I have been staying in Washington, DC for a little bit. These are photos of animals I’ve seen in or by the Georgetown Canal, where I jog very slowly. My husband is convinced the snake, over six feet long, is a boa constrictor that someone must have released. I didn’t get close enough to get a definitive pic unfortunately !
So, it seems
In even the most peaceful death,
there is a grimace,
as if the body gives life’s hand
a last tight squeeze, or is
itself squeezed,
the interlace of face releasing
into surprise,
an ah as the jaw slackens,
as if to say, ‘so, that was it, then.’
So, at least, it seems,
holding the hand,
onlooking.
*************************
A poem of sorts. I am linking this to Susie Clevinger’s prompt on With Real Toads about lace. I have uploaded the photo from my iPhone and fear it may be cut off by some browsers; just click on it, if you wish to see the whole thing.
I have edited this post twice within three minutes of posting! I’m not sure if I’ve made better–but seems to be my way lately–indecision in editing–
Our Hearts Bleed (for Nigeria)
In last years, Nigeria has lost
most forests,
but the Sambisa seems a place
of bush as much as tree,
or, at least, thorn.
Traditionally, only elephants,
or others with similarly thick skins,
could traverse it.
Elephants are few
now,
but some trucks seem tough enough,
and too the hides of those who treat people
as things–
those who have been trained in the way
of the cutlass;
though the skin of even strong
young girls
is soft, warm, such
that fingers touching it
should sing.
Boko Haram:
“Western education is
forbidden.”
Only the Western part
is a ruse,
it is education
that is
forbidden–
For things
should not read,
property does not write.
What is to be sold, used, fisted–
tethered to post
and slop pail–
should not have tools
to speak her mind.
The terrorizing
of schools
is a kindness truly–
so, they may say, pulling at their hats
and other parts–
for they are very good
at stopping mouths,
but they do not wish
to have to blind, maim, amputate–
no, they want girls
intact,
young limbs spread dark
as woods’ night shadows,
eyes pooling
stripped bark.
***********************************
A poem of sorts for Abhra Pal’s prompt on trees on dVerse Poets Pub, about the horrific abduction of now more than 230 girls in North-East Nigeria. It is suspected that the girls have taken into the Sambisa Forest, a stronghold of the Boko Haram.
Religion has been misused against women and education for a very long time. But what’s happening in Nigeria right now to both girls and boys pursing education is beyond evil. It’s really beyond what I could write of here–just trying to raise awareness,
The drawing, like most on this blog, is mine. — this post has been edited– the last line– since posting.
Reversal at Arlington
Oh you are men of stones
now. You have cracked
heaven’s vault,
one way or another.
Having tongues and eyes, you have also,
at some point,
howled,
whether silently or aloud, being of
this earth,
this hallowed, hollowed earth.
Though you’re now reduced
to roles–names, dates, ranks, wars–
‘father, husband, grandfather, Purple
Heart” – you were not players strutting
in a play, not king
for a day, nor me neither, a daughter,
who lives,
a daughter who was allowed, always,
to heave her heart
into her mouth,
a daughter who
looks there, as Lear says, seeking breath
in the stillness.
**************************************
I’m sorry. Another Arlington Cemetery poem. And very much a draft–I’ve edited it extensively since first posting. (I’ve probably not made it better either, as this last edit is being done at 4:30 in the morning. But I woke up with a change of heart.)
My father is buried at Arlington. This is a rather odd poem, based upon the last few lines of King Lear in “King Lear” uttered after his daughter, Cordelia, has been killed. A Purple Heart is a U.S. medal awarded to a military service person wounded or killed in service person wounded in combat.
At the suggestion of the wonderful Hedgewitch, I am posting the main quote that I was thinking of in writing this poem. It is Act V, Scene 3, when Lear carries in his daughter, Cordelia, who has been hanged. Cordelia had earlier been estranged from Lear because of her refusal/inability to “heave her heart into her mouth” and declare the specific measure of her love for her father in a who-loves-dad-most competition with her two older sisters, Goneril and Reagan.
Howl, howl, howl, howl! O, you are men of stones:
Had I your tongues and eyes, I’d use them so
That heaven’s vault should crack. She’s gone for ever!
I know when one is dead, and when one lives;
She’s dead as earth. Lend me a looking-glass;
If that her breath will mist or stain the stone,
Why, then she lives.
Throughout the scene, Lear tries to see if Cordelia is breathing (which would mean that he is mistaken and that she lives.) He repeats as his last words, “look there,” seeming to find her breath.
The line about the players strutting is (kind of) from Macbeth.
Vignette
I ask you to make sure
that I’m not buried
where I can hear cars.
This, walking to the edge
of Arlington Cemetery where the lawns,
still empty, are separated from a parkway
by a fence, motors roaring
through what was, a few steps back,
only birdsong flickering
through the scores
of small white stones.
“Or muzak either,” you say, squinting,
because we had to leave
a Sunglass Hut earlier–me nutty
about all-around sound–
“Even if I’m only, you know, ash,” I add.
It takes us a moment
to see that the fence is filled
with niches;
a woman sits cross-legged
on the sidewalk facing one, the only movement
the shimmer of her gold blouse.
Just then, a motorcycle fires,
rata-tat-tat, someone peeling away
too fast–ripping–so it feels, with the green stillness behind,
the woman’s stillness ahead–
the immense sky–Washington not
a tall city–
I try to find the bike,
but my eye is caught, instead,
in the light of the woman’s blouse, the unchanging rays
of each bent sleeve.
“So maybe it was good he died when he did.” I try a laugh.
You smile.
“I mean,” I say, “I know I won’t be able to hear anything,
but I’d just go bananas.”
You take my hand.
**********************
And here’s one for Kerry O’ Connor’s prompt on with real toads to write a vignette. I do not know if this qualifies for Kerry’s wonderful prompt, but what I came up with.
As a process note, Arlington Cemetery is the Arlington National Cemetery, the US national military cemetery. It is an incredibly beautiful place, just on the other side of the Potomac River from the Lincoln Memorial and the Mall. In my photo, you can see the Washington Monument and the Capitol in the distance. The place we walked was beyond that single stone, which is quite unusual, as most of them are in lines and rows (and the grass is better tended.) My sense is that this one may actually be a marker for the beginning of the next grave area rather than an actually headstone.
Editing and uploading on iPhone from train where internet connection keeps giving out! Agh!!!! So posted before ready, and now in my office, and still uncertain–but, it’s a vignette, right? So, maybe I’ve even said too much—)
The Brain (how it performs sometimes)
It wants to be petted,
wants to be stroked,
doesn’t like
to be vetted/poked.
Don’t make it jump
repeated hoops
unless they are
high-fired loops–
Then the brain, hard-wired as moth to flame,
dons tiger stripes and lion’s mane,
describes arcs gold as melted butter,
all to hear the clapping after
of another brain.
**************************
Here’s 55 (excluding the title) from a brain that likes to perform when the challenge/audience is there, but that is right now exhausted from a lot of traveling and socializing–not great for poeticizing. I am linking it to With Real Toad’s 55 challenge, taking over from the G-Man.
The drawing is mine–lion/tiger jumping through a fiery hoop?
Here’s a very sweet pic from Washington, DC of some Muslim women playing under a fountain , some with umbrellas, some sitting on the pavement. They were having a very nice time. Me too.
To some much loved book, or another
Unable to be parted,
I took you to my bath
where your pages waved
like the sea–
fine with me, better even–
for I floated then in your open hull
through the primeval family hall
to the shore of my own little bed, where,
my personal moon,
you reflected the light overhead,
my eyes following
the fallen stars you banked–
words, like the room itself,
dark yet lit within.
What sacrifices you made–
sitting up with me, all hours,
shepherding me, when sleep came
and went, from chest-choke dreams to
safely-ventilated boxes
of sweeter sheep,
adventuring tedium, silencing
demand,
even taking the fall, at turns,
from the cliffs
of mattress, letting me
come to the rescue–
No grown-up could be
so consistent–
always on page 2, a boa, more adorable
than a fedora, digested
an elephant,
and always too,
on some later page
in one of those parallel universes upon which
physicists base
their reputations,
Charlotte, the spider,
would die.
You gave me cover
to cry–
a corner where still-ephemeral-
but-soon-to-burgeon breasts
could confess suffering, expand
with the pain of another,
where tears felt like water tapped, at last,
from the trunk of a baobab–where being overrun
by baobabs was not, as some might think,
so bad–
*****************************
Here’s my last draft poem for the month of April 2014–though I think I may have just missed midnight.I am linking this to Grapeling’s prompt on With Real Toads to use some words from a list by St. Exupery (taken from The Little Prince.) I would love to make a St. Exupery-inspired drawing, but I fear I am too late. (Hopefullly some other day.)
Many thanks for With Real Toads, especially Kerry O’Connor, for making this month so meaningful for those of us trying to do the poem a day. Also special thanks to my friend Hedgewitch, blogging at Verse Escape, whose behind-the-scenes camaraderie has been incredibly helpful and to all of you also doing the poem a day (or not) but reading many poems a day–thanks so much–
Calves
The little cows, their faces white as Noh
masks, their cut-out eyes say ‘oh” when they see
me, their twigged legs skedaddling as if blown–
the calves– with muzzles clean as milk should be,
as tremulous as milk blued by a pail
in a morning when the moon still shines
like an 8 ball in sky’s corner. Do not fail
them–the little calves who emit no whines
that corporations are people, my friends,
who, like chickens bred for cage-bottomed breasts,
topple-heavy, do not understand how ends
justify means, the logic that infests
so many bottom lines that it gets lost–
as if we could eat cruelty, without cost.
************************************
Here’s very much a draft poem, another sonnet for With Real Toads, Helen Dehner’s prompt re talking to animals. I think this is only my 29th for National Poetry Month– not sure, so one more to go?
The little calves above have, I think, quite a nice life; the poem is really about factory farming, all too prevalent in the U.S.
Thinking of Shakespeare, Caught At a Closed Gate–
I hear him cursing “Zounds” (‘His wounds”)
at the dusk-dropped gate, its iron lattice,
even then, mottled with thick and thin.
He presses his forehead almost
into its rivulets, nipping cold, as
Hamnet of an instant pricks
his heart, like a foul hollow tripped upon
in the sluicing cobbles,
that little tiny boy—
How foolish to toy
with what is no more, he thinks,
knowing even as his next breath moves the rain
like a feather
that only one who never had a son
could think
so foolishly.
For his poor fool
is dead.
So, his mind works—words, stones skipping
across a river, light slipping
across a sea—figures
of speech that
from tossed ships
salvage sails
for wings–
even as he pulls his own cloak, sodden–
(for the rain, it seems, has rained down
every day)–
closer than the night, and heads back
to a pallet at the theater,
looking up to the heavens
for signs of gentling.
*******************************************************
Here’s a draft poem for the 24thday of April, National Poetry Month, written for Ella’s (of Ella’s Edge) prompt on With Real Toads. Ella’s prompt was to write a poem based upon a sentence from a book. I opened up Bill Bryson’s book on Shakespeare— a section that discusses the period after Shakespeare lost his young son, Hamnet. Of course, very little is known of Shakespeare’s feeling about the loss except through his plays. I’ve tried to incorporate very loosely some lines from plays, including King John, King Lear and Twelfth Night, and very obliquely, The Merchant of Venice. “Zounds” was a euphemism for God’s wounds or Jesus’ wounds. The sentence that was the spring board is below:
“A separate question is why Shakespeare moved in this period to Bankside, a not particularly salubrious neighborhood when his theatrical connection was still with the Theatre, at precisely the other side of the city. It must have been a slog shuttling between the two (and with the constant risk of finding his way barred when the City gate was locked each dusk) ….” Bill Bryson, Shakespeare.
MY APOLOGIES FOR SLOWNESS IN RETURNING COMMENTS. A VERY BUSY COUPLE OF DAYS. I WILL GET BACK TO PEOPLE AND THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR PATIENCE!
(PS – I appreciate that the photo has little to do with the poem! Agh!)
ManicDDaily 
Recent Comments