Posted tagged ‘ManicDDaily poetry’

« ManicDDaily home page
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Also For Father’s Day – “My Father (baby birds)” Poem

June 20, 2010

Earlier today wrote a post, which, despite the elephants, approached Father’s Day from the sociological side (sort of).  My true bent is more towards the poetic, so here’s another post (draft poem) in honor of the day.

My Father (baby birds)

When he sang,
which was only in church,
my father’s voice
was deep and cragged and
reminded me of a froggie
gone a’courting.
But this was baby birds.

It was not even a person
who had died.
It was not even a particularly noble dog,
though like all of its species, it was capable
of a self-debasing attachment that could seem
Arthurian.

But after the accident, the rush,
the sad blur home,
my father’s back faced me in my room
with a sound
of birds.
It silenced all gone wrong,
turned me back into a person
who could do things in the world.

Categories: poetry
Tags: , , , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

Prom Season (With Elephants)

June 4, 2010

June Prom

The skies take a short break, waiting for the hair.
In one case, it is fine, sleek hair
which will only stay up till
the photo’s click, less than the time
I’ve stood behind the girl, working with
bobby pins.  “Wispy is good,” I say as
she fumbles in the back for smooth.
The make-up is smooth; two-toned
eyes converge with Egyptian directness
onto the shade of dress’s shine.

Skies grumble.  “Maybe
you better hurry,” I say.
“Why did I squeeze it?” one wails.
I palpate tint and powder onto a spot on
her breastbone, repeating a mantra
of don’t worry, it won’t show.

Another wants to keep the price tag on, tucked
inside the dress’s backless back
because it’s the most expensive she’s
ever owned.   Mid-twirl, she cries, “oh no!  It smells
like smoked fish.  Why does it smell like smoked fish?”
I tell her it’s fine, but offer perfume.  The one with the squeezed pimple
leans in supportively:  “I can’t smell it.”
“Oh God,” the twirler moans, “I
can smell it from here.”

Lips stretch shimmer
onto smiles perfected
over eighteen years.   And then, the camera
down, they really smile, not bemoaning
their lack of dates, only—and that less
and less–the possible scent
of smoked fish.

Darkness greets them with what sounds like applause.
I chase down a cab, then, umbrella in
each hand, ferry them one at a time,
hovering over hair, shoulders, skirt.
Slippered feet glisten through the tarred, watery drumroll,
as if made partly of glass,
the other part celluloid.
I laugh with the doorman as the taxi pulls away,
taillights as bright as Christmas in this storm,
the mother, the friend’s mother,
the one left to put away
the little jars, hangers, bobby pins,
to scoop from the floor the finally cast-off
tag, happy to be needed
by these large, beautiful, creatures,
happy to be out of the rain.

Categories: elephants, parenting, poetry, Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

Memorial Day Weekend- Liquified Whitman

May 30, 2010

Memorial Day Weekend

Here is a draft poem for Memorial Day weekend.  Did you know that Vitamin B is recommended to ward off bug bites?  Apparently, mosquitoes hate the smell.

On the Grass By the Pond

My Vitamin B-infused pee
blends with the blades of yellow-green
below my thighs, like
liquefied Whitman.
Memorial Day Weekend.
First outdoor pee of the season.

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized, Vicissitudes of Life
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Comments: 2 Comments

Kristoff’s Moonshine, Hirsi Ali’s Feminism, “Honor Killing”

May 23, 2010

A couple of articles in the New York Times today are enough to make a woman a feminist for the sake of bettering the world as a whole, and not simply the lot of women, (although since I am already a feminist, I may not be a good judge of that. )

One from Nicholas Kristof describes the situation among the poor in Africa where spending choices by fathers favor alcohol and cigarettes over anti-malarial mosquito netting and children’s tuition fees.  To combat this problem, micro-bankers are trying to put more money in women’s hands, as women tend to be more likely to spend money on the welfare of their children than on their personal habits or pleasures.

Another article by Deborah Solomon, portrays Ayaan Hirsi Ali, an ex-Muslim woman, the author of Nomad:  From Islam to America, and discusses the Islamic view of women as family property, only with the twist that women are property that is capable of devaluing itself (like silver that self-tarnishes, an oven that self-chars.)

To some degree, the articles discuss unpopular topics; some in the West are so anxious to compensate for cultural biases and depradations of the past (and present)  that they are reluctant to criticize, or even acknowledge, practices that are unjust and oppressive.  This, to my mind, is political correctness at its worst: when there is a pretense that all points of view are equally valid and that cultural norms (even those that are unjust to women and children) are somehow fine simply because they are foreign and/or tradiional.)

Here is a poem on the subject on honor killing.   It was inspired by an incident in the Middle East where a brother killed a sister suspected of dishonoring her family:

Honor killing

The knife slides in,
with force.
She is thinner than he has remembered,
her collarbone sharp as
a hook he thrashes upon.
Mind snags heart, but
cannot aim for breast,
only the knife can look past nipple.
Smaller than he’s remembered,
with too-soft skin that folds within
whites of eyes big as
blade.
He tries to think
of flame, the filmy body
of smoke, the dryness of
ash, but blood,
fountains,
in honor of
the righteous,
fountains.
Why has she made him,
righteous,
do this,
with force.

Categories: news, poetry, Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Comments: 4 Comments

Brain Teeming? Try Rhyme!

May 11, 2010

Locust Leaves

What to do when your brain is teeming too much to think straight!  Write a poem, especially a rhyming poem.

A rhyme offers a wonderful thread away from fretful pre-occupations;  it can take you somewhere quite magical.   So, in the stress of mid-week, even though I no longer have the excuse of National Poetry Month, I am posting a draft poem written this evening, made up of rhyming quatrains.  (I don’t think it qualifies as magical, but it was a fun exercise.)

Behind the Locust

She tiptoed under the locust trees,
their shade bared earth, her shorts bared knees.
Their bark was rough, as rough as you please,
though the wood is soft in locust trees.

Though the wood is soft, the thorns are not;
sticks fall down, and leaves on top.
She tiptoed through the thorny plot
of earth and stem and leaf and rot.

The trunk was thin but she was small
and stood at angles–so, and so,
shifting from tip to the other toe,
to hide from all who’d come and go.

No one was looking, but still she hid,
looking herself at all they did.
She watched them walking, watched them sit,
keeping close the tree’s close fit.

What mystery to be lost and found
beneath the slightly rustling sound
of leaves like grapes; inside, the pound
of a heart that’s longing to be grown.

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized, writing
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Comments: 12 Comments

Mother’s Day Evening

May 9, 2010

Hiding in Lilac Bush

The post below, for mothers and infants, was originally posted in the springtime, for Mother’s day evening, but I am linking it to Bluebell Books Short Story Slam.

 

It’s a poem for mothers–though I suppose it doesn’t so much express appreciation of mothers as of motherhood.  (Happy Mother’s Day everyday!)

Going In to Look at My Daughter Asleep

When I walk into your room,
I try to sneak
beneath your soft
small breaths like
hiding inside the
lilac bush, trying not to laugh, like
the dreams in which I
sit with my dead
grandmother, so happy to
have her back.  It’s a rebirth
each time I see you after
not seeing you; it’s
as if, you miracle, made
the dead rise.

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Comments: 16 Comments

Not Quite National Poetry Month but “Good Enough”

May 3, 2010

Diamond Enough

After yesterday’s post concerning the relatively higher payback for posts about Robert Pattinson, I am returning to poetry.  This is, in part, because the  Academy of American Poets announced that it is extending its April program of daily emailed poems for the entire year.  (I figure if the Academy of American Poets can post a poem a day for longer than a month, I can too.)

So here’s another draft poem  (written on the morning subway).   Any suggestions for improvement that you may send are seriously considered and greatly appreciated.

Good Enough

Why is it that they,
the amorphous they,
can never say
you’re good enough
well enough
for you to feel, in fact,
good (enough);
not perhaps like a
diamond in the rough,
much less a diamond buffed,
just not ‘not good enough’.

What can they say
to allay
that bay of inadequacy,
that convenient, if unsafe, harbor,
built-in, if empty, larder?

It sounds like a game,
but if words can tame pain,
rhyme act as anodyne,
it’s worth a shot,
would mean a lot,
maybe, for a short time, enough.

(PS – note that an earlier version of this post incorrectly named the Academy of American Poets.  Sorry, Poets!  Their emailed poems are a feature called “poem-a-day”. )

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized, writing exercises
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Comments: 5 Comments

End of National Poetry Month – Poetry Goes On! (May 1st Monsoon Villanelle)

May 1, 2010

Monsoon Skirt

What to do when April, National Poetry Month, is over, and you no longer have an excuse to post draft poems, but you are not yet ready to reinvent yourself or your blog?

Post another poem about excuses, difficulties with reinvention and May 1st!

Here it is (a Villanelle).  (Thanks for your patience.  Tomorrow, I really do hope to move on.)

Travelers’ Wedding – Bangkok

The monsoon sky grew slowly thick with grey
as sweat like traffic stalled the steaming city.
It didn’t feel much like the first of May,

not even in his shirt saved for the day,
nor in the Indian skirt she’d thought so pretty.
The monsoon sky grew slowly thick with grey

as they hurried to the bureau where they’d say
“I do”, or if required, some learned Thai ditty.
It didn’t feel much like the first of May;

still was, and, as they found, a holiday.
Closed office doors made clean clothes somehow gritty;
the monsoon sky grew slowly thick with grey.

“Tomorrow then,” they sighed, feigning dismay,
and then made jokes that almost passed for witty.
But it didn’t feel much like the first of May,

stained, like his shirt, with portent and delay
as sweat, like lifetimes, stalled throughout the city.
The monsoon sky grew slowly thick with grey;
it didn’t feel much like the first of May.

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized, villanelle, writing exercises
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Comments: 8 Comments

30th Day of National Poetry Month – Villanelle to Mistakes

April 30, 2010

K's

30th Day of National Poetry Month, and my 30th (or so) draft poem.  I have to confess I’m not sure what I’ll do tomorrow.

This last draft poem is a villanelle.  This one came very readily, actually, as I was busy stewing over the day’s mistakes.

For a detailed explanation of the villanelle form, check here; for a comparison between writing a villanelle and assembling a banana pudding, check here.  For more villanelles, check out the poetry category from the home page.

As always, pauses in my poems are intended to be made only where marked by punctuation (comma, period, etc.) and not at the end of every line.  (I have to say I’m not completely sure of proper punctuation here.)

Finally, thanks so very much for following this blog, reading the drafts and not minding the many–

Mistakes

I make mistakes just writing out my name.
I know the letters, curves, the dotted “i”,
but what was then was then, now’s not the same.

The letter “K”, for instance, no longer tame,
won’t bisect in half with every try.
I make mistakes just writing out my name.

The “u” beginning “us” against the grain,
it wants to sag and limp, become a “y”
what’s then was then, why now is not the same,

why what should be a beam becomes a crane,
not level, but a very uphill climb.
I make mistakes just writing out my name.

How does one make a stand on legs gone lame?
How does one make a song out of a cry?
(When what was then was then, now not the same.)

The green in Spring is yellow, in Fall is flame.
What one can do is endlessly defy
the making of mistakes.  I write my name
as I did then, and then.  What’s now?  What’s same?

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized, villanelle, writing exercises
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

29th Day of National Poetry Month – Poem In Your Pocket Sonnet – WhitmanBack

April 29, 2010

Whitmanback, not Greenback (or, as it appears, Rasputinback)

April 29th–the 29th day of National Poetry Month–is not-so-traditionally “poem in your pocket” day, a day when everyone is supposed to carry a folded-up sheet of poetry on their person.  (In my experience, the main people who celebrate the day are students with good English teachers.)   Here’s a draft sonnet in honor of the day:

For Poem In Your Pocket Day

Amazing to think of a poem in
one’s pocket in place of all currency–
cash or gun—a bartered verse to phone in
to your broker, negotiable fluency;
“Song of Myself” read for a credit check,
“Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking”
serving for your OB.  For a higher tech
purchase, try a quote from Stephen Hawking–
not quite a poem but close enough—and
for those moments one faces something raw,
when, as they say, the going gets tough, and
life itself seems stuck in maw and craw,
what a gift to unfold one’s own scanned lines
and read in them word of other times.

F0r more on sonnets, look here, and also check out the poetry category from the home page.

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized, writing exercises
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Comments: 2 Comments

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »