Placental Prison
I sit inside here yammering,
hammering at the soft walls.
This skin tent bows where my
feet hit, but always returns to its
original shape: stretches, extends
to fit my fighting form.
Like incremental change,
it feels like I am getting nowhere.
I just want to be born.
Monday, July 27, 2009
a short one
Rain is good for thinking in,
sun is good for living in.
Mud is good for sinking in,
snow is good for drinking in.
Storms are good for loving in.
Breeze is good for hovering in
if you’re a dragonfly with time
to kill, when summer is
a-comin' in. Then, time’s
a drink of water that
refills itself day after day.
sun is good for living in.
Mud is good for sinking in,
snow is good for drinking in.
Storms are good for loving in.
Breeze is good for hovering in
if you’re a dragonfly with time
to kill, when summer is
a-comin' in. Then, time’s
a drink of water that
refills itself day after day.
spring semester poems
Balm of Night
A eulogy, after Dylan Thomas’ “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night”
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Youth should burn and rave, not fade away;
rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though at the last you must have known that night
was wrong, you could not peel the clinging dark away—
you leapt into that soft dark balm of night.
Once, you caught and sang the sun in flight.
You loved a girl who could draw any face
but still you leapt into that balm of night.
I did not know you well, but you could fight—
it was your signature. With words, with grace—
swift kicks, hands blurring in the evening light.
Your words suggested a firm grip on life.
You spoke to us of cosmos, Dao, the Way,
quietly insisting what was right.
Your music spoke as if from some great height.
Dark, vital chords, but you were miles away—
flamenco strains against the bonds of life.
You had to know someone would find your shell
turning slowly, dangling from that height,
would fall on to their knees and start to pray
for the first time in their remembered life.
Youth should rave and fight, not fade away.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light
when you leapt into that balm of night.
In-Between Waking and Sleeping
The edge of my exhaustion like the edge
of a storm cloud about to break. A spell
of warm fog and floating thoughts upwelling
on tides of emotion, raw ropes barely
Holding, about to fray. Enfolding
rational facts with dream colors, blunt thoughts
that have no words attached. My will: an old
boat, or mere raft—planks creaking like she
wants to go to sea. Between the slats
phosphorescence beckons: synapses flashing
neon signs: wish fulfillment—dreams are free.
Flashing like my mind is sending up flares—
because no one dares to live what they dream.
Whatever the cause, I cast off those taut
ropes, drift on the loping waves, raft lapped by
salt water, intimate in warm rain.
Leaving Season
Early summer leaving season
and the air sticks to me like wet cloth.
It wants to hold on to passing things.
Colors assault my eyes: fuchsia spikes, falling wisteria.
The air sticks to me like love lost.
I walk to the grocery store down crumbling southern roads--
colors assault my mind, sprawling violet across remaining time.
Buttercups Jackson Pollacked across the rugby field.
The sweet decay of crumbling southern roads,
the smooth grooves of same paths traveled many times.
Buttercups studding fields and the drinkable sky.
The light wind intimate and sweat everywhere my body folds.
The smooth groves of beech trees climbed many times.
I'm not searching, just letting sights fall into my eyes.
In windless air my body swims in sweat, my eyes in light.
On roads and fields, kind ghosts walk in the heat of day.
Sinking in honey, I fall into these sights.
I hold on to passing things with humid hands.
Ghost heat-mirages with friends' faces
walk off into summer, rippling.
That poem about mermaids
I don’t have a title for this one. It’s a sestina—a very strange form where the last words of each line repeat throughout the poem, in the different verses. Hence some very short lines and some very long ones. Also, I’m not sure how I feel about how prose-like it is. I mean, I like it. But I’m not sure if it’s a poem. Thoughts?
Also, a style thing: the lines that look like they're not supposed to wrap to the next line aren't supposed to. They're just too long to fit so I guess you just have to imagine them being on the line above. There might be a way to change the layout so they fit but I haven't found it yet.
Mermaids are at home in the rain.
Does rain rust dragon scales?
Every beautiful and strange thing, on sea
or land, is born with the gut-
feeling that, in time,
they’ll have to bear
a burden they can barely
carry. I used to love superheroes, who reigned
over us mortals with their timeless
stories. They scaled
impossible obstacles, gutted
countless villains (all to plant the seed
of peace in the world.) But I’ve never seen
such aggression, passion, or splashing water as when bears
attack during the salmon spawn. When I first gutted
a fish—took the insides out, threw the outsides away—it was rainy,
bittersweet: an intimate experience with reality. I took off its scales,
cut it open, seasoned it with thyme.
But my experience doesn’t compare to the time
salmon spend muscling their way from the sea
to spawning grounds hundreds of miles upstream. That’s scaling
obstacles, with a vengeance. They lay their salmon-colored eggs till the bears
descend in a brown frenzy. Then there’s nothing but red water and the sound of rain.
They came, they saw, they gave their children life. Died like a guttering
pink fire. It’s not an elegant word, gut,
but we all have one, even if we can’t sacrifice like salmon in fall, the time
of year when everything is dying. (Gut-feeling gives Irish songs from rainy
moors that yearning sound. Struggle bleeds through music, relentless as the sea’s
pull. They way major and minor are overlaid is sometimes unbearably
beautiful: I try not to cry at the last notes of the scale.)
Where there are mermaids, they have scales
the sheen of spilled-oil rainbows. They’d play violins with catgut
strings, protest ocean pollution—their singing and their bare
skin would change anyone’s mind. Time
and again, I envy people who know their path. I sit by the sea
and listen to it’s constant struggle; I love the continuous motion of the rain.
I try to scale the slippery fish of passing time.
I’m no mermaid; I don’tknow what I’d swim upstream for—but the sea pulls like my gut-
feeling: there’s passion in the motion of salmon, bear, and falling rain.
A eulogy, after Dylan Thomas’ “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night”
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Youth should burn and rave, not fade away;
rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though at the last you must have known that night
was wrong, you could not peel the clinging dark away—
you leapt into that soft dark balm of night.
Once, you caught and sang the sun in flight.
You loved a girl who could draw any face
but still you leapt into that balm of night.
I did not know you well, but you could fight—
it was your signature. With words, with grace—
swift kicks, hands blurring in the evening light.
Your words suggested a firm grip on life.
You spoke to us of cosmos, Dao, the Way,
quietly insisting what was right.
Your music spoke as if from some great height.
Dark, vital chords, but you were miles away—
flamenco strains against the bonds of life.
You had to know someone would find your shell
turning slowly, dangling from that height,
would fall on to their knees and start to pray
for the first time in their remembered life.
Youth should rave and fight, not fade away.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light
when you leapt into that balm of night.
In-Between Waking and Sleeping
The edge of my exhaustion like the edge
of a storm cloud about to break. A spell
of warm fog and floating thoughts upwelling
on tides of emotion, raw ropes barely
Holding, about to fray. Enfolding
rational facts with dream colors, blunt thoughts
that have no words attached. My will: an old
boat, or mere raft—planks creaking like she
wants to go to sea. Between the slats
phosphorescence beckons: synapses flashing
neon signs: wish fulfillment—dreams are free.
Flashing like my mind is sending up flares—
because no one dares to live what they dream.
Whatever the cause, I cast off those taut
ropes, drift on the loping waves, raft lapped by
salt water, intimate in warm rain.
Leaving Season
Early summer leaving season
and the air sticks to me like wet cloth.
It wants to hold on to passing things.
Colors assault my eyes: fuchsia spikes, falling wisteria.
The air sticks to me like love lost.
I walk to the grocery store down crumbling southern roads--
colors assault my mind, sprawling violet across remaining time.
Buttercups Jackson Pollacked across the rugby field.
The sweet decay of crumbling southern roads,
the smooth grooves of same paths traveled many times.
Buttercups studding fields and the drinkable sky.
The light wind intimate and sweat everywhere my body folds.
The smooth groves of beech trees climbed many times.
I'm not searching, just letting sights fall into my eyes.
In windless air my body swims in sweat, my eyes in light.
On roads and fields, kind ghosts walk in the heat of day.
Sinking in honey, I fall into these sights.
I hold on to passing things with humid hands.
Ghost heat-mirages with friends' faces
walk off into summer, rippling.
That poem about mermaids
I don’t have a title for this one. It’s a sestina—a very strange form where the last words of each line repeat throughout the poem, in the different verses. Hence some very short lines and some very long ones. Also, I’m not sure how I feel about how prose-like it is. I mean, I like it. But I’m not sure if it’s a poem. Thoughts?
Also, a style thing: the lines that look like they're not supposed to wrap to the next line aren't supposed to. They're just too long to fit so I guess you just have to imagine them being on the line above. There might be a way to change the layout so they fit but I haven't found it yet.
Mermaids are at home in the rain.
Does rain rust dragon scales?
Every beautiful and strange thing, on sea
or land, is born with the gut-
feeling that, in time,
they’ll have to bear
a burden they can barely
carry. I used to love superheroes, who reigned
over us mortals with their timeless
stories. They scaled
impossible obstacles, gutted
countless villains (all to plant the seed
of peace in the world.) But I’ve never seen
such aggression, passion, or splashing water as when bears
attack during the salmon spawn. When I first gutted
a fish—took the insides out, threw the outsides away—it was rainy,
bittersweet: an intimate experience with reality. I took off its scales,
cut it open, seasoned it with thyme.
But my experience doesn’t compare to the time
salmon spend muscling their way from the sea
to spawning grounds hundreds of miles upstream. That’s scaling
obstacles, with a vengeance. They lay their salmon-colored eggs till the bears
descend in a brown frenzy. Then there’s nothing but red water and the sound of rain.
They came, they saw, they gave their children life. Died like a guttering
pink fire. It’s not an elegant word, gut,
but we all have one, even if we can’t sacrifice like salmon in fall, the time
of year when everything is dying. (Gut-feeling gives Irish songs from rainy
moors that yearning sound. Struggle bleeds through music, relentless as the sea’s
pull. They way major and minor are overlaid is sometimes unbearably
beautiful: I try not to cry at the last notes of the scale.)
Where there are mermaids, they have scales
the sheen of spilled-oil rainbows. They’d play violins with catgut
strings, protest ocean pollution—their singing and their bare
skin would change anyone’s mind. Time
and again, I envy people who know their path. I sit by the sea
and listen to it’s constant struggle; I love the continuous motion of the rain.
I try to scale the slippery fish of passing time.
I’m no mermaid; I don’tknow what I’d swim upstream for—but the sea pulls like my gut-
feeling: there’s passion in the motion of salmon, bear, and falling rain.
a few from last fall
10,000 Feet
10,000 feet—an altitude
for the brave and silent.
But the marmots thrive,
just by being fat and furry and
living under rocks, and frisking
in the cool bright sunshine.
They do not hibernate but survive
by storing up grasses to eat in winter.
What a life. But they seem
happy, enjoy sunning themselves
on the ledges. Oh don’t give
me that bullshit about we
don’t know whether they can
feel emotions, “love
their children,” etc.
The marmot sitting in the
sun, enjoying its’ warmth, is
definitely happy. The way
Opa was when Daddy wheeled
him into the backyard of
Avalon House and he sat
in the sun and said
“Ahh” in German, and then
there was a fox, which was always
his favorite animal. And
Opa and the fox both
sat motionless in the
sunlit backyard and
looked at each other,
the one with sleek red
fur and the man with downy
white hair, his alter ego, both
silent and still, it didn’t
matter that Opa had to
be still because his legs
didn’t work anymore and
silent because the
words in his mind didn’t
match the ones that
came out of his mouth.
NO ARMS BUT WINGS
(NO LEGS AT ALL)
Native taxidermists of New Guinea prepared the birds for trading by cutting off their legs and drying them over a fire. Islamic traders brought the stuffed birds to Europe where people saw that they “lack feet and are therefore obliged to fly continuously and live in the highest sky,” and thus named them “bird of paradise.”
In animals, arms and legs are what
make things happen. Are what let us
walk, reach, hold on to the dusty earth
with our bare toes. Are what buoy
us up when we jump, for a fleeting time
suspend the duty of being attached
to a planet. Let us hibernate a whole
winter long among tree roots,
cradled in bare earth bones.
Medievals in their frail bodies
loved the bird that broke
the confines of their narrow,
gravity-bound life, soared above
the mucky courtyards and disease,
forever purer and happier.
But animals need arms, cannot
live long without reaching
toward another warm body.
The bird of paradise lives a life of
enforced freedom. His feathery cage
lets him draw near other birds but
never close enough.
I never thought I would find myself
arguing against wings. But if I measure
what I love most by what hurts me most
when I try to do without it, I would
have to pick arms over wings.
PROTOZOAN LOVE
Proto•zoan
Their name means
not quite animal,
means
not like us.
But they’re where we came from—
microscopic swimmers
in the primordial soup
where everything was sea
and no land.
They move like little
ticking clocks, measuring their
short lives in forward spurts.
Pliant machines
diving blindly
through forests of weeds.
Are they happy?
They don’t need a mind
to do what they do,
so it doesn’t bother them that
they don’t know what happy is.
Their flagella undulate.
Their cilia beat
in perfect synchrony.
Their pellicles protect them
from the outside world.
They work so well,
but they don’t know love.
If only they could feel what we feel.
Plumb the ocean depths of passion.
Know from a smile, a wordless
glance across a crowd, that you
fill all the crevices of someone’s mind.
But maybe my height
has clouded my vision—maybe I
look down on them
as the mountain looks down on me—
What if there is,
somewhere in their
tiny ticking bodies, a wish
to be held?
Or irrationally believed in
beyond all doubt?
Who hasn’t yearned for something
they’ve never known?
Been homesick for a place
they’ve never been?
Maybe down in the muck
in the mangrove swamps
among the interwoven roots
Protozoa are discovering new truths
about the nature of attachment.
Or at least enjoying some coital bliss.
Down in the muck
seems as likely a place as any
for discoveries about yearning to be made.
Evolution is an endlessly patient
maiden aunt, who steers her charges
with a light hand
and mostly lets them go their own way.
They may well have given
their guardian the slip, snuck
out one night and found,
earlier on the phylogenetic tree
than we once thought,
those immortal secrets that
Rumi’s words whispered of.
10,000 feet—an altitude
for the brave and silent.
But the marmots thrive,
just by being fat and furry and
living under rocks, and frisking
in the cool bright sunshine.
They do not hibernate but survive
by storing up grasses to eat in winter.
What a life. But they seem
happy, enjoy sunning themselves
on the ledges. Oh don’t give
me that bullshit about we
don’t know whether they can
feel emotions, “love
their children,” etc.
The marmot sitting in the
sun, enjoying its’ warmth, is
definitely happy. The way
Opa was when Daddy wheeled
him into the backyard of
Avalon House and he sat
in the sun and said
“Ahh” in German, and then
there was a fox, which was always
his favorite animal. And
Opa and the fox both
sat motionless in the
sunlit backyard and
looked at each other,
the one with sleek red
fur and the man with downy
white hair, his alter ego, both
silent and still, it didn’t
matter that Opa had to
be still because his legs
didn’t work anymore and
silent because the
words in his mind didn’t
match the ones that
came out of his mouth.
NO ARMS BUT WINGS
(NO LEGS AT ALL)
Native taxidermists of New Guinea prepared the birds for trading by cutting off their legs and drying them over a fire. Islamic traders brought the stuffed birds to Europe where people saw that they “lack feet and are therefore obliged to fly continuously and live in the highest sky,” and thus named them “bird of paradise.”
In animals, arms and legs are what
make things happen. Are what let us
walk, reach, hold on to the dusty earth
with our bare toes. Are what buoy
us up when we jump, for a fleeting time
suspend the duty of being attached
to a planet. Let us hibernate a whole
winter long among tree roots,
cradled in bare earth bones.
Medievals in their frail bodies
loved the bird that broke
the confines of their narrow,
gravity-bound life, soared above
the mucky courtyards and disease,
forever purer and happier.
But animals need arms, cannot
live long without reaching
toward another warm body.
The bird of paradise lives a life of
enforced freedom. His feathery cage
lets him draw near other birds but
never close enough.
I never thought I would find myself
arguing against wings. But if I measure
what I love most by what hurts me most
when I try to do without it, I would
have to pick arms over wings.
PROTOZOAN LOVE
Proto•zoan
Their name means
not quite animal,
means
not like us.
But they’re where we came from—
microscopic swimmers
in the primordial soup
where everything was sea
and no land.
They move like little
ticking clocks, measuring their
short lives in forward spurts.
Pliant machines
diving blindly
through forests of weeds.
Are they happy?
They don’t need a mind
to do what they do,
so it doesn’t bother them that
they don’t know what happy is.
Their flagella undulate.
Their cilia beat
in perfect synchrony.
Their pellicles protect them
from the outside world.
They work so well,
but they don’t know love.
If only they could feel what we feel.
Plumb the ocean depths of passion.
Know from a smile, a wordless
glance across a crowd, that you
fill all the crevices of someone’s mind.
But maybe my height
has clouded my vision—maybe I
look down on them
as the mountain looks down on me—
What if there is,
somewhere in their
tiny ticking bodies, a wish
to be held?
Or irrationally believed in
beyond all doubt?
Who hasn’t yearned for something
they’ve never known?
Been homesick for a place
they’ve never been?
Maybe down in the muck
in the mangrove swamps
among the interwoven roots
Protozoa are discovering new truths
about the nature of attachment.
Or at least enjoying some coital bliss.
Down in the muck
seems as likely a place as any
for discoveries about yearning to be made.
Evolution is an endlessly patient
maiden aunt, who steers her charges
with a light hand
and mostly lets them go their own way.
They may well have given
their guardian the slip, snuck
out one night and found,
earlier on the phylogenetic tree
than we once thought,
those immortal secrets that
Rumi’s words whispered of.
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