Category: Poetry

Last time I posted a poem, I made an audio recording of it. This time, however, I felt compelled to write it out by hand—my nicest print, for my nicest cursive’s too large—and scan it in. It’s a twenty-line poem with twelve syllables per line and two broken lines where it felt like there ought to be stanza breaks. I’ve posted the full text after the image, just in case you’re having trouble with my handwriting/loading the .jpg. 

And what’s an asyndeton, you ask? You can read up on it here. ♥

Asyndeton v2.1

The words line up on the page in clean, carefully
plotted hedgerows, assembly lines of ideas,
suppositions, emotions. Their sentences pose
no mystery, the alchemical combination
of letters, characters align to suggest an
inside joke that’s lost on all who’ve lived beyond the
transformative diseases of the twentieth
century.
             The sunlight from my window peels back
a layer—a column of illumination,
light, redemption—to expose the contours of the
paper. The printing press kissed the page, it left low
furrows, caverns of delusion, obfuscation,
projection, near the spot where my practiced hand made
a note for you—only you.
                                      Shadows—the consorts
of the afternoon sun’s narrow exegesis,
the walls’, the curtains’ imprinting upon the page—
leave much to speculation, prognostication,
imagination, never deigning to provide
a breath of justification, explanation,
elucidation. Some things aren’t meant to be known.

As I was having the worst time getting to work, being a little soultired and heartbroken, I wrote an anaphora in free verse based upon the perplexities that were kicking around my head.

I also made an audio recording of it. ♥ Temporary

“Temporary”

She carefully considered all the complaints at hand,
and she paid them off with her silence.
It was the wisest, most patient response she could afford,
but it was not to be confused with acquiescence or agreement.
She was simply too headstrong for that.
She would wait until the time was right to speak.

So she went out and into the near-twilight’s tempest,
and she walked into the insistent torrents of rain,
where the lightning threatened to pale everything around her,
where the thunder shouted at her to turn back,
where the western horizon left to chase the east,
where the sun was held captive by a phalanx of thunderheads,
where its light climbed over their steep defenses, and
where its latent brilliance streaked into the streets, leaving pathways of quicksilver,
until the tempest’s tantrum had worn itself out,
and the evening’s lazy quiet settled in for the night.

Her shoes didn’t mind the puddles, soaked as they were,
and the streets’ sheen gradually recovered their typical lacquered black,
and the sky returned like a sincerely apologetic lover,
and she smiled at the nature of nature,
at the mathematics of time itself,
for time, as it must be, according to its own definition, is temporary.

But, headstrong being as headstrong is,
and clouds’ determination to rise anew from their disappeared brothers’ spirits,
she pondered the relative nature of perspective itself.
She wondered, within her own tiny perspective,
that was encased within her even tinier lifespan,
if she would ever see the changes that she’d fought to accomplish,
if she would ever be able to speak those truths she nourished,
or if the world would always follow its own long, strict calendar
and press force against force,
will against will,
hunger against hunger,
desire against desire,
the love of one thing against the love of another,
until there’s nothing left but sky,
and the emptiness of the relentless transformation of everything temporary
back into the permanence of nothingness.

I’m feeling generous, like I want to share a Work-in-Progress with all those who swim through the soup of the internet and stop on my page. For some reason, I can’t seem to finalize this poem, so what better way to stamp out these tentative feelings than to boldly post it—Forgive the split infinitive. Courage isn’t synonymous with grammatical precision.—and walk away? I can’t even decide on the title for it. At present, the title is based on my worry stone of choice for the moment: a luminous hunk of aventurine that fits my palm perfectly. The body is a little terza rima endeavor with 9–11 syllables per line. I’ve been writing lots of terza rima lately, come to think of it. I tried to employ a strict syllable count, but as it kept straying away from it, I let it go in the end. That seems to be the way this poem works, I reckon: the more I struggle, the more I have to accept that it is what it is. Hmmm. Without further ado—

(Aventurine is exalted.)

Jealousy is an unwelcome guest. She
crashes my gate wearing many colors,
never donning the greens that ready

my smile for softer moods. She bickers
with my reason and dresses my door in
violets and their demure golden corners,

hanging ribbons of raspberry that spin
around my intuition. She sets
off the bluebells—their stentorian

music stuns my reflexes—and she lets
my assumptions lapse into grayscale
vignettes that play off my old, murky regrets.

Until next time… ♥

A villanelle from last spring. Happy Solstice, folks. ♥

“The Pact“

I dive headlong into a hidden pool of promise
to deliver you an overdue apology,
although I sense that my belated effort is fruitless.

My guilt is a dead bird floating on the surface
of a history we deny with purpose, rhythmically
bobbing along over secret pools of promise.

Back then, you presented me with your gift, wrapped in a kiss,
and I, an anguished little girl, tossed it out callously.
Even then, I had a sense my efforts were fruitless.

When you sought her out for comfort, something felt amiss,
but I dismissed it, entertaining insincere revelry,
and dove headlong into different, cooler pools of promise.

Then, from that cheap balcony, we used the springtime premise
to propose a future future. It soothed my anxiety,
although I got that the effort was misguided, fruitless.

You offer me coy distance in the hopes that I’ll dismiss
that old covenant as just impetuous fallacy,
but I’ve willingly chosen untested pools of promise,
knowing that all these efforts are belated and fruitless.

An older 6×10. ♥

“Imprimatur“

their enunciation made me take note,
that it was used four times by four people

—like a multiplication table—by
the time four hours had lost their teeth—tongue swells,

lips curl—words fell in and out of fashion
such was my affection for you today

This blåg is morphing into a repository for poems that I don’t feel the need to submit anywhere. It’s what I have in abundance to throw up here while I’m occupied with other things, to be perfectly honest.

This one’s new. Last October’s new when compared with the summer of ’04, right? Anyway, it looks like a sonnet, it rhymes like a sonnet, but sister, lemme tell you: it ain’t a sonnet. There’s no volta, that’s why. ♥

“Fluid Dynamics“

If only these conversations weren’t lined
with caramel-flavored puzzlements, or
arsenic-coated promises, but mind
you, all our dearest intentions are for

the academics. We’re operating
in the mines of the conditional. If
I loved you as you love me, then posing
these quandaries—your melodies in the rift,

they pulse within the brain and find their way
out of the heart with crisp logic—would be
meaningless. Every step I’ve tried to make
in this corridor is shadowed by the

elegies sung for all my empty words
—in this dissonance, I can’t move forward.

A little reverse double acrostic based on the OBAFGKM classification used for stars. I wrote it after staring out the window of the flat where I used to live, the charming one that overlooked Mount Place, Oxford. ♥

“Spectral Classification in Mount Place”

Over by those stones in the courtyard, damaged by the storm
—bemusingly still in tact but weathered—I’m the thin crack,
almost faint enough to miss if you aren’t really looking.
Farther down the canal is where I live. I’m more than half-
grizzled and twenty pounds shy, typical phenomena,
kicking myself for not being more healthy. I’m just drab,
making excuses for when my world was all Jericho.

Here’s a poem. It’s been webified, if you will, in that I’ve linked specific phrases to images on the web that correspond with what that which I typed into that delightful little Google Images search box. I just realized that I haven’t done this in a really long time. I used to post all my poems like this, back in the day. Huh.

Anyway, this one’s for Catherine.

(Not there now.)

The street lights glazed over our gray-blue block,
west of Fillmore, with orange loneliness,
all the way to the airport, passing docks
hinting to Red Hook, Greenpoint, and places

of less color and more steel tip. From one
home to another, where Catherine sings
herself to sleep, to where Manhattan’s gone
tilted over, the cars pell-mell falling

to the eastern shores. Each sidewalk we go
past is in their count to a thousand roads.

Aaaaaaand if there’s one thing I’ve learned about Archangels, it’s that they don’t apologize. See you next week. ♥