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Undercurrents and Paper Towels (“Divorce a Possibility in Brooklyn, NYC”)

January 28, 2012

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I was honored to be asked to host the “Poetics” prompt at dVerse Poets Pub today.  (Thanks to Sheila Moore, Claudia Schoenfeld, and Brian Miller.)

My prompt has to do with “undercurrents” in poetry.  The examination of the layers of a moment or experience is frankly something most poets do unprompted.  Nonetheless, I look forward to seeing what the wonderful poets at dVerse will do today, and urge you  to check out the prompt and the poets as well.   (And, of course, to write your own poem!)

Here’s mine:

Divorce a Possibility in Brooklyn, NYC


She wipes the counters for weeks
with an increasingly moldy
sponge.  Paper goods
have always been his job, the
disposables,
so for a while when she shops,
she just forgets, grocery store a blur
anyway, baby tied to her chest
like an amulet
against the leering heights
of canned corn, the precarious stacks
of tomato, all those old Italian ladies
in black coats (no matter the season),
the traffic
of criss-crossed carts. 

Till at last, gridlocked in
an aisle she’d intended to sidestep,
she’s faced
by the cellophane muscles
of a man who promises
to pick up everything.  She starts
to reach out to him–his
brand, his wrapper–but feels
suddenly certain
that if she even
touches those paper towels, it will be the end
of the life she has planned.  

She looks down
into her cart; its dull
metal grid reminds her now
of a cage, a poor
cage made of wire and gap,
perfect for some animal
that’s neither strong
nor clever.  

 PS – I’m sorry–overly scattered today–and have greatly edited this poem, changing back and forward again and again since first posting, adding and taking out a first verse (now out!)  Not sure that I made it better but not changing it anymore for now!
For a much much much lighter read, but also about NYC, check out my new comic novel, NOSE DIVE, on Amazon and Kindle.  (A lot of fun for just 99 cents!)

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized
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Comments: 33 Comments

Goodbye to Old Year – “Taking Leaves”

December 31, 2011

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Happy New Year all!  I am posting this for dVerse Poets Pub “poetics” prompt about the reflection that comes at the end and beginning of a year.  Ironically, Mark Kerstetter, the wonderful host of today’s prompt used a photograph of a leaf in his article.  My poem, below, a sonnet of sorts (on I guess accepting the way things are), was also inspired by leaf shapes.

Taking Leaves

The lily pad is formed like a spoon of heart,
holly a pronged sleigh.  Look out for three points–
my leg itches at the thought–there is no part
of me–not organ, not digits, not joints,
not susceptible to mind’s suggestion
(like a house plant that blossoms to Mozart
and cringes at a din).  No. My question
is how to put the horse before the cart,
how to let the soul’s true shape unfold
outside the mold of to think and then to be;  
that is, not to ask why, or wait to be told,
but to just accept pi (what rounds), gravity
(what makes for fall), and Death’s shade (from Day One),
while we earthgrown still will–must–seek out the sun. 

Have a wonderful, thoughtful, safe, healthy, happy, New Year.

I myself realize that what I am hoping for most is kindness–to receive it, of course, but more, to give it–to overcome all those obstacles that sometimes come in the way of being as kind as I would like to be.  (Agh.)

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized
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Comments: 18 Comments

Expression of Emotion in Poetry (Muted) – Burned Soldier

December 8, 2011

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Victorio Ceretto-Slotto is hosting the dVerse Poets Pub “Meet the Bar” event today, and has posted an article about infusing poetry with emotion through use of particular detail and metaphor (among other things.)   She has very kindly included my poem “Far” in her article.  (I am also, at a later date, linking this poem to the Poetry Picnic.)

Here’s another older poem, a villanelle, that doesn’t really have the kind of particular detail Victoria writes of.  Still, I’m posting it because it deals, quite literally, with the muted  expression of emotion.  (My apologies that some readers may have seen this poem, or its companion villanelle.)

Burned Soldier (A Mask For Face)

He tried to smile but found that skin would balk;
a mask for face was not what he had planned.
Right action should give rise to right result,

saving the day as it called on God to halt
all burn and bite of bomb as if by wand;
he tried to smile but found that skin would balk.

When they talked of graft, he always thought of molt,
as if his flesh held feathers that could span
right action, then give rise to right result:

cheeks that were smooth but rough, but loose but taut—
it all had been so easy as a man.
He tried to smile but found that skin would balk.

Hate helped at times; to think it was their fault.
But how could “they” be numbered? Like grains of sand,
like actions that give rise to like result,

like eyes that fit in lids not white as salt.
This lead white face was not what he had planned.
He tried to smile but found that skin would balk;
right action should give rise to right result.

On a very different (i.e. humerous) note, check out my new silly teen novel, Nose Dive, by Karin Gustafson, illustrated (terrifically) by Jonathan Segal.   (When you’re there–take a look at Going on Somewhere, or 1 Mississippi.)  Sorry–but it’s that time of year.

Categories: iPad art, poetry, Uncategorized, villanelle
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Comments: 28 Comments

What’s Best Not To Be Caught Doing In the Stairwell (Middle-Aged Version)

November 29, 2011

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Here’s an older poem for dVerse Poets Pub Open Link night and Thursday4Poets Rally, apologies to those who’ve seen it before.  (The drawing at least is new.)

In the Stairwell

Descending the building’s stairs, she tests her breast,
fumbling beneath her bra to get to skin,
palpating (as they say) but in a mess
of here and there and not all within
the confines of an organized exam.
Silly to do it here, not time or place,
someone else might come, have to move her hand,
and yet fear seems to justify the race,
as if by checking each time it crosses mind,
especially checking fast, she can avoid
ever finding anything of the kind
that should not be found.  And so, devoid
of caution, but full of care nonetheless,
she steps slowly down the stairs, feeling her breast.
PS – A version of this and other poems can be found in my poetry book on Amazon called “Going on Somewhere.”  But, for real fun, check out my new teen novel, NOSE DIVE (written by Karin Gustafson, illustrated by the wonderful Jonathan Segal.)

Categories: iPad art, poetry, Uncategorized
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Comments: 31 Comments

Poetics Prompt- Wild Poem – “Kali”

November 26, 2011

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I’ve posted this for DVerse Poets Pub “poetics” prompt “wild” and Gooseberry Garden’s poetry picnic.  It’s an older poem about the Indian Goddess, Kali.  Kali is a  Goddess of Destruction, often depicted in a fairly violent, i.e. wild form,  but it is my understanding that this destructive force is also an energy that can be channeled in a protective manner–against obstacles!  Blocks!   Enemies!  (She seems to me to be kind of like a life coach mother bear.)  At any rate, here’s my effort and a new iPad drawing above.

Kali

Dear Kali, you are my favorite goddess.
It is your krazy hair,
and all those men that you wear
at your waist.
It is the way that you waste
them with your big mouth,
that you break them in two with your teeth, 
that you bear down hard.

Dear Kali, you are my favorite goddess.
It is the way that you slit,
the way that you split,
the way that you pit
them against each other, heads against heads,
and that sharp spear that you hold
in your hand.

Dear Kali, you are my favorite goddess.
Make me your third eye.
Make me the clasp at your waist.
Give me the weight of fifty men, the hook of the chain.
Dear Kali, you are my favorite.

(PS the poem is in a collection of my work GOING ON SOMEWHERE available on Amazon.)

(PPS – I’m so sorry that I’ve not been in a good position to return comments the last few days.  Thanks to all who’ve commented.  I will get back to your work.)

Categories: iPad art, poetry, Uncategorized
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Comments: 26 Comments

Change Poem – Mother/Daughter/Sister/Hands (“Making It Better”)

November 19, 2011

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DVerse Poets Pub has a “Poetics” challenge to write about change today which set me to thinking of both the new and old.  Here’s the resulting poem:

Making it Better

I think today, the anniversary of my daughter’s birth,
of my mother’s grace–
how she came to my hospital bed at 8 a.m.,
two hours after leaving her sister’s,
her favorite red blouse catching
the robin’s egg fluorescents, the curled tips
of her brown hair carefully
slipped back as she
bent over over the bassinet,
exuding unshadowed wonder.

My mother, who never made any
decision without vocal re-thinks,
not asking me
at that time
how she should dress
her sister–whether the funeral home’s gown
would not be too frilly–she worked after all,
had a career—
carrying only in the back of her dark eyes
the echos of that laboring pant
that strains so to keep on–

My mother, cupping
my daughter’s still-damp head,
in the same cool hands that had
stroked my forehead as a child, as her mother
had stroked hers, and that now,
when she’s been sisterless
and motherless for many years,
stroke her own forehead, wiping
the thinned hair back.

Like this, like this, she shows me,
running her palms over the
join of face and crown–
her particular self and her
universal self–I just find
that it makes me feel better.

Categories: iPad art, poetry, Uncategorized
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Comments: 27 Comments

“Idiomatic” Poem (“Bits and Pieces”)

November 12, 2011

DVerse Poets Pub, a great community for struggling and less struggling (i.e. successful) poets, has a poetics challenge today requesting poems written with idiomatic language.  The idioms I use are not so colorful as let’s say, letting the cat out of the bag, but here’s the poem:

Bits and Pieces

Bits and pieces make a whole;
we use them to fill up a hole
shaped like a merely mortal soul.
Bits and pieces take their toll.

Bits and pieces don’t seem real,
and yet they occupy that reel
of all we say and do and feel
beneath the ever-thickening peel.

Bits and pieces are what we’ve got–
all that’s left and not forgot
(after all that time we shot).
Were they all we ever sought?

That can’t be true, we wanted more.
Surely, they’re what we settled for
and now somehow must find enough,
forget the diamonds, love the rough.

Categories: poetry
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Comments: 16 Comments

Prose to Poem (Plagiarism too?) (“Time Times Time”)

November 10, 2011

Solar Powered Timekeeper?

The wonderful dVerse Poets Pub, hosted today by Zsa of the zumpoets site, presents a very interesting challenge for participating poets–the conversion of prose to poetry.  The idea is to make the prose, someone else’s (and hopefully not under copyright) into, more or less, your own poem (or an amalgam of youand the prose writer.)

I copped mine from good old Charles Dickens.

 

Time Times Time

It was the best and worst–it
was time.  It was
time times time–it
was age.   Of
wisdom/foolishness
epic; belief (aching incredulity);
Light seasoned by
Darkness; where hope
winters, despair
springs, and everything before us
feels
like nothing; a time 
we go direct
to Heaven
only
if there’s no
other way.

Here’s the true text, from the opening of A Tale of Two Cities:

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – “

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized
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Comments: 21 Comments

Poetics – Color Poem (Or Monochromatic One) Maybe

November 5, 2011

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I am still supposedly working on Nanowrimo, but I wrote a poem in my head yesterday, and it happens to fit in (sort of) with dVerse Poets Pub Poetics prompt of the day (hosted by Victoria of liv2write2day.blogspot), which is to write a poem using color.

Date

“It’s hurting me”, she whispered,
“I want it to hurt,” he said.
Later, she lay on a bathroom floor,
its hard checkered tiles,
the only black and white
In the whole situation.

 

After posting the above poem, I thought of a different variation that I like better I think as it has more of a moral compass.  Here it is.

 

Date

“It’s hurting me”, she whispered,
“I want it to hurt,” he said.
Later, she lay on a bathroom floor,
its hard checkered tiles,
the only black and white
in the entire world.

 

 

Any suggestions welcomed!

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized
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Comments: 21 Comments

Conversation Poem? (“No Good Answer”)

October 29, 2011

dVerse Poets Pub has a poetics challenge today, hosted by the wonderful Claudia Schoenfeld (who lives in Germany but writes beautiful poetry in English)  asking for a “call and response” or conversation poem.

The poem below is a conversation in which one person speaks in words, the other gestures.  it’s a pretty grim poem, sorry.  (Please remember it’s a poem, i.e. work of art! )  Also note that, although it rhymes and has line breaks, pauses should really only be taken where punctuated and not at the end of a line.

No Good Answer

She took a brush and hit her hand,
trying hard to make a stand.

“Just go,” he sighed,
“it’s just not working.
You’ve got to know
I’m not just jerking
you around.
No, it’s just the way I am is all,
I’m not the one for you at all.”

She stuck a tack into her wrist,
showing him a bloodied fist.

He shuddered, turned aside his head,
“It’s time for me to go to bed,”
then left her for their one spare room,
while she sat on beneath a gloom
of fear
that she would stop the pain
so that it would not come again.

But she was frozen, could not move,
luckily, perhaps, since all self-love
had vanished
just as his had done,
not to be found under moon or sun.

Categories: poetry
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Comments: 16 Comments

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