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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

Fridays Flash 55 (“Did you hear the one about the father, the daughter, and the….?”

October 21, 2011

Overheard in NYC 

Man, dark curls pulled back below
balance of thick black hat,
breaks from gentling lilt of
tuneful (if slightly breathless) Hebrew song,
to child, blonde curls falling forward,
anxious (despite song),
in his fully-extended arms (and pink), wedged
between careful pale-
fingered grasp and
trapezoidal cardboard box:
“Don’t worry, sweetie, we’ve got
the ukelele.”

(This is posted for Friday Flash 55 (Flash Fiction in 55 words), a fun excercise posted by the G-Man, Mr. Know=it-all.   (I’m going to tell him a thing or two.)

Apologies to regular followers:it’s the reposting of an earlier (not great) drawing, and story, though slightly expanded here.

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized
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Taboo/Provocative Sonnet? (“Spy Games” )

October 18, 2011

One of my (many) faults is a tendency to second guess myself.  In the world of online poetry sites, this tends to arise in the context of ‘why did I post that poem, link, story, or picture?’ when I should have posted a completely different one.  (The different one, of course, would have been much more cool, likeable, wowie-zowie.)

This past weekend, dVerse Poets Pub, a wonderful online poetry site, urged poets to post something taboo or provocative.  Needless to say, I spent all weekend castigating myself for the poem I put up (about an important seaside activity.)

So, here it’s Tuesday, dVerse Poets “open link” night, and instead of moving on, I’m going to post another “taboo” poem, a sonnet, in, I think, a Spenserian format.   I am also posting this poem for the Poetry Palace’s poetry rally.  Here goes:

Spy Games

We played spy games galore in the basement.
Running spy games with the boys, our bent hands
guns, till sweating we lay down on cold cement,
shirts pulled up, chests hard.  Not much withstands
the leaching chill of earth, the buried sands
beneath a downstairs’ room, except perhaps
the burn of nipple, the future woman’s
breasts.  Our spy games just for girls had traps—
some of us played femmes fatales, poor saps,
while the leader girl was Bond—0-0-7.
She hung us ropeless from the bathroom taps,
then tortured us in ways that felt like heaven,
the basement bed our rack, what spies we were,
confessing neither to ourselves nor her.


The poem is published in Going On Somewhere.  (The header is a detail from the cover by Jason Martin.)  Check it out!

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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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Bumper Sticker Poem (Live Free or Die?) (Thinking of Germany and Bad Times)

October 8, 2011

20111008-033446.jpg

This is a fresh-off-the-brain-press poem written for dVerse Poets Pub poetics prompt.  Today, it is to write something inspired by a bumper sticker.

So What if You Really Did Live in Germany in the 1930’s?

‘Live free or die’
easy enough to sigh
‘let me be me’
when it’s not really a choice
of to be or not to be,
but the voicing of
a complaint, the price
of sainted gas
is too damn–
(kind of half-assed,
if important in its way),
but what if your neighbor,
even the guy you’re sore at,
who plays the tuba at two,
and happens to be a Jew,
is dragged off in the night?
In your window, the light
of a seering torch;
on your porch
the pound of booted step;
and your wife has wept
with fear, your
children so very near,
and you know,
yes, although you know,
it’s terribly wrong,
and you long
(somewhere)
(somehow)
to dare
not to bow
to whatever inner voice
now says, the choice
is not your own.
Okay, you’ve got a gun
but you’ve also got
a son, and
they’ve taken his,
that neighbor–who–
he had one too–
not yours,
yours, who purrs
as he sleeps,
you see the peeps
of dreams beneath his eyelids–
what do you do then?

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Written in some physical discomfort

December 17, 2010

In Discomfort

Oh, how prominent the body
when it does but hurt.
When it works,
it’s the slovenly servant
(each not as pretty or clever
or fast
as others in its class.)
But when it pains,
the servant reigns.
We supplicate, cajole,
pretend to ignore,
pray for, hold
(in its arms), pledge allegiance to
(hoping for a truce.)
It is not amused; it is not
amused.

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Conversation Piece

December 15, 2010

More poetry!  Or draft poetry!  Whatever you want to call it.  I think it’s a little difficult to consider a poem finished on the day it’s first written.  (The initial draft of this was actually written on the subway yesterday, but still to say it’s “finished” may be a bit premature.)

The Conversation

He, who has not always been
kind, but wants to be,
told me of a dream.

“I was crying,” he said,
“as I looked at you,”
and that it had to do, he thought,
with something painful that
I had once refused to disclose,
he’d forgotten what.

I knew the conversation,
but also could not remember
exactly what I’d not said–there is so much
I would not tell him–only
that it was suddenly more painful than ever
it might have been
in the reflection of that girl,
the girl in his dream, enough so that
when he looked at me, I felt small
cracks at the backs
of my eyes and, for a moment,
could not speak again.
“Well?” he asked, and I said,
“anything else?”

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Self-Appointed Tasks (Draft Poem)

December 13, 2010

Self-appointed Tasks

Invent duties in order to feel dutiful.
Propose purposes.
Appoint tasks.
Why? you ask.
To crowd out the required,
that, we are mired in,
what makes us cry uncle
but from which we can’t bunk off.
Cast them onto a list
where they can almost be forgotten
till ticked off,
one being to die,
another, surely, to live.

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Rain, Melting Snow, Draft Villanelle

December 12, 2010

Rain Today, Melting Snow

A rainy day.  I thought I’d try a villanelle; the draft is below.  In this one, I’ve played with internal rhyme and word repetition; also used slant rhyme to avoid the flippancy of straight rhyme.  I am linking this also to Bluebell Books short story slam–their picture was a girl outside in the rain–this is a woman inside (in bed with iPhone) in the rain! 

Any suggestions, re-writes, corrections–feel free to let me know!

 

Rain today, melting snow

 

 

It rains today.  What was a scrim of white
frays to a stark and intermittent thread,
as browning fields bring softness to the eye,

 

and rumpled folds of brush and weed deny
the brambles that will later stalk my tread.
It rains today.  What is a scrim of white–

the screen that fixates, though two inches wide–
and, like a stalker, ties me to my bed–
(’till browning fields bring softness to the eye)

as intermittent glances, window-wise,
prise digital fingers from my real-world head.
It rains today; what was a scrim of white,

 

as bright outside as in, in puddles lies–
as clear as any water (over mud).
The browning fields bring softness to the eye,

 

reminding one that even autumns die,
snow too, its shine reduced to what was then
by rains today, a threadbare scrim of white.
The browning fields bring softness to the eye.

I appreciate that the poem has a certain similarity to other efforts of mine.  (But there it is–you write what you write.)

For other villanelles, or posts about the mechanics of villanelle writing, check out the category “villanelle” here.

 

Categories: poetry, villanelle
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In Memoriam – Rhona Saffer

October 16, 2010

I went today to the memorial service for a dear friend who died this past summer of breast cancer.  All agreed that she was funny, bright, warm, brave, strong and beautiful.  But the theme that resonated most was her extraordinary kindness and care for others.  Because of this compassion, she sometimes “mothered” her many friends; but, of course, she was especially devoted to her own children.  (They, like her, are wonderful people.)

This is a poem (a pantoum) that I wrote for her, during her lifetime, after she told me how she feared and regretted the pain that her death would cause her children.  Although any mother could relate to such feelings, they seemed particularly emblematic of her courage and selflessness.

The Last Thing
For Rhona Saffer


Know that,
when I must go,
I will love you
just the same.

When I must go,
I know it will not feel
just the same.
There will be cool air—

I know it will not feel
like my lips—
but there will be cool air
caressing your face

like my lips,
while your smile only,
caressing your face
(oh reflection of mine),

will be your smile only.
I never wanted to cause you pain,
oh reflection of mine.
That was the last thing

I ever wanted to cause you. Pain.
No, I would love you—
that was the last thing.
Just the same,

know, I would love you,
I will love you,
just the same.
Know that.

She was a much loving, much loved, person;  she is sorely missed.

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