Random Collections of Words that May Become a Poem. Or Not.

The Performance Artist

Simple tempered she stepped from the limelight with delicate fingers dipped in crisp chocolate.

It cracked like her fingers were cold vanilla ice cream.

Everyone Cried.

 

This poem Needs work

When a butterfly flaps its wings…
we say nothing

What I say is never heard through brick walls
covered with plaster.
My voice clogged with decayed leaves
of ancestors I never met,
rules placed before asking
and silence filled with white noise.
It is never quiet.

I thought you said something.

Although we walk together our hands never touch
we placate emotions like mimes in boxes-
ticking to our own clocks
different time, never together-never in unity-we are
the individual!
We believe this-
the moving box with flashing pictures told us-
“this is truth-
the individual only fights for self! Only the self succeeds!”

Hand in fist hits a plastic table rattling
cardboard skies propped up by two-by-fours
and the man in the suit speaks
the truth
because he says it’s truth-
the woman blonde and bubbly
smiles from the box, says
“Some have died today-but it didn’t effect you,
have a nice day.

And seated on stones in our mime boxes
we applaud but no one hears us.
we don’t care
because inside, here, we can’t
feel anything.

beat, beat, a pulse
my heart?
I think, beating, ringing, crying
in my ear
I place my hand to a clear wall
I hope our palms will touch
but you don’t see me
you are applauding at the flashing lights
I say something but I am never heard-
I can barely hear myself-
they trained us well
from the very beginning
on carpeted floors, necks arched
looking toward tele-gods
we are never enough
and we applaud in silent boxes
but I think I heard you speak
once
and I am afraid
I am forgetting your voice-
your true voice.

Dreaming of Patti Smith

Where would we be without Patti? After reading her book Just Kids I felt inspired to know everything Patti. The life that she chose to live is the life that I imagine, the artistic life. It was a relief to read that she had to work at “jobs” to support herself before being able to survive solely as an artists. I often look to my life and I think of the hours and days given to other people for employment. I feed their dreams and their ambitions. It is especially hard when you are only doing a job for money and you have no connection to the work you are doing, you become acutely aware that you are helping to pay for your boss’s house, your boss’s vacation, your boss’s adventures, while you still rent, you never vacation, and all your dreams are in bits of paper on your floor in your rented room. I envision that these great poets had starved themselves for the sake of their art, and some of them did, and some of them had patrons, and some of them were revered before they ever needed to find a “real job”. Sometimes I need to hear that someone had to do what I have to do in order to just make it day-to-day, work just enough to eat and have shelter but the rest of the time is for your art. As I get older, I find it more challenging, especially as I watch my friend’s paths turn to building a family, buying homes and choosing secure careers (as secure as we can find right now that is). I think to myself that I am a failure in a job that has no personal growth, no pay increase, and no tie to what I find creative it is retail, it’s not even a bookstore. Thank god for Patti though, thank god she wrote her memoir, it reminds me that life is a path and a series of events and where you are right now is not where you will always be. I can still find my way.

I’m looking forward to seeing this film.

The Day after the Flood

I was in Copenhagen when I had learned that Carley was missing, that she had fallen in the Partnach River.

The dream is always the same.
Steel blue water, cold, silent, like a grave,
and it was a grave.
It had woke me, as it does,
at the point when I see her;
bloated and wedged between two erratic boulders,
ancient, tired rocks,
moved by glaciers, drowned by mountains’ rivers,
and left to press, and squeeze her
like rollers in an wringer washing tube.
Always the same bits of her flesh peeling away like dying salmon,
clouded lidless eyes,
and her name whispered, faint:
Carley.

Blondie and The Six year old

This is very much a work in progress. I’m not sure how I want the stanza or the mood or anything for that matter. I was doing some imagery exercises and this game out of that, but there is a lot of work to be done on it.

Almost midnight,
Ten minutes till the Debbie Harry Interview.
mother is in bed
pressed against the boyfriend,
the one with the black beard, like a pirate’s.

The living room, my new bedroom,
holds the key to my mistress of music.
I crawl from the sheets, flannel,
pj’s spark blue and crack,
soft palms press against tweed plaid
couch, hard and rough on my skin,
but I’m young I can handle the couch.

White ghost feet, toes spread
to slip into the brown shag carpet
like sand slipping between my toes
and to my knees and hands
as silent as a cat on the
kitchen counter, I crawl
breathless to the black stereo.

The record player with the Am/FM radio.
I pinch the dial and carefully,
slowly, slowly,
turn the black metal knob.
The click is like bones cracking
and the rooms echos
like a scream into a cavern.
I lie still listening
to the sounds in the next
room.
New boyfriend does not
find my behaviors cute
and does not spare the rod, but she is worth it.
Crickets orchestrate classical melodies from behind
sealed glass, but there is no other sound except the exhalation of the house and my breath.

I slide closer to the speaker,
the hiss and crack of airwaves
tickle the hairs in my ear
as I press my cheek into the
soft but scratchy fabric that
stretches like a band over the
speaker. It is like a seal that
separates her from me.
I know if I could peel back the fabric and climb inside that I
would fall into the studio, like
Alice fell into the rabbit hole,
I would fall to her white pumps
and she would kneel down to
smile at me
her platinum blonde shag
falling about her delicate cheekbones.
“Why hello. I’m Debra Harry. Aren’t you up
way past your bedtime?”

I close my eyes at the first sound of her voice
and fall asleep like
a content serpent around a hot stone.

When I spend too Much Time at Work…

When I spend too much time at work,
I forget I am a writer,
I forget that it is words that feed me
not dollars,
but the necessity causes me to forget.

When I spend too much time at work,
I forget what my work really is,
craft, poetry, learning, reading, ascension
to language,
it’s easy to forget.

When I spend too much time at work,
I am lost, and my heart aches,
why so blue? “At least you have a job.”
Yes, yes, I have a job,
but I keep forgetting my true work.

Mary Oliver certainly pulls me back into the light.

Thank you to lannanfoundation for posting this to youtube.

Something from Anne

Thank God someone recorded this and someone posted it to youtube so that we could listen to Anne Sexton read this poem. In honor of the Confessional poets (since I posted something from Sylvia Plath previously) I found this youtube post. Her Kind is an amazing poem, but listening to her speak it sends chills through me. I wish I could have been alive to listen to her read it live.

 

Something from Sylvia

I love Sylvia Plath. She is the one poet I continue to return to. I think that even though she is not considered a beat writer and that she is placed in the category of the confessional poets, I find her to seem very beat. This is a clip that is posted on youtube of her reading her poem Daddy. I love to hear her read this piece. I had never heard her voice before and I have yet to listen to the other recordings, but the powerful cadence of her reading has drawn me even more to this poem that I had never really connected to until now after hearing it read from the poet herself.

The year in my Poetry World

In 2010, I was introduced to Write Bloody Publishing and was able to meet and watch many new and talented poets.

I was accepted into the Attic’s Antheneum writing program, not as a poet, but I have the pleasure of working with poets.

I was reintroduced to Philip Larkin’s poetry.

My wish in the poetry world of 2011, is that I see Howl, and that I am able to go to more readings, engage with exciting new writers and influential artists, and that my poetry will improve in quality craft and skill.

Aubade

A Video for one of my poems

This was made as part of a collaborative effort for a Showcase I put on in November, this was the media part of the art and performance show.

Poets can seduce
with big words like dystopia,
metaphors like
fern sword, fern
sword.
Aural body licking,
words talk dirty or clean,
deep like the best lover,
even if they are
singing to a wine glass
filled with dirty dishwater,
They are seducing you
simple red wheelbarrows,
ball turret gunners,
and dancing on daddy’s feet,
wipe the tears as the meaning hits,
or doesn’t. We don’t get it.
They are seducing you,
they get better looking as they read.
Average men and women
turn to perfumed demigods,
not gods, not goddesses,
not humans, not immortals,
half-breeds.
That is the power of performance.
Intoxicated by the
language,
The gaze shifts from
love to lust.
Away you poets!
Do not  speak to me
crafted words strung
like colored popcorn
on the poor man’s
tree dripping
tinsel, and bread made ornaments.
Vocabulary curled like the petal of the
deepest part of the red, red rose,
that is language.
Taste the muse, see the
spirit,
then set the poet free
to be men and women
who die like the rest of us.