Watermark

This is Your Life

 XX by nwolc

MP3 File

A wood. All branches bare, except for the hundreds
of tiny lizards hanging by their tails, crooked legs stretched
out, tiny hands reaching, bodies swaying in the almost
visible breeze, black limbs, white sky, then

a meadow, tall grasses, wildflowers, a wooden chair
standing in the meadow, many-times-painted many
colors, layer after layer, year after year, weather-crackled,
bubbled, chipped and paled. You see him, Weather,

an old craftsman in worn coveralls, bent over the chair,
carefully working away with ancient tools, carving that
valued antique patina, as if it had stood, unprotected
in a grassy meadow, season after season, and

now a vast lawn, green grass thick and mowed and
made for croquet. A man sits in the grass beneath a tattered
useless umbrella, no shield from rain, no guard from sun,
with its broken spines and ribboned cloth. The man sits cross-

legged, the man with the head of a kangaroo sits on the
croquet lawn, he hears the crack! of the mallet, the distant
plummy voices arguing, exclaiming, laughing, and when
you wake you still hear them, laughing.

  

    read write image #17 (now known as read write prompt #81)

    Totally Optional Prompt: Weather

[I sneaked in and did a little editing; will come back later and redo the audio. That gasp you hear was kitten jumping from the bookcase onto my shoulder. I thought I recovered fairly well?]

The House-Bound Ventures Out

she prepares for days hoarding
energy / fireflies in a glass jar /
examines clothing for marks
of wear / a hole in the knee / buttons
cracked or missing / missing / stains
on the embroidered breast / amulets
in the pocket / earrings 
finger rings / key ring

her eyes widen / she can feel the lids
stretch / at the distant horizon / far
mountains / clouds / the river
high dark fast / pulling / at its banks
trees bent down in the water

a drive through the neighborhood
of biography / victorian towered flats
the hall of a bed / bath in three rooms
claw-foot tub / pedestal sink / time
cracked / old porcelain

cottonwood flurries at the windshield
out-of-season seed-storm / wide-winged
dark-tipped osprey / young-one
gliding in the still air

boarded storefronts / bowling alley
gone / in its place modern cantilevered
apartments across from the slumped motel
where once she lived husbanded / loving /
loved / daytime soap operas the drama
of housewifery punctuated by books
physics / philosophy / poetry

she buys new fish for the slaughtered pond
tiny shells & silk cord threading through narrow
street after wide avenue / this old woman /
green maples and ash trees


MP3 File

Dreamer

Somebody came to my door and offered
to give me a child who had been abandoned.
I declined but thought of you.

They say that in dreams, the house is the body.
Or perhaps the psyche. A house of many rooms.
But who is the child?

Who is the offerer? Who the prospective parent?
What is the car, the truck, the train? They are,
each and all, the dreamer.

This is the vehicle, the work, the task. It carries
me where I must go. Me, the child, the parent.
The dreamer. The poem.

    

  Totally Optional Prompt: Sound -- I added the sound player in response to this prompt. More of my poems with audio can be found at Audio Posts. This prompt has nudged me to add sound to more of my poems. The player above is an experiment -- please let me know if you have problems.

     

This poem is already up at Poets Corner -- Thanks, Anny!

Audio

Added audio to:

Blog Action Day: Why Must It Be Beautiful?

Snapshot Poem 10 October 02007

Snapshot Poem 03 October 2007

Blog Action Day: Why Must It Be Beautiful?

MP3 File

What is it for, all this
beauty? The curve
of the spiral

from the laddered
twist of DNA
to the vast wave

of galaxies; the green
luna moth, breath-
taking & ordinary. 

Does the prey see
beauty in its predator?
Do gazelles admire

the leopard? Does
the seal lift
its sleek head

to gaze in wonder
at the bumbling,
lethal polar bear?

Our science tells us 
how. Our science
gives us reason.

But why must it be
beautiful? The aero-
nautic miracle

of the bumble bee;
the passing brilliance
of the butterfly. Surely

predators would be
more deterred by
ugliness. The hideous

and the platypus
have their own glory.
Humans have our

own glory. Do other
creatures adore
the useless,

the only gorgeous,
the green wave
of Northern Lights

dimming the stars?
The indented shadow
of the heron's bath

in a snowdrift? Why
must it be beautiful?
When we pass, with

the bee, with
the butterfly,
with the polar bear,

the leopard,
the gazelle,
who will grieve

this deep and terrible
loss? Who will delight
in what comes next?

I wonder if a poem could be like a butterfly?

Snapshot Poem 10 October 02007

This day is too gray
for profundity. I woke
to roofers hammering,
shingles flying past
my window; both dogs

quietly asleep, pressed
against my knees.
The birches are a shower
of gold, with a few
withered brown leaves,

holding, holding on.

   

MP3 File

Snapshot Poem 03 October 2007

I remember how it will
happen. Leaves will fade
and brown, the sky will
grow wider. Snow will
thicken in the mountains.

The news will speak of war,
famine, extinctions. Coasts
will tremble beneath storms
called rare, unusual, brutal.

Widows and mothers will
grieve; fathers will fold flags
on the sideboard. Children
will not understand, but

they will rage. Skies bared
by fallen leaves will close
again with fog and falling
snow. Winter will come.

MP3 File

Poetry Thursday

    . . . this week’s (completely and totally optional) idea is to write or share a poem that incorporates a song.

I am -- again -- using an old post for this one -- I'm still tired, uninspired, and inward. But I do just happen to have a sort-of song poem, from the NaPoWriMo experiment, originally posted on April 19 of this year:

This is what happens when you commit to an impossible poem-a-day for a month, and then listen to the radio in that place between sleep and morning.

EDITED TO ADD: I am told that this is a bit dry on the page, but a kick to hear; so if you feel disappointed, try clicking the audio.

MP3 File

remember what you told me
remember what you said
    you said you'd never leave me
    till the day that you were dead
oh this sky is turning purple
this sky, it's like a bruise
    the sky is turning purple
    and I have got the blues

you swore you'd never leave me
till the day that you were dead
    remember what you told me
    remember what you said
oh you say that she is loving
you say that she is true
    you say that she is loving
    babe, that's no excuse

remember what you told me
remember what you said
    you swore you'd never leave me
    till the day that you were dead
oh the sky is turning purple
this heart, it's like a bruise
    you said you'd never leave me
    but I have got the blues

Bell

[I'm on vacation. This was originally posted Wednesday, 25 August 2004]

MP3 File

once I imagined the bell
all the rest came easily
the young man in the burgundy coat
lilies tolling their scent in the garden
pale moon over narrow streets, it all
dreamt itself into tall dark trees
shivering with sparrows and wind

the wind in the shutters
the nervous courtyard
something sacred at the altar
the pale child in her ghost dress
the book with its gossamer gilded pages
its thin black-pebbled cover
this docile child, butterfly wings

the old man bent into his cane
shuffling, shuffling, the pale moon
it all came quite easily, then
the moon walked into the mountains
the stars fell the old man fell
the lilies dropped their thick petals
the young man became a branch

scratching, scratching the window
the shutters opened their louvers the fan
making its ocean sound it all became
lightness and bright stripes on the wall
morning morning and I step into the garden
thick slow beat of pelican wings
into a cloud of pale moths

Poetry Thursday

 

Quick Muse, via dumbfoundry:

Two poets write a poem in 15 minutes. You can see the letters as they type them in, and if they decide to delete them or change something, you see that too. You can read the 'finished' poem or watch it appear over 15 minutes bit by bit.

This week's suggestion was to read poetry aloud -- which I often do, and here is a link to my audio posts, in case any of you would like to hear my poems.

So two diversions today.

Enjoy.

NaPoWriMo ~ #25

I have added audio to the following posts:

NaPoWriMo # 21
NaPoWriMo # 22
NaPoWriMo # 24

I did set up an accout at Odeo, as suggested by Didi at Cafe Cafe, but the player is so big and ugly, and there seems to be no Mp3 option, for readers who don't have flash -- so I went back to AudioBlog, which now, apparently, calls itself hipcast. Odeo, however, is free; and, um, hipcast is not.

NaPoWriMo ~ #24

MP3 File

When they brought my father out
of Germany, he weighed ninety-two
pounds. He had no tolerance
for picky eaters.
                         Was he still
a boy then? Was he kind?
    They could leave the camp
but had nowhere to go.
    A brass key to a church, where
sometimes there was food. Then
    back through the foreign woods.
                         Who might he have been?
If not for this? Did he dream, ever,
of people burning beneath his plane?
                         Does it matter?
    What counts against him?
    What weighs in his favor?
                         Who has the right
to measure?

NaPoWriMo ~ #22

MP3 File

Once you lived in a city.
Tall buildings and thick
air, noisy traffic, yellow
cabs. Apartments with
blackened brick facades.
You were a child then.
You didn't know.

Dresses and book bags,
cold breath at crowded
bus stops. Oblivious,
innocent, provocative,
shining hair tied back
with white ribbons. Up
& down the library steps.

NaPoWriMo ~ #21

MP3 File

Do you want to live? Know
that you decide each day.
This day, I will live. Sun
on your face in the morning.

You accept it. You open,
not only your eyes. The
stiffness in your hip --
this, too. You can say

No. You might choose
otherwise. Remember
this. Water from a chrome
faucet, or brass. Catch it.

Let it go. Say Yes.

NaPoWriMo ~ #20

I've added audio to the following Snapshot Poems:

12 April 02006
05 April 02006
22 March 02006
16 March o2006

napowrimo blues [#18]

This is what happens when you commit to an impossible poem-a-day for a month, and then listen to the radio in that place between sleep and morning.

EDITED TO ADD: I am told that this is a bit dry on the page, but a kick to hear; so if you feel disappointed, try clicking the audio.

remember what you told me
remember what you said
    you said you'd never leave me
    till the day that you were dead
oh this sky is turning purple
this sky, it's like a bruise
    the sky is turning purple
    and I have got the blues

you swore you'd never leave me
till the day that you were dead
    remember what you told me
    remember what you said
oh you say that she is loving
you say that she is true
    you say that she is loving
    babe, that's no excuse

remember what you told me
remember what you said
    you swore you'd never leave me
    till the day that you were dead
oh the sky is turning purple
this heart, it's like a bruise
    you said you'd never leave me
    but I have got the blues


MP3 File

NaPoWriMo ~ Day 11 & Snapshot 12 April 02006

MP3 File

Just another symptom, they tell me,
this pervasive, overpowering smell
souring everything around me. It sinks
like rage into floors and hand-woven
Indian rugs, poisoning symmetry with
its uneven stench. Just another misfire
in this mysterious brain. Another kind
of pain. Another unfamiliar visitor from
the understory of incomprehensible
illness. Another of the same.

Snapshot 22 March 02006

MP3 File

We are between the Chaste
and the Seed Moons, between
Sap and Grass. Winter lingers

on the dark side of the road,
high in the mountains; but here
in the valley, spring touches

the liquid face of the pond, buds
on the birches. Long friends
share stories like knitted scarves,

unravelled, rewoven; nothing
lost or forgotten, nothing unused.
Bamboo needles, silver hairpins,

a hospital balcony, a death bed.
Brutal family holidays, road trips
in deep snow. We pass back

and forth between us, gold ear-
rings; apricots and grapes; what
we know and what we don't.

Snapshot & Poetry Thursday

MP3 File

The Blue Bed

I sleep on a high blue bed
between clouded mountains.
I am growing a new brain.
This one will be sparkly
and fine; it will float
in the fluid of compassion.

I sleep flanked by two fine
dogs on a high blue bed
between brushed green
cotton and purple flannel.
I am growing a new heart.
I will beat to the rhythm

of dreams. Who is it that
wakes in the mornings on
a high blue bed in this bowl
of thick cloud? Is the waker
fashioned from this real, or
this imagined, world?

I usually post my Snapshot Poem on Wednesday, which is the day the PoetryEtc list does this exercise. Below is from  p o e t r y e t c    p r o j e c t s -- just one of the archive sites for these poems:

ODE Poem

[Another Didi challenge]

MP3 File

Praise be to flowered
flannel that softens
and fades with age.

Praise to checkered
slippers knitted by
elderly aunts from

left-over yarn, thick
slippers to cushion
& warm our wandering

feet. Praise to happy
pom-poms, to antique
lace; praise to hooded,

over-sized robes with
rolled sleeves; floor-
length robes of terry

& fleece. Praise to satin
& silk; praise to clinging
fabrics carefully folded

into ribboned boxes
by hopeful lovers & well-
wishing friends. Praise

to boxers and too-big
T-shirts, snatched from
the closets of intimate

strangers. Praise to high-
heeled slippers & slippers
shaped like rabbits. Blessed

be all that keeps us warm,
alley cats & pomeranians,
cuddlers, snugglers, back-

sleepers, side-sleepers,
spooners, quilted duvets
& comforters: Praised be.

Snapshot 25 January 02006

MP3 File

When I went to New York, to bring
my brother home, he was well
into the wasting of the disease.

He looked like an animated corpse.
He asked me to hold him, to share
his bed -- it had been so long

since he'd been touched, held, by
anyone. And so I did; as I did when
Judd made the same request, years

later. There is something inexpressible
about sleeping in an embrace with a man
you love -- however you love him --

waking in the night to feel his bones,
the nearness of his death, in your arms.
As I write this, I sit in my bright sunroom.

The parakeets sing for their supper; sun
gleams on the snow in the garden. I am
eating a slightly over-ripe apple --

I am contained in life, breathing long past
many of those I have loved. The white
orchid opens. It smells sweet.

Best of Cafe' Cafe' 2005

This snapshot poem was selected as one of the Best of Cafe' Cafe' 2005, and Didi asked me to record it for her, which I am pleased to do.

MP3 File

Snapshot 17 August 02005

I am waiting for the sky
to fall. I am waiting
to be wrapped in its blue
cloak. I wait for this pain
in my shoulders to grow
into wings. I wait for
the one who can lift me
without effort. I wait for
the people in this book
to step out and fold me
in. I am waiting for winter,
for this dream to open
into spring. I am waiting
to wake up.

I sit in this room with
the other petitioners,
with the flat wood tables,
with the magazines
and their glossy pages.
I am waiting for my name
to be called. I am waiting
to be told what to do. I am
rising to my feet. If you call
my name, shall I follow you?
These altered windows
shed the sun like water.
There is nothing out there,
on the other side.

Snapshot 04 January 02006

MP3 File

I dreamt the new year came to you
before it came to me. It came to you
in orchids and fire. It came to me
in silence, and snow. How suddenly

the earth turns, the message changes
from dark to light. Bats hang quiet
in their caves. The barn owls stir.
Fog seeps between the mountains

into this high valley where I sleep
and dream of strange flying machines
and benevolent monsters. Are you
waking now? Are there orchids?

Is there fire?

05 January 02006: Edited to add audio

Duck Soup

Didi asked that I post an audio of this very odd poem. This was written in response to one of her challenges: write a poem using all of the following impossible phrases ...  I've done this before, with some success. This one, I think, is less successful -- but still, here it is:

MP3 File

I'm making duck soup, as the year
falls toward the dark. We shall eat it
as we watch the light come up in

the morning. We are contemplating
the confinement of song birds. Can
canaries and Java sparrows live kindly

together in the same cage? Green
onions, root ginger, winter melon. He
looked so calm, so not beaten down,

in his Chicago Overcoat, there in the
Fleet Street Family Mortuary. I had known
he was a lunger, but not so near. . . He

told me he was behind the eight ball.
Chicken stock. Arrow root. All those
orphan papers posted on the board.

Who will bother with them now? He had
to have the bees. Five hives in the middle
of town. Peel and chop the ginger. Slice

the winter melon. He had the oddest quirks
with words, especially words for women: long,
long getaway sticks; great nippers; man, she

snaps my cap, but I can't carry the vigorish.
They're ringers, all of them, he'd say, wanting
to ring my bell; wanting my mazuma. He loved

duck soup, loved the way the duck came last,
after the chopping and peeling; after the salt,
the monosodium glutamate; after the shao hsing

wine or dry sherry. The clearness of it. The hot
and soft, the sweet and salt and dryness of it.
The rich and stringy empty body of the duck.

UPDATED to add title and my name, as requested; and also an MP3 file. The middle of an insomniac night is no time to do things like this.

Snapshot 20 April 02005

MP3 File

I receive a visitation in the night
from John Paul. He is throwing off
his white robes. He is tap-dancing
in ruby shoes. These mornings
are cold, the color of steel. Fresh
snow in the mountains, little petaled
suns in the flowerbeds. Friends ghost
up from history, emerging through mist
like special effects. Here is Richard
Greene, blood at his temple, pistol
still smoking in his hand and here
JFK, Bobby, Martin Luther King,
the famous and the intimate all lost
together. Terry Schiavo floats past
on a cloud of pale parakeets. Judd
places his hand on my head. Squirrels
are ravenous with spring, trees
filled with complicated song. Joan,
with the certainty of the spiritual,
tells me to take my time.

Listening

I forgot again. Here is an audio post of Listening, below.

The Ledge| Audio

Arthur, when he reviewed Watermark, said that his one complaint was too few audio posts.

I keep forgetting.

So here is an audio post of the poem below, with a couple of edits. Doing an audio is a reminder of the importance of reading your work out loud; weaknesses the eye misses are clear to the ear.

[Note: you must have flash enabled to use this feature.]

Goodbye

On New Year's morning, 1992,
it snowed. You shivered, touched me, kissed me, said
you loved me. I waved goodbye to you

and went into the winter. Wind cut through
your bones like knives, your skin, it was so cold
on New Year's morning, 1992

you died and I did not. I dreamed I knew
that high above the snow you were not dead,
you loved me. I waved goodbye to you

and climbed up on the garden wall at noon,
breathed the roses, touched them, bled.
On New Year's morning, 1992

you walked away from winter, went into
some secret bloodless season. I told
you that I loved you, said goodbye to you.

Equinox. Today the crocus bloomed.
Snow is melting. Once we touched and said,
on New Year's morning, 1992,
I love you. I love you.

The Pagan Agenda

This post is an experiment -- and a risky one.  As some of you know, I take sleeping pills (among others) as part of my medical treatment.  Usually these knock me out for the entire night, but occasionally my mind races and I get up in the night and do odd things, some of which I remember.  Last night, I got up and recorded a long ramble about the thinking I've been doing on religion and values, subsequent to the election. 

As you will see/ hear, I've been thinking about these issues a great deal, questioning my own values and beliefs.  This has brought me to the conclusion that, I'll be damned (at least many people will think so) -- I'm a pagan. 

So here is the recording.  I've transcribed it below, eliminating the umm's but otherwise staying fairly close to the original.

Letter to a Friend in China

You travel far to lose yourself
in strangeness. You watch a man
gutting a turtle into the street.
Hills fade in the distance.

I stay in my house by the river.
Aspens are losing their yellow
hair. Today I found a wounded
bird perched in the brittle garden.

You are learning the Chinese way.
One does not speak of such matters.
Evenings and mornings are cold,
sky washed with glorious colors.

Fog lifts from my river at dawn.
Frost embraces every surface.
Birches, drying into autumn,
rattle and bend with the wind.

You eat rice and sip green tea.
You wander crowded alleyways,
carrying with you the pale
alien you now know you are.

I drink Italian coffee with cream.
The moon is chipped in an open sky.
A slow walk on a dark night, beaver
slamming its tail on the water.

Soon snow will come to us both.
You send for warmer clothes.
I tighten the shutters, and sleep
with the dogs.

Fall, Juneau, Alaska

I want you to know
the Chinese porcelain beast
grins. The glare
in the clouds
does not light my way.

The lavender candle burns.
I listen to the radio.
Rain. The year falls
toward the dark.
Gold on the mountain.

Alders turn brown.
Wet boards. I want
you to know, the baskets
weave together. The silk
rainbow fish

hangs on my wall.
I've moved my clothes
together in the closet.
There are no blank spots
here. Ask me. Ask me how

I'm doing. Ask me
where I am. The chickadees
are in the spruce.
I feed them your sugared
cereal. I want you to know

the water in the channel
is dark and flat.
The moon, the year,
wane, accelerate.
Leaves are down

in the forest.
The falls swell. I want
you to know,
the Japanese maple
is red. Birch trees

show their bones
again. The year
is seamless.
There is no hole
where you were.

      

Bell

once I imagined the bell
all the rest came easily
the young man in the burgundy coat
lilies tolling their scent in the garden
pale moon over narrow streets, it all
dreamt itself into tall dark trees
shivering with sparrows and wind

the wind in the shutters
the nervous courtyard
something sacred at the altar
the pale child in her ghost dress
the book with its gossamer gilded pages
its thin black-pebbled cover
this docile child, butterfly wings

the old man bent into his cane
shuffling, shuffling, the pale moon
it all came quite easily, then
the moon walked into the mountains
the stars fell the old man fell
the lilies dropped their thick petals
the young man became a branch

scratching, scratching the window
the shutters opened their louvers the fan
making its ocean sound it all became
lightness and bright stripes on the wall
morning morning and I step into the garden
thick slow beat of pelican wings
into a cloud of pale moths

 

Summer Solstice, Sitka, Alaska 1993

This day blooms
under wide meadows
of sky. We lay
our sun-stunned bodies
in constellations
of clover and buttercups. 

Salmonberry bubbles
of sweet red light
break on our tongues. 
Shooting stars
in the flowerbeds,
pollen in our sheets. 

Snapshot 09 June 02004

something like that blue
cloud, thunder rolling
through our valley, hail
in the flower beds, or this
lukewarm tea in the Chinese
mug on the brass table --

something like this sun
or this gnat on the page,
scents of solomon seal
and cigarette smoke entwining
in the garden, wind rustling
the birches --

something like the neighbor's
dog barking at the noisy pickup
and rap music from a radio,
somewhere -- black pavement
gleaming after rain, something
like that -- this solitary life