October #1

Cobblestones just want to wrench the cartilage from your joints, throwing themselves into the street's geography like huddled children hiding, rock-shaped, under bedcovers. They can be a tap-tap-tap companion on your journey, or a series of hardships to overcome. Rainwater sweeps down the streets and drowns them into small, abandoned islands. Even with the flood, they will bend and buckle your ankles in an attempt to keep you close.

Excavate I

Poems are relics of what you bring back from an imaginary creative place.

I wish I could take you with me.

I know you watch me, unable to access

the world inside my head

that tempts me away

in the middle of the day,

in the middle of conversation,

in the middle of a thought - 

I wish I could give you a reason other than:

I measure my life by poems,

map the world in sheet-paper.

I wish I could keep the explanation going,

drive it further,

until understanding colours your eyes.

I wish I didn't have to say,

I'm sorry. Tomorrow, more tomorrow.

My new project for the next few days:

"Our first mini-challenge

Research synonyms for “unearth” or “dig” or “cull.” Pick one you like. It will be the title of your series.

Now, with the images conjured by your series title swirling in your mind, go through your notebook and find a subject for a poem. If you don’t keep a notebook, sift through any book or paper or magazine, preferably something in print. Digging is a physical act.

Do this every day for three days, starting today. You will end up with three poems that may (or may not) be related to one another or to the matter of uncovering something, but they will be three poems you didn’t have before. And you shall be known henceforth as the one who is not afraid!"

 

Care of Read Write Poem.

The scar on my leg is the past embedded in my present. 

The poem on my tongue is a litany, a hope that our stories make sense in this sky.

The sleep in my eyelids is a cousin of gravity, a separate but related serious force.

The words in my handwriting are unrecognizable; the pen in my hand is envisaged. 

The notes in the singing bowl are hummed by passing vehicles.

The dream in my head is living without you.

Today is the day I teetered on the edge.

Today is the day I forgot to mourn summer and realised that expiration date had passed.

Today is the day I wish I could swim out and out and out and further out.

Today is the day I breathe.

Today is the day I breathe in.

Today is the day I breathe deeper.

Today is the day nothing seemed more important than anything else. 

Today is the day everything seemed important.

Today is the day I knew... what?

photo: 'My Angel and My Devil' by Thomas Hawk

You never let me in

and yet your melody haunts me on the nights

when I am least able to sleep.

If someone were observing

would they see both of us,

apart, elusive,

distinguishable?

Or does everyone assume

we are the silhouetted outlines

of drunken doubles?

We are passable as twins

or even as the same person.

But I do not know you well,

and you do not know me 

at all.

Stay here, all the same.

Keep me company.

There is warmth in even 

the ghostliest flesh.

You do not let me in.

You Need To Have a Plan

What you need to know is laid out in front of you on the kitchen counter, like all of the ingredients on a grocery list freshly shaved from the recipe book. Make sure to use different cutting boards, do not mix the juice of fresh truths with anything; you'll be poisoned. Wipe down the counters afterwards; if you have spilled any future plans, they will congeal on the countertop quickly. Check off the list plan a, plan b, backup plan but only for Tuesdays, flight plan, floor plan, life plan. Your mother used to say, "Make a plan and God will laugh" but what the world needs is more laughter. Just hide the blueprints in the knife drawer and pretend to be surprised.

I wish my mind could function for longer
without my body getting tired.
I wish my body knew how good it feels
to always go to bed exhausted.
I wish I were always exhausted
so I may wake up refreshed.
I wish I could wish for things outside of myself.
I wish I could always fall asleep to a
gentle violinist.
I wish secret admirers were not so secretive.
I wish my dreams would write a book for me.
I wish it would be an instruction manual.
I wish google understood me the way
my genius button in iTunes does.
I wish I could remember more.
I wish I remembered to write every day
rather than simply composing lines in my head
that will dissipate like sand in the surf.
I wish I knew how to pack my life into 16 boxes.

Once I knew a lawyer who was honest.
Once I knew honesty was best to offer with restraint.
Once I thought I dreamt a future, but I’m not sure whose it was.
Once I thought, I could do something other than this.
Once I questioned where I was going.
Once I forgot the difference between past, present and future.
Once I imagined a lynch-pin holding my life together.
Once I removed the lynch-pin.
Once I watched a movie in French and loved saying ‘Allor’

Now my cat announces he is ready to sleep.
Now I can feel the breeze from the evening air.
Now I feel the violin’s strings resonating in my empty fingers.
Now I wonder why I say these words.
Now I am ashamed of reading more than I write.

I remember when a minute felt longer than that.
I remember little.
I remember arbitrary information of no importance.
I remember what it is like to feel the future.
I remember to touch carefully and tread gently.

I have lied about lying.
I once announced I was 16^th in line for the crown.
I have pretended to be trusting.
There are people who do not know who I really am.
I lie every time I open my mouth and do not say, “peculiar”.

Mountains move.
Clocks melt.
Cloaks fly.
Rings shimmer.
Curtains dangle.
Burrows empty.
Windows shade.
Final moments finish.

I ponder on this world of men
The dreams they string on fraying rope,
While sitting in the Faerie's Glen,
Small sprites that wing from faith to hope.

There is a place below the hills
Which dips beneath and out of view,
With sloping rocks and greens that spill,
Small leaves that stretch from roots to dew.

I see it in the ewe who climbed
the steepest rocky crag again
and in her coat, it lies entwined:
the hope that fills the Faerie's Glen.

I wonder at this world of strength,
so simple to forgive the pain
Afforded all who live the length
And breadth and fall and rise again.

Such musings on this world of men,
The dreams they string on fraying hope,
Resigning still to love again
And soar from love to faith to hope.

While sitting in the Faerie's Glen,
I ponder on this world of men.

Faerie's Glen, Isle of Skye, Scotland. September 2007.

Light is More Important Than the Lantern by Nazir Qabbani Light is more important than the lantern,

The poem more important than the notebook,

And the kiss more important than the lips.

My letters to you

Are greater and more important than both of us.

They are the only documents

Where people will discover

Your beauty

And my madness.

Language by Nazir Qabbani When a man is in love

how can he use old words?

Should a woman

desiring her lover

lie down with

grammarians and linguists?

***

I said nothing

to the woman I loved

but gathered

love's adjectives into a suitcase

and fled from all languages.

Since I discovered poetry, I cannot make out

which shapes are silhouettes of ancient memories

and which are pulled from pictures

manipulated,

to serve, to feign, to fake their way into stories.

Another reason I confuse photographs

for memories

is because I remember so many of them 

being taken in their first moment

the shutter click, the film progress

because dad took pictures everywhere and

all the time.

I stopped remembering 

because it would be on film one day,

things I don't even want to remember.

Instead, I can pull out a photo

and everyone is happy.

When we are done

I can put it away again.

Around the harbor of

the small sea village,

children read bedtime stories

of messages sent by birds,

through the grapevine,

left in the voices of frogs

whose croak croak doesn't

sound very princely.

Stories are built into the trees

and mortar of kingdoms,

whispered legends

binding with faith.

In the morning,

some run to the water's edge

thinking of the stories they liked most,

messages in bottles sent from shipwrecks,

islands, from the loneliest people.

They fold their scribbled stories

into boats and set them

adrift on the tides,

sure they have

simplified:

bearing words

on boats, themselves,

instead of encased in glass.

I will let you know

when I find a way

to forgive myself.

It might help you also.

all I have are drunken song lyrics swimming through my head,

and I can do nothing but drink them.

Their analysis: 

It is very sing-songy,

no one likes rhymes anymore.

Of course, the end-stop lines don't help.

It seems very... antique.

Simple diction,

simple words,

simple rhymes.

They're almost cliche, but not quite.

I like the first stanza.

And the third.

And I like the darkness that is brought in

with the ocean.

But why do you start out wanting a house

and then continue to talk about it

like you already have it?

And why, if you don't have it,

do you spend the whole poem as an invitation?

Kirsten's advice:

read the poem backwards.

You might see something useful.

Like, this way, it would begin with solitude.

My analysis:

The poem is sing-songy,

like the ebb and flow of the ocean.

The simple rhymes, simple diction,

simple words

make it easy to get caught up

hypnotized, even,

by the flow.

It feels like a lullaby.

Until you listen to the content

and realize that it wakes you up,

like the ocean can

when it laps against the side of your boat

too hard,

unaware of its own strength.

As for needing and having,

inviting...

Don't you know it's all a dream or distant wish

that we can't pretend our way through alone?

They say:

You can't talk about grounding and rootedness

in a place you don't already have.

It doesn't make sense.

Grounding and rootedness means 

you have to have been there for a while.

I say:

False.

If that were true,

I would be a toppling tree.

Shoe:

The shoe is on. Blue is best, but not always. Heels break off barely, often, and always too soon. Step on it. Toe the line, the thin line, a line like a shoelace, or maybe a thread.

Bear:

Running down hills. You could trip or climb trees, and you will always do both when the moment is right. Teeth bared sharper, scent stronger. You will see one on a TV screen tomorrow and will not recognize it, not there. It does not belong behind glass. You of all people can attest to this. "Fake!", you cry.

Face:

There are many faces, facets. A terrible thing to waste, really. You do not find your real one until you are 30, but if it takes you much longer than 35 you are in the deep end now.

There are many different breeds of ghosts;

a feeling of touch,

presence when alone,

hearing voices

music,

footsteps

down the hall at night.

Many things can ghost us;

objects, photographs,

anything we think gives us agency

over the past,

when really it stays with us

on its own accord,

haunting in its own way.

Maybe ghosts are lonely;

maybe the souls of things hold on to us

as much as we cling to them.

The beloved friend, mother,

sister, 

son,

the photographs that miss being held,

looked at,

regarded lovingly.

The piano misses being played.

When I finished my poetry portfolio in two days

threw it together 

wrote the essay in 12 hours,

I forgot about it,

just relieved it was over.

Months later, I was at dinner 

with "cousin"-but-really-"second-cousin" Ivon 

(who calls me his niece).

I told him about the portfolio,

that I got 

'highest marks'.

An 'excellent', even.

He replied,

"you do know that's the 'Bartholomew way' --

to do something at the last minute,

and to do it well."

Good to know it's in my blood.

In terms of procrastination, 

the British seem to have it down.

Everything is on its own schedule.

Some see days as rolling by lazily

but really it is a disregard for imposed importance.

The Scots prefer a slower pace,

something to remind them

it is their time,

no one else's

while the English

simply

refuse

to rush.

It isn't proper.

Funny,

a country with a history of its own pace

houses

the Prime Meridian.

There are multiple myths

from different cultures

where the children are turned 

into swans

by an evil stepmother,

jealous of their worth

and kind, pure hearts.

Really, I think swans are mean,

bitter and not at all

deserving of the gracefulness

they appear to hold.

Why isn't the evil stepmother

turned into a swan?

Her beauty is only

feather-deep.

i.
Snow erases even itself,
an artist painting white onto an empty canvas;
tricks of the eye, depth and illusion
a blank.

You walk, in a black jacket,
past trees bent with icicles.

We all hold
the weight of winter in our limbs.


ii.
In April,
we feign surprise when snow
flurries past the windowpanes.

Even in this thaw, we feel
frozen inner landscapes

down to the bare bone.

"The wheels just keep on turning.
The men just keep on marching in.
And the inner heart divides."
- Company of Thieves




What we have found here is gold,
if you are on a west-ward search for uncharted
emotional territory.

The mental pictures in my head
shift
to some blurred-edged
image I have of you
now.

I don't have anything to say.
To either of you.
You A are something long awaited.
You B, something I have held onto for too long.

Which is which?

I've been compromising,
-- for who?

April is National Poetry Month

I meant to write a sketching-a-day, but have missed the past few days. No matter, I'll start now.

This poem was by request: Jarred wanted a poem where everything rhymed in -ology. I compromised and did every other line. A suggestion for the reader; read it out loud, it may flow better. Or read it on the page, if you prefer.

Phenomenology; Or, The Meaning of Life

for Jarred

I'll study anything that ends in -ology

I say to you, with hints of worn frustration,

if it explains (but with no false apology)

the purpose that we crave with desperation.

You look at me, confused, as though mythology

more than the words I give, makes sense to seek.

But daily life is closer to theology,

as every breath is closer to mystique.

As in earthquakes, the grip of such seismology

seizes the richter scale of each experience

and leaves us now to reach for blank cartography,

charting meaning 'til we are granted sense.

Lost in the mists of ancient ideology,

we feel our journey aching for release

through any framing form of etiology,

although no cause, or reason, brings us peace.

We live within neurotics of neurology

and trap ourselves within our own constraints

along with haunting cries of phantomology,

unable to afford themselves restraint.

Awake at night, no help from pharmacology,

we shudder at the sounds of crippling fears,

but then alight in day to ornithology

that sings melodious grace into our ears.

I think you have created angelology,

because you need angelic-lined defense

or some invented kind of teleology,

an end or purpose steeped in recompense.

The ancient Greeks found reason in astrology

as if the stars were formed in strict design,

that then drench heavens with a cardiology

straight from the core of what could seem divine.

If answers born from any etymology,

or definition, give us actuality

that we may miss by searching in biology,

I may be tempted to redefine reality.

Past culture, past our inner anthropology,

we look for answers; where should we begin?:

In landscapes of the personal topography?

How bodies reach for hearts outside their skin?

Indeed, life seems more tender than chaology;

a semblance of an order, more than just

the chaos we prescribe to sociology.

We're lucky when we live for those we trust.

It's not a complex figure of cosmology,

No complications bigger than our hands

Entwined. It all returns to love and more psychology

Of whatever we can use to understand.

In the end, no matter what the -ology

we choose, or where we plant our feet;

we sketch this, love, discrete phenomenology,

to help us make our world seem more complete.

"The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent. But if we can come to terms with this indifference, then our existence as a species can have genuine meaning. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light." - Stanley Kubrick

Poetry is:

- the first thing

- the first in a series of...

- a series, a pattern

- the illusion of a pattern

- making sense of things

- allowing things the sense they deserve, whether all sense or non sense

- another kind of music

- another side of an already-two-sided life

- a window looking out onto something that changes

- a kaleidoscope of images or meaning

- more things to read

- more words to form

- the form my dreams take

- form

- content

- form & content

- so much more than form or content

Early this morning there was thunder that sounded like two trains colliding. It became absorbed in my dream, which led to this: I dreamt a novella about the color turquoise and the heartbreak that synesthesia and ekfrasis cause in our lives, as much as the benefits.

I'm going to start re-writing the novella from memory.

Freewrite 3

Our house makes me think we may live in a Jazz Club and not even know it (or notice). The kitchen, at least: piano progressions, wailing brass while the onions sizzle and the salad is shaken. The living room may be more closely linked to an opera house, with a cathedral ceiling & a baby grand for company. We sink back into the plush comfort of couches that are directed into the room, and towards the piano, rather than towards the TV, which shows where our priorities lie. The bedroom is a bookstore. Poems sheet the bed.

Freewrite 2

If only we could do more in the first few minutes of waking. Sometimes I wish I could write a poem in half-consciousness, to see the way my mind's handwriting looks (which is why I love the times I fall asleep in class and my notes drag off like this [illegible handwriting]). What does handwriting say of our personalities? When I'm not scribbling, I can actually (and do actually) write very neatly. Precision is the word I would use.

Freewrite 1

Through the library corridor,

you can see her hiding

in a marbled alcove -

shoulders shrunk with concentration

over the magnet of the page

and all you can think of

is how her body sings;

its frame the fiddle

she swung into a melody

until all hours last night,

spilling out the pub door into black,

stumbling you home.

Had an extensively wonderful conversation tonight with a (almost) stranger. Not quite, because he & I are, in fact, quite the mirror of each other.

"We are influenced by the creativity around us. If it's not difficult, why do it?" -- Christian

My Fleetwood Cadillac is, for all intensive purposes, a tank with leather interior.

Externally, it is indestructible with two scars: 1) a cracked parking light from months ago when my mother dented a man's side door in a parking lot, and 2) a scratched side mirror from last week when I demolished someone else's by taking a corner too quickly.


Internally, it is the perfect road-trip car, if the engine itself were stable enough to manage long distances. Instead, we frequent the drive-in and pretend it is a sofa.


I am worried that I am the opposite of my car: a soft-leather exterior that cannot afford itself protection, and a tank of an interior who has hardened prematurely in order to compensate.


I would rather be the mirror of my car: an exterior of a woman who can take care of herself, independent, strong, able to be the anchor in the midst of a torrent,
but internally soft, caring and full of trust, protected enough by my substantial exoskeleton.

I do not have, or know, the language for I need you yet.

Black crows circling up above
crying out, do you hear that sound?
I never thought it'd come to this
paradise raised to the ground

Sometimes I don't sleep at night
I hear the wind in the morning trees
I wonder how my child will fair
with wars and bombs and thieves

The thunder has begun

Some are blind but choose to see
lies into the truth they weave
some put their trust in Faith
Some say I don't believe

Each man unto himself
there an island in a raging sea
with a boat to anchor or sail
of the two, which will it be?

The thunder has begun

A storm is gonna come
A storm is gonna come
A storm is gonna come

Who's the one that watches you
who says your rights are wrong
when preacher and the judge are lying
a change is coming, it won't be long

We may have burned the bridge too far
we may have run ourselves too far.
When you look in the mirror, friend
what is it that you want to ask?

The thunder has begun

Dear father when you left me here
you lay your head in eternal sleep
you told me that all remains
Love is all we have to keep

The thunder has begun

A storm is gonna come (find a heaven, find a shelter)
A storm is gonna come (find a port, find a harbor)
A storm is gonna come (find a friend, find a lover)
A storm is gonna come (find a sister, find a brother)



This entire song is worth just the last four lines
A Storm is Gonna Come - Piers Faccini

The stressed syllable is the one anguished between regular words found

in the bowels of the dictionary,

sitting on the shelf of a deceased man's legacy.

"It was finally when I was telling only the truth that I was telling the most lies." - Nietzsche

Billy, the magician I met this weekend, says: Always telling the truth is actually omitting... it is not rendering the relative quality of truth. Not everyone can accept the truth.

Some people would die.

And here I am, thinking honesty was the best policy.

I am learning phonetics, as though it is a new language. See below:

Olivia wrote a vilanelle the other day for our Poetry Workshop called "The Artist".
It is about the many, universal variations of how people react to art, with distancing, perspective. It is about the empathy of an individual subject, of wanting to protect or sympathize with the artist.

"I watched the artist slowly torn." - Oliv

This made me grab hold of a variation; of the "I" as defensive on behalf of the artist. Which led to the following sketchings:

Let me buffer the delivery of reaction.
I will scour the newspapers and cut out the reviews, so you will hold up windows instead
until you are ready to hear them.
I will hold them until that point.

It reminds me of the scene in 'Finding Neverland' when J.M. Barrie's play is a flop, and his maid cuts the reviews out of the newspaper, so that when he is sitting on the park bench and unfolds the paper, we see his face through the outline of the absent article. What love, what empathy. What care.

I feel as though there is a plethora of information today, nearly none of which I can effectively make sense of, especially if I want to keep these posts relatively short (but why value brevity over clarity?)

Chronologically...

My dream last night: Alex with younger brother (Adam?) who comes home drunk. You are angry, but I take him from you, give him care, put him to bed. He asks me why you and I are back together again. Do I know, he asks, that you may not be enough for me? He starts to evoke his drunken opinion, I tell him to keep it. No one expects to break another's heart, I say, you can't forsee it... unless they've always meant to break it. I will keep this, I tell him, the possibility that he may break my heart again because he is what I need at present. Anything else, I say, I don't want to know.
Your older-younger sister is upset at drunkness, at broken bedtimes, at lost routines... commands in order to hold onto here dwindling sphere of influence. Younger brother & sister - twins hide behind doors. Did I imagine the brother twin? The younger sister brushing teeth downstairs until I come to find her: "You know you can talk to me, right?" and the 9 - 12 year-old tidal wave spills; her older sister gets more angry where she should become softer or more able to retain compassion. Where are your parents? In the absence of the parents, this girl needs an older woman, to speak to, confide in, verify her 10-year-old sanity. Put down your toothbrush, stop taking care of your older brothers. Does your older sister exist? Or is she the premonition of who you will grow into? Don't let the weight of care, of this responsibility, age you too heavily. Do not become stone.
I reach in while I still can; as an outsider, your eldest brother's girlfriend, the novelty of my presence something you can invest in liking. Let me take advantage of this. The older, perhaps imagined, sister is Jessie? But what is your name? The faded dream cannot even afford me a first initial. Sarah? Gracie? Perhaps the twins evolved from older forms of Cameron & Gracie (two twins I babysit), except you, the girl, stem more from my sister, Mathilda, when she speaks to older-sister-familiar-not-residential me, the novelty of not living together. You, the girl, stem more from me.
Maybe I hold my own hand, spill my own tsunamis.

I woke up and got out of bed after getting in & out of bed so much in my dream. When I got back in, you had rolled over. I wanted to pull you back, to say: I am cold and dreamt of sadness.

My alarm went off too early - you came back across the bed to wake me up. To which I said: I was cold, and had a bad dream. When I came back, you were futher away & I didn't want to wake you.

You pulled me in & brought me back. And again, conscious this time, I missed my alarm.
A small sacrifice for the warmth of comfort.

I like words with slant rhymes -- words that remind me of each other, without an easy rhyme or reason.
Examples:


- combat and comeback - Cameron and cameraman
- paper and waiter


(Sarah: Those last two rhyme.
Me: Paper and waiter? No they don't.
Sarah: ... in my head they do.)


Addendum:
Drew Bear: "What about 'Walter the waiter who wastes water'?"



"Perhaps people like us cannot love.
Ordinary people can -- that is their secret."
- Hermann Hesse, German poet

Introduction

Thoughts, poems, scribbles, sketchings.

Somewhere hidden in maps of my personal cartographies.

Something more public than the modes I have been trying.

Something for those I do not see, or speak to, nearly often enough.