Posted tagged ‘dVerse Poets Pub’

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Poem by The Other? (who wants some cheese.)

October 22, 2011

dVerse Poets Pub, a wonderfully supportive website for online poets, has a poetics prompt today about writing in the voice of the other (hosted by Mark Kerstetter).  I have one very serious poem written from a very different perspective (the poem’s called Honor Killing.)   But the world is such a somber place these days, I wanted to focus on something lighter, i.e. a dog! And cheese!

So here’s the poem.  And below is a little fledgling animation I did some time ago which does not exactly illustrate the poem, but is close enough.  (Have a great and light Saturday!)

Sniff Becomes Him 

Sniff cheese sniff cheese sniff cheese above,
Sniff that pungent sniff I love. 
Sniff high faint clouds of that so dear–
Sniff cheese so far and yet so near.

Sniff bowl, oh holy hallowed
Bowl, sniff (howl howl) bowl, so hollowed
Now.  Oh please Oh please
Oh please, Oh please!
Oh wherefore art thou
Phantom cheese?

Sniff time not passing,
(Swiss, Cheddar, Brie?)
Sniff hours harassing,
(Oh my! Oh me!)

A Treat! (for Pete’s sake!)
For him who’ll wait
By door and bedside
Early, late.

Oh whimper/whine, I’ll beg no more,
If you’ll just drop some on the floor.
Egads! Yum Yum!  My thanks for this,
Sweet morsel of a moment’s bliss.

(Repeat till satisfied.)


Categories: dog, poetry
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Comments: 26 Comments

Taboo? (Maybe…) Poem (Yes!) (“A Woman Needing to Pee”)

October 15, 2011

Woman Needing To.... (image by Diana Barco)

The below poem is posted as part of dVerse Poets Pub, Saturday Poetics prompt, hosted today by Kellie Elmore. The prompt was for a poem that is provocative or deals with a subject that’s taboo.  As a (believe it or not!) slightly shy person, I find it very hard to post something both new and taboo, so am posting an older poem (one, that I’ve had time to get used to.)

A Woman Needing to Pee

A woman needing to pee,
she steps into the sea, knees
salt, a piercing balm, her
shaved legs grimace, gasp
cold, still she strolls thighward,
as far as she is able, needing to pee,
squats needing to hide it,
rubs water over her arms to hide it better,
acting out a woman too timid
to go out far, a woman
needing to cool herself.  But
she craves warmth and secretes it,
a secret warmth, wet-warming
all the sea.

Stretching tall
and cold now only where air
licks skin, she dives
into the afterglow,
a woman who swims.

A little background:  the poem was originally written as part of a “magnetic poetry exercise,” a kind of arbitrary but freeing exercise.  It can be found in my first book of poetry, Going on Somewhere, poems by Karin Gustafson, pictures by Diana Barco, cover by Jason Martin.  Check it out!

(PS – the new header above is from the cover of Going on Somewhere,  by Jason Martin.)

Categories: poetry
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Comments: 36 Comments

dVerse Poetics-Marlowe Revisited – Christopher not Phillip

October 13, 2011

The wonderful and very supportive dVerse Poets Pub  suggests as a poetics prompt today that one imitate an admired poet.  As host to the prompt, Victoria gives a great personalized version of the wonderful Wallace Stevens Thirteen Ways of Looking At A Blackbird.  I would love to try my hand at Wallace Stevens, but shortness of time  and several days into the long distance part of a long-distance relationship lead me instead to Christopher Marlowe, a poet  whom I  love and whose work I’ve already imitated.   This is based on the wonderful  “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love”. (“Come live with me and be my love.”)

A Passionate Long-Distance Caller To Her Love

Come live with me, my sweet, my dear,
and we shall never echoes hear
of anxious longing, fearful cries,
of ‘why me?‘ woes or angry lies–
our ears won’t burn with cellphone’s ray,
our brains won’t morph their matters gray
into tumors fed by conversations
that only serve to try our patience.
Oh please come here; stay right by me
so I can see you when I see
the sky, the window, the chair, the bed.
the pillow there beside my head,
for you are all to me and more,
my sun, my moon, my ceiling, floor,
the one I talk to, the one
for whom I’d be still–sweet Hon,
I know my silence is not much known–
I can’t quite manage it on the phone–
but come here soon and stay forever
and we’ll lay quietly together.

 

 

(Apologies to those who’ve read this poem before; it is edited a bit!  I will try some Wallace Stevens soon.)

Categories: poetry
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Comments: 21 Comments

An Egg is Still Not a Lightbulb (Crafting Poetry)

September 29, 2011

I have lately been following a terrific poet-inspiring blog called dVerse Poets Pub;  I’m a bit new to the pub, and in anticipation or what, last week,was a day to post “works-in-progress”, I posted, this morning, a draft poem  (Dolphin Dream).  But instead dVerse Poets Pub has requested poets to think  today about the craft of poetry!

The craft of poetry!  Thinking!  I don’t know which is more difficult for me.   Both take some measure of disciplined focus and wild abandon.  I do a lot of revision when I write;  at the same time, I rely a huge amount on unconscious leaps.   Increasingly, these leaps probably arise from synaptic gaps (or gaffes), as much as from inspiration.    I try to use these gaps as starting out places, and then, ideally, I go over and over them to iron out the rough edges.  Good to leave some rough edges though.  And, of course, to add music.

A form can help as it can supply some of the discipline and focus.  (As well as the music.)

And now, here’s a poem about it.

Villanelle to Wandering Brain

Sometimes my mind feels like it’s lost its way
and must make do with words that are in reach
as pink as dusk (not dawn), the half-light of the day,

when what it craves is crimson, noon in May,
the unscathed verb or complex forms of speech.
But sometimes my mind feels like it’s lost its way

and calls the egg a lightbulb, a plan a tray,
and no matter how I search or how beseech,
is pink as dusk (not dawn), the half-light of the day.

I try to make a joke of my decay
or say that busy-ness acts as the leech
that makes my mind feel like it’s lost its way,

but whole years seem as spent as last month’s pay,
plundered in unmet dares to eat a peach
as pink as dusk (not dawn), the half-light of the day.

There is so much I think I still should say,
so press poor words like linens to heart’s breach,
but find my mind has somehow lost its way
as pink as dusk (not dawn), the half-light of the day.

(Sorry to those who have read the poem before, a reposting.  It’s also in my book, Going on Somewhere, by Karin Gustafson, available on Amazon.)

Categories: poetry
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Comments: 18 Comments

Unable to Change or Fix Life Poem–Yellow Glads–Grasping At Straws (And Contentment)

September 17, 2011

20110917-020340.jpg

The political scene seems too grim to even contemplate these days, so turning back to poetry. Poetry! And iPad Art! Although this poem is fairly serious too– Any suggestions, comments, are most welcome, particularly with respect to title.

There

There is so much in life
we cannot change or fix:
your dear friend stacked
with flowers, yellow glads
and lilies white, the green baize
cloth that masks the upturned
earth; the tumor that
takes over a torso, the still
familiar face that can’t digest
the body’s betrayal;
time spent more carelessly
than cash (loose minutes
rarely found in turned-out pockets);
all those difficult years
when contentment was there–
there–there within our grasp if we had just
grasped less; the
flotsam jetsam straws we clung to,
drowning rafts, that
sparkle now in the current of all that’s past,
catching against far shoals, banks, shores–
there–there–there–

(As always, all rights reserved.  Karin Gustafson)

(If you are a reader from the wonderful dVerse Poets Pub, the link to the train poem which I should have written and posted today to participate in the Pub is here.)

AND NOW!  I am posting this one to the dVerse Poets Pub Open Link night and also to the ver supportive Promising Poets Parking lot (blogspot).    Thanks for the opportunity.

Categories: iPad art, poetry, Vicissitudes of Life
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Comments: 29 Comments

Subway Sonnet – Train Chemistry – Light That Cannot Be Broken Down For Parts

September 23, 2009

Molecules (poem by Karin Gustafson, drawing by Diana Barco)

I updated this post for the dVerse Poets Pub prompt for poems about trains and am also linking to Victoria C. Slotto’s blog liv2write2day relating to poems about light.     This poem is not a new one, but it was written on and prompted by the subway on a Monday, thinking about a beautifully sunny Sunday before.

This is a sonnet, a variation of the regular form 14 1/2 lines rather than the requisite 14.   I added the extra couple of words at the end to combat that “patness” that sometimes results from a sonnet’s final couplet.

Molecules

Yesterday in the dim fluorescence
of subway car, I thought of molecules.
They seemed, in that greyed light, the essence
of life.  I saw them stretched in pools,
sometimes seemingly limpid, other times
volcanic, fervidly swooping me
abubble, then mucking me into slimes
of laval woe, a test tube of to be
or not to be.  Today, I’m by the sea,
and water, vaster than pools, sparkles
under light so immense it cannot be
broken down for parts, yet its particles
raise up the non-molecular part
of me, what refuses to lose heart,
no matter–

(All rights reserved.  Karin Gustafson)

(The drawing above is by my dear friend Diana Barco, who illustrated my book of poetry called “Going on Somewhere,” available on Amazon.)

Check out 1 Mississippi at link above also.

Categories: New York City, poetry, Uncategorized
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Comments: 31 Comments

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