Finally, the internet is working again, so I can direct your attention elsewhere…
Another of my haiku is up over at tinywords. Check it out and while you’re there, have a look around at the rest of Issue 10.1. It’s well-worth the time.
Also, thanks to Adam Ford for including my poem “Looking for Flaws, Hoping to Find Some” on his June 2010 Poetry Mix Tape. Be sure to check out the others linked there.
A desiccated
butterfly
animated by
wind
skitters along the
curbside.
After years in the desert, when he reached the empty sea,
he knelt in the sand and prayed to the rusted ships
bobbing lifeless on the shimmering black waves.
Syringes and glass glistened in the sand like ruined stars.
He knelt in the sand and prayed to the rusted ships.
In the grimy brownlight of evening, he collected treasures:
syringes and glass glistened in the sand like ruined stars.
From these bones of the past, he made her a necklace.
In the grimy brownlight of evening, he collected treasures;
he found bits of plastic and driftwood poisoned with tar.
From these bones of the past, he made her a necklace.
Imagining her beautiful again, he sang like the birds of legend.
He found bits of plastic and driftwood poisoned with tar
bobbing lifeless on the shimmering black waves.
Imagining her beautiful again, he sang like the birds of legend
after years in the desert, when he reached the empty sea.
—
This is for Big Tent Poetry’s weekly prompt. The form is called pantoum, and this is my first crack at one. I liked the repetitive spiraling nature of the form, which seemed an interesting fit for another of my post-apocalypse myths and legends poems (for want of a better term), though, I suspect pantoums are best kept short. The idea was to write in form about something that makes us angry so there’s some BP oil spill in this as well as a little bit of influence spilling over from Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and Stephen King’s The Gunslinger. Using form to tame emotion is a good idea, I think. I’ve tried to write about the BP spill, but its hard to maintain control. Form helps. So does 3rd person narrative and walking so far down the chain of effects that I’m in a different world by the time I begin to write.
—
Just for grins, I de-pantoumified (de-pantsed?) it . It’s easier for me to follow this way since I can get lost in all that repetition, but it loses that legend-y vibe, I think.:
After years in the desert
when he reached the empty sea,
he knelt in the sand
and prayed to the rusted ships
bobbing lifeless on the shimmering
black waves. Syringes and glass
glistened in the sand
like ruined stars. In the grimy
brownlight of evening, he collected
treasures. He found bits of plastic
and driftwood poisoned with tar.
From these bones of the past,
he made her a necklace.
Imagining her beautiful again,
he sang like the birds of legend.
One of my vulture-related haiku is up over at tinywords today as part of Issue 10.1. Go check it out and have a look around while you’re there. There are lots of great haiku and micro-poems presented on a beautifully designed site.
Today we’ll travel with I and the Bird
to discover the most amazing birds.
We’ll marvel at Rio Blanco shots
of Colombian sylphs and hummingbirds.
We’ll see colors galore in Singapore
on a camera-ignoring sunbird.
We’ll have to get stuck in the mud to see
Avocets, Willets and burrowing birds.
Supporting birding teams, we’ll stop to know
the beautiful woods surrounding birds.
Flammulated Owls live beyond rough trails,
but we learn the wild when surveying birds.
Stop for a moment to consider the
vultures, our maligned highway-cleaning birds.
The vibrant beauty of nature’s revealed
by children carefully coloring birds.
Near a hole on a familiar shore, see
Bank Swallows, brown-and-white scolding birds.
In Zion park, we’ll learn the stories of
certain condors, those distant soaring birds.
We’ll brave the coldest snowy days for owls
and hope all life birds will be living birds.
Viewer warning: “Sex and the City Bird”
documents the habits of mating birds.
In a blooming sage garden, time stops for
close looks at Ruby-throated Hummingbirds.
Recall nature’s red in tooth and claw when
we see crows are squirrel-tongue-eating birds.
Burrowing Owls and roadrunners remind
us of the simple joy of finding birds.
Spend a good day searching for Golden-winged,
Cerulean and other warbling birds.
A witty Straw-necked Ibis has some words.
(Who knew we’d find poetry writing birds?)
We can observe a Red-tailed Hawk’s high nest
and learn all about digiscoping birds.
Strange orange colors on Mallards’ tails pose
questions when we’re closely studying birds.
On the Gulf, pelicans will break our hearts
when we confront loose oil killing birds.
Shearwaters, jaegers and petrels will lead
us to boats for looks at seafaring birds.
We’ll see a Little Gull and lovely terns
on the southwest Queens coast while listing birds
In Madras, we’ll meet pittas and plovers
and sandpipers among the wading birds
“Always be birding,” that’s what we’ll say.
Even in parking lots, we’re finding birds.
That’s it for this trip, I’m signing off. Send
links for the next one to The Drinking Bird.
Venus chases the moon into the mesquite trees
where a cushion of haze rises to dim their light,
break their fall so as not to disturb the golfers
coming up the back nine during twilight play.
A Carolina anole turns green, inflates his dewlap
as his clock ticks toward mating; he searches
along railings and in bushes, peering through
the dusky light for the female he knows is there.
Out over the Pacific Ocean, it’s still daylight,
could be tomorrow or yesterday or maybe even
next week, but in the brilliant sky, Venus and Moon
sail unseen, a slow pursuit like lizards stalking mates,
questions circling all night only to come up again
in the morning, looking different, but only slightly.
—
This started as a micro-poem posted at a gnarled oak and Identi.ca, where Deb hinted it could be a first line.
My students freeze—
how out of place
that slope-intercept
equation on the whiteboard
in this literature class.
Scrawled in blue, graphed
and correctly worked.
It’s poetry, I tell them.
Two of my poems are up over at Carcinogenic Poetry. They are “I-10 Eastbound” and “Miles (Never Once Imagined).” I’m excited because Carcinogenic and its parent Virgogray Press are based here in Austin. Go check them out and look around while you’re there.
Elegant and graceful, forever young
under the lights, but up close her legs
were scarred like cottage cheese, her eyes
had bathtub rings. She twirled the years
inside the cage, spinning them away
like someone else’s dreams. Backstage
she showed us off: tiger, leopard & me,
toothless cougar rescued from a meth dealer.
We rumbled like idling engines while
she ruffled our fur, loving all of us
as she did her own children, loving us
even as we tore her and her son apart.
—
This one took a decidedly dark turn, and it’s based on a true story. My father-in-law used to coordinate a Shrine circus. We went and got to go backstage to meet the woman who worked with the big cats. She was much older in person than she looked onstage. The cats were beautiful, and she clearly loved them and took good care of them. We weren’t allowed to touch them, but seeing them up close even inside their kennels was enough to set some primal adrenaline sparking. A few years later we learned that the cats killed the woman and her son.
This is a response to the very first prompt over at the brand new Big Tent Poetry where I’m honored to be a barker and to have had one of my posts included in the 3rd ring of that exciting poetry circus. The prompt, in honor of the site’s circus theme, was to write a persona poem ideally about someone associated with the circus. I chose the cats who I can’t blame. It’s what they do. We often wonder if our sweet cat would eat us if he were big enough. I suspect he would.
I’ve got 2 prose poems up at Poem2day. They are “Portsmouth, 1988” and “Newport, 1990.” Go have a read and while you’re at it, check out “River Water” by Angie Werren, which is also there and how I learned about the site, so h/t Angie.