A haibun

...because a serious (?) form is still something I think the flowers need, I decided to try something a little different and yet something lyrical that might enhance the bouquet. I'm not sure if it is working; I was troubled trying to produce "a happening" in the prose part of the haibun. My reasoning for this poem is a non-happening is as much a happening as something is happening. (I sort of pilfered the title from a book review, not quite the same, but VERY similar).


Why I’m not a lilac


Every day my north-facing window is a barometer of time, an aging reflection; I drink earl grey while watching the state of the season out the kitchen window, this time spring, the yard in a phoney flux of puberty. I gaze through double-paned glass at the lilacs, a profession of limbs budded like cosmetic surgery, the potential of purpled parcels, the ruse of branches— each one so old and prim they barely bend with the wind, those lavender coiffed buns bound by brown stick-pins rapidly popping from bee-hived dos. The flowers are forms held wisely in place, no closer to opening than an eruption of lava from prairie earth. But appearances are deceptive— lilacs are the poster gals of decorum, have silently slept their way to the top, spent years rooted in affairs, apple-blossoming under eyes and bruised lives gossiped by sparrows and I, each bud a curiosity trained tightly on the yard



memory is pinch-
lipped, stiffens with age—
lilac-petals pulled

gulls

there are a hundred gulls
or a million -- we place bets
that will never pay --
the air saturated with sound,
voices thrown, impossible to count

we can hear only the gulls,
can only hear them:
the constant cheering
of a hometown crowd,
an unseen arena,
deep in the secrecy of the marsh

even hunched in wind and age
last year's grasses are tall gawkers
that fence off the game, rustling
brittle pennants above our heads

we can only imagine the plays --
the dives and saves, the taunts
and dekes -- as we watch the defeated
rounding slow, silent laps in the clouds

Slumber party

Slumber Party

Bouquets of peonies are overnighting
in my home, houseguests
in shades of pink-tipped white,
some sporting big winey heads.
Others are balls of pale innocence
hiding smears of red
in random places
like butcher’s children

unaware of what’s been cut.
Fragile balls of petals fluttering
in open windowed rooms,
the odd crowd overflows
from blue glass vases,
a small collection.
The yellow Fiesta pitcher
and one burgundy clay vessel
were pressed into service
for their spacious accommodations.

Canning jars
show linear
green stems
in still water,
vertical reminders
of the rootless state
my blooming friends
find themselves experiencing.

Tonight I can only
offer them another drink
and lie about the prognosis.

I won’t know their names
‘til I find books with their pictures –

too late I fear,
to share with my nodding quests—

all handsome
as Marie Antoinette
before that cake remark.

sleeping habits

i watch you poke at sleep
with your toe, then begin
a slow wade -- half an hour
later it only laps at your ankles

you're still, curled into a snail shell
but sleep gathers then recedes
according to the moon
through our window,
the currents of your mind

inching in, twitching each step,
it is a slow process --
swimming lessons for someone
who has known drowning

chest deep, the cusp
of sleep, you prepare to dive

your breath hardens, explodes
through your nose the way
it does when you laugh
with your mouth closed,
your belly kicks out

i used to ask you what was funny,
bringing you to the surface
every time, but now i wait
for you to finish paddling,
for the folds of your mind to loosen

soon your body forgets me,
my hand on your chest,
and sleep is so far over
your head you breathe dreams
and float

Anti-aging

I'm aging
ungracefully,
ungratefully.

Others claim
amazement
that I look so young,
a backhanded compliment
if ever I heard one.

But I know my
face more intimately.

That red spot
on my nose
is new
this year.
That little bump above my
right cheek
I expected to fade
never has.

I yank white hairs
unmercifully,
pretending it's a
manageable job,
though they have
moved from isolated
incidents to a crop
that grows more
plentiful each season.

The lines
beneath my eyes
multiply monthly
and I suppose
I should take solace
most of them are
born from laughter

but it hasn't helped
that I've spent
years squinting
trying to see things
farther away
than I was meant to.

But seriously,
how can I be expected
to accept the idea
of myself as sage-ing when
I still get zits
and crushes
and am
still taken
suprise by
my period?

I still hate fish
and black olives.
I still fear
the laughter
of teenage girls.

I still dream
of boys out of reach
and exams I'm late for.

I've never conquered
impatience or sitting still,
size six jeans
or the lack of desire
to have children.

I still lose myself
in romance novels
and prefer
19th century insights
to our own
post-modern angst.

But three fears I've overcome:
being alone
living without love
and missing out on
that which I was Meant to Do.

sigh. i have on-going computer issues at home. this is yesterday's poem. back to default settings. this still feels very drafty to me... i'm having issues with structure and transitions...


body search

we look one another over
for woodticks, check freckles,
poke moles to know
which flaws belong, are built
into the skin

at your temple i find one
white hair, the single poplar
in a stand of cedar and pine,
and show you mine --
spokes of a spider web
spreading over darkness

where eyes can't reach
we roam with fingers, feeling
for small worries
that crawl and root

i follow the brook of your spine
with my hands, trace a rivulet
of sweat and discover
a shallow basin that receives
my fingers, boots in creekmud

we put away the matches
but keep up the search with lips

on the back of your neck
i come across my own handwriting,
tinged with woodsmoke, the pages
i gave you from my notebook,
words that got the fire going

I know better than to watch the news,
wrapped in the quilted distance
between where I sit
and where roadside hells
explode sitting soldiers into bits –

primetime statistics, thrown
through satellite waves –

or whatever communication
miracle brings this crap

packaged between commercials
for local car dealerships
and fast foods’ latest offering
of some manly feast on a bun,
too slick not to swallow,
right before the weather and sports.

I know better than to sit and hear
the numbers dead, casualties –
somehow ours more
than those not in uniform –

thumping against my quilted chest,
soft and silent as bodies of dead robins
thrown at my body
for no apparent reason.

Improvements

While you are not here, I improve
the house. I hang pictures, I fix
the creaky door's creak, I manage
to install a garbage disposal. Our bed: new sheets.
The living room: new lamps, a series of
shadowboxes which hold many
meaningful photographs featuring people
who love us and are loved. The upstairs
bathroom: shelves and a mirror,
which reflects my harried hair
and my lonely eyes. I cut the lawn, I weed
the garden, I plant ten begonias down
the side of the house. I pull up the carpet
in the basement. On Friday
I move all the furniture around,
in the hopes that it will stop reminding me
that you are not here to use it.

You will not recognise things when
you return, you will be amazed, you will
see with new eyes all the places
you took for granted and realise how much
you missed them, how beautiful they are
now, how much you want to know them
again. You will love it.

Stutter

Some days all you can do is put the rice on,
trust the rest will come, lace your running shoes
just twenty minutes, just. Push yourself through
with a stopwatch. Some days you’ll coax
fear out the window with nothing but a wooden spoon
and some honey, the wasp slow to take
and you wanting to hit it as hard as you can
to stop the live radio feed in your head--
the voice that says I’ve lost a few pounds,
my pants fit again, that’s something,
but the next cheque’s already spent, can’t
even brown bag it on my front porch, every penny’s flipped,
job boards the new pack-a-day habit–-
your arm swings back, your face twists,
but something in you asks to be merciful.
So it continues.
The wasp stutters against the glass.

I'm retiring

from couplets for awhile. Actually, I simply tire of them. I will think of some other form in which to place my bouquet.



Pick and Gogh


The sunflower is a victim
of her own success—

shades of the girl next door,
once good looks and sunny

dispositions preserved her
role in the spotlight.

Now she’s clichéd,
the wasted model in mass

produced t-shirts and towels
a multiple personality—

the sunflower scrabbles through days
turgid in suburban portraits,

loses sight of the path, movement
of the sun. Follows instead

plots sown, unseeded in the core
of her being, beliefs shed

black-eyed weathering, the future
pecked clean by posturing.

one of my goals with this mayday project was to use the opportunity to experiment, but i've been finding myself sticking to my same old, mouldy habits. (with the pressure of a poem a day, i've been reverting to doing what i know and am comfy with.) today i'm trying out a found poem (never done this before... not even sure how to do this) because i just couldn't resist the gems contained within the preface to my thesaurus, circa 1962, which i borrowed from my Dad when I was writing a high school essay and never returned. here i've edited down some the selling features -- removed only context and a few words here and there. is that what a found poem is?

what this book can do for you

it offers you immediate,
practical and invaluable assistance
whenever you are in trouble
with a few quick synonyms
for a word you have been over using

you feel that your language lacks
freshness or vigor, your ideas
drab, weak, vague or overly general

laboring over phraseology,
you desperately search
the recesses of your own mind
before you start
tracking down a word,
one particular word
that will most successfully convey
the subtle shading of emotion
you wish to get across to him

Creature Comforts

Sump pump serenades me
like a fat cat, purring
in the basement, all slurpy
with the water seeping in
the cracks,

such fragile foundations,
moist hairlines seeping,
keeping the spring soup soil
outside the place,
keeping us dry and content

aware of how important
a roof over our head
really is,

no matter
how flowers quiver
in the skywatering or
splay their luscious leaves
heavy against grass
gorging in the dark,

all the rooty things
sucking up the wet
catching what they can
letting only ribbons
of irregular rain
run past, percolating

through saturated soil,
ribbons of river
thin as mouse tails
enter and triggers the purring,
the float in the bucket
a worn toy, bobbing.

fence lines

The bison huffs all dark woolly head
hump and hindquarters
then lowers himself into the ditch
its banks of spring gumbo funk already hoof-split
already baked hard

The bison locks his thin front legs
considers the sun-shot wings of mites
the foot-waggling wallow of a cow
her dark mufflers and trailing streamers of winter fur
upheaving
cloven hooves up and down
the dry mud lifting and clouding around her

The bison dips his chin
into reflections of last year
sucks and strains green bleached blonde
garrump gone to spawn
lifts it streaming to the calf
all pulled caramel all legs and on pointe hops
takes his biting attendants his airspace of geese growl
and gull scream of overhead airplane
and peripheral auto drone
and moves off

Hands

Blind shackled creatures we so often ball, fist,
harnessed to our daily tasks,
they’re the poster child for repetitive stress,

all that verbing. Sensitivity burnt off their tips;
testing the bath water
always gives an inaccurate reading. Better to use

the ankles, elbows, or wrists. And yet when it rains,
our first gesture is to hold
them up to be pin-pricked. So rarely do we lay them flat,

praise their ability to touch. Lifelines cracked with dry skin,
every tool they grasp
is only an extension of the hand, a poor copy.


----
I'm strugggling with this one. I thought putting it in a pretty form
(aka Stephen Dunn) would help, but I'm not sure. Is it too "poetic"?
Am I a prisoner to sound? Is something missing? Do I need to explode it
and write more before tightening again? Thoughts?

Dandy Lions

Inspired by Tracy's meditation on dandelions the other day.

We grasp
yellowing stalks
and blow
our wishes
sky high

content to
pay the price
for this cosmic lottery
later
when our wishes become weeds
to be cursed, despised
and destroyed

divine retribution
perverse, unfair
for have we not waited
to yank these ghostly
genies from
the living ground
until they are
giving their
dying gasps?

have we not
helped them
fulfill their
botanic genetic destiny?

Behind in everything from bills to dishes,
plants still sitting in their plastic trays
losing patience with me as I say,
Not today, but soon. They know I lie.

I am becoming one of those people
who will have to make up stories
to entertain the creditors, to get them
to offer quick pay by phone, the easy way

to get their money, which I have, and
me to get some sleep, which is becoming
more and more a test of tossing
without waking my loved one,

who does not guess how the bank balance
is a poor reflection of how I tend
the family finances when I am absorbed
with every other detail I concoct.

The plants are lucky there is rain,
but other chores need attention
before the whole thing gets out of hand.

synthesis? or just a new word for cowardice

taurus terror
autre hauteur

|workplace bullies|
it said on the tv screen
with closed captioning
in the learning commons

abilitybelittled
bullyidiot

this unquantifiable effect.
micro-objectified

embattlement
with a side of belittlement (as in beef)
where the marginalized
by the wrongly strong
belong.

who's the flawedlogical bully
who's the idiot whose deeds are
at the behest of the beast

are glimpses of the human inside
enough to keep playing along?

you can't beat the vestigial salvajuices
out of the postmasochristic idiot
raised as he was
by offending commands

agency pairs with patiency
courtesy of
|Polarity, Dialectic & Organicity|

bullyidiot
abilitybelittled

mcgillivray falls

this afternoon we drank water
from bottles, ate apples
cleaned on our sleeves and
tracked an eagle
along a creekbed as it stitched
trees to trees either side
of the narrow stream

we paused to watch the water
fall away -- constant froth
like thick new moss
on the rock -- and lost our way
of telling the white head
and tail from the pale poplars

we were the first to leave
our fingerprints, this season,
on the fine branches
that crowd the path,
the trail littered --
used spruce needles, cedar
scraps, crumpled pages of birch

miles from monday, hours
from a calendar,
we could have believed
in being remote,
but the far off trucks
on the highway were flies
that don't bite, just insist
on your ears

Road Work

Ringside, I watch as dump trucks lumber
up my street, avalanche dirt
from their humped backs. Workers
emerge from underground bunkers,
in their reflective orange spacesuits,
to lunch in the loose gravel, juggle
coffee cups and wrappers into the gutter.
Traffic re-directed through a slalom
of orange pylons and signs No stopping,
Detour, sewer pipes’ cement lengths
lie shrink-wrapped and bundled
on the sidewalk. Dormant. Walking home
I pass giant eggcups, mixers, remnants
of the day’s work crusting the edges, spare sets
of backhoes’ teeth, sawdust and fresh stumps.
The choked bark of each remaining oak.
Wonder what roots are left among
the labyrinth of pipes and cement,
where I once thought, foolishly,
there was solid earth.

3 Cinquains and another Somethin'

Hrm, been having Blogger issues, but here are some recent efforts:


3 Cinquains

Bed
soft ours
holding joining forgetting
we aren't supposed to
Rewind


Icecream
sweet luxury
dip lick consume
in my forbidden pleasure
Sugar


Bike
forlorn abandoned
standing waiting forgiving
rain caresses dirty wheels
Rust

=========================
And from Sunday...


Editing
that which will not be edited
History
all that has passed
Story
what is to come
Cutting
that which is irrelevant
Pasting
together things that were
never supposed to touch
Compressing
years into minutes
Images
what never was and never will be
Yet
through the power of
Creation
Is