisans of
cartilege and bone, of bone
and desire,
we beings who often
don’t think.

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

Another late night attempt!  This time a pseudo-philosophical.  (I have never much for the philosophical.)   As a process note, the word “Cartesian”  essentially means of or relating to the extremely rational French Philosopher Rene Descartes, who, in the early 1600s, coined the idea of “I think, therefore I am,”  (“Je pense, donc je suis  or Cogito ergo sum!”)   

I am posting this belatedly in connection with the dVerse Poets Prompt, hosted by Gabriella, featuring the drawings of Danny Gregory.  Gabriella did a very good interview of Mr. Gregory, whose work may be found on flicker.  

 

 

 

 

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Trying to Imprint Some

February 10, 2015

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Trying to Imprint It Some

I simply
have nothing to say.
Experience doesn’t mark me
the way it used to.

The only imprint
of my day
are the ribs
of my sock tops, notching the perimeters
of my calves–

meaning that that they were high
socks–meaning that I must have trudged
out in the snow at some point–okay, that
I remember–the snow that socked
the land
so beautifully,
knitted cloud
to horizon, mountaintop to
field–I will not say in white
wool– long-sleeved the limbs
of trees, gloved their twigged
digits.

And I want–now that I’ve recovered them from
my sock-carved hieroglyphics–to save those trees
in my brain, those snow-fleshed trees,
but my mind is like the bath
I sit in,
growing cold too fast, and a little murky,
caching even less
than the skin of things;

when what I need
for a mind
is a lake, something bigger,
deeper,
truly
reflective.

I know a lake; it holds upon
its glass whole skies; it holds within its depths
whole trunks–you can see it shine back
blue, even cloud, and where shine breaks,
you peer through water that clear, though green
as brine, shows silent racks
of branch and still-barked log, fallen
who knows when, washed since then–
trees you can skate on
in a freeze, swim over
in summer’s ease, careful never to
touch, or dare to–

Not like these ridged rims
I run
my hands over, hurrying
their fade as mind already
trickles ahead, away–bath draining.
Some light still caught though
as legs step out, in flashes,
wet, warm.

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

Ha.  Scribble, of sorts; or what I could.  (It seems very repetitive to me.)  For Real Toads Open Platform.  I did not get any good pictures of trees in this latest snow, but here is a pic taken from my Metro North train this morning of the Hudson River–the little turret is part of the ruins of a small castle that can usually be seen on an island in the  middle of water, called Bannerman’s Castle.  (Wrongly called by me Gillette’s Castle, when this post first went up.  Thanks for the correction to a very kind reader and one of my oldest and most admired–by me at least–friends.)

 

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Raw Deal (Farmerkin/Pasiphaë)

February 8, 2015

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Raw Deal

The classic story of a wooden frame carpentered
as a comely calf
that stars a man
(and also involves
a cow hide)
was memorialized
by the Brothers Grimm and follows
the trickster Farmerkin, who parleys his wooden calf
with its painted black eyelashes, and his cow hide
with its hidden raven, into, eventually,
the drowning of nearly everybody in his town, one
in a nail-driven barrel (so it will  leak), leaving Farmerkin
as mayor of sorts, with pots and pots
of gold.

The tale of a wooden cow frame featuring
a woman
is the myth of Pasiphaë, who, as punishment
for her husband’s greed,
is God-besotted
by a beautiful white bull
(meaning that Poseidon, mad
at Minos, made
her do it.)

It being the fitting of herself into
a heifer frame, sides hidden
by cow hide,
her genitalia carefully slotted
against applicable vents,
then taken out to pasture,
as it were.

One can’t exactly say Pasiphaë,
got the short end
of the stick,
yet Farmerkin, through sleight of paint brush
and pinch of hide-clotted raven, separated
his compatriots
from both their money and
their lives, ensuring his own,
according to the Grimms,
happily ever after,
while Pasiphaë ended up
as archetypal porn queen
and beast mother.

One–if one actually thinks about it–
imagines her wracked
with pain, pregnant, a leaking, gored, barrel.

“Hmmm,” some might say,
who do not understand
what I am getting at.

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

Here’s an odd sort of poem.  I have been thinking about Pasiphaë (which for some reason I think is pronounced Pacify–ay, rhyming with Pacify- day) since seeing a Jackson Pollock painting of that name a week ago at New York’s Metropolitan Museum.  The painting is part of an exhibit about Thomas Hart Benton, who was Pollock’s mentor.  I happened by it while a lecture was going on in which the docent asked the tourists what they saw on the canvas, and several talked of little stick figures at the middle or top, but no one mentioned the large phallus in the bottom right hand corner!  (Needless to say, I did not point it out, and I couldn’t then remember the story of Pasiphaë, but the whole incident made me look it up later.  I would note that there are many many very graphic illustrations of Pasiphaë made throughout art history and beyond.)

There are several stories based on Pasiphaë but the main one is that she was the daughter of Helios (the Sun), married to King Minos of Crete.  Poseidon gave Minos a beautiful white bull (his altar ego), with the understanding that Minos would sacrifice it back to Poseidon, but Minos instead kept the valuable bull (probably to use as a stud)  which in turn led Poseidon to bewitch Pasiphaë into falling desperately in love/lust with the bull (resulting in the cow frame discussed in the poem.) The beast child born from the union of Pasiphaë and the bull was the Minotaur, which later was kept in Minos’ labyrinth.  Pasiphaë was also mother of Phaedre and Ariadne, and interestingly, it was the great craftsman, Daedelus (the guy who made the wax wings to get out of that same labyrinth with his son, Icarus), who devised the cow frame used by Pasiphaë, to seduce the bull.  (Several poems there perhaps.)    

The  Brothers Grimm Farmerkin story is a story of a classic trickster, who without a cow of his own, uses a wooden frame of a calf to trick a herder into thinking he has lost Farmerkin’s cow and must give him one.  Farmerkin than uses that cow hide for further trickery, ending up with a drowned town and a great deal of moola.  Phillip Pullman who has authored a wonderful retelling of the Grimm stories says that it was originally told to the Grimm brothers by the Hassenpflug family and Dorothea Viehmann. 

Below is Pollock’s Pasiphaë, painted in 1943.  (Unfortunately, I could find no reproduction that does justice to the wonderful palette of the actual painting. )  Above is a painting of Pasiphaë and Daedelus by Giulio Romano, painted in Mantua sometime between 1525-1535.  (No copyright infringement intended in the photos.) 

I was not sure where, if anywhere, I would link this odd poem, but I will try the Poetry Pantry on Poets’ United, since I know they are very accepting people over there!   

 

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Uphill Climb

February 7, 2015

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Uphill Climb

The snow holds no planks
unlike the floor we couldn’t walk clothed
when you first came,
and I move slowly through it, thinking
of sex and missiles,
poems and my head
by the TV table–sometimes we’d get all the way
to the kitchen and I’d grip the width of wall
of the doorless door, warmth spilling
over the fridge, its magnetic words
cock-eyed–

But wait–I trudge the snow-heavy
hill, good exercise
for a Lutheran–and remember how I had to shut
all the windows at a certain point
in that apartment, for weeks
after 9/11, there in downtown
NYC, trying to keep the seep of smoke out of
the old jambs, and the service at the church down the street
the first Sunday after, so crowded we had
to sit behind the altar, shaded
by the pomegranates, the ultramarines,
the too-stark whites
of that anglo-american
stained glass–so much brighter
than the wax pages of hymnal, ash of notes, blurred words
that we sang–
that we all  sang–though we trailed the melody
like the heft of the organ,
only it was not a mishmash of chords
that held us back
but the difficulty of singing
weeping–

and I’m not really sure I’m still writing
about 9/11 but about some generalized
feeling of pain–the problem somehow being that I, you, we
have tasted
the apple and that it tasted so very sweet
we even bit
again, and somehow we, must all pay
for this–especially we, who are women–
with our breasts so capable of
pleasure and
of tears,
with our breasts that breath hard
uphills and tighten
touched, with our mouths
that taste and give
sweetness.

The sky turns dark
overhead except where there
are clouds that seem to carry light
along with fresh snow, and this burdened brilliance, I think,
is something to remember.

 

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

A draft/scribble/what you will for Real Toads, inspired by Grace’s (a/k/a Heaven’s) prompt on With Real Toads about the wonderful Cuban poet, Carilda Olivar Labra.

 

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Competing Drafts — “Sometime After the Anniversary of a Dog’s Death”

February 7, 2015

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I often call freshly posted poems drafts, which can bring up a certain digital laughter among readers/fellow poets.  I don’t mean to be falsely modest–but to emphasize my indecisiveness in writing/posting.  Sometimes I’ll go back into a freshly posted draft to repeatedly change it–other times (more often), I can hardly stand to look at something after it’s posted.  (I suffer a kind of backlash, I suppose, at having had the audacity to put something out in the world–it manifests itself as acute embarrassment.) 

One solution, of course, would be to just post less–hang on to something until I am absolutely sure it’s done.  But, to be honest, I get a huge amount of comfort and energy from moving ahead in my work, so I am selfish (or audacious) enough to put something out before it may be ready, hoping that the caveat of calling it a “draft,” will protect me on the embarrassment side. 

At any rate, here’s a poem/draft that I wrote last night, and re-wrote this morning, and I thought it might be interesting to post both, since it shows how difficult it can be to make decisions about these things.  (Please only bother to read if you are interested in these kinds of issues–)  I tend to think the original shorter one (posted first) may be better, but I also like this morning’s longer version.   Thoughts of others are welcome, as always–

 

Sometime After the Anniversary of A Dog’s Death
(Glad of the Deep Snow)

I always worried
that some animal
would dig you up,
knowing that I myself
was not a great digger,
though also an animal;

even knowing
that I’d dug deep enough
only my thighs
reached the earth’s surface
and that, later, I secured your top soil
with a host
of stones.

But how the heart is snagged
by loss, that barbed
catch-all–

Loss, you finder
of all we no longer can,
you keeper.

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

Sometime After the Anniversary of a Dog’s Death

I always worried
that some animal
would dig you up,
knowing that I myself, like you,
was not a great digger,
though also an animal;

yet knowing too
that I’d dug deep enough
only my thighs
reached the earth’s surface
and that I’d secured your top soil
with a host of stones;

still, glad
when the ground froze
and when even those stones
were buried; glad when the snow too
froze, and I was absolutely sure of your safety
from the claws of some harder-scrabbler–

but how the heart is snagged
by loss, that barbed
catch-all–

Loss, that finder
of all we no longer hold,
Loss, that keeper,
who does not care
how deep we dig,
how thick snow falls,
what freezes, what thaws–
*******************************

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Before Writing It Down

February 5, 2015

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Before Writing It Down

The view I get
might be described
by the word glimmer
if the word glimmer
were the word flicker
and if the view were a glance
and glance was dance and a dance
was a poem.

There it is–glimmering, flickering, viewed
at a glance
as it dances past
the corner of
my eye,
and though my pen
certainly extends my reach
by a good six inches,
it is never enough to truly pen
that view,
to hem it in
that corner,
so I might actually be able
to exhibit it–
if exhibit meant press
to the page
like a flower or leaf
so that even years later
it still brings with it
as pages split
either spring
or fall.

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

Another drafty one for With Real Toads, for Ella’s prompt on the Kumulipo, a Hawaiian prayer chant, asking for poems about one’s creative process.  The picture is mine taken at a beach outside Seattle, Washington.

I think I inadvertently posted the picture before I meant to post and then I deleted that premature post!  Sorry for any confusion.  Also, I’m not sure if the picture is posting properly–so if you can’t see the whole thing (it is a very sweet pic) just click on it.

PS – I am calling everything a draft lately because I feel like I am writing much more quickly than normal (when I finally do get down to writing), which always leaves me with a feeling of some insecurity about what I am posting.  This one I’ve edited since first posting.

 

 

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