New Year

Two on the table. Forgot all about them

for a hazy three hours laughing with former

friends in a bright cheap bar through beer

squeezed from a sponge like vinegar. Drank it

anyway; had to. Laughed at futures

and stalled futures and the way we talk

about the past as if it’s the future. It never

has been – never will be either,

not even when one of them lights up about

cosmetology school and her new

passion as if it wasn’t all just vinegar

and beer thrown up onto the bright wood

floorboards. Counted it on too many fingers.

Came to what was called home and look,

it’s been months since I’ve used a personal

pronoun. Sometimes I can’t hide and so

I’ll just say it:

I came home and saw two presents on the table

and I was drunk and I had forgotten.

I had forgotten they were there; was glad

to have forgotten; forgot to forget them; saw

them again. Three hours earlier in a dark

brown living room a man who used to have

a family stretched out his arm with two

presents for a birthday diminutively set

between Christ’s and the year’s, presents

he had chosen by himself for the first time

because who could help him? Saw them,

saw them again three hours later, saw by

their shape a calendar and a dvd. Thought

to open them, the gifts from a man whose

name was known once. Thought:

the doorway to an infinite sadness is here.

Thought: it is too dark here. Turned off the lights

and sat at the table. Did not open.

Upon Putting Away an Old Coat

I cannot recall the occasion for the card,
Or whether the picture on the card
Of two bowls of blueberries
Held any significance,
Or what prompted her to write
"I feel I've done nothing for you."
I only recall slipping the card into the breast pocket,
Forgetting with intent, so that on this day,
I could discover at once
What I have carried all along.

HI EVERYONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Here's what I wrote/partially helped record this summer: (It can be found at http://madswan.tumblr.com b/c I can't get the link to work per usual. It's the post from Thursday September 24 - which would, in fact, be today)

Also, my dad requested a sci-fi and/or fantasy short story for x-mas so maybe I'll post some of that...mostly just for Timothy Star Trooper DeMay.

-A BIG HUG FOR EVERYONE!

September

The stars hung upside down,
Bright, blazing bats
On heaven's dark rafters.

Psalm 88

I was the dust

Wanted to sleep, couldn’t, remained in
step and some outside observer would
never have guessed a dead pigeon on the edge
of the sidewalk, neck stretched and beak open as

if a sleeping Madonna undisturbed by the cars
or the feet that swept the dust across the body.

In the opened cloak, on the sandal

In time there are no farces only parables:
last night, woke to spirits bargaining. Over
souls. Over mine. Turned to my side to sleep, thought:
if demons cannot win it by day then surely

Shaken off, I was

by night. Woke fully. Thought:
faces rise up like waters around me.
Had sat on a rock, had seen the waves flung

like the dust from a shaken cloak.
Generations rise up like waves around me

The dust

thrown in a curse.

taconic state highway

Bobby, you were six. Camping is the coolest, Mom, camping is the coolest--jumping around her as she walked, stoic and bleary, to the van. I love, love, love camping! And you haven't been this effusive in days, after that rocky start to kindergarten.

You sure as heck aren't getting in that van without a struggle. Look at the outdoors! You smell the air, of course, but the people, the musk of all the people around you--you are wild, wild, wild with the sight of the sky and the smell of the people around you. Around the bumper, Bobby. Run around once more. Steady yourself, little body slanting sideways with the force of your run, against the greasy bumper. Get in the car. Oh you can't even sit still, little fast-beating heart, believing at that moment you would still die happy.


A Long Island mom guzzled vodka and smoked pot in a minivan packed with young kids before speeding the wrong way down the Taconic Parkway, sparking the head-on collision that killed eight, authorities revealed yesterday.

sierra nevada

i met in the emerald river some panners of gold, culling the water for flecks which they feel in their bones. i washed myself in the river with eucalyptus... the men look for gold, they have for years, live in their cars, smoking like lunatic herbovoirs pouring juice in their beards. gold sivvers are like pan handlers without the pleading eye or rusted saxophone or sidewallk. say wiskey they say, meaning smile. this river is hidden by cliffs life or death or long needled pines. we scream at the rocks, deal with things on our minds, while the soap sleeps alone in its dish.

I'm Sorry W.G Sebald

When I pick up The Rings Of Saturn
I fall into a horrible pattern.
I open the cover and see the first page--
That net-covered window, that comfort cage,
Is maybe the only image that I understand,
but my eyes lose focus and can't see a strand
of the words you put one after the other
in sentences that seem to go on forever.
I always fall asleep at the same part,
the page with the cadaver and his open heart.
I'm trying my best to finish but perhaps it's not too dire,
I've tried to read you more than Nabokov's Pale Fire.

I'm writing a novel. Here is Chapter I:

Earl was the young, lean, and only son of Matty Bear, a bereaved (on account of her dead husband) woman. Earl lived with Matty on a large farm which had been in the family of Carl, Matty's (now dead) husband for several generations. The fields of the farm stretched out into the distance. There were stretches of corn, and other stretches of lowing cattle that were constantly chewing up the grass beneath them with their flat, yellow teeth. Consequently, the grass was always too short, ripped, and harassed-looking. There was a white farmhouse on the southern part of the property, with a porch on which Matty sat in the evenings, pockmarked, looking out at the distance into which the fields stretched.

Matty Bear had, in her youth, been an attractive woman. In the photographs Earl found in the attic's tin box covered in mildew, previously hidden, but now discovered and easily opened by way of Earl's lifting of a small, dull, silver clasp, Earl observed, with surprised satisfaction, the shapely bare legs of his mother, then not a mother, but seventeen, about, and just married to Carl Bear, Earl's father. Matty Bear had had flax-yellow braids, long and thin, resembling the strands of a weeping willow in August. Her eyes were beautiful, if a somewhat common, cornflowery color. What Earl noticed, however, most, were her plump, white hands which, in the photograph, were in a perpetual state of rest at her sides, beneath their white cambric sleeves. But now, Earl thought, somewhat perplexed, as an eleven year old often is (and aught to be) with regards to questions concerning the Impermanence of Beauty and the Inevitable March of Time, his mother was not something at which it was extremely pleasing to look. In the evenings on the porch, her cornflower eyes gone to seed, so to speak, and looking off, and un-hearing, un-answering, she was decidedly pale and slack-skinned, as a chicken before roasting. She had no longer that firm, robustness of youth. Her once milk-white hands were red, and worn, as chewed upon by chores as were, by cattle, the near and distant fields. Now Matty wore a plaid neck cloth. She wore a checkered apron. She wore low, rubber shoes without socks. Around her porch swing, among her swinging, sock less, rubber shod, feet, the house cats were littered like so many wads of newspaper. However Matty did not see them, just as Matty did not read news papers, wadded or smooth. Matty kept her eyes strictly on the distance, as if it were a fascinating action movie rather than a a green, unwavering, line.

One warm summer afternoon, Earl sat below a large yard tree, singing a semi-merry song, and skipping stones across the yard in order to more thoroughly pretend it was not a yard, but a cool green pond with swimming fish. Sometimes, Earl wondered about the world. What was it like? Out there? Beyond the distance into which the fields of his farm stretched? Perhaps that was what Matty Bear looked for, too, so carefully with her faded, blueish eyes. Yes. What was the world like? Oh what. Yes. Oh What. Earl clucked and sang, ignoring the ants which raced up and down his thin, hairless legs. Eventually he ran out of stones to skip, stones, which he had gathered into a pouch from the gravel road. Now the pouch lay empty. Earl threw himself onto the grass, pretending, still, that it was water. That this, what he had just done, was a belly flop. He made a sound to resemble a splash of lake water. Then, presently, lying there, looking up at the filter of leaves hanging from the tree like a symposium of sleeping bats, Earl began to think about his birthday, which was encroaching on him. Any day now, he would be twelve. He then thought about that number, twelve, a seemingly solemn one. Solemn, like a slow march, a funeral march, one, two, one, two, everyone in black on a summer's day, with a bagpipe's out-of-breath wheezing at the back of the black line one two one two, one two.

When the tail end of the funeral had finished its march, Earl switched to thinking about the slice of pie he would buy himself on his twelfth birthday in town, as he had done last year on his eleventh ; a slice of pie which he would wolf down, but at the same time relish. He imagined each buttery, crumbling bite of crust, and the bright, oozing triangle of congealed, fruit. Unconsciously Earl licked his thin, hairless lips. He tasted salt, always salt in summer, even moments after a bath, the heat pulled it out, it seemed, the salt. At last, in the grass, or pond, depending on who's point of view it was, Earl, thinking of his birthday, fell sound asleep.

Spam (a poem sent to me by a spambot)

shrink pant.
module bingo seer ladder.
emir budge oakery mix?
glover voter zoic.
feed moving reflux renew?
lives cue elan sin?
gasper zoic luting gird!
shrink swathe.
hubby blase outre.
thyme gas blase flake!
morgue oakery fiber smelt.
public agile chose nimbus?
pant morgue mix lives!
bled chump lumper morgue?
sin module.
fetid cue.
flake ragout ragout.
bingo feel grouch pink?
ladder large.
morgue shrink glover.
nibble farad morgue gird.
chump voter sap.
farad rococo pawn thyme!
graft module feed gooey?

The Bird I house free

with the second
I burst to yellow

an epiphany and the beak
breaks my chest

I feel the world rupture with song
from a lone wooden one

who knows everything opens
from nothing to then stop

with an apology of silence
and once closed inward

tucked with darkness
behind the door of its chamber

does then resume counting
the sound of its pulse

I love sneakily reading this blog and miss you all

Rough Draft of a Folgk Song I Wrote Today
(When the music is recorded, I'll post the song)

Lookout Mtn.

I watch for you
waiting by the window blue
and I know you're there
on Lookout Mountain...

I hope you're heading home
not out on the roam
for a treasure you can't find
on Lookout Mountain...

Look for me on Lookout Mountain
Find me among the pines
Wait for me on Lookout Mountain
I know you've got the time.

If you've got to go
Please make your way back so
I can run to kiss you
on this mountain.

'Cause I'm still here
waiting for you
though the sun is gone
because I hope it's not gonna be long
before you come home
home to me on lookout mountain.

So remember to look for me on lookout mountain
You can find me among the pines
remember to wait for me on lookout mountain
because I know you've got the time.

Noon

No one was mowing,
Nothing held the summer clouds.
Then a hawk flew down.

Days of the Week Underwear

Her belt was a little too big. So for the whole date she had to push out her stomach to keep her jeans from falling. Uncomfortable, but she figured if he likes me like this, I'm golden. But the real reason and the unthinkable outcome was that she was wearing her Wednesday panties on a Friday.

Transfer Student

Jens walked down the sidewalk in bare feet, letting old leaves crack beneath long, Danish toes. He liked the slow hardening of his feet beneath him. He sang, in elemental English: Why she had to go, I don't know, she didn't say. I said, “Something's wrong!” Now I long for yesterday. He was experiencing a rapid series of new thoughts: Every man is all men. In every organism, there is a microcosm. This sidewalk may still be warm from the passing feet of a beautiful girl. Then he stepped on the band-aid. It wasn't a normal band-aid, warm from the passing finger of a breathless child. It was a band-aid specifically for knees, a huge, pentagonal band-aid with a soft heart, a heart that held the yellow and blood of a serious wound. “Jeg bande den dag du var fodt!” he snarled. “America!”

Metro Sex Ad: Whats Ur Coat of Arms/ Touch Me

(for eric)

hey i'm a suit of armour, right
from 1300 after christ!
i'm on 5th ave, i'm in the met,
and yeah, i'm missing one gauntlet
but OMG my greaves r great
(just FYI no chain, all plate!!)
my nipples r bronze and erect
a sword on me's a sound effect.
like grls or guys whose lips r soft
who like art/ go to the met often
touch me; set off my alarms
but need 2 c ur coat of arms.

Hard Work

A cache of berries!
So much trouble picking them--
And they taste like shit.

Where the Torso

All the fingers that hang
are branches growing out
of the surplus of a season,

and away from recognition--
that still they arch from one

The Glass, Having Broken

To Hover
To Want
To Burst

And Two to Hold

I feel often my hands are not
but made of wooden spools.

Bare and dry, these two hold
nothing and cannot know

any texture of another.
Until you are thread wound

like a corkscrew, dark in bindings;
defining movement and history.

Hunter

It sounds like rodent burrowing inside
a tree or someone unfolding
dried petals of a rhododendron,
whose lips are always bent
upon dissolving--

But it only you, as a child who digs
with a stick, deeper, closer to the minute limit
that an owl pellet circumscribes.

Each stab erases exactitude
of what the owl was, of the remaining whole
existence of the organism. Wondrous are
these cracks made now in decimals of bone
by you, merely touching

anything and nothing; so pure with want
to derive what color lines, like bark
the other side of someone's skull.

Mowing

I have stepped    the soil
Of every damp foot    this lawn --
How many fields    more?

Ant Hill

I pulled the weed that held the hill of ants--

it was a common blade of grass.

Unplugged, they all erupted and

I raised the green, un-rooted sword, and gasped!

They bit me on the ankles,

and danced across my limbs.

I brushed them off with both my hands. They fell,

split open on their hill

like soldiers dying on the field

or filaments of plums dropped in the sand

op. 130, Cavatina

This is not the first time.
Not the last, either. We will spread
our butter over our bread thin
until it scrapes out and all we have
left to spread are our shadows.
We will spread them, too,
until we haven't any left.

We will run
the shadows of every
piece of cork board, torn movie stub,
and rubber band onto the earth
and then into the earth until they,
the heartbeats of our worlds, cease.
Are no more: these things like the footprints
of God go on.

And in the fourth minute
of our lives, when everything has been said
and what hasn't been said has
been heard, at least, all will wait in silence
for the violin to wander the new earth
we are leaving behind, searching our pockets
and deeper things also. Hear the violin.
Your pockets, your fingertips, the scar
you etched out of sidewalk. Isn't it

Prehistoric Love Poem

Here, my best bones in exchange for your fern
And I’ll touch your spine with my fossilized bird.

I still feel apart with our jaws interlocked
I want us to be the same sediment rock.

I think we are wasting our time eating leaves
Come, go extinct in the amber with me.

Verse (a)Verse

Hello writers (and readers), and welcome to the new day of the blog. We Are Not AVerse is meant to encompass all kinds of writing, and all kinds of writers. So, feel free to invite whomever (or if you are reading and want to be writing, invite yourself!) to become a contributor. Also, remember to add your name as a LABEL to any of your creative writing posts so we can rifle through them. Finally, let me know if you want/don't want your personal blog to be listed under "Contributor's Blogs." So far, I am just stalking you all and adding what I can find.

Go, Write!

Rose Awards 2009

A month is gone, which is long enough to determine a few awards for our heroic Poetry Month efforts. I have unilaterally decided these award winners, so if you don't like 'em, deal.

The (un)Poet Award: Taylor Dearr
Taylor's remarkable 14 posts were second most, and most among active students. This fiction writer demolished all expectations turning in brilliantly, and often food-themed, poetry. For Taylor's efforts, he receives an award signifying Poetic Expertise from an Unlikely Source.

Untapped Poet-ential: Bridget Mendel, Willy Nast, Tori Telfer
Bridget, Willy, and Tori all turned in a few (or one) poems after entering the contest in its final days. This award signifies a future as bright as a moth dream.

Most Scholarly: Eric Dean Wilson Madden Swan
Eric and Madden began with a bang, and their production dropped off accordingly. In order to make this something other than a rebuke, I am assuming that they turned their energy to school work.

The Roses: Lauren, Dinah Fay, Jordan Shuler
The trained poets flexed their muscles at a good clip and presented consistently challenging poems.

Show Don't Tell: Jordan Shuler
Jordan's blackout poem was phenomenal. Nuff Said.

Best Poem: Nina Yun
Nina's "The Poem I Won't Be Reading at my Sister's Wedding" is one of the best pieces of existence created in the 21st century.

Congratulations!

Well we have sufficiently handled National Poetry Month, and I for one am pretty impressed with the amount and quality and diversity of the work posted in the last thirty or so days. But, i am sincerely hoping that this is not the end of a communal web space where we can post minor parts of our writing and keep in touch through our creative efforts. Therefore, two things need done:

1. Name Change - Because I know other writers are just as sensitive as poets, I think it worthwhile to change the name of the site to something more universal and inclusive. So, reply and post an idea, and we can vote on them. I've vetoed, from the start, Leaves of Sass or anything else that predetermines the tonal quality of the work. You weren't even that sassy, Dinah.
2. Others - Feel extraordinarily free to invite others to the blog. Just have them email me and I can add them to the roster. As a communal space, the more the merrier.
   

Ok, that's all for now. Perhaps Rose Awards will be posted soon...

Visions of Hosea

[I know, write about something else, right?]

Married to a prostitute Hosea sought the beds
Of others, authored his dowry
*
His wife [...], himself a prophet, he chaste,
Eyes closed, knew each night, before, during

He spoke to her You are my wife I am your
Husband, wrote homilies on fidelity, tried
*
Your means, he said and trained the cords
To loosen in muscles when [...] her work
*
Stay, he said, Don't go, she left, he
Ate alone in the mornings
*
Nothing said, something understood between
them, always [...] welcomed back
*
Let me not, he prayed, See, hot coals, his eyes, no matter

What We Haven't Done

She, black, sixteen, the back
of the El, legs folded,
he facing her from where he sat,
wide wide apart his legs,
sweatpants rolled up, eyes,
his eyes, "Almost," spat,
muttered bold, "see her cunt," my
ears, my body right there, "What?"
she said, loud, "I'm sixteen"
the metal scream, the next stop,
doors unshut, can't, he, black
giant, cursing, she so old, so old,
"Your momma," advised, "Ought
to have taught you better," her eyes,
straight into his cursing, "My
momma had me," doors shut, unshut,
"she was sixteen," my body, me,
"Get out," she said, "Get out,"
he, rising up, a djin or a
doubt, a tornado, me, sitting,
I twisted the cord of my headphones
around each of my fingers and,
he whipped around, left, her
silent, me silent, "Get out,"
what I never, said, me, silent.

World Without End

From the edge to             grass-blade

Edge, endless edge of     grass-root
Shape upon boundary-   grass-seed
We run fingers along      root-heart
World growing in           seed-heart
Palm, eye, mouth,          blade-blade
And word of                   heart-blade
                                       grass

Untitled

No one embodies a metaphor
for sleep better than a lover
or my fish, Hamlet. In the dark,
he sinks beneath his flat eyes.

Poemism

Chips, Starburst, Nutell-
a, and icing with a spoon
is how I write poems.

Steel and Wire

Gum, metal, and bone
I run my tongue along
the back of white enamel
and swear I can taste blood.
The gleaming brackets plump
my lips and people say,
"Look at that mouth,"
not knowing that I carry
steel and wire on my teeth.

Vandalism

I have slashed the screen
to reach the bush of lilacs
outside my window.

Nice Legs, My Friend

"Can you come outside a minute?" she asked,
On the first truly warm day of the year,
Wearing a corduroy skirt high above
Her knees. Her sunroof would not open.
"My friend," she said, whatever that means,
"Had it working the other day, but now
It's stuck." Seated in her car, her skirt exposed
Even more of her pale thigh. I often told her
that she had nice legs when she was not just
My friend. I poked the sunroof with my fist,
It slid open, and I went back inside,
Feeling victorious.

original sin

I don't have any poems yet (that I like). But I have memorized, due to my mother's consistent quoting and re-quoting, my supposed "first poem." Does it count?


Pens, pens, pens
Birds, birds, birds
Me, me, me, me.

Uncollege

I was always told that I am
who I choose to
be
- some kind of vestigial
anthropology where we close
our eyes and
fill in belief with the niceties of infinity. Well

I've felt the swallowing
drop, the hardening concrete around every single
choice

that I have made that has made me into
what cannot purely make myself into
whoever making whatever

but me, right here. I am who
I have chosen to be.

For the Flight

She is riding far too far away from us because she is yours,
your Cordelia. And she yells through curls
It is the cars, Daddy. Daddy, look at the black!
She is riding from them. What I would give
to catch her; I think I would let you go and would leave
you. I think I will go now and go
through cars and bodies for years. So often you, as anyone,
I have thought of what I would give
and tried often to make you have
entire drawers of me
paltry things I had wanted to have. You would remember
the bird perched on brown knotted leather,
kneeling and never ready to steal
itself away from your breast because you know it
for what it is and know it is not
a thing that is best. It is felt on you always
for the distance that exists. And we learn
a little more each year how to exist by giving each other less
because giving is baring us
as a confession. We are learning to love
turning ourselves into our opposite.

Saturday, Night

Let us now waltz down the glimmering streets until
Rising, a stained sun enamels our feet.

My Saturday Night

Gran Turismo,

how it blows.

License tests,

hairpin turns,

realistic

car physics.

It's shit.

LA woman,

playing behind,

makes it slightly

tolerable.

Gran Turismo,

how it blows.

Mr. Mojo,

risin'.

Face

Face
Face
Face
beauty Face
fashion Face

Eye
Eye
Eye
produce Eye
construct Eye

Leg
Leg
Leg
transport Leg
bouguois Leg

Chest
Chest
Chest
poem Chest
mortal Chest.

this poem brought to you by RuPual's Drag Race.

What Work It Was

It is funny to remember what walls
the mind silently built around itself
placing each with the attention of one
working out the layout of a labyrinth
and with the attitude that this is
what is delicate and so far beyond
what is sacred that it is only for one
to ever want. It is humorous now
to find, where once one lived, is nothing;
only the room inside a dime-pocket.

There are dark rooms, cavities for the soul
that unfold to bare one's whole existence
for as long as one is willing to stand
senseless and ignorant inside of them.
They have doors that look like mirrors inside
a line of mirrors. These are the doors to forever
close or affix open; either affords more
and more hinges to be used for change.

Grill

Here in the infinite breadth of the moment the sun in every space
as if it had always been we ate and spoke the possible memories
away. Gone as if they had never been and they never were – lost
in the corners of dropped sandwiches and jokes held too tightly.
Of course we never knew them and never will. Gone, such excess.

Ode To A gChat Onomatopoeia

What sound 

does a gChat make?

Thoonk?

Suunk?

Dooonk?

It is subtle,

a small variation,

in consonants 

and vowels.

Soooonck?

Foondk?

Loountk?

Does it matter?

The tiny differences?

I say yes.

And I say,

Ptoonk!

Oda al queso asado

Did you know: April is also National Grilled Cheese Month. Fact.

The grilléd cheese
of yellow heart
formed an embrace,
hugged itself
together,
kept itself
from melting
over the
flame,
while outside
fat raindrops
hit the windowpane,
snaked downward
like beads of sweat,
in the heavens
the lightning bolt
looked for a place to land,
the thunder
rumbled
hungry,
the clouds
busied themselves
in bunches,
the air
grew thick
and the cozy
grilled cheese,
there in the kitchen,
content
in its
pool of butter,
sizzled oblivious,
until the time
with the other grilled cheeses
on the great iron
skillet,
it traveled on a spatula
to realize its dream:
fill someone's tummy.
Stacked up,
it was never so appetizing
as on that plate,
the children
at the table
with sticky hands
were
gods to be fed
grilled cheese sammiches,
demanding,
with whining voices,
and the sight
of a golden-brown buttered thing,
but
then along
comes
the dog
with her nose for food,
sniffing
the grilled cheese,
bold,
she examines and observes it
as if it were hers,
she jumps for it,
but misses altogether
in her haste
for a taste of ambrosia,
receiving a reprimand and a
shoo
from the room
until
each child has gotten their
portion.
Thus ends
in safety
the career of this treat
called grilléd cheese,
then,
crispy bite by bite
we eat
this delicious morsel
and swallow
the gooeyness
of its yellow heart.

Points to anyone who can name the poem this is modeled after.

Rose

The loaf of bread,

full of yeast,

swells its head.

Rising up

and up

and up.

Up 

into my mouth.

Down 

into my tummy.

Yummy.

Not Roses

Whore tea cult chore

Roes of row says
Buck cats foul of day seas
Mount hands Hiawatha sale Jas.

Eyed bayou flue errs
Button steady rote averse
Toward dent euro fecht shun.

Dudette fork?

A Rose Is

not a poem
or even prose.
All one writes
about the rose is
what it is not.

Roses

Deep in his heart a poet knows
That roses are not poems but prose.

A Rose

It is the hundred thousand symbols
caught in the ironed silk red, red through,
curved around the fingers that are not
dipped near the stamen; the space left
by the fireworks burning out the space
before the ash feathers, manna, along
a thousand invisible stalk-lines; what
we expect buried within the hip and
time; what with attention we stretch
into both what we knew it would
become and something much, much,
more the way all colors are when they
are bound in the fleshy crystal of a petal;
what it is is not the fibers wound
for the sun or the air or the eye but the what
it is, the Rose, is a poem.

Whether

Whether or not it is right,

I feel like a bit of a trendsetter.

Whether or not it is right,

I feel a bit proud.

But honestly,

who cares whether or not it is right.

I'll still feel proud.

Hubri-fic.

Weather

I don't like it, she said, How
it is always rainy somewhere
and how it is always here.

I think, he said, you've lost
a letter; this isn't very climactic at all.

Weather

He knew the weather by the drops
on my glasses as he glanced
up from his screen for the first time
all afternoon. It’s shit, he grizzled,
shaking his head in the fluorescent buzz
of the library, to live in a place like this.

Weather

Oh boy am I sick of this rain.

My squishy socks sure are a pain.

Just two weeks ago,

I lamented the snow,

now I wish it were here once again.

New Town

There on a north bend of the Missouri where it is fat and
swollen with dams we built, dams that flooded the early white
town of Sanish and probably a majority of the Hidatsa, Arikara,
Mandan villages as well but it is hard to tell since we just don't
have aerial photographs of that time, but I can tell you that there,
buried beneath the water and the long bridge across to Four Bears Casino
where white men and women wear credit cards affixed to necklaces,
there you will find the kind of remnants that built towns worthy
of the name New, homes and hides that cut the first stretched
scars of people lining the North Dakotan poor-cell-reception areas,
places not where the refugees of the past have huddled cold and
in their coldness built a history.

Montaigne in April

Pitched by wind this spring
Again, against the gray church stones,
God is in the magnolias' waxy blooms.
I intend to memorize their stems,
Though their language is dead.

I Feel Sorry For Broken Umbrellas

buoyed bellies burst

in a rush of air

spindle-limbed urchins

wink in the street

Fish

My fishies have been swimming upstream,

splashing in the faces of the nay-sayers.

Glug, glug, glug.

They lug, lug, lug,

their leaden bodies

toward a promise of happiness.

Prosper

Oh is it so
bad to be strung like a clothesline
and bent weighted
by the wet what, what really?

No sense in believing in the reality
of things when weight is
weight and to be strung out
well we all have our

idiosyncrasies.

For Good

At night Adam rolls over
to look at me, looking where
his rib is and softly tells me
he would like to have it back
by morning before he wakes
and remembers for good.

A Triolet About Knowledge

I want to find the final step
That under every step supports,
This strong foundation finely pressed:
I want to find the final. Step
From warmth, this fetal nest;
The more the cold the more, the more,
I want. To find the final step
Look under every step's supports.

Wish List

after "God's Ear," a play

For Halloween, I want to be
an exception to the rule.
I will wear socks
on my ears and gloves
on my feet. I will smoke
cigarettes, and swear, and
smash things with my hands,
but people will nod
and understand.

For Christmas, I would like
a master plan.
I think it would be fun
to play with, to carry around
and show it off, to bounce it
off the wall or stomp on
if I felt like it. And the best part,
it would never break.

For my birthday, please, I want
an exit strategy. It's a useful thing
to have, and I could use it
like a rope to pull myself
out of a quicksand pit,
or like an eraser if I didn't want
my name on something after all,
or like a pair of scissors
to cut the tie between you
and me.

Libraries Without Walls / the first dream

Two blackout poems borne of the same text - sisters? brothers? siamese twins?

The Whale Less Traveled

Just another silly piece of writing about whales

Two whales diverged in a forest
and sorry I could not follow both,
could not watch these great transports
of song and common breath, could not
swim beside them lumbering and gliding
all at once to the lengths I'll never know,

I dove, swimming deeper into the same
axis point from where I saw the whales
push off, tails like continents pumping
the water behind them. Neither whale
to follow, I followed no distance and sought
instead the depths of where I already
was, depths I had no breath to reach
but pushed until my lungs began to find
the oxygen in the water, until my fingers
webbed and my feet stuck together like
a continent and I doubted if I should ever
come back. If I should ever turn back.

Two whales diverged in a blue forest,
one whale submerged into a wet-born breath,
one man lost himself in the airless depths,
one man, one whale - and that was all
the difference.

Talkbox

My roommate built a talkbox.

Now I spend large chunks of each day 

trying to speak like a robot.

The plosives are simple,

but "s" and "x" sounds are

another matter altogether.

Funny, how Blade Runner led me astray.

Those replicants were so well spoken.

Armor

[My blackout poem]

Moth, The

Studies find moths not nature’s creation—
They are figments of a lamp’s imagination.

The #2 in Santa Fe

Here is where the dust settles
the sighs escape
the shoulders droop.
Here, everyone knows
everyone, knows everyone's
business. Which is alcohol,
the woman wearing dusty beads
who unwraps stories like cheap toys
and holds them up in the dark to see,
or the one who takes them, shakes them
like a piggy bank, and laughs
when they are empty?
A man professes his will to teach
someday, that he will teach
a lesson longer than this line,
and one that doesn't end
where it began.
Sage fool, I think.

Here is where words dissipate.
I hear a man
who speaks a dream
will watch it fade
into the fumes. Push it
forward, slur it
down, lurch it
back.

Pickle

You would be a lovely thing
to pickle and keep on a high shelf.
I would spend my time
looking at you from a distance.
Stepping back to step forward again,
to see how you change, if at all.
I would only drink
the brine in the jar,
and seal my lips with a closing sip
after I drink deep deep.

*A man waiting at the Davis bus stop told me I would be a lovely thing to pickle. I still don't know how I feel about this.

Neato! (a pop culture collage)

Greedo

Magneto 

Holy Toledo

Speedo

Dorito

Obladi O

Blah Da.

Binomial

How when in need of names
those dusty scientists found
among the options of nomenclature a
poet to limn the borders of what
we call the animal not alone, the even
wandering ones we hope find
another, someday - a pitying
of turtledoves, a siege of herons -
and how when I, my hope
lighting on the end of wandering
on some bright afternoon I call
the I not alone Us.

A Public Service Announcement

This is a friendly reminder
To shake your booties



Not your babies.

This Is Just To Say

I got the idea to loosely imitate the poem "This Is Just To Say" from an episode of This American Life that I listened to yesterday:

This Is Just To Say

Roommate,
that I have taken
to a party
three bottles of Miller Lite
from our fridge

which was okay
I thought
because they were technically mine.

I left a half-dozen
to drink at another time

during a hockey game
or when I felt like having one
but now they are all gone

And I'm wondering
why did you need to drink
six bottles of beer

of my beer

on a Wednesday night
alone
anyway?

I, So Tired, I

want to sleep in my clothes
and give myself away
to no dream but find purity
streaming blankly across
my mind and then nestle
into the dark emptiness
of no one

Unicorn

What I truly desire out of this art:
You

creature loping out of myths
into the white white clouds

your grand wings of White,
all of you

into the white clouds white
with your white white body

perfect, in another word, with your
single, magnificent, white

horn running through our
insides.

A Poem of Circumstance And Collaboration

I want to play Wii,

If the TV is free.

That's fine with me.

Rhyming, are we?

I just remembered,

I have to write a poem.

POETRY CHALLENGE

Alright gang. This week's challenge is going to require a little extra time commitment / technology commitment, but it is one of my favorite types of poem so you should try to do one.

BLACKOUT POEMS
Blackout poems are created by manipulating pre-existing texts into compressed, tightened new meanings. I like to use found documents -- things from the scrap print pile at the library or newspaper clippings. The idea is to physically black out all but a few words and phrases, and let that remainder be a poem. I'll include a nice example below. If you'd like to do a variation on this type of poem, such as one that moves it to a digital sphere or just plays with the idea of positive and negative space, compression, etc, that's cool too. I love this form because it forces you to work with a limited set of words and find the most fruitful combinations and meanings in a fixed space, and because it has so much to do with space, the black expanse.

Happy poem-ing!

Face of the Earth, by Austin Kleon.

Roses I had thought

might be nice at school in the room
that is a box, the length of a bed.
They were leftovers from Easter.
Ivory half opened and half
used, wholly unwanted. Rarely
do we crave what is slightly off
the edge of death. It might as well
die upon infection or infected
we will feel with fear. The passing
of the moment for passing, between
to pass and past, between
the voluptuous blossom and the hard
fragrant head held later is worst
to endure because it is the best
collage of where once we were
a mystery and where now one is
thick and grown over with clarity.

Dead on the Page

I have dragged my chair
Out of line to peek through
Towering heads on green
Bean necks to watch the mouse
Man read his poems in the quiet
Breeze that is his own echo.
I am curled tight, clutching
My knees to my lips, while
My friend of the long legs
Stretches them in the absence
Of my proper place. Together
We struggle against sleep
In the warm wind of voice,
Lulled into the invulnerable nakedness
Of an unthreatened audience,
Barely registering the touch
Of the dead poet of the page lapping
Flaccidly around our calves.

Crackers

Crackers, crackers everywhere

but not a drop to drink.

Like a River

[Again, this would/should have occurred last Saturday]

What in the hours was preparation
In the emptiness was forgetting to eat

We stared through the dust
And counted the years of

Preparation the years
We were dying through

The dust

The Poem I Won't Be Reading At My Sister's Wedding

Love is love, love, love,
so love is love is love,
somebody loves loves loves loves somebody,
so love, love, love,
if somebody loves loves somebody then somebody loves someone,
love, love, love.

*directly taken from my Intro to Elementary Logic lecture notes.

The Evolution of Our Being

[Technically, this should have been written and posted on Good Friday]

Yes, he had already exhumed
the final pocket of living air from below
his chest when the night had started to fill
the empty spaces without stars.

Late, it was acknowledged.
Time to go, yes.

No need to break his legs and slump him
into the weighty breathlessness of broken supports.

Yet there was a spear, yet
it opened his side where there was

blood and water like a river.

Planning for the Future.

“Times are tough,” the voices rang
from out my television,
“A war is on, the world grows hot,
propriety’s in rescission.”

It is today my search begins
for what, oh what, comes next.
Alack! This market's dearth of jobs
has found me quite perplexed!

I cannot be a banker, for
the banks have all been shut.
I cannot be a lawyer, for
I laugh when I rebut.

It’s no time to enter business
and besides I lack the skill
to sell you sweater blankets
or a new George Foreman grill.

I haven’t taken science since
around eleventh grade,
don’t know a single thing about
how guns and drugs are made,

I haven’t got the wit to write
for pithy, poignant blogs,
and I’m far to small in stature
to walk all the neighbors' dogs.

Whatever shall I do! I cry,
and throw my hands above,
when at once the answer hits me
like a leather dueling glove –

My path is clear, the challenge set,
now that I finally know it –
the only job for times like these
is this: professional poet.

I’ll use the word “Diaphanous”
(though I do not know its meaning),
I’ll let me studio go grey
from months of never cleaning.

I’ll write the tale of Orpheus,
(that’s one you’ve never heard),
I’ll write about the Writer’s lot
(the burden is absurd).

The smoke of a thousand cigarettes
will curl around my face
grown wrinkled far before its time
with haggard artist’s grace.

I’ll write in odes and ballads,
here and there the odd Haiku.
If your culture has a subtle form,
you can bet I’ll steal it too!

I’ll write my dedications
to the poets of the past,
with all the cheeky knowledge
that my skillz have theirs surpassed.

And when I die in poverty,
as all great poets do,
I’ll do it with the knowledge
to mine own self, I’ve been true.

For it takes the greatest courage
to compose in metered lines,
and all my greatest iambs will be
summoned in their time

To take the boldest statements down
in bile and blood and ink…
just please don’t make me get a job,
it’s clearly going to stink.

The Grape

the bug sees as fractals
and dreams of apotheosis.

The Shapes We Inhabit

[This is probably a multiple part poem... And this part probably should have been written on Thursday... Oh well]

What we did not know we
never knew but in fragments hidden within the deep rivers
that thread our bones together into what
we have always called human.
What we did not see was the emptiness
between our feet and the pavement, that awful
emptiness between so much, shivering
the supports of the world until shaking they
in their splinters tell us what we did
not see. What we cannot believe we can
put off into the decades until our
like every other mass bodies fling off the atoms one by one
leaving us not, not at all. Yet, far beneath

the blinking heartbeat of the moment's
wholeness is another pulse of a man who was a son of men
who knew that far beneath the blinking heartbeat
is inscribed the signature of divinity, a man
who could not believe in the flinging off of atoms
one by one leaving us not, but in leaving us not yet,
leaving us broken glass waiting to be melted
and blown into the shapes we were meant to inhabit.

And yet he heard too the heartbeat,
two heartbeats. And yet he heard too
the pain, and the glory. He heard too the high
evolution of our being.
And how clearly we could not.

Kinks ii

[An oulipo poem, in which for nouns, n = 7. I don't own a dictionary and the OED is crazy. This poem ended up delightfully critter-heavy, just as I like it.]

The dazzle two wombats stood before Solomon;
it is not true that they held a chiliahedron between them.
They held twocker.
One chiliahedron had died in the nigonry,
his tiny lunist contracting
mothless fleur into his movable feast
instead of airgonaut,
a wrinkled facet rendered the same
indigo as the kink's
robin. This chiliahedron as well
as the living, screaming onerosity
bound the wombats
to that dazzle in couscous
and hung heavy
in his slip-knot between them
as they asked the Saggitarian:
Which of us is truly mothless?
Solomon could not speak
of the wombat who loved more
or the wombat who loved better --
only of the wombat
who understood the justification
of a griffin that rends the sound in two
and willed it shared.

Revolutions

An Oulipo Snowball poem

We
are
dark
moons,

unlit
lights
rolling

nowhere,
dreaming

lanterns
searching
the borders

for centers.

Game #2 - Oulipo Constraints

I am so pleased with the results of the first game! Everyone's poems are absolutely wonderful, with a great mix of emotional depth and clarity. Because this was so well done, I'm going to move in a completely different direction.

One of the things I loved learning about in Creative Non-fiction was Oulipo, or "Ouvroir de littérature potentielle," which translates roughly as "workshop of potential literature." Because their mission is to seek new structures and patterns (or constraints) which may be used by writers in any way they enjoy, I thought it would also fit well into our mission of Poetry Month.

I chose two constraints that are specifically used for poetry. Feel free to do both of them if you like.

The first method is called the N + 7 Method. For this method, you would take one of the poems you have already written and replace every noun in it with a noun you find seven entries later in the dictionary. (If you don't like the number 7, you can choose a different number, just keep it the same for every noun).

The second method is called the Snowball Method (at least on the English Wikipedia page). For this method, you write a poem where each line is a single word with each subsequent line one letter longer than the one preceding it.

I don't know if these poems will be as great as the cut-up method poems, but they are sure to be interesting.

If you want a reference page for Oulipo, check out the wikipedia page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oulipo) which also has links to more in-depth sites.

Happy writing!

Notes from a bar where I sat alone drinking a Guinness (not a cut up)

I never liked solitude. The vast space around me filled with atoms.
Unseen, I flung my limbs from my father's arms,
my body stirring enough fury for the beginning of a universe.
Today is different though.
Today, my atoms assembled themselves
in a space where I sat alone watching music.
Alone, for the first time, I felt a peaceful dissolution of atoms into atoms.
This was solitude.

Cut up of Dinah's Poems

The girl, sleeping on the escalator,
is trapped by metal wisdom -
its inexorable motion
pumping hollow
the gritty happenings
of flesh.

The girl, pressing on its membrane,
would not wake in prayer
of industry, compelled to smash
the speed
of art.

The Room that Bodies Lamp

Hungry ribbed men
are lured naked into a box
surfaced with stiff faucets,

see their hard reflection turn
thin like ballerinas,
and change as the smell of gas

runs like perspiration.
Their grunts spit into music;
howls up, for security,

from bodies coursing down—
the dicks of history. Locking all
to mirror the make of a porno.

---------------------------
(cut up Eric's)

Watermelon (Cut-up poem from Tim)

I ate a watermelon, the seeds slipping between my lips,
And remembered a plumb memory:
A boy once told me that any watermelon seed I ate
Would sit in the dark of my belly, that internal darkness,
And the seeds would wait to grow, to spindle in my abdomen.
They would stick until I opened my mouth,
For sun to shine and cast lines of shade and light.
The vines would soon grow, furling and tucking,
In the darkest and softest areas of me.
And once skin spanned, alive in the lack of what I never truly knew,
The boy said that one day I would give birth to this melon,
And give it a name.

A Madden cut up

How the sun looks now,
Proud and present
She saunters silent into the room
And leans against a counter.
6 foot tall and pregnant,
She fills and fills and fills
The room until she is
Spurting out of my nostrils, ears and eyes.
In the haze of her ebbing
The kitchen glows
Violet in the darkness,
Every horizontal surface sighing
If only I was happy, if only.

Partial Blame

A Poem Cutting Up Taylor's Posts

Could I know
the clay from the loam, the quicksand
from the soil? Maybe no;

that red red soil, that red red
snow, that red red - but it's nice
to know the fireballs this evening,

the red red fireballs furious,
out with a red red pail to eat
the clay, the loam, the soil...

I won't
go out this evening
anymo'.

Body Bag on the Runway

No one cares much for the doctor
Or the nurse when there is a lady
Following with an alligator purse.

Even the child imagines the bag
To be a prize, with a wide-eyed
Gator head and leggy extensions,

Before knowing the price of real hide.

A doctor or nurse I would care for
On the street where there is a lady
Turning her magenta scarf into handles

To drag a dead dog from the street.
He hangs on her like a purse of cement
As if he were wanting still to stay

A blockade in the traffic of other bodies.

He reminds me of first carrying you
And the thought that if the doctor
Or the nurse had come in, into war,

There would not be a third, a lady
With a body bag--her purse full of you,
Who had gone, blown to once, and sent in letters.

You are well in death, a glossed hide
Having and hiding tight some lady inside.

The Crying Spider - Odilon Redon

For lack of eyes the sockets have plumbed the abdomen for
the internal darkness the tears have spanned the moments for the past
not forgotten, the past once alive between the stone lips slipping
into the black fur where fangs wait to stick through the once skin for the
bright memory of I lost in the spindled hairs of the hidden I that has not
been anything but I from the first moments, the bright past, and
the crying present, for underneath the lines there are the shades that
for I are not ever truly ever, known.

du mal

Barbey d'Aurevilly, that grand decadent,
Told Baudelaire that his blood must be spent
At the muzzle of a gun, or the foot of the cross;
Since the Fleurs had bloomed,
And the coeurs were lost.

Stand Right, Walk Left

It’s the simplest rule of travel,
And also the most important
For surviving a trip to my town,
Where the escalators climb
Endless in their scale as in
Their motion. For some
This inexorable metal push
Towards the sky is enough,
But others like myself
Are compelled to apply
The pumping weight
Of thighs and barreling
Flesh to the pace of
The gnashing teeth of industry,
Cranking ourselves up
The concrete tubes of the subway
Stairways with a speed
That is superhuman
But also supermachine.

Burgers

Burgers, burgers

nice to eat.

Burgers, burgers

red red meat.

Burgers, burgers

such a treat.

I like burgers

they're so sweet.

First Game: Cut-Up Poems

The blog has been up for a week, and it's time for a game. Our first game will be creating a Cut-Up Poem. For those who aren't exactly sure, a cut-up poem is one that uses the words from somewhere else and then builds a poem from them.

Our game will come with a twist: your source of words must be the Catalogue of Poems from another writer on here. So I could write a Madden cut-up poem, using whatever words I want, like Penguin and fisherman, from her past poems.

Now don't get ahead of yourself: I'm going to set April 10th as the day when we will all post our cut-up poems. This also gives writers who have only posted once the ability to get another poem or two in before that day. Also, be sure to add in your post whose poems you are cutting up.

Finally, does anyone want to take charge and come up with a game or challenge for the Ides of April? You can post on April 10th or so.

[Administrative Note: remember to add your name as a Label when you post a poem. If you don't know what I mean, just look down through the poem posts, each one has the author's name as a label so we can search by author by clicking on the relevant links on the left hand bar]

Fragments of Hosea, continued

VII.
Here is the net to catch what love though you may will
through the holes of whatever net escape –He commanded knowing
what is let go of and what cannot be restrained do not burn
the same.

We are Fishermen

There are times I wish I could say we are all fishermen headed for the sun,
But I am simpler than that.
While you might think we spend our days watching tides,
I feel like I've been taken miles away
to a deep sea
where it is just becoming night.
We're on two ships,
and in the haze
they come so close
as to barely touch
before they move on into the violet
or is it violent?
darkness.

In a Box, With A Pail

Today I realized,

while looking at my notes,

that poem rhymes with loam, and

loamy soil was my specialty once.

But some days, I was partial to clay.

Why?  Who can say.

Could I stand to play more in the sand?

Maybe yes, maybe no;

though why do I like rhymes so?

I blame the Beastie Boys.

Knievel

When younger, “nothing” was the end
of a perspective question: “What is between
you and me?” “Nothing.” “Then why
aren’t we together?”

But nothing can hold a place
like a full rest
or the emptiness between cliff sides –

it is the delay that matters
for what is between you and me

is two seconds, a step,
and what is between the music

is a mental tapping of the beat
and what is between the cliff sides

is a motorcycle sprung

by jet engines

into nothing.

To the Teeth

I like it when my gums hurt.
After the dentist
The pain sits right below
The surface of that pink
Membrane and pressing
Against my teeth
With my teeth draws
The faintest memory tangs
Of blood. I like it when I remember
Really stupid things I did,
Like smash up the front
Of my car because I was too
Busy looking at the girl in
The passenger seat who
I never saw again after that night.
The pain sits right below
My tonsils like I could
Cough it out if I tried real hard.
I like it when I’m petting the cat
And she suddenly decides
She doesn’t want to be touched
Anymore and there are claws
And teeth in my arm but only
For a second. I like that she
Has the right to decide this
At any time. All this pain
Of close contact lights my skin
Up like current, pulls me right
To the surface of my being
And taunts me with the possibility
That it might never heal.

Snow

Snow? Whoa!

It's nice to know

I won't have to go

out anymo'

this evening.

The First Person Under Foreboding Times

by Jack Eichorst, Colin McGrath 2009

Penguin, why are the mountains looming
And pushing children down into trenches?
Forlorn, I question not the quiet crooning
Forlorn, I wake to frosted and lifeless benches.

Across the callous tundra I seek my only equinox.
Billowing snowdrifts and weeping ladies litter the ancient streets,
While I sigh sweetly at thoughts of masochism.
Only yesterday did the sting of inimical bedlam wake me.

Penguin, why has the clouded morning transcended the forests,
Breaking into the crust of time with no apprehension?
Forlorn, the panda crawls without his supple dignity,
Forlorn, the most ignorant species will nonetheless search for honor.

Father time: whence the church bell that rang in my captain's ears?
Without it he is overcome by eternal damnation.
Tarnished and rotting, he satiates the serpent's appetite.
Whetting its desires, he tastes the acrid rain upon his forked tongue.

Children, how do all antiquated forms consecrate our daily expulsions?
Bliss never is what seeps between the sheets.
Sullen, I caress my shattered and trembling frame of hopelessness.
The only solitude we share today under false skies is calamity, Penguin.

Clamp

It was a Friday night, I don’t know –
I hadn’t done anything in so long and
Tantalus told me about some new bar so
I went. Nothing special, I had a drink
with the guys and missed all of the usual
imaginations but I’ve got a while to
think about it, that’s what the bartender said, that
son of a bitch.

Mrs. Koala

[When I publish my first Ogden Nash style book of children's poetry, this will certainly be included with a better illustration, but I wanted to create some ambiance.]

On the day we met Mrs. Koala
Her demeanor was quite hard to swalla’
She could easily have clipped us
Some nice eucalyptus
Stead of sending us home to eat Challa.

Poem I wrote about 3 years ago

I wish
you could see
how the sun looks now.
Sitting here,
through glass you would see
an orange orb
being squashed
by the earth's rotation.
Behind green trees
it's actually quite beautiful.
If you were here,
you would see it flatten as it does now
The last ray
-gone-
And still,
I had not enough time to say goodbye.

His Early Ministry 2

II.

All of the clouds were doves
And the palm trees bent

When he said he was the Son of Man
As if we were not

Were we?

Weekend Movie Haiku

Fast and Furious,

Vin Diesel motherfucker,

Quick cars and fireballs.

Where I Continue to Destroy The Korean Language...(and pretend to write poetry)

Bop mo-go-so? : A nosy question.

Ooyu: the word sounds like what a baby feels when he is weaning, but I don't think it should.

Sa Gwa: When you hit your knee against a table and you breathe in your pain and then hiss out an expletive.

Bonku: A dangerous word. A smiling demon that sounds like a pet name and distracts you by its cute pronunciation. Unrecoverable.

Mo-Dee: Necessary.

on writing?

I never want to write.

I do not wake in cold sweats pawing for my pen.

Words have not once poured from me against my will, nor have they pounded down the doors of my mind demanding to be given audience.

I have no coarse truth to force upon the sleeping world today, no packed globs of mouth-sounds to send forth in righteous anger like the spittle a man in a suit might wipe off his neck as he glares at some lunatic in a sandwich board who breached his private public space with wet, ineffable projectile proof of life.

There are no birds trapped in my chest.

No pressing wisdom in my Alpha-Bits.

I am not the scribe of unbridled heart-yelps nor the dome that makes sonorous the single prayer that accounts for the souls of all congregants.

I would not die without this.




But in the quiet hours,
Flexing my foot under the hot rush of the tap
Or picking eyelashes from a lover’s cheek,
There is a soft beauty that finds me
Like the hollow scritching of mice against plaster,
The dull pull of all that which will go, unnoticed,
About its business without care or record
That moves my hand across the page, eyes shut,
Shifting fogs of ink that are mine over the vast sea that is not.


Fell off the daily poem wagon very quickly; trying to pick up some momentum.

His Early Ministry

Keep it silent - silence let it through you in the waves
of a petalling rose
wave when the crashing it against the inner edge of your skin
deafens and you cannot keep in stillness it
silent.

To Dust

Two feet to the left the scene is different,

Close to my neck my ghost breathes

A word once spoken – now it slips out again

Into the coldness of a life

Into the room quiet with memory

Already he whispers is it gone.

Before we were stained glass

Around the weight of our sacrifice, ready

Like a dry, curled leaf

For the moments that colored us and

Ready to be

What we knew we would be, we were

Broken.

Madden's (Early) Day 2 Post

So, I think I am the only person that continued writing Free Associations (sporadically) after taking the Creative Non-fiction sequence with Professor Kinzie. In honor of her and all the other poets out there, I am going to post a few of my free associations. I also like the idea that something like this could (arguably) be poetry:

From November 25th 2008:

Eat the blanket that is a burger he said. And I did it. I did what he told me to do. I ate it and philosophy spurted out of my nostrils, ears, and eyes.

-------

Fall outside the doormat and into the cracks in the porch. Shut the door and close the lock and look inside the hole - another world is there and it is full of splendid gifts. If only we had those things said the magician. If only I was happy he said. I might have time to find God.

(right after that one, I put):
God is 6 feet tall and has dreadlocks like my cousin Brittany who is like God because she gives acupuncture.

WTF?!?

For Gertie

[Since Tim decided to override my suggestion for a clearly superior blog title, I thought I'd grace you with a Gertrude Stein imitation. Not trying to hate on my girl G -- she was a proud member of the family and hey, anybody out of favor with Hemingway is a friend of mine. Be on the lookout for LEAVES OF SASS on an internet near you, detracting flannel womb Twimathy Demizzle be darned.]

So, what's next?

Make it happen.
Happen once
And again
It happens
As it happens
Gritty gritty happenings
Hapless in the art of causations
As a woman has a cow
The course is a coarse cursory curse on cusps.
Of course the course crumbles
Crispy course
Crabby course
Course criss crosses
Cursive crags of courses
Hay for horses
Crip crap curdled crew
I like poetry so do you.

A Haiku

I hope you enjoy this deeply compelling haiku which I spent the entirety of one minute on:

A Rose is a rose...
But I like Leaves of Sass more
Oh well, I give up.

Fragments of Hosea

[For some reason the story of Hosea is something I've returned to over and over for a while now. I will likely write many more fragments through this month. Here are some initial ones.]

Fragments of Hosea
I.
I met you in the field
where you were sowing, your face
was covered and I saw only your
eyes

II.
My love you will wither in time–
this is our chorus though we do not
believe it

III.
How long
is the night! There is the moon
or it is a hole into behind the deep sky where

only white is

IV.
I knew you before we had wed
From the light that pierces all things
– His–

Others knew you also

V.
…the failure
of my time. Repentance?
Something like it, love

VI.
I pray dear Father …
[…] all eternity …

in the borders of […]

a thimble