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