James Brush is a teacher and writer who lives in Austin, TX. He tries to get outside as much as possible.
bring water, electrolytes
this night will burn
heat and light
have come untwined
out on the porch
I call back the dogs
swift feet, darkness
panting shadows
sweat beads my forehead
the stillness of trees
leaves roasted
beyond autumn gold
pray for rain, ask
in secret for hurricanes
they claim this red moon
only reflects
Links to some poems by web-based writers whose work I’ve enjoyed lately. I hope you’ll follow the links and enjoy these poems as well.
“Cloudlonely” by Susan S. Keiser. This one just sounds so good. One to reread and savor.
“Morning” at Jumping Into Life (Not sure who the writer is). A perfectly captured moment watching birds and baby (much like my summer has been).
“Time’s Reflection” by Jean Morris. A lovely photo poem. The words and image could stand alone but together… wow.
“In Victimhood” by Horace Jeffery Hodges. A clever parody of “Invictus” and a reminder for me to get that flu shot.
“795 (Concrete)” by Angie Werren. A stunning “phoem” (as she calls them) appearing in her beautifully redesigned feathers micropoetry site. A good reminder to leave the RSS reader once in a while.
“Being” by Neil Reid. This one had me at the first lines: “there is a gate, we call it sky / when visible, we call it cloud”.
“If there were such things as ghosts” by Dave Bonta with a whole comment thread of very cool ghost poems by Dave’s readers.
“Mail Pouch” by Hannah Stephenson. I’m always amazed by the quality of Hannah Stephenson’s work considering she manages to write and post a poem every day. I had several I wanted to pick, but this was a favorite for the opening image of the barn and the faded letters. What is it about faded ads on old buildings anyway?
“from seeds here & in my backyard” by Carolee Sherwood. Wisdom gleaned from watching nature’s processes.
“The Bone House” by Wrensong. A moment by the sea: “the salt-scented blossoms of kelp / the song of whales and old wars.”
“Night Predator” by Sherry Chandler in The Cortland Review Issue 52.
“Indiana” by Dale Patterson in Right Hand Pointing Issue 43, Part1. Read the whole thing.
No one puts stock
in ghosts anymore.
But everyone has a story
that begins with I’m not crazy.
Maybe it’s the bridge on 97
or the creaky floorboard upstairs.
The chair they’ll swear was rocking,
or totems of the dead discovered
in strange forgotten corners.
Lights on the Devil’s Backbone.
Ghosts love these stories.
They know
there isn’t any darkness
more forsaken
than the end of memory.
—
This was inspired by Dave Bonta’s “If there were such things as ghosts”. Dave invited others to add poems to his post’s comment thread and the result is a wonderful mix of ghost poems. This is the one I came up with.
I made this back in March and never got around to uploading it and then forgot all about it until something sparked my memory yesterday. It’s based my poem of the same name, originally posted a little over a year ago. This is the second video I’ve made from my Birds Nobody Loves series (the first was “Chasing Westward”).
The images are photoshopped versions of some of my pictures of black and turkey vultures. I’m planning to use these as illustrations in the Birds Nobody Loves collection I’m slowly (so slowly) putting together.
The real purpose of this video was experimental. I wanted to try to figure out how to make my editing software do the “Ken Burns effect” that was so nicely done in “Beach/Snow” a beautiful video by Peter Stephens. It was complicated but once I had it figured out, it got a lot easier to get the pans and zooms I wanted.
The music is by Oleg Serkov downloaded from Jamendo and licensed under a cc-by-nc-sa license. This is the first time I’ve used Jamendo for music for a video. There’s a lot of good stuff there besides Mr. Serkov’s wonderful work.
As to the poem, it comes from the church I attended when I was in high school. It was built on the edge of a cliff overlooking Lake Travis. They built it lengthwise and placed the altar on the long side which was made entirely of glass so it was easy to let your mind wander out to the open sky above the lake where turkey vultures circled endlessly.
I’ve always found it strange that church is held indoors but that church anyway made it feel like you weren’t completely disconnected from the natural world, which is why I still consider it the most beautiful church I’ve ever seen.
It is also where my fascination with vultures began. Watching them each Sunday, thinking about their place in the scheme of things and watching their effortless flight, I couldn’t help but fall in love with them while witnessing in awe the sheer wonder and beauty of creation.
I lost nearly 10 pounds this morning shoveling the heat out of my driveway. It was 104 in the shade, and 108 on the road. This is our indoor time. We go out only when we must and don’t stay out long lest we catch a fire.
A few weeks ago, I left an apple in my car. I remembered it was there around lunchtime and went out to get it. It was perfectly baked and delicious. I’ve started keeping cinnamon in the glove box since the car is also an oven. They didn’t tell me this is what they meant by hybrid.
Lantana can burn your eyes if you stare at it too long. Most things are that way these days. This is why I walk with my head down, wincing with each step over the coals of parking lots. I wonder if this will lead to heat stroke or visions.
At night we eat a pot of salad and huddle round the ice box telling lies about the time it snowed.
How many times to sing
“Redemption Song”? The first
song I thought to sing him
when he needed singing in the NICU
Some other parent sang nursery rhymes
in curtained spaces with beeping monitors
to metronome the time
Not knowing any rhymes, I went with Marley
it stuck and now it’s ours
Quiet, now, he settles in to rocking
my voice trails off to mumbles
this song of freedom…
Moonlight, thunder moon
streaming in through the live oak
the passing hours marked
by moonlight dropping down the blinds
The dogs dream
their twitch-footed dreams
the squirrel finally caught,
whimpers and low growls
The fan spins
beneath its spider shadow
ceiling jungle
Dim lines trace frames
black pictures on the wall
beyond the room… I can’t see them
but I imagine what they might be
surely not the same images
hung there years ago, not
at this hour. They’ll have shifted
become things I can’t conceive,
ideas of things that can’t exist
in morning light
Everything is strange now
and somehow more easily understood
His breath slows against my shoulder,
he sighs much like the dogs,
and I watch the late minutes tick
through this room of simplest
dreams
[saveagrey]
I’ve spent a lot of hours lately rocking the little dude in the middle of the night. It’s a peaceful, quiet time and since I’m on summer vacation, it’s not like I have to get up and be anywhere for a few weeks, so I rather like sitting in the semi-dark with the baby asleep on my shoulder while I read poems on my iphone. I like to just sit and look at him but at night, I need to make sure I don’t fall asleep while I’m holding him so I read. The computer and books are too cumbersome for one-handed reading, but the old phone has really come into its own. Anyway, here are ten poems I’ve read and liked lately. I hope you’ll follow the links and check them out.
“Summer Nocturne ii: Hudson River Fireworks” by Joseph Harker. What a wonder it is to walk around New York City, the main thing I ever want to do when I’m there.
“Curating the Dead” by Dave Bonta. One I really liked from Dave’s series of Highgate Cemetery poems.
“Like Green Eggs, Summer” by Briarcat. Summer heat has its moments.
“Feels Like 108 Degrees” by Jessica Fox-Wilson. Meditation on heat, surrendering to it just a little.
“Broken” by Angie Werren… “fingers clumsy with a memory”
“Blank Stare Escape” by Mark Stratton. What happens when you call yourself a poet?
“A Stone in a River, 11” by Deb Scott. The hard necessity of fire.
“A Theology of an Autistic Body” by Nicole Nicholson. Another stellar entry in qarrtsiluni‘s ongoing imprisonment issue.
“There Are Howling Wolves” by NS from her latest collection Dark and Like a Web.
July 2011: A River of Stones. Not a poem, but a repository for all the micro-poems people are writing for the July River of Stones.
I’ve been trying to find a way to share links to blogging poets whose poems I’ve found and liked online, but I’ve struggled to find a way to do it consistently, so I’ll try this. I don’t know if I’ll do it when I find ten poems or if I’ll try posting links like this weekly whether or not there are ten. I guess we shall see.
