Watermark

Confession

What do you bring to the confessional?
Wasted hours; a kind thing undone,
and another, and another; or some
singular crime, a thought or deed
that left a wound, some innocent
bereft of confidence and cheer?
Have you taken what was not yours
to keep; kissed one not yours to claim?
Or is it deeper, darker than these?
Did you see your path was cold
and steep, so turn an easier way?
Have you scoured your heart of love,
set it to harden in a kiln of rage?
Drop it on the tiles, then. Let it break.

   

unearth -- RWP minichallenge III

I'm posting all three parts here, because I think it is one poem.  Also, just to say -- this exercise has resulted in something much different than my usual. Whether this is a good or a bad thing, I can't yet tell:

  

I.

the walls are filled with the lives of children
what appears to be an exit changes to a trap
you have everything to lose

oil rainbows the water, a thin & dangerous sheen
that pain you call love pulls you away
there is no point in stopping

in the middle of the mountain road
an old woman walks in the wrong direction
she is thin & frail, she wears a red coat

years have passed, buildings torn down, rebuilt, renovated
each place you sail into more beautiful than the last
sometimes she can be heard, crying in the lake

the sun drops into the sea like a stone
you repeatedly forget what you have remembered
this part lasts forever

  

II.

this is how it happens
static in a closed room
an electrical hum

I open my hand
sparks escape from my palm, crackling
like petting a cat in the dark

you reach out & touch my face
a cradle, a caress
it's warm there, where our skins meet   

  

III.

you diminish in my arms & I want to take you into my body
the sky is washed with green light
you are not cold       you are not there 

a small forest grows from fallen trees 
we build houses & friendships around us like crypts
a string of mussel shells crosses the path       you will have luck

the earth holds me up.       feel that, you say.     feel it.
I shake off the fear and make a place for myself
where your edges touch my edges       there is pain

we watch skipping stones of light on the water
the sky is nearly cloudless & goes pink at sunset
the moon comes up one day from full, with a face and a soft aura

I try to find my own name
the river reflects nothing     it absorbs the light
I can't carry this mask much longer

 

   poetry mini-challenge

unearth -- RWP minichallenge II

this is how it happens
static in a closed room
an electrical hum

I open my hand
sparks escape from my palm, crackling
like petting a cat in the dark

you reach out & touch my face
a cradle, a caress
it's warm there, where our skins meet

   

unearth -- RWP minichallenge I

   poetry mini-challenge

  

unearth -- RWP minichallenge I

the walls are filled with the lives of children
what appears to be an exit changes to a trap
you have everything to lose

oil rainbows the water, a thin & dangerous sheen
that pain you call love pulls you away
there is no point in stopping

in the middle of the mountain road
an old woman walks in the wrong direction
she is thin & frail, she wears a red coat

years have passed, buildings torn down, rebuilt, renovated
each place you sail into more beautiful than the last
sometimes she can be heard, crying in the lake

the sun drops into the sea like a stone
you repeatedly forget what you have remembered
this part lasts forever

  

   poetry mini-challenge

Flow

I sit in my shaded garden, watching
the koi and goldfish feed. The house
is closed against this heat, plantation
shutters pulled across the windows.

Every week my aunt baked two cakes
in the wood stove, one with the yolks,
one with the whites. Angel-food cake,
sponge cake. Sue cut off her fingertip

fixing the well pump. Grandma's street
ended in the lagoon, swampy and dark.
Two blocks down was the stone bridge.
When she was seven, the girl next door

climbed that bridge and stepped off.
They called it an accident. Everyone cried.
Then the Cities, split by the great river,
crowded and loud, wet air that paled the days.

Another town, the smell of fish, boats
docked at the inlet, swaying and creaking.
Cedars and rhododendrons, houses closed
in on themselves. Lilacs. Roses.

The Inland Passage, whales breeching.
Wooden houses climbing the mountains.
Crab pulled up from the sea. Rain.
Ravens, eagles, great blue herons. Rain.

I eat cherries from Flathead Lake.
They are sharp and sweet, cold
from the refrigerator. Just a few
steps away, the Clark Fork climbs

its banks. Somewhere to the south,
it meets the river of my childhood.
The air smells of forest fires. Later
I'll make a devil's food cake.

  

   read write prompt #86: by celebrity guest poet dorianne laux

Calling the Ghost

  

How long must I sit on your grave
to elicit a visitation? Must I fast?
Must I meditate on the vastness
of the universe of death? Must
I count my own? Must I arrive
at midnight to pull your ashes
back to some semblance of you? 

If I wake, if I sleep, will you come
to me, shambling, silent, silhouetted
against the summer moon? Will you
speak? I closed your eyes with my own
hand. I sat at your side and waited. 

Now I sit on your grave, and wait.
I wrap myself against the night,
I sit on the cold ground, where you
are not. And wait.

  

   read write prompt #85: spooky

    Totally Optional Prompt: Midnight

Animal Empathy ~ The Empathy Animal

   

Animal Empathy

an animal antiphon
assimilated aborigines

we are Antaeus
earth our arboretum

it is not a matter of thinking
it begins here: we band

together, a braid
of betrothal and betrayal

the human biography
curators of creation

we cannot continue
to consume without consequence

sinking deep into demise
we must listen, we must hear

the descant of the Dervish
or die with the devils

of our own nature
this, our dilemma

discipline, or distress
feel the drumming

the ebb, the elapse
of human dynasty

we are the element
of our own extinction

or we embark on a voyage
of enlightened empathy

  

  

The Empathy Animal

we claim that empathy
emanates from the human brain

that elegant and enigmatic organ
that distinguishes us from our cousins

the ground of our disposition
or perhaps of our self-deception

we consecrate our deviation
in this dialectic with our kin

from the time we left our caves
we have blamed on them our carnal selves

we say the beast in us is base
a barb in the flesh of all that's best

but it's our apish arrogance
that divides us from the rest

  

    read write prompt #84: fun with the dictionary

    Totally Optional Prompt: Spontaneity/Planning

Again, the two prompts work together. Usually I think and/or write and then work with what comes. This time I followed the guidance in Matthea Harvey's essay “Don Dada On The Down Low Getting Godly In His Game: Between and Beyond Play and Prayer in the Abecedarius”, working through the dictionary from animal to empathy and back again.

This exercise seems to have elicited my expository self. Not a strong suit for me, I think.

[Thursday morning: a bit of slight editing]

Homunculus of Dreams

  

She keeps them in a jeweled box.
It turns itself inside out. She flies
into an infinite sky. A flaming bird
breaks the glass, its broken body lies,
martyred, on the gravel ground.

She walks with me on distant beaches.
I am lost in the phantasmagorical sea.
The shaman cuts the cord, the gypsy
grants me a future of fog. I loiter
amidst the whitened ribs of whales.

She dreams me a séance of strangers.
We seek the hearts of the dead, the once
blood-red, sanguine hearts of the now
bloodless dead. Each dream has its own
clarity, its own acuity, its own lucidity.

She brings me many-colored cats, and ponies.
Appaloosas and thick-furred island wildness.
The sagebrush mound slumps down to the sea,
the many-peopled, many-creatured sea. She
shows me, I am drowned, and I see.
   

  read write prompt #82: ode to your homunculus and read write prompt #83

Homunculus

I am having a terrible time with this prompt. I have three responses so far. The first is all feeling, no form. The second is boring. The third is all form, no feeling.

I'm working on a fourth. In the meantime, though, I post #3:

  

I think I am. It seems a reasonable
formulation. If I am not, then who
is thinking? Perhaps it's possible
that I am merely a fragment of you.

Then who are you? one asks. But who is one?
One may be many, a crowd, a multitude.
I try to count the many me's, the sum
of all I am. It seems an attitude

of skepticism is advisable.
I think I can, I think I can, I think
the paradox is not resolvable.
I think I can't. I think and then I sink

into paralysis, and think I'm not
at all. A particle, a speck, a thought.

  

  read write prompt #82: ode to your homunculus

This Old House

This house has many rooms. Small
rooms, stuffed with large things; large
rooms, cluttered with trivia. Over-sized
bureaus and under-sized beds.

Razor wire guards the boundary. It sparkles
in the sun. Then the moat, deep and dark,
flashing with goldfish and koi. Harmless
beasts patrol the grounds.

The windows are mirrored on the outside,
shuttered on the in. At the parapet,
telescopes and binoculars, lawn chairs
beneath striped umbrellas.

No monsters hide behind the bedskirts.
They live under the floorboards, with the
operatic mice and web-obsessed spiders.
The walls are buzzing with bees.

In the attic, vintage toys and modern novels.
In the cellar, shell-framed mirrors and
wind-up robots; antique televisions with
shattered screens; bowls of scentless petals.

There is a room for the badgers, with their
sharp teeth and purple gums; and another
for the feral cats. Here is the room of old lovers,
forever young, forever rehearsing their lines.

Books are piled on every floor; art layers
every wall. In the music room, Bach plays
chess with Ani DiFranco. K.D. Lang is dancing
the tango with Philip Glass.

Here is the hall of file cabinets. Drawers
hang open, overflowing with lurid documents,
spike-heeled shoes, scandalous photographs,
broken china, diaries written in invisible ink.

This house is a labyrinth, a maze. Long dim
hallways, twisting corridors, hidden doors
and camouflaged, impenetrable chambers.
Do not enter. There is no exit.

At the top of the house, the gardens: desert,
tropics, alpine, rain forest. Coastal, filled with
wind and salt. Great arched skylights, views
open wide to the indifferent universe.

  

    Totally Optional Prompt: Fireworks! ... explore some pyrotechnic language. Go for some really over-the-top images.

Thursday afternoon: I came in and did some small, but significant, edits.

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?]

What I'll Never Tell You

  

1

I did go out that summer day
with an old lover, into the mountains.
We had a meal by the river, then
lay together and made love
on the scratchy blanket.

2

Peonies make me think of you,
how they open, and open, unfolding
petal after petal, so lush, so brazen;
how we chased each other, room
to room, naked and ecstatic.

3

If you had asked, I would have
gone with you. I would have
left all rules behind, followed you,
led the way into that unknown
wilderness, that anarchy of desire. 

  

This week's prompt was what i could never tell my mother.  I changed it just a bit.

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.

   
 

For an audio post of this poem, go here.

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

Talking to the Animals

A poem with long lines. I've posted it as an image (click to embiggen); text below the break.

bowl

put the egg in the bowl
put the bowl on the table
put the table on the floor
put the floor on the slab
put the slab in the hole
dig the hole in the ground
put the ground on the stone
put the stone in the water
put the water in the bowl

[Woke in the night with the urgent need to write this down. Why? I've no idea.]

Cold Moon

Each month I show you the same face,
and you call me a different name.

Now you call me Cold Moon,
but I am always cold.

You call me Long Night Moon,
but my nights are always long,

bright on one side, dark the other.
I am the same, always, and you

make of me what you desire. Magical,
monstrous, indifferent, muse.

I pull at your blood, and you
deny me. We yearn for one

another, stone of my stone, fire
of my fire, night of my night.
  

Dec. 12, 11:37 a.m. EST — Full Cold Moon; among some tribes, the Full Long Nights Moon. In this month the winter cold fastens its grip, and the nights are at their longest and darkest. Also sometimes called the Moon before Yule. The term Long Night Moon is a doubly appropriate name because the midwinter night is indeed long and the moon is above the horizon a long time. The midwinter full moon takes a high trajectory across the sky because it is opposite to the low Sun. The moon will also be at perigee later this day, at 5:00 p.m. EST, at a distance of 221,560 mi. (356,566 km.) from Earth. Very high ocean tides can be expected from the coincidence of perigee with full moon.
    

  Totally Optional Prompt: Request for Persona Poems

Prickly Person

[Text beneath the cut.]

Day of the Dead

  

   

I try to count my dead

and their gifts,

    but there are too many.

  

The garden is buried in leaves.

  

Red Moon

  

You took my cat
from me. He flew
from his body.

I could not hold him.
I think it was your color
that called him. Same

to same. Now when
I see you, I hear him
purr. I could not hold him.

Aug. 16, 5:16 p.m. EDT — Full Sturgeon Moon, when this large fish of the Great Lakes and other major bodies of water like Lake Champlain is most readily caught. A few tribes knew it as the Full Red Moon because the moon rises looking reddish through sultry haze, or the Green Corn Moon or Grain Moon. There will be a Partial Lunar Eclipse that will be visible from Europe, Africa and the western two-thirds of Asia with this full moon. At its maximum 81 percent of the moon's diameter will become immersed in the Earth's dark umbral shadow.

[The photo is a mashup: Full Moon from Rhys Jones Photography and Spike]

Love

 

 

I've looked everywhere:
the junk drawer in the kitchen,
the catch-all on the dresser,
in every cupboard and cabinet.
I scolded the cat and got down
on my knees to look under the sofa.
It's not in the garage, the basement,
the attic. I cleaned out the car,
the glove-box, the trunk. I've swept
all the corners, emptied the desk.
I asked Google, Yahoo, and Amazon.
I searched Wikipedia, called
everyone I know. I switched out
the bed linens, shook out the rugs,
shuffled the pages of all the books.
It is not here. I've looked everywhere,
year after year, but I cannot find it.

   

  This week's prompt was Lost Stuff.

UPDATED Monday, 11 August:  A new title, at Jim Murdoch's suggestion.

Person Jim Murdoch's

Right click for SmartMenu shortcuts

An Olfactory Meditation

The current prompt from ReadWritePoem is:

Walk around this week with your sniffer in high gear. Or take a moment right now to conjure up your favorite sense memories: Movie popcorn, gasoline, firewood, bed linens hung out on a washing line to dry - what is it that the sense of smell evokes for you? Be it positive, negative, or a little bit of both, put it into poetic form and share it with the rest of us.

 

So I did. Put my sniffer in high gear, I mean. And below, after days of working with it, off and on, is what I have.

What do I have?

1. One very drafty poem?
2. Sketches or drafts of several poems?
3. A poem in search of a form?
4. A poem, in the form it wants?
5. A non-poem.

Critiques welcome. Please.

A woman hangs laundry on the line.
    The grass is freshly mowed.
        She wears an apron.
            Starch, under a hot iron.

The widow sobs into her husband's shirt.
    As long as she can smell him, he lives.

Those who lose their sense of smell say that everything tastes like sawdust.

• Anosmia - lack of ability to smell
• Hyposmia - decreased ability to smell
• Phantosmia - "hallucinated smell", often unpleasant in nature
• Dysosmia - things smell differently than they should
• Hyperosmia - an abnormally acute sense of smell

These dreams have no scent. Scentless dreams.

She smells of lily-of-the-valley, of lavender, of lilacs.
He smells of horse, leather, manure.
She smells of garlic and tomatoes.
He smells of gin, cigarettes, and secrets.
She smells of cinnamon, nutmeg, chocolate.
He smells of another woman.

Coffee, and bacon sizzling in the pan. Just the sound smells of bacon.

This lemon, with its faintly oily skin.

Odor information is easily stored in long-term memory and has strong connections to emotional memory. This is possibly due to the olfactory system's close anatomical ties to the limbic system and hippocampus, areas of the brain that have long been known to be involved in emotion and place memory, respectively. Wikipedia

Cities have smells: New York, Santa Fe, San Francisco. Rome.

The dog asks "Who are you?", its nose in your crotch.

Belly button smell, under-arm smell, scrotum and vagina smells.
    Mask it, deodorize it, wash it away.

You put your nose to the infant's soft skull,
    trying to remember the true beginning,
        where we really come from.

The smell of the foreigner, his strange diet leaking from his skin.

After the flood: wreckage, and the smell.

There are diagnosticians who can smell disease,
    mothers who can smell misbehavior,
        lovers who can smell infidelity,
                                even when it is not there.

Bake cookies to sell your house. Put vanilla on the pulse-points to sell yourself.

This smell, she says, Godmother's house!

... it seems strange that human beings are able to distinguish so many different odors. It seems that there must be a highly-complex form of processing occurring; however, as it can be shown that, while many neurons in the olfactory bulb (and even the pyriform cortex and amygdala) are responsive to many different odors, half the neurons in the orbitofrontal cortex are responsive only to one odor, and the rest to only a few. It has been shown through microelectrode studies that each individual odor gives a particular specific spatial map of excitation in the olfactory bulb. It is possible that, through spatial encoding, the brain is able to distinguish specific odors. However, temporal coding must be taken into account. Over time, the spatial maps change, even for one particular odor, and the brain must be able to process these details as well. Wikipedia

Old pickup smell, animal and metallic. Stale beer. Stale tobacco. Stale male.

Ice. Freezer smell.

    Or glacial ice,
            the smell of sailing back through time,
        past animals and plants,
into ice and stone and lichen.

The prison smell, dense, metallic, electric.
The smell of threat, suppression, and rage.
The smell of danger, barely contained.
The smell of slamming iron doors.

When she comes out later to bring in the laundry,
she drops the clothespins into a pocket in her apron.
She folds each garment, and brings it to her face, before putting it in the basket.
   
She brings it to her face to smell the day.

Dog & Cat

 

Run! says the dog.
Run! Run! Run!
Bark woof grrr!

No! says the cat.
No! No! No!
Hiss spit rrrllll!

I'll eat you!
says the dog.
I'll have you for lunch!

Claws! Teeth!
says the cat.
I'll bloody your nose!

You look tasty,
says the dog.
Yum yum yum!

I'm muscle and bone,
says the cat.
And claws claws CLAWS!

OK, I'm bored now,
says the dog.
Woof?

Me, too,
says the cat.
Mrrrrl?

Wanna take a nap?
asks the dog.
Sniff sniff sniff.

Sure, give me your
belly, says the cat.
Currll purrr purrr.

 

  This week's prompt was to write a humorous poem.

read write prompt #36: ekphrastic extravaganza

fibonacci, by Rick Mobbs

[not a] Fib

You
live
in a
shell, a nautilus
shell, a miraculous pearly husk.

You
live
in the
shell with a
light. The light is alive,

it
shimmers
in the
iridescent glow inside
the shell. The shell curves

in
a
marvelous spiral.
These are your
chambers. You live in light.

 

This week's prompt was ekphrastic extravaganza. Here is Christine's article on ekphrastic poetry. Here is a Wikipedia article on fibonacci poetry, which this actually isn't; I counted words instead of syllables.

Revised 24 July: changed the pronoun from she to you.

Thunder Moon | Revision

 

   

It woke me at midnight. It touches
everything, the photographs
on the far wall, the chair
that rocked me

on my grandmother's lap, this bed
in its summer whites. It's quiet,
stealthy. If I sit still
long enough,

I can see it move. But the light
in this room does not move.
This light is a thin dry mist,
it silvers

the dog's paws, twitching
with dreams. The moon
dreams, too. It dreams
of rain.

The moon is bruised with time.
It conjures bolts of fire, it sets
the mountains aflame.
Lightning, this moon.

Yes. Lightning.

   

6/20: Again, the original is below the cut, for those interested in the process.

July 12, 02008 -- REVISED

   

It's a dark night,
a slight moon.

The scar remains,
pale silent stitches

from wrist past elbow.
She held herself

together. She healed.
They used a saw

to remove the cast.
It screamed.

She wakes in the breeze
of the ceiling fan,

sinks into deep
mattresses; the sweetness

of strawberries; tart lemon cake;
the full scent of grass, just mowed,

lying down on its own fresh self;
the soft underwater feel of a tree-

shaded room. Even the taste
of mountain fires,

smoke in her mouth.
Even that pleases her.

  

16 July: This poem has been significantly revised, with suggestions and guidance from Cindy and the PoetryEtc poets. It has reminded me what I mean to be doing here. I will write more about this later.

For those interested in the revision process, I'll post a few versions below the cut.

July 4th

[This poem's lines are too long for the column, so I've posted it as an image. You will find the text, with broken lines, below the cut.]

Poems & Publication

 I have been lax in noting that some of my poems have been selected for publication elsewhere.
 

Several of my poems are featured in the current issue of MatriFocus Web Magazine: The Making of Eve; the bubbling place; Fibromyalgia; and All Fall Down. I must confess that I was not familiar with this site before they contacted me, but I think I will enjoy it from now on. And, of course, it's always nice to have someone like your work enough to ask for it.

I think this may mean that I am now officially a Goddess-Woman. The goddess-daughter will be glad to hear it.
 

Tundra was published in the MiPOesias Cafe' Cafe' Edition. Cafe' Cafe' was a poetry board on Facebook, sadly now defunct -- but you can see some of its best work in this issue. I have been previously published at MiPOesias, here and here. And maybe elsewhere. I forget.
 

A few more of my poems have been added to my page at Poet's Corner on fiera Lingue: Winter; How does one come to believe in the moon?; Wolf Moon; and Richard.

If you haven't visited Poet's Corner lately, make some time to do so. It is a great privilege to be in such company, and I'm very grateful to Anny for including some of my work.

 

Finally, for those who count only publication on paper, my poem Raven will appear in The Raven: Soaring Through History, Legend & Lore, by Lynn Hassler from Rio Nuevo Publishers. I'm delighted by this, one of my poems in a book that, if I saw it on the shelf and had money in my pocket, I would buy.

It will be out soon -- I've not actually seen it yet -- but I'll let you know when it's available.

March Sonnet [an old poem]

The full moon glides across winter's night
as February now concedes to March,
the month between the seasons, fickle skies
that now are mellow, now are cold and harsh.
The crocus tentatively tests the air
that taunts with whispered hints of summer warmth;
the daffodils, the tulips, debonair,
all toss their yellow heads with wanton charm.
But winter only rests, it does not sleep
and bears still hibernate in mountain caves.
The snow will come again, and cold and deep
will bury woods and gardens many days.
So treasure this fine darkness. Take your time
to sleep and dream till March makes up its mind.

   

Dialog

Will you speak the name?
                I do not know it.
Is it one name, or ten thousand?
                It is ten thousand names.
                It is uncountable names.
                Each knows its own name.
What is my name?
                Do you not know it?
I do not know it.
                Choose, then.
What shall I choose?
                There is a universe of names.
                    Anger, Joy, Grief, Sorrow,
                    Delight, Revelation . . .
I choose Revelation.
                You choose well.
What will be revealed?
                Only you.

Make the Woman

Let me put on
this blazer 
with brooch,

pull back my hair
into a tight
knot.

There.
Will that
do?

Perhaps you'd prefer
this red silk
dress

bare legs
and spiked
heels

or this flowery
innocent
shirtwaist?

No? This strapless
tube, then
you can see

the ring
in my
navel. Pull.

You long
for leather
and high boots

with a whip?
Even now
you're in charge.

Oh, you want me to
unzip my skin
for you?

Here, let me
fold it
onto this chair.

Happy now?

 

This week's prompt was to use this everyday topic [clothes] to inspire poetry.

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 am reposting this, since it seems ideal for this week's prompt: to say why you think you're alive, why you were born, and why you're still around: What are your reasons? ...try responding to this prompt without using the word "I" (me, my, mine).

Though I did post a poem yesterday, this one seems much more responsive, even though it was written months ago -- and I doubt I could answer the question better than this does.

And I need a reminder this morning.

what equals metaphor plus math?

numbers

I

numbers are magic
as everyone knows
numbers of fingers
and numbers of toes

one is a number
as is two, as is three
big's not a number
and neither is wee

but you can give them a number
if you measure them close
you can give them a number
for lesser or most

red's not a number
and neither is blue
but we give them both numbers
and think that it's true

numbers aren't real
they can't hug you or kiss you
they can't feed you a meal
and numbers won't love you

zero's a number
or just an idea
it gives nothing away
but a question: to be?

II

What if we could map the future?
If we could graph the probability
of you loving me, of me loving you?
This moment, its topology, its exact
dimensions and chronology - if we
could fracture it into its smallest
signifier - decipher the most obtuse
and mysterious functions - if we
could do that - this moment, its
infinite fractals, spinning off one
from the next - if you, if I, are only
numbers, the consequence of some
algebraic equation, some geometric
shape - do we add? Do we divide?
Each solution holds the next problem.

III

zero equals spiral
the moment of conception
anything is possible

one at the center
the beginning
and the end

two, the dialectic
balance, and also
contradiction

three is perfection
in its fullness
nothing is missing

four is totality
this earth
and all its directions

five is the star
it is fire
it is light

six is power
it is destiny
unfolding

seven is fulfillment
it is motion
it is change

eight
the pillar
and the path

nine
is the serpent
that bites its own tail

zero, the spiral
the shell
and the snail

 

This week's prompt was to incorporate mathematics into a poem. As you can see, I found this unusually inspiring.   

Ephemeral Sonnet

We write on water, we poets. Most of
us. Some write on sand, brief calligraphy
for seagulls, shore-birds and the slow inev-
itable tide. A few write to stain the sea,

so intense, the color of their ink salts
the words of their inheritors years
beyond their own decline. It's not their fault
that rules and ideologies emerge

poem by innocent poem. Some writers
strive to obscure the mysterious; some try
to reveal the obvious. Some are rhymers;
some are not. Some leap at the chance to fly.

In hopes they will endure, some write their odes
on stone. Stone is hard. But even stone erodes.

 

RWP offered two poems -- a sonnet and a free verse. The prompt was to pick the style that appeals least to you and write in that manner about the same theme: the transity of human efforts.

This week's prompt was to write a sonnet.

I know, it doesn't scan. I'm open to suggestions.

Tundra

 

The tundra can soften, it can swallow you.
An eye accustomed to mountains must learn
to see small, to see the tiny pattern of lichen
crawling across an unbounded landscape.

Land and sea, both flat as paper, only a thin
line between. Even the colors are close.
A village set down here is an alien thing,
an artifact on stilts, unlikely and unreliable.

Here is a world without edge. Here there   
is no horizon. Here, you know you are small.
The bear is a large thing. The sea is a large
thing. The ice is a large and dangerous thing.

There are people who know the tundra,
but you are not of those people. You
are small. You are weak, and all that
you know is useless.

Last week, we read Mary Oliver's Cold Poem for discussion; this week our prompt was to take something out of what it stirs up in you and write your own poem. For me, of course, it stirred up Alaska.

Coming to Grief

I walk with you again, this crowded
gravel path. We pass beneath dying

elms, fire maples, thick oaks. Soon
bats will rise up, above the trees.

My hair clings to my skull in the rain.
I hear the river moving stones in its bed.

The rain stops. Now, spots of sun,
the steady dripping from leaves.

I come to you as to an old lover. You,
of all the rest, will never leave me.

 

I'm posting an old poem for this week's prompt, which is Traveling Companions.

I Have This to Say About That

Don't those pollsters know
that married women
lie in the presence
of their husbands?

They lie mostly about
money and politics.
And sex. That, too.
They sneak shopping bags
in the back door.

If their husbands notice
something new,
they say, "What?
This ole thing?"
And when they pull

that poll booth curtain
closed, who's to know?
And white women, well,
they'll vote for a woman
or a black man

without flinching. And smile
while they do it. Just like   
they smile when asked
"Was it good for you, too,
honey?" "Why, yes,"

they say. "Yes."

 

[This poem has been published at New Verse News.]

UPDATED 15 JAN: I've posted a response to comments on this poem here:  Politics & Poetics

Let us examine the symbolism of dreams

 

The falling dream. The flying dream.
The dream in which you lose your teeth.

The abandoned kittens, the lost dogs,
the infant floating in its cradle on the lake.

The woman weeping, alone, in the forest.
The beast with an urgent message,

a critical missive you don't understand.
You fall, and someone offers his hand.

You reach out, but your fingers slip
through one another like light, like water.

You walk through the rooms of your life.
They are laid out, one by one, like a rail-

road flat with no corridors, no hallways.
You watch your own life pass as though

in a mirror, somehow reversed, somehow
not quite as it was. You arrive at now.

You wake in the fog of morning, slanted
bars of light on the ceiling. These dreams

wrap the shoulders of your waking hours,
a hooded shawl for your long, flat days.

 

[I posted this too soon; I'm revising in place...]

[Tuesday morning: Revised, again.]

Poem to the Editor

Dear Editor:

I am writing to warn you of a con-
spiracy that threatens our civil life.
Ordinary poets are blogging on
current events! They are fomenting strife

and discontent with our fine government.
They are everywhere on the internets!
Instead of writing well-rhymed sentiments
on ancient gods or abandoned bird nests

they are composing sonnets and clumsy
odes to contemporary candidates
for public office. They slander Rumsey,
they insult our president. How they hate

America, our freedoms and our goals.
The wrath of patriots on all their souls!

   

This week's prompt was 'Poem to the Editor'

There are some really good responses to this prompt; go check them out. I'm especially enamored of the poll on Mad Kane's sidebar. It's so good I'm tempted to try one of my own [a shudder passes over my widget-hating readers.]

And - if you think this letter sounds a bit crazy, go read the ones in your own local paper.

Happy Holidays!

 

Winter Solstice

It was dark and cold and Grandmother said let's make a picnic, we'll hang the beaded sun on the ceiling, have lunch from a willow basket. She laid out great-grandmother's quilt, orange and yellow and blue, a homespun lawn on the carpet, and I in my nightgown and she in her lavender dress, ate tuna and crackers and chocolate off delicate china plates.
 



   

 

Winter Solstice

It was dark and cold and Grandmother said let's make a picnic, we'll hang the beaded sun on the ceiling, have lunch from a willow basket. She laid out great-grandmother's quilt, orange and yellow and blue, a homespun lawn on the carpet, and I in my nightgown and she in her lavender dress, ate tuna and crackers and chocolate off delicate china plates.
 



   

Santa Lucia Day

I meet this winter without celebration,
as the man who was dying, but now lives,
greets the ants that pass through his kitchen
in narrow, undisturbed rows.

When the child with her crown of candles
comes to my door in her white dress, singing,
I watch the delicate notes disperse in pale
cold light, like snow.

A few years ago, on this day, when Fairy Goddess Daughter Abigail lived with me, one of her classmates came to the door with her daughter and candles and cookies and song. The next year, when Abigail was no longer here, Carole came to the door again, and when I told her Abigail was not here, she said, I know. We came to sing for you. So they did.

Before this, I did not know about Santa Lucia Day.

Soon after, Niki shared with me the story of her friend who had survived  a supposedly terminal illness, and, having faced his own mortality, could not bring himself to kill the ants that had invaded his kitchen.

These gifts -- song and story -- came together to make this poem. So consider it a gift to you, from Niki and her friend; from Abigail; from Carole and her daughter; from me.

Lucia symbolizes light and growth for human and beast as she emerges out of the darkness. May this season bring, to us all, light and growth.

Saint Lucy's Day

What It Is - an exercise in long lines

I've combined two recent prompts into one long-lined poem.

Prompt #3: Consider three pieces of your life . . . You could even go crazy and mix it all up, picking one piece from different “categories.” Write a single poem about all three. Try to work from concrete pieces . . .

Prompt #4:  Look for the patterns in your writing, and write a poem that breaks them. If you favor short lines, write all the way to the margin . . . use the writing prompt over to the right, the one that’s there right now and use it in the first line . . .

The random writing prompt I got was It is what it is, which ended up in the last, rather than the first, line. I've been writing in short lines, so I tried for long ones -- and then realized that Watermark is really not designed for posting long lines. Which may be why I've been writing short ones -- I'll have to think about that.

So I made the poem into an image; click it to bring up a larger version:

   

Below the cut: the poem in text, with broken lines...

If

red fruit: apple
Photo uploaded by beta karel.

 

If I brought you a cloak
    embroidered with stars
        a staff & a crown & a steed
            would you mount it?

If I laid out a carpet
    from my veins of bright red
        if I bled & I bled
            would you walk it?

If I sent you a bird
    with a song yet unheard
        if it came in a cage
            would you free it?

If I wove silk from corn
    if I turned wheat to gold
        would you wrap yourself up?
            Would you count it?

If I gave you a colt
    with a horn in his head
        would you hold out your hand?
            Would you feed it?

If I cast down my hair
    with its stiff strands of grey
        if I unwound the braid
            would you climb it?

If I offered my head
    on a carved wooden plate
        if I died, if I'm dead
            would you grieve it?

If I hand you an apple
    from my orchard of hearts
        -- it is ripe, it is red --
            will you eat it?

[ poem by SB ]

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?

BloggersUnite | Poetry Thursday

Today is Blogging Against Abuse day, a Community Challenge from Blog Catalog. I have a poem that is appropriate for this challenge: The Therapist.

I am linking rather than posting for two reasons:

• This poem is written in long lines, and that format works much better at Oratory than it does here at Watermark.
• This poem deals graphically with the subject of sexual abuse/assault.  It is important that the reader be warned -- this can be a difficult and painful read for some folks.

This is also my Poetry Thursday post. Sadly, the topic for this week was Utopia, and my piece is anything but. Still, there it is.

From the Poetry Thursday site:

For the next few weeks, several Poetry Thursday participants will take turns hosting the Thursday post on their blogs. This week, please visit The Red Door Studio where you will be able to a) leave your comment linking to your Thursday post about poetry, b) find out next week’s prompt. Next Thursday's host will be Liz Elayne.

Poetry Thursday/ Secrets

From the Poetry Thursday site:

For the next few weeks, several Poetry Thursday participants will take turns hosting the Thursday post on their blogs. This week, please visit jillypoet where you will be able to a) leave your comment linking to your Thursday post about poetry, b) find out next week’s prompt. Next Thursday's host will be The Red Door Studio.

I'm still working on The Love Series, but have nothing new from it to post. I do, however, have an old poem that is in line with the prompt for this week. It's one of my best poems, too.

   

Secrets

Listen. I will tell you everything. The weather is turning. 
Soon it will be time to unroll the Persian rugs and lay them
on the polished floors. 

I will hold nothing back. I am brittle, like glass; like leaves
of a tree too long without water; a cocoon, untenanted,
exposed to the sun. 

This morning I wore a jacket to walk the river path. Two crows,
in their black robes, pecked at the body of a thick green snake. 
My mother was a northerner.

She carried me across thin ice. Many times I slipped beneath
the frozen water. I never knew my father. Tomatoes are laid
on the kitchen counter,

red bulbs on the maple wood. I prepare the knife:  steel blade,
sharpening stone. I want to slice to the seedy centers without
bruising the skin. 

I loved my father. He had perfect, beautiful hands. He kept
them manicured and clean. There are reasons you must not
touch me. My grandmother

lived with God in her garden. She fed me carrots and peas,
she put white lilies by my bed. I am telling you everything. 
It is cold here. 

Birch trees bend in their white sleeves, leaves hissing in the wind. 
A blade of sun slants down, casting serrated shadows on the hard
ground. Are you listening? 

Do you understand? The dog waits, and waits, at the door. 
Yesterday, I dropped the Murano vase. It cannot be repaired. 
I cut myself on sharp, thin air.

 

Love 6

6.

Love is a married man.
He is strong and lean; he's a tree.
He carries his son on his shoulders.
Love is a tunnel of laughter.

We lie together, chastely.
The bed is on fire. When I send
him away, we kiss forever.
I send him away, though my skin

is sloughing, my bones are cracking,
little fractures, one by one. When
he leaves, the walls fall down.
I sleep in the burning wreckage.

   

This is part of a series I'm working on.

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4
• Part 5

   

From the Poetry Thursday site:

For the next few weeks, several Poetry Thursday participants will take turns hosting the Thursday post on their blogs. This week, please visit The Polka Dot Witch where you will be able to a) leave your comment linking to your Thursday post about poetry, b) find out next week’s prompt, and c) find out who will host the next Thursday post. [It will be jillypoet.]

Love 5

5.

Love is bitter and cold, with eyes
of blue fire. He shoves me away
with one arm; pulls me close
with the other. Leave me alone!
he shouts, his lips caressing my ear.

We court with our fists, then comfort
each other with tears. When he leaves,
he takes nothing. He dreams that I
weep in his closet, wrapped
in his clothes.

 

This is part of a series I'm working on.

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4

   

From the Poetry Thursday site:

For the next few weeks, a few Poetry Thursday participants will take turns hosting the Thursday post on their blogs. This Thursday, September 6, please visit Delia’s blog Left-Handed Trees and Other Lies: Writing from the Roots where you will be able to a) leave your comment linking to your Thursday post about poetry, b) find out next week’s prompt, and c) find out who will host the next Thursday post. [It's The Polka Dot Witch]

Folding In - a poem from Cathy

Poem by Cathy Muenster

some lines of morning hope
a little afternoon poetry

life can be folded
into an old friend

   

One of the toys on facebook is Magnetic Words -- just like the magnetic words for your fridge, where you & your friends can move words about to make messages and poems. I was delighted to find this on my board one day, and am posting it here with Cathy's permission.

International Rock-Flipping Day

To learn more about International Rock Flipping Day, go to Via Negativa or the IRFD Flickr Group.

For years I sat with people as they
turned over boulders in their hearts.
Millipedes, centipedes, scorpions;
snakes and roots and cockroaches.

The occasional treasure: a gold
watch, a glass jewel, a glittery bit
of quartz. Clumps of earth, dry
and grey; or deep and dark

and fertile. Sometimes a stone
shattered, bringing blood
and relief. Sometimes a rock
would find its way up to the throat,

choking, smothering; once even
a killing wound. But often the weighted
souls left my room scattered with
discarded pebbles. They remembered

how heavily their pockets had bulged
with the old, the deliberately
or sadly forgotten. Now and then
some would upturn a stone and find

themselves. Sometimes a buried
root, feeling the air and the light,
might sprout into something new,
living and green. Sometimes

the person would quietly set
the stone back in its place,
leaving it to its own dark
and busy life.