Midtown Midsummer (Morning)

Posted July 22, 2015 by ManicDdaily
Categories: elephants, iPad art, poetry
Tags: , , , , ,
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This picture is not a true depiction of Central Park in the morning.  The pic was actually taken in the afternoon.

Midtown Midsummer

Morning park feels like yesterday’s
shirt, worn, but rested right now
from a night on the bedroom floor
slumped just below
the blow of your best fan.

(The wood of that imagined floor
has been sanded, by bare soles, soft;
its varnish long
walked away, leaving a cool in its planks
that the weave of the shirt would now seem
to carry,  if, that is, air were linen,
and linen, aged oak.)

And you are conscious,
walking through this day that does not yet
stick
to your body but still supports itself
a breath or so away,
of things you really mean to do sometime,
other days you want to live–like that bright one slightly buzzing
with bug and sun, in which,
beneath a great straw hat,
you will paint landscapes from life
leaning over watercolors
before a spread
of cattails,
and a few in Lake Como, which you know nothing at all about
but whose name connotes blue
misted by wine; and a couple starting with oatmeal
on the Isle of Skye–you add those in just
for the sound–
but mainly days, many days,
before your own wooden table
and your own unwooden
computer, in the company of words that hold hands
to catch a story as if it jumped
from a burning building and those hands supported
a strong round net–

and before you know it,
you’re at 59th Street, a/k/a Central Park South, and tourists,
whose shorts are the color
of street maps, fold over one or the other,
and the curb is cross-hatched
by stain and plastic,
and the light on everything
from buckle to windshield, coffee cart to
door-manned lid, glares
rather than shines,
and you understand
crossing Fifth Avenue at 57th Street,
(just to the front of Tiffany’s where, this early
in the morning, the windows show only
small backdrops of dusky harbors)
that your time must be plotted, alloted–
allocated (which since it has four syllables
must surely be the best term for
this job) if you wish to get
anything done at all–

and you notice, traversing the grid,
how the crosswalks fade in the center
of the tar, and how the words holding the net
for your stories seem to veer slowly,
h’s tripped by d’s, m’s crowding–

Impatient, you dart across the lowering
side streets–
54th now, maybe even 53rd,
even before the light changes,
even when a truck is coming,
in some pretense of saving time, counting
that you can make it.

*******************************
Another draft poem, or maybe little story.  I wasn’t going to  link this up with anything as it is so long, but will try Real Toads open platform very belatedly.   Thanks much for reading!

I am posting with it an old picture of Central Park, actually from a very hot afternoon rather than early morning.

Comments: 21 Comments

In the Blink

Posted July 19, 2015 by ManicDdaily
Categories: poetry
Tags: , , ,

 

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In the blink

Rocks wink at me
like bits of moon
from the bottom of the stream,
ripples wisps of cloud
on a breeze-blown night.
How do we not understand
that life has gone by
before we even turn
our hearts?

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

A draft of sorts.  Posted for myself. The pic is mine–an old one.  I’m sorry that I did not take one today when the water was so clear, and the rocks so reflective. 

Comments: 5 Comments

Found

Posted July 18, 2015 by ManicDdaily
Categories: poetry, Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , , ,

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Found

We lost the trail in the darkness,
made so much worse by the fog,
so switched children.

You took the little one, cocooned
from stick and branch,
passing the older from shoulders that broached,
as you tried to lead the way,
encroaching trees.  It seemed

forever.  Bracken up
to the knees, crashes half-caught,
I whispered to the child postured sureties,
all the while thinking screw
the contact lenses, maybe we should
just sleep in one of the small ravines where we slid
without meaning, leaning
into wet leaves,

until a long downward stumble
yielded to a field we knew, a field
found new,
and the child I could have carried forever
grew instantly so heavy
I could hardly move,
there, where the uncanopied moon silvered
rain-slivered stalks
and the road shone like a striped ribbon
wrapping a gift
called soon.

I think of this now–the flashlight’s gaze
dazed only mist in the darkness–
when I try to think about
grace–

I think of how humans stretch what they are
to shelter another,
as if they were tents made of
some miracle fiber, as if their strength
were truly tensile-

But what was graceful that night was not the way I carried the child
until carrying could be put down–
because there are plenty of parents, surely crowned
with grace, who have not been able,
to carry children
through their nights and fogs–

but that I so wanted to carry her,
grace more the gift of caring than carrying–
the gift of somehow lifting up
one’s self,
what makes us try, impossibly, to be as true
as the blue about the late moon, mornings,
and, nights, to hug another as closely
as haloed glow encircles
that reflective rock.

I can feel still
the pressure of small arms, legs,
making conscious my own contours,
as we both
held on.
*****************************

A draft poem for my own prompt on Real Toads to write something sparked by the idea of grace.  Honestly, I wanted to write something much shorter than this, but this is what came to mind.  Check out all the wonderful poets at Toads and congratulations to Kerry O’Connor, the founder of the blog and Toads Community, on its 4th anniversary.  Congratulations to dVerse Poets Pub on its blog anniversary. 

The pic above is mine. As with the poem, all rights reserved. 

Comments: 26 Comments

Talking of Shorter Days

Posted July 17, 2015 by ManicDdaily
Categories: poetry
Tags: , , , , ,

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Talking of Shorter Days

We are shortened.
An invisible hand presses
upon us.

Sometimes, it’s the hand
of the market–
Adam Smith’s dowser–
its forked-tongue stick-thumb heavy
on our heads.

Other times, it’s the gravity of Newton,
the gravity of events, the grave, and, of course,
the grave. 

But, then, there’s also
the gravy–
that soppy flow of marrow and stock
that runs between us, you
holding my hand.

I tell you that when I grow even more
demented,
you must put stones
in my pockets,
then prod me towards
the pond.

You answer that you’ll photoshop
the Monday crossword–that’s the easy one–
so that it looks
like an impossible Saturday’s–

I revert
to the stones.
We’ll get so strong, you say,
walking around with rocks
in our pockets.

I picture you, then, leading me on hikes
through the forest, the legs of our weighted pants dragging
through the leaf mold, our pants
that already need to be hemmed,
though somehow we never get around
to it;
for the invisible hand does not hold, just now,
a needle.
(Good.) 

 

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

A draftish poem for Kerry O’Connor’s Real Toads’ prompt on writing with “voice.”  This one, with all its convolution and goofiness seems to be mine, or at least one of them.  The pic is mine as well as the poem; all rights reserved. 

I call it a draft because still changing. (I think maybe the “Good” should read as “Ah”–any thoughts? ) 

Comments: 15 Comments

Begins With S

Posted July 12, 2015 by ManicDdaily
Categories: poetry
Tags: , , , , ,

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Begins with S

Then there is the slithering
of snakes inside–
those stretches when Esses
eat you, slit
your “it,” style a switchblade
as salvation.

You mishear their hiss
as ‘yes,’ sliced
permission.  It’s also the hiss
of histrionic, suffering’s
seductive backwash; still,
it speaks to you–

until, at last–before
at last if you’re lucky–
you see, as if unhooded,
how unoriginal are
your sins.

Re-surfacing, you stitch.
Sew tight the lips
of the wound.
Smear the stains into some swath of something,
scarf the scar with some swath of something,
something busy, patterned,
something that won’t
show dirt.

 

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

Poem of sorts influenced by the brilliant but very dark poet, Paul Antschel, who wrote under the name Paul Celan in response to Grace’s prompt on With Real Toads.   Grace gives a brief biography of Celan, a Romanian Jew who survived World War II to become a poet, professor and translator, dying of  suicide in 1970.

The pic (of a turkey vulture) as well as the poem is mine.  All rights reserved.

PS – process note–Ess is a spelling of “S” and “esses” –S plural.  Esse is also the German word for eat (I think?)  and Latin for to be? (I think.)  (Not completely sure how that relates to the poem, but why I spelled it out.) 

Comments: 21 Comments

Early Evening, July

Posted July 11, 2015 by ManicDdaily
Categories: poetry, Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , ,

DSC00382 - Version 4

 

Early Evening, July

The hay just mown,
birds fly low,
wings holding light
like fingers round
a great candle.

Field just shorn,
insects shown,
wings alight
like wax ringing
a bright candle.

Days new mown,
summer shorn,
gold ring circling
to down-faced
palm.

Lord, have mercy
as time feeds on,
wax eaten
by a held candle;

new mown hay,
wing-blown day,
gold ring
glimmering–

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

A draft poem for no prompt.  I’m calling it a draft since I’ve done about a zillion versions in the last day and am by no means sure this is the best, even adding things I probably shouldn’t as I post.  But I’m a bit anxious to move away from it for now. I wish all a happy weekend.  (The pic above is mine; as with the poem, all rights reserved.) 

I am linking this to Real Toads open platform.   

Comments: 20 Comments

(Book) Skywalker

Posted July 9, 2015 by ManicDdaily
Categories: poetry, Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , ,

(Book) Skywalker

Overcast.
Still, there’s sky in the air,
and, light on the blacktop
of this country road,
I say that what I’d like to be
is a person who walks all day.
Preferably holding a book, I add
with unusual frankness, to you
for whom the world outside
is usually enough–

And you, who knows what I do
when alone, especially in the City when not
in the fold of you–how I follow an arrow of page
through lines of print and people, cross blocks
of blocks, that is,
how I read, walking,

grow serious, saying,
you better watch out down there,
you’ll make yourself a target–

not understanding the cover
of cover,
the shield of
one’s own corner, carried,
how those there, yet not there,
(like the sky in this grey day’s air),
(I’m talking about characters) serve
as my personal pages,
while the page itself makes
my weather–
and how can anyone who holds
a small separate sky
in their hands, be harmed, I want to protest.

But don’t.
Don’t even tell you how surprisingly well
my feet read the street
with my other soles–

Because I must confess, thinking it through,
that wheeled fenders seem
extraordinarily insensitive
to sky,
so vow silently to look both ways
on those read streets,
and also, you know,
up–

**********************************
A rather odd poem for multi-taskers or escape artists (like myself).  I am talking here about reading a real book, not phone, which I have done for many many years.  I am posting  for the With Real Toads prompt of Ella about things you’ll never grow out of.

Comments: 18 Comments

Not Bird (55)

Posted July 4, 2015 by ManicDdaily
Categories: 55, poetry
Tags: , , , , ,

Not Bird

I swung into the early
of my life, pumping the vine-veins
of its woods with sweat-salted limbs
that could rewind,
I thought, warped
arcs–

Swallows swoop
to rise,
but what humans swallow,
they tend
to keep down.

Too much of my flight
a fleeing,
soars sorry, fleeting–you
not there–
nor me hardly–

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

A 55 word poem of sorts influenced by Dante Alighieri, poet of The Divine Comedy, for Kerry O’ Connor’s prompt on With Real Toads–

The pic is from the recent Plains Indians exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC ==a ghost dance drum.

Comments: 22 Comments

Field

Posted July 3, 2015 by ManicDdaily
Categories: poetry
Tags: , , , ,

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Field

Pressing myself against your bared back
feels like the idea
of lying down in a golden field
only there is no stalk
poking my arm–

well, that is not completely true–

except that my skin is not incipient
with crawl, with twitch, some
itch, and the craving
to (not exactly) scratch it–

maybe
forget that too–

but certainly there’s no filigree of fern or even hair
along the horn of your nape, spine,
the ridges of ribs that like me
reach round you,
the crests of shoulders
my nose climbs–

For it’s only the idea
of a golden field,
this warmth where I lay
me down, or at least
the idea of me,
this expanse where we both
become quite other–

not true again–

for your skin
always holds gold
when I look closely–
you, my
mister glister–
you, where I lay
me
down,
you, who loves that me–
we,
glowing–


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

I’m back with this draftish poem for Hannah’s prompt on nature’s wonders on With Real Toads.  The pic is an older one of a much wetter field than I imagine for this poem!  

Comments: 12 Comments

Ode to A Rock (On a Bedside Table)

Posted June 20, 2015 by ManicDdaily
Categories: poetry, Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , ,

Ode to a Rock (on a Bedside Table)

You’re heavier than
your grey,
and so rounded
you’d pass for a stone
if rolled some way.

And I (meaning me)
could use you, my husband says one night,
to throw at the forehead of
a gunman, knock
him out.

This casts you
in a somewhat different light–
no longer an oversized bite
of forest floor, something to hold open
a door,
but a possible means of deliverance
like the rock rolled away
from the tomb.
Only not.

For I’m not sure gunmen are swayed
by rocks, certainly not rocks
of faith, ages–

Hard to understand
even when your heft
weighs down my hand
that you will outlast its flesh–
that all our individual flash
will transmute to dust, ash,
while the wind still feeds on you–

So, life seems to pass faster
than a speeding bullet for some,
while for others, it is taken away
at exactly
that pace–

*****************************
A draftish poem of sorts for my own prompt on Real Toads to make an ode to something relatively quotidian.  This one, of course, is very influenced by the horrible tragedy in Charleston, South Carolina, this past week, at the Emmanuel African Methodist Church. 

I’ve edited this since first posted, as the end didn’t quite get across the meaning I was aiming for.  Thanks. k. 

Comments: 23 Comments

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