"Dune Flower" (a ghost sonnet)

"dune flower"

I was enticed: your dark and stylish eyes
amongst all that white, those brambles,
dollar weeds. Like the brazen sister of
the Black-Eyed Susans in my Grandmother's
front garden, you rage, even in the frame
of ocean blue and salty mother-air. Splinters,
prickers, sea-oats. To all these Southern Belles
you dance flamenco, a one-act filler play,
a jewel hushed-up. Your skirts spread around
the gaping black fuzz, truncated and fringed,
sinful pink-orange, and yellow. Each petal
seems a slice of fabric, a cut of fruit,
to be stitched up, to cover you, like so
much lace piled up over brown legs.

quatrains in trimeter.

These are also fresh, and strange:

"The Abbey"

Sweet white Elizabeth:
laid flat, bone-bare, regal,
in Westminster Abbey,
(on my street.) I'm tight-lipped,

swaying in the draft below
dizzy rose windows, scared,
feeling round as they, but
colorless. The sun shone

on me for the first time
in months. Flaring nostrils
and wet eyes, silent chanting:
let the bastard child

swing free from my unchaste,
unbloodied hips. give me
a box of shame, a chance.
i'll tell myself i carry

the christ child. And you'll tell
me, in no uncertain
terms, that i have sinned.
Oh, how I suffer for it.


"Afternoon at the Chemist"

Half drunk with fear, the scarf
comes sliding down my throat.
Burst in, scour, feel sick
in line. Ten pounds, I race

to my flat, around a
corner. You can't say, "I
gotta piss." here, I think.
Piss is drunk. I'm dying.

Five floors in the lift. Slow,
then ding, then running, teal
walls give way to pale yellow.
Five minutes, two lines. We're

safe, it tells me. I call,
you wake. It's eight a.m.
in The States. Hysterical,
I tell you all. Strangely,

you thank me for wanting
to know. You are too small,
child, to have one. You can't
live in the ebb and flow.

Even that has left you,
your own body saying
it's final "no." Lovie
eat your mash, and more.

The Body Sequence

These are a bit controversial. And I have literally written them in the last half-hour. So, here they are, rough and (not) ready:

"To my ribcage"

Ribs resting like fallow fields,
furrowed, dusty roads, silt-colored.
I know, you think I choose this,
but I don't. Eve stole the fruit
that I cannot eat. I do not know
why she turned from me
and said, starve this one,
so she doesn't bleed.
Make her body blind to the changing
moon, her mind deaf to the tide.
If she lives, it will be because
she wills it, in the end, (instead
of allowing the fields to fallow.)


"to my breasts"

not so round, peaked, tired
hungry for nothing and no one
hungers them. the kitten only
kneading at the sound of a tiny
motor, presses up close,
chooses you, milk white, pink
planets of slow growth.
a source of shame, a loss,
unknown, above the fields,
the plane, the crater, and on.


"to my pelvis"

french weeds lie low and tangled
with the ground, burnt, offered
as crumbling ash in wiry columns.
i want to know, why don't you
bloom like lovely wisteria?
why don't you tumble up a trellis,
or sigh, carrying your petaled heads
toward the sunshine?
lay low, you french weeds, under
a broken tree. indecent.


"to my thighs"

symbols of the eroding planet,
turning the color of dunes in mid-winter,
shrinking, rolling back, sucked under
a crumbling fence and nothing
of your once-high luster.
the houses will go under in tiny tides.
you don't notice the gentle wane,
the lack of breadth, the emptying
pant leg. the dunes don't choose
to shrink away. the dunes aren't angry.
only me, wishing they were more powerful,
wishing they looked "enough" to bear children.

more photos from the olden camera.

Photos from the Canon A-1: my first roll, room to grow.

"Stay Purdy"

an original, fresh from my mouth...

Audre Lorde!

A visit to Busboys and Poets yielded a new book and some inspiration...

adrienne rich

the first three of adrienne rich's 21 Love Poems

London Street Fashion.

One of the biggest things I miss about London, is the street fashion...
view photos by area of the city here.

"Dionysian Body"

spontaneously written a half-hour ago, if that...


















"Dionysian Body"

Milk-pale round balls of dough
in the half-light from the kitchen,
kneading and rolling them, the kitten
follows my fingers and necklace

swaying. The milk slides out into flushed
imprisoned sand, two dunes paired,
patched with dollar-weeds curled black,
as if by fire. Your calves bowing in

like the vase's neck, in the streetlight,
filtered through a white sheet
we hung as a curtain, and our cemented
hornbeam tree protecting us from bar-drifters.

communal creative energy!

ON THURSDAY NIGHT, I had the privilege to see two of my favorite bands (The Rosebuds, and The National) in concert together at The 9.30 Club in Washington, DC. A unique thing happened to me at this show, I fed off of the energy of the musicians so much so, that I began to spontaneously write poetry during their performance. And I was down front, literally, leaning against the stage with my notebook and pen, scribbling in the stage lights. This is a video of part of their performance below, and also a picture of what I wrote down (mirror-image encrypted)... The experience of a band's performance, I have often felt, is akin to a religious experience, or creative orgy in some way. Everyone is eerily shouting the same words, which they have practiced in their cars, bathrooms, or other intimate domestic spaces--pumping their fists, tapping their toes, nodding their heads in rhythm. And the band is leading the procession. And everyone is usually getting drunk, as well... So, I also had the thought bubble that the experience of a really profound live music performance must have been what a medieval Mead Hall felt like, plus armor and the imminent threat of death. But I will blog more about that on my (strictly!) academic blogsite: Intertextuality (http://thenameofthegameisintertextuality.umwblogs.org/).




...and here is a direct transcription of some of the poetry i began seeding at the concert...

"the cancer"

is spun fruit, tendrils spinning
a fine overflow of borders,
the aggressive webbing of seedlings,
misshapen and hungry
multiply and harden, metastasize,
grow up and give birth
in the time it takes to bat an eye
for you.

and i don't know the boy,
sweater vest, greek name, love
of answers and archeology,
but i nearly see
his fearful eyes, encircling center
like that of ink black
flowers, universe of ache,
the death-touch
assaulting his mother.


<>


walk off the stage
to let the thing play itself,
a tuning fork,
heart bursting.

<>


"Body"

i learned to count the bridges
down the Thames
like my own ribs:
spread fingers, running
out to sea.

a hand across my stomach
produces goose-flesh
like the pebbles
on Brighton beach.

wiry grass on white
chalk cliffs,
London my navel.

<>

In My Craft or Sullen Art

A bit of how I feel tonight is best expressed by the poet Dylan Thomas:


"In My Craft or Sullen Art"


In my craft or sullen art
Exercised in the still night
When only the moon rages
And the lovers lie abed
With all their griefs in their arms,
I labor by singing light
Not for ambition or bread
Or the strut and trade of charms
On the ivory stages
But for the common wages
Of their most secret heart.

Not for the proud man apart
From the raging moon I write
On these spindrift pages
Nor for the towering dead
With their nightingales and psalms
But for the lovers, their arms
Round the griefs of the ages,
Who pay no praise or wages
Nor heed my craft or art.

- Dylan Thomas, 1946

"A Swim in Co. Wicklow" by Derek Mahon

http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/42

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Mahon

cheers to having a notebook around all the time.

BACK TO SCHOOL, BACK TO SCHOOL! Which means that my life consists of having pen and paper in my holster nearly 100% of my waking hours. So, some inspiration struck between classes yesterday). So, here are the unvarnished results. I know that I always preface these with DRAFT! DRAFT! NOT THE FINAL PRODUCT! But truly, the crafting of poems takes time, energy, countless revisiting...but the energy, what I want to record, is in this first AHA!

Adrienne Rich says it beautifully:
"poetry can occur as a fierce, precarious charge in the imagination,
or an almost physical wave of desire[...]as something written down,
that remains, so regardless of circumstance
you can turn back to that fierce charge, that desire."



"White Whiskers"

I lift your rumpled, cast off
skin from the bamboo-inspired
rug, to put it on-- V-neck
with a hanging hem, hot-sauce stain
and fading smell of smoke and soap.

You're asleep already, so I feed
the cat and watch her lick
her pink-and-black nose, stroke paws,
and rub the tufts behind her ears.

We crack open a book of poems
I need to have read tomorrow,
and she curls, sighs
against the place where an ovary
hides inside my abdomen.

I can't fault you for sleeping.
It's not insensitive, or avoidant;
it's just the tremendous pause between breath,
the kind of quiet when you listen too close,
that maddens me, until I see
your rising chest, a beacon.

I think of him, knowing it tears
at you. Even in sleep, you turn
and grunt, stirring the pages
of a book, your bedfellow.

I see in white whiskers
sighing on your t-shirt sleeve,
white hair on the operating table.




"Growth"

Is it me, or this place
that has lost a bit of sanctity,
of joy? Crushed underfoot
in the teeming streets of faces
unfamiliar and younger than mine:
whatever it is that the sapling holds
in the moment of breaking forth,
can continue even on this uprooted tree.

The message has not found its way
to the top.

heritage. (my father's family)

metaphors springing up everywhere!

A FEW DAYS INTO CLASS, AND MY READINGS are already sending off streamers of ideas in every direction! This is what I love about school. A few interesting potential metaphors have popped up, which I will mention here. Also, expect some new original poem fragments, a reading or two, and a book review in the near future...

FIRST: The picture above is from the Père-Lachaise Cemetery, in Paris, which I have visited. I have even seen this tomb. But, what brought me to this image was a the love-story of Heloïse and Pierre Abélard, a Medieval philosopher, which my Classics professor glided over today. It has tragedy, scholarship, violence...the works. I am thinking of writing a voice-poem in the persona of Heloïse, or perhaps their son...stay tuned! The picture is of their tomb, or rather "memorial"...all comes full circle!

SECONDLY: I was reintroduced to the idea of a "palimpsest" manuscript...and am finding it more fascinating than ever. The OED has this to say:

Palimpsest:
A. n.
1. Paper, parchment, or other writing material designed to be reusable after any writing on it has been erased. Obs.
2. a. A parchment or other writing surface on which the original text has been effaced or partially erased, and then overwritten by another; a manuscript in which later writing has been superimposed on earlier (effaced) writing. Cf. sense B. 1.
b. In extended use: a thing likened to such a writing surface, esp. in having been reused or altered while still retaining traces of its earlier form; a multi-layered record.
3. A monumental brass plate turned and re-engraved on the reverse side. Cf. A. 2. Obs.
4. Physical Geogr. and Geol. A structure characterized by superimposed features produced at two or more distinct periods.

THIRDLY:
check this phrase, from an introduction to Beowulf:
hapax legomena-- what linguists call words recorded only once in a language. Beowulf = wordsmith.

<><><><>
Okay! Enough for now!

freed verse?

SO, SORRY, I KNOW...I haven't been here lately. Actually, in quite some time. I have photos to share, and poem(s)...I just got busy, and got down, and let worry knock me off my creative game. But, I'm back! My senior year of college starts TOMORROW...and I feel, well, incredibly out-of-place/ elated/ nervous/ giddy/ worried about it. It is much harder to adjust back to school, after a semester abroad, than I ever imagined (perhaps it is that my city of 12 million has shrunk back to a campus of 5,000?). Anyway, I will blog-o-generate a poem. Now. In real time. Just to bare my chest and tell my demons, ha! So here it goes: whatever I am thinking of now:


I bought a new notebook
of recycled paper
and left it
out, in the rain,
and thought about how the old
me would never do
that sort of thing.

I spent all night
writng my name on twenty-some-odd inside flaps,
and trying to recall the name
of the High Street that she was probably on
in the 1970's, leggy blonde,
in a new pair of Feragammo boots(!)

What a tiny tragedy
are the blurring blue lines,
and the untraceable thing
that goes with Oxford Circus,
like we were going to The Social
for a drink.

I never once shopped on High Street.

pictographic.

"Aftermath" by Claudia Emerson

"Aftermath" by Claudia Emerson

"Eurydice" by H.D.

Because one can never hear too much of H.D....one of her poems. Also, I apologize for (already) falling behind on my poem-a-day posts. Perhaps late summer was not the proper time to start this? Alas, I'm trying!