can you hear me, major tom?

Hello folks,

Please forgive my radio silence for the past three months (three months! How did you manage without me, blogosphere?!). Life has been...a roller-coaster of emotions to say the least, filled with personal transition, transience, and transgression (more on this later). I've been working on a poetry project (I even did a reading...more on that later, too). For now, may I leave you with a tidbit? A work in progress? A savoury morsel of a future poem bonanza...yes? yes. Feedback, as always, is much appreciated.

you sing sometimes, late at night,
with a book for company, cigarettes at hand, 
and a candle casting shadows that keep time  
with songs you don't know the words to. 

your voice is high and thin, as uneasy sounds weave into the air.  
you sing of loss. you sing of roads.
you sing of memories that are distilled and untold.

even in your sleep

you fight a war that grinds the enamel off your teeth,
and wake with jaws clenched and your mind spent
wondering how many dishes you have broken this week
in an attempt not to break yourself.

all the therapists in the world might say,

"maybe your anger is good...
maybe your rage
is you emerging from the cage 

of everything you've been."

but when the doctors called saying
your father's falling in love with an eternal winter,
you wiped your tears away
you knew it was going to be more than "OK"
it was going to be perfect
your denial made you feel
like the first time you rode your bike 

without training wheels-

immortal.

your scarred knees tell a different story.

you swore you'd never lie to yourself again 
you cried and talked of taking time 

to learn your hidden face, the one  

you see reflected back in puddles on the road
or in his eyes as dulled by longing 
as yours.

pinot noir and paramours pt. 2 (don't speak, mnemosyne)

her story, like life, is wrought with disclaimers,and her breath a train she just can't catch.

she rambles on, desperate, like a candle 
that doesn't know how to stop itself from burning

but the truth is, she just can't bear to live 
another holiday without a destination.

"her sweater and her eyes were blue and her
hair like buttercups spraying out the mouths of doves..."

she incompletes herself
with sad songs and recycled insults

swaying to the acoustic snowflakes

and drifting on the weary winds

of might-have-been.

she'd do anything to sing her that one song,
but she'd forget the words and have to hum
that unknown verse, in tune, but off-key

like her socks that never match.
and when she's done, she'd watch the lines

around those pale cerulean eyes
form rivers when she cries, making her feel

at once 40lbs too heavy and light as a feather,

but still 20 years too young.

oh, the stories she holds...

she's got her reasons for feeling so old
her body craves those warmer days,
but it's not only the seasons that change 
when she wants them to stay.
her heart aches while her bones break
into song, and she knows: her breath
will turn silver when your hair does.
she'd spend forty-four lifetimes with her head
thrown back, trying to drink the sea
so you won't have to anymore. but for now,
it's two hours and ten drinks past midnight
and her knees are bent like the pages of her favorite memoir,
the one whose title and ending she can't recall-
can't even remember reading the damned thing-
but while saudade and imagination
weave through her soul and
flesh out her memories,
she'll be holding (                   )
your place.

pinot noir & paramours pt.1

"Aphasia is a condition characterized by either partial or total loss of the ability to communicate verbally or using written words. A person with aphasia may have difficulty speaking, reading, writing, or understanding what others have said..."

if this condition were not further described as having been brought about specifically by a stroke or traumatic brain injury, i would have no problem self-diagnosing. the past two weeks have been such a roller coaster of emotions for me, that i have given up trying to intentionally process what's going on, because it just leads to self-deprecating thoughts (e.g. the common denominator in my failed relationships -platonic or otherwise- is me) or credit cards being maxed out at my local liquor store (hasn't happened yet, but the week is still young). i have no words of my own today, so i planned to present a cento poem. a cento, from the Latin word meaning "patchwork", is a poem that is constructed entirely out of the words from poems of other poets. but i didn't have the energy to do that, either, so here instead are excerpts from very unrelated poems that nearly describe some of my thoughts. with that said, if you see me in the streets, please offer spontaneous hugs. or a plane ticket... i will accept either at this point. the cento will be up in a few days if/when i get my coherency/heart/sobriety back...
alas, alack.

there's a bluebird in my heart that

wants to get out
but I pur whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
he's
in there.  

-- from "Bluebird" Bukowski

And if you come I will be silent
Nor speak harsh words to you.
I will not ask you why, now.
Or how, or what you do.
We shall sit here, softly
Beneath two different years
And the rich earth between us
Shall drink our tears.
--from "If you come softly" Audre Lorde


i like my body when it is with your
body. It is so quite new a thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body. i like what it does,
i like its hows. i like to feel the spine
of your body and its bones, and the trembling
-firm-smooth ness and which i will
again and again and again 
kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,
i like, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz
of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh ... And eyes big love-crumbs,
and possibly i like the thrill
of under me you so quite new 

-- ee cummings

My Secret
My soul its secret has, my life too has its mystery,
And she who was the cause nor knew it nor believed.
Alas! I shall have passed close by her unperceived,
Forever at her side, and yet forever lonely,
I shall unto the end have made life's journey, only
Daring to ask for naught, and having naught received.
These murmurings of love that round her steps ascend,
Piously faithful still unto her austere duty,
Will say, when she shall read these lines full of her beauty,
"Who can this woman be?" and will not comprehend.

-- from "A Secret" by Félix Arvers

six a.m. sestina for sweetness

a sestina is a highly structured poem consisting of six six-line stanzas followed by a tercet of three lines for a total of thirty-nine lines. The same set of six words ends the lines of each of the six-line stanzas, but in a different order each time. sounds difficult? it is. here's an example:

These are merely pleasantries, yes, sweetness. 
They're okay for those good enough, 
at least decent, good enough get-offs, 
but the myriad pet names, clever and otherwise, 
cutesy, dumb, or 'quaint and curious'— 
the treble in your voice, turn it down. 

I know we met on a kind of down- 
beat sorta day, when that sweetness 
drifting from a baker-mom's curious 
son's steamed wet window was about enough 
to keep a one afloat—a really off 
day. I would have probably caved otherwise. 

I would have had to get all warm and fuzzy otherwise. 
These tendencies I keep tucked way down 
in my insides' (button fly) jeans' 5th pocket boil up,  and off
I go! Just hang on a second, sweetness. 
The getting goes tough then soon enough 
the toughies go to getting gone. Curious 

about all these "I miss you's." A little curious. 
Just a taste. Pencil tip on a tongue and, otherwise 
healthy, just mentally gonzo, I guess. Enough 
"I need to see you's," too. Deeply down 
there somewhere there's a certain sweetness, 
maybe, but I just don't see it. So I'm off. 

I've thrown on some Lizz Wright, so back off 
for a track...Okay, so back to that curious 
way we/you/I/she/they could squeeze the sweetness 
from a kitty cat. I'll go, I mean, otherwise 
I'll stay. It's a whatever kind of down, 
down, down, down day. I think it's broken. 

No, hang on—"enough, enough, enough." I went off. 
I'm sorry. It's this letdown ending part, all curious 
and crushed up, but otherwise touched. (signed) 
Sweetness. 

dopplegangers.

for Elizabeth:my sister, who knows.

erelong our buds will blossom into buttercups.

life's too short for me not to say that

i...well, doihavetosay? won't this poem do? 'cause the

zealots with their branding rods have

anchored us together, like the extra A between your names,

but brazen, you dare not drown. you say, think quick, for

even as our lives are taken out of context,
there is still a literary chance - we
have yet to be mollified in Flanders

now, i see that some days
are far worse off than others,

but if disaster strikes on monday
would we leave our A's behind
two Gretels grasping for breadcrumbs
on the other side of the week?

now i feel that when we speak
our zaftig shapes sway to the beat of
dangerously different drummers

even our discord is divine
just know that i too taste it,
our friendship bitter-sweet
and while you've never seen me weep,
during nights of fitful sleep
i hear your whispers - how they
tranquilise and fortify me...
saying shh, just listen: you and i?

we're just a couple of fellows:

fellow, "don't you know each other?"

same glasses, different mothers

fellow black, up-and-coming

twenty-somethings. my fellow,

"you look like a fella, girl!"

we take fellow clumsy steps, 
unstable we fall feeble over fabled

fields filled with
flourishing blossoms

and buttercups.

yet brazen, we dare not drown.

on the shine i've taken that won't dull down.

The characters in this poem are fictitious and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.*

Special person,
if I were you I'd pay no attention
to admonitions from me... 
                                              ...To love another is something
like prayer and can't be planned, you just fall
into its arms because your belief undoes your disbelief. 
-Anne Sexton

 

dismissal, devotion.

each blue eye

on the same bright face

nulls the space that lays

numbed by her candor which

echoes- rings out - in ardor, in ardor, in ardor

ebullience. 'til an ending.

no one knows that i will

never match the rhythm of her heartbeat. with

one pound and three-quarters of premature chagrin i

expect the question; maudlin, mirrored: 

do i? i think i do

 

for her smile's the same at six as it was at two,

her hair shimmers its blonde good morning.

we stroll for one night onto hard-pressed streets,

and onto my pages she comes pouring.

the gentlest glance turns to the softest blush

and i'm soaring...

          i'm soaring...

                     i'm soaring

*except, of course, if i'm referring directly to You. which i am.

lunch in a parallel universe.

Somewhere, in a town completely unlike the one you grew up in, there are two women at lunch- mother and daughter, obviously. The girl is beautiful, tall, twenty-five or so. Yet she can't sit still in her seat. She bounces around, tosses her hair, eats too fast, talks a mile a minute while looking all around just in case there is something interesting she hasn't seen yet and can talk about. The mother is also beautiful, perhaps sixty, her eyes alone are a 500-paged novel. Serene and smiling she is a total contrast to the young woman sitting across the table. How happy she is to be here with her daughter, how proud. Not many years ago this is the same child who frequently tried every bit of patience she had. The difficult student, the one with dyslexia or ADHD, or just wildly impatient about anything that didn't interest her. But now look at her- this wonder, this young woman who is moving way too quickly out of her mother's life and into her own. She has already set sail and we can only watch. But today she's generous enough to have lunch with Mom and talk about things that matter with her first, her greatest pal. She doesn't even know it is a gift. But Mom does.

on the difficulties of living every week like it's shark week when you're the bait (a pantoum).

Since the last poem made use of the metonym, I decided to opt for a bit more transparency in this entry, which I've actually been working on for a while. At Deonne's reading a few weeks ago, a guy went up before her (or maybe afterwards- there was free Scotch, so who can say for sure?) and read a few poems, one of which was a pantoum, a form in which the first and third lines of a verse is always the same as the second and fourth lines of the previous quatrain. Harder than it sounds, especially when you're not a poet, which I'm not... If it weren't so angry I'd dedicate it to certain FPers who know where i'm coming from and help me see where i'm goin'.

my bad habits and i,
we may need couple's counseling
i can't always be "on" or "off"
moods shifting like swedish seasons.

we may need couple's counseling.
at night when we turn our backs i say
i can't always be "on" or "off"-
i smell blood in the water,

at night when we turn our backs. i say-
i plead with you to leave me-
i smell blood in the water!
my tears bleed through your pillows.

i plead with you to leave me
"the sharks," i say, "they're circling"
my tears bleed closer to your pillow
but like bait, you've thrown me over

the sharks!! i say, they're circling!
as i'm clinging to your pillow
like bait, you've thrown me over
i swim towards them, i'm a martyr.

as i'm clinging to your pillow
they tear me limb from limb
i swam towards them, good little... martyr.
i hope they save a piece for you

god, how they tear me limb from limb!
it's nothing i haven't already done
i hope they save a piece for you
self-flagellation's not just for christians, 

it's nothing i haven't already done 
anything for you to love me.
self-flagellation's not just for christians
your reticence keeps me under

i'll do anything for you to love me
so my moods shift like swedish seasons
as they devour the final piece i think
yes, we may need couple's counseling.

an advisory note to a certain city by a bay.

 No. 29

distance aids, abets

these feelings under rugs swept;

sleeveless hearts abound

but if i had sleeves, i'd put my heart on 'em.

"that's what she said"

No. 28

"hold it against me"

entendres doubled over

taking it...the blame

...what? don't hold this haiku against me. unless that's what yr into.

on wearing more hats than immelda marcos's shoe collection

No. 27

i'm worse for the wear

no time to sleep nor to sneeze...

what day is it, please?

...but really, what day?

pardon my turkey.

No. 26

me and macaulay:

irony, i'm 'Home Alone':

ennui not prevented

...erm, Happy Thanksgiving?

the consequences of a sea-sick sailor.

No. 25

you will rue the day

"ships are fallible," i say

this one's sailed away

wherewithal: the lack thereof

No. 24

peeves shouldn't be pets 
like sleeping dogs, let them lie
put your mind to rest

a(n) historical haiku

No. 23

my petulent young son

fought the british and one, but

we've all lost, bar none