Here’s a handwritten haiku, draft poem for the 19th day of national poetry month.
All rights reserved, Suggestions welcomed.
PS – successfully made, edited, and posted from iPad. (I did it!)
Posted tagged ‘Karin Gustafson poetry’
National Poetry Month – 19th Day – “The Dutiful Couple”
April 19, 2011National Poetry Month -Day 18 – “That Same Night”
April 18, 2011I tried to post this draft poem from my iPad just to see if I could. (I couldn’t.) The effort may have put a crimp in my poetic style! (Ha!) On the other hand, mucking about with technology was a great escape from thinking. Oh well.
All rights reserved. Suggestions welcomed.
National Poetry Month – Day 17 – Dolphin Dream
April 17, 2011
Over head
Draft poem for 17th day of April, National Poetry Month:
Dolphin Dream
The hospital required me to cart
the scanner needed to test my heart,
my torso too and abdomen,
the places growths had lodged within.
I carried the scanner in a bag;
those who saw it guessed the sag
that weighed my spirit, slowed my walk,
and, human, they began to talk.
Defiant, I broke for the sea;
the waves that day were high for me.
One forced my dive far far below
what looked to be a crushing blow.
The shelf’s drop was precipitate,
so fathoms deep, I had to wait,
and watch above the crushing bubbles
that I recognized as deadly troubles,
’till, as my lungs o’erswelled my breath,
I saw a sight beyond the rest,
from my cerulean deep sea bed,
a paisley pattern over head.
Stirs of silver, curves of grey,
muscled turns as clear as day,
Sharks? No, dolphins. My heart took flight,
awe subsuming background fright.
Their ease, their grace, were palpable;
to wish them past felt culpable,
though soon my lungs were too compressed
to sense much more than harsh distress.
The need for change brought exhalation,
despite the lack of further ration–
no air down there–and so far down,
I felt that I must surely drown.
I woke up treading toward the light,
gasping, panting, in the night,
afraid to settle back to sleep,
though longing to re-spy that deep.
That I could watch those dolphins twist
without a clutch inside my chest!
That I could sink into that dream,
sparing no thought for scan machine,
or hospital, or sense of tumor
the hush of the half-murmured rumor;
but translucent blue was not enough,
to smooth the diamond of the rough.
All rights reserved. Suggestions welcomed. (P.S. – I’m very happy with the painting! Made on the iPad 2!)
National Poetry Month – Day 15 – “Buddha Hands”
April 15, 2011
Draft poem for today. It has nothing to do with taxes!
Buddha Hands
My mother says she was a sassy child.
Her father egged her on, she thinks now, liking
to see whether she could get a rise
out of her own mother, a kind of a tease.
“Terrible,’ she says, and I see
her father, whom I don’t truly remember, as
a sharp-nosed, sharp-tongued man, who nonetheless
had a wink about him, his reddish face rough from the cold of
Minnesota when he ducked into the kitchen to warm up
with coffee and a bottle of brandy stashed
in a cracker tin. He, she tried to please, but her mom, she says,
she could be ornery to.
Yet, when she was tired, my mother says,
her mother, to whom she could be so ornery, would let her
put her head on her lap, and would wipe her hair
back from her face, smoothing her forehead.
It felt so good, she sighs, that now, nearly 88,
she sometimes wipes her own hair back in just that way.
As she speaks, as she stands before me, she palms
the grey strands from the still dark
widow’s peak; she soothes the reddish brow
again and again, passing her hand over and up
her forehead.
I think of how she used to do exactly
the same to me: in the back seat of a car, on a long drive,
where no tasks could tended, and my pointed, busy, mother, stroked
my head. I think too of Buddha hands,
a temple market in Asia, where they were lined up
inside a counter, the tapered fingers
flaked with gilt, and how if there were ever such a thing on this
Earth as freedom from desire, freedom from suffering,
it could be found (for me at least) in that one
smooth space on my forehead where my mother, her mother too,
ran their hands,
without grasping, without clinging, without even
holding on.
All rights reserved. Suggestions welcomed.
PS Sorry to those of you who follow this blog regularly that I sometimes recycle old drawings. This arises from lack of time (and illustrational capacity!)
National Poetry Month-Day 13- “Villain-elle” With Elephants
April 13, 2011Unfortunately, it’s a bit hard to read the text in the pictures (it’s kind of small and blurry), so I have printed the full text below the pictures. Jump to that, if you can’t read on the frames.
Here’s the poem without elephants!
VILLAIN-ELLE
He twirled his ‘stache when he thought no one could see
and kept away from rope and railroad track,
for a cartoon villain was not what he would be–
what he sought was originality.
Wearing a hat that was not quite white, nor black,
he twirled his ‘stache when he thought no one could see,
until the day he met that Miss Bonnee,
whose single smile made all his knees go slack.
Though a cartoon villain was not what he would be,
she steered him to a classic robbery,
a bank heist with a gun, a car out back,
He twirled his ‘stache when he thought no one could see,
but see they could, if only digitally.
She whispered, as she relieved him of the sack,
that cartoon villain was not what he would be,
“my hero,” and other murmured fiddle-dee,
till his bent head received a good hard whack.
She twirled her stash when she thought no one could see.
A cartoon villain was not what she would be.
All rights reserved.
P.S. If you like villanelles, look at that category or tag on the site, as I’ve posted a bunch.
National Poetry Month – Day 12 – “That One’s Taken”
April 12, 2011
Day 12 of National Poetry Month. This is also tax season! A very busy time for me. As a result, I’ve found that the only free time I’ve had to do my draft poems in the last couple of days has been on my subway ride to work. The subway (if I have a seat) is actually one of my favorite places to work. It is one place where you really can’t multi-task. Someone else is doing the driving and your handheld computer/smart phone doesn’t work. And, yet, if you are like me, you can always find something else to distract you, something to keep you from writing a really great poem! See below.
That One’s Taken
On subway mornings, I try to write,
to jot down something new and bright.
My brain fills with a melody,
however, most unfortunately,
it’s not composed by me at all,
but from some Broadway musical.
Worse still, I find I’m doomed to hear
the jangling in another’s ear.
Their iPod’s turned up way too loud;
they’re making music for the crowd.
Though that’s just what I long to do–
to be heard by more than one or two–
my spoken tune, my thoughtful rhyme,
some memorable (I hope) line–
I cannot think for all the din,
the pre-played music out and in,
and when I try to write a poem,
I’m stuck in someone else’s song.
All rights reserved. Suggestions welcome.
National Poetry Month – Day 11 – “On the Subway, NYC”
April 11, 2011
I admit to being very tired this eleventh day of National Poetry Month and Monday to boot! (More on boots below.)
Here’s a draft poem written in and about the New York City subway system.
On the subway, NYC
Oh the energy of the human!
Not only do we wend our tubal way
each day through track and dim
and the jim-jam of more
humanity; we also make the effort, pre-
trek, in some looking-glassed, dim-lit room, to don
a black gaucho hat
with a silver patterned band encircling
its crown, a band which nestles just above another
band of braided brown.
Nestled below the hat
come blue jeans embroidered
at the shins
with a cartoon hip-hot kid in crimson and white,
who carries a similarly threaded boom box
about knee-level,
which brings up, along this same track,
wonder at the energy of
manufacturers, their surging press for
logos, crests, pink princesses
interspersed with spirited teams–the man’s shoes
narrow to points unknown, while
the black leather boots of the woman just across are
open-toed, her nails like lips painted beige
to match her blazer, earrings
sparkling to the clavicle–all
of us poised in our best grim readiness–I myself
washed hair this a.m., rubbed on mousse–
inside these tubes of darkness, mostly,
to step on out into the tiled echoes, beneath the
ceilinged stars, of
Grand Central.
All rights reserved. Suggestions welcomed.
National Poetry Month – Day 10 (?!) – “Into Porter”
April 10, 2011
It seems impossibly soon to be April 10th. It is still cold here in Manhattan! (I am wearing silk long johns and a wool sweater as I write.)
On the other hand, the beginning of National Poetry Month seems very far away.
I have to confess that I spent all day working on a separate graphic design project, which is something I’m not very good at. My slowness depressed me enough that a great deal of dancing was required afterwards. Not Fred Astaire this time, but pure Cole Porter:
Into Porter
The trick of Cole Porter,
other than the high order
of wit, is the double rhyme.
Yes, he writes of bubble time–
champagne and effervescence,
an age’s evanescence–
which he crams into a lexicon
where every single word’s spot on.
(It’s huge! It holds the steppes of Russia
and the pants of a Roxy usher;
Mahatma Gandhi, Mickey Mouse–
all take hands in Porter’s house.)
But, to me, that word cabal’s so cunning,
the terribly banal’s so stunning,
because of the double-barreled rhymes
that punctuate all Porter’s lines.
Alack a day, what can I say,
he’s still the top of all Broadway.
As always, all rights reserved and suggestions welcomed.
National Poetry Month – Day 8 “Dear Fred” (Astaire-way to Heaven)
April 8, 2011
I wrote a poem on the subway this morning which I later deemed just too weird to post. So, feeling glum over the possibility of doing more than one draft poem a day, I spent much of the evening dancing. But dancing is just so great! It never fails to give you something!
What it gave tonight: another draft poem.
Dear Fred
Listening to Fred Astaire,
I feel that I could waltz on air,
my mind aloft in swirling swirls
of skirts and arms, top hats and twirls.
My heart is light, if movements less so.
(My tapping hits more heel than tiptoe.)
I clamber, but with grace and ease,
at least through my synaptic trees,
those nerve ends buoyed by Porter’s bubbles
to dance away a host of troubles.
Oh Fred, my hero bold and meek
who dances with me cheek to cheek.
So what you’re just a memory–
they can’t take you away from me.
As always, all rights reserved, and all suggestions welcomed.
I am linking this to Bluebell Books weekly submission re bubbles, since Fred is my favorite bubbly guy.
National Poetry Month – Day 7 – “Oncoming”
April 7, 2011
Today I was kind of dry creatively so, in order to produce a draft poem, I went back to one of my old rules–if you don’t have anything to write, try a sonnet!
I have purposely tried to use slant rhyme (not-quite rhyme), as I think sonnets can sound a little puerile if too rhymey. For prior posts about sonnets, check out this list.
Oncoming
There were one, two, three, four, trucks and we’d hit
sparks, some devilish configuration
of torque and stone, radii and slip,
that spit the car from its lane as from
the sea. It bucked and dove, frantic, through
the waves of semis; to the right, the poles
of an overpass pulled to some untrue
North, as if to catch whatever souls
the semis missed. We were on a visit
to a grandmother but I can’t recall
a greeting, meal, kiss, only that minute
that seemed sure to be our last, the haul
of those deep-sided trucks, my father’s swerves,
the way space looks, time feels, when fate uncurls.
Here’s an alternate last line:
the way space looks, time feels, in fateful curves
Though I think the poem might be better with a specific description.
ManicDDaily 
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