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In the Waiting

December 3, 2015

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In the Waiting

You wait
for a sign, inked
in sky,
even butterfly–
some calligraphy that will write
before your eyes
this is it,
permission
to live.

But, waiting,
head bangs
a moving wall,
the bangs you no longer wear
blurring all,
and you decipher only
a smeared graffiti of
it missed,
permission not taken
or taken
for granted.
Oh land; oh lord.

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

60 word poem for the wonderfully terse and succinct and sharp and distilled poet Mama Zen, for her prompt on Real Toads (re photograph of Fortune Teller, 1870’s.)   Also for the wonderful (and Swedish) poet Bjorn Rudberg’s prompt on Real Toads on the subject of waiting.

Sorry for absence.  Life hellish.  (But only because of too much work, not an actual real-life problem.)  Take care.

 

 

Categories: poetry
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Comments: 19 Comments

Draft (NYC)

November 20, 2015

Draft (NYC)

I think as I walk through midtown Manhattan that I should email you my manuscripts
just in case I get shot or blown up tomorrow.

Shoulders filter the night; I weave slightly (in part because of thick black shoes meant to roll worn feet
into a next step)
even as I pass a guy whose face shows the shadowed hollows of someplace south or east of the Mediterranean, depicted in the news lately as scary hollows–

yet, I feel pretty sure that if I should stumble he would catch me by the arm–

a little behind him, two policeman (each of different ethnicity) and half a block behind–these being tense times– two more–

but also because the sidewalk’s really uneven here, slabbed.

Still, I stick with the cracks, having seen a rat on the smoother path I was about to turn down, a curve through the Park (supposedly safe now
in the dark)–

I want to digress here into a story about a pregnant raccoon in this same Park, how I happened onto her one bright day and, in yesterday’s dim, her silhouette, possibly–but it is too long a story for this piece–even though there is something somehow endearing
about a city that harbors pregnant raccoons in its parks (they get rabies shots) despite
the rats–

this city where also hang Matisses blue as sky or sea dancing
and where in the high glass ahead float paned wedges of reflected neon, blue
as a Matisse.

I feel rather sorry for you trying to figure out what to do with the manuscripts–

me who did not myself give them time, yet who still wants them saved,
who wants them (so much) to walk about in the best way manuscripts can, that is, holding
someone’s hand, in the way a book might hold mine now,
but for the night,
holding that person’s hand through street and room, through comfy chair
and scary hollow, showing that person (if desired)
the silhouettes of pregnant raccoons–and more–a woman
weaving–
the only need
wedges of light–really, any color
will do–

******************************
A very odd draft poem for Corey Rowley’s prompt on With Real Toads about the hearts desire(right this minute.) 

The pic was actually taken by me a few weeks ago, showing light shows that were done before the NYC Marathon–not the neon squares of glass I write of, but cool pics, I thought.  All rights reserved. 

Categories: New York City, poetry
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Comments: 22 Comments

When I Only Thought To Write of Paris

November 14, 2015

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When I only thought to write of Paris

I remember when I only thought to write of Paris
when I wanted to wallow in the blue sky
of the basement breakfast room
of our cheap hotel near the velvet of
La Dame de La LIcorne,
or when I allowed myself to taste
good but half-limp croissants like those shoved
to the peeling door
of our bed-sized room near Notre Dame where,
already broken-up,
we wept–

And when I thought the World Trade Center
was horribly gaudy
with its fluted gold columns, burnished fake
as a plastic fire,
its red carpets thick
as the Donald’s wished-for bangs, its long swish
of many
trooped flags–

And later how strange it felt
when my children’s PC New York school
hung the Stars and Stripes over its door,
and how, this time, when we wept
it was like Jesus, not
for ourselves–

And I remember–was it September 16?–
singing in the alcove behind the altar, our West Village church
(because of the crowd)
and how then when we wept, we did not
feel like Jesus but
sorrowful little children, who,
no matter how tightly their hands are clasped
cannot bear the streets ahead
or any more
dark nights–

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

Another poem for my prompt on Real Toads about writing to an exercise.  I don’t know quite how to express my sadness and fraternite with what is going on in France–a start, I guess–

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized
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Comments: 19 Comments

Angora, or a Female Baby Boomer Looks Back

November 14, 2015

Angora, or a Female Baby Boomer Looks Back

I do not remember this grey
ghosting our days,
gaunting the grass below
childhood windows,

though the air was thick
as boughs then too,
air that could be cut into blocks, stacked
like igloos, only warm.

Still, we slipped
through its chinks, able, so young, to think
a back slide sideways,
to glide from the yawn of bed
(barefoot, or flexing Keds)
to the blood red wood of

next door’s back yard table
where we sparred the way girls do–
in slouching talk and prancing walk–
thighs planking the picnicked planks,
too big, we assumed,
to slip through those cracks–

not understanding that it was not the dark
beneath the wood we should
have feared, but something much more fuzzy

that seems to me after years
like the shawl of this fall morning,
whose sharpness pricks
as sure but fine as that rabbit fur sometimes woven
into wool,
or the itch of the sheep itself–

Why could we not
stand up for ourselves?
(Or, maybe, I only write
of me.)

 

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

My rather convoluted attempt at my own prompt on With Real Toads to make a poem from a writing exercise.  Please visit and try for yourself. 

I’m not sure the pic goes with the poem–but I like it–it is my photo taken of leaves falling from the sky.

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized
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Comments: 15 Comments

Beheld

November 8, 2015

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Beheld

She thought she could be held
by a looking glass,
only after slippering in,
found the spoon ass-backwards, front to flat,
even just her own arms warmer;
so battened them around her,
not noting as she looked down
her crown caught, parted.

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

Attempt for the wonderful Kerry O’Connor’s prompt on Real Toads to write a micro poem on the theme of the eye of the beholder.  Pic by Christina Martin, edited by me; all rights reserved

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized
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Comments: 7 Comments

Parting (Fall)

November 2, 2015

Parting (Fall)

I catch the parting of clouds
on the mountain rather than sky,
the baring of bared maples’ inner birch, silver linings bright
as any limb warmed,
light moving
as the crow flies.

So, we sometimes find
those lost, not
by looking up, but across,
right into the shine
of the valley of death;
so, we are sometimes wreathed
with a kindness that knows our shape, our face,
though it lies well beyond
our tracery.

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

Here’s a drafty sort of poem about the way light seems to move in November.  I will link to Real Toads Open Forum.  Pics are mine.

 

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized
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Comments: 18 Comments

And, Also

November 1, 2015

Photo on 2010-05-13 at 23.49

And, Also,

Tired as a flat
by the side of the road.

Whatever rolls round in me
melts to ground,
momentum nailed
down inside–

Abide with me, I croon to you
who has arms so warm
that their life cannot be mistaken
for anything but,
blue veins mapping
an alternate route I strain
to follow.

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

A second 55 for the wonderful Kerry O’ Connor’s prompt on With Real Toads. 

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized
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Comments: 10 Comments

Not the Best Name For It, Maybe

October 31, 2015

 Not the Best Name For It, Maybe

My boohoo won’t
to a shirtfront press,
its ring-ding wringing of face
needing space
from pat flattening,
forced comfort.

Boohoo not the best name, maybe,
for what laments the same not being
the same–
you not being the you,
the true not being the true–
that voodoo of what we do
to one another.

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

A drafty 55 for With Real Toads, hosted by the wonderful Kerry O’Connor.   Sorry for the long hiatus.  Going through a terribly challenging period at my job.  Photo (not sure it fits but like it) is mine.  Milkweed fluff on a frosted leaf.

Categories: 55, poetry, Uncategorized
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Comments: 16 Comments

Something Coming (Late October or Anytime)

October 23, 2015

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Something Coming (Late October or Anytime)

As the trees turn skeletal
the wind does call:

cover your limbs
with shear from bawl,

with the silken squeeze
of cocooned offal,

with hollow-cored fur
torn from its soul,

with leather stitched
by sharpest awl.

Wrap these too
around your skull

and still, I will snake through
your all,

find your flesh,
and, like leaf fall–

wither what I cannot
pull,

crack and chap
the bits I shawl.

The only way
you can forestall

my bite and blow,
my mar and pall,

is to squint right into
my bright maw,

is to smile into
my low and tall

is to let me too
be part of you.

For I can only just pass through
what gives me
passage–

*****************
Drafty poem linked very belatedly to Real Toads Tuesday Open Platform (meaning written mainly just for myself.) Influenced by my friend Hedgewitch’s great fall rhymes in Song of the Willow Wisp.  Photo is mine–all rights reserved. 

Categories: poetry
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Comments: 6 Comments

Falls

October 17, 2015
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Note that this pic only suits the poem in the most metaphoric way.

Falls

It felt as if she’d put a fake eyelash
on her whole head, as if her whole head flirted
with the world, batting itself with the flippancy
of hair curled,
though it was just a fall of auburn hair (framing her face)
and not
from grace,
a purchased dangle of pageboy mod
that made my mother
a strange woman in my eyes, that is,
a woman–
a role that with the bald
totality of youth, I thought, reserved
for me–

In the same way that many
years later,
when I met her at an airport,
I saw a loop of dry toilet paper
dangling from the back waist
of her navy pants suit
and understood, in one fell swoop,
that she’d become
an old woman,

and that I would too,
(if lucky),
which silenced my flip
remark, as, masking
the movement, I caught the tissue, curling it
into a wad–

In those frames, time’s lash
snaps us to, eyes opening
in batted blinks–
Real enough, though–

*********************
My drafty offering for my own prompt on With Real Toads to write something stemming from the idea of fall.  The fall at issue is a hair piece of a type that was once quite popular, longer hair to be worn almost like a hat, with a hairband covering the place where the hair attached. (Unlike a wig, a fall was worn for a change of style primarily, not to hide any bald spot.) 

The pic (mine) doesn’t really go with the piece, but I just liked it.

 

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized
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Comments: 17 Comments

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