2012: What Could Be

Happy New Year! I am getting a head start on 2012 with the New Year's Eve post about a project I need help tackling.

This weekend, we visited the stunning new Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. More on that another time, although, honestly, there's nothing I could write that could give you even the littlest bit of an idea of how phenomenal that place is, so just visit it yourself, or take a look at the website

 www.crystalbridges.org



 Anyway, I found a book called A Year of Mornings in the museum gift shop. I'd heard about the blog, but had never seen the images in person:

3191ayearofmornings.com/mornings


I love the whole idea of this, and wonder if anyone would want to attempt something similar with me, using words and phrases rather than photos? Just leave a comment if it interests you, and we'll see what happens.

Learning My ABC and D's

I have always liked the idea of writing a poem every day as an exercise. However, without something concrete to focus on, the idea gets me nowhere.

Until now! Somehow a conversation with my dad about a James Madison biography prompted me to use letters of the alphabet as a framework for daily writing. Overall, I'm enjoying this exercise, but am not happy with pieces "C" or "D". With "C", I am not sure about the abrupt ending, but don't like the longer versions I've come up with. "D" is just a place holder until something better comes along.

------

A B C D

A

The afternoon we waited for space junk

to fall, somewhere, probably not near us

in our house in our luminous city

where planes land and leaves spiral

like ladies at the circus spinning off the trapeze

we would have preferred a supernova

seeing a star try to run away

from its own brightness

not another satellite returning.

B

I once looked up the word beachhead;

it refers to enemy space but sounds

like we should climb there on weekends

build a summer house there

feeling wise as we watch shore birds

pluck fish from the water and make

suburban zen of the sea spray

thinking it good to come across

and that we expected it to be

like the girl with a shell to her ear

saying she can hear the ocean.

C

I miss the coast road outlining the end of the country

sugar cane fanning itself by the newly built highway,

how it winds around like a corn maze reminding me

of Mary losing Jesus in the crowded caravan

and finding him, one more story for her to wonder at.

I am not like that, keeping in the heart what might work out

the way of a nursery rhyme: leave it alone, it will come home.

I miss the ride.

D

Diana, my least favorite

goddess, you never let a girl

save herself.

Your modus is change

for the sake of not changing:

nymphs escape because you keep them

moving, cold stream or laurel

like one of your silver arrows

aimed at something higher than a lover.

He will keep hunting

what you would rather remake

hard as the wood of a tree.

Pigeon Revision

Pigeon



I hate their eyes
taking in the park.

They show up,
touch crumbs like Midas

rock colored wings
in the rock colored street

beneath lightning arc of starlings.

October Poem: Besides Squirrels, This Is All I've Got

Pigeon

I hate their eyes

taking in the park

like a harvest.

They show up                           for gold

touching crumbs

like Midas

they stay                                  with rock colored wings

in the rock colored street

                                                  beneath rows of starlings

                                                   like airplanes leaving

Seven Miles Per Second

Escape Velocity

It’s possible someone made this

calculation watching horses

the blur of grass stained hooves,

white foam cooling their necks.

There might be a connection

between this running through pasture

and how fast we have to go

to slip from the particulars of gravity

because we are like other animals

making circles, going back

for apples and sugar cubes

and staying there, tied to a cart

September, So Much Farther

Chrysanthemum

The petals curling over themselves

like girls at a concert figuring out

how close they are

could be an emblem for heaven

golden heads blending in that way

of girls again, lined up to meet their idol

just as dramatic, these blossoms

scattering like girls after a show then

someone says you were killed in Afghanistan

and I think of that book about Japan

the sword and the flower like girls

thinking of what to say when

night vision and drones quit

their usually melismatic tune

technical words getting spun

around like girls not knowing where they are

or why they should be

dragged into this poem. 

September So Far

Cold front moves in

to our place like the old

missionaries I’ve read about

starlings taking summer on

to their busy wings the burden

of warmth.

Industry, Angles and Angels

Industrial Park, February

Who divided the day into shifts?
Monks did it, somewhere in Europe
before there was steel. Buttresses flew

the body wanted to
but the alloy of soul
is hard:

something in Aristotle told them
natural place seeks natural motion
so turbines spin

cooling the womanish
coils into planes
the angles of men

making metal and words
like american to go everywhere
the body stays

this place the heart rings
its factory bell
finding the act beautiful enough

-------------------------------------------

Angel / Angle

To the tangled planes of hereafter

constant virtue carries you,

the fixed point where angels

like angles are made

if the body is miraculous

keeping its geometry,

aching space generated by your

constant velocity

the body, as we know, is all angles:

to the body belongs

joy of measure

of which a measure of joy

perfumes the dirt with which angels

would seraphically fill

their hands if they had not lost

the elaborate world.

School Days Are Here Again, With a Poem

For many of us, school has started once again. I was talking to a young college student, majoring in Engineering, who was thrilled to report that his study of grammar, mechanics and the English language in general are 'over and done with, forever!' I cannot imagine what that would be like, and so will persist in my unbelief ( in the existence of a world without constant study of prepositions, punctuation and paragraphs) by posting this poem homage to that classic manual of usage and style. 

------------------

For Strunk and White

What clause comes                                                                       in the night

do parts of speech                                                                    sneak up, I bet

they make threats                                                                        they can tell

you fear the first                                                                   second and third

person

pure blue, her night dress on the table

she is still able to figure out the tides

making figure eights the pure blue slip

covers up her dancers hips                      he predicts

you will modify what moonlight lets                                           run on

her pluperfect body

a polity not of mouth’s right angles but of roller skating enervating algorithmic swiveling like lipstick the flimsy shift colored somewhere between green and violet

and then this conjunction because the quick brown fox and i before e except after

c and sometimes y. Sometimes why perfumes the air and he and she wish to

dangle prepositionally but instead must quickly

left

left

left                                                                                                           right

left                                                                                                  

to the busy ant hill go with                                              cotillions of speech

build and build                                                                            your words

Dominion

Houses are going up

for sale. They look

like cut flowers ready

for a place on the mantel

I don’t think dwellings can

feel but let’s give in,

anthropomorphize this bit

and houses fear being

the dog in the kennel

The Pseudo OCD in Me

Apologies to anyone who read yesterday's post about the word baby: typed in haste, it had multiple typos and, what is worse, the wrong draft of that poem. These errors were corrected as soon as I saw them. After all, lo que es digno de hacer, es digno de hacer bien.*




* "That which is worth doing is worth doing well."

Baby, If You Ever Wondered...*

...about the word baby, you aren't alone. Not too long ago, I wanted to attempt a serious analysis of how many times that little endearment has been used in the popular music of the last one hundred years.The attempt was, alas, short lived, since the word shows up about a thousand times between Led Zeppelin and James Brown alone.

However, that does not mean my preoccupation with baby has ended. On the contrary, see the poem below. While not very good as a poem, it has at any rate let me for the time being dispose of those two syllables that can mean 'infant' but often mean anything but!

*Title song from favorite childhood tv show, WKRP. I know, I know: it's a hard choice to defend. My only excuse is that it was the 70s, and after Debbie Harry and Wonder Woman, Loni Anderson was a close third on my list of most beautiful women.

---------------

Loop

Mention stars and we count

quitting after fifty even

though their light keeps going

we add up endearments in one

love song losing track because baby

hey baby pretty baby I hum to you

that word in between babble and babylon

double plosive popping off pressed lips

full-stop of all talk it is

pluck pluck pluck a pause on the string

but waves have been sent out

like earth’s curve

revolutions we can’t get rid of.

Accentuating The Positive (integer)

A more upbeat analysis of absence: 

The New Math

There is no remainder that can be measured

either in rain or your sailing laugh

when solving for x where x is us not together

if distance is big as a kitten is

and memory times memory leaves half

with no remainder that can be measured

in units other than goodness no emperor

gave his courtiers better nor shepherd with staff

paired lambs prettier where x is not us together

Sunday School divided by Vegas chapel

our numbers add up; we have the right mass

with no remainder that can be measured

what odds lay against; what bookies will wager

if happiness is quantifiable but countable as ash

when solving for x where x is us not together

greater than the greatest common factor

so perfectly circle, space and time collapse

there is no remainder that can be measured

to solve for x where x is us not together.

Post Holiday Post

It's beginning to sink in that my holiday is over: a sinking so pervasive that all the Tim Tams in the world could not remedy it. I won't even try. 

Instead, I'm listening to Coldplay. The song 'Yellow' is especially appealing; wistful yet cool and collected. It sounds like someone who has hope. It also references the stars, which are in my top five of All Time Favorite Things In The Universe. And so, two poems about stars, the future and something greatly missed. I promise to try for cheerier poems next post. 

-----

Tomorrow

when teleports dissolve us close

to dark matter

put back together

better than Jack and Jill

atoms winging off

in search of

that time beneath the Milky Way

we had a camera and filled the frame

light spilled out giving up

photons to roll and scroll

galaxies set in motion

a longing like our own.

---

Endymion

The gallery has this

shepherd statue.

Someone asks about the myth

and what it has to do

with the wandering of stars

before they take

final form.

I do not know.

His upturned mouth

resembles yours.

Love takes

the shape of its curve.