Aenigmas

Integration

2008-06-05T16:53:00.000-07:00

I really live at a different blog, and now that I'm a mother I've decided to integrate all my facets into that blog. I will no longer be writing poetry or about poetry here. Instead, all of my projects and other bits of my life will be recorded at my main blog.

Please update your links to reflect this. It is called A Mindful Life, and the url is http://www.kathrynpetroharper.com/mindfullife/.

Nearly all the posts from this blog and the resources in the sidebar have been transferred there, and the blog roll followed too.

I hope you will join me over there!

(If you read this via an RSS feed, here is the new one to use: http://www.kathrynpetroharper.com/mindfullife/feed/)

Escape

2007-10-12T08:06:00.001-07:00

Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.

--T.S. Eliot

So Many Months

2007-08-31T09:54:00.001-07:00

I've not written a poem since April. I've read poetry, but my energy has been diverted.

Any day now, any hour, I will begin the labor of birth. My first child is overdue by four days.

My daughter, flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood. Building her cell by cell is what I've been writing on the skin of existence for the past nine months.

I don't know when I'll write a poem again. Maybe soon, maybe never. But I remain here, as does this blog.

Moonrise

2007-04-29T12:19:00.000-07:00

Her moon is rising
over fleshy peaks after
many years of night.

Our Life's Prayer

2007-03-29T00:02:00.000-07:00

Carnal syrup which flows within,
why not make it art?
It has been spilled
enough to fill
the gloomy pit of Tartarus.
Ferry to us the draught of life.
Preserve us from dissolution,
for our gene codes fight dauntlessly,
against this.
Be not used to segregate others,
for humanity is one tribe.
Thou art the mystery, the
sinew, and the richness
that makes our lives worth living. Yes.

--
For Poetry Thursday. This poem is based on a Poetry Thursday exercise using a style called ekphrasis. The photograph is of a piece by René de Guzman and is titled Blood Color Theory. His artworks allude to current issues such as the HIV/AIDS crisis in the early 1990s. In this piece, de Guzman sandwiched his own blood, mixed with preservatives, between two Plexiglass sheets. The work's impact lies partly in the shock value to convey the message, and the work takes on the formal qualities of a minimalist painting. What I find intriguing are the images reflected. This poem, which echoes The Lord's Prayer, is the result.

Turf War With a Spider

2007-03-24T15:21:00.000-07:00

I drape against a picnic table, inhaling
orange blossom perfume thick as syrup
on the breeze. With pen poised,
my hand starts scrawling when
in the corner of my sight
I catch perched on my elbow a small
tuxedo with eight legs.

Jerking,
I shake her off; she lands on my knee.
I am Goliath. With a stamp of my foot
she tumbles
to the concrete,
banished.

Moments later a presence pulls me
from my pen. I look down.
She has crawled
halfway up the table leg. One gust
of breath blows the leaf of her body
to the concrete, again.

I return to my words, absorbed, only
to soon find my nemesis
at the table edge. We stare,
eyes to eyes. I'm a behemoth,
but this David is relentless.

Such determination in so small
a creature deserves reward.
I move to another table.

These Old Boots

2007-03-22T15:17:00.000-07:00

These boots were once fresh,
a leather pair of strutting
peacocks flaunting
straight laces in full plumage.
They boasted proud soles,
like granite; impervious
to water, stoic in heat
and cold. These centurions
marched to conquer.

Now the plumage, frayed
and faded, holds scuffed
split leather by a thread.
Mile after mile erased
the heels. They are failed
sentries against enemy
pebbles and creeping rot.
These wounded soldiers
wear the perfume of decay
waiting to hike one last
time into the shadows.

--
For Poetry Thursday; from an exercise in The Poet's Companion. Photo by Fedot Praslov, used under the Creative Commons License.

A Visit With Mother

2007-03-21T21:54:00.000-07:00

The ocean is a high contact sport. Expect to wrestle a wave.
Expect to be tackled, lifted up, tossed aside.
Waves sprint and jockey each other to the shore.
Cresting, they swap twelve-foot high fives.

Boys play tag with icy waves. Their cries of surprise
compete with seagulls. A toddler in pink totters toward
starlings holding their convention on the sand.
Her face beams as she waves to each bird.

You scuffle across dry sand and it pedicures your toes.
The wind is a penetrating caress.
It scrubs your face as its chill bleaches your mind.
Your eyes sting and weep in the salt air.

You do not come to the beach for tranquility and silence.
You do not come here for shelter.
You come to absorb ancient energy.
You come to feel the rhythm of waves in your blood.

You come to swing on the tidal pendulum.
You come to submit to the scrutiny of the baldly shining sun.
You come to gaze at the horizon melting into thousands
of miles of nothingness and possibility.

You come to release your illusions.

[cross-posted at A Mindful Life.]

The Lonely Hours

2007-03-03T04:33:00.000-08:00

The second hand on the clock marches.
It dances a stiff two-step circle.

Sleep flees like an unfaithful spouse,
courts everyone else while I lie
still as a corpse, pretending not to notice,
not to care. The rest of the world
sinks into its embrace.

My conscience sparkles like clean plate
glass. My body is a race horse, ridden
hard and put up wet. If I were a rode
doper, I'd be a recovered one,
stimulant free.

I am awake for no reason I can discern; God
does not whisper to me. I receive no visions.
I am simply awake, a witness to the lonely hours.

A Contemplation

2007-02-20T20:40:00.000-08:00

My body is no longer my own. It contains a
sprout like a fiddlehead fern frond, curled
inward on itself.

Microscopic cells mystically multiply
with fervor, their intention known only
to themselves.

While I breathe, while I sleep, whether
I churn like a river or remain a placid lake,
this body has

It's own mission. Summer is coming.

A Glimpse of My Youth

2007-01-03T12:15:00.000-08:00

Tangles of Virginia creeper drape over
the pool, a shimmering gasoline puddle
of Japanese beetles.

I am sodden in my second skin bathing suit
sprawled on the ground murmuring secrets
to cicadas,

watching my father wash lettuce
from the garden.

One Afternoon

2006-12-08T13:32:00.000-08:00

Bellied up to the kitchen counter
I bite into a pear and chew,
watching the empty hammock shimmy
in the yard. The wind sweeps gray
cotton balls overhead, rushing
them to some destination eastward.
Rubies and topaz fall from tree
branches. I stare, mesmerized,
as juice drips from my chin.

On The Way to the Library

2006-12-07T21:48:00.000-08:00

Two oily crows play chicken with cars
idling at a traffic light. Inches
from a tire, the birds jackhammer
gray pavement for a smashed tidbit.
This is the only task of the
eternal moment, to eat six times
one's weight every day, even
if that meal sits on a four-lane
boulevard. One crow grabs
a prize hunk and rises
with helicopter wings, landing
on the crosswalk light.
The other pecks and pecks again,
unaware of the thrumming metal
bull looming next to it.
The light changes. I drive past.
Crow remains.

Surreal

2006-11-14T12:02:00.000-08:00

At the turn of the century
it is a long way down
to the mind's I. A treehouse
chronicles my journey to this
lost continent, which requires
the amber spyglass to navigate.
When I arrive I am barely a
shadow of a man. There is
snow falling on cedars; through
the woods I hear the single hound
wailing for her hometown. After
twenty years at Hull House, she
mourns for that bastard out of
Carolina who left her tender
at the bone. I wander through
trees toward her cries and find
her. My journey ends across the
river, past the canal town. Before
crossing over, I ask her for
directions. "I don't know," she
replies. "I'm a stranger here myself."
--
To force myself to connect creatively, I arbitrarily chose titles from the books on the shelves and assembled them into a poem. This poem makes no sense, but at least my mind was focused on the method for a little while.

Barely

2006-10-31T11:38:00.000-08:00

She was a mouse in the thicket,
a hidden operative gathering intelligence.

She was a spider in a wall,
weaving darkness, hunting blind.

She was a fish flipping through deep water,
a sun-flash shimmering.

Wherever she went, whoever she was,
she was barely there.

Quenchable

2006-09-03T00:22:00.000-07:00

A toothless pinecone sits abandoned
on a tan patch of crispy grass
that serves as a lawn.
Pointed brown pine needles
long enough to knit with tangle
among singed ivy leaves in cemented
dirt. I sit at a sun-bleached
table, scrawling on a dry page
inked with a Rorschach tea stain.
The earth is sullen.
September. Everything not
artificially watered sits parched,
patient, dormant, waiting for
autumn rains that will make roots
gasp with relief. Soon dust and water
will meet, mingle, dance in rivulets.
Gullies of debris will rush to the
sewer to merge with the bay.
Magician rain will vanish smog.
Crumpled tissue mountains will
bloom emerald green, cloaked with
clouds and adorned with shafts of
sunlight. The sky, no longer a
one-dimensional flat blue, will
carry chilly news of the coming
season, a season to replenish.
We are so thirsty. We are ready.

Cat Nap

2006-09-02T16:34:00.000-07:00

The cat comes
on little fog feet
sneaking toward me
lying prone. She
heaves her body
onto the ottoman
moves to my thigh
her paws pressing
into my flesh.
She bursts into a
roar of purring
kneads my stomach
and ample breasts
reliving kittenhood
memories of suckling
finally settling
herself across me
pats my cheek
and closes her eyes.

Rush Hour

2006-09-01T22:03:00.000-07:00

The gray man in the next lane over
digs into his nose, oblivious
to the fact that there are six lanes
of witnesses to his nasal excavation.

The bumper in front of me touts peace
and the sun winks through a crystal
pendant hanging from the rearview mirror
while a leather-tanned hand dangles
out the window flicking cigarette ash.

Somewhere behind me the air
is punctuated by the seismic bass
thump of some cholo's rap music.
Words are garbled but I can feel
the beat in my bones as Dr. Dre
and Snoop serenade us.

To my left a sleek black Beamer
shelters a woman who appears
to be talking to no one. Then
she tucks her hair behind her ear
and I see the earpiece. She's not
insane (yet). She's talking her
way through rush hour.

A Little Desire

2006-08-25T20:23:00.000-07:00

His kisses began like cotton candy
melting quickly, barely touching my lips.

I devoured them.

His fingers stroked the nape of my neck.
A chord of need rang through me, vibrating
up from between my legs.

A cord of need snaked around my hips,
wound through my lips, impaled me. I fell
away from myself, I turned
inside out,

inhaled

and floated away.

Still Life

2006-08-04T19:24:00.000-07:00

Two weary oranges sit in a cracked
wooden bowl. In California there
is always a navel to contemplate,
but these dimpled globes I have abandoned
for sexier fruit.

They have company. Three bananas
lean against the curved belly
of the bowl, their sunny skins thinning
into a melanoma of ripeness.
The air is sweet with ruination.

In the rotting fruit I see decadence born
of carelessness and disconnection. Looking
closer, I notice brown hands that cut, plucked,
sorted and packed, hands that worked
many hours for few dollars. Dusty hands,
scraped and cracked like the bowl.

--
This poem is a result of an exercise suggested by Jack Martin.

A Line Is a Dot That Went For a Walk

2006-07-24T10:49:00.000-07:00

Each day brims with dots rivaling the stars
and bursts. Millions pursue me as I await
penetration, integration, creation.

A dot is an adventure contained
within infinite boundaries.
The mystery blooms, the line emerges: here,
a rigid, attentive marching row of Marines,
there a meandering rivulet of rain,
sometimes wavering and shaking like a drunk,
other times oozing blood-viscous. The hand

takes no heed of the mind's instruction. It is a
wayward teenager determined to discover itself.

We walk slowly over the page; it is meditation,
a masterpiece of attention.

We whirl, sometimes a writhing orgy of squiggles,
sometimes a jagged clash of angles. Each journey,
unrepeatable.

Damn Hot

2006-07-24T10:34:00.000-07:00

The crepe myrtle weeps in the heat
I step out the door and wilt
like a bunch of collard greens abandoned
at the farmer's market. The wind's
fingers press my skin, sticky as the tarmac.
I am a bacon ultimate cheeseburger,
dripping and overcooked.

Where's Kathryn?

2006-07-11T20:56:00.000-07:00

Bless Jack, he left a comment on my last post reminding me this blog still exists.

I had put poetry in cold freeze for awhile. Instead I dove back into knitting and drawing.

Fear not, though, I will write something this month.

Sensate

2006-05-27T08:19:00.000-07:00

Mid-night I rise to pee, my feet shocked
awake by chill tile, the cold making
my arms like sandpaper.

Then I return to the warm cocoon bed
next to you, and melt again into sleep,
grateful.

---
I've written nothing since mid-April, and I could not abide allowing May to pass without my writing something, however lame.

My encounter with a poetry forum inhibited my willingness to play with words, made me overly conscious. While poetry is a difficult craft, something to become skilled at, this awareness made me stop completely, rather than strive to improve. So here is a small poem.

I Gots Nothin'

2006-04-12T21:01:00.000-07:00

There will be no poem tonight. My brain is too full, there's no room to move around. It's late, I've got nothing to say, nothing at the ready. Sorry teacher, the cat ate my homework.

Meanwhile, I've been hanging out at an online poetry workshop that is chock full of incredible resources. They have clear rules about which level of forum one should post to and stringently enforce them. They do not suffer fools, and they don't sugar-coat feedback. If a poem is trite, cliched, and generally weak, the feedback is honest and specific, and many times ruthless. I've been lurking in the higher-level forums and see how good some of the work is. And the critiques! They are truly thorough and at a level I'm nowhere near to provide. So I'm feeling a bit intimidated, a little pale, as I look at what I've written so far.

This, combined with the fact I have work I took home and am resisting... Nope, nothing tonight.

American Dream

2006-04-11T18:42:00.000-07:00

Banks pepper us with plastic,
feed our indwelling greed --
we risk our well-being
to barter for glitter,
gorge on obsolescence.
Too many are willing
to forfeit the future,
surrender their power --
it's just paper, they say --
in exchange for their fix,
allaying the craving
for more, yet more, and more.

--
Poem #11 for NaPoWriMo

This poem is built on the scaffold of Stephen Burt's After Callimachus. I also found this of interest:

In “After Callimachus (4)” Burt invokes Eudemus, the Greek astronomer and mathematician, who pared back his life in order to avoid debt—which came with mortal penalty. ... Burt is taking contemporary America to task (through showing parallels to our esteemed Athenian friends). ... In (4) [he] raises his critical hackles by reminding Americans that in another time, debt came with the penalty of death, yet with Americans taking on more and more debt (and the Congress voting to raise the debt ceiling for the government again just this week), Burt is slyly pointing at what Kevin Phillips in his new book American Theocracy calls one of the three most clear and present dangers facing America today, American indebtedness.

--THE GREAT AMERICAN PINUP: STEPHEN BURT—PARALLEL PLAY

Poor Nineteen

2006-04-10T00:02:00.000-07:00

I did it because I could not sleep,
had not slept for several nights.

The air was cold as plate glass;
breathing, like death by garrote.
Clouds hissed and spat perpetual oblivion.

He lingered a few feet down the aisle
by the hair products. I did it because I was laid off
from my dead-end (deadened?) job.

I promised myself that I would only do it this once.
I promised myself that I would never do it again.
But I did take that risk at least a dozen times more.

In a world where I had nothing, felt smothered,
I would probably do it again. The bleat of the
register kept time to the whine of Muzak overhead.
A clerk rang up my purchase: a can of mousse.
My gut tingled in warning; he materialized abruptly
on the other side of the register a few feet from
the door. In his black coat he sidled up to me, pressed
his hand on my arm: “I believe you put something in your
purse? A box of Nytol.”

I did it because I was choking on privation and anger.
Because at nineteen I yearned
for the repose of the hopeless.

--
Poem #10 for NaPoWriMo. Big thanks to Laurel for providing an exercise to work with. Oh, and Laurel? I ordered Barbara Drake's book (used of course). You knew that was coming.

Poetry Tidbit

2006-04-09T21:49:00.000-07:00

My dream trip will blow me
into a moon lake
and girls pant as
they lie under the summer sky
while hot winds moan lightly.

--
#9 for NaPoWriMo -- a puzzle piece for another poem sometime. Have had a very low energy, inarticulate day. Partly angry with a slight chance of depressed. Feh.

Rains Unceasing

2006-04-08T17:11:00.000-07:00

The rains unceasing fatten
streams into rivers, choke
the planted fields. Satiated
earth burps a sinkhole on
Highway One at Devil’s
Slide. City streets become
quickwater, and black
umbrellas weave over the
sidewalks like vesper bats
veering toward home.
Panhandlers carry their
soggy lives in shopping
carts; even the homeless
cling to commodity. In
broad gray daylight a
black man pisses on an
overpass pillar, heedless
of those stoics waiting at
the corner for the next bus.
They disregard him equally.
Ah, northern California,
in just spring.

--
Poem #8 for NaPoWriMo

Haiku

2006-04-07T19:01:00.000-07:00

A gorgeous vision
behind the sordid picture;
stare only at love.

--
Poem #7 for NaPoWriMo
(not feeling verbal today)

Monopoly

2006-04-06T00:29:00.000-07:00

Mother loves games so much children at
the playground hang from her arms and

legs. She plays Monopoly at the Cosmo
Club, jockeys hard for a few good

properties, not just the purple ones.
She hitches rides from her gentlemen

friends, then hides her thimble for them
to find. Mother’s got friends at the jail

because sometimes she uses her needle
too much. I keep waiting to hear she

slipped the knot and snipped her last
finespun strand of thread, falling past

Go, not stopping, collecting way more
than she bargained for.

--
Poem #6 for NaPoWriMo

Enough

2006-04-05T01:18:00.000-07:00

Isn’t it enough
to feel a chill as you rise from a warm
bed, stumble to the bath and with
nimble fingers attend to your body’s
needs, button your shirt, to balance
as you put pants on one leg at a time?

Isn’t it enough
to hear the morning news, the coffee
maker gurgling as you eat your
Wheaties with skim milk, to listen in
the comfort and illuminated safety of
your kitchen as rain rattles the roof?

Isn’t it enough
to inhale the earth’s perfume of wet
dirt, worms, roses and jasmine blooms,
to smell even the faint fumes of the
world’s morning commute as you join
with humanity for the day’s business?

Isn’t it enough
to taste the fresh tender day and
savor the strong bitter brew from
your steaming paper chalice as
you await the train under the shelter
with others huddled like pigeons?

Isn’t it enough
to observe the blur of cinderblock
fortresses adorned with graffiti, the
lonely artifacts of life strewn across
anonymous backyards, to notice the
window cat watching the morning?

--
Poem #5 for NaPoWriMo

Chained

2006-04-04T08:39:00.000-07:00

Her finger smears black rain
across the day as
languidly singing mothers
with lazy stares lie chained
to smooth diamonds and irons
always watching the void
while aching to live.

--
Poem #4 - NaPoWriMo

I Post This Because It's Something I Need to Read Often

2006-04-03T19:57:00.000-07:00

Considering the ways in which so many of us waste our time, what would be wrong with a world in which everybody were writing poems? After all, there's a significant service to humanity in spending time doing no harm. While you're writing your poem, there's one less scoundrel in the world. And I'd like a world, wouldn't you, in which people actually took time to think about what they were saying? It would be, I'm certain, a more peaceful, more reasonable place. I don't think there could ever be too many poets. By writing poetry, even those poems that fail and fail miserably, we honor and affirm life. We say "We loved the earth but could not stay."

--Ted Kooser, The Poetry Home Repair Manual

And I have Alison to thank for sharing this gift. I shall also keep her words handy:

And what comfort in the idea that there can never be too many poets (or writers or artists). We don't have to earn a spot at the crowded table, because there's room for all.

Missing Central New York

2006-04-03T00:22:00.000-07:00

Where I come from the
sky’s gravity weighs like
a jury bringing verdict.

Where I come from the
earth sings arpeggios
of green.

Where I come from
apple trees wave blossom
scarves to woo suitors.

Where I come from Hades’
breath strips trees of
their russet ochre shawls.

Where I come from it is
possible to walk far
enough away from

This concrete madhouse
and encounter a heron
startled into flight.

--
Poem #3 (or the beginning of one) for NaPoWriMo.

Reading Impermanence

2006-04-02T20:15:00.000-07:00

A reading of this poem.

For Diana

2006-04-02T13:36:00.000-07:00

At sunset at the edge of the world
in San Francisco the fog crawls in,
a pillow for the sun.
The day drowses in diaphanous
light, a lullaby light dressed in
the caress of silk. It tucks in.

At dawn the sun sneaks back,
ambushes the hills with burning
beams, vanquishing droplets
with sharpened light. Clarity
wears a uniform, scrubbing cobweb
corners clean. The city stretches.

--
Poem #2 for NaPoWriMo.

At Bedside

2006-04-01T22:58:00.000-08:00

The leather diary, the abandoned crosswords,
the clock aglow with red digits,
tarot decks nested together,
the magazine pile, blue plastic earplugs,
scattered coins mingling by a dusty tissue box,
one lone domino, a low-lit lamp, the
small spiral notebook with a black-capped pen,
like admission tickets for an underworld ride
or runes rich with portent.

--
Poem #1 for NaPoWriMo (National Poetry Writing Month).

National Poetry Month

2006-04-01T10:53:00.000-08:00

Going to participate in NaPoWriMo.

[With props to Laurel for leading me to Reen.]

One Thin Line

2006-03-29T19:36:00.000-08:00

I knelt on the damp soil, my knees
dimpling black loam made tender
by winter rain. Lacy green hemlock

waved on the dunes, red stems alluding
to a lethal power. This day it was my
foe to banish. Gloved fingers burrowed,

sought unseeing, with gentle tugs
eased the pale taproots out. Hours
passed. Piles of conquered plants

multiplied. One lone ladybug hiked
across a tangle of stems, a cheerful
red button contrasting the gunmetal

sky. A pause. Resting, I observed
her journey, noting that she traipsed,
tumbled on her back, legs waving,

for every completed step forward.
Chill wind scoured my mind. I
looked up. A red kite strained

against a taut and quivering tether.
The soul, connected by one thin
line to the body. A gust of wind

strong enough can snap it. Where it
lands I cannot guess. Where do
snowy plover feathers end their

journey after dancing across the
ocean? Sighing, I turned my mind
back to the truth of the earth.

Despite

2006-03-27T13:04:00.000-08:00

Under stacked magazines,
A floor made of wood
Echoes faintly
The breath of ancient trees.
Man, the despoiler,
Cleaves and plunders the earth
To exploit for his gain --
Feels justified.

Under the dim canopy
Of towering redwood,
Seeds germinate
Daily, cell by cell.
Nature, objective,
Regenerates life.
A miracle of chaos
Flows up forth
Regardless of human machinations.

This incredibly trite poem is built off of Under the Harvest Moon. For whatever reason, even though I love Sandburg, this poem inspired me least of the three I've used as scaffold. It could be the raging headache that hindered me. It could be I'm tired of the exercise, taking the form too literally as I build. However, it's all good practice (I suppose). Time for something else (and to stop comparing myself negatively to all the poets whose works I'm reading of late).

Impermanence

2006-03-22T22:04:00.000-08:00

A dead man's photo peers over my bed
The silent witness who lives in my blood.
Absence is the soul's starvation diet.
I have been hungry since before I was born.

Plan for madness to heal you.
Plan for sadness to fly.
Plan for hope estranging your happiness.
They surely will.

The finite hours and days,
The years,
Dissolve with relentless measure
And apathy.

This will grieve your heart but release it.
You must not pull back: too late too late to stop.
You carelessly left your spirit alone,
Now seconds plunder its fey secrets

And take all.
Life perpetuates a feeble trick on the frail mind:
A creation of memes
Moved by predestination

To obscurity.
The clock lightly ticks and then cocks its gun.
Aims between your eyes.
Are you ready?

--
I found this poem a ~~nasty~~ wrenching process. I was using James Galvin's Post-Modernism as the scaffold. It was an abstract poem, slippery. I seem to be focused on mortality of late. I don't set out to write it. It's just what comes out. But this one felt like harder than most. Words tested, words discarded. I tried to follow the syllable and word structure of each line. I succeeded except for the first stanza and the last two lines.

Unable

2006-03-22T18:32:00.000-08:00

The cherry trees weep
tissue paper petals.
Crows shout at each other
about nothing. And here
I sit alone in my car
parked at the Boys & Girls Club,
softened by sadness
heavily hopeless
unable to look spring in the eye.

There Is No Place Too Small

2006-03-21T23:19:00.000-08:00

Here is my poem resulting from this exercise. I used Naomi Shahib Nye's So Much Happiness.

It is easy to know how to meld with so much grief.
With joy there is blindness, rose-colored ignorance,
No body to tend, to anchor one to the earth.
When the world remains intact, you move nimbly,
Caressing the surface of things, noticing little.

But grief burrows in.
It needs only the exposed, wounded soul
To dig in as a tick under skin.
Grief bangs around the cellar, shrieking,
And behaves unpredictably, hijacking your eyes with tears
When the store clerk asks how you are. It clutches your
throat when you call the dentist’s office for a routine cleaning.
You walk now among oblivious humans, an emotional leper
With lesions rotting your heart.
All of existence has its own death,
It too could slip into a tumor-ridden coma
Adorned with catheter tubes,
And gasp last breaths to the sterile beat
Of a monitor, attended by loved ones…

Since there is no place too small
For grief to infiltrate,
You lie down, you surrender, and pull it into you
Into every cell of your being. You are its servant.
You take its orders, as a dog obeys commands
From an owner; you honor and bear it,
And in this way, endure.

Only the Emptiness

2006-03-21T22:25:00.000-08:00

With civilized tones we bade him good-bye
as his face drained white and
his still fingers grew chilled,
undeniably gone.
It was a hard labor
his leave-taking, punctuated
by lung fluid gurgling with each breath
his eyes rolled upward unseeing,
breath stopping, pausing long, starting again.

We sat vigil and held his hand all night.
On this day I learned what irrevocable means.

Still the stomach growls, eyes grow heavy,
the crematorium must be paid.
I whisper his name, ask “Where are you?”
I feel no answer, sense no presence
of spirit, as some people do.
Only the emptiness speaks.

Another poem written using this exercise, and built with Jane Kenyon's The Blue Bowl as scaffold.

Excursion

2006-03-21T21:50:00.000-08:00

Saturday wakes to the scent
of burnt toast wafting through
rattling Venetian-blind palms as

the gonging mission bell cuts
my sleep-hazed mind, and
I cross Mercy Street watching

blacktop roses bowing to the
gentle breeze. I walk with
lopsided longing toward the kazoo

hum of the Farmer’s Market,
where a blind troubadour sporting
tattoos on her arms courts

seekers and idlers with her
church-bell voice, and a
farmer hawks Yukon gold potatoes

as if they were truly
treasure. Beyond these nuggets, past
the fruit waiting patiently as

people nibble nuts, savor honey,
bargain with vendors, the spicy
orange day beckons to me.

California Living

2006-03-21T21:39:00.000-08:00

After supper I make amends to
my body, taking it for a walk –
four miles marched, punctuated
by the blat-blat-blat of a Harley,
the Doppler whoosh of small metal
worlds on wheels

I am bathed in a sodium yellow
streetlight buzzing industrially
like nothing heard in nature
this din of light pierced by
the ersatz bird chirp of a
crosswalk signal

Gazing up, I wink at the moon
undressed, full and flirting with
voluptuous clouds, the air
infused with cloying car fumes
and I pause at a yellow rose
far from Texas, inhaling (yes, I inhale)

its spicysweet gift. It’s not paradise,
this city, but I am alive, and it will do.

Kali in an Onion

2006-03-21T21:37:00.000-08:00

I heft the white onion in my right hand;
the sunlight slanting through the window
caresses it, brings a glow to this smooth moon.
In my left hand I grasp a knife, blade glinting;
as homage to mother Kali, I split the globe.
Peeling off the outer layer, a husk of secrets;
vulnerable, the cloven orb rests passively.
Again I lift the knife, slicing, chopping,
breaking integrity of form into mosaic
pieces, a small supernova of pungency.
My eyes weep, observing the demise of
unity, while my heart trills with joy.

Room to Play

2006-03-21T13:31:00.000-08:00

It sits on the nightstand, a
spiral-bound stack of deadwood
no larger
than a cassette tape, clad
in magenta,
offering
one hundred and sixty invitations to
commune with myself.

A black butterfly clip divides past
from present; faint blue lines
promise to
bring order out of chaos.
Paper bits,
notions
extracted from this moveable
brain, mingle with silver.

But it is too small for secrets, it
can only contain the mundane;
the lines
too orderly, too rigid. Muse
needs galactic
space,
demands borderless playgrounds
to spill the soul’s blood.

Recognition

2006-03-21T13:28:00.000-08:00

Playing truth or dare an hour before daylight
among the bean trees, I encounter a stranger at the gate.
When I ask what she is doing, she replies,
"Composing a life." She seeks to answer the question,
"Is there no place on earth for me?"

I ask how she will know the answer, and she says
she will track her progress in the stone diaries.
She has an amazing grace, this girl with a pearl earring
wearing borrowed finery, and I want to know more.
I ask with an open heart, open mind, what it is she seeks.

She wants to understand the savage inequalities,
to have a reckoning with the fact that she lives
in a world where the poisonwood bible increasingly
becomes the rule of law. She wants to help people
to stop running with scissors and enjoy the perfection
of the morning.

We are surrounded by landscapes of wonder, if we
would only make the effort to see differently.

She in turn asks what I seek. I reply that I want
the courage to be, to cast a slender thread
of hope into the sea, the sea of humanity.
I want to plant new seeds of contemplation,
embrace the grace in dying. I want to
know the mystery of tying rocks to clouds.

From her angle of repose under oleander,
jacaranda, the magnificent spinster listens.
I tell her she has a beautiful mind, that
I can see the molecules of emotion swirling in her.
She tells me that I am a succulent wild woman,
that I have zen under a wing. She reminds me
that art is a way of knowing and solitude
a return to the self.

Then we part, blessing each other with traveling
mercies, with a promise to meet again
at the healing circle in Gilead.

Moon

2006-03-20T21:22:00.000-08:00

The moon is a cool mint candy that
on this blue-hued vernal evening
I would like to pluck from the sky
and swallow whole.

In My Garden

2006-03-20T21:18:00.000-08:00

In my garden moves life.
A garden snake, pink and pencil thin,
skims across gravel, shimmering
as it flows. One touch of my
finger sends it skating slinky style
into a nest under the antique roses.

In my garden dwells peace.
Roses pursue self-actualization,
nodding budded heads in agreement
with the wind's caress. They bloom
hot and pale pink, luminous with
red veins, each one uniquely imperfect.
A spider nestles in one exuberant bloom,
betrayed by two spindly legs.

In my garden flows energy.
Bees murmur about their tasks as
they hover and dash, hover and dash.
Red ants, audacious in adventure,
climb the stone wall foothills to the
mountain of my body, seeking the summit.
They rest on the flat plain of my
notebook and I, godlike, teach them
the fly with the flick of two fingers.
They, undaunted, begin again.

Sheer instinct, the drive to live,
to move, vibrates quietly in my garden.
In my garden I thrive.

Minstrel

2006-03-20T21:17:00.000-08:00

Words tumble from your mouth,
so many happy children rolling
down fields at play;
vibrant, sonorous, thrilling with energy
as they leap and chase each other.
Your voice a symphony,
a rich honey tenor pouring into me
inscribing life on my heart;
crescendoing in passionate explanation,
now resting, silence drawing me forth
into the next movement
and your heartbeat a metronome
beating a river of strength
beneath magnificent melodies.

Your breath whispers caresses to my soul,
tender wisp of touch here,
long circling stroke there,
wooing me to dance the delicate cadence of love.

Crucifixion

2006-03-20T21:16:00.000-08:00

She wills him to leave.
He shred her with words and now
she is every slut who ever lived,
the Levite's worthless concubine from Bethlehem
as she stands scrubbing under
stinging, steaming needles of water,
as she cooks him out from under
her flesh, now banana tender,
welting purple at the wrists, breasts, thighs.

He permeates her head, the
musky mushroom scent stubbornly
remains regardless how much
she retches and spits;
she bites the bar of soap as though
taking communion, seeking its promise
to trade cleanliness for evil.

She stands, trembling and heaving
from gut to fingertips
shaking bone deep cold from her soul,
and the blood,
the blood won't stop,
evidence of a sacrifice she should never
have been required to make.

Full Circle

2006-03-20T21:15:00.000-08:00

You held your infant daughter
in your arms
agonizing, cajoling,
willing your love to her.
This baby expected
perfection--
that you read her mind
and provide
every need, every want.
Sometimes that infant
arises now,
and your daughter rails
against you
for not possessing omniscience.

You jiggled your toddler daughter
on your lap
as she laughed,
singing to her,
calling her your "little Punkin."
This half-pint drank
your love
as a thirsty babe
guzzles the milk of life into every cell.
Sometimes that toddler
gazes now
with adoration for her infinite
mother
content and whole in her trust.

You watched your teenage daughter
from afar
as she brooded,
wishing her victory
over that devil called depression.
This young woman envied
your detachment
and accused you
of confusing her
and burdening her beyond control.
Sometimes that girl-woman
rages now
crying, wondering where
you hid
your secret fountain of peace.

You love your grown daughter
with all your life
as she strives,
reaching to her
with the gift of friendship.
This woman recognizes
your humanity
and gently removes you
from the pedestal
to a place in her heart.
Sometimes this woman
perceives now
that though we are family
we can meet
somewhere in the middle.

This Is Just To Say

2006-03-19T23:29:00.000-08:00

I've been reading
the books
that perch on
my bookcase

and thus
my brain is full; I
cannot
write for you

Forgive me
I need a day off
to breathe
and to live

This is an older doodad that I wrote for another blog, as a post mentioning I would take a break. Scaffold for this was This Is Just to Say by William Carlos Williams.

I've been posting many poems here that I'd written in the past (the 1990s mostly) just to get them in one location.

A Different Pledge

2006-03-19T20:52:00.000-08:00

I pledge a grievance, trying not to gag,
at the disarrayed state of America and
to the conglomerate, under Bush’s command,
inflation, plundered debt,
invisible, with classism and racism for all.

There's Always Looking After

2006-03-19T01:10:00.000-08:00

A tree is a guardian angel.

Trees talk to us, they
whisper stories and secrets,
slip us clues to universal mysteries.

Do you see the forest, or the trees?
Sap murmurs up the trunk in spring. Listen.
The apple falls (not far from the tree), its
crisp honey tang for the taking. Notice
how the air changes when you approach
a woods; the fresh, spicy scent of leaves
and needles performing their gift of tonglen.
Handle limbs gently. Despite their
coarseness, trees are benign as babies.

Autumn. My favorite elegy. Red orange yellow
each color a note, a symphony of glorious
death. Gaia's last hurrah before hibernation.

Glorious death. The nativity of Jesus in
Bethlehem was honored by his parents, wise
shepherds, angels -- even animals. But not
one tree except for the remnant serving
as his crib. Look what happened to him.
Whereas Buddha, under a Bodhi tree,
received the gift of enlightenment.

Beware. Trees are destroyers. When touched
by lightning (not an angel), in a rhumba
with the wind, trees release limbs as
geckos lose their tails. They surrender
responsibility, abandon stability,
crush what lies beneath. A shard
of wood thrown by a tornado can kill you.

How many angels are there? They number
more than all the leaves on all the trees
since Big Time began. Earth -- head
of a pin on which all trees dance.
Those trees, they krunk in a hot minute.
We just don't see them. They move so fast.

A baby is born. A sapling takes root.
As roots grow, her neurons multiply.
They amputated the tree in our yard
the other day. Am I going to die now?

A tree is a livin' thin', wif it’s own
varmintality, expressed by it’s shape,
texture, locashun, seasonal variashuns,
shade/sun alterashun, th' emoshuns it
invokes in th' obsarver, th' memo'ies
it stimulates in th' obsarver. A tree
lives as long as a hoomin, o' longer,
an' faces th' elements day-in an'
day-out. To sacrifice a tree is a kind
of euthanasia. A tree thet yo' plant
today will outlive yo', an' affeck other
hoomins in th' future junerashuns… but
will only be thar IF yo' an' yer projuny
own th' lan' on which th' tree thrives.
Own SOME lan', somewhar, an' put trees
on it, an' viset an' watch them grow.

The ancient forests of knowledge
hidden in dusky, musty library stacks
have become my land. My mind, my tree
of knowledge, thrives. It is all I have.

On this moonless night everything
telescopes, clarifies. Brightness erupts
from inky black. The dark night of the soul
is really a form of enlightenment.

I fall on my knees, praying to No God.
The god of no. I sway in the wind, yearning
to be struck, to plummet, to become the abyss
that annihilates, that looks into me. Oh,
the ecstasy of descent! I cry for it.

Mindful One, she thinks too much. She dwells
inside her head, sips the ink of books too
often. For all her lofty talk about meaning
and nature, she lives indoors, estranged.
Reconciliation is possible. The priest
intones, you are dust and to dust you shall
return. So it shall be. A reunion.

Yes! A gorgeous reunion. A gorgeous death.
It shall be as it is, unless it is as it shall
be. Remember, nascentes morimur. The voice is
relentless, paralyzing. Death, inevitable from
the beginning of my existence. My destiny, our
destiny, is to become nothing.

Not so, whisper the trees. Willow weeps over my
rigid despair. A pine tree caresses my hair.
You do not become nothing. You become everything.

The body becomes a corpse. The corpse rots, feeds
maggots and beetles, enriches the soil. A squirrel
foraging embeds a nut, forgets it. The nut germinates.
A sapling grows, slowly. Outside of time. Watching over.
Witnessing the Mystery. There's always looking after.

Wistful

2006-03-19T00:57:00.000-08:00

I have just written the longest poem I've ever written.

I am accomplished.

I am pleased. Proud. Amazed. It actually has a theme, and it seems to hang together. Mostly.

But I'm feeling a bit lonely. In this household, poetry is my domain. The spouse doesn't like it, doesn't understand it, doesn't want to explore it. I read my poem aloud, asked him to pretend to listen, so I could at least get a feel for how it reads, to hear my voice animate my words.

What do I want? Isn't it enough to have written it?

#20: Close the poem with a vivid image that makes no statement, but that "echoes" an image from earlier in the poem.

2006-03-19T00:35:00.000-08:00

#19: Make a nonhuman object say or do something human (personification).

2006-03-19T00:31:00.000-08:00

#18: Use a phrase from a language other than English.

2006-03-19T00:22:00.000-08:00

#17: Make a declarative assertion that sounds convincing but that finally makes no sense.

2006-03-19T00:18:00.000-08:00

#16: Modify a noun with an unlikely adjective.

2006-03-19T00:10:00.000-08:00

#15: Write in the future tense, such that part of the poem seems to be a prediction.

2006-03-18T23:16:00.000-08:00

#14: Refer to yourself by nickname and in the third person.

2006-03-18T20:14:00.000-08:00

#13: Make the persona in the poem do something he/she would not do in "real life."

2006-03-18T20:04:00.000-08:00

#12: Use an image in such a way as to reverse its usual associative qualities.

2006-03-18T19:56:00.000-08:00

#11: Create a metaphor using the following construction: "The (adjective) (concrete noun) of (abstract noun)..."

2006-03-18T19:50:00.000-08:00

#10: Use a piece of "talk" you've actually heard (preferably in dialect and/or which you don't understand).

2006-03-18T19:28:00.000-08:00

#9: Use an example of false cause-effect logic

2006-03-18T19:12:00.000-08:00

#8: Use a word (slang?) you've never seen in a poem

2006-03-18T19:00:00.000-08:00

#7: Change direction or digress from the last thing you said

2006-03-18T14:24:00.000-08:00

#6: Contradict something you said earlier in the poem

2006-03-18T14:12:00.000-08:00

#5: Use the proper name of a person and the proper name of a place

2006-03-18T13:00:00.000-08:00

#4: Use one example of synesthesia

2006-03-18T12:45:00.000-08:00

#3: Use at least one image for each of the five senses, either in succession or scattered randomly throughout the poem

2006-03-18T12:40:00.000-08:00

#2: Say something specific but utterly preposterous

2006-03-18T12:38:00.000-08:00

A tree is a guardian angel.

Trees talk to us, they
whisper stories and secrets,
slip us clues to universal mysteries.

#1: Begin the poem with a metaphor

2006-03-18T12:37:00.000-08:00

A tree is a guardian angel.

Taking a Dive

2006-03-18T12:10:00.000-08:00

With Laurel's encouragement, I'm joining the fun*.

I'm terrified.

*page 119 of The Practice of Poetry: Writing Exercises From Poets Who Teach.