PBR Denver: the Poets Beyond Reason

Some damn text from Raja

2011-12-09T18:36:00.001-08:00

So much deep
Ends up
On the red
Wheel bar
Ow!

Glaze Ed
With rain
What?
Er...

B side:
The white chick
Ends

Push Birth Seizure-edited

2010-05-07T18:27:00.000-07:00

Before the seizure,
he sees a light around people
the way I did
when I leaned forward
to push him away from my body
twenty-two years ago. This time
it is he who leans forward,
remembering somewhere
deep in the impenetrable
darkness I can’t enter,
that he could break my back
with his strength, the hard weight
of his body, if he were to fall
fully onto me.

So we dance a kind of
birthing together:
push and lean, push and lean
until we are bound together,
this time without benefit
of life-sustaining cord. We fall
through the slow, patient air
that seems merciful, as though
it is a parable of love,
only with cold
instructions first.

I am a quick study: I cup my hands
under his head as
he bangs it against the flagstone
floor. My hands are bruised,
pummeled, but he would crack
his head otherwise so I don’t feel
any pain as I push-pull,
and wish I had strength
enough to slit open heaven’s
belly to bring him breath.

I don’t cry because I never
do with pain. No one can convince me
that pain and hell go together.
There is no pain in hell,
only measureless time
that you must bargain for.
Here, now, when his skin
is no longer blue,
and his eyes are lupine
silk, I pull him up and I hold him
and then there is heaven:
the beloved in my arms.

Now the air sings its
parables again and I remember,
there was never pain, never hell
only pearls that fell and were lost,
then found and saved.

SHIVERBUSH JONES

2010-05-06T14:04:00.001-07:00

This life teases out of you an incongruous song
made of stair steps and questions and flipping of birds.
But the world sings you back to you in thousands of tongues.

The throwing of bowling balls and the spanking of gongs,
the tripping of triplets and the ripping of shirts--
they’re all just a part of your incomplete song.

Vibrations recycle before very long.
And even the thud of your feet in the dirt
the world will sing back to you in thousands of tongues.

The air that you squeeze out of overused lungs.
The cries and the barks and the purrs and the words.
It’s all just a part of your world-wooing song.

We are never alone so much as among.
Each gesture we make this planet records.
And this world sings you back to you in thousands of tongues.

Love itself is fine, as are lust and longing.
And there will come a happy answer from some exotic bird.
When you step outside and engender your songs,
the world sings you back to you in thousands of tongues.

JD Frey — April 15, 2010
JDIEGOFREY@GMAIL.COM

MY BLIND DATE WITH THE WOLFWOMAN

2010-04-27T19:48:00.000-07:00

This room this glass this bed this wine,
this song of lives lived well and rested,
that look that passed between us when
I discovered you were hairy-chested.

The air was thick with lupine lust
a wave that quickly crested.
Dense fur sprang from your hands and bust
and from the snout that manifested.

Full moon through dusty keyhole white
across rare steaks we had requested
and how you fanged them with delight
while I stood back as you'd suggested.

I've thought of you only since that sharp night in bed.
Your lovemaking nip left me single-breasted.
A lunar month later, this scar throbs on my chest
and the thrill that it gives me still fills me with dread
now that the taste of my flesh has been tested.

JD Frey

Separate

2010-03-11T11:09:00.000-08:00

From my window, Chicago is a clove of garlic
On an eggplant lake too deep to ford.
You chopped peppers, carrots,
Leaves Romaine, tomatoes on a cutting board.
You asked me to separate a yolk from its white
And I knew I could do it
Because keeping things separate
Gives me no trouble.
So I proved it to you,
Standing at the sink,
Sliding the sun from one half of the sky
To the other
While thin and ropy clouds
Oozed to earth.

Here, I hold it.
I have isolated this burning thing,
This bird‐to‐be,
What now, what will we
Do with it?
From a cabinet,
You pulled vinegar and olive oil
And lemon juice and honey,
And you told me to make dressing.
So I took a fork and popped the tender bird;
I whipped it into froth, and, further,
Poured it on the salad.

Let us share this humble meal –
We, fierce advocates of health.
Let us take these simple steps
To responsibly dine sensibly
To align ourselves so perfectly with earth,
Her crunchy bounty.
Let us raise a fork, a lettuce leaf,
Let us both agree on everything,
Specifically, that yellow yolk
That gives our meal its extra texture:
It really binds it all together.
Once it’s in, we can’t extract it
Can’t take back; we can’t unhatch it.

If asked again,
I might have rather kept it separate.

I didn’t say but might have said
Your healthy salad was a bore
My body craved but mind abhorred
Because I’d rather you just touch me
But we’re talking about salad, now,
We’re talking about making healthy choices
Which is separate from the voice in my head
Not yours but nevertheless course and rough
Saying “you’re not what he wants;
You’re not pretty enough.”
See? A clip, a snip, some rhetoric
And I’m a parsnip on your board
Chopped up in mixed metaphor.

Not so secretly,
Nor, in the end, separately,
I will head home hungry.
I, who am so fond of flying,
So fond of spying on the earth from my window in the sky,
Will shell Midwestern cities like peas –
Davenport, Moline, and Muscatine.
I’ll fight my way through this final leg,
Mourning my bird,
Eating your egg,
And Omaha and Council Bluffs
And Kearney where they searched my car
Will race like oil on a tongue,
Like dressing from a bottle poured,
Until at last, at length, I’ll land
Just two hours from Cheyenne
And two thousand miles from your cutting board.
We’ll retreat into our private bubbles
Because keeping things separate
Gives us no trouble.

VOX POPULOTOMATUS

2009-09-09T13:48:00.001-07:00

VOX POPULOTOMATUS

When I think of what this town has become
it inevitably tears me a new one.
What used to be forests of dogwood and plum—
when I think about what this town has become—
is now painted squares that spell e unibus plurum.
(Makes me wish for a taco-sized aspirin to chew on.)

When I think about what this town has become,
it inevitably tears me a new one.

JD Frey – September 9, 2009

Hikes, Hailstorms

2009-06-23T19:25:00.000-07:00

Almost the end of June and we (me, my husband & son, Aaron) watched a wicked lightning storm last night from our front porch. Every piece of sky was changing from twilight shades of white to impenetrable black, minute by minute, and simultaneously ripped by jagged yellow electric needle-thin lines. We huddled together in awe and were startled by silly things like a poor, lost poodle who scurried up our stairs and trembled next to my ankles. Her white fox-like face emerged from the torrents of rain like a strange animal spirit and we scooped her up and kept her warm and dry in the house until the storm had passed. Aaron gathered up pieces of the inevitable hailstones like he was a boy again and placed them in the freezer side-by-side and there they sat like stoic, crooked marbles. I mourned the fact that the hail was probably decimating the tender columbines and pink wild roses, but I can't be so greedy. I have had a long spring season of them and when I searched for them today, they were still there, as sturdy as ever. In fact, poppies had sprung up around them. It was as if the chilly hail and heavy rain had unearthed them all from lazy sleep.

On Sunday, we hiked up in the park to Cub Lake. A swift five miles. Color everywhere and delightful showings like fat coyotes and marmots, mallards and one cornflower-blue bird perched on a post. Golden banner dominated the wildflowers until of course we reached the lake and then the long, wavy stems of the giant yellow pond lilies hypnotized us, the lake so clear and a dreamy green. The lilies floated independent from their pads, light spirits all.

Graceland

2009-03-04T14:27:00.000-08:00

Last leaves linger on black fingered trees
lacing the crackled blue sky.
The waiting has begun.
Miss Thalia and her sisters,
at the beer since morning,
laze about languorously, expect
nothing.
Grampa, who helped
his own poppa plant those naked maples,
paints emptied shells for the future,
while mother fusses with her quilts again,
still. Everything so still.

Old Carl (way up there on the right, through the branches)
looks up from his fields,
listens as silence accumulates.

Only Aglaia the younger and her beau are unaware—
lost they are in a moment
of each other, entwined, they grow together.
Her mother only smiles.

There are other towns, other skies
across the mountains,
where the river Cephissus flows,
the dogs begin to howl
and crows rise on the wind.
Ceres’ harvest is done,
night approaches.
It is time
to bring the quilts inside
and dance a slow tango
making the beds.

Stoke warm fire beneath
the eternal soup, blood
red with beets, smoke-savory
herbs nearly burned in butter,
scrap-full stock
hissing silently in
fragrant welcome.

They’ll be back,
the children and the animals,
birds will sing again.
Tonight we have some
of Grampa’s old plum wine
and stories of ancient days
to keep us company.
History’s in the wind.

The dance of Euphrosyne,
off-stage, left, makes
Aphrodite smile, invites
another spring.

BLIND DATE WITH THE WOLFWOMAN

2009-03-04T14:17:00.000-08:00

This room this glass this bed this wine,

this song of lives lived well and rested,

that look that passed between us when

I discovered you were hairy-chested.

The air was thick with lupine lust

a wave that quickly crested.

Dense fur sprang from your hands and bust

and from the snout that manifested.

Full moon through dusty keyhole white

across rare steaks we had requested

and how you fanged them with delight

while I stood back as you'd suggested.

I've thought of you only since that sharp night in bed.

Your lovemaking nip left me single-breasted.

A lunar month later, this scar throbs on my chest

and the thrill that it gives me still fills me with dread

now that the taste of my flesh has been tested.

J Diego Frey

Footsteps

2008-12-16T13:07:00.001-08:00

Ms. Buddha’s coming
her silent rampage
of forgiveness and
tearful smiles contemplate
cookies and sin
not attending to
black crow that tears
space with pierced voice
meadowlark announces
just here and right now
I am the body hyperspace
unvoiced words reach for
you for your terminal
and your fingers and eyes
coffee revs my heart
to sing reach grasp hope
love songs to the impossible
world lit from
a universe on fire
cold and immense
inside a singular point
not dark but without
light as feathers

Poetry Is Like...

2008-12-16T10:23:00.000-08:00

Anyone want to match the poet with the statement of poetics?

POETRY IS...

"...a partially descended testicle, embarassment, anticipation and life, all in one crouched form."

"...a big scratchy silver table and then and then jeni read and there was pizza and then JD said stuff and I got to stay up late and when I got in bed I tied the red balloon to the bed post."

"...that deja vu where I'm holding a pen but it's really a wishbone, and all I have to do is decide which verse of the world to write down, which stanza of the mind to salvage."

"...clouds of locusts licking the wind until it turns blue, the sand frozen in sea mist."

"...Lydia at four, when all things are not only possible but probable - and prime numbers have nothing and everything to do...with everything else - when stars are henry in eyes of hazel and words and phrases of cheekbones and grins and chuckles."

"...being dropped onto a charred prairie looking for love like hunger, like water, like a camel whose hump has hollowed out, and then poetry is the mirage of coming home."

Fields Marked By An Asterisk Are Required

2008-10-21T11:37:00.000-07:00

An absolution of indifference, perched top-heavy
atop the sunken confines of a styrofoam cup.

Speak or not, breathe or not, parry the words
on the page with keen discernment, or not.

*What do you use to carry the anvil of
choice, and its furthering implications?

The flimsy whim fabric of choosing, woven.
The wind that moves breathlessly

through fall fields full of dusk and miracle
light. Sawdust leaves that collapse, cranky,

red-faced, nap blanket, dreaming in prose.

freewrite

2008-10-20T11:36:00.000-07:00

the wind does not need the grass to answer

any more than it needs me
to love the accidental sound
it makes by passing an open window
or its amphibian skirmish across the mouth
of a hollow glass jar

it does not need me balancing
its dry winter beheading of trees
with its lesser signs, the second sources:
little creature bones scattered among the bayonette
still so elegant
and then while I sleep
wind disappears
abeyance so complete
I beg it back
even its vapid form better
than nothing

-Barbara S.

Garvin Mesa

2008-10-17T15:42:00.000-07:00

The wind does not require the grass
to answer, but the question is always there
and gone, then back again, persistent,
ruffling blades like hair with an open palm,
posing queries of the daybreak
while the skylark tries to echo him,
asking us awake into the morning.

In the darkness of dawn in the valley
the coal train sings and everyone
listens and responds in kind:
the cicadas lost in tall forests of grass,
thrumming like starting motos;
the cows lowing in nearby fields
wet with cool dew; the odd rooster
at his post, shrill steward of the sun—
every throat as open as an unanswered
question, every sound as full
of asking as the wind.

Emily's Love

2008-10-15T07:21:00.000-07:00

The wind does not require the grass,
He has loftier goals,
destinations unknown,
an ocean of air confronts
always itself, wrapped
around the world
with no expiration date
sipping up moisture along the way,
waters fields and junkyards, clouds
perception then suddenly clears
to reveal itself behind the mirror
where mountains accumulate,
stars gain energy and the life
of creation is still as the wind
never is, even on still sunlit afternoons
when birdsong stops, butterflies
close their wings, the gray stripped cat
stares uncomprehending
a mote without motion, silence rules
and this chapter’s done.
The gentlest breeze turns the page,
the grass moves, though She does not
require the wind.

some of us

2008-10-14T20:48:00.000-07:00

MEANWHILE THE MONKEYS

2008-08-14T07:28:00.001-07:00

Meanwhile the monkeys

Dropping

into our garden

like commandoes

Threaten

with memories of the time

we showed

up without pants

They pound

on the tabletops

until

banana cream pie is produced

Monkey see Mountain Dew

Screeches worse

than Niebelungen

Toaster, cat, bowls

and bottles

in a frozen

arc

of juggled

They come right at us,

teeth bared

like dobermans

Monkey say we people around

Laughing

at my minivan

Amazed by my bad

gas mileage

and this need

to carry around

more than one

good ant-collecting stick

They will

not even look

at the collection of clever bumper stickers

JD Frey -- August 12, 2008

PBR night in review: monkeys, rainstorms, yellow jackets and charles wright

2008-08-13T09:37:00.000-07:00

Charles Wright, from Scar Tissue
"Our lives, it seems, are a memory
we had once in another place.
Or are they its metaphor?
The trees, if trees they are, seem the same,
and the creeks do.
The sunlight blurts its lucidity in the same way,
And the clouds, if clouds they really are,
still follow us,
One after one, as they did in the old sky, in the old place."

A sampling of Charles Wright poetry from the Poetry Foundation.
Mark Strand and Chuck Wright reading at the Library of Congress.

TOP FIVE Monkey titles this week:
All's Quiet on the Western Monkey
For Whom the Monkey Tolls
Honey, I Shrunk the Monkey
Monkeybusters
20,000 Leagues Under the Monkey

The Dogs Ate My Biscuits

2008-08-12T11:35:00.001-07:00

Just a while ago now the monkeys
ate all the porridge so we’ll have to go
to storage to find something funky
to eat. In the eternal meantime
the monkeys are all frisky,
and leaving them alone
is bound to be risky, but I suspect
it’ll all turn out fine
as long as we don’t bother to much
about the monkeys, just focus
on our own internal flunkies,
try to gain satori
before your mother finds out.
In the morning I’ll slip away
ever so quickly
before the sun does its tricks
and the monkeys come out
to play.

peanut butter orange blossom cookies

2008-08-12T11:15:00.000-07:00

Wanted to post this recipe for an unbelievably divine cookie - peanut butter orange blossom! I am in love-love-love with this blog, 101cookbooks.com, and have been looking for an excuse to imitate an orange blossom cookie I tried at the Pearl Street Farmer's Market nearly three years ago, so when this recipe popped up a few weeks ago, I dove right in. For a while, I thought that "orange blossom" was some magical spice I couldn't get my hands on, but after some digging I found that people generally just add some zest and juice to their recipe.

Here's the recipe for Heidi's Peanut Butter Cookies - to "Orange Blossom" em up, I just added the zest and half the juice of an orange in the last step (these are vegan and easily made gluten-free too, if needed). On the right, photo of the cookies enjoyed at the PBR session at Ginny's.

Ships Passing

2008-08-08T06:46:00.000-07:00

We navigate along,
the way ahead seeming
longer than the one
behind. We don’t mind
the wind, the choppy
waters. We’re martyrs
of the sea’s breadth. Its depth
is no threat for us who float.
When we pass we wave,
drop anchor for the night,
bump up against
each other’s hulls till light
comes, then pull up
again, and sail away.
Our mast lights signal harbor,
keep the distance at bay.

Poets Beyond Reason Reading at the D-Note

2008-04-29T11:43:00.000-07:00

Watch's Face

2008-02-14T15:25:00.000-08:00

with thanks to Mina Loy

Whose eyes blur
face time in whirling circles.
Needle-thin minutes

spin, cingular rings
round cohesive anatomy
of disconnected seconds.

Sects of breath reject
each other’s rich witchcraft,
Watching for the errors
their era will aver—

Speak, spoken, spoken to,
broken arcs of time’s
miscellany and moments
of madness

Who regresses sits
atop the apex, amid
lucent truths and silken sex.
Again the circle arcs and peaks,
the needle’s gap lapsed—
again the stolen epoch reached.

A Hallucination While Traveling

2008-01-12T23:29:00.000-08:00

A Friday, I think, in Thailand. Somewhere along a three-day journey beginning on a tropical island and ending at my apartment in Denver (empty and overheated, a bursting peach in the dry snow), time blurs and then disappears. 3 pm Sunday will be 5 am Monday, which is like 8 am Friday equaling 6 pm Thursday, and so on.

At a bus depot in Central Thailand we give green ticket stubs, retrieve green ticket stubs, give them again for good, and are then asked for them repeatedly. We are stickered with a neon orange square that must be worn visibly on the shirtfront, stickered next with a fuschia square - fuschia for Bangkok on Fridays, I guess. An eight year-old boy wheels around the driveway on a Batman bike, trying to impress my brother and the other weary, ripe, sun-worn and beach-weathered tourists from Australia, England, Germany, Holland, France, Canada, America. He rides by with no hands, teeth flashing, his eyelids flipped inside out.

Four hours ago it was afternoon, and the bus depot in Krabi was sweltering, overcrowded, and filthy. Colleen couldn't understand the refuse cluttering the edges of everything - water bottles, candy wrappers, plastic cups and napkins, toilet paper, ticket stubs, square stickers in acid dream shades, junk, garbage, waste. "Depots are always like this," I told her. "Any place where people come and then go, where people don't stay, looks like this." A thin, bony, blondish girl in oversized sunglasses leaned forward from her plastic chair and vomited what looked like kinked yellow noodles at her feet. Thirty minutes after she and her hungover friends were ferried away in the back of a truck, a Thai man sat in the same chair, clipping his fingernails, crescents of which flicked from his clippers into the pile of noodles.

There are dogs. Dogs with fleas, with scars, with gigantic testicles, "showing their lipstick" as one of the girls from Brighton put it, dogs with teats swinging below them, long, impossibly stretched dog tits, dogs trotting, stretching, sleeping, rolling, running, nosing, whining, and scratching, scratching, scratching. You can tell the tourists from the travelers because the tourists sit and scratch the dogs between the ears or pet their matted fur. The travelers sneer, disgusted, and slap mosquitoes with mirthless economy.

On the bus again, I am woken from sleep, probably by the churning of my own mind. After night falls, the squirrels in the works become horses running thunder, and the mental turbines crank out the poisonous product of relentless self-obsession, the agony of a skewed self-awareness, fractals upon fractals of a faulty self, an untidy, unattractive, unsavory, and unsaved self. Over the course of two weeks I have worried that wound like a frayed seam, biting thread after thread as the hem unravels. I worry it still; it requires all my attention, until suddenly my sister stretches her leg forward across the seat of the chair next to me - a seat with the back broken and therefore removed - and rests her foot so that it lightly touches my thigh. The transference is quick; in an instant I am prepared to hitch all of the hate aimed at a fat girl onto the smooth, warm, amphibious curve of a pedicured foot. A pellet of reason within me pipes up against all odds and asks her, nicely, squeaking with niceties, to please move her foot a little to the right so it will not rest on me. Magically, she obliges - and survives.

Later, in the dark, I hear that same sister sniff, and I know without turning that she is rigid against the window in the dark, silently sobbing. An hour later we wait for our bus connection at a terminal, and I ask my mom if Ryan cries for her not-so-nice-after-all ex-boyfriend, though I know well that she could have been crying for the great loss of youth, of innocence, for poverty, for beauty and sorrow and their tiny tangerine dance, for the pink polyester curtains swagged from row to row along the length of the pastel party bus. My mother replies that Ryan was crying for our father, who had died one year before.

That makes me think of our last night on the island, of how we stood in a circle, of how the air was nudged by the gentle lapping of the Andaman Sea. It makes me think of the orchids, the ashes, the ocean, the flame, the pathetic attempt at ceremony, the terrible trial of keeping my mouth shut so as not to hurt others' feelings. It makes me think of how my sister, terrified it would be mistaken for drugs and confiscated, insisted on transporting a tiny portion of my father's ashes halfway around the world in a Burt's Beeswax lip balm tin the size of a quarter. I recall how the ashes ground against each other between the two pieces of metal, sticking them fast so that the tin would not open when it was finally time. I ground my teeth in time with the ash, daring myself to laugh or scream, waiting for the inevitable explosion, some raw impropriety. My mother passed an orchid to each of us, and I observed with clinical surprise that I did not crush it when I took it from her.

In the end the tin was opened and did not explode, and Colleen just reached in and pinched my father between finger and thumb, sprinkling him into her flower. We stared at the actions of the youngest among us, too scared to admit that we didn't have a better idea. I wanted to mention the bones; I wanted to make a joke and describe out loud the rough coarseness, the frank chunkiness of the "ash," but in the end I said nothing. My father was sprinkled into my orchid too, and I walked to the water, muttering apologies under my breath.

"I'm sorry we're doing this; I know how much you would have hated it."

When I put my flower in the water, the first thing it did was turn upside down.

I walked back up the beach to my bungalow and went to bed. The mattress was covered with a fine layer of sand, and my back was sunburnt from persistent snorkeling. I dreamt that night that my legs were coated in sticky beach sand, and I was shaving them, blood pouring out from beneath the blades.

Tonight will be spent on a bus, a twelve-hour ride that launches the long journey home. The only activity good for quieting thunder is writing it down, writing it down just as it happened, just as it seemed like it happened. And if I write enough, sometimes the horses will become squirrels again, sometimes the fractals will become single silhouettes, and sometimes sleep will come and stay.

Grandma Bird

2007-12-16T21:12:00.000-08:00

Found art.
This old robin spent
Most of two summers
In the small back yard
Feathers salt
And pepper gray
Mottled pale orange
Not much spring
To her hops, her chirp
Crackly, must have died
Hidden beneath garden foliage
Old plants faded
And there she was
Papier-mâché likeness of bird
Buried now in situ
Waiting next year’s tomatoes.
Another robin’s back there
Measuring the room.

Sequitur

2007-12-16T21:10:00.000-08:00

He wakes with wars
(Acrid metal in his nostrils, back of his throat)
Outside his door
(At the place he dreams of, prairie winds seep in)
Within his heart
(Wounded, just begun to heal)
All the Asias risen
(Africa in tears)
Heathens chant
(We are the infidels)
Young women sigh
(Like the animal inside)
In his ear, ask for
(We assume so much of each other)
Everything, undeclared
(And the request makes it inevitable)
All resources requisite
(Soil beneath your feet, the air)
No one believes
(Mesquite woodsmoke circles sacred spaces)
The reason he invades
(Enter now from all directions)
Is neither passion
(Far off a coyote calls)
Nor rich dark oils, but
(Our planet burning)
To prove himself alive

Spark

2007-12-13T14:05:00.000-08:00

Walk against the wind, thin
spit though it double-turns onto your chin.
Kick the snow to a tiny tornado
and knock your knees against the trembling.

Belly-flop into the half-formed thing
though these December days weigh still and gray
and the televangelists are still proselytizing.
Bubble to the top of the rising dough.

Light a match to the classifieds
until the want ads burn staccato.
Pennies a word for paper and ink
(a profound reticence to think)
as dreams of the mine and yours combine:
light the pop-crack fire, kindling.

In the in-between dawn under right and wrong,
catch the insect by the God-smacked wing.
Start the spark in this muscle-bound heart.
Fill the space between your teeth with everything.

Inside the Raft

2007-12-12T13:00:00.000-08:00

I ran outside.
Your brother was lying dead in the street
And you stood on the sidewalk
Screaming
Your hands covering your mouth.
I softened my focus
In order to determine the greatest need:
Three passers-by crowded over the body
Unwilling or unable to know its lifelessness
And you stood on the sidewalk
Fuzzy with perpetual motion
Screaming.
I grabbed you.

I grabbed you and I held on tight
Attempting to fuse your spirit back to its base
Keep you from killing yourself or
Tearing your hair from its roots.
Your hands over your mouth
Your hands in your hair.
The rocking, the stutter, the sobbing, the
Screaming.
You were fourteen, and your six year-old brother
Was dead in the street
Dragged by the truck
Library books in the road.
I held you.

“It’s my fault, it’s my fault, it’s my fault,”
You chanted.
“Oh god, I want to die. Please let me die.”
You tore your hair,
And I held you.
“I know that you don’t understand,”
I said, softly,
“But it’s not your fault.”
And I held you.
“God is great.
You must pray.”
And I held you.
I held you, and your head fell back,
Mud meeting heavens, and you cried
Dios mio ayúdame, ayúdame
Ay, Dios mio, ayuda….

Later
Seconds. Minutes. A million years
Later a librarian asked you about
Your mother.
“At home,” you stammered.
I took out my phone and took you by the shoulders.
“I need you to tell me your phone number.”
Suddenly you stopped moving
Condensing your energy into
Ten points of focus.
“3. Oh. 3…”
“Does she speak English?”
You nodded.
I stepped away.

Right before your mother answered
I thought of my own mother.
I saw her drop the phone
Scream, go limp, evaporate
Incinerate, disintegrate, combust
Liquefy, and disappear.
The who and where must come first,
I knew,
Before the what and why.
She answered.
“You don’t know me.
My name is Andrea.
I am on the corner of Mississippi and Tejón.
I am with your daughter and she is fine,
But there has been an accident –”
The line went dead.

So quickly the afternoon was ruined.
So rapidly the crowd gathered
So shattered was the light,
The November side-light
The near-dusk, disappearing-trick,
Glinting, glancing, entrancing light
The light your brother ran into
The last light
The only light that mattered
As it shattered
As first the truck
And then the trailer
Jolted, bumped, took hold,
Would not let go
Thirty feet
A stripe of rubber
Ending in the gutter
Where now the paramedics bent
Over the body of your brother.

I felt myself spinning
With the rotating lights
Hearing cries yet seeing beauty
In the way the four men lifted your mother
Dragging her to the grass
As though she’d been deboned.
Beauty in a woman, her hand
Flat on the top of your head, praying
Praying to God, entreating the sky
Dios es poderoso
Dios es fuerte
Dios en su sabiduria
Proteja esta niña
Protéjala, proteja
In your mercy
In your wisdom….
And then they took him.

No one would say
What at least one librarian already knew.
She had tried.
She had pressed his chest,
Blown air into his tiny mouth.
She was back inside the library,
A woman told me,
In the bathroom
Throwing up.

You were finally sitting
On the sidewalk
And I knelt at your feet
Both of my hands on your body.
I could feel you heaving
And I had nothing left to say.
I was near and also far,
Witnessing the tilt from denial to pain.
I could not turn off the beauty
No matter how shattered the light.
Your soft hair
Your long road
Your mother’s grief
And the driver
To your mother
How he held her
How he cried
How he looked her in the eye
And apologized
And the rocking
Like a raft
And all of us were in it.
Together,
Broken and weathered,
Alive.

Little Apple

2007-12-05T09:11:00.000-08:00

I.
A woman who looks in the mirror

sees behind her
shapes
much like herself:

blue heron in tree pose,
heliotrope Chinese Houses
in the garden.

II.
A woman who bathes
in water like glass,
feels it shatter inside her.

In her mouth,
cross as a gull’s beak,
sea stars shorn from salt marsh.

III.
A woman who breaks a branch
of a manzanita,
desires its color,
the red so like a
garnet fastened to the sun.

IV.
A woman who watches everything
knows of regeneration:
the grace of the manzanita,
the grace of the sea star,
each her quiet enterprise.

-Barbara Sorensen

Wanted: Patron

2007-12-04T15:49:00.000-08:00

I cannot bear this modern poet’s life.
For God’s sake, inspiration only lasts
as long as discretionary funds are rife.
It seems the bank doth future fame forecast.

Did Shakespeare have a day job? I think not!
His muse was kind as long as bills were paid
by his Dark Lady. It seems success is bought
and sold, and art in gold and silver weighed.

Be you ecclesiastical or noble,
my work is sure to please your worthy tastes
with themes immortal, relevant and global,
and as you like it: Cyprian or chaste.

And so, aristocrats and CEOs,
Please cast the glow of greenish glory hither!
Until you do, I fear I may compose
such mediocre verse as this, then wither

much like the ripest grape upon the vine.
Alas, let poverty not pull me to decline.

Got A Minute?

2007-11-12T09:08:00.000-08:00

Now is or is not when
To bring this up
To you
I wish I knew
The answer any answer
That did not anesthetize
The brain of a fallen ape in a universe
So vast that time is small
And small becomes a place
Where matter and space vanish and quarks
Dance with neutrinos on their way
To
The beginning of round two
The other end
Perpendicular universes
Fifth through twelfth dimensions
Risen angels pinned to cork
The place where language begins
To put back together
All it has torn to pieces
Just in time

American Marsupial, Why Do You Grin?

2007-11-10T06:48:00.000-08:00

[Not natcherly given to blog or form,
My screwups feared, but high is time
to buck up, give in to possum-fed norm,
count feet and join struggles for rhyme...]

Villanelle 1

Hum, don't sing; it's truly best,
words then won't be tangling your say.
Humble tunes will teach, caress.

Don't mar the air with lyric-fest,
like bone of fish with too much fillet.
Hum, don't sing; it's truly best.

Beagles and cats know how to request,
Masters jump, please at dumb bay.
Humble tunes will teach, caress.

Virgins weep from untouched breasts,
labored, details just get in their way.
Hum, don't sing; it's truly best:

All will rise, be more than mere chest,
Unencumbered, without cliche.
Humble tunes will teach, caress.

Politicos, preachers, those who'd impress,
shun your verbiage, eschew all fray!
Hum, don't sing; it's truly best.
Humble tunes will teach, caress.

Eugene's Wedding Toast

2007-11-07T15:23:00.000-08:00

In any day with any weather
There is no fear if you're together.
Fool [full] Moon like magic light on sky
Just whispers gently: "You and I"

It could be day or could be night
It could be rain or bright Sun light
At any time and any weather
From now to ever you're together.

You're at home or you're abroad.
You're having fun or work.. whatever.
At any place and any business
To be together is your sweetness.

Sometime together be not easy
Sometime you could be sad or busy
But raining day will pass away
Replaced by happiness of futures days.

Written by Yevgeniy Snezhkin, Simferopol, Crimea, Ukraine
September 15th, 2007
E-mail address: yudjin@cris.net

Postludes

2007-11-07T12:12:00.000-08:00

After T.S. Eliot

I
The moon swoons low and purse-slung
on the sore shoulder of a frostbit sky.
One-thirty.
The smell of exhaust and french fries.
And now the winter’s faithless chill
cuts skin until
your green hat Made in China joins
the gaping wrappers on the street;
cup-jangling coins
employ a kind of strangling beat
while neon throbs of beer and sirloin.
A tired engine shifts and dies.
And then the flight of barflies.

II
The sunlight bleeds its morning mess
onto the gum-pockmarked cement.
The coffee’s smell is weak and burnt
and many cracked hands will soon caress
their styrofoam and lid-capped cup.
Of all the paces time has run
or hobbled through the lonely nights
one thinks of all the heads picked up
from pillows of undreaming sun
to days bathed in fluorescent light.

III
You lounged, awash in t.v. glare,
you fiddled with the socks you hated;
you slowed your breathing to the pace
of the monochromatic dream
through which your soul was percolated;
reflected fingers shone in your hair
love and death scenes on your face,
and when you came back to the world
the dryer shouted loud and sterling
and through the sun and white dust swirling,
you felt the coming of a train
no human eye had seen before;
sitting on your tired chair
awake for now but unaware
bright visions sparked within your brain
while restless feet tapped resting floor.

IV
Her soul pressed firmly to a ball
that fell next to the kitchen waste,
or stretched to make a stunning dress
worn once and then removed in haste;
and cigarettes pass lip to lip
and fingers jingle useless change
and small white thighs press to the wall
built skyscraper-high to give the streets
tall shoulders stiffened to the fall.

I am woken by a gentle breath
and tendrils clinging to my sight;
the memory of some eminently waking
eminently unfolding light.

Shield your eyes to shadow, and laugh;
the days meander like the waves
on the softening arms of the shore.

T.S. Eliot (on his marriage to Vivienne Haigh-Wood)

2007-11-06T14:54:00.000-08:00

To her the marriage brought no happiness. To me it brought the state of mind out of which came The Waste Land.

The Burning Giraffe

2007-11-06T12:19:00.000-08:00

from "The Burning Giraffe" by Salvador Dali

We onlookers are silent, like so many are
when they look on anguish.

Her frame lilts, balance precariously
preserved by these crutches
and sticks and perforated thick-
nesses of wood, ripped from within
or pushed from without we do not know.

Her frame lilts, bony armature propped,
arms akimbo, face shrouded
in red,
hands coated in red,
wearing red gloves of vein and sinew,
forward hinge of hips
pricking the vacant blue
like daggers, like the shrieks
we cannot hear, though they must be here.

Those crude drawers stagger open,
blackness within gaping like sores,
and why is it these old drawers never close?
Steely skeleton with no closet,
thighs with slipping skin
have plenty to hide,
but the contents of her chest
have been stolen.
Her drawer torn open from beneath
her breast
(and nothing inside).

So is this why she cries out now like the dying,
for the carpenter or the burglar?
Or the one who stopped up her face
with gauze and left her here tipping—
a column buckled,
a tower conquered?

Those unseen corners
of cabinetry
test fastidious attention to secrecy,
challenge meticulous concealment,
time-trained.

The lady by her side prizes her streamer of red,
silent
(as so many are)
though anguish is near.
With root-bound brain, her leafy branches
reaching for that weak scratch of clouds.

Only I remain still, one eye
trained on the stilted, lilting woman,
one eye on the distant black hills.
Following some invisible road
to water,
I arrived here, wandered in like a martyr,
neck and back ablaze,
flesh curling with flames,
fur singed like kindling.

Above me sits a stream of smoke,
a frozen songbird sitting
on its branch of orange air,
perched on its tall branch of fire,
and there is nothing
(at all)
for me to do
but burn.

fair's fair, I guess...

2007-11-05T10:47:00.000-08:00

There's no money in poetry, but then there's no poetry in money, either.
-- Robert Graves

Compost

2007-10-31T21:24:00.000-07:00

Squash-colored leaves parachute
over the Highlands bridge
with directionless joy.
Beady headlights scramble
the road below unknowing,
pulling to both poles at once
like some schizophrenic river.
I know we are undone.
Complacent, splayed.

A bit of breeze might freeze you,
nick your kevlar chest
with my pear-shaped prayer,
my shrapnel syllables
a wound to the hollow tomb
of safety pin skin.

Good posture does not make you good.
You blew like true the little ledge
you were tonguedumb stalking,
hairy Heathcliff on the moors
sans passion sans pride sans whatever
simmers the cinder in my gut,
knew you would tidelike keep
retreating to and from the umbrella
stuck in the sand on the shore.

Aviatophobia in an awkward grasp
(murky heat from musty core),
despite your assiduous calculations
of feet per second and landing gear.
Epiphanies of falling, not a
misplaced embrace of wings.

Gratia plena and onion rings.
I favor this escape,
pick brown stalks and green tomatoes,
dump bits of tired earth
and eggshells already broken,
and one more call at midnight,
into the heap to sleep
and dream of spring.

THE "S" IS FOR SALMONELLA

2007-10-31T10:17:00.000-07:00

for Barbara S.

Our hostess does not wish to kill,
but the shrimp puffs have an axe to grind.
She served them up. We ate our fill.
Our hostess does not wish to kill.
But the heat of day and lack of dill
have turned the shellfish most unkind.
Our hostess does not wish to kill,
but the shrimp puffs have an axe to grind.

JD Frey – October 31, 2007

Grandma Bird

2007-10-30T21:42:00.000-07:00

I’ll call her found art
This robin spent most of two summers
In our small back yard
Feathers salt and pepper gray
Mottled pale orange in front
Not much spring to her hops her chirp crackly

She died hidden
Under garden foliage mid-summer.
Now she is a papier-mâché likeness
Of the bird that felt at home here. She is buried
right there to feed next year’s tomatoes.

The world has a lot of work to do it seems
To feed the dollar machine change the water the air
Speed up time until it is almost gone.

Another robin is back there now
Measuring the room.

FOR A.R.F.

2007-10-25T20:29:00.000-07:00

"I will take the end of a thought in my hand and walk back and forth."—Sherwood Anderson

Before you take your simple leave,
before all the air disappears from the room,
give us a simple holy moment to grieve.
Give us a chance to write a damn poem.

They who have known you are many and spread.
Change comes to most from a distance.
So before we announce you're officially dead,
give us time to explain your existence.

Tomorrow like all days will show up for breakfast.
Quite possibly you won't be there.
So we wish to collect on this hasty checklist:
your eyes, your philosophy, your hair.

Pacing around with these words in my hands,
while, Mother, you leave us for unwritten lands.

JD Frey – October 25, 2007

No Return

2007-10-24T20:18:00.000-07:00

Wonder why the universe is here
almost every day there comes a time
blank face enrapt within empty stare

while some part of brain seeks rhymes
searches unanswerable questions
to muddle, let mind swim with the sublime

and absurd. There is freedom in the notion
that this body’s not the real me—
a vehicle rather, to constrain the soul from

its fall, an acorn from a old oak tree,
disperses waves within a puddle
only there as long as seen.

And which are we, there’s the trouble,
are we ripples or their cause?
I fall asleep when questions are this subtle,

wake to a world as full of flowers and flaws
as the one just dreamt, where
our own awareness makes the universe ours.

Third Floor Walk-up (Ekphrasis after Stiegliz)

2007-10-24T20:03:00.000-07:00

I
Mrs. Meuller’s bed linens frozen on the line.
What will another night in the cold city bring?
The sheets are stiff as boards, been out there a long time.
Mrs. Meuller’s bed linens frozen on the line.
The sky grows darker and she’s looking for a sign,
her Heinz walks up the alley and begins to sing
Mrs. Meuller’s bed linens frozen on the line.
What will another night in this cold city bring?

II
She loves sea mist and fog, loves to stare out the back window over the sink at pigeons on the line. She loves the first night snow. Her boys will be home soon from school, Heinz a little later from the plant with that strange smell on him of metal and flowers and most of his pay. It is time to start the onions.

Rearview (ekphrasis)

2007-10-24T13:36:00.000-07:00

The pope doesn't approve of my green hemp dress
or the way it sags between my shoulder blades.
Even his picture, busy and smiling on the balcony
with the usual entourage of fluttering cardinals
has a weather-worn sheen, tired of its misplaced
place in the fair-skinned air of Saint Malo's,
the dated hair, the fuzzy image safely framed.
I catch the whisper of misplaced stones,
gather my stilted breath from the rafters,
stuck like an axe in rotting wood.
The swallows follow overhead, sullen shadows
in a misplaced v, oddly obedient, free.
Sunset descends. It is too cold here, too small,
too much laminate on wooden Simon and Pieta.

At the mountainous altar of his own church,
he waits outside, these predictable afternoon storms
unknowable, plain, wipes my face with a nubbled
grey sleeve, mannequin to my pandering,
sinner and savior in the gathering rain.

Redress

2007-10-24T08:51:00.001-07:00

(From the Floral Radiographs of Steven N. Meyers:
Amaryllis, Mountain Fire Pieris, Fern Forest, Rose Petals, Dogwood Blossoms, Four Callas, Foxglove Ballet, Columbine #2)

“Flesh, our one possession, the heart is its own redress.”
-Matthew Copperman

One day a doctor peers at x-rays
and sees what she knows:
spalled bones,
mass on a skull,
small spills of cells.
At night she dreams
these things change,
that in the morning
she brings
a patient in a milkblue gown
news that all is well;
everything is just a flower
rendered transparent.
Her hand covers the patient’s hand
and together they look at
radiographed rose petals,
wavy bivalves floating
on an invisible watercourse;
engrailed bracts
in a spring cold snap;
serried bells;
the throat of an amaryllis
in which bursts a resurrection;
mountain fire’s plain pearls;
bracken.
Someone down the long hall
calls out “butcherbird, butcherbird,”
as if in warning,
but the patient is already
beginning the lonely, arid walk
toward heaths,
all their color burning
beneath her skin.

-Barbara Sorensen

Freewrite

2007-10-24T08:44:00.000-07:00

Prompt: "Another dozen or so new laid eggs from any one of which I might yet poke my little beak"

laced, diseased, the eggs's pulp tumbles into bowls blue and white. we know they harbor the froth and grind of all that's healthy, all that's not. we wonder if we will know what first will signal the precipice of sickness, perhaps the shadow of a small boy with salmonella, perhaps the beginning signs of schizophrenia in its curled infant stage of paper-slicing, skin-piercing, hallucinatory, new-laid dreams, and the boy, his little beak of eyes sees all, and yet he remains still, refusing to believe anything could be so fantastic from an egg, an egg, any one of which could be birthing the very first Easter he comes alive.

Awful Ready (Already Fall)

2007-10-17T15:51:00.000-07:00

AWFUL READY (ALREADY FALL)
And, like the changing trees, we're dignified
With radiance. We don't acknowledge our unease
About the want that closes winter in parentheses.
We participate instead in a sarabande,
Glad to slow our tempo in a dance
We've memorized, but cannot understand.
This is the way of all things. Choice and chance
Step and turn in sentience, while the globe
Whirls like a dervish in trance.
In belief, or suspended disbelief, we probe
For purpose. How unlikely we exist!
Here it is, already fall. The sunlight's strobe
through yellow, gold, green, red, and amethyst
leaves the path we thought we knew ablaze.
The whole world is an amorist.
For a season we resist our sad malaise
Of too much, too much information,
Acquiesce to this astonishment, and praise.

Solitude

2007-10-17T15:45:00.000-07:00

I cried for it at midnight
just to be done with it,
enough is enough, after all.

I tried to cry for it at six
but the sun was just setting behind old steel mills, the sky
resplendent in red-ochre and deep violet,
my eyes in tears from sulphurous air.

I nearly cried at noon, when the sun
made a brief appearance, illuminated gray hills and houses,
then disappeared behind the gray banks
as though frightened by what it saw.

At misty dawn I began to cry
for another lost night, my mind lost
in labyrinths of doubt and desire.
Then the lightened sky called
to me, insisted that this was the very day,
the fine moment of now
from which I might transform
all of reality, meet the people I am meant to know,
find the perfect spot to sit and sip potent liquids
ponder sun and sky and self until they swirl
in a favored dance that will end at midnight.

Occlusion

2007-10-17T14:14:00.000-07:00

If only I could recall the shapes
of all the cities I’ve visited in dreams

then perhaps I could build something fresh
in this world. A map worth living in,

streets laid out, nerves tapped
in just such a way, gray-black, gold-blue

as these flickers of dark and day
that spread, flayed out like dissections

to be learned from. Here is the heart,
beating—clogged; here are the airways,

the bloodways, the intake and output,
this taxonomist’s wetdream,

thrill of gush and flow and now,
times like now, choked, stopped up

the gash bled dry, all movement
halted

to this frozen frame, all fixed all empty
all flat but for that red light

of eye seeing, that glow of dreaming life
hid beneath, behind, o this halo

of arrested conception.

Theory of Convergence (terza rima)

2007-10-17T11:40:00.000-07:00

Theory of Convergence
after Kenneth Patchen

In the footsteps of broken night,
convivial discordance.
Touch a lamppost’s slender height,
touch an arm. Ever since
the walls came crumbling down
and blustered our allegiance
we push that rubble all around.
We build them for each other.
The boiling point of calming down
grows in tornado weather,
scatters our loose vertebrae
in a poorly rendered blender.
We make a fairly rare sorbet,
activist and anarchist
meeting Monday’s breaking day.
Gathered in a loose kiss
the pines in time will soon forget,
I am bothered by our brokenness.
Wrench the punctum’s pirouette
from all observing eyes.
Watch, the streets are getting wet.
With a stomach’s slow surprise,
I drink the gibberish of glib,
leapfrog the sullen compromise,
and with an awkward mock ad lib,
we fly.

In a Murderous Time (Villanelle)

2007-10-17T10:31:00.000-07:00

The heart breaks and breaks and lives by breaking.
I work hard to understand
the whole idea of war--peace through death; how's that going?

Morning news shows the Ship of State sinking;
adds a fresh news bite from the Captain.
The American heart breaks and lives by breaking.

Sometimes, I think this President is joking
when he trots out his latest plans.
We're kickin; ass, he says; we're winning.

Sometimes, I think this President is dreaming
or just phoning it in from Texas ranch land.
The world's heart breaks and lives by breaking.

Sometimes, I wonder what he's smoking
as he takes another bold stand.
Peace through torture--how's that working?

The war drags on and the world is watching.
I work hard to comprehend
how the heart breaks and keeps on breaking.
Peace through fear; how's that working out?

World View

2007-10-11T07:44:00.000-07:00

The World *, ** ,*** ,**** ,*****

It is real or it is not.
It was created,
or spontaneously began,
or was always here,
or something else.
Planned or random,
probably both.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
* Rated CG 13. Anyone over the age of thirteen must be accompanied by a child to be admitted. Child Guidance is suggested throughout due to absurd juxtapositions, graphic violence, some sexual content (language, brief and prolonged nudity, sexual situations and widespread preoccupation with sex.)

** Contains one or more of the following: wheat, peanuts, chicken parts, dairy products, bits of hooves, ashes, dust, sausages, aspirin, lofty mountains, searing desserts, leafy glades, soul wrenching slums, fabulous villas, boring suburbs, electronic gadgets, god-awful weapons, intractable diseases, lots of plants and animals, salt water, time, space, other stuff and death.

*** May cause headaches, constipation, deep blue depression, dry mouth, sweaty palms, constant fidgeting, dropsy, ague, croup, fantods, shortness of breath, shortness, coated tongue, hemorrhoids, enlarged prostate, plantar fasciitis, colds and flu, and/or drowsiness.

**** Do not drive or operate heavy machines while reading. Do not use in the shower or tub. Objects in mirror are not what they seem. Safe for septic systems and pets. Should the universe suddenly collapse to singularity, continue reading on the other side.

***** Slow down. Look around you. Listen carefully. Taste your tongue. Smell the nearest flower. Feel good.

As Sweet

2007-10-10T21:25:00.000-07:00

It is analysis at last
that kills us. Our wish
to tear everything to pieces
in the mistaken belief
that we will understand
in parts that which has eluded us
whole. This last rose is not red, is not
even a rose. My eyes and nose
are joined with flower
in mutual dance of beauty,
neither is without the other.
My words are red, I am at one
with a slim silver electric box
and a cool autumn breeze on bare feet.

Cloud/Sea Freewrite

2007-10-10T17:05:00.000-07:00

I am drinking a cloud
or the sound of the sea, endlessly
repeating, but what is
a dream, are there sounds in it?
Is, perhaps, the endless repetition
the thing? Earth, rotates, revolves, endlessly
almost, and we short-timers will never know...
Our big home, this spiral arm
circling a center of an ordinary galaxy
amidst a cluster of galaxies, moving
gently, at great speed
in an ever widening arc
a cosmic helix,
the coded reality
of the one who knows
whether and why we ought to care.

Who is this cloud dreamer
awash in inner oceans
his own DNA?
Buffeted by waves
of chance,
chemistry and spark
stray neutrinos force muons
from quarks that at last
are not there
endlessly rotating
in a universe of silence.

Drinking a Cloud/Sound of the Sea (freewrite)

2007-10-10T11:37:00.000-07:00

Oolong

I am carrying the thud in my solar plexus
(like an unopened package of Oreos)
of a voice, of the sound of a voice
clipping out of view.

I am a little teapot,
I am peas porridge in the pot,
I am the cat inside the hat
and all its referential signifiers.

I am peeled like a grape
though this endless escape
back to the safe soft skin.

I am picking the piece
of a cultural consciousness
between the toothpick and my teeth,

I am hogtied, hornswaggled,
desperately indefinite,
tethered to the infinite,
pawing at the catnip,
wondering where my claws went,

begging for omnipotence
so I can be all things for you:
one, two, three, achoo.

I am gargling my breakfast,
I am stuck in last week’s mess,
I am paralyzed by possibility

that this is
or this is not.

I am ringing the phone to call you,
counting sidewalk squares,
and neon open signs, endless dotted lines,
desperately hoping you won’t answer,
mouth a nest of noise and blur.

I am the power of this thought.
I’m rooted to this spot.
Flip my mind like tiddlywinks.
Tip me over,
and pour me out.

Sexual Limerick! (an assignment, sheesh)

2007-10-09T22:58:00.000-07:00

My leg on your lap earns a hot rise
You squirm; your eyes dart to your trapped thighs.
You casually shift,
But I know that you're stiff
And I let my leg lay where the heat lies.

Drinking a Cloud / Sound of Sea Freewrite

2007-10-09T22:49:00.000-07:00

I am drinking a cloud
Or the sound of the sea
I am drinking a drum
I am thumping impossible
Bear down on plausible
Water from chocolate or
Cheese from a stone -
I'm clamping the clone of this thought.

When the tide pulls out it trips
And gurgles, humiliated and raw.
If I stare it will continue to shudder,
Drawing itself to safety,
And sometime before dawn it will slink in,
Sure as guilt.
I can't watch that long:
I won't be waiting.
I'll be off tearing fingernails
And wringing necks,
Craning toward a cloud,
Opening my throat.
Don't you want to climb,
Say farewell to the shore?

I forget myself -
That sad chill that cliff-dwells
That bears down
That sea-binds,
Hangs tight and holds on.
That drawstring that gathers,
That water that gurgles,
Those oysters that clatter,
Those waves, and the tide
Has come in.

No Less Effort (a villanelle)

2007-10-09T22:38:00.000-07:00

Effort wears a costly dress
I hate the volume of my hair
I fear that you will love me less

I keep competing with my mess
And damaging the calming air
Effort wears a costly dress

A sentence starts with "I confess"
And, rapid, winds its way from there
I fear that you will love me less

So there I purposefully press
Until you grant an ill-masked glare
Effort wears a costly dress

With conflict I've had great success
I've earned division of this pair
I fear that you will love me less

There's terror there beyond the rest
And with the best I can't compare.
Effort wears a costly dress:
I fear that you will love me less.

Why aren't poets more sexy than gym socks?

2007-10-09T09:12:00.000-07:00

WHY AREN'T POETS MORE SEXY THAN GYM SOCKS?

Why aren't poets more virtuous than grocers,
more noble than monks, duller than wonks?
Why aren't poets braver than a breadbox, happier
than bullets, double-jointed, left-footed, trim, rich
and shrink-wrapped? Why aren't poets more agile
than yogis, able to dodge iambs at a single bound?
Why aren't poets more perky than pirates,
more wooden than wax, more free of syntax?
Why, oh why, aren't poets tall dark and pensive,
shy but expensive. Why aren't poets
the best looking people in the room?

Gateway

2007-09-26T08:31:00.001-07:00

Comments welcome. I'm not committed to this form, it's a fairly new poem - thoughts?

Gateway

After a few years
in the canyon, its
odd damp corners
Swiss-green in the desert
climate, its leering
plateaus gashed with
geographic years,
studded with brush
like a teenage upper lip,
it almost became
invisible, wallpaper,
a barrier to beauty
instead of its evidence.

Until some rich prick
riled this lazy
post office town
into a turf war,
codified angry secrets
into marketing terms
like “lush landscape”
or urging visitors
who apparently don’t
of their own accord to
“breathe.”

And now there are
lampposts and organic
tomatoes and embarrassed
half-glances as people
hide condescending
amazement that so
sorry, there isn’t another
restaurant in town
except the café that opens
when they feel like it.

I am an alien
to both these worlds,
tourist among tourists
leering at nature’s
newly-groomed trails,
pool boy in this
sand-colored stucco
prison without even
dreams of escape,
as boredom leaves
a dent in my passenger
seat and we dare
the plateaus
to defy us.

Welcome.

2007-09-26T08:17:00.000-07:00

Friends, here's a blog to organize our ponderings from poetry night. Feel free to post your poems for comment, thoughts on the readings, mad rants, love letters, etc.

Here is the crazy Dutch video from last night, and the behind-the-scenes "making of" video too. (With English subtitles, even. God, I love them!)