Refusing Heaven

This poem takes the title of Jack Gilbert's latest book, Refusing Heaven, as a starting point and jumps off from there. It was a great exercise, but his title poem kicks ass, so please check it out when you get a chance.



Refusing Heaven
after Jack Gilbert


The man at the turnstile is taking tickets.
I search my pockets and find none–
I’m wearing a hospital gown.

He shakes his head with the practiced
half-smile of a bureaucrat, as if to say
what did you expect?

Even God has to make a living.
Over twenty years of working the gates
and still no raise. So much for the union.

His former life forgotten: taxi driver
steering white collar drunks home on Friday nights,
women with plastic hips to the airport.

The seated weight of his daughter
on his shoulders, heels knocking his chest,
gone the way of twelve-hour shifts.

It’s not our time I say, wishing I had remembered
to scoop the kitty litter before I left.
Poor cat. We do the best we can.

Someone else will have to wash the sheets
in our absence. Let’s go for a drink I say.
Put up a sign that says back in thirty minutes.

But he doesn’t move, just squints at the stadium lights.
By now he realizes it’s all fiber optics, special effects,
but just once, he’d like to be invited backstage.

Auditions

Auditions will be held
for the next 50 years.

Here is the role
I'd like you to play.

Here are your lines.

Please learn to say them
properly.

If I don't like
your delivery,
I will correct you
until you get it right.

The script will change
over time.
Please be on the look-out
for your new lines.

Please note:
if you gain
too much weight
or too many grey hairs
I will have to put out
a new casting call.

And if you cannot fill
the role I've created for you
I will just have to find
a better actor.

ok, i'd like to -- and will, someday -- spend a lot more time with this one.


sleeping with leonard cohen

i'm sleeping with leonard cohen again,
like all those old nights i curled
around his words, furtive with my own

i keep him in our sheets, tucked into my side
of the bed -- he's a small man and bent
now under the weight of his mind

he is courtly, polite, except for his hands
which are everywhere, busy with touching
or poems that last all night

i try to cover his mumble with my pillowcase,
but i can't muffle this old man in our bed, this relapse
and you lie, these nights, looking at the wall, listening

Cloudburst

Sadie came back from the rez,
riding in front of the thunderstorm
moments before the sky broke loose,
banged on my door
and hollered my name —

never mind the two years
gone without even a parting
cup of black coffee

just grinned and said,
“I knew you’d be here.”

And she was right
as Red Lake when she laughed
and said, “We musta missed
each other down at the pow wow
last week.”

Didn’t I see her
in the bleachers or hear her
cussing the poor excuse
for fry bread they were

trying to pass off?
Her cousin will show ‘em
how to make it if they
can’t do no better than that.

Storms fly in on
the Doppler, green
blobs heading this way,
but no cable station

can tell when Sadie will
blow through and remind
me of the way rain tastes
when it’s laughing.

spread e-go'ld: a tale of two stephens -- even?

it's all about the eagle
whether the stephen is roasting the george à la colbert
or the harpooner is skewering kyoto
thousands of hits daily says something
about either nesting or nested values.
follow the blood to the head.
bald faced lies
when is the brain not a muscle
wait i know this one
but i'm a bundle of nerves
when it loves being hustled

when i opened the robot's rebellion
a brain at war with itself was the first thing
that leapt out
as chapters go
capitals & accipiters
the brain is a bloody thing
but by george that rugous gorge
can be healed with holy spackle

this has been a synapshot

now that i know the scope
i just need to work towards the automatic
rifling through my responses
is not option

let your hip do the talkin'
you can raise your sights later

a little truth
can push the necessary lies
a long, long way
down their gullets

the future is a hybrid of the purists

Seven months: the ultrasound

I am the fork-scarred sink the utility the water table
you are the warming goldfish
he is the big eye anxious on your domestic bulge
the wet magnification of dorsal flicker ventral thrum

They all should have known better –
you might circle my drain
showing fin and bony ripple on each grainy pass
but I’m the only one likely to go belly up

Cunning Conversations


Clematis understands the organ of speech
could befall her name, learns sprawl—

the need of the body to fold
itself in to boundaries placed beside

and beyond, fenced lines she straddles
legs she roots, her progress a pioneering

of paths not settled by anyone.
Clematis stretches her arms to hold

more than herself, an offering—
sky’s taut body unused above,

his clouded washboard abdomen
horizon of leanness, a word smoothing

her cheek, one significant sigh
released in a long-winded draught,

the slip of a hybrid tongue shirring
pink-furrowed petals.

Crush

Crush


At best a circus tent on stilts:
lopsided peaks boast illegible banners

over signature stripes. Maybe it reads asshole,
maybe future wife, who knows at the outset.

A rope ladder descends, the sturdiness of popsicle sticks.
Inside those darkened flaps, what waits?

An acrobatic marvel or the same contortionist
from the last top. We are ever hopeful, so we enter,

strong men into the freak show. Past lion tamers
and their dented hoops, to sit on a padded bench, watch

clowns play up their tricks like the one or two
stories we know will get us laid.

It’s all monkeys on bicycles. A cheap slide
from intermission to the end,

but we’ve paid good money, we’re tired of being alone, so
we clap till our hands smart, try hard to be amazed.


----
Note: I'm trying to get away from the three stanza wonder
(one of my default settings). I'm curious how the couplet form
is working here? Thoughts?

Lost

This is actually yesterday's poem - too tired to input it last night.

==========================
Lost

Somewhere on my trip I lost
track of what month it is.

Then I misplaced the loonie I'd set aside
for the laundry machine's
precise monetary demands.

Luckily I found another
but in that load two socks
- one black, one white -
ran off together.
Never would've noticed
if they'd stuck to their own kind.

My uncle died a year ago
but I haven't changed
the entry in my Palm
or deleted him
from my recipient list -
I think he still likes
receiving updates.

The Yanks dropped another
last night to the Sox -
their 11th L this season.
I saw losses five and six live
in Minneapolis
only weeks ago
with the man who
only months ago
was my lifemate
and now is on hold,
status indefinite.

I could stand to lose
a few pounds -
I decided that a while ago.
And the stress and guilt
and a bit of cockiness
I'm sure.
And I sure as hell would
like to ditch this cough.

But the things we want
get lost sometimes
while a few things we don't
stick around.

making a garden


we speak now
in this sweet green time,
before the roots are deep,
of the space
waking around us,
the possibilities
of lupin or liatris,
dianthus or delphinium

you plant meadow rue
and sweet woodruff
in my ears, along
the furrow of my spine

i show you
with my hands
the best spot
for columbine and thrift

your fingers white roots
unravelling in the night

Early Harvest

A nice delivery came today:
a friend, a gift, a treat to share.
It is so lovely when
so early in season
products of gardens

even ones so carefully
attended, indoors,
through the frozen months
the long dark months so pressed
for green so wanting in it’s absence.
Damp quilt chill in the recent air
the thawing’s only just begun

a whisper of green beginning.
But a smile and a small bag
walked past my own seedlings,
through my lavender door,

entered the rooms
that make a house
the size of a pocketbook

with barely room to lose a pair
of glasses, magnifying details

vital detecting realities
variant pungent delicious.

Taste buds wash hands,
and take their seats
anticipating the feast.

Lighthouse Park

Lighthouse Park


Children clamber over rocks slick
with algae, look no hands, talking
non-stop to parents, egging them to cross
the moss-licked log when–
scrape-palmed and sounding
like a ship’s horn, they’re surprised
the world can hurt them. Knees throb
as they crab-scuttle back
on all fours to solid ground, where
two minutes later, after a kiss to make it better,
they’ve forgotten.

But the body deals in compounds interest;
by the time they’re forty, it’ll be hours
before they can relax, unclench, believe
in ankles and elbows to hold them.
That sharp-scented relief after illness. At seventy,
they know a fall can break them.
But for now they turn back, run along on the outcrop,
while their parents watch, flinching,
fingers crossed.

body

At last at age 29 I am
in love with myself again.
When I was five I knew this
feeling, this absolute love of body
and mind, this endless fascination
of skin and fingers and flex
and flex.

In bed I love my body with his,
arch and arch, the feeling that we
are driving forward into nothing,
making the universe as we go, and it is
his body and mine, my body arching
over the final crest of creation, oh,
I am me, right down to my toes.

Naked for the shower I stop
to watch myself in the mirror. Pose
and turn, hunch, straighten, glance
over the shoulder, Vrksasana,
Garudasana, all my bones straight
and strong.

The melodic drip of a small fountain
so near at hand –

half full and amplified—

calls for replenishing
it’s copper pipes.
Raindrops from a felt gray sky
are all so dripping moist
on my sad ear.

The crying falls
universal on the very day
the season struggles
announcing
its wet self
to a swelling surge of soil
bound up in
all the growing, trembling
as the poppy pods burst
their green boundaries
and orange comes
falling out and out
crinkly as wet skin
all crepe and thin
in it’s newness
fragile as last moment’s
wet breath
sipping the damp sounds
fertility rejoicing makes.
Each damp petal
explodes
from its containment.

Seven months: the ba da bump

In the shower my hair goes molten
liquid against my neck and shoulders
liquid against loamy curves of battered clay
with its igneous flaws and bulges
but my belly is still a radial tire
whose valve sucks and puckers
pulling the entire chassis to one side at speed
going warm and soft
when still

In the shower my back is a blown vase
spine fluting under the spray glowing red
each vertebrae an ember glowing red
but my belly is still a milk-fed melon on the vine
smelling of sugar and soil and green green rot
even half a summer away
from being man-handled home

* * *

As you can see from my first May Day poem, I'm giving myself a lot of leeway these days...which in purely logistical terms means that I've set myself the rather breezy schedule of posting here three days a week during the month of May.

I'm aiming for Mondays / Wednesdays / Fridays at this point.

Of late, I've been working on poems about my neighbourhood, about trains and storms and early morning demolitions. I've also been working on a series about being knocked up, mostly because it seems like a more legitimate form of complaining than, well, complaining.

Other than that, you should know that I'm from Winnipeg and that this is my third on-line poetry project.

I really did write this on Monday

Hey everyone. Happy May! Nice to be here and meet you all through your poems.

I admit to being a bit daunted by the poem-a-day concept, but I've been making a real effort lately to do more things that scare me. So, I'm going to give it a shot... and not beat myself up too much if I can't pull it off. I'm happy to receive any feedback you want to send my way.

Here goes...


sunday-sad


it isn't raining
but it has
rained and will
rain, you read it
in the grey lines
between whites
of the blind --
the same story
every time
you open your eyes

you feel rain turning
the hike to mud,
drowning hotdog buns

you hear rain
in your own voice
go back to sleep,
taste it in the laundry,
groceries, a day
of closed windows
swallowed before you
have even left the bed

but a chin scuffs
your shoulder, a palm
softens your nipples
and your neck
is wetted with
the words next weekend

you let go of the day
you'd wanted

so it begins again for the first time

so it works mmmmmmmmm like gravity

got my invitation didn't know how to respond this commitment

thing is it commutative? if so, i'd better look

that word up again i'm better at commutilating.

maybe you've seen my work with headstones

isn't that what it's all about?mmmmmrhetorical
questions are not

my favourite colour but all the other parachutes* sold out mmmmm the ground is it a good question mark will it interrogate me with impact by crater

targets make for run-ons.
my fletcher recycles commasmmmmmmi bought my object a stanza of adamant re-affection

& it became the subject of how to break up a greens tick sentence

this is just a suggestion to fill the void left by social convention mmm *i demanded the sale have no strings attached

the airplane is my afterthought balloon

Luminare

"Will you call out Open Window, Sir?"
she shouts out to the bus driver
"Just in Case I miss it."
The driver and I stare at her, no
clue what she could be talking about.

"It's a Senior Centre" she explains.
"Don't know it." he says.
"I'll watch out for it then," she says.
"Just before Super Valu
or Valu Village
I'll watch out for it."

But she spends the trip looking around
at any number of things
the boy with a mohawk,
the old man's slow journey down the aisle,
the contents of her purse.

And I'm the one left looking,
the responsible one, always.
Worried we'll all get distracted
worried we'll all miss out
on our chance to jump off
at the Open Window.

It begins

Hello fellow poets and (hopefully) readers. I just came off NaPoWriMo, an event of similar concept but held in April. So I'm already firing on all cylinders. At least, that's what I'm telling myself. My goal is 31 poems by the end of the month. This may translate to none on some days and lots on others, or it might mean one poem a day, like creative clockwork. I suppose we shall see.

I welcome critique should the impulse seize you, but with the understanding that these are first drafts, and any of them that I decide to keep will already be undergoing my brutal editing and rewriting processes.

My first poem for May Day is an odd one for me - I don't usually use the prose poem form, partially because I tend to be a very careful and hesitant poet and prose poems always have a very flow-of-consciousness feel for me. At the moment, however, I'm working on a suite of poems about my relationship with my sister, and it's proving very difficult to write. So I'm trying out a bunch of new forms and techniques in the hope that I'll find the key.

you left me

I was, perhaps, five. We were climbing among the bales, great round prickly things like golden cinnamon rolls laid on their sides. The world smelled like dust and hay and our girlish sweat. We were pretending something, we were princesses or elves or maybe Robin Hood. I fell between two bales, my small body slithering downward, my shirt filling with straw. Thump to the ground, a space not quite big enough to turn around in, no leverage to climb out. The hay slipped and slid beneath my sandals. My knees were red. Help I said, trying not to cry. Your face, like God, blotted out the sky above me. You can get out, you said, and you left. I screamed and wept - it was an eternity of minutes before our father came, reached down and drew me out, small wretched peg from a fusty hole. I don't remember much else other than the sinking despair of you leaving me, you leaving me.

I think that's when it happened, my decision not to need you anymore.

Yah!

I'm so pumped about this project I've written 3 poems in the past 24 hours. This is me: I'm a Regina based writer and finishing an English honours degree at the UofR (I'll be done in Dec.). I work full-time as a barber/stylist and write on anything with blank space. Thanks for letting me participate; I'm looking forward to the whole process-- from reading, to writing, to responding. I plan on writing a poem every second day, while trying to follow some of the themes laid out along the sidebar, but also, I'm trying to be thematic in my approach. I'm open to any suggestions/comments on my poetry; it's all good. Here is my 1st post/poem:



Perennial Red-lights


The pacific giant delphinium knows
roots of its existence are embedded

within loamy soil, their own growth
historical through the surface of envy

green erected as phallicies stalking
the sky, blossoming buds

raspberried repetition, rows
of organized attraction, an old trade

developed through centuries flowered
and tucked purposefully in bearded tufts.

But passionate plants are hypnotic—
hunger and patience combine

catch the attention of leaf rollers’
newborn desire, their harmful invasion

rolled firm within each leaf
constructing the present in carnage

fetalled impulses measured each day
by bites. I wonder as I cleanse

plants every spring with prescriptions
of soap and water, unfurl leaves

remove the worms, if delphiniums remember
each year’s struggle, the parallel

wasting to legless stems—
or if each alzheimered stalk remembers

nothing but perseveration
of this moment.

Okay, here's my first post! I don't know most of you, but I'm looking forward to reading your work. A bit about me: I live in Vancouver, where I just finished my first year in the MFA program at UBC. I'm the current poetry editor of PRISM international. This is the first May I've spent in town in five years, previously I worked as a Fire Lookout. I'm happy to get comments/suggestions on the poems I post. Thanks so much for letting me be a part of the May Day project. I plan on writing a poem a day, but I'll only post four times a week, Monday-Thursday. Thanks!



Winter’s end


crawls out of a tuna can, yanks the plug,
all our buried garbage resurfaces.
Like a dump truck loosing its gravel,
all the shoulds lodged in your back
go sliding into the ditch come daylight.
Gears cranky and stiff, a bicycle chain
ratcheting around the block, bell thumbed
at everyone you pass. Overnight,
daffodils have popped, tilt
their bugle horns, call to one another
across the field. The end of winter
is like a new bra; you can’t help but feel yourself up.
Like three car alarms going off at once,
a mailbox with a red flag tipped up,
the backhanded crack of a spoon
on the crème brule crust.

May pole

From today’s entry of The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor...

“Today is May Day, a celebration of the return of spring that goes back thousands of years in European traditions. Various May Day celebrations included the gathering of wildflowers and green branches, the weaving of floral garlands, and the setting up of a decorated May tree, or Maypole, around which people danced.

May Day never developed a Christian equivalent. In order to celebrate the holiday, workers had to stay home from work against their employers' wishes. It became known as a people's holiday, and in 1889, a congress of world Socialist parties held in Paris voted to choose May 1, 1890, as a day of demonstrations in favor of the eight-hour day.”

Hooray

Hooray Hooray it's the First of May!

Welcome to all participants and to those dropping in to see what we're up to!

I think it might help us feel more connected if we introduced ourselves briefly and declared our goal for the month.

I'm Polly Washburn, co-founder of this blog with Ariel. Live in Winnipeg but will be reporting from the U.S. for the final week of the project. Ariel and I were in a writing group together for 3 years, but without her bugging me biweekly to write more poems, I've been focused on film projects and haven't produced much new poetry lately. So my goal is... to write 6 poems a week.

Looking forward to everyone's work and to giving myself this space and time to produce some new Stuff.

May Day

Hey all,

We're less than two hours away from the first day of May, and, by extension, the start of the May Day Poetry Project.

That means thirty-one days of poetry, poetry that is both raw and polished, inspired and laboured, fragmentary and oddly complete.

And so, for those of you who will be participating, welcome. I'm looking forward to working among you.

For those of you who have happened by, do drop by again - I promise it'll be worth your while.

It's almost May!

Ariel and I have been talking, and we'd like to do May Day again! The basic idea is to write a poem a day for the month of May, and in my view, the point is to be more concerned with consistency of output than quality. It might help to look at last year's thoughts.

We're all busy people, so we won't be dictatorial about everyone having to submit a poem a day, though it would be great if people indicate what their goal is at the beginning of the month.

Each poet can indicate the amount of feedback they feel comfortable getting.

Please add your thoughts about this process - see you in May!

Poem accepted

OASIS Journal 2005 (IMAGO Press) in Tucson, Arizon has accepted "Half a Hundred" for publication. The journal will be out in October.

I had to scrunch some lines together to fit their one-page-per-poem requirements, but the words are the same and the changes are minor to me.

Notes for Ariel

Ariel - I’m sure I’ll see some of these again to critique in more detail, so for now I’ll just give you my fave poems, lines and details – plenty to select!

Fave poems:

The Humboldt Squid

The ninth day of May [is this about your uncle?]

The twelfth day of May - (part 1)

The Writers’ Retreat: Arnes, MB. - fantastic details

Assiniboine Forest, May 15, 2005. - whole thing great but why last 2 lines?

The eighteenth day of May - Still one of my favourites not just of MayDay but of All (Ariel) Time

The twenty-first day of May - This is powerful – don’t remember reading it in May

The twentieth day of May

Renovation poem #3: uncareful graves - Creepy domisticity!

The twenty-fifth day of May - Heh – would like to see this expanded.

The thirtieth poem


------------
Other great moments:


The first day of May

In Don's Deli the midafternoon light settles
over the stack of crockery plates with crumbs
and blots of butter platters with fork-scarred films of yolk
mugs empty grating against saucers against the gulp-swallow
of the coffeemaker in the corner the percolating of coffee
already burnt


the slow coast of a police car under the careening snowflakes


It is a day of small protests

Saturday night disappointments
as we return to breakfasts refills and the injustice of snow


--------------
The third day in May

if we represent a threat and the bunny has been bronzed
by its caution but the girls are free to recline on their marble
pedestals in their pigtails and perky tits: an old man’s fantasy
as much as the busts of men in power only their heads and shoulders
only their heads and shoulders are an old man’s fantasy
and we walkers could touch the old men the girls in ways they never
would have permitted in life


the same way we know the people in the idling van
in the parking lot pumping exhaust into the air as the trees
pump oxygen will come no further

--------------
The fourth day of May

Fishing for the tail-end of a beautiful fall afternoon
Gudmund had his trusty rod in one hand and his sweating
beer in the other was thinking butter dill the crackle of the fry pan
when he got another bite and felt the arc of protest in his rod
against the heavy thing that lurked below


Fishing for compliments for just the right line


Gudy panicked; he’d be the first to admit that she was dainty
only four-foot-four but despite her corkscrewing suckers
each with its own row of pearly teeth her three hearts of gold
and her big eyes he’d thought it through
he wasn’t ready for this kind of commitment, see?
and there’s always other fish in the sea


And maybe it was because he was better with a nailgun
than a rod better with power tools than power politics
that he got a faceful of ink enough to fill any poet's poison pen
but he didn’t need anyone to tell him that he should fling
his doomed darling to the deck open the hatch
and kick her breathless wide-eyed
into the hold


--------------
The fifth day of May

upper right central upper right lateral

upper left central upper left lateral

gold-leafing the morning

timed by the swerving cars only a few feet away
none of them none of us
ever sure where to turn

--------------
Renovation poem #1: after spring thaw

Eggshell & bricky bits
in the tarry
shingle grit,
glass,
& set
grey curls
of pigeon shit
between my house & his

--------------
Renovation poem #2: the ground floor

See how the line is overlaid
by outstretched wings hinged
to a spine laid bare follow the line
of leg up into spine the fine fletching
of wing see how the long feathers
are still intact
black
and how little that matters now

On top of the bones there are butts
smoked down so that all that is left
is tar resin and reason
and the threads of a broken jar
some domestic thing
to be opened and put away


Lie down

Feel the long muscles
in your legs relax your spine
sag as the small of your back
touches down to the ground
see how the long beamsof the building
the lines of shadow
are intact
black
and how little this matters now


--------------
The fourteenth day of May

its soupy sidewalks
cracking under the repeated
demands: freeze!
thaw!


mixed-up lilies
who should be dug up: divide!
conquer!

--------------
Assiniboine Forest, May 16, 2005.

but it seems
I must satisfy myself
with what there is

--------------
Assiniboine Park Zoo, Enclosure #41

In the dark the white-tailed deer
tuck their tails under the long lines
of haunch and hip of shadow
and roadside sound
and settle out in the open
while the American bison as boxy as bales
of straw intact bales of hay broken
sleep at the edge of the chain-link
barbed-wire enclosure


the curving line of dark

--------------
The Writers Retreat: Arnes, MB (part the second)

curves of swarming fish
and the sinuous surprise of them is wide
and delicate


as what was shadow now shows
fin ripple
and muscle
through sun-shot water
as I stand ankle-deep
twenty paces out
from the rock-pickers after the perfect
piece of clear quartz
and the purple moth that has
settled
on the cocooned balls
the larval curves
of my shed socks

--------------
Renovation poem #4: foundation

Walking home there are the teenage girls
in hajibs trying to persuade
each other
to swing
the sandbox grit
in the air their heels
grinding on the leaf-littered
ground
but each of them
thinking of being airborne
of pointing their heels
up

Notes for Paul

Two favourites:

within range, montenant

si))(((lens...


And favourite lines:

Re:Setting

i've plumbed my place with them before
as the die is cast
sixsidedly
in lines of long-
and latitude
to fall in with
risk-taking throws
at poetic justice
and global domination

-----
titular indeterminayacy

the mayans had calendars
by my-oh-my if "maya"
isn't just a foundation
for illusion to build pyramids to
(even the stars are blood-spattered)


but
back to my maya
my mayday
the beast with two backlashes:
even my maieutics
are having a midwife crisis

& menno? please!
blistered are the pleasemakers'
lips
no more pleading

wow
i said waking up with
a severe case of enlightenment.

-----
& i've only ever seen a possum once

but i'm completely inept
at giving up completely
because i LOVE
playing in traffic your eyes
deeper than halogen
and your grille
an open invitation
to attempting hot passionate
fusion with your radiator

don't get me started on your bumper
(i look too good
in chrome agony)

there i go
objectifying you again
by just lying there on the road
to keep the asphalt from telling its side

can i be your hood ornament?

-----
schade is too bad in german

my son & i
(this one, not that one)
watch his finals


the personal is political
i tell myself
& yeah
i do vote for me

how's that for happy endings
or edges,
not losing my nerve
just because my skin is raw
& the ball is up in the air

-----
seen from this side of the glass, poker tastes like gin

inverte-berating me


then again we were playing big blind little blind
which goes a long way towards
describing my ability to read people
never mind books
which i do so slowly
i read them in reverse

-----
just lying, there

life is a tupperware casket of donuts
looks like truth
tastes like chickenshit


& its brain,
only big enough to believe in
two-sided theories
massacred all the others
lest it lose its deathgrip
to something more
personal

like love,
or lovelike

-----
<{[(:+:)]}>

[Still like this title!]

Comments for Jonathan

Jonathan -

My favorites:

Wolves

The Poets

Growing Poets

My friends are beginning to die

to dance
[though don’t need last stanza maybe – perhaps combine with “A Poem for Mandy”]

Planning the Shot

film haiku

Take me to America

Apples
[like the unexpected way it unravels!]


------------
Fave lines from others:

The Toads of Hamburg

If you were to ask one of the toads
it would simply swell up, affronted by the question,
and burst. This line of inquiry
will get us nowhere.


We must trust in science.
We must trust in our leaders.
We must trust in the government.

We must trust that, one day,
things will return to normal.


Until then,
the crows feast.

------------
my bones so

but the thought of
my bones

moving under
my skin

breaking
breaks me

inside

------------
Cooley in Germany

scoffing at the wind (this is nothing
on the prairies the wind will
well the wind will blowhard
knock you over it will
the wind if the winds will it
if it’s the wind’s will)
but they just smile
not understanding
these poets—such exaggerators
they say

------------
Cold

There are words. Carved in the walls.

Listen. Lie still. Lie down.

To a colder place. I will take you. Then. If you are. Cold.

------------
Among Roses

We will bleed from you such small amounts
And so quiet, the softest of pain

----------
Tired

Take the penny.
From my mouth.

Hold me.
Close.
My eyes.

----------
Best of luck with all your Projects and going back to Skool!

Comments for Myra

Myra -

I've listed my absolute faves first. If I just have the title, that means I liked the whole thing - I've also listed some favourite lines from some that jumped out at me.

-------------
Water Falling Lavendar

Away With Leave

Good News From Duckie

So It Is [with editing, this will be even stronger]

Reading The Names


------------
Planting time

How can the spring drunk hand
not touch,
not push
the roaming root to it’s new
warm place?

Guide the root to reach
for the juice that will spread and rise
through the already up reaching
already eager signal
green text message flashing in each
flowing vein.

------------
A Little Help

The plants are in and watered,
little deposits of dirt and roots
promising to be more if tended.
It took a friend to help me step down

to the place where the bare soil waited,
fertility confused by it’s unbroken surface
when all I needed was the helping hand
of a younger body’s frame


my helper some of another harvest
did I have enough guts to venture out
into the small garden space awaiting my touch
listening for the sound of the hand hoe

hitting against the wood edge of the barrel
the root bursting herbs erupting
in my hands like rumbling
volcanoes of stems and leaves

no longer content to shelter beneath
the surface. Tomorrow will find
the living leaf rivers flowing from the beds,


---------
Half a Hundred

The party
seems to have lasted
so much longer
for us all
than the invitation
indicated.

------------
Fave lines from others:

Jumping the Gun

I feel wrapped in their
city love, the nesting pair
of love birds who call
me Mom. I am a giant
Chimichanga of love.

------------
Meeting On The Road
[Just went to Tulsa for the first time last month – was fascinated by it]

The city passes barely noticed
Like another attendee at a conference,
“My name is Tulsa,”
when only movement matters—

------------
Pondering Sorrell

Good cooks require courage.
And abundance

------------
Picnic Effervescence

their fragile wishes
out into the fully leafed treetops
delicate and sharp edged
trusting the grown-ups
to make bubbles possible
for awhile longer.

--------
What We Eat

or have we turned more meekly
into the flock of mindless sheep
I once recalled,
all lining up for the
humming of the shears?

------------
Enough For Me

Water like liquid diamonds
falls from so many taps—
gratitude and astonishment
continuing.
I know I have the only
Blessings I need.

------------
Dusk Ablaze

When day has slipped its foot
into the bath of night
and stars call down
to whatever bits of light are left
pooling at the edge,
then the ground shimmers
and yellow rises flashing

as if each
petal of the dandelions
has taken wing,
the blinking

lights rise bright
against the darkness
dancing a quest for life.
Some stay moored to the earth,
blinking back, twinkling
like tiny candles
showing the direction home.

------------
Drops of Day
[like how this one relates back to “Enough for Me” and “Dusk Ablaze”

----------
Circuit

Speaking only made my voice
carry old truths
back to the women who had
always known them
guarded them
and merely needed to be
reminded of their own gardens.

------------
Before Paper Cranes

Is this island of a body calling
back waves from that day
before my birth
broadcasted eternally
received in our bones?

Wonderful dying flash
fluttering last light
turning all to ash as
blood cloud umbrella closes
over a charred city
folding surprised citizens
into burnt creases.

===============
Hope this helps! Good luck with venturing out into publishing!

As we edge out ever farther from May...

I've got comments for Myra and Jonathan, which I will post now. And I'm working on Paul and Ariel (though I know Ariel's already culled and started editing!)

Also, I fixed the setting on comments so we know WHEN people commented!

I would welcome even just a list of a few favourites from mine, as I'm culling and editing, and am curious to know which poems people felt were most worthy of pursuing and putting more work into...

Hope all is well with everyone and you're getting out to enjoy summer!

Processing

I've copied everyone poems, including mine into a word doc, and separated them by poet. If anyone wants a copy, just leave me a note here or email me and I'll send it off to you.

Hope everyone is doing well. Just got back from a very fun 12 days with family and friends in the U.S.

I should have notes for potes in the next few days...

forget that deadline

it seems that nobody (including myself) has been able to stick to my arbitrary deadline. so let's just say that we'll all try to provide said feedback by the end of the month.

myra had wanted more info on my publishing imprint ... well, it's just a small chapbook press, newly starting up. there seems to be a fair amount of interest though. i have put out two small books and two more are in progress. a little more info at www.martianpress.blogspot.com.

the 3rd book is by calgary poet derek beaulieu and the 4th book will be by ottawa poet rob mclennan. the may day poems would in theory be the 5th book. to be published late fall/early winter. if not everybody's interested maybe we'll just do a selection of the interested poets.

jonathan

a new deadline

i am going to arbitrarily name June 10 as the day that we will post our favourite 3-5 poems from each poet, as written during this project. that's gives us time to relax and think.

also, let me know if you are still interested in putting together a chapbook from the site/project. i'm game.

The first day of June

Around 11 pm tonight, my brain started churning. The usual oh-shit-I've-got-to- post- before-midnight anxiety...but also the usual oh-shit-I've-got-to-post-before-midnight pleasure.

Apparently, after thirty-one days of this chemical slurry, this lazy adrenalin rush, my brain had geared up for another grasping-at-straws outing.

Though, sadly, I refrained from writing the poem, on this First Day of June I wanted to note that I am already missing (and mourning the end of) May Day.

I'm missing having somewhere to post my terrible first drafts, my tits and goddamns and frogsong.

I'm missing the after-midnight browse (coming down coming down) of your poems.

Anyways, thanks.

The thirtieth poem

And always that one tree
at the end of the paved path
through the forest
glows
tungsten bright
shallow-rooted dry on the median
the thin divide
between tarred roads and ditches full
drowning the thicker belts
and bottoms of boreal

And always that one deer
at the edge of the paved path
through the forest
glows
tapetum bright
thin-lipped shy at the treeline
the long stride
between dried grasses and gardens full
crowning the thicker stems
and sepals of suburbia

* * *

That's it. It's eleven-fifty-something pm and I'm still short a poem.

Can I possibly be content with only thirty poems when there are thirty one days in May?

Only time will tell.

A.

The Poem to End all Poems

Winter Cinquain

cold feet
sockless pathos
reaching sneaking seeking
yearn for a warm place of comfort
your legs

The thirty-first day of May

First signs of spring: a West Nile screed

Bare-legged women clean the muck
of still-sodden parkland
off their first-hot-day sandals
in the puddle that mirrors the tree-line
the mowed lines of the canopy
the first base line beyond
muddling the reflection
the soft light
of evening
the water sloshes
is still
by the time the women slide
into their cars
scratching at the backs of winter-white knees
the water is still
except for the twilight stipple
of mosquitoes laying
the plumb line
the vertical between the sky
and the soil
as the soft blue carcasses
of crows blue jays
magpies
ravens
fall
from the trees
right smack
into the morning paper

Standing by

Waiting waiting
waiting
put on hold
can't get what I want
when I want it
don't know what I need
until I need it

Through the empty room
a few words whistle by
the Universe is standing by -
call now!

Love Poem - to be Continued...

I woke this morning
to a curious sound
at first I could not place
then realized
he laughs in his sleep

Yet another trait
to add to the list
of what makes him
different from anyone
I've ever known

He keeps me warm
in winter
drives anger
to laughter
makes up words
to songs

He lets me be weak
so I can be strong
the rest of the time
Out There

Half a Hundred

So easily we imagined
ourselves decrepit at this age
so nearly bent
in two
with aches and lack of hope—
no drives
to push us out of bed
or into the arms of lovers
or faraway cities

No lust for the sight of another
shore or taste of a grape brought
in a bottle from a year and region
we missed
in our aging. But
we were wrong and see
the dawn as another
opening of
a day
with more light than we

Imagined with more sun
than was predicted,
full of people who know
our names and love
the sound of them being
called. It strikes us with
no surprise but sheer

Anticipation that reservations
have been made for celebrations—
innumerable days and dinners,
cake all round for everyone
and more sweet ice cream than
we thought capable of
ever making. Candy and
gifts fall
from the sky in shapes
we never imagined would

Hold value or even exist
when we were a fraction
of these present years

Thinking we were as
wise as one ever gets. And
now we know ourselves to be

The sloppy puppies
and kittens
still chasing our tails
in search of whatever is there
when we catch up with

Ourselves. The glee in the
eyes of our elders hints at
birthdays still capable of
blowing out
all the candles
we could ever think of

Lighting. The party
seems to have lasted
so much longer
for us all
than the invitation
indicated.

5-31-05

Simple Play

Two girls attempt to draw
in chalks the boxes
holding numbers
they will use to jump and
hop a game.
Their play

Is at least half
in the chalking
as much as the hopping
but some grown person
knowing better
in their set cement mind

Must take the chalk—
make the numbers darker
the lines straighter—

So the game is turned
to work and insistent perfection.
The small gleaming children

Watch in baffled amusement
as the adult tries
to wash the play
out of the game
as rain may wash
the chalk away

But wait until
the one obsessed
finally walks away
so they can resume
their simple sport—
small feet hopping

On the imperfect numbers
hidden underneath
the rigid corrections.

5-30-05

Honey Flight

It seems the bees flee
their comb-filled hive
in route to a place
known only to them
in their flurry

humming all the way
to a dark hollow tree
or gray timbered
shaky leaning
abandoned place

where there is
room to build
a sweet life again
no more aware of the drive
that lifts

the honey center of their lives

that relocates the chambers
they will as one mind build
in symmetrical designs
all linked by wax walls
unable to withstand

the unsheltered
heat of a bright day,
how do they settle
in to calm at the noise
of their own homecoming

that sound the black and gold
swarm makes striping
the morning air
when greeting itself
after the panic of leaving.

5-29-05

Th-th-th-that's all folks!

Well, I just put up my last poem. I've enjoyed this a lot. It is interesting to see what you come up with when you are forced to create a new work every day. I will have to take a few days off before I can come back and pick out poems by other people that I liked best but rest assured I will do so once things settle down a little, maybe early next week or this weekend.

A Poem for Mandy

the light
in the morning

from the window

from you

Final Day!

It's been awesome!

A few thoughts:
For today's poem(s), we can go back and find our favorite theme and re-use it!

As previously posted, once we've all posted our final contributions, it would be terrific if we could each go through and select 3-5 poems from each poet and let them know these are our favorites, and maybe add why or other comments if you have time. I find it tough to go back and find comments on older posts, so I suggest we post those comments here in the present.

I've got a few more poems to post today.

Congratulations all on taking on this challenge! I'll be interested to hear people's thoughts on the process.

Half - Ballade

Wrote May 21 for a friend's wedding - complete ballade still under construction:

---
On your wedding day
Our aim is to please
with words we say
some praise, some tease
some bring you to your knees
But one truth I bring in song
on this special day in May
to fill your married life with ease

D & B on this sacred day
In sum I offer these
6 words to keep a marriage strong:
"You were right and I was wrong"

May Day: the forest for the trees

Hey all, this is a visual representation of May Day, courtesy of texone.org.



According to the website: texone.org is "a fun Processing applet that takes a URL and converts the site, including links and content, into a tree, with external links creating other trees."

I just wanted to say, a day early and three poems owing, how much I've enjoyed working in this particular thicket.

And, lest I be accused of not seeing the forest for the trees, I'd like to thank Polly, Jonathan, Paul and Myra for everygoddamn thing.

Thanks too to everyone that commented, lurked, or backchanneled.

(...do I really have to post three more poems by end of day tomorrow? crap...)

A.

The thirtieth day of May

Bugs beat against the tall pillars
of puffed out dandelions
clock the yellow sawteeth
as they go to seed
then follow
suspicious
to the soft pointillism
the breezy fluorescence
of summer screens
of open air
evenings

And the lightbulb inside the bulge
of light is the most swollen
moon they’ve ever seen
the hazy head of the dandelion
its delicate
globe
is nothing to this hot
hot heat
and once in
bugs buzz bright spirals figure
eights ovals
crawl the walls
swarm
and
burn

In the morning
bugs will drown in bedside glasses of water
down the sides of cooling cups of tea
wings flattened floating
others will beat at the screen
wanting out
while the dandelion
with its deep
tap root
its thousand thousand fruit
is content to flower and float
and flower

* * *

This is, I guess, a response to Polly's dandelion poem of a few days ago (though I only just realized it to be so as I wrote the last stanza).

It also harkens back to the Writers Retreat in Arnes last summer, when the (screened) windows let in so many swarms I had to block the space under my bedroom door with a towel - as though there was a fire in the next room, as though the bugs were a kind of smoke, could choke me.

Political Poem - As If

As if
it matters
anymore
what gets done
what doesn't

peak oil
is coming
or it isn't

the sky is falling
or just falling apart
the hole is getting wider
the whole is shrinking

I don't care
not one whit
do I?

the animals are disappearing
or maybe just hiding
i don't blame them one bit
do you?

war is over
if you want it
Lennon had it right
but we don't want it
do we?

Ode to Z

You're writing me a note
sitting in the train station
in my new city

You're inviting me to come visit
your new school
on spring break
We're going for blizzards at Dairy Queen
turning them upside down

You're driving with me
in my yet-to-be country
we're reading aloud
from C.S. Lewis
with my supposedly
a-literate boyfriend

You're competing
in my temporary city
We're playing boggle
to calm you down
It's not working but
you're winning anyway
thanks to your amazingness
and the extra-special
good luck monster woman
I loaned you just for the occasion

You're assuring me
that you will remind me
not to get married

You're showing up
at my wedding
to play anyway

You're practising
the same three bars
over and over
while I drift to sleep
in the city I'm arriving in
and you're departing from

You're playing beautiful notes
in a long flowing dress
that shows off your arm muscles
and your passion for musical flow

You're showing me your city
across the ocean
your girlfriend with a motorbike

You're feeding me waffles
showing me how to eat M&Ms
with chopsticks

You're taking me on a bus trip
while I've got the worst case
of jetlag ever

You're walking me to the shore
giving me a little push
out toward the waves
recording the moment
for posterity

Returned

I am back with my poems for today and during filming. I decided I would actually DO the exercises this time. One poem/day left!! This has been a great experience.

Tired (May 30)

The days are long.
They make me.
Tired.

The sun is.
Too bright.
Welcome me.

Into your bed.
Take the penny.
From my mouth.

Hold me.
Close.
My eyes.

Ode to Film (May 29 – Ode)

Jacob wrestles with the Angel.
We film it at 6 frames per second.

Black & white. The light
screams. It moves with intention.

With fury.

Into Fire (May 28 – Political Poem)

Give me your tired,

your poor,
your huddled masses

yearning

to breathe free,
the wretched

refuse
of your teeming

shore. Send these,
the homeless,
tempest-tossed

to me.

I like the way they taste.

Apples (May 27 – Food Poem)

There are apples
on the floor.

They are bruised. There is
a woman lying near them.

The table is broken.

The light comes
through the shades.

Everything
is red.

Rain (May 26 – City Poem)

The rain comes

when it wants, not
when you want it to.

The sky does not care.

Neither does this city. You should
pull up your hood. It is coming

down upon you.

The twenty-ninth day of May

The snail's slide stride
makes the sidewalk mica strike
moonlight makes each shell
a stone a bead
a breast with its turned nipple
each snail a tongue curled
around it
feelers out feelers out
while worms rubber band rappel
from one edge to another
glisten
as they thin out thicken
listen: a passing car toots
its horn but doesn't slow
down
heads turned to see
if we startled waved our tails
and rocking horsed
into the woods

The Gift

She opens the box
lifts up the tissue
she thought he'd forgotten
until now it had been
just an ordinary day
and though she's enjoyed it
she's been growing a tiny
cloud of disappointment

Until now
white box red bow
saving grace

She holds up the dress
one thing remembered
another forgotten
he's bought her
the wrong size
again

she chooses to laugh
lets the small storm
blow over

she knows too well
how easy it is
to walk away
from contentment

as if something better
existed a short ways
down the road


---
From today's Utne contest. The words were:
bought size laugh ordinary walk contentment easy
enjoyed over exist

I've got to write a few more poems today and tomorrow to make the 31 mark!

Makeover For World Girls

Unescorted women can’t cross
streets in Saudi Arabia
even fully veiled
without breaking the
law today,

Yet some will remain
locked in breeding behind
burkas with no
faith in redemption
when even the imperialists

Promising ideals
have only fourteen – a cute age
fit for breeding – percent
of the comfy seats in their vaulted
legislative chambers filled by

Women. Who can say
who is oppressive
when law tools cut down
women with merely different
shaped blades? How can the

Promise of education of
girls for any purpose past breeding
be taken seriously when testicles—
the common good –
hide just as easily behind suits

As robes and the good ol’ boys
smell the familiar scent of crude oil
on each other’s crude breath?
As incendiary
as a sabotaged well

The flames burst horrific
from the very suggestion of
women taking part in
the crossing of
the building of
the laying down of
streets. The paths are
strewn with shriveled hopes
headscarves of defiance
lying where they dropped

Proving the rumors of
bareheaded
women on their way to
making roadmaps
all are allowed to follow.


5-27-05

Before Paper Cranes

When the hot white cloud
in my chest opens
like a bloody umbrella
spreading excessive warmth
beneath my left breast

I wonder, “Will this be
the last flaming
mushroom rising?”
This dull cap of expanding
warmth surprises me

With it’s intensity. Is it
alerting me to some personal
internal bomb? Or spreading
spores of the last
flaming mushroom rising?

Is this island of a body calling
back waves from that day
before my birth
broadcasted eternally
received in our bones?

Wonderful dying flash
fluttering last light
turning all to ash as
blood cloud umbrella closes
over a charred city
folding surprised citizens
into burnt creases.

5-26-05

Reading The Names

I saw the name Moreno on the list of names
of those whose died in Iraq since last April
an update giving more than statistical sterility
to the soldiers dead for the arrogance and
mongering of a Texas playboy and his pals.

I saw the name Moreno and remembered
the smiling couple who met me on my first
week at Fort Lewis, while still cramped into
the guest quarters awaiting base housing
only because of the child growing inside me.

The wife was named Virginia. She had dark hair
and a round face filled with the smile of one who
travels at the army’s whim. Her kind husband was
some kind of sergeant. The ranks confused me
with their layers of numbers and classes. I knew

We were at the bottom of whatever ranking
the military handed out, already busted for
the larking on the coast when faced with a third tour
back in the steaming fetid country that was the current
exercise in imperial obliviousness. The Morenos

Took us into their home and she gave me all
her maternity clothes and newborn baby clothes, blue
terry cloth sleepers and chamois soft cloth diapers
all ready to cradle my new child as her toddler
orbited around us laughing. I saw the name Moreno

On her husband’s jungle green uniforms, on the nametapes
sewn to his chest. His first name was Clarence. Strangers
named Moreno gave me comfort in the far northwest
as we made the transition into the Third Armored Calvary,
stalling till our baby could be born in the hospital shared by

Both army and air force, built so long ago it was
all sprawled out on one floor like a mutant spider
sprouting in every direction just in case the enemy planes
reached across the Pacific and bombed the place
all would not be lost, just a branch or two, an arm

Or leg. Keep the losses to a minimum, that’s the way
they do it then and now. The Morenos were there for me three
decades past and now come popping back into my head
as I read the too long list of names dead in the desert,
reminding me of when the Third Cav was relocated to the base

In Texas and all the camouflage was changed to desert beige
and brown indicating a change in fashion for projected targets
and geographic future arenas of engagement. Morenos – just
one more name from my past projecting itself into the present
giving me pause as I try to remember the names of their

Children, hoping this solider was not their child,
as if
that would make the loss any less tearful
any less
the loss that tore some mother’s heart out.


5-28-05

The twenty-eighth day of May

Renovation poem #5: the elements

Objects age
as people do thin-skinned
prone to breakdowns
hinges encumbered
by greasy particles
of use
until it is all dun
until all you can see
is the gummed mouth
of time
its marks all along
its length
like the dint where
you came around
the corner
too fast
but let an object
spend a season
drifting
in the wet places
or the sucking pull
of earth
and they are fey
become things
that crumble
and burp

Brussel Sprouts

I eat brussel sprouts
for breakfast
This may be the one thing
that sets me apart
from every other creature
on the planet.

If there is by chance
someone else
who likes petite cabbage
at all much less
in the morning,
I defy you to find
someone who calls it a
great way to start the day.

If you find such a person
let me know --
I want to meet
my soul mate.

City Poem

Between the cracks
grows weeds
small pretty purple and yellow
flowers
the beginnings of trees
ever optimistic
that they'll be allowed
to live and let live
that where they fall
is where they can stay

the cracks
get quite wide
in this city of cycles
ice and river
freeze and thaw
like pop cans
left in the freezer
like hard green buds
left on branches
the sidewalks explode
in spring

between the cracks
is where I grow
a little here and there
try to squeeze in
burrow deep into tough soil
hibernate with the ants
survive the freaking winter
learn to get strong
push up concrete
with my shoulders
explode in the spring

The twenty-sixth of May (one poem still owing)

Renovation poem #4: foundation

Walking home there is the wet excavation
the machine just at the top
of the pipe-wreathed hole
on the wet meat sliced clean
of deep down mud
I looked along all the edges
attempted grids diagrams
graduations
but all there was
was the ground
up
soil crumbling dry
toppling
in the sunshine

Walking home there are the teenage girls
in hajibs trying to persuade
each other
to swing
the sandbox grit
in the air their heels
grinding on the leaf-littered
ground
but each of them
thinking of being airborne
of pointing their heels
up

The twenty-fifth day of May (one day late)

Spring. We’ve gotten to the end
of a twelve-pack
of toilet paper
and also our winter colds
the long days
of manufacturing
mucous
the nights
where we heaped ourselves
into bed
where it is not a question
of who snores
and who doesn’t
but who falls asleep
first

Nature Poem

Today we look to the sky
beg for something akin to sun
rays of any colour on the spectrum
it doesn't have to be orange
we'll settle for purple or pink
or blue

We'll rejoice in the
new extremes our skin tones
and car chrome and bird feathers
take on

We'll open our mouths and gulp
giant mouthfuls of air
see if light pours through our cheeks
fills our lungs
shines through our thin tshirts
back into the atmosphere
a subtle glow
drawing us one to the other
my blue to yours
sharing air
maybe breathing out
carbon dioxide in
pale green dusk

Dinner For Two

When I want to be
alone
with you
as if we were
far away

and nobody could find us

make demands of us
or intrude
into our still
contentment
I get defensive.
I want you all
to myself

not willing to share

my delicious treasure
the meal of devotion
we share
quietly
on special occasions

and I want you
to defend us
from all comers
all intruders
no matter
how
they are related
or why they come.

I want us to be enough
and not afraid

to own
the feast we have laid
in the secret alcove
with only two chairs
two place settings.

Sometimes
there really is
no more room
and no need
to apologize.

Take me to America

Take me to America. I want

a place where I can kneel
take the earth into my hands

close them & say

We are watched
over

We are looked
upon

We are surrounded
on all sides

A Little Help

The plants are in and watered,
little deposits of dirt and roots
promising to be more if tended.
It took a friend to help me step down

to the place where the bare soil waited,
fertility confused by it’s unbroken surface
when all I needed was the helping hand
of a younger body’s frame

a kind eye and steady arm
not afraid to go
searching in the dark for the lost
end of the meandering hose

and the joy found in handing me
varied treasures waiting to be
buried in the dark dirt.
Only after feeding

my helper some of another harvest
did I have enough guts to venture out
into the small garden space awaiting my touch
listening for the sound of the hand hoe

hitting against the wood edge of the barrel
the root bursting herbs erupting
in my hands like rumbling
volcanoes of stems and leaves

no longer content to shelter beneath
the surface. Tomorrow will find
the living leaf rivers flowing from the beds,

gold orgegano falling in cascades
fountains of tri-color sage
and lemon verbena erupting.

5-24-05

The twenty-fourth day of May (one poem owing)

Renovation poem #3: uncareful graves

They are uncareful graves
or we are bad neighbours
moving soil from our yard to his
covering the dropped fangs
glassy transparent
of a machine
heel-broke smashed open
in the dirt

They are uncareful graves
enough for an entire family
the soil exposed and wet
black spade slices drying into a day
where the clouds have fallen
to roost in the branches
and we are bad neighbours
who had the decency to bury our dead
but not enough to keep out the robbers
though we have guarded
this corpse for long years now
as it slowly crumbled

We are bad neighbours
the kind that take running starts
at the property line with a wheelbarrow
hopping in time with the broken axle
hoping to get over the curb
that pan the dirt with dirt-rimmed fingers
for coins nails buttons cogs
seeing what the turn of the shovel
a quick eye can reveal
like the chunks of stone
the not quite concrete
ideas
that we cart over to the bin
not wanting to provide your midnight
midday attackers
with missiles
to launch at its remaining windows

4 poems

So, 4 days of poems for you, now that I have returned to the city. Enjoy.

I will be shooting a film Thursday-Monday & may miss a day or more due to the work schedule, but if I do then I will be sure to make up whatever missed poems on Tuesday, right at month's end.

Nothing (May 24)

I will tell you nothing. Talk,
I will listen. Tell me

what you want. I will listen.
I will tell you nothing. Poets,

they speak only of themselves.
Listen. What am I saying.

I will tell you nothing. Tell me.
Where is the poetry

in this.

Cold (May 23)

Cold. If you are. Then. I will take you. To a colder place.

Lie down. Lie still. Listen.

There are words carved in the walls.

Listen.

There are words. Carved in the walls.

Listen. Lie still. Lie down.

To a colder place. I will take you. Then. If you are. Cold.

Still (May 22)

In the quietest night

after days
grown dreary with dust
in this age of the aged
hollow bus shelters
brittle bones
& old stories

I am the one
still

walking. These streets.

Among Roses (May 21)

Come to us, reach out your hand
Give it to us, let us draw blood

O we are the kindest of needles
Such small things, so barely worth fearing

We will bleed from you such small amounts
And so quiet, the softest of pain

O we are the sharpest of thorns
Made so pretty by our packaging

spring thwarted

a swarm of dandelion seeds
press up urgently
against the window screen
dying to get in

I don't have the heart
to tell them
they can't grow
on my green carpet

Remembering Irma Bañales from San Miguel de Allende

On Sundays we would buy
with pastel pesos
the sweet brown pastries
a big bulging white bag of them
and you would present them
to the spidery beggar women’s hands

greet their dark clay eyes
in front of the big pointy church
along the cobbled streets
on nearly invisible corners
in stone shaded doorways

beneath curtains of bougainvillea
handing each hand a pastel paper napkin
and smiling as you blessed each one
with the bread and sugar.
¡Buenos dios, madre!

In the crystal afternoon
after siesta the time would
come to walk down
past the fancy hotel
named for its arching doors

where we would afford drinks
on rare occasion
where the clever stream
gurgled like happy babies
out of sight bouncing
beyond the lush fragrant foliage

the whole extravagance
sculpted into the side of the hill
high above a dry mud field
where children kicked a dusty ball
we walked, you led

beyond the walls of Los Positos
beyond the secluded orchids
frail as butterfly wings swaying—
¡Buenos tardes!
we stepped

a graceful dance
down to the heart of town
where we would wait on moss green
painted iron benches
for the blackbirds descent

a reclaiming cloud exactly
at six o’clock refilling
the sheared jacaranda trees
with their feathered lullabies.
When we stopped by the cart

to sniff the air like hungry dogs
then point to the fat chicken
roasting happily with the others
glad to come up the hill with us
to the street you said meant mud flats

it was my weak northern ankle
that began to fail
just past the open-doored laundry
the sign said Lavandería, like the herb
and you
ever gracious

waved your magic hand
and made a taxi appear.
The hill’s steep angle
strained the poor old cab
as we rested our feet for a few blocks

before the thin white smoke
seeped from under the hood
growing fatter with
the bitter smell of machinery failing
our cue to hit the streets again

leaving a distressed driver with full
fare and handsome tip
for his apologies. Only later
as we washed the day’s
dust from our feet and set about
the task of setting the table

did we find missing
the fragrant chicken
no doubt easing the tale of misfortune
the taxi driver must tell his worried wife.

We could barely eat
our fruit salad
for the mouthfuls of laughter
falling like the fountain
in the tiled courtyard.

Buenos noche, mi amiga.

5-21-05

The twenty-second day of May (one day late)

The Writers Retreat: Arnes, MB (part the second)

On the beach at Arnes
there are fish carcasses and a dalmation
that sniffs at me with the dry nose
of a diplomat
and the rock-polished beaks
of the seagulls and crows
and pelicans on the barely-there stones
of the sandbars
glint
as I wade out
to where it is so shallow
I can see the fins and following
curves of swarming fish
and the sinuous surprise of them is wide
and delicate

The carp come and go
in water only a few shades
lighter darker
than their scales
as what was shadow now shows
fin ripple
and muscle
through sun-shot water
as I stand ankle-deep
twenty paces out
from the rock-pickers after the perfect
piece of clear quartz
and the purple moth that has
settled
on the cocooned balls
the larval curves
of my shed socks

The twenty-first day of May (two days late)

He insisted on planting a tree
for his first grandchild
in his wife's garden
and heaving the root ball into the hole
alone his wife
watching from the living room
window his legs bowing around the weight
panting knew this was as close
as he'd ever got
to birth

The tree flourished
the way the tumour in the brain
of the over-the-fence neighbour
flourished
and when the leaves
that reached impertinent for his sunlight
all the unfurling fingers
pointing at him
the anger of trespass
the overlooking overhanging
made him wrench off
a branch the way you might
wrench off
an arm

The next week his wife tsked
on the bedroom phone
he's sick! as she reported on
the rough edges of the torn thing
tossed over the fence
into her yard
but you know how your father is
he won't say anything
then went quiet
as their son described a schoolyard
incident
the hard edges of his son’s cast
and the sudden
anger
of boys
laughing a little
the wan light of the emergency
room the chorus of grunting
sighing sick
a few days off now

The next year he came out to find it
stripped
the winter-sick lips of deer
shredding the limbs bare
all for the glazed shoots
the goddamn
tenderness of leaves
springing from bud
after a long drifting winter
after that it was blight
and apples worm-eaten even
on the highest branches
and there were more phone calls
strange bruises
shadows under the eyes
his son less buoyant
as he described how they always got
to the front of the line
at emergency
as soon as
they saw his son’s
face

By year five it was clear:
the tree hadn’t staked out a domain
wouldn’t branch out into this sky
these breezes: it's sick she noted
every day for a month
and when she finally sent him out with the axe
he stood under the spindly branches
of the tree
that cast shadows over his kin
like the hanging trees at crossroads
but even so he dreaded
the bleeding seep
of the cut
his dread
raw
all of him listening for
the tones
of the long-distance
ring

The twentieth day of May (three days late)

She was a mulch-digger that believed
in orderly beds
a woman that wore crisp
denim shirts on cool days
and kept her white hair in a bob
and this was her territory:
when a squirrel wouldn’t stay away
from her birdfeeder
she uprooted it
turned the page in the catalogue
and planted things that drew
butterflies
instead
he was a pruner
that otherwise stayed out
of the garden
a man that semi-annually
grasped the telescoping arms of his tool
looking for the clean edges
of cut

She was familiar with the orderly disruption
of pest life cycles
she had a notebook full of dilutions applications doses
all in her careful hand
but when she came upon
her husband still
watching
a raccoon fish in her koi pond
swiping at the water brushing aside
her special order plants for the fish
they carefully sifted into tanks in the fall
so they wouldn’t freeze
the fish swarming the murky light
of the basement
all winter
she watched him watch
then grabbed a rake
and took
a swipe

So It Is

I need to try the zoo again
the place I spent so many days holding
the hand of the strong little girl
they called Peanut, connected

like two ends of a necklace encircling
whatever adventure we discovered. The free zoo
still holds the snake paths winding though
oak shaded buildings holding reptiles,

apes and other species,
our friends to visit like the wounded
bald eagle so young his white
head feathers had yet to grow. He

looked like some other bird, not
the symbol of national sovereignty
laid upon his shoulders. Peanut
would bring small red cloth bags

of tobacco and leave them one
at time under the landscaping,
gifts to honor him. Good day,
brother, she would say softly.

See how his shoulder hangs,
just off enough to see he could
never soar as intended. The bars
of his giant outdoor cage were so

fine so obviously designed to give
the illusion that he’s merely visiting too
rather than being restrained.
The details always made us sad

so we kept up a respectful dialogue
when we came to call. The sun
is warm today and we see you have
fresh water. It is a good day. Aho.

One time we brought along
Peanut’s dancing shawl lilac satin
with purple fringe and she wrapped it
round her tiny shoulders and bent

her knees in time to the drum dance
we made with our whisper singing.
Eagle turned to face us and bent his head
to let us know he heard the song and gave

thanks for the modest dance of a young girl.
One day downwind a small brown feather
and a white fluff of down blew to
the edge of the twisted path and

we picked them up. Walking back
to return them we asked instead to carry
them as connections and a light share
of the sadness born by the captive bird.

He told us even when it’s for
your own good, and that’s in doubt,
time spent behind bars feels bad. So
we kept those barely there fragile

earth toned filaments probably illegal
bits of that bird’s covering, like threads
from his regalia ornaments fallen
in the powwow arena, sacred feathers

that must be restored before
the dance can continue. When I think
of going back to the zoo after these
uncounted years without the small

hand of Peanut in mine, without the solid
grounding of a four-year old in love with earth
who saw the eagle as her brother and
me as her grandmother I know I’ll find

the now brilliant headed bird
and share his sorrow,
not for the confines of the cage
which he has now grown to know,

but the missing voice of the little one
who followed her parents’ drift
and is no longer here
to bounce the songs

with her strong legs and
clear little voice keening
lamenting the loss of family

or carry off more
of the feathers’ burdens
away. Still we did dance
for Eagle. Aho.

5-22-05

Small Top

Stapled to the edge of our seats
at the county fair's seedy circus
we chomp stale popcorn

discuss how drunk the clowns
have to get to come out
put on their sordid act

regard callously
the scarred lion tamer
reduced now to
taunting a 45-year old crocodile

the lame magician
performs his tricks
with no pride whatsoever
sighs with relief
when the dingy handkerchiefs
configure themselves as they're supposed to
though the main thing disappearing
is their once-bright colours

We critique the lack of subtlety
in the work of the sequin and latex-clad
stripper posing as a trapeze artist
there's no net
but I don't think she cares
falling would be a blessing
at this point
her eyes beg me to
shoot them all
every last one
degraded beast and human alike
put them out of their misery

On the way out, we inspect
closely the tattooed lady
bet on which one she's bedding
the gluttonous giant
or the parsimonious thin man
wonder silently to ourselves
what it takes for her
to remain in this life

If I were to complain to the hawker
fumbling for his smokes outside
He'd turn on me and shout
What the dickens did you expect
for three dollars?


----
(This is from this morning's Utne contest. The 10 words were:
seats glutton fair closely subtle whatsoever
dickens one inspect remain)

si))(((lens...

(...ringing in)
Hollow Form

even though love
has no rules
except
stop believing
only the possible
all i took today was
this vow of silence.....
.....................to see for
...................................myself
that view you've taken
(up to your eyeballs
rolling in their ashes)
that this world is all there is
for everything only
to be broken

like my mould,
for one,
or the world record for
persistent visions:
another

sorry

Hey all,

Sorry I've been absent without notice. I've been really busy the past two days but will be posting my missing poems soon.

A.