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