In the Wake
Birds watch
child; sand reflects
child; clouds shine
on child, waves calm
for child; day itself takes
care, finding
its inner adult, in the
hope (perhaps) that what
will be born
in that sparkle of foam
will not be a full-blown
goddess, but simply
love, a child lost
in finding, a child
concentrating
in light.
(It’s late, but it’s Friday and it’s 55 words – tell it to the G-man.)
(Imagine Pen and Sunset)
Charles Miller is hosting a prompt at dVerse Poets Pub about writing what’s behind the poem. Here are some of my somewhat disjointed thoughts:
Old Poems/Kids in the Sea
So, I used to rely on the sonnet,
and yes, it scares me to see them out there,
bobbing up and diving down, the wet
glisten of shoulder at high surf, where
I lost all my breath trying to swim back
this morning, my lungs shot from who knows what
(waves tugging at what seemed to be chest’s crack)–
I found that a form would anchor words, not
tie, give meaning a lane, a buoying up–
choppy out, sun setting rust, still I know
they’re strong, try to sing as I wade about,
salt cupped–fearful, I needed a flow
that followed a channel; I relied on
the sonnet; they splash to shore, free, prideful.
(In keeping with the exercise, I should probably note that I wrote this poem, more or less, at the beach, watching my kids – or those I was responsible for–swimming very far out. Also it is a sonnet, of sorts–this, a form I used to write quite frequently.)
Screened (Mid-Sixties)
It looked, from the peaceful pictures,
like the land of the hand-held scythe,
what with the impossibly green gatherings
of ankle-short stalk so gently bordered
by palm and vine,
till the choppers swept the frames
like combines, their great blades
threshing a beat that thwapped
to the other side of the world, even of our
TV screen, where we fought
over the only truly comfy chair, its
thick sag re-shaping to each
as required, the rest of us
stretching out on the living room rug
rather than take a straightback.
We watched, silent beneath that thwap,
the jewel shag of paddy turn
to a blurred-stained-brown, the sweating lens
become a windshield wiped
by blades of chopping/chopped, fogged
by non-monsoon cloud and
napalm drizzle, vibration only clipped
by shouts of Charlie, shots
of GI, the stretch of sagging legs,
boots notched at elbows–the air
seemed to be sucked from us too
by the rotary vacuum, though, of course,
that was not the case; we could change
the channel, turn off
the TV, pretend
that what we’d seen
had absolutely nothing
to do with us there, in our living room;
we could fight again
about our only truly comfy
chair.
I am posting the above poem for dVerse Poets Pub Open Link Night. (For dVerse devotees, it was the poem I wrote last weekend thinking that the poetics prompt would relate to going back anywhere in time, not specifically 1999!) And if you are not a dVerse devotee, become one! Check out the site.
And while you are at it, check out my comic novel,NOSE DIVE, book of poetry, GOING ON SOMEWHERE, or children’s counting book 1 MISSISSIPPI. ) NOSE DIVE is a lot of fun and a great bargain on Kindle for 99 cents, only a bit more in print. K.
Another week beginning, and here’s a new picture prompt from Tess Kincaid of Magpie Tales. The real photograph by Uzengia Aleksander Nedic is somewhat blurry; my version (not blurry enough) is above, and my poem below. I am also linking this poem to “Imaginary Gardens with Real Toads” for their Monday Open Link Day.
Villanelle to Glasses
Without glasses, the edges of my world are furred
like the ending of an echo, crush of shale.
Ideas are seen as if through water, blurred,
trooping muzzily through head, not shaped by word,
as if mind’s eye can’t make out thought’s detail
without glasses, the edges of my world so furred.
Then, too, I find my verbal memory’s slurred:
I’ll say this “peach” for onion, “kite” for sail;
ideas are seen as if through water, blurred,
and though I tell myself I’m quite absurd–
my mind’s still good, it’s only eyes that fail–
without glasses, the edges of my world are furred.
Even corrected vision’s not assured,
each type of lens its own peculiar jail,
where ideas are seen as if through water, blurred,
and I must make a choice between page or bird,
eternal grain of sand/horizon’s trail.
Without glasses, the edges of my world inferred,
ideas are seen as if through water, blurred.
Have a nice (fully-lit and clear) Sunday. And, if you get a chance, check out: comic novel,NOSE DIVE, book of poetry, GOING ON SOMEWHERE, or children’s counting book 1 MISSISSIPPI. )
New found advantage of daily savings time: dawn’s early light.
Okay, maybe not dawn, but closer than midday.
I’m not normally someone who will get up and out at even at 7:30 a.m. on a Sunday morning, much less 6:30.
Oh, I’ll talk about how renewing it would be, but then I’ll pull my comforter over my shoulder and snuggle deeper into that little (big) depression I’ve formed in the good old memory foam.
But today–aha!–profiting from that extra (or rather subtracted) hour–I was up and out.
Sure, I wasn’t quite able to get dressed–pulled my only long skirt (velour) over my nightgown, hiking boots over sleep socks, down jacket over the whole assortment.
But I was up! And out!
And the light was blue and pale and fresh and kindly promising in just those ways of a somewhat earlier morning, and the coming day seemed eminently possible.
Hope yours is too.
The wonderful Shawna is hosting a dVerse Poets Pub poetics prompt on “1999”. (I have to confess to having spent the whole day writing about 1969, till I realized I’d missed a digit!)
But 1999 had its own ethos, so I slowly, awkwardly, switched gears/years. (1969, in this case, will have to come later.)
Winter Break, 1999
I remember at the Christmas party edge
of Y2K, the DUI guy telling me
how he planned to sneak a new license
once the DMV went down.
And how so many worried that planes
would crash that prices for flights
leaving New York City New Year’s Eve
plummeted, even flights across
the world with free champagne.
What a pain it was back then to
get to Lower Broadway from the
West-–you had to either go through
the Towers or around, and it was
a long long way around–
Taking a break upstate, where the power did go out,
not because of the glitch of far computer, but
wires down nearby, a thick wet snow
webbing all in glassine sparkle–
Going through a long hike too,
the Towers’ lobbies maddeningly
grandiose, soaring glass bordered by the swish
of world flags, red carpet as
thick as a wad of wonga–
With no heat, we laid fires for
the others, finding our own in the
flicker of sculpted muscle against
smooth skin; how mad it felt,
that really and truly caring
what others thought, we
dared try for the real and true–
And yet, how glad–to be
in your close, warm arms
and not on one
of those cheap world flights, not because
I feared the planes would crash–no, that
just wasn’t one of the things I worried about
back then, planes crashing–
(PS – beautiful photo is candlelit snow igloo made by certain family members at the time of a later snow.)
(Sorry- this heart in chains--"trapped" but perhaps not quite what the poem envisions.)
Here’s kind of an interesting exercise for those interested in the ways in which form shapes content. The first is a draft poem in “free” verse; the second is a triolet (a form recently highlighted by Gay Cannon and Samuel Peralta in dVerse Poets Pub “form for all”) which I wrote the next morning. Oddly, I am also linking this post to “Imaginary Gardens With Real Toads”, for their prompt about love and affection, since the poems deal with their backwash.
Trapped Heart
And then you come to a time
when you are willing to excise a limb.
You are consciously an animal,
caught; cutting–hand, foot,
arm–seems the only cut loose.
You gnaw, increasingly
panicked, you saw,
increasingly frantic, not
for freedom but survival,
for you know,
even as you slice, that it’s
your heart that’s trapped,
your heart that is beating you
so hard, so insistently.
And here’s the triolet:
After Lashing Out
Then comes a time when you’d cut off a limb–
when you’re an animal, entrapped and sore,
when, in the come of time, you’d cut off a limb,
if you believed your severed paw could trim
the clock hand’s spring; if you believed a whim
of excision could take you back before
that time, when what you became cut off a limb–
you were an animal, entrapped and sore.
(As always, all rights reserved. And as always please please please check out my books Comic novel,NOSE DIVE, book of poetry, GOING ON SOMEWHERE, or children’s counting book 1 MISSISSIPPI. )
Used To Be
Fridays were permeated
by the smell of fish; fuzzy brown
limp sticks exuding stink
through the school in vengeance for
their not-so-sea
change, an odiferous insistence
that they had once been something actually
found in the natural world, subject
to the laws of birth, death, decay. We
could only eat them
with ketchup.
As always, all rights reserved. And, as always, have a great Friday. And, since it’s Friday, tell it to the G-Man!
And finally, finally, if you are looking for some light-hearted escape over the week-end, check out NOSE DIVE, my comic novel about noses, New York, friendship, and fallen goudas. Told too with a dab of fone sex. (But very innocently.)
PS – and I should really have made it 55 flavors instead of 57, but couldn’t do that to an old icon.
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