ALL RESPONSES |
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| Rather than post a poem right away, I'd like to share with you this video (click here) as part of the stimulus. |
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You tell me the sky holds nothing, it is gravity
that weighs us down.
I watch the branches sway, wood against cloud
and name each
gray; gunmetal, pigeon, guardrail, steal,
cement, twig, ash.
It is spring. Somewhere a robin sings, a hawk
wheels and glides. Somewhere, bees
dream, like me, of soft petals and perfume, of
a love, so light, we mistake it for sky.
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In the unconscious
all water is clean
enough to drink
to dip hands into,
to stir silt and wait
for it to re-settle
In the unconscious
are the sounds
of hammers, footsteps
on the roof, the view
from above looks
so inviting, so lovely
In the unconscious
all poets hold their
breath, carry their skin
to their hearts, write
from the beginning
black and white
The end too |
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Replace what winter’s finger lifts
What hail’s hammer splits
And the sun’s heat weakens
Over time, it’s often enough
To mend a tile or two, until
They begin to fall like autumn leaves
Found broken into pieces
Beneath the melting snow
Act while the house is dry within.
What more do you need of a roof,
Than to block the rain and wind? |
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Everyone works except those who wait.
Maybe even the workers are waiting.
God knows their pockets lie flat enough
against their thighs. They’d receive a bit
more with pleasure. But isn’t that the way
it is? To wait to get more than the dull
day can afford? Like sonorous love. Like
heavy pay checks; the eagle flies. Like
the work is finished and masterful.
Oh the loss that we are not gods.
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One year, after many years of rest
upon the roof, tiles slide off
when a wave sweeps up,
knocking the beams of houses,
swimming up over the rice.
The rice, the houses,
some carts, and cows,
they all are sweeping
out to sea,
following the liquid god
to whom the ancestors prayed.
Here, this year, and maybe
or not,
next.
Here this year,
men shimmying up the angles
of roof, protecting from the rain next year’s crop,
smoothing the roof with tiles of blue,
hoping to blend houses in with ocean;
trick anyone who’ll be had.
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You build her a house
by a marsh
where they work the rice
while she watches,
leans proud from the window
as laborers tile her roof
in delft blue, regimented,
one-dimensional squares
to reflect sun away from her
to keep the house cool
for her porcelain skin,
her fluttering hands
that speak
like urgent birds
delicate.
This is no place for me.
The cherry trees
blooming nearby.
Heaven awaiting.
God sees, God sees.
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Water and land mass,
cacophony teeming.
Rice sticks, sticky passion,
they exist cheek by jowl.
Their sync does living.
They, who are not us,
are more like than unlike.
We all scream, beat
the air with our fists.
We all drown in our self
loathing. All face
the oncoming water.
The water screams,
we scream back.
They weep openly.
Where is the question?
Water is the irony.
If you believe that this
is it, you had better
make an imprint.
If you believe
in the elusive,
in heaven,
exactly is how
things are
totaled.
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Where are you, little red bird?
Delicate wings of pearl
and gold, black strokes
on fragile paper
All my life your song
warbled through the morning
mist to awaken me to
my brush and pot of ink
creamy blank paper waiting
my caress. Little bird
flown in the roar of waves
that swept away my home,
my livelihood, my neighbors and the
tree where you greeted me
Where are you, little bird,
flash of red, sign of life?
Will my hands ever ungnarl
to trace your song, can my
heart echo the beat of
your wings?
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That is not what I said at all.
I asked only that my view be splendid,
that the rains not wet my hair,
that rivers might separate the sky
from the distant roll of drums behind
mountains lipping foreign shores.
If these chores keep you from me,
If this life spent draining Naniwa
and on its base to build the life I speak of,
it is no small price to wait.
Is that agreeable to you? |
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beyond the drift of water
the unsettled stone perches
slightly at edge
voices carry further than our eyes
yet fall further
than the petals of spring
its tender roots reaching deep
searching for water’s spring
the source of being |
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You ask much of me.
First, a roof over your head.
A place for you to lounge,
look out at the farmers,
breathe the blossoms,
hear the river.
You say nothing.
You give less.
How did we come to this moment?
The reeds keep growing
in the pure river water. |
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From above
All is so beautiful
And peaceful.
We can contemplate timelessness
And immutability.
We can talk of our day
Of the upcoming celebration…
Who will be there…
What we will wear…
All the news of the court.
Meanwhile,
Out of sight,
Those who labor in the fields
Curse a broken plow,
Worry over their sick water buffalo,
And wonder if what is left of their harvest
After their taxes
Will be enough to feed their children
In the winter.
They rarely have time
To look up.
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I don't know weather
it's snowing
it's raining
it's touch
it's taste
it's sleet
it's blue
it's orange
it's a robin
it's ice
it's of fire
it's thawing
its wings
it's darting
it's splitting thin film
it's breaking
its blue egg
it's the sky
it's hatching yellow blood and veins
it's a bird prematurely
it's on time
it's debating
it's living
it's yolk
it's tropical
it's unborn
it's heaven
it's hell
it's sun
it's not moon
it's on our watch
it's light glinting off
its glass face
it's time made unreadable
it's wrong
it's right
it's just
its weather. |
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In 1953, father paid 20 dollars
to a young Japanese artist
so he could paint mother in oil
from a black & white photo
father kept in his wallet
For hours, father pointed
to red blush and egg white
and indigo blue, air breathing
a reasonable happiness
helping the young artist
to conceptualize his love
three thousand miles away
And how the world has since
changed; its breath verses
through dead lips, sweet
heart to sweetheart, lost
to one another going on
now these last twelve years |
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In bright beats until the resounding fades away
Little foot crawls on the roof and builds
The tiles underneath are fibre clay
Those above fresh kiln
Motion toward the mountains and the roof divides night from day
Motion toward the sea and nothing stays
Face smiles at me
I accept and turn away
The bay lingers on the tongue with evening fog
The inland tries so hard to complete the day
Even with salt there is moisture
Even with soil, clay |
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there is expression in the way
water becomes the land
taking the shape of its captor
swallowing the blades of grass
as they strain to the tips
for light
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I catch a whiff of Jesus’s B.O. while
washing underwear on Selby.
Palms are getting rougher;
cigarette syrup coats my voice and I croak,
'Death is a pale, bald Swede
in a thick black coat.
So I see a lot of death
in Minnesota.'
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She lives under a cloud of broken hearts
Each beaten into submission
A blue roof of misery
Protection from her own rain
Beside her
Another willing victim stands in the shadow
Of heartache
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birds made by folding paper
planes made by light bounced from oceans
moon, the basin of a shared sink
satellites, eyelashes stuck to your cheek.
Every Word Was Deliberated
tokens reuniting with metal
slots
a pilot holding a sneeze before
landing
an astronaut leaping from crater
to crater
the universe adopting a
blinking red light.
I woke up last
night
thinking I wanted
fridge light
and cold whole milk
to insulate my body,
thinking sleep
was a distant infrared
waiting to be
explored.
Instead
I played a
video.
The man hurled himself from
a moon colored balloon in
space
100,000 feet above the
rose bush under the interstate
billboard
even farther above
our knees kissing
in the shower
and there was only earth
a blue screen of death
and there was the man
a white lice egg
twirling
like a seagull
suffocating on
a wishbone.
I watched lucifer
burn
toward the water sky.
He was a white coal made
of gravity
He was a ricocheted pearl
stitched onto
my pupil just by
pulling up the
blinds
of heaven.
And they say one
can get a taste
of it
by closing
eyes and diving sternum
first into necessity.
So I yawned like
a man bored and scared of flight--
falling
between asleep
and the feeling of falling.
And Soon Was Smithereens.
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Maybe
the sharp note of a bird’s call
cut through the hammer’s fall above,
drew your eye to the window;
maybe
your gaze fell on the water below
and stayed,
your thoughts eroded
by its gentle endless ripples.
It is easy to not pay attention
when you believe that the cool blue tiles
laid by another
will sheer the merciless sun.
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