Hello-
I don’t know if you remember me-
I was a friend of yours from years ago.
I was just sitting on the porch of my house,
here in New Orleans, feeling the cool air, watching the purple sky
and listening to the sound of the train pass, when your face came to my mind.
I can still smell your hair. Feel the touch of your skin.
You, beautiful woman, one of the most beautiful women I have ever met.
I just wanted you to know that.
I would have wrote it all down if not for the beer in my hand.
I’ll hang up now- in three-
one
two
three.
An Old Friend Calling
Gone to Get Milk
This is a poem that I rewrote from my very first post. In its previous form I think it was a collection of images pasted together but not making a lot of sense. The second title was the good-bye man. I like this title more. ***Update- I’ve reworked this poem once again, giving it a new title and cutting some words. This poem is working like chipping out a sculpture.
Gone to Get Milk
Breath to a window, fogging the view,
reflections and grief clamor for attention.
Emotions like a choir inside four walls.
Ludicrious, brooding for hours, upon days.
Dull, damp moonlight ushers in dark clouds,
headlights draw near and pass
leaving no choice but to close the curtains.
Anonymity is a wreaking ball to wanting to be seen.
It has smashed the veranda of imagined futures.
The home, the family an illusion.
Doors close and they close.
Life goes on
passing like headlights flooding a room in brief light.
A New Blog title
After a few months of this blog I have decided to change the title. When I first picked the title Really Bad Poetry, it was a tongue in cheek kind of title, and also I don’t consider myself to be much of a poet, but after a particular comment on one of my poems (nothing bad) I began to rethink the title. I still don’t consider myself a poet, but far more than in my fiction writing, and other writing, I feel more free to write as I want, be it stream of conscience or form. Since, I am not offering my work to submit or for critique I feel “allowed’ to write whatever I feel, and to make changes as I want, not based on any one person’s opinion, just my own. Thinking in this context leads me to conclude that I should not call myself a bad poet but an amazing poet because there is no one around to tell me other wise and I’m not listening anyway.
The new title comes from a poem I wrote a few years ago titled Mother’s Gift. Chatoyant, a soft word that slides out from between your teeth and pass your lips like a kiss, means: varying in color when seen in different lights or from different angles. I think it is a far more welcoming title and more appropriate for the growing poems.
Not a Sestina
The sestina is slow coming. Because I haven’t worked on it at all. I have been so busy new poetry has been on the decline. (Sorry Emily) After this week I will be able to sit down and create some new work but for now, since it has been ages since I have posted a poem, I’m posting an old one.
This poem was originally written to be a 100 line poem, but I didn’t like the form so I ended up expanding it into 118 lines. I had based it off the stylings and movement of the confessional poets. It has some obscenities, in case you are sensitive, and sexual themes. The title and Name Sylvia- come from Sylvia Plath one of the most well known confessional poets. The piece is meant more to be performed than simply read, although if I did a good job you should be able to feel the rise and fall in the poem.
Sylvia, the poet, and A Confessional
I am nothing like her.
The men, the pain, the education-
All different.
I was supposed to be honored that he wrote me in a poem.
His words painted me-an exquisite portrait.
His masterpiece-To be viewed but not touched.
(He was the poet. I am
just
a woman.)
He wrote late. After hiking through mountains.
He sat beside a night river.
Pen in hand, and thought
deeply,
about our last night together:
Her arms wrapped about my body… my flesh pressed to…
His notion of love making
Pressed. Come to me. Come to me…
Words, scribbled in pencil.
(I’m thinking about sex.
The way it drives
everything
The way it controls
everything-
gets complicated once you get naked.)
Nude-fuck…
We can’t do this anymore because-
The muse has left?
My body-
Yes! My body that held a part of his body-
And this was to mean nothing but a moment,
material for the next perfect prose.
(I kept expecting something more
Some incredible release. An
inner body experience)
My flesh folding in, on and over his.
He wrote me in a poem and immortalized
my white bra, my bare ass
on his cotton sheets.
I left, and this was poignant
(When we are rolling around tied in a knot of skin and liquid
am I the only one in the room?)
Shh-
(Why is it I feel like I am in this game alone?)
Shh-
Listen! It’s not as romantic as all that-
I told you once:
I was drawn to Tomas, Kundera’s character,
his desire to be with every woman he met.
Not for the conquest, but because he loved them,
so much
he wanted to know their secret,
their secret smell.
(I felt so heavy.
I wanted to know what it was like to be light
even if it was unbearable.)
I told you this once- remember?
We sat across the table with coffee and later beer.
You had locked the doors
seducing me
but it was over-
You said you were like Tomas,
It was how you identified yourself. Shh…
Listen!
When we were new
I wanted to peel your skin and slit you open,
step inside and wear you-
Tsk. Tsk.
Wrong thing to say; too intense, too serious.
Too afraid I wanted to steal your soul
like a succubus
or would I be an incubus? Shh… I wanted to know you…
Shh
Listen!
Where were you?-
When I lost three hours,
hallucinating, hearing voices?
Calling me a train wreck I suppose.
Leaving me bruised and screaming
And, Where were you, poet, when I crashed?
Writing about me in your bed, loving my memory?
Running an imaginary finger down my translucent spine?
Holding your pen tight- ready for the muse?
Here I am!
I am the one who punched the glass and walked over
wet train tracks gripping a piece of two-by-four wanting to smash
your face
my rage like an engine:
“I think I can, I think I can-
make it to the other side of this mountain.
Alone.”
Shh.
Listen- a secret:
I fell in love with a bi-polar boy, once- long ago
He suffered from psychotic episodes and I wanted to
ride his nightmare.
(Such a pretty horse to those of us
watching outside the fence.) I didn’t want to fix him
I liked him broken- like all the sick romantics.
But, I knew the danger.
I let him go.
But, here is the clincher in this jugular confession:
I was hoping to take a bit of his madness
and make an excuse for mine.
Time is thick.
Inside are all the parts I wanted to steal.
Skin and blood and madness swirling like oil-
madness- loneliness-
I am something like her.
I look into mirrors, carry stones.
Where is the rope! the tape? The children? The gas?
No not this way-
I am taking myself back,
poet,
stripping the canvas
smearing your words your paint
and leaving
My hand prints.
My words.
Poetry Up date
I’ve been working on a Sestina, which is slow going. I’m playing around with form as I did with the previous ballad. The Sestina is a bit complicated, as it has 39 lines in six stanzas of six lines each, it is then followed by a final stanza of three lines.
There is no rhyme, but this is where is begins to get tricky: The same six end words have to occur in every stanza but in a changing pattern- this is called a “lexical repetition.” Each stanza follows the last with a reverse paring of the previous lines.
There is more. The first line of the second stanza must pair its end-word (s) with the last line of the first. All the stanza’s repeat this pattern, except the final three lines which are more of a wrap up of all of the repeated six end-words.
So it has been taking a bit of time. But there is a new poem in the works.
The Ballad
The Ballad is a poem that is generally written with four lines in a stanza, and its rhyme scheme tends to be abab or abcb. The subject matter is often about love lost, things ghostly or events or social commentary. You don’t see the ballad in poems much these days but you can still find it in song, think of “Every Rose Has its Thorn”-Ballad just like something you’d hear around the table in 17th century England. Anyway…
I’ve made an attempt at writing a couple of ballads trying to keep with the themes and the rhyme, as far as meter; I’m terrible at it, but sometimes accidents can happen.
When at the Cafe Don’t Look at Him
No one talks to him
he is a lonely man
sitting in the coffee shop
a coffee in his hand
Poised for conversation
He stares with eager eyes
hoping to make contact
with any passer by
He really has a lot to say
the words rest on his lips
if only one would chat to him
he lifts his cup to sip
When he walks he tippy toes
his sharp nose pointing out
his bones are bent and crooked
but his heart is full and round
He comes here every morning
to sit among the crowed
His longing it is palpable
uncomfortably shifting down
The problem: he’s not normal
not quite right in the head
you can tell by glancing at him
but careful, remember look straight ahead
No one has ever loved him
he’s never been adored
people treat him like he’s dead
Invisible and ignored
He doesn’t grasp these feelings
neglect already ate his brain
He was laughed and left by children
As adults it is the same
His head is knotted and scoured
like custard scraped from a cup
if you did get caught in conversation
he’d forget you as you got up
In a way he is lucky
sitting here alone
like a bird perched on a chip
an old king upon his throne
It is us who feel his sadness
to his loneliness we are prone
it hurts our heart to view him
A projection all our own.
Many of the old ballads were about women loosing their loves or sons at sea, some great loss where they wish to toss their bodies to the vast oceans and join their love or they call to the world to help them mourn. Following that tradition I wrote this one like a love calling to another that is long away never to return.
When Love No Longer Visits
This time it is truly over
This time it is the end
There will be no beginning
no more letters will I send
The heart’s been broke completely
There are no pieces left to toss
There will never be walks in parks
All love of future lost
Cutter
It was more than a past time…
She took pleasure in it
a cleansing-
“I’m clean”:
She cut into the flesh
like an apple
her arm a grid
red streets sectioned
into
swollen neighborhoods
and at the
thigh
inside,
hidden (the sweetest spot to kiss)
a slice like opening the universe
bleeding as she slept.
The scars will last a lifetime.
Just the thought brings a sigh of
relief.
Any Heart can Break
She speaks to me
with her hands.
Lean soft fingers
curling into letters.
Such an effort
to make
A hearing person understand.
Her voice ( which is rarely used),
strains to vocalize-
Rapidly her fingers spell
She touches her eyelids, mouth, chin.
Her sounds
lifting uncontrolled,
Words peal like wails
And I hurt for her.
She folds her lips, and tounge
Over the vibrations,
Each vowel a tear,
Each sentence a raging river.
Without syllables her story
Sweeps
like the broom of god
Over an ocean,
And I weep
Because I am the hearing one.
Some Fairy Tales
A Tiny Pea
A princess complained:
Please move me. I can’t sleep the pain is far too intense.
I can aspire to be so,
so small.
I can hide in a crack
In the corner
of a tea cup (in the farthest
circular edge). I could
lie between the mattress,
40 mattresses deep
and wait-
and wait -
Please move me. I can’t sleep.
The pain is far too intense.
A princess complained:
2.
Fable
Crow is eating cheese.
Cunning Fox,
Red with snow white tipped tail—
“I sit below your branch
Mouth open,
Wide toothy grin,
And wait, and wait
Would I—”
Crow-
“Fly to my branch?
Or bring me to your level?”
3.
Kid Wish
I want
to hold
a butterfly
in my hand
and borrow the powdered
wings
as shadow for my eyes.
Just One Freckle
I wish I could carry you
something small,
something you could live without,
something you would not
miss.
Like a freckle, the one by your lip,
I could keep it
in my front pocket
carry it around
everywhere I went
patting my breast
just to feel you there.
We could go to dinner,
for walks
at night, out in the warm air.
When brushing my teeth
I could place you in a small cup
on the edge of the sink,
and smile just knowing you were there.
At night when I’d sleep
I’d put you beneath my pillow
and sleep together
keeping safe.
If I could just have one
small part of you
just a tiny bit for myself
a bit of you
I’d hold you tight
pressed like a flower
close to my heart.
