Painful

The poetry open mic reading at Kieran’s pub felt like watching a bike slide across the ice and the rider, bloody and mangled, begin to struggle to their feet only to have an SUV pulverize them.  The first poem started out travelling smoothly, but it went too far, drove a little too fast and subsequently crashed in the middle of its track across the road.  The concept of the first poem intrigued me, taking Poe’s The Raven but instead creating a humorous, modern, and erotic poem.  The rhythm and meter followed that of Poe’s work, forming an interestingly patterned and flowing poem.  However, I found the poem took its sexual theme to an extreme, perhaps for shock value or because the author couldn’t think of any other rhymes.  This caused it to become uncomfortable, not only for me, who feels awkward easily, but for most of the people in that room.  The bike had hit an icy patch, but it still had an opportunity to save itself before it wiped out.  The next poem does not merit classification as such.  A man stood before a regretfully open mic and ranted.  Unfortunately, open mics do not have rules in place for the revoking of poetry rights, something new I learned that night.  If terrible, distressingly illiterate writers wish to speak for five, or tragically, ten minutes, they cannot be stopped.  The bike had slipped into a tangled mess that nobody wants to witness, but the watcher cannot avert their eyes.  The night ended with a long prose poem that bordered significantly on the side of story.  The poem captured my attention with hopeful potential.  I believed for a moment this bike could still drive away, and took the time to appreciate the cozy, book filled room, the dark wood implying a severity and competency that none of the poems so far had encompassed.  I sipped on the lemonade I ordered because the reading took place in a bar.  My personal experience, sitting on a cushioned bench, enjoying my lemonade with crunchable and properly bit sized ice, found no issue, but the discomfort came from sympathetic embarrassment.  Witnessing a room full of one speaker, crashing in slow motion, while the rest of the onlookers cringe in their shared distress did not live up to my idea of a quiet, sincere and intellectual poetry evening as envisioned when I entered the library-esque back room of this polite little pub.  Suffice to say, the last story-poem suddenly turned cliché and difficult to follow, as the SUV of poetry standards leered above the floundering reading and drove straight over it, similar to the fate of the endearing puppy in the final poem.

Lies

The seductive simplicity

Appeals to the practical,

The insignificance, how can it be wrong

If it matters so little, the honey coated

Words wrapped neatly in smooth silver,

Pleasantly crinkled paper, presented

On a platter, delivering exactly

The truth they want, how is it harmful

To provide the harmonious, hoped for

Response, no need to complicate

With dissident complaints,

After all, the talent to deliver

These candies perfectly wrapped

With anecdotal details, the flavor

Personalized for each of us,

Some prefer white, petty, innocent,

They say it’s not healthy, but

The indulgence tastes as sweet

As chocolate, smooth, innocuous,

Sates your hunger, and you’re good

At it, not just any store bought,

Not everyone provides such

Polite service, smiles innocently,

You know you want to hear these

Well crafted, thoughtful, homemade

Lies, sometimes, there is an

Aftertaste, but if you try just

One more, it goes away.

Grandmothers

The room filled in your name, bustling children, grandchildren,

Their fast conversations vivacious crescendos, but your presence

Barely sustains, it seems as if you take less space with each rattling

Breath, you leave early and the bubbling, roiling energy reclaims

The vacancy in seconds, after you gingerly bestow a present with

Crooked claw hands, but a shaking fumble later, the box bends

On thick carpet and maroon blood blossoms below your transparent

Skin, ghost skin, crinkled over darkening pools, almost a surreal

Memory already, like the other grandmother, of whom my impressions lie

Foggy with the wear of time, pulling mere reflections from the surface

Of a once sea, acrid perfume of cigarettes, curiously stiff hair,

Soft eyes, overlarge as my father’s, staring out from a startling

Photograph, this woman I never consider, long packed into stuffy

Attics of ancient memories like the corroded silver jewelry eagerly

Snatched from drawers she no longer needed, soon forgotten by chaotic

Children, now of all places I see that face alongside the other

Grandmother, ironically among a celebration of age, yet the aged

Here shocks me with fragility, the resounding fall of the tightly wrapped

Gift calling attention to twisted fingers, the outlines of meager bones,

Hollow bones, mirroring the traces of thickening joints and spider hands

Of my mother, the nonlinear curve of my own pinky, as thin below supple

Skin so unlike my parchment genetic destiny, and now, holding

Ice on her lurid bruise growing like fungus, vainly trying to stem

This burgeoning weakness, I remember the other, unlined face that never

Will appear at its own eightieth birthday party but smiles jauntily from

The muted photograph with a permanent fortitude, unchanging youth.

Weakness

You offered

Your sympathy, supersaturated syrup,

Poison to flesh imbued over years

With self reliance, self dependence, self

Pity, so if I cringe

At the self inflicted idea

That I am somehow weaker, that I cannot

Fix my own problems without salt stains

Down wet cheeks, I’m sorry, thank you

For asking but I will recover, I will not make this mistake again,

I cannot be another girl begging for help from stronger men,

As my body betrays me, the one that shakes

With surprised fear while you keep walking,

The treasonous weakness of my skin amongst the cold,

Submitting to the elements, or sordid exhaustion,

I cannot prevent these involuntary

Reactions that destroy cautiously created

Independence, the way I cannot reach

My sparring partner, practicing karate with

A man six feet two, I take an extra step, punch

With inconsequential force, the teacher nods assent,

My incomparable strength

Is not my fault,

It’s in my nature.

Final Project Proposal

I would like to create a single craft book with illustrations of about 15 to 20 of my poems.  I will not center on a common theme but work currently on more poems with a narrative, descriptive feel.  I will plan on placing my book in a public location, perhaps a coffee shop.

Opossum

A barely perceptible thud

Jarring me more than its size merits,

The searing second image, two glossy eyes

Ghostly white in unforgiving headlights,

Scrutinizing the silent passenger who sits,

Stares back for this heartbeat but next finds

No eyes staring back, gone in an illustrious,

Imagined second, now the idea of surreal

Intimacy haunts, the specter twisted under

Wheels, waiting in sticky blood for the next car

To maul already matted fur, this car, hurtling

Murder weapon has long passed, no marks,

Not even a stain of that crimson life I saw

So vividly in the rearview mirror, verifying

That opossum were ever there, ever stared,

Ever died in the moonlit road to Iowa,

I checked the merciless metal, but nothing

Was left, so unlike the brutal screeching,

Scratching impact of reckless humans seeking

Insurance scam payouts, the greed leaving behind

Broken metal, scarred side doors, angry shouts,

A thud reverberating, but here along the quiet

Highway a white, silent creature strays too far

Into the unstoppable path of another violent

Car, slips under, and we keep driving.

Melody

Close your eyes, the music will still play

It leaves your fingers to become surreal company,

Distinguished entity to join your lonesome hands

Connected to smooth machines of mystical ability,

Who created this perfect formulation, who decided

They could bend the trees into sound that pleases,

Almost deity, the physicality of this transformation

From an obscure language across creased pages

Into human flesh that surprises itself with each

Melody emerging, the tangible portrait of identity,

I have seen the numbers, mathematical proofs,

Neuroscience explanation of the fascination simple

Notes compel within our wired heads, and yet

An essence incontrovertible, unnamable emerges

From the fluttering cocoon of my dancing bow,

Why else would I set down the phone describing

What is irrevocably lost to sit down before inanimate

Keys and play the first melody I remember, this song,

Springing from me as if cued as messenger, the act of

Creating draws me back into humanity, into a peace

Of listening, letting this fantastical creature comfort me,

Haunting ghosts of imagination, when one note vibrates

We can hear the harmonic chords, the invisible presence

Of sequences falling into place, the periodic waves

Deceiving brains into believing an excess noise, invaluable

In this world of excess noise, I find words unnecessary,

Because I can envision infinite, self realized expressions

Within this peculiar cacophony of unknown reality,

Speaking inaudible secrets of unequaled capacity, Chomsky

Would find, I think, this wordless language lies as inherent

In our nature as vocalization, the personification

Of ancient harmony, constant in inconstancy, I cannot

Fathom what you hear, but I hear compassion, silence,

A universal will to share the possibilities of this, of any melody.

If

Blurred lights flash, pulsing

The words in my head, If, If, If.

I cannot catch my breath, it’s as if

This cascade of events has rushed

Into one second, I have

Chased it, leaving my ragged

Lungs behind a step.

If I were behind a step,

I would have dallied longer

Eating ice cream in the cold,

I would have turned left when you

Suggested, I would have stopped

At some other darkened corner,

Any other wet asphalt corner.

I would have changed

Anything to not slide

There into a stunning

Array of flashing lights

And confused, broken metal,

If frayed nerves had not

Impulsively accelerated,

The twisted door

Would have been mine,

If I had been alone

I do not think the shaking

Would have stopped,

I might have drowned

In suffocating, doubtful Ifs,

A word easily falling, begging to be asked,

And yet I fear once taken

Each inconsequential, fatal choice

Cannot be remade.

Waiting for the Future

I wish to inhabit the silence between the laps of frosted waves,

Washing sorely trodden feet, the stinging abrasion of water on skin,

As I stand along the jagged edge, watching between closed eyes

The wheeling seabirds scurrying into the darkened west,

The land still shrouded in night, to which I must return my legs

Having wandered lengths of long avoidance, scrambling craggy

Rocks that rarely feel the greedy touch of human hands.  I wish

Sometimes to be these ferocious boulders, facing the fervent wind

For eons, watching fools return to aged fishing boats, not glancing

Once behind, but following the path of all rushing, fearful beasts, taking

Their past in one hand and their future in the other, gripping these ties

With unnatural strength, hoarding plans without offering a taste

Of the land in between, forgetting how to walk in an endless race.

But if you close your eyes, it almost feels as if nothing’s changed at all,

It almost feels as if I can ignore the burning feeling that we’ve been here before.

The repetitive dreams like warnings, I recall one night I thought

I’d lost a friend, so why did I never call, I never asked you if you were

Still there, the peculiar fear of the subconscious dissipating the moment

I awoke to follow the selfsame trail of yesterday, did you find yourself

In this gyre of nonsense, is that why you wanted to sleep until it tore

Your independent, smiling life apart, or was that always an illusion,

The mirage of childhood hopes like the imagined trips into the books

We shared, I only wish I called you one more time before you spun

Too far, would it change anything at all to pause and use your phone

For a conversation with more significance than petty thoughts of the instance,

I think it would make all the difference, because the long wait

For the future to begin tires us before we ever get there,

Because we live always too many steps ahead of ourselves,

So close your eyes to catch the sliver of a glimpse

Into that stasis at the seaside, changing towards nothing

More important than this second of yourself, nothing more vital

Than your life mingled with the heady scent of salt and silence,

I think the rocks tumbling over decades into the embrace

Of the churning water are far braver than you or me,

Brave enough to look forwards into their imminent

Plunge below the shoreline, yet never fearfully, forsakenly strive

For some more meaningful demise, they watch me leave their haven

With a knowing sympathy, I cannot help my humanity

I continue to return to my disheveled sanctity, to compel

My toes away from the caress of the soft spoken ocean,

Return to labors for an unknown future while ignoring the futile

Knock of the present on doors labeled Do Not Disturb, but once in a while,

Please Disturb, I am waiting only for the courage to live now

While any carefully constructed future waits for me.

Almost Nonsense

Have you yet aspired

To the task of observer

Sent to relay

Crooked correlations

Of the strange habits

We fall into, how

We propel into questions

Avoiding the only

Significant words,

Because we know the answers

Will fail to please ears

That absorb endless nonsense,

How my restless cells

Occupy with inane wonders

Out of necessity, lest I mire

In idle insanity, the sagging

Of elastic days in which

I nearly lose myself,

Trying not to wish

For a name more durable

Than this sturdy body,

Except when I cried

A week late, maybe for

You, mostly because

My breath felt insubstantial

And nobody asked.

And when the white noise

Blessed distractions cease,

I return from distant

Perches, to let my body

Weary from rest sleep

In this strange sea

Of aching incompletion

Let the acrid waves immerse

Leaving a burnt outline that

In minutes fades

This all consuming desire

For lauded accomplishment

Contradicting my firm

Belief, that all salient

Change dies within

Our own annihilating sun.

Madres

Nothing surprises more than

Faces gently swollen

By age, or tears, or both

Displaying the ironic parabola

Of a secret happiness, a shared

Joke amongst portraits of the

Dead, caught in the corners

Of twin, age spotted chins,

Partaking in the miraculous

Ritual of the pained,

The laugh that timidly

Creeps from frightened

Throats, driving the wreckage

Back from the scene of the crime,

The unquenchable chortle

That reminds your body

Of its existence, more substantial

Than any adrenaline heartbeat,

The curving line thrown

Onto shore, securing the restless

Minds of disaster, the lifeline

Of audacious, sore smiles.

Poem of the Day Video

Video Poem

If I barely pay attention to the words, I still like this poem because the way he speaks is in itself poetic.  The presentation of this poem turns it into almost a song, with accompaniment on the violin and the cadence of his words.  I do, however, also enjoy the words, occasionally too cliche, like "embers that can light fires", obviously, what else would embers do.  His pattern of words cycles up to louder, successive rhymes, creating emphasis and drawing one's attention.  Overall, I find this poem sweet, nostalgic, and mildly empowering, and the dualism of the spoken words and music provides a neat, creative experience.  I will remember the idea of background music for my own video poem, because somehow I never found it distracting, only adding to the tone of the poem.

Draft Papers

I’m told I’m now an adult

And strangely offended that my country

Has not asked me to sign

My life on a dotted line,

They demanded my father

For this bloody promise,

Pulled two grandfathers

Away from brides and into

Potential patriotic martyrdom,

But my citizenship does not extend

Apparently to this fruitless end.

I would mind the request,

I would write my name

In irrevocable, slow, and fearful

Print, and yet I mind

As much the lack of invitation

To the hopeless warrior institution,

Ordained unfit for duty

As if some corporal weakness

Maimed me, unnoticed, leaving

Reminders in the curvature

Of a body unsuited for

The bleak price that

Is asked of only

one half of one nation

With liberty for the fifty

Percent whose lives

Are worth either more

Or less, but never

The same.

Online Journal Review

            Drunken Boat online poetry journal competitively publishes international poems and sometimes art.  I like the diversity of its collection, the result of cultures and experiences from around the world compiling into words.  Several poems have been illustrated by different people than the author, and I find it intriguing how readers visually interpreted the poems.  I wonder if any poets disliked the image an artist created for their work.

           One Australian poem, “Everything Spins”, attracted me with its scientific metaphors.  I always enjoy the rare yet eclectic combination of science and poetry, yielding more sense about the entire world than emotionally focused poems.  The author, Aimee Norton, connects human relationships with the interactions of matter.  One of the more complicated issues of life lies in this alignment of universal truths and forces with the personal.  Her poem aptly meshes these, acknowledging the ‘heavy centers’ of vastness constantly reeling us people into its gravity.  Interestingly, as this journal submits to no specific theme, this same poet wrote another piece about aboriginal stories, offering a very different view than that presented in “Everything Spins”.

           Then, a French poet writes with interesting but not so understandable words, using rhythm and sound to describe a story.  A Swedish poet makes even less sense, yet in one poem uses scientific language, reminding me of Norton’s work.  I doubt if this Swede and this Australian have met, but the same idea crossed both their minds at one time writing.  Although these poets have come from, I imagine, wholly different backgrounds, their language, use of rhythm or none at all, and themes relate to those of the other poets in this collection, sometimes only to one particular line of another author’s, and the equality of poetic structure surprises me.  Each contributing writer has a brief biography, yet I find this information unnecessary.  Without knowing their nationality, or whether their poems have been translated from a foreign language, the poetry possesses a certain homogeneity, all free form, creative expressions of relationships and the people involved.  I like this journal because without any obvious theme it publishes works from all possible perspectives, and yet they naturally fall into place, matching pieces of the collection.

Reflections on the Poetry of Louis Jenkins

            I first notice the format of Jenkins’ poetry.  His poems span the page in a pseudo-paragraph form, without any meter or pattern to the lines.  Combined with his contradictions of himself and casual language, like writing, “….well, slowed down a bit, perhaps” in his poem “Change”, I feel as if in conversation with this man in a coffee shop.  Because of this tone, I easily remove any obstructions to listening.  He invites us into his poetry, beginning with simple introductions:  “There might be some change on top of the dresser” in “The State of the Economy”, or “It turns out” in “Gravity”.  Then suddenly midway in the poem you realize he has deceived you into reading profound thoughts.  Mostly I like his work because of this unexpectedness, but I also appreciate how he connects the mundane to broader truths.

            Jenkins writes with a witty and entertaining sense of humor.  This aspect of his voice creeps into the poems just like his wisdom.  After reading the title of his poem, “The Afterlife”, I expected something sincere, yet discovered a very funny piece.  Once again, Jenkins displays his talent for thoughtful and often sarcastic surprises.

His poems always come from his unique and clever voice, but also address ‘you’.  Sometimes the author himself becomes this addressee, as in “You haven’t changed” from “Change” and I imagine he shares this detail of brushing his teeth incorrectly as if he were talking to himself.  According to Jenkins, we know each other because he declares “You and I stand at the back” in “The Speaker”.  He evokes this casual intimacy in every poem, referring to the reader and himself interacting with particular images and scenes of daily life.  Again, he creates a conversational tone that sets the audience up for his sneak attacks of wisdom, often finally reached with humor.  Even when I finish reading and contemplate his words, I never felt like he imparted any deep knowledge because he wove it into his poem after making me laugh.

Composition

I am

Composed

Of quiet moments

Collected into a prayer

For atheists, the choreographed

Possibility filling the gaps between

Sentences, lingering on the edge of your

Iris before blinks bombast my fragile

Idea, shatters into kaleidoscopic

Shades of aching comfort

Soon forgotten by

Rapidfire

Eyes.

Chris Martin and Meaning

            Chris Martin’s poem “Blood on the Tarmac” seemingly contains fragments of many stories, like whose blood was on the tarmac, and why can he not be innocent in Minnesota, and to whom does he return.  His language, however, takes us away from these close up pictures, away from the “patchwork face of the suburbs” almost as if the reader joins Martin in this airplane and watches the world from a distance.  What appear to be stories become a minute glimpse of the landscape Martin describes.  Focusing on such details only distracts the reader.  The feeling in Martin’s poems comes from the view from above, glancing down to see a hectic, complex, and utterly meaningless world.  He seamlessly connects the varied scenes into this portrait.  Each word used interests me somehow, as unique as his ideas and strangely fitting together so well.  Martin describes events that I have experienced countless times, yet that can feel incredibly arduous or alternatively fantastic.  I like this poem because rather than leaving me in distressing confusion that these experiences can leave in their wake, it challenges me to think beyond that, envisioning both the mundane and the magnificent that are individually lovely so long as I do not try to make such moments meaningful.

Alas, Subjunctive

Alas, Subjunctive, I knew you well,

Yet so near I hear the quiet knell

Of an imperceptible funeral bell.

And Oxford Comma, I will miss

You clarifying curl, a sweet caress

To my eager ears, but not all hear

And I fear I am alone in my distress.

How can the rigid brick foundations

Of my communication education

Shift, I would have thought this were solid ground.

Instead, the people change the language,

And the language changes them.

Might this reflect a newfound lazy streak?

Or is it indeed open minded, as they speak

In hoarse vernacular, no sanding on the edges

The dynamic truth bared in tumbling tongues.

I have wondered how these tongues decided

To shape those sounds and with it the firm past,

To fight fleeting wars and build cultures that last,

Uniting or dividing not by swords but words,

When all along the world has changed and lived

When oblivious teenagers forget the subjunctive.

A Farewell to Summer

A late summer sun reaches with long rays

Holding tightly as its grip starts to fail.

This moment stretches too, not giving way

To harsh Autumn’s change, but to no avail.

A soothing glow of farewell, then it’s gone,

Another victim by rushing Time felled,

For even with the same sweet words this song

Serenades less sweetly each time replayed.

The leaves that gently brushed ambitious hands

That climbed heedlessly into swaying heights,

Now feel burdening time strangle with bands

Of changes, differences that crept by night,

Subtly bleaching away innocent green,

Yet, dying, burst anew with golden flame.

Black Magic

Wednesday, crowded physics room

Velocity makes me smile because I think of velociraptors

Running, accelerating, like arrows shooting to kill.

Floating formulas fill my roaming mind,

Then demonstration time.

Anybody epileptic?  The enthusiastic doctor who stands poised to bounce
Into another dimension, the physical embodiment of physics, asks.

A question that precedes greatness.

Strobe lights stop gravity before my eyes,

And my heart stops, too, because my childhood dream just became true.

Magic is real.

In a Blink

What if we could have back

Every moment when we blinked?

Would we see a newborn world flash by,

Or watch again times tried to forget?

Would you gather the missed seconds

In a glass jar as if collecting raindrops?

Would you save them surreptitiously,

Under your pillow to soak in your dreams, strengthen with age?

Would you thirstily drain each drop

Right before you left your body,

Splicing on each extra second,

Forcing time to wait on you?

Or would you sip lightly

On foggy Sundays, taking

These moments one by one, searching each

For that perfection missed the time you blinked too soon?

Sonnet

I ask not for time stopping perfection,

That would dim the sultry sun’s reflection,

But for a warm hand that encloses mine,

Fitting snug, made to hold both hands and time.

Yet neither will we vainly pursue it,

Ever chasing fleeting Time’s chariot,

Flinging ourselves into the white capped sea

For false deadlines, to ground on shores rocky.

I ask for thoughtful hands that grab the reign

Ceaselessly hurtling that chariot on,

As we rest our feet, borrowing a ride

Upon the gold horses of time, alive,

Within moments that stall our frenzied breaths,

While outside this carriage, earth spins towards death.