4.29.16

I've got some weekend words for you. I have actually been writing, and some inspiration was even taken (for other pieces) from some of the other works I've shared recently. Do you like a contextual analysis? I do, but I find it too simplistic. Maybe that is a bit elitist of me! Anyway, here's a poem.

4-27-16

I presume to speak for you

When I say we want to live on after death.

There are names marked deeply,

Scored to protect against time and weather,

Theirs are the claim to deeds and monuments.

Others hide in a passive voice

In a feathery hand, and

Maybe one does not survive.

A roll of names is a cemetery,

A minuscule footprint;

Not all are stirred there, not all are comfortable.

Perhaps one would touch the engravings

And follow the syllables with a finger

strike a small spark in the soul

Before pulling one's hand away.

4.27.16

This poem smacked me in the face with a theme I complain about a lot. Photography is amazing, and I am terrible at it, but the message our culture gives us right now is that our lives don't matter unless they are documented and shared (particularly via whatever brand of social media is selling you something). The word "curate" (Wow, I almost typed curare, Freudian slip!) is popping up everywhere. This blog probably gets fewer hits because there are no images. Images are huge to us, and what we charge them with doing. 

A Sunset

Ari Banias

I watch a woman take a photo
of a flowering tree with her phone.
A future where no one will look at it,
perpetual trembling which wasn’t
and isn’t. I have taken photos of a sunset.
In person, “wow” “beautiful”
but the picture can only be
as interesting as a word repeated until emptied.
I think I believe this.
Sunset the word holds more than a photo could.
Since it announces the sun then puts it away.
We went to the poppy preserve
where the poppies were few but generous clumps
of them grew right outside the fence
like a slightly cruel lesson.
I watched your face, just out of reach.
The flowers are diminished by the lens.
The woman tries and tries to make it right
bending her knees, tilting back.
I take a photo of a sunset, with flash.
I who think I have something
to learn from anything learned nothing from the streetlight
that shines obnoxiously into my bedroom.
This is my photo of a tree in bloom.
A thought unfolding
across somebody’s face.

4.20.16

I like the "kinds" of forever that the speaker attests to, and I like the idea that they can come to you rather than having to seek them constantly. I have been looking recently into the reasons other people write, and it seems that this hits some of the common ones (looking for sense, a desire to live forever or live on after death, experiencing art and beauty, and another thought that is not sticking in my head at the moment. You can decide which one is which). 

Some Kinds of Forever Visit You


Brenda Hillman


The unknowns are up early;
they browse through the bronze
porch bells. Crows
call & late
apples blaze
toward western emptiness.
In your illness,
the edges hesitate;
like the revolt
of workers, they
will take a while…



Here comes the fond
mild winter; other
realms are noisy
& unanimous. You tap
the screen & dream
while waiting; four
kinds of forever
visit you today:
something, nothing,
everything & art,
greater than you are
& of your making—

4.15.16

Happy Tax Day, and Friday, and I'm trying to be ahead of the game by getting a Weekend Words ready for you. I hadn't made one in forever, because the things I had written recently all suck (in my opinion) and I couldn't remember what older things I'd already shared. Clearly the logical response is to do nothing!

3-1-16

The hair is shaggy on the flanks of the deer

And they eat in the brambles at the side of the road

As if it were not a road,

And watch us lazily, as if we were not cars

There is no threat in springtime.

There is no threat from the gusts

That blow songbirds in each other’s paths

When they choose not to cling to limbs,

Or when rain plashes birds nest cups

To put spores on the wind.

The streams dabble up to you shoes

Ferrying a season’s ammunition

Over the falls--

…

3-10-16

I’ve been writing this over

Several roaring days,

Pulling the creased and fading paper out of pockets,

Making its edges sharpened

And then soft.

The sky cycles through its extremes

Lion-like, and present, and in control,

Leaving little slack between.

This is your spring!

Grow your daffodils in the mudslide,

Host easter in the late snows,

Mow your lawn in the downpour,

While loose blossoms

are pasted to wet windows.

This is your spring.

4.6.16

Still asking myself if I should keep doing this. Ok; poetry! Dorothea Lasky is a younger poet, I guess since age is relative I should clarify that she's young compared to our idea of poets as old guys. Here's something from her poetry.org bio that I liked: 'Known for her colloquial, even slangy style and dramatic readings, Lasky acknowledges that “there is a kind of arrogance, a kind of supreme power, that when infused with a little real humility and expertise, makes a poem. Because the poem is always about the speaker.” ' This is interesting to me, because I was always taught that you never assume the speaker is the poet. But yes, the thoughts and feelings and desires of the poem do come from the speaker. I also like the implied contrast of "expertise" and "power", where arrogance and humility are contrasted. I like these ideas, and miss the feeling of arrogance and power as a speaker (perhaps I had these things when I had no expertise by design. I still have no expertise though. Plot hole.)




There Is No Name Yet


Dorothea Lasky

Until I find a name
I will not put it in the soul calculator
I will leave it free and open and unnamed
And not limit my expectations for the kind of person
That goes in one direction of the wind
I will keep all lines of the wind open
And place all my days free and empty
And re-envision what it means to be unencumbered
Or bereft
Not crying but the expanse of numbers
That go beyond the grave to what is left
And it may be true
I said it could be true
That the sunny days do stick to walls
And then enter you
It may be true that the purple bells do chime
Everyday you let them
It may be true that the sweet juice
I put across my lips would not be my last
But that the nights could get better and better
Until the evil is banished until the day
When the sun would crush it anyway
It was true without a set of things like letters
It was true the air was free and open
And I saw things as they were
Without violence
For the first time




Lilac Field

To perform death is something only humans would do

No animal would sit there

With a blank look on its face

Just because the camera is there

No no an animal would look directly in it

Or cover its face, like the overweight

Woman in the picture in the magazine

By the room where I keep my bed

What people don’t understand about beauty

Is that after all it is not fleeting

After all it is so gross to be that way

That someone sees among you

After all, to call into question

I painted my lips, my eyes

Only our scholars know that

To perform is to be malleable

To perform in language

Or was it

The large purple insect I let in the room

Or was it the furred face — the hippo or the gorge

That I was the devil in the wood

In my own bones that I knew the face

That I took that face

Was it midnight blue sky

No, were my wings iridescent

Even in these lines

The voice moves you

What sense of exquisite cause

Thought

Moves you past these lines

Into conversation

With the undead

I don’t know

That is something

You will have to answer for yourself

I came back to this place to help you

And that I did

Shoot sparks of green and gray

Through time

What skin sack

I put myself  in

I mean for what, why,

Or who

Did I manage to do this for if not you

Lilaced thing

The soft rustle of  beetle wings

In air that is warm and gray

And is not strong

But there, is there to carry us past it