ALL RESPONSES |
| --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
I am of a mind to forget you.
If only to show
that, even in America,
greater poetries exist.
Though I may need to brandy
my life with
brilliant impiety.
Naturally transpiring from young to youthly,
back and forth,
in ceaseless changing,
retaining bright eyes wide to sovereign prayer
too holy for belief.
An aged mystery by which the poetic lies unattainable
regardless of honest desire,
parched temptation
or favored wish.
This is, as it was in youth, where what is felt is either naïve
or a fearful
response to sin,
after which only the pen
can see the answer through the rust.
Am I not eternal?
Eternity is made
to be washed away.
Sharpening my teeth no longer,
I smolder in bare confession,
knowing
my flesh to this Earth was not
my last undoing.
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
And you are the reason
the clouds are filled with music
why rain sounds like desire
and dawn is the kiss I’ve left
on your throat.
You are the moment
I spy the moon, cradle it
in my hand, rock it
to sleep, knowing
each tomorrow I’ll find you
in every swaying branch, in each
fragrant dream. I believe
in grace, in gravity, in the pull of
love, and in your eyes
I find them. Trust that every bird
that sings
of longing can hear
the tune my body hums
for you.
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
flower the cat comes to poetry
she stretches out
on a sheaf of selected poems
propped on my lap
it’s not that she’s taken with Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg
her sleek blackness likes the feel of paper
(coupled with my underlying promise)
no fussing here
newsweek will do or the trib
whatever I happen to be reading
for now she becomes the poem
cat are you jealous of my attention to the word
she rubs her head against Death of the Kapowsin Tavern
yawns delicately at Letter to Kizer
has no concern about blocking my view
poetry matters I tell her
I move my knees
she leaps away, nails leaving puncture
wounds in Church on Comiaken
two black hairs remain for Richard Hugo
praise or disdain she doesn’t say
to her
in her constant search for comfort
one word is as good as another
logos widens her pupils
as she watches the night
from her stool by the window.
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
Why should I write?
yell through the hole in the floor
whisper into a hangnail.
verb preposition article noun.
do I need
to connect you to insanity?
the greats call it poetry
do I need language?
the others call it pomp
my mind is the cat's feet
on a piano's keys.
the black keys, a meow
Do you matter?
Yes, you, the one I forget about.
The one who knows how I look.
The one who breathes ink.
The one who listens.
you, the poet.
Will you get mad if I don't make sense,
or is that impossible?
Does this sentence look like the depths
of the human intellect?
If I dropped your gavel would it
make a sound?
Do you realize you will never answer
these questions?
I bend your lips into what I please,
and you believe I do it.
Do what? Question the reality of you.
You make no sense.
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
I bought three pens today
black and white barrels
extra fine - bola rodante -
agarre de caucho
and they were cheap too.
But one of them has already
spoiled several pages with
indelible marks that I can't erase
in phrases that I don't understand.
Perhaps the other two
still in their package
and so full of fresh ink
will listen more carefully
when they are freed. |
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
Today I wonder if you can hear me
in the way the wind speaks to leaves
in the sand as it tumbles in waves
in the feather of a bird, pounding
the sky, stealing the blue to
give to you. It does not matter
if I sleep, I dream of horizons
shimmering and liquid like you.
It does not matter if I dream,
for you touch every surface,
plant memories on street corners
and buttons, leave them
in the backseat of my car.
If I sit still, I can feel your heart
beating, know what it means
to be a silent e.
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
Coming late to writers’ group at Bruce’s cabin October 5 2005
‘it was a dark and scary night and three men were sitting around the fire’
boy scouts, girls scouts, campfire girls –
they all know the drill
sweet jesus, where is my flashlight
I can see the cabin lights
but after I slam the car door
I step into thick black nothing
other cars parked roadside confirm
this must be the place
‘it was a dark and scary night and three women were cackling around the fire’
I make it down the hill my wee torch
sweet jesus is almost no good at all
I stand by the lantern Bruce placed half way
maybe I’ll just stay here feeding my poems
here’s annie now the neighbor’s brown lab slobbering at my knee
I walk into a line of low trees
no that’s not the way annie says
‘it was a dark and scary night and 10 writers were sitting around the fire’
their pens whisper
the fire crackles its pungency reaches me out here
the creek’s gurgle becomes less lonesome
I stumble on a rock
sweet jesus where is the step
annie circles me panting
dumb bitch she thinks
why doesn’t she just sniff her way in
it was a dark and scary night
10 writers were sitting around the fire
wording their futures the now the past
bob bruce lynn mable sheila reet brenda krista faith betty
sweet jesus where is my pen
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
On a day when you can hear the grass crisping
in the heat, until it feels like a bed of nails
under your bare feet stepping gingerly across
the lawn...
on a day when you can hear the end of
summer rustling in the bent and broken
cattails in the marsh...
on a day when the evening breeze, ripe with
the musty scent of rain, rises to roust the
ghosts harbored in the trees outside your
bedroom window...
on a day when you least expect it, I’ll come to
visit you as a whisper of light illuminating
everything that goes unseen. |
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
For the arm which writes is the stunted arm,
the one which must exercise all
the harder to do its share, and this arm,
looking so disconnected at times
because of imperfections, defects,
call them what you will, this arm’s duty
and blessing must be to practice,
to become strong, to be a faithful
and responsible member to the whole,
to spend its life connecting what the eye
sees or the heart feels to the hand’s words.
It can’t just hang there doing nothing.
This is no free ride, the arm’s job, carrying
message, thought. It can’t allow
the hand to seem larger than the forearm,
as if the hand knew everything and
needed no carrier between it and brain,
as if its every movement were autonomous,
its every twitch, omniscient. That somehow,
independent, the hand is its own principality.
The arm must not shrink into its situation,
intermediary, yes, humbling, yes, yet not
so humble as to be retiring and withdrawn. |
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
What came first
constellations
or those tall tales
of hunters or swans—
water-dippers or
Dorado, ocean deep
What twin is more
beautiful, which horse?
the graceful roan seen
at midnight or the timid
Pegasus with silent wings
of feathered sunlight
rising from a familiar star
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
Richard Brautigan
was a mystery
he refused to speak
of his childhood
without a childhood
what can we know
about the man
his poetry
snippets of introspection
slices of life
in mere moments
influenced by love for the orient
his complicated simplicity
and unique style inspires
readers to seek little things
dissect the moment
into something important
because we can never go back
captured breath...
released
does this art
of pen and paper
drive us all mad in the end
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
because I already love you
because I want you to know me
because I am bold alone in my black off-the-shoulder Spanish lace bodice
because I found a silk shawl at the last chance store and a velvet beret that was more than I could spend
because of the smoke that got in my eyes and the water in my bones
because the campfire was more than night and less than silence
because the wine went to my head and all I had to drink were fumes
because I waited for you after midnight
and ate all the cherries
because the quiet tic-toced all the way home
because I am longing for home no matter where I am
because home is the place where I find words to extricate myself out of knots and charms
because only pearls know my true name
because I licked the salt of your tears
because I haven't met you but still I love you
because the sunset scorched across my accidental descent
because this is where meaning meets my foolish hope
becuase I am foolish and full of words
because I have to
because I said yes |
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
Lines drawn on paper.
We recognize some as letters.
Others as skin, eyelids or flower petals.
Or clouds. But the lines in R feel nothing like your arm.
L doesn't smell like your neck, but is the beginning of love.
When you paint life red with a brush, it looks like blood,
and blue is the color of my eyes in spring.
Next time you paint or write,
don't forget the lights.
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
Don't think for one minute that we don't recognize you,
writing sentence satire on that desktop, or designing
your next tattoo around the frame of words which reflect
this mess we're in because, God knows, there was little
reaction when you said, "The only difference between
Hitler and Bush is that Hitler was elected." |
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
i’ve come to accept the fact
that I will forgo
food
sex
even water
to put pen to paper
my blood runs indigo
and everyone around me
risks becoming my next subject
i’ve become a parody of myself
do we ever really avoid cliche’
or is that simply a myth
Lord Byron said,
“ if i don’t write
to empty my mind
I go mad.”
“i think composition
a great pain”
Like giving birth
over and over
again
and dare anyone
hurt my children
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
Poet, like knot of wood in humanity's grain
Poet, like smell of water - subtle, hidden, in desert
You sing with no music - a vibrant song
Paint with no color - a portrait of the inside
And shine with your shadow - in the dark heart of our sun. |
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
This was my winning essay in "The Great American Think-Off" contest held in 2002 (New York Mills MN). I thought it might by appropriate here:
In Act V, scene vii of Macbeth, Shakespeare writes, "Why should I play the Roman fool, and die on mine own sword?" A query for people who both live and die by the sword. That these words were penned over five hundred years ago speaks volumes. The pen is indeed mightier than the sword. Man wields both. Where the pen is controlled by Man, the majority rules. Where the sword is controlled by man, the minority rules. Man is at its collective best when celebrating its successes and honestly confronting its failures. The pen allows this to occur. From Shakespeare to John Lennon; from George Bernard Shaw to Mathew, Mark, Luke, and John; from Sammy Cahn to Thomas Jefferson; the pen's production has proven to be infinite. The sword's production is finite. The pen produces and nurtures life. The sword produces and nurtures death. Man was born to live, not die prematurely by the sword. In a curious way, intelligence is at the heart of the matter. The pen demands intelligence. The sword reprimands intelligence. The pen has aided Man's quest for intelligence. The sword has repressed it. Even in societies where the sword is the controlling element, the same controlling societies fear the pen more than anything else. Thus, the pen, in any form, is suppressed. The controlled thirst for the pen, smuggle the pen both in and out of their suppression, are more willing to die for the pen than for the sword. America, the greatest nation in history, was founded by the pen. A majority of nations emulate our pen or are guided by it. Oppressive nations continue to suppress the pen. They are afraid of its power. The world's religions were all birthed by the pen. Guttenburg's 1455 invention of the moveable type system press was recently voted the most significant event of the 2000 millennium. The pen, once massed produced, has led Man from the Dark Ages through Enlightenment through the Space Age to the threshold of mapping itself. The pen will eventually lead us to our origin. The pen is government. The pen is literature. The pen is music. The pen is stage. The pen is law. The pen is advertisement. The pen is dictionary. The pen is religion. The pen is newspaper. The pen is book. The pen is children's crayon. The pen is quill. The pen is computer. The pen is epitaph. The pen is cave wall. The pen is radio waves to distant galaxies. The pen causes Man to raise its sword. The pen causes Man to lay down its sword. The pen is history. The pen is future. The sword will always be with a minority of Man; however, the pen will outlive the majority of Man. The pen produces reason, stimulating the difference between Man and animal. The sword produces chaos, preventing growth in the difference between Man and animal. As a teacher I have seen the educational power of the pen as our youngsters learn its language. As a teacher I have also seen the demeaning power of the sword, its cutting edge, as it endangers our families, our schools, and our streets. The pen is carried with pride by our young and used for enrichment. The sword is carried with anger by our young and used for defilement. Enrichment deters anger. The pen is mightier than the sword.
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
Now I want to run
pulling my hair to the river
want the mud of it, slivered almond
moon, Venus just above
the rocks beneath the bridge
singing in the dark.
I'm thinking water
the rubbing, wearing, the silk of it,
the he touched me I am whole of it.
The beautiful poet reminded me of you
the edge of combustion in him.
He's your age, frail. (Are you that thin now?)
In dreams you are ahead of me
I, just missing your face in a room
that you left but your voice drifts back,
your voice and your hands.
You said if I had been born long ago
I would have been a saint.
Is that what I can do
now that you are gone?
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
(Please click here to view the poem in its exquisite intended format.)
Life displays
A succession of losses, perceived
childhood
innocence
parents
lovers
memories
friends
A poem spoken by an unconscious, constant
Certainty, never to be explicated.
No despair, no reward, no linearity.
That Which Is,
then, we is, left with what was.
Time
slides
sideways
so that perceptions
and losses
never correspond,
but still whisper between themselves several truths.
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
once in a blue moon
a poem will begin to push
its way onto my paper:
the sweetness
of being alive
and being able
to write about a robin
unsullied as a soul
dancing across spring
on thin legs or the bliss
of hearing a thirty degree
morning crack electra
or Willie Nelson crooning
“Stardust” on the drive home
this evening that left me o
pen as a door |
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
mainly
I talk of love
the aorta loves that talk
glub, glub, glub,
take it in just to lose it—
veins on paper.
Do I choose poetry or
express it?
I preferred holding hands with you,
spelling words with the lines
of our palms in the orange
light
The title, an afterthought.
"poetry", so I can remember
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
For you I want to capture this pleasure,
encapsulate it-- a tiny ship in a bottle,
a prayer craved onto the head of nail.
I never loved this world or you so much.
Truth is, I’ve lost more people
than I have loved. Still there
are reasons to believe.
Poetry and warm weather have arrived.
The heart can be made tender
and memories like fruit
soften over time.
I open the windows and my mind
to let in spring and flush
from crevices and cracks
winter darkness and the cold
that for so long held us bone-chilled.
And the sun enters as dazzling
as the wild turkeys that stopped traffic
this afternoon. That big tom’s feathers
sparkled with mating iridescence,
his red wattle jiggling in breeze.
Bold he was, making me wait
without even a glance my way.
His eyes a bridge to his haughty hen,
pursuing her with a strut
afire with religious verve.
He trembled with longing
to gobble her up right there
in front of us. Heedless
of life or death he followed--
all moment, all praise, feeble
in the crush of so much passion.
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
think Dickinson
a mentor once told me,
go ahead, speak to her
a bit of advice
that paralyzed
my fingers
for years. and now
alone this April evening,
anticipating showers
i imagine i know the woman,
have seen her at the local bazaar,
frayed scarf around her neck
perhaps have seen her
entering a cemetery, black
wool shawl draped
upon her thin shoulders
quite a solemn thing—
as is my writing these days
as if i’m waiting for a messenger
to tell me Emily has been delayed,
she’s busy, too busy to visit with me
she’s spending time these April
evenings with the East, the Yellow
Man, who may be Purple when he can
and i am left alone
to gaze upon
yellow nosegays,
as captive as she
and i and we
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
I couldn't quite make out what he was writing.
or if he had even written anything at all.
I do know it was David Byrne writing.
The head Talking Head was poised,
waiting for a signal
from a muse to create.
Or, maybe it was the idea of food,
after all, he was sitting
at the kitchen table,
where songs about food
piled up in his mind.
In his dream
during daylight,
was a cryptic glyph
bugging him,
like the steady stare
of a stranger
looking down
on his vacuous
black and white... |
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
The redheaded boy reads loudly through his braces about this town versus
the city maze of traffic, people pushed together like bees on a hive
and similar similes and the teacher wonders, why bees, why hive?
The one-armed girl reads about her courageous fake arm,
adjusting it automatically as she shifts her pen from wood to flesh.
It is April, near summer vacation and the girl who loves the boy reads
her poem about seasons and loss and her eyes know these things.
The girl who writes about the boy who is thin as a toothpick
reads as if he were not sitting across from her chewing on his lip,
his pencil dancing circles around the page. He is so small, reads the girl,
standing to help her voice work better, that he cannot fathom...
Fathom. The word of a teacher invited from the city to unveil
or impart something she can barely fathom and the teacher finds
herself shrinking as the toothpick boy grows, as he will,
and the girl isn’t even sorry and the whole class laughs, boys and girls
alike, at the miniature teacher standing on a stool.
The quiet girl in the corner hands the teacher a folded paper on which
three poems are written: Dolphin. Sunlight. Eagle. The teacher
disappears and on the stool, cooling, is a giant blueberry muffin.
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
I sat while you were outside today
reading books readingbooks
I thought fields were so wonderful
you at work youatwork
you plowed up the earth today
you at work youatwork
and I thought it was so meaningful
reading books readingbooks
America, why have you forgotten me,
Forgotten about punctuation?
your lungs are a pantomime
filled with soot filledwithsoot
and the glass of a generation
asbestos asbestos
it keeps you safe from fire
asbestos asbestos
and lets you bleed black earth
filled with soot filledwithsoot
America, why have you forgotten me?
the arms of our industry
rake in green rakeingreen
and you were born already
on your knees onyourknees
but I was a youth once too
on my knees onmyknees
I’ve forgotten what I used to do
to rake in green rakeingreen. |
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
Your silent name,
the taste in my mouth
your arms,
my resting spot
your kiss,
the only kiss
your voice,
tangled in my hair.
Somewhere
an orange sun rises.
Somewhere
You lie
dreaming of snow
in April,
of bitter rain
you lift
from my lips.
Here, where
Birds refuse
to sing, my skin
glows of embers
of your touch.
Here
on my tongue
your silent name
lingers, waits
for yours & its
sweet, sweet release.
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
as if all my friends have moved away
leaving me less lonely than disabled
as if their homes still stood but awaited
boarding over instead of being lived in
as if they were expected, but uncommandable
as if more would come to take their place, but word was out not to
as if innumerable stand-ins might audition and be cast in their parts
as if vocabulary should be able to proliferate like bunnies, exponentially
as if it mattered
as if I'm sometimes just fooling myself
as if the trigger was desire itself
but the moving finger, having writ, did truly move on.
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
Blank page blank page blank page
Who sits in a dark bar with a beer
Alone with a blank page?
Fuck you that's who.
What I really would like to know
Is who sits in a bar with a
Beer alone sitting before a flashing screen
Of men chasing balls down a field
Over and over again, the only change
Is a color of uniform.
Forgive me for interrupting, but
who here can tell me if alcohol thins the blood?
The doctor said No aspirin or tylenol because
It thins the blood, so I wondered.
Well, we’ll find out
Sooner or later, right?
Some laughter, but it turns to be me.
It isn’t so much the same ball being tossed
Over and over again as it is broadcast on
multiple screens, all within eyeshot.
To clarify, one screen is of biking and motor cross
And BMX—things with wheels going round
And round on the track, kicking up dust and dirt
Peppered with the occasional bone splitting crash.
In the distance, by the window,
four dirty blondes grasp hands
across the table as if in prayer
when in reality, one just applied
too much lotion. |
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
how cardinals bless the buds in May
and squirrels grow as large as Cornish hens
courting corpulence and cognac in cafés,
how eagles fly, searching for their prayers,
or hear bells, peeling back bark
that falls in piles near a garage in need of paint,
or what can grow in the tilled soul,
how seeds, drunk on drops of evening rain,
become swords that cut crust at day. |
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
(in response to Wendy)
Because I don't feel very creative today.
Because I don't want want to rule the world, just enjoy it.
Because my in-laws would think I'm strange.
Because the voices drown each other out at night.
Because sex is better than any words can scream.
Because absinthe is sooo expensive.
Because nothing can ever be taken seriously.
Because children are more important than art.
Because words have the power to change the universe.
Because honest expression can be brutally painful.
Because poets are more predictable than atomic clocks.
Because one might resign oneself to a lifetime of introspective ennui.
Because Hegelian dialectics don't always lend themselves well to verse.
Because of what Sappho did to me. |
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
and
because with each word, I question
each word
because I find poetry in the repetition
because I’ve discovered something I
will never find
because
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
Haiku Trio
1
Wintery April
Ice stays late on northern lakes
Impatient loons
2
Only one warbler
in this cold migration
Juncos refuse to leave
3
An April wind
rattles my bedroom window
Uneasy season
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
In the light of the sun, rays pass through a sawed-off window.
I sketch you. The dusty strokes of graphite and lead smear
into memories I have forsaken.
My hands are traitors to me. They show me where I am from
every now and again.
On a step below me you sit and repeat what I say
with a characteristic grin. I sketch your legs. They are scrawny and short. Your hair is a black breeze that falls through my fingers evenly, cross hatches my knuckles.
I make your lips scarlet red, bitten with anger.
I cannot make anything more clear
You do not understand the plates that shift within the earth, the deepest holes on the moon; the way I dream of plopping down
on all of the porches of Italy
You do not understand the ways in which my fingers grasp
at nothing and everything at once.
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
The students are restless around the table
under the blaring glare of florescent lights
even after it is proven they make us jittery,
does nothing for my mood
One boy yawns, but he wants to sing
One girl hums her way
through her embarrassment of not
knowing what to write, one girl chatters as if this is
home ec class, one girl says poetry is
about love, she dropped out
after we read Callarse by Neruda
and talked about defiance and war
One boy has the heart and soul
of a poet, waits patiently
for my instructions, hears the
melody and the meaning
For him, I would cross again the
desert, slip on the ice,
crack my head on lesson plans
that implicate anger and grief
love and beauty, travel through
the wilderness with a map
in my hand and one small lantern
against the dark
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
Your smile
is better than sunlight
to chase away all of my fears.
I envy the flowers
because they might
get much more
than their share
of your tears.
Your lips
are not merely a pillow
to rest
my restlessness on.
I envy each cloud,
each slight billow
whose shadow falls there
while I’m gone.
Your love
is an ever-warm arbor
full of unexpected delights--
there the bird of my song
regains ardor
for his countless
fancyful flights.
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
I like a poem that bleeds
like a rare steak on the palate
and leaves the taste of hot
copper clinging in my mouth. Smells
like my old man leaning
over the sink in July, sweating copper
pipes. Looks like a tell-tale
beating hard along a close-hauled crescent.
Sounds the crescendo of a tell-tale
beating heart. Feels like your heart, held
warm and familiar in my hands. |
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
I have a friend who hiked Mt. Parnassus
and all he found were goats and rabbit droppings
and a clouded view of Delphi.
I'd like to think
that among the grass and dirty rocks up there
lie broken strings, the iron tongue of a bell
the echo of the language we all knew. |
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
FOR THE LOVE OF WORDS
From the intense look on your face
it is clear to me how absorbed you are
in your writing,
so much indeed you look gray,
as if you have been bleeding into it
until you are a mere trace of yourself.
The awkward position of your body,
your leaning sideways
as if collapsing under a weight,
makes me wonder
about the weight of the lead in your pencil,
as the one in your thoughts, and words.
This load you carry
cramps your hand on a white page,
atrophies your arm while you waste away.
Nothing seems to faze you though,
definitely not my words.
You look as if possessed by a ravishing fever.
I am envious of whatever is consuming you,
the intensity of your passion
which leaves me behind
and for all,
leaves your words
and pencil traces of your life.
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
Because this is poetry month, I thought to include an obscure Italian poet who's name was Lorenzo Stecchetti and lived in the late 1800.
I wish had written these words, but I have not. Believe me when I say that in the original language the words curd up your blood, and are filled with a passion and a desperation of which I have yet to find equal. The translation is mine and even though I have tried my best, I am not sure it does his work justice. Anyway, I hope you'll enjoy it.
The Song of Hatred
When you will lay forgotten
Under the rich soil
And the cross of God will be erected
Straight over your casket,
When your rotten cheeks will sink
Onto your unsteady teeth
And in your fetid eye sockets
Worms will swarm,
For you the sleep that for others is peace
Will be a new agony,
And a remorse will come cold and stubborn
To bite into your brain.
An acute and atrocious remorse
Will come inside your grave
In spite of God and his cross
To nibble on your bones.
I, will be that remorse. I, will come
Searching for you like a wolf in the dark night,
Like a lament fleeting the light of day,
Like a moaning she-wolf I will come;
I, with these nails will excavate the dirt
For you made manure,
And from the filthy wood holding your
Infamous carcass, I’ll pull out the nails.
Oh how in your still vermillion heart
I will satisfy my hatred,
Oh, with what joy I will dig my claws
In your un-bashful womb!
On your putrid womb I’ll curl
I’ll lay for eternity,
Ghost of revenge and of sin,
Fright of Hell:
And to your ear once beautiful
I’ll whisper implacable
Phrases that will leave my mark
Like a branding iron.
When you will ask: why are you biting me
And feeding me with poison?
I’ll reply: don’t you remember your beautiful hair?
Don’t you remember your blond hair
Covering your shoulders,
And your deep black eyes
filled with yellow flames?
And of the audacity of your bust and
The opulence of your hip?
Don’t you remember how beautiful you were
Provocative and pale?
Aren’t you the one who showed the naked chest
To strangers’ eyes,
And invited them into your bed?
Aren’t you the one who
Opened her arms to every soldier
And lowered yourself to unmentionable kisses,
But at me laughed?
And I loved you, and at your feet
Praying I fell, and for you,
When you looked at me
Under your feet I wished to die.
Why deny to me, the one who loved you,
A gentle gaze,
When for you I would turn slave,
I’d turned vile?
Why say no when I, prostrated at your feet
Mercy asked,
Meanwhile in the street waited the English men?
You laugh? Listen! From the sepulchral place
Your guilt filled carcass,
Your naked flesh I so much loved
I’ll nail on the pillory,
And the pillory is the verses where I damn you,
To eternal shame,
To pain that will make you
Regret the pain of Hell.
Here I make you die again, oh cursed,
Slowly, at pin pricks,
And your shame, my revenge,
Between your eyes, I’ll seal.
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
what am I doing to you child?
the last time I saw you, you
were so full of promise--
like a mirror--like the avalanche’s
first pebble; and then smoke
and time and smoke and time and
there is a new face now; you
fill pages in books with words
that are useless when compared
to the innocence you once had;
you once wrote on the wall with
your finger you were such a god,
but now I have lost
you
and I grow old--grew gray the day
that I stood at the bottom of
your cataract, covered with mist,
covered with dust, covered with
the grime of years; and you have
become, but I am done--there are
no tears that my eyes will loose. |
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
Charging past
the unsuspecting welcome
of eye or ear
your words rush
my interior
there igniting
much the same passion
that spun your own soul around
We two,
poet and reader,
dance dizzily
across different floors
yet somehow hear
kindred notes
and share this love
of synchronicity.
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
The first is like shell of dead hornet
Propped and hunched over writing desk,
Like the husk of once painful buzzing now empty and airy inside -
No reasons to write,
Other than the beauty of his decaying machine,
Gutted on the floor of his lifeblood production plant.
The second grinds and cogs forth with wheel -
With method into gear shift formulas of grease and grime
Blood and bones small and fragile- Birdlike, crackling
Twigs and light wings with marrow –
Sharp beak-teeth biting into feathers of crunching aeronautic corpse.
Both are like light flight of firespark sparrows in thought.
Ducking and swooping in and out of tallest trees and cavernous caves
Embers atop bonfire on witches peak.
I, a wild-eyed vessel of firefly deception,
Shall die in their same method.
Remembered for such dynamics.
I have decided this on this day,
As a new lantern is being lit
To fight the bite of the darkness.
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
I used to know you Father,
before the door shut on a Saturday and
I was whisked to safety--
before (in the time even
before before) you came into my room
at one thirty in the morning, to talk, I
was planning to run away
from your Book, your Spirit,
your you;
(I was looking at the roadmaps of places
that did not involve Him at all
(how could that be?)) places, rock
hard places were traced
in patterns so far gone from your chaos--
your fall of man--because,
after all, you knew that I
was just in my decision, and let me
lay out My plan;
I packed two suitcases, a guitar, an
amplifier for the guitar (because
nothing works without power), and then
I stepped into oblivion, an angel
intent on falling because, before, you
had taught me not to feel anything. |
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
a clock is ticking—
grandmother’s clock
and with each tick
the world is closer
to the west, clouds
gather and disperse
like casual residents
the sky is brass
and tonight the faithless
will write no poetry
a river runs through
us like your shadow
on the opposite shore |
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
The body repeats the landscape. They are the source of each other and create each other. –Meridel LeSueur, Growing Up in Minnesota, University of Minnesota Press
Portrait or ‘Scape?
She thinks of Gulliver, staked to the ground by Lilliputians,
little ones crawling over him, lifting his eyelids,
hoo-hooing into his ears, whispering to themselves.
Did he stay staked long enough to become grass, dissolve into dirt,
begin a tree?
Did he know they were giving him home?
She remembers Gulliver when her eyes scan Southern Minnesota’s map,
the River a huge quality check,
angling south to Mankato, her town, then north.
A giant artery spurting, feeding the land, then turning, searching for the heart.
Childhood’s landscape becomes her body’s topography;
The meridians of her body feed its extremities.
She is nailed, like Gulliver, to prairie and woods.
She becomes the grass, sod self eschewing Cities,
wondering, like Gulliver, who or what might lift her eyelids,
speak into her ears, peer at private parts.
Pinned, she travels inward,
Searches for heart.
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
In a maze of loneliness,
the heart pumps for more
than false hope found in a pill,
then Creativity grips
the perfect pen:
painting portraits
brighter than words,
cleaner than health,
deeper than memory–
opening the door to reality.
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
Memory is an old box of photos
in the attic of my head, I draw
thoughts with words, feelings with
tears, shame in the guise
of a smile, with a bow of the eyes
I am in that place
again--a desert too barren for hope,
too empty for light. But
Truth still has His hold on me,
wiping clean a dusty memory,
words can paint the cleanest images:
deserts, temptation, redemption…
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
Perspective is a shape-shifter. It's all in how
you view the field. Left handed pitchers
with wobbly side-arms throw hundreds
of third strikes a season. Catch your batting
eyes off center, a good foot from where
you thought! Focus that seems to wander burns
one whiz-bang over the outside corner,
and there goes your turn at bat. He's learned
to come from a hundred shifty angles. The guy
you think you can see through isn't empty. Got
your number. Already walking to the dugout. |
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
Behind the clever wit and flashing affection
was a dark mood (darker still grew in him
darker still year by year)
The summer’s high tide
of wild drinking and boisterous
antics at parties
became the arguments that skinned
me alive. I shook and shivered
at the sound of his voice (the darkness took hold)
The happiness of awaking next to him
was not mine to keep. (Nothing he felt)
When the pieces came
shattering down, darkness
coaxed him into believing
he would find solace in silence.
("I just don’t want to exist any more,"
he would say and how that
drove nails into my heart)
The shredded fragile
veils of fantasy revealed a truth that
brought me to my knees
and the darkness slew him
(nails removed one by one, blade withdrawn,
bleeding stanched, wounds to heal)
What I didn’t know was:
incineration, cremation, illumination
What I didn’t know was:
when I read my poems to you,
your tears would make me whole
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
Night flows, a river between me and sleep.
Lying in a sleep-like position, trying
to muster up some dreams while lonesome words
howl for attention outside the window.
Bereft, they tumble away down the banks to
darkwater currents then: awake again.
Gather the surviving words in a trash-sack
of a journal I keep there, depressingly,
for just such a night as this. Roll
back to the sleep-like position while
the words, dark starlings of pity, regather. |
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
Consternation
Such bowely thickness
has the blocking power
A frowning defensive line
in its hugeness and bulk
Some fibrous mesh
holding everthing dry and suspended
Resistors too large to pass through
with any energy left whatsoever
Or those shouting editors
with their fool decency code
in black and white and half-tones
when techni-colors are needed
Locked in the depths
of the library after hours
lights out - blinded - alone
drifting at the edge of
his one pocket map |
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
There are times when I just sit there
waiting for the words to come to me
I'm not one of those who can write
just about anything under the sun.
Are there even writers like that?
I need stimulus.
I miss our old typewriter. There's something about hearing those typewriter keys hitting the paper that made writing a joy back in those days. It was music to my ears. I wrote many school papers that way.
The computer keyboard is fine, but I miss my friend, the typewriter. It's probably languishing in the dark corner of someone's home right now. I hope it wasn't tossed out in the garbage or anything like that.
I remember taking interest in learning how to type with my Mom's typewriter. That was back in high school. It seemed ages ago. My Mom showed me a book on how to type. She learned how to type with that book too. I followed it chapter by chapter and pretty soon, I was typing away, typing to my heart's content.
I think I type fast, well at least fast enough to drive my husband bonkers sometimes. I don't think he can stand the symphony of hearing me type. Some people type with a rhythm. Not me. I just hit those computer keys like there's no tomorrow in one burst. Then I stop. Then I go at it again, like I'm doing now. He probably thinks to himself, "What could she be writing now?"
I can't help but smile. :) |
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
Henry examined his face in the bathroom mirror. 3am, finally home. Just off a night flight from San Francisco to Phoenix to Detroit. Getting to Phoenix was hard enough on the nerves, with the heat wave turbulence of July shaking the plane all the way to the landing strip. But no sooner was he off that plane then he was onto another for several more hours of restless sleep between bouts of disengaged, light reading. Once firmly on the ground in Detroit, the captain got on the intercom and apologized for the square wheels during the landing. Henry thought he’d put the plane down in a cornfield. The captain said square wheels with familiarity, like it was industry slang. Through squealing tires, the violent trill of rumble strips, and shrieks from his fellow passengers, one thought splashed across Henry’s quickened mind: I've never had a moustache. Now looking at a full week’s worth of vacation beard, he realized—by god, that was the last thing he wanted to have pop into his mind the next time he thought he was going to die.
Henry’s dad always had a moustache the whole time Henry was growing-up, so ever since he could grow facial hair, Henry sported a goatee. Henry’s grandpa would clean-shave daily, though now in his nineties, he often had stubble, likely due to that delicate turn his skin had taken, like it was ready to crack off like the dry, outer-shell of an onion. Henry thought: my chin hasn't seen unfiltered light for almost a decade. He remembered shaving as a young man. Soft brown skin; bloodless cuts filled instantly with elastic oils. New hairs springing up like cattails, once buried in mud, released by storms. Skin changes though. Seventeen never brought stubble. Now there are no clean shaves; immediately after, it’s a cheese grater. Henry’s dad still wears a moustache, though the last time he saw his dad, it was all gray, and the creases of his smile, etched there forever. Dad’s features will one day grow into a grotesque rubber mask, like Henry’s great-grandfather, once a man of full life, now redrawn in his great-grandson's mind into a blur of large ears and nose. Great-grandpa was always clean-shaven.
Henry lathered up his face and shaved all but the moustache. A moustache that had never been taken in alone. Henry could hear the shit he would take at work tomorrow. It's the cop, the fireman, the cowboy, Burt Reynolds—costume virility, washed-out. But Henry’s mustache wouldn’t be ironic. It was an homage. Dad always embarrassed Henry, not because of his moustache, in particular, but because of the whole package. Dad doesn’t just rock the moustache, but also the white short-shorts and sock-less tennies in the grocery store after a long, hot afternoon mowing the lawn. Dad doesn’t give a damn. And that’s just the attitude you need to die in a plane crash outside of Detroit in the middle of the night. |
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
A summer’s garden
Sun warmed this afternoon,
The day before
The first hard frost.
Soon remove the residue.
Uproot the faded annuals,
Smooth disrupted ground,
Sprinkle hope among the perennials.
Nature grows the garden
We are but Makers of its order.
From seeds and timorous seedlings
Such varied, permanent,
Brilliant, bouquets.
Too short the growing season.
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
I have become a slow man,
stranger, often
stuck inside the drain;
heights are taken from me,
even though I once saw, I cannot
see the plain before me,
and my stumble-stepping quickness
hides the reason for my illness--
hard heels that will not give peacefully--
and through design (My own, goddam,
My own) I am slowly dying
....
Once, where our fingers crossed
each others’ palms,
I let you lead me through
the calms that plagued my youth;
Once, I had to sit
on my haunches, coiled, ready, sure
that you would point me in the right
direction, Father; I am in your image!
But the design of Me
set off by your assured chemistry
only let the calms grow stagnant
and summer shadow warm,
and my coiled spring
came to nothing
when attached to the leash
of your form;
But, and there is always a but, I
have learned to be still
like a bee floating in the wind
or a dragonfly--
I have learned to Be
anything but human
and still to eat at the same table
as you while you are living. |
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
in blackberry tea
on a white oak table
in a drop of loneliness
found on the fingertips
of a homeless girl
when you forget to laugh
after a bite of tart apple
a snowstorm out of season,
salt seasoning in an unfinished meal
by a yellow fence, slats that need
more yellow and the owner
wondering about the other side
the pond at the end of Eight Mile
Drive, waiting for a crooked angel
to skip a stone across its clear water
a simple man, serious and strong
with the moon, like good brandy, giving
heartache like the devil
ordered, without perplexity |
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
for Thu., April 24
http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/ |
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
There is something depressing about this small room
Perhaps it is the smell, all musty old and stale like lost opportunity and failure, disappointment—it really sticks in your throat,
I know the sounds quite well from being in the room next door, the clink of a glass on slate coaster, a bubble of laughter, then nothing. |
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
We finite creatures of line created,
Drawn together, fastened by eye, by hand,
Ego, sum of dot, thought, position.
The space between phantomatic
But no barren island:
Within, motion might dance with imagination
Memory may find a place to gambol in creation:
A curving dark stroke may fashion
The transient subject, ourselves, our spaces
Our lives of ink, of light, flesh and change unchained.
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
I heard you laughing until it turned to screaming
and I realized it was the pipes behind the bathroom walls.
April 15th, today is Easter and we studied the streets well.
Found the stones rounded, the cobbles worn uneven, the flights of stairs
long. It is an Italy of gesture that greeted us with scent and smoke and
sharp glances. We were only audience to the landscape.
Dead orange stone and pillars chewed like sinew by rain and palm.
We observed the love affair of nature and mark and we stirred our coffee slowly.
Slid fingers into the cool stone’s mouth and waited for truth to bite,
paused at truth and listened cautiously, patiently,
then washed our faces and began to write.
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
.jpg)
