The Poem

Home After a Long Hiatus

Home:
     it begins with an expulsion of air, then segues
     into the sound of the universe;

the leaves here are already turning
shades of gold, red, igniting amber-blazed effigies
that burn brightly in the forest

and at the sides of roads.

I have never been away so long before.

Things have happened:
     friends moved, couples
     split. An aunt moved and split
     and broke an arm in two places.

In one year, so much change...

yet so much is unchanged
that I wonder if time moved without
me at all;

men haven't forgotten, touching me
on a denim leg, letting innuendo drop
like drifting-down leaves
into smoldering piles.

Neither has the poodle forgotten,
her creamy topiary body greeting me at the door
as though I had just returned late with groceries.

Food tastes the same,
the restaurants serve the same dishes,
stores the same Made in China
rags posing as designer labels that they did before

I left.

But I'm certain there is something different...
a lens that colors the scenes, or a cloud that rolls
and covers,
then uncovers as it chooses, revealing

bits and pieces
that I had never before noticed.

I tell myself that this, like any weather system,
will pass soon enough,
and everything will look as it once did:
     a whole unparceled painting,
     a horizon that stretches just as broadly as ever,
     a vastness that cannot be captured in photographs.

In the meantime, I move slowly,
tentatively,
just in case perspective has shifted
and the step in front of me is bigger than it looks,
even though I feel like leaping and skipping
and cruising several city blocks in one giant stride.

Home of Baggott & Asher & Bode: How Boot Camp -- Starting Tomorrow -- Might Actual...

Home of Baggott & Asher & Bode: How Boot Camp -- Starting Tomorrow -- Might Actual...: "This is how it's going to work. 1. I'm going to give you some memory exercises every day. Basically, it's my firm belief that the dark fin..."

Submit Now!

After a long hiatus, I've finally decided to start submitting again. Poetry, that is. I stopped because I had become disillusioned with so many of the print journals that published poetry. There seemed to be an attitude among certain editors and writers that praised poems that were basically incoherent, and the more incoherent the poem, the more praise was heaped upon it. Language poets ruled. Lately, I've noticed a lot of movement away from that sort of aesthetic, which I welcome gladly. Not that I look down on experimental forms; I'm only too happy to see people playing with words and language in new and interesting ways. It was more the attitudes of certain groups that I was dismayed by. As though poetry only belonged to an elite bunch of writers who had clearly been educated beyond their intelligence.

Poetry belongs rightly to everyone. Robert Frost understood that concept; he knew that poetry stirred the spirit and imagination of the common farmer as much as it did the college-educated man. His poems exist on two distinct levels for this very reason. Everyone can read his works and gain something from them, whether it be more a surface gleaning or a deep, nuanced understanding that comes from informed study.

I like the new movements that strive to put poetry in the everyday world, such as the one by poet, Agustina Woodgate, in Miami, who recently sewed lines of poetry by Li Po and Sylvia Plath into the collars of thrift store clothes as part of a campaign for the O, Miami Poetry Festival. I am also reminded of the title character in the Norwegian film, Elling, who sneaks his own poems into packages of sauerkraut in his town's grocery store.

Poetry did not have elitist beginnings. Quite the opposite. Poetry was enjoyed by everyone as they sat around the campfire or the hearth listening to epic tales or histories recited in verse form. Rhyme was originally used in poems as a mnemonic device; it's much easier to remember a long piece if it has rhyme and rhythm. The poetic form also adds power as it preserves; the very reason the Old and New Testaments are written in verse is to bring power to the words and stories they contain. If poetry did not have elitist beginnings, why should it have slipped into the dominion of the elite few for so long? At some point along the way, most readers found they no longer understood poetry, or could no longer relate to it. I'm happy to say that's no longer the case. The great equalizer of the internet has provided voice and medium to so many poets and readers of poetry that I can't imagine poetry ever again being usurped by professors and critics who feel so threatened by mass audiences that they have to confine the practice of poetics to their own small circles.

I welcome the deluge of poems on the internet that beg to be waded through, the guerilla poetry movements whose ranks I would gladly join, and all the new writers and readers of poetry who only prove my thinking that poetry is important and necessary to our culture. Not that my own poems will be a great boon to any of the new journals, but I want to be a part of it now. I want to submit, to play whatever small role I can, to make my own tiny contribution to poetry in whatever way I can.

The Red Shoes

the first pair was different    
she made them from found scraps
        pieced together carefully at night
she no longer minded being poor

then the gilded carriage came
    in its radiant glistenings
the old woman inside like a dried bean in her pod
with the carriage came duty and being quiet
    when the girl really wanted to hunt for more scraps

the first pair were tossed into the fire
    by the old woman
the inappropriateness of red shoes extinguished

the girl yearned for what she had lost
she dreamed of the red shoes
she longed to walk in brightness

the second pair were bought secretly
she wore them to church
    where the old woman became ashamed
the red shoes were forbidden to her
and they were hidden away

but the girl was resolute and devious
she found the hidden shoes
and wore them again

but now something was different
now her feet danced
or the shoes danced her feet
she could not stop
she was a marionette
    a wicked puppet on strings
    a foolish automaton
that wanted only to rest

but the shoes did not stop
they danced
all over town they danced
the shoes danced the girl
    until she thought she would die

she danced in front of a woodsman
she begged him to cut off the shoes
he struck but the buckles were too tight
they were bound around her feet like roots
she begged him to cut off her feet
he lifted his ax and she rested finally

shoeless
footless
the girl continued alone
once again she searched for scraps
and the things to be pieced together

no longer needing red shoes
no longer expecting golden carriages
hobbling
dragging herself
she scoured the forest for scraps left behind
by others who had also cast things aside

An Awakening in Three Parts

One:  a waiting

urgency seizes the girl
who listens with all her curiosity
to the flailing night;

the sky releases the scent of day
that it had been carrying aloft
and she breathes it in deeply,

as deeply as she is able to breathe.

Two:   a revealing

of things kept under padlocked dread
flares like a sunburst;

the girl opens herself in time
to be struck by meaning
like an asteroid creating a canyon;

she holds herself open
with piercing deliberation;
her body floods with certainty.

Three:  a releasing

of everything she once held
close sloughs clean her memory

frees mistakes that had lurked like a dog
with its tail between its legs
at the edge of exuberant woods

leaves her with only her corpse to ponder
and an emptiness ready to be filled.

Green Tara in the Cleveland Museum of Art

Adder eyes
and breasts like colliding
planets,
she lifts one hennaed hand
in a mudra.
The gold hoops
almost touch verdigris shoulders
and a jewel-strung foot
rests the weight of wisdom
on a solitary
blossom.
Lips that might have imparted
their secrets to Mona Lisa
tell no tales, yet
Enlightenment is one step away
would surely be their words
if I only knew how to hear them.

A simple act

I marvel at the eternal
genesis of the world
and of me: I am
                 the center
through which everything po
                                            urs.

I am the observer;
                  without me, the particle is silent.
Without me, there is nothing.

My gaze begins the rotation,
the winking             in and out
of existence
thousands of times per second,
                          the flux of subatomic activity
the only constant.

A thought is a step in evolution;
a single idea spawns galaxies.

My memoir is strung
in a double helix,
the sugars and amino acids
                        that form my desires
spelling out my destiny in distinct letters.

The world is inside me;
I am inside the world.

A quantum leap is all that is required
of you
              now
to create the world with me,
                              and you and I
will beget ad infinitum

the simple act of consciousness.

Shanghai, China

(thanks to Diane Lockward for the writing prompt & Jason Shinder for the model "Jacksonville, Vermont")

Because I am not Asian, I have the skin of a page

that has spent its life between rigid covers.
Inside the pulp I am spellbound.

I cannot tell when a breeze reaches in and stirs

the atoms of the dust. Sometimes
an aiyi will bring the tea into my study.

Or the yellow leaves falling on the bare floor

are days beginning to bump against each other
out of their drifting quest. All the great novels I have known

have been suffocated by fog and the prostitutes crosing the street at night.

The Birds

In Bodega Bay
they're not fussy chickens
that tell of the arrival
of chaos

and they came, the sky darkened
with beating wings
the power lines conquered

she said I want to go through life
jumping into fountains naked.

they descended in hordes
tearing flesh from limbs

I wish I were a stronger person
I'd love to be able to relax sometime
I'd love to be able to sleep

they came down the chimney
through the windows
tore through wood
through nerve

It's the end of the world
she said

the wings beat quickly
drowning out thought
and screams

even the hard-boiled knew
this was no accident
the sky flushed with black
with the fury

of the helpless suddenly
coming into control

the forgotten bringing the
lens back to their moment
in the spotlight

How to worship Diana

Stand closely, quietly
underneath the quaking trees;
your emptiness
should deplete you.

Lady of Wild Creatures,
Queen of Heaven.

Contemplate your origin.

Listen to the wind above
as it excites the branches.
Smell the bark. The moss. The dew.

Do not brush butterflies away;
let them paint your hair
in phosphorescence.

Be luminescent.

Sing along with the wolf,
the wind, the dancing leaves.
Lie with the pine needles
in their prostrate humility.

Regard the moon.

Ask the light to bathe you.
Ask the dark to clothe you.
Ask nothing of Diana;
she has already given
you everything you need.

Aradia's poem

They call my father dark,
yet his name is the opposite.
I am his hopeless earth-bound child.
My father stands tall in the background
of a childhood that only knows how to crouch.

His eyes glisten
like burning pools of water.

He listens.
He respects my opinion.
The leader of a revolt
that ended badly for everyone,
he still believes in free will.
His voice rises above the daily racket.

He is so very old now.

His hands bear the memory of war.
He showers me with truths
that cannot be rationalized away.
He encourages my individuality.
He tells me not to conform,
and, of course, not to submit.

He says the only way to lose
your soul is to give it away.

His exile is painful.
He is slandered daily.
He holds his head high.
He is not afraid of pride.
His memory is a light in a dark room,
a lucent flame that dances as though a window
has been opened.

Becoming Gertrude

I will have a salon like Gertrude Stein,
and all the weirdness in the world
will belong to me;
it will be mine to open like a bat
mitzvah gift found twenty years too late.
I will wear a caftan and pour shiraz
into tall stems; the poets
will settle in one corner hoarding
the cheese platter, and the painters
will stare at white walls until we
are all quite dizzy.
My friend Alex will stretch himself
the length of the settee, asking,
So, would you do me?
I will still shake my head, even as Gertrude,
and direct him to the water closet.
The novelists will ask me how to end
their endless novels,
and I will have a ready answer.
I will be formidable as Gertrude
and large, and those who touch me
will be famous before they leave.
I know that she is dead, and the decade
deader still, yet I can't help wondering
how the fabric would feel against my skin,
the draping beautifully, covering only what
it needs to cover, silk of becoming Gertrude.

A Poem to Rania

My paper is violet (no, not violent,
although maybe it should be that too),
and cheap, but my story is cheap.

Overheard in a poor palestinian village,
I stole it from a girl who had gotten married.
A young girl. How dumb, I thought,
why do you throw your life away? 
How can you do such a thing?

I wanted to pull you away, but I didn't
like you well enough for that.
Your life is mine now; it belongs to me
lock, stock and barrel.

I write about you as though I own you.

Your long black hair is mine too,
your every feature, crooked uncertain smile,
girlish laugh. I've taken them hostage,
although without hope of ransom, I think, Rania.

You are no longer your own person.
I am in charge and you will go
through all the permutations I ask of you.
I am too lazy, though, to ask for much.

You can't deny the fact

that I've been tired so long
the silver dollars from years
past don't even begin
to pay my allowance.
I am unaffordable
in my exhaustion,
the wall that separated
past and present worn
down to a nub, a glittery
pile of rubble that collects
only dust. You remind me
that I am expensive,
every coin in the world
a failure in precious metal:
in god we trust,
tiny letters defining mass
hysteria for future generations.
What's your point? Saying
that wealth accumulates
behind held-down eyelids
only tells me that you're not
willing to count and wrap
as those who've learned to delay
gratification might. After all,
it wasn't me who Lady Liberty
pointed to
as the mint pressed her spine
and rolled her toward uncertainty.
It was you, dallying around
the periphery like a collector of debts,
that the finger was meant for,
her omniscient gaze worth following
for those whose eyelids are still open.

On Writing Poetry

Learning to write poetry is a lot like learning to draw. When you first start out drawing, you see a face. Okay, that's easy: a big circle with 2 smaller ones inside for eyes, and a semi-circle for a mouth. Voila! You have a face. Not so fast, my drawing teacher said. Look at the lines, the shadow, the light and the dark qualities of every inch of your subject. It's not a face, after all; it's just shades. You start at one corner of your subject, documenting painstakingly every shade variation. When you're satisfied, you can move on to another aspect. You continue in this manner until you have captured it all. Then you look again, and instead of having a few perfect circles on your paper, you have a good representation of the person sitting in front of you. The key is to NOT see it as a face while you're drawing it (because our brain wants to reduce the idea "face" into a simple symbol), but to pay attention to each detail in its turn. Once you've captured all the details, you relize that what you've drawn is your best friend's face (or the face of whomever you connived into sitting for you).

Learning to write poetry is the same. If you want to write a poem about the rain, for example, you can't just think "rain." If you do, your brain will reduce that image to a few succinct (and likely trite) words and images. Like "wet." And all the well-worn phrases you've heard people use about rain: a "sudden downpour." Instead, you have to focus on each aspect of rain, one at a time, never thinking "rain," but trying to see it as though for the first time. Isolate the senses involved and let each one speak for itself. What does it look like? Sound like? Taste like? How does it feel on your skin, head, your open palm? Document the rain as someone from another planet might. Capture the shading, the light and shadow, the lines as you would with a charcoal pencil. Don't let the left side of your brain get involved until editing time. Easier said than done, I know. But with practice, it gets easier. And you don't have to actually write a poem to practice. Just start noticing the details. Put words to these sensory details. And be patient. Trying to take it all in at once is how we get our left brain into the mix, and then it asses things up for us. Inch by inch, fill in the shadows, and the lines will eventually reveal the poem that was right in front of you.

Striking

Echoes of striking hammers
bounce off metal walls,
the sparks of work continuing
into the darkness.

I am not satisfied.
The world ages quickly.

Love is a four-letter word
in this hole;
workers strive
not to notice how time
passes them by,
secludes them from the party
where tea is served
from gold-rimmed porcelain.

My time is short;
I will not wait for you
to hammer the cold metal
into a hot, morphing shape
that calls itself eternity.

The anvil's patina reflects
the number of things struck
upon its altar.
The count is staggering.

Once I knelt; submission
was inevitable.
I waited for the hammer to strike,
the fire to spread
between synapses and memory,
the pain that shapes
formless ore
into something precious.

Waiting for the strike
is illuminating;
the darkness splinters
into cold shards of light
and dark,
the knowledge
gained leaving no doubt:
I will not wait again.

Return of the Rider

The girl breaks her silence;
after the fall from the polo pony,
the quiet entombed her,
holding her like a chained
demon from the light.
Now she sees the rain falling,
hears the drops pound the stable roof,
asks herself Where are the ponies?
The ponies are retired,
bridles left hanging on rusty nails
by unopened doors.
Her friends are gone;
they've forgotten what it feels like
to ride in the early air,
dew gathering on ankles, mud
speckling the hems of jeans.
No one remembers marriage
of horse and rider, two
becoming one machine
that propels forward
into gloom and into sudden light,
into trails that wind
through unknown trees.
The girl remembers. Days of birdsong
and brisk musty smells,
the will of the animal submitting
to your own,
patting the brown neck for encouragement
when wading through water or
sliding downhill in slippery rain.
She listens again to the rain,
the empty barn's echo throbbing
in her own temple.
It wasn't the same, coming back
after so long.
She wants to leave it all again,
let it lie and rot as she has, but can't
bring herself to let go
of the smell of leather, the touch
of the mane running through her fingers
like dark hesitant water.

The Empty Field

The walls stand without a roof, the late
afternoon sun fixating bricks with a pallor
that means autumn is unpreventable.
Blackened beams crisscross the ground,
weeds growing up around the foundation
in place of shrubs and bedding plants.
Three steps lead nowhere. The sky beckons
with a sleepy watchfulness,
wind carrying the odor of charred wood
across the otherwise empty field.

Can wind also carry emotion, dense
suspicion or virulent fear?
Can it predict the outcome of years
of burning, the slow smoldering
that consumes walls, floors,
the memorabilia of youth?

The wind eddies these questions
as we search among the ruins,
toe aside the debris
of a life we never knew.
A bridge in the distance rumbles
as cars head home from dead-end jobs
and satisfying careers. Only the dead
understand that these are the same.
I choose a memento: a stick from
underneath the rubble, a reminder
of things past, dark and unforgiving.

The ruins merge with our visions of the future,
the sky growing darker by the minute,
our teenage brains clouded by dreams
of places other than Alpharetta,
of houses other than those burnt by madmen
or of those decorated by spoiled housewives.
We worship detritus, spoils,
things that have fallen away;
we avoid the building,
the planning and creation of things
that are as yet unblackened.

The sky watches us leave, the wind
telling us of things we cannot understand.
Of accidents, and murder, and fate.
The Porsche revs softly through the dust,
carrying us back to unended lives
that consume in their own flameless way.

The Battle of Brunanburh

Ah, the days of grammatical gender and declensions. Definitely brings back memories....