poetremix - variations on a theme

Ok. So, we post the poem, we are somehow inspired by the poem, we write a poem "after" the posted poem.

Whew.

Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is due this time next month!

Poem!

THE IDIOT'S GUIDE TO FAKING YOUR OWN DEATH AND MOVING TO MEXICO

Every few seconds I check the Bible
to see what Jesus is saying about me. The answer
is always nothing. Sometimes

he's condemning me to eternal damnation,
but usually nothing. Tonight I am alone,
wearing my sex shorts, adrift amongst

the black suburban pools of eternal damnation.
No, I have not been in love. Yes,
I have been in love. I am speaking the language

in which no and yes mean the same, in which
apricot and goodbye mean the same.
I am remembering the kudzu of the awful season,

sitting with you beside the swamp for the last
time and neither of us knowing it was the last
time but yes the glass was hello and dragonfly.

Was it a blessing? They say so in this language.
Others say this language is dying, or already
dead. I speak it, nonetheless, while eating

apricots in the evening of eternal damnation
where you yell at the map and cut your wrist
and there is a darkness here that I have only shared

with my cat, like that guy in the movie who writes
graphic erotica and goes crazy. One says
pain near the black pool of everything,

my back is covered with wax. Every few
seconds I check the Bible to see what Jesus
is saying about me. The answer is always nothing,

aside from the time he lambasted the outfit I wore
to the People's Choice Awards. A green tuxedo.
Tonight, I am adrift in the suburb of the black sky,

I am speaking the language in which love
and apricot mean the same, in which pool
and death mean the same. I said goodbye

in a suburb like this, years ago. I said
goodbye in a suburb like this, years ago.
According to Hercules, if we make an angel

out of ourselves, that is what we are; if we make
a devil out of ourselves, that too is what
we are. See, this is what I am getting at.

It is the awful season and I am speaking
the language in which violence and God mean
the same, in which blood and dragonfly mean

the same. I am in the orchard of eternity
picking the goodbyes of damnation, I am licking
your dragonfly blood and speaking the language

in which pain means hello. A black pool,
a green sky. That is to say, each moment
without you is a vacant airport, each moment

without you is a glass apricot. Every few seconds
I check the Bible to see what Jesus is saying
about me. The answer is always nothing. Except

today, it's a bunch of weird stuff about how
I'm falling into a black pool in some suburb,
maybe Palatine or something, and just like that,

I've gone forever. I know! That's what I thought
too. This is the story, but in this language, this
is not the story. I am eating red ice,

harvesting a field of knives. I am speaking
the language in which heaven and earth mean
the same, in which sky and white mean the same.

O Lord, I made this dragonfly for you. Even
if you do not listen to it, just know, this
is how I have always felt about you. And I

am posessed. And I am a fatalist. Do you see
these bruises? Do you see these bruises?
They are a sad bouquet. They are a beautiful

scrapbook. I am floating. I am in love.
I am dead. On a perfect night, my back is covered
with wax. O Violence, but I did not want this hello.

O Lord, I made this dragonfly for you.
Even if you do not listen to it, just know, I made it
only for you.

~~Jason Bredle

I'm painting quotes/poems on an old chair I found.

Anyone have a favorite line of poetry? Just in case there's anything I missed.

SaM.

Everybody wants to go to bed
with everybody else, they're
lined up for blocks, so I'll
go to bed with you. They won't
miss us.





Brautigan:
my 3rd favorite poet.

Once I manage to gather up enough motivation to post one of my own poems in response, I will.
I'm new to this community and I like it that way.



SaM.

HYMN

And when you showed me Brooklyn Bridge
in the morning,
Ah God,
And the people slipping on ice in the street,
twice,
twice,
two different people
came over, goin to work,
so earnest and tryful,
clutching their pitiful
morning Daily News
slip on the ice & fall
both inside 5 minutes
and I cried I cried
That's when your taught me tears, Ah
God in the morning,
Ah Thee
And me leaning on the lamppost wiping
eyes,
eyes,
nobody's know I'd cried
or woulda cared anyway
but O I saw my father
and my grandfather's mother
and the long lines of chairs
and the tear-sitters and dead,
Ah me, I knew God You
had better plans than that
So whatever plan you have for me
Splitter of majesty
Make it short
brief
Make it snappy
bring me home to the Eternal Mother
today
At your service anyway,
(and until)

1959---Jack Kerouac

"Sex Without Love"
---Sharon Olds

How do they do it, the ones who make love
without love? Beautiful as dancers,
gliding over each other like ice-skaters
over the ice, fingers hooked
inside each other's bodies, faces
red as steak, wine, wet as the
children at birth whose mothers are going to
give them away. How do they come to the
come to the come to the God come to the
still waters, and not love
the one who came there with them, light
rising slowly as steam off their joined
skin? These are the true religious,
the purists, the pros, the ones who will not
accept a false Messiah, love the
priest instead of the God. They do not
mistake the lover for their own pleasure,
they are like great runners: they know they are alone
with the road surface, the cold, the wind,
the fit of their shoes, their over-all cardio-
vascular health--just factors, like the partner
in the bed, and not the truth, which is the
single body alone in the universe
against its own best time.

Another poem from grad skool discussion. This one made me make that "mmn" poet sound while reading it. Non-poets hate it... but I don't think we poets can help ourselves.

Maybe I'm wrong.

This poem... feels so much where I am, right now.

"There is Wind, There Are Matches

A thousand times I have sat in restaurant windows,
through mopping after mopping, letting the ammonia clear
my brain and the music from the kichens
ruin my heart. I have sat there hiding
my feelings from my neighbors, blowing smoke
carefully into the ceiling, or after I gave
that up, smiling over my empty plate
like a tired wolf. Today I am sitting again
at the long marble table at Horn and Hardart's,
drinking my coffee and eating my burnt scrapple.
This is the last place left and everyone here
knows it; if the lights were turned down, if the
heat were turned off, if the banging of dishes stopped,
we would all go on, at least for a while, but then
we would drift off one by one toward Locust or Pine.
--I feel this place is like a birch forest
about to go; there is wind, there are matches, there is snow,
and it has been dark and dry for hundreds of years.
I look at the chandelier waving in the glass
and the sticky sugar and the wet spoon.
I take my handkerchief out for the sake of the seven
years we spent in Philadelphia and the
steps we sat on and the tiny patches of lawn.
I believe now more than I ever did before
in my first poems and more and more I feel
that nothing was wasted, that the freezing nights
were not a waste, that the long dull walks and
the boredom, and the secret pity, were
not a waste. I leave the paper sitting,
front page up, beside the cold coffee,
on top of the sugar, on top of the wet spoon,
on top of the grease. I was born for one thing,
and I can leave this place without bitterness
and start my walk down Broad Street past the churches
and the tiny parking lots and the thrift stores.
There was enough justice, and there was enough wisdome,
although it would take the rest of my life-- the next
two hundred years--to understand and explain it;
and there was enough time and there was enough affection
even if I did tear my tongue
begging the world for one more empty room
and one more window with clean glass
to let the light in on my last frenzy.
--I do the crow walking clumsily over his meat,
I do the child sitting for his dessert,
I do the poet asleep at his table,
waiting for the sun to light up his forehead.
I suddenly remember every ruined life,
every betrayal, every desolation,
as I walk past Tasker toward the city of Baltimore,
banging my pencil on the iron fences,
whistling Bach and Muczynski though the closed blinds.

~~ Gerald Stern

We discussed this poem in my lecture by Major Jackson. They're pals. It seems he's pals with everybody. I don't blame them.

This poem blew me away, and we discussed it so much that he didn't get a chance to play "Bolero" or Miles Davis.

Life is hard sometimes.


Six Apologies, Lord

I Have Loved My Horrible Self, Lord.
I Rose, Lord, And I Rose, Lord, And I,
Dropt. Your Requirements, Lord. 'Spite Your Requirements, Lord,
I Have Loved The Low Voltage Of The Moon, Lord,
Until There Was No Moon Intensity Left, Lord, No Moon Intensity Left
For You, Lord. I Have Loved The Frivolous, The Fleeting, The Frightful
Clouds. Lord, I Have Loved Clouds! Do Not Forgive Me, Do Not
Forgive Me LordandLover, HarborandMaster, GuardianandBread, Do Not.
Hold Me, Lord, O, Hold Me

Accountable, Lord. I Am
Accountable. Lord.

Lord It Over Me,
Lord It Over Me, Lord. Feed Me

Hope, Lord. Feed Me
Hope, Lord, Or Break My Teeth.

Break My Teeth, Sir,

In This My Mouth.

~~Olena Kalytiak Davis

It's that time again. Here's a good one:

"To Dorothy"
Marvin Bell

You are not beautiful, exactly.
You are beautiful, inexactly.
You let a weed grow by the mulberry
and a mulberry grow by the house.
So close, in the personal quiet
of a windy night, it brushes the wall
and sweeps away the day till we sleep.

A child said it, and it seemed true:
"Things that are lost are all equal."
But it isn't true. If I lost you,
the air wouldn't move, nor the tree grow.
Someone would pull the weed, my flower.
The quiet wouldn't be yours. If I lost you,
I'd have to ask the grass to let me sleep.

Sylvia Plath used to be a guilty pleasure of mine. I really liked a lot of her work, but, I didn't think she was actually... respected? Respectable? Enough for me to list as a favorite poet. And now, she's not one of mine anymore, but, I still have fond memories.

I'm reading tons and tons of poetry these days in preparation for my week of workshopping, and stumbled across this one... and remembered why I had loved her.


Mirror


I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
What ever you see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful---
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.

Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

~~Sylvia Plath

I'm sorry... I lost track of days - I'm spending all my home time right now resting and trying to save up all my energy for work (which is now being done in sauna-level temperatures - see my journal for details). Which means mostly lying down and staring. I just finished a great book, though, called The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon, and for some reason I can't pinpoint, it reminds me a bit of this poem. So here goes:

"Keeping Things Whole"
Mark Strand

In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.

When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body's been.

We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.

It was a very warm day in Cleveland today, and it's just stayed warm. It's 81 degrees right now, and my dear weatherman doesn't think that's ever been true for Midnight in Cleveland, like... ever.

It kinda feels like this poem, to me.

Here

Here I am in teh garden laughing
an old woman with heavy breasts
and a nicely mapped face

how did this happen
well that's who I wanted to be

at last a woman
in the old style sitting
stout thighs apart under
a big skirt grandchild sliding
on off my lap a pleasant
summer perspiration

that's my old man across the yard
he's talking to the meter reader
he's telling him the world's sad story
how electricity is oil or uranium
and so forth I tell my grandson
run over to your grandpa ask him
to sit beside me for a minute I
am suddenly exhausted by my desire
to kiss his sweet explaining lips

~~Grace Paley

I have so many poems I want to post here, it feels like there's not enough time in the world. That's a good feeling!

"Axe Handles"
Gary Snyder

One afternoon the last week in April
Showing Kai how to throw a hatchet
One-half turn and it sticks in a stump.
He recalls the hatchet-head
Without a handle, in the shop
And go gets it, and wants it for his own.
A broken-off axe handle behind the door
Is long enough for a hatchet,
We cut it to length and take it
With the hatchet head
And working hatchet, to the wood block.
There I begin to shape the old handle
With the hatchet, and the phrase
First learned from Ezra Pound
Rings in my ears!
"When making an axe handle
              the pattern is not far off."
And I say this to Kai
"Look: We'll shape the handle
By checking the handle
Of the axe we cut with--"
And he sees. And I hear it again:
It's in Lu Ji's Wen Fu, fourth century
A.D. "Essay on Literature"-- in the
Preface: "In making the handle
Of an axe
By cutting wood with an axe
The model is indeed near at hand."
My teacher Shih-hsiang Chen
Translated that and taught it years ago
And I see: Pound was an axe,
Chen was an axe, I am an axe
And my son a handle, soon
To be shaping again, model
And tool, craft of culture,
How we go on.

I just found out that Major Jackson is going to be my very first poetry advisor in grad skool.

I'm nervous.

His book o' poems, "Leaving Saturn", won lots o' prizes. Maybe y 'all should check it out. (maybe I should, too) ;)

Here's a sample:


How to Listen
Major Jackson

I am going to cock my head tonight like a dog
in front of McGlinchy's Tavern on Locust;
I am going to stand beside the man who works all day combing
his thatch of gray hair corkscrewed in every direction.
I am going to pay attention to our lives
unraveling between the forks of his fine-tooth comb.
For once, we won't talk about the end of the world
or Vietnam or his exquisite paper shoes.
For once, I am going to ignore the profanity and
the dancing and the jukebox so I can hear his head crackle
beneath the sky's stretch of faint stars.

Note: How this ended up in my own journal is a complete mystery to me, since it was originally posted in this one and then somehow removed itself from the community when I edited the spacing. Sorry, dudes!

I read this yesterday and it really got to me. Mostly because it's so surreal, and yet the way it's presented makes you want to fight to understand it. It's also got this frightening tone of desparation. So even though this is going to make 2 W. S. Merwin poems in a row (which I didn't realize until I sat down to type this) I think it's worth it. Behold :)

"Some Last Questions"
W. S. Merwin

What is the head
         A: Ash
What are the eyes
        A: The wells have fallen in and have
             Inhabitants
What are the feet
         A: Thumbs left after the auction
No what are the feet
         A: Under them the impossible road is moving
             Down which the broken necked mice push
             Balls of blood with their noses
What is the tongue
         A: The black coat that fell off the wall
             With sleeves trying to say something
What are the hands
         A: Paid
No what are the hands
         A: Climbing back down the museum wall
             To their ancestors the extinct shrews that will
             Have left a message
What is the silence
         A: As though it had a right to more
Who are the compatriots
         A: They make the stars of bone

Alas.

I thought this was appropriate.

Happy Mother's Day, all you mothers!

To My Mother

This very evening I reach
the age you were when you died
I look through the decades
down past the layers of cloud
you had been watching the dark
autumn sky over the garden
and had told me months before
with a grace note of surprise
that you were an old woman
you laughed at the thought of it
all my life you had told me
that dying did not frighten you
yours was the voice that told me
that I was not afraid
you stood up to go in
knowing it would rain that night

you had seen death many times
before I even knew you
I am watching the rain now
fall on another garden
your words are still in my head
it was the winter solstice
before I was thirty
that I was the age you were
on the day I was born
to slip between numbers
through the measureless days

I'm getting rid of my cell phone and need to buy a new address book, so it's kind of a propos that I stumbled upon this poem in last summer's issue of Arc. I think it was published in Steven Heighton's latest collection as well.

( Address Book, by Steven HeightonCollapse )

Damn!

I've had a cold... so I think I lost track of who-poem-when. Sorry.

BUT!!! I got a book from hkath today!!!!! And, the book is amazing. I am so grateful and blown away.

This is the poem the book opened up to, which I read at the stop light on my way to work... and went 'DAMN!' So, I offer it to you.

Aperture, 1856

First the flood of chemicals:
guncotton, ether, silver
nitrate. Then forty-five long seconds
of stillness--and she only three
and quick. Did they meet because

of a raising of eyebrows, curiouser
about each other than about anyone
else in the garden? Her sisters
blurred into foliage;
he smelled of medicine. He was

twenty-four, did not choose her
as his favourite until the Adventures
six years later. But something began
that afternoon, marked in his diary
"with a white stone."

Her blue eyes tight buds.
Her mousy thatch straight across
the forehead. Spring everywhere threatening
to open them both: tense in that unfurling
garden, during the long exposure.


~~Stephanie Bolster

If I knew where donnagirl was, I'd get her to post a poem. But since I don't know where she is, you get this one:

"When I Was Little"
Keith Kelloway (grade 2)

I used to be little

but now I am big

I can go and buy a basketball

This again from the "I'm tired and this book is closest to the computer" category of poems. Not that I don't like this poem. I read it a few days ago and it thrilled me.

"The Sensual World"
Louise Gluck

I call to you across a monstrous river or chasm
to caution you, to prepare you.

Earth will seduce you, slowly, imperceptibly,
subtly, not to say with connivance.

I was not prepared: I stood in my grandmother's kitchen,
holding out my glass. Stewed plums, stewed apricots -

the juice poured off into the glass of ice.
And the water added, patiently, in small increments,

the various cousins discriminating, tasting
with each addition -

the aroma of summer fruit, intensity of concentration:
the colored liquid turning gradually lighter, more radiant,

more light passing through it.
Delight, then solace. My grandmother waiting,

to see if more was wanted. Solace, then deep immersion.
I loved nothing more: deep privacy of the sensual life,

the self disappearing into it or inseparable from it,
somehow suspended, floating, its needs

fully exposed, awakened, fully alive -
Deep immersion, and with it

mysterious safety. Far away, the fruit glowing in its glass bowls.
Outside the kitchen, the sun setting.

I was not prepared: sunset, end of summer. Demonstration
of time as a continuum, as something coming to an end,

not a suspension; the senses wouldn't protect me.
I caution you as I was never cautioned:

you will never let go, you will never be satiated.
You will be damaged and scarred, you will continue to hunger.

Your body will age, you will continue to need.
You will want the eart, then more of the earth -

Sublime, indifferent, it is present, it will not respond.
It is encompassing, it will not minister.

Meaning, it will feed you, it will ravish you,
it will not keep you alive.

I didn't have a chance to post this last night, but just imagine that I posted this around midnight? kthanks :D

"This place full of contradiction"
Daphne Marlatt

a confusion of times if not of place, though you understood when i said no not the Danish Tearoom - the Indonesian or Indian, was in fact that place of warm walls, a comfortable tarot deck even the lamps pick up your glow, a cabin of going, fjords in there, a clear and pristine look the winds weave through your eyes i'm watching you talk of a different birth, blonde hair on my tongue, of numbers, nine aflush with capuccino and brandy and rain outside on that street we flash down, laughing with no umbrella, i see your face because i don't see mine equally flush with being, co-incidence being together we meet in these far places we find in each other, it's Sappho i said, on the radio, always we meet original, blind of direction, astonished your hand covers mine walking lowtide strands of Colaba, the light-house, Mumbai meaning great mother, you wearing your irish drover's cap and waiting alive in the glow while i come up worrying danish and curry, this place full of contradiction - you know, you knew, it was the one place i meant.