Silence is Golden

One of them's in the living room
sacked out in the La-Z-Boy. All you can see
is a mismatched pair of slippers and
a loud pair of polyester stretch pants ankles.

The other's making an infusion of spices
mulled in Earl Grey. Rattling the Williams-Sonoma mugs
for all they're worth. But no matter how stylish,
the kitchen-clatter can't outweigh
that speaking silence.

They say silence is golden. This silence
doesn't call for a goldsmith. More like
a toxic-waste disposal expert.

--word salad

Available! High-Voltage Lines, Knocking from Inside

Man of Iron, Man of Green

I've always been fond of Gawain. He's overshadowed by Lancelot in most of the stories, but being No. 2, I think he tried harder. At least, that's my read.

And then there's the Green Knight. In the earliest version we know of, he's not just a knight in green armor: he's green-fleshed and carries a bough of holly. Perhaps he's some forest or vegetation spirit, taken up into what has become a heavily Christianized myth cycle. Fits well with the death-by-beheading/resurrection motif.

(Please note, I'm making no assertions here about origin or appropriation: this is an exercise in poetic imagination, not scholarship, and it's very dangerous to confuse the two.)

Um. Adult content ahead. Read the poem.

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Brother Death, won't you walk with me?

The path through the forest is dark.
A bony hand is more comfort than no hand at all.

The rapids roar with white spray.
Your teeth gleam beside me.

The path winds through a tight gut of stone.
Click, clack, say your fingers.

Sun glows on the peak of the mountain before us.
Sparks in the eternal night of your eyesocket.

The angels are arguing about whether I should go on.
You stand silent and motionless.

I drink emptiness from the bowl of the moon.
You have taken the unfinished book from my hand.

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Things Poets Say When They Mean the Reverse

Fancy meeting you here.
Love your poem in (fill in the blank)
You haven't aged a bit.
Oh, my house is much messier.
Why, I'd love to come to your critique group.
Won't you come over and have coffee some time?
(Blank) is a great journal.
The cake was fantastic, but I couldn't eat another bite.
I loved NaPoWriMo: let's do it again next year.

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TriMet Conversation #317

"Are you OK?"
"I'm just tired," I say, "it's been a long day--"
long day doing what? Sitting at my desk
moving numbers around.
"Well, they can be that way,"
she says. "When I was young I worked on the docks.
Every day crude oil up to my waist.
Wanted to send my children to the best schools.
Every night I'd come home sit in the tub and cry."
She's frail, steel-wool hair at her temples,
in a wheelchair. Legs wrapped in
midnight-blue wool. Clean white tennies
that never touch ground.
"We do what we have to.
I haven't been down to the docks in years."
I imagine her young and strong,
picture her striding from pier to pier.
I see her walking
on water.

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The Queen of the Universe

surveys the world
from a throne of rumpled bedclothes.
Small, but self-sufficient,
her domain is populated
with slaves who possess (all-importantly)
thumbs. Who understand the workings
of doorknobs and can-openers.

All is not always peaceful. The Queen
has enemies: she hates the kitten.
The dog is loyal, but unruly
and sometimes fails to appropriately discern
the royal will. Then, the dreaded frown--
accentuated by stripes on her furry brow.

The days are past when her dominion
extended over the whole block-- now
she goes out only now and then,
watches the world from my bedroom window,
drinks from the tub, sleeps on the bed.
Matters domestic remain firmly

under her paw.

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Life, and other updates

Lord, how things can change. I've been reading back over some of my older posts on poetics, also the srticles I wrote for Write Anything up through December 2012. And I'm finding that my attitudes, my core beliefs about poetry and communication, have hardly changed at all. That's comforting-- although to be fair, these writings go back at most about 8 years. There's plenty of life ahead yet.

What has changed is how I'm living those beliefs. I wrote quite proudly about my involvement in online communities back in the late oughts. I have since dropped them almost completely. I've stopped following poet blogs, with only a couple of exceptions.

Instead, I've been active with real life poetry communities. I now routinely go to three or four poetry readings a month. I deliver at open mics. I've been in a number of critique and writing groups, meeting at people's homes by rotation. As a board member of the Oregon Poetry Association, I've organized a conference (spring 2012), am currently winding up a statewide student poetry contest, and am gearing up to organize another conference (fall 2013). I also produced a chapbook that collected work by several OPA members, to honor our outgoing President.

Oh yeah... I'm also the acting President. Within a month, I'll become President for real, unless someone else jumps up and wants the job.

And I have big dreams. I've restarted the OPA's book review column, we're revising and expanding the website, and we're recruiting new volunteers and networking with other literary groups in Oregon. They're thick on the ground out here, and we have lots to offer each other.

And my pet project... I want OPA to sponsor an anthology. A bilingual anthology, English and Spanish, authored by Oregon residents of Latina/Latino extraction. I'm recruiting a biligual editing and translating team; I'm researching grant opportunities; I'm hoping we can land a contract with an academic publisher, but if not, we'll go print-on-demand.

God gives me work!

Available! High-Voltage Lines, Knocking from Inside

VFW Pen

In the shadow of Memorial Coliseum
the VFW built this garden, peace-sign shaped. Every year
they rototill and weed, plant bright flowers
along the arms. They gather and write
Salaam in colored chalk, in all the many tongues
this city owns, along the circle's rim.

Today one lost a pen-- I found it--
midnight blue, inscribed in silver ink
VETERANS OF FOREIGN WARS
OF THE UNITED STATES, Maltese-cross insignia,
click-out ballpoint tip. A little scuffed
from its encounter with the pavement. I hold it
and think of other labels that might fit:
Soldiers. Gardeners. Cultivators.
Survivors. Mourners.
Peacemakers.
Blessed.

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Urban Ditty

Another morning; waking as the clock
throws off its nightly doze, shrilling "Day
has come." A dump truck thunders down the block
with dumpster clutched in steel claws, like prey
to be devoured. Crows are shouting; they
will gather for the carrion. It's city
life: no quiet pastoral display
of sheep and clouds. It's down and dirty, gritty.
Six A.M, a fender-bender ditty
rouses cursing sleepers. Every lawn
is grazed by growling monsters. There's no pity
for the fragile silences of dawn.
A feather ghosts the sidewalk, slips my hold
as pre-dawn gray dissolves in rising gold.

Available! High-Voltage Lines, Knocking from Inside

Southern Thule

So far from any human habitation
gripped by southern winter's icy hands,
devoid of resting place. No research station,

memories of polar exploration.
Shackleton did not sleep here. These lands
so far from any human habitation

do not source telemetric information,
chart the weather or the currents. Strands
devoid of resting place or research station

became a casus belli, demonstration
of imperial designs. What hands
so far from any human habitation

raised the flag? What feelings move a nation
to begin a war of cold commands
devoid of resting? Place no research station

on this other Thule, this location
marked by pointless war and frozen sands--
so far from any human habitation,
devoid of resting place or research station.

Wikipedia on Southern Thule

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Vanishing Time

is when all the hands reach backwards
round the sunwheel, slicing away
chords of music we forgot long ago.

Sunwheel spins, throws tangent lines of light
drawn down into black-hole bobbins, captured
under event horizons, never seen again,

stars of past years strutting present stages
like love-letters from the past: faded notes
inviting you to an infant universe's baptism.

You can hear those notes with ears spread wide
in very large arrays across desert sands. Radio noise
and incoherent light. Garbled messages,

time spent on tangled tangent threads
chords lost by lovers under stardusty beds.

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Blue Dragon River

scaly tail curled around mountains, your mouth
open hungry to salt-water kisses. You swallow
my feet and spit back fish
cold as your own scales. You grin with stone teeth
askew like old tombstones.

Blue dragon river, you're amused
to carry yellow rubber rafts
on your white back. You turn them over
once in a while, like the giant turtles
seafarers used to mistake for islands.

Your song is full of bones. We should never trust
those lazy coils swelling between banks scarred
with old high-water marks. You never sleep.
Blue dragon, I see you.

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Fragments

On the streets near Lloyd Center
a broken robin's egg
like a fragment of sky

And the head of a spring warbler
killed by car or cat

Scatter of ruby glass
someone's heart
someone's footprints

walking away.

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What shape is the wind?

It is the shape of flags snapping-- whip crack, ringing their lines against the flagpole

It is the shape of a full-bellied lateen sail, white wake underneath

It is the shape of the delicate hairs on your forearm barely stirring

Shape of the roof rattling, spiral of smoke rising, spray of loosened cherry petals

Shape of a newborn baby's first breath and God's last sigh

Of the moaning mouth of an empty bottle, the inside of a breaking wave--

What shape is poetry?

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Eyes

His, black raccoon-masked, peering
from under the frayed rim of the bowler, into
a world that wasn't heart-friendly. Hers,
sightless while clever hands
arranged flowers, beauty for others.

The millionaire's, hardened and empty,
dissolved by drink into desperate warmth. And always
implicit and complicit, ours watching
from the other side of the screen.

This was before sound: he used titles
sparingly. He spoke of sadness words could never touch
with eyes, hands, whole body eloquent.

With restored sight she could not see him,
did not know him. The story ends happily

when she touches his hand.

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Poetry (the Journal)

Today I read a volume of Poetry

the journal, I mean, not poetry in general

which it resembles as a general resembles a journalist--

(sort of)

anyway this volume was given to me by a friend

for helping judge a student poetry slam qualifying round, and apparently

it's important to me, the poet

somehow

that you the reader know I did not actually buy this journal. About halfway through

I realized that I was at the end of poetry in Poetry

(again note the use of the general and the journalist)

there followed only: editorial commentary, contributor notes, ads ads ads

unless you count as found poetry

some text from the ads such as:

"Co-sponsored radical spirit journeys half past hope, debating the issues,"

"Kurdish French bedrock narratives tremble and reel"

Alas these ad pages are not numbered so I cannot say for sure

whether poetry (the general) in fact constituted less than half of Poetry (the journal)

but I can tell you exactly that the poetry in Poetry ended on page 48

and was both surrounded and interlarded with lots of white space

very like this irritated rant that you are now reading

which is exactly the kind of poetry I hate and which there is a great deal of on the first 48 pages of Poetry

(the journal)

and so I am getting it out of my system. Thank you for listening.

Available! High-Voltage Lines, Knocking from Inside

Gray Heads

The golden dandelions have changed
to gray heads leaning together,
touching still-green palms, gossiping softly
about children and grandchildren. Their thinning hair
floats away in the breeze. Already
new hairless buds are rising
from the same years-old taproot.
I dibble, and pause:
one ought to have respect for grandmothers.

Available! High-Voltage Lines, Knocking from Inside

Easement

They tore down the McDonald's
to make an easement. Carted away
the yellow plastic rainbows and their promise of
yellow-jacketed leprechauns guarding pots
of golden grease.

Fat deposits can clog your arteries,
wrap around and constrict your spleen-- which, some folk believe
is the seat of emotion. Not the heart, the spleen.
And if emotion, then also surcease from emotion:
easement, unconstriction,
a widening of the road. Country two-laner grown to an autobahn
at the expense of one fast-food joint
layered with lard.

Still I miss the arches and the yellow, spotted cats
I once saw lurking in the plastic jungle
that masqueraded as a play-set.
I know it's better for my spleen.
I'm just not sure about my heart.

--word salad

Available! High-Voltage Lines, Knocking from Inside