Wednesday, January 11, 2012
A Very Bad Idea or, The Sonnets Are Coming! The Sonnets Are Coming
In the interest of preparing for The Love Letter Project http://phren-z.org/ I have decided to write one sonnet a day for the rest of the month. If I can keep this up, we'll see if I can make it for an entire year. Hopefully this will make me a better sonnet writer or, at the very least, a better blogger. First iambic monstrosity posting tomorrow. Shakespeare help us all.
Monday, November 7, 2011
The Morning Shift
There is a comfort
To the morning register shift.
The early risers come to and from their coffee
In the yawning light,
Two dollars, a dollar ten, eighty cents
Impatient in hand,
And I know they want a newspaper--
The Sentinel, or The Times, the slim Wallstreet Journal--
As quickly as possible,
Never mind the pennies.
I really have no idea what people want the rest of the time,
Just that we are running heavy
With everything we want to spend.
To the morning register shift.
The early risers come to and from their coffee
In the yawning light,
Two dollars, a dollar ten, eighty cents
Impatient in hand,
And I know they want a newspaper--
The Sentinel, or The Times, the slim Wallstreet Journal--
As quickly as possible,
Never mind the pennies.
I really have no idea what people want the rest of the time,
Just that we are running heavy
With everything we want to spend.
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Parting Gifts
You returned everything
Except my goodbye.
The one thing I wanted back.
You kissed and watered it
Just a little,
Just enough
To keep it growing.
I tried to drown it,
But it proved to be
Too a thirsty young thing,
Pretty,
In its delicate, carnivorous, melancholy.
It's funny--
What looks good in a vase--
What eats you alive.
Except my goodbye.
The one thing I wanted back.
You kissed and watered it
Just a little,
Just enough
To keep it growing.
I tried to drown it,
But it proved to be
Too a thirsty young thing,
Pretty,
In its delicate, carnivorous, melancholy.
It's funny--
What looks good in a vase--
What eats you alive.
Sunday, May 15, 2011
In August
In August,
Demoiselle Cranes
Stretch their slender necks
Above the dying grasses
Again, for the first time, or the last,
Preparing to throw their improbable lacework
Against the eternal teeth of the Himalayas,
The hawks, and hungry canyons,
Trembling wings, and purple storms,
Season after season,
For the distant emerald certainty
Of home.
In August,
Two hands often reach,
Hover on the uncertain breeze,
Brush palm to palm,
Fragile as paper kites
Against the long blue of the sky.
Demoiselle Cranes
Stretch their slender necks
Above the dying grasses
Again, for the first time, or the last,
Preparing to throw their improbable lacework
Against the eternal teeth of the Himalayas,
The hawks, and hungry canyons,
Trembling wings, and purple storms,
Season after season,
For the distant emerald certainty
Of home.
In August,
Two hands often reach,
Hover on the uncertain breeze,
Brush palm to palm,
Fragile as paper kites
Against the long blue of the sky.
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Between reading Sheila Callaghan and Erik Ehn, my brain is getting funny
Peter Counts His Darlings, he doesn't know how
Flying is just falling backwards.
I fell out of nurse's pram,
Tumbled starward,
Never never looked back,
I think?
I don't remember.
Michael has puns
That are too old for him,
They stick out through his cradle
Like too long toenails,
Wendy snips them off with doll's scissors.
John is fighting to pulse through
His own machinery,
Sometimes he is a clockwork crocodile,
But not as hungry.
Wendy complains at the steam coming out of his hat.
Wendy,makes every corner a throne,
Her eyes sparkle by needle-light,
Nothing in her face is anything I understand,
Her heart is a bird, beating against a closed window,
She tells me that flying is just falling upwards.
Mother,
I think?
I don't remember.
Flying is just falling backwards.
I fell out of nurse's pram,
Tumbled starward,
Never never looked back,
I think?
I don't remember.
Michael has puns
That are too old for him,
They stick out through his cradle
Like too long toenails,
Wendy snips them off with doll's scissors.
John is fighting to pulse through
His own machinery,
Sometimes he is a clockwork crocodile,
But not as hungry.
Wendy complains at the steam coming out of his hat.
Wendy,makes every corner a throne,
Her eyes sparkle by needle-light,
Nothing in her face is anything I understand,
Her heart is a bird, beating against a closed window,
She tells me that flying is just falling upwards.
Mother,
I think?
I don't remember.
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Some Mary Oliver for the Solstice
Poppies
Mary Oliver
The poppies send up their
orange flares; swaying
in the wind, their congregations
are a levitation
of bright dust, of thin
and lacy leaves.
There isn't a place
in this world that doesn't
sooner or later drown
in the indigos of darkness,
but now, for a while,
the roughage
shines like a miracle
as it floats above everything
with its yellow hair.
Of course nothing stops the cold,
black, curved blade
from hooking forward—
of course
loss is the great lesson.
But I also say this: that light
is an invitation
to happiness,
and that happiness,
when it's done right,
is a kind of holiness,
palpable and redemptive.
Inside the bright fields,
touched by their rough and spongy gold,
I am washed and washed
in the river
of earthly delight—
and what are you going to do—
what can you do
about it—
deep, blue night?
Mary Oliver
The poppies send up their
orange flares; swaying
in the wind, their congregations
are a levitation
of bright dust, of thin
and lacy leaves.
There isn't a place
in this world that doesn't
sooner or later drown
in the indigos of darkness,
but now, for a while,
the roughage
shines like a miracle
as it floats above everything
with its yellow hair.
Of course nothing stops the cold,
black, curved blade
from hooking forward—
of course
loss is the great lesson.
But I also say this: that light
is an invitation
to happiness,
and that happiness,
when it's done right,
is a kind of holiness,
palpable and redemptive.
Inside the bright fields,
touched by their rough and spongy gold,
I am washed and washed
in the river
of earthly delight—
and what are you going to do—
what can you do
about it—
deep, blue night?
Friday, December 3, 2010
Mad Women Do You Love
Soo, I may have been watching the show Mad Men a little. Or a lot. This happened next:
Mad Women
Do you love
Lucy
Brick-a-brack brightened
Smile curved string of pearls
Do you love
Patsy
Swollen voice
Bruised lovely as a tumbling car
Pouring out past the wreckage
Do you love
Or hate
The signs on fountains
Wire and bone
Curled tight as your hair
Around your middle
Back straight
Do you love
Sexton
Or sex
Are your children bird-tongued
Indecipherable as your hands
Cramping for wonder
Do you love
Sylvia
Oven dreams
Crowding the bedside darkness
Anxious with thirst
Or cold
Do you love
The curlers
Tin cans
Books hidden under the bed
Do you love
When everything is either
An outside cardigan
Or an indoor plant
Do you
When you smell Marilyn's cocktails
And lethian fumes in your baby's shampoo
Love
Yourself inside-out
And back again
To you
Love.
Mad Women
Do you love
Lucy
Brick-a-brack brightened
Smile curved string of pearls
Do you love
Patsy
Swollen voice
Bruised lovely as a tumbling car
Pouring out past the wreckage
Do you love
Or hate
The signs on fountains
Wire and bone
Curled tight as your hair
Around your middle
Back straight
Do you love
Sexton
Or sex
Are your children bird-tongued
Indecipherable as your hands
Cramping for wonder
Do you love
Sylvia
Oven dreams
Crowding the bedside darkness
Anxious with thirst
Or cold
Do you love
The curlers
Tin cans
Books hidden under the bed
Do you love
When everything is either
An outside cardigan
Or an indoor plant
Do you
When you smell Marilyn's cocktails
And lethian fumes in your baby's shampoo
Love
Yourself inside-out
And back again
To you
Love.
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