A Tiny Poem

My stony moon sleeps
and dreams of
perfect waves
crashing
in the raw season

A Poem

A better mess
A perfect cyclone
tendril climbing from
the mother cloud
to lick
the salt
of a slow lazy dream

"Nothing Gold Can Stay"

Sunrise over Wright Quad

Nothing Gold Can Stay
by Robert Frost

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Mine.

Karen Green's Bough Down

I got this from the library and read it and reread it and then I didn't want to give it back, so I bought my own copy.

Box of Words

A Poem a Day...

Body Sonnets
I. Credibility
from Rachel Dilworth's The Wild Rose Asylum

I've been reading a metric shit ton of poetry this month. July was Camp NaNoWriMo, and this time around I elected to write a poem a day. So I've been reading and writing and writing and reading. Rachel Dilworth's The Wild Rose Asylum is absolutely heartbreaking. It's about the Magdalen laundries in Ireland. Dilworth received a Fulbright scholarship to travel to Ireland, where she conducted research for the book.

I also read Nicole Cooley's The Afflicted Girls, about the Salem Witch Trials. It, too, is heartbreaking.

A house with human hands built

A house
with human hands built
lay now underwater
salt and weeds, all
eternally hidden
Glass Sun invisible.
It had been there for a long time
Centuries
the dwelling place
of wisdom and sacrifice
blossomed into thorn.

So. I was trolling around in my Amazon recommendations, like ya' do, and up popped Marion Zimmer Bradley's "Mists of Avalon." I read the book when I was a kid, on the glowing recommendation of a neighbor who was getting her masters in English Lit. It passed for "pretty good" at the time. She was no Mary Stewart (a comparison that folks on Facebook are quick to point out and which I agree with). Then I reread the book, a few years back. To be charitable, it did not hold up well. It is every damn thing I loathe about feminist earth goddess worship woo. Every. Damn. Thing. And it was crap, and not very well written crap, either. Cringe-inducing, ham-fisted crap that takes itself way too seriously.

I wondered, looking at the book on Amazon, how it got so damn many five-star reviews. Are the reviewers all 12 year olds? If so, I think their bad taste can be excused. I doubt it, though. I posted about my befuddlement on Facebook, and a friend directed me to this page.

I was gobsmacked. I had no idea Marion Zimmer Bradley was a child molester. I think I may have read about her ex-husband being involved in NAMBLA and being convicted of child molesting, but I didn't know MZB was involved or to what extent. I'm gobsmacked. But also, thinking back on some of the passages in Mists of Avalon (I've not read any of her other books), with this knowledge, they take on a new and horrifying aspect.

The bottom line is that this is not a book I want in my house. I also don't want to pass it on to a thrift store. What to do? I guess I'll tear out pages and make poems with them. That's the best way I know to exorcise contemptible ghosts.

The Shapes of Words

I learned to sight read. I think, because of that, words to me have form and substance and meaning as objects apart from their duties as agents and ministers of spoken language. It also leads to weird connections in my head. I've been reading a lot of Emily Dickinson's correspondence lately. The volume containing the Master Letters (which, if you haven't read them, you should, you really should; it will be quick and painless as there are only three of them) also included scale facsimiles of the originals. They aren't exactly the real thing, but it's kind of lovely to hold them in your hands and experience them (more or less) as she did.

So, that's what I was doing. Holding them in my hands and reading them. And something jumped out at me, from the first letter. The spelling of Michelangelo's name has now been pretty well standardized as one word. That wasn't always so. Emily writes it Michael Angelo. But my eyes read Maya Angelou. Just one of those improbable connections my brain sometimes makes between words.

Anyway, you should read them. They are more like beautiful poem than letters. This is the first one.

Spring 1858

Dear Master
I am ill -
but grieving more
that you are ill, I
make my stronger hand
work long eno' to tell
you - I thought perhaps
you were in Heaven,
and when you spoke
again, it seemed
quite sweet, and
wonderful, and surprised
me so - I wish that
you were well.
I would that all I
love, should be week no
more. The Violets are
by my side - the Robin
very near - and "Spring" -
they say, Who is she -
going by the door -
Indeed it is God's house -
and these are gates
of Heaven, and to
and fro, the angels
go, with their sweet
postillions - I wish that
I were great, like Mr -
Michael Angelo, and
could paint for you.
You ask me what
my Flowers said -
then they were
disobedient - I gave
them messages -
They said what the
lips in the West, say,
when the sun goes
down, and so says
the Dawn -
Listen again, Master -
I did not tell you that
today had been the
Sabbath Day.
Each Sabbath on the
sea, makes me count
the Sabbaths, till we
meet on shore - and
whether the hills will
look as blue as the
sailors say -
I cannot talk
any more
tonight ,
for this pain
denies me -
How strong when weak
to recollect, and easy
quite, to love. Will you
tell me, please to tell
me, soon as you are
well -

These Are the Words I Use

These are the words
I use
Half swallowed
aw
And bitter
In my mouth
No honey here
No sweetness
A tongue of blood
Bit
Salty
Is all

Speakign of Things That Keep Silent

I
Speaking of things
That keep silent
A fingerbone
An ugly thought
A nightmare
Made real
My will
Pale wax
Remembering the tide

The Night Bird

Mercy mad
The night bird has
Deft at all things good
When dreams obscure
The knowing world
She whispers secrets true

My Wishing Heart

Glass eye
Lazy sky
Another lucky star
Comet's wings
And twisted strings
Wake my wishing heart

The Sky Flown Down

The sky
flown down
to earth
A delirious storm crush
Sent
to swallow me
whole



And then it did.

Egg Shell Girl

Egg shell girl
Skinned in pearl
Rowing out to sea
Fishing for hope
And drunken ghosts
And a tiny secret dream

In Slow Orbit

In slow orbit
Ghosts fly
Like comets
Nightmare wings
Swallowing the stars

These Are Small Thoughts

These are small thoughts
Remembered in a dream
Half mad and drunk
With wanting

Found Poem

In succession,
each
a complete turn.
First the bloom,
raised bodily,
then the snake
alive.
A warning
on its way.

This is from an old book I found in a junk shop. It was falling apart, and I paid maybe $1.00 for it? I bought it with the intention of cannibalizing it for art, and also because of the title. Pick, Shovel and Pluck: Further Experiences "With the Men who do Things." Yes. Men who do things. How could I resist that?!

A Poem

Rain
from a broken sky
dance
chant
dream
a thousand times
wishes
like
water
crashing

Mother-wings

Oh, beautiful half-fledged
thoughts of mine
peeping out
from the mother-wings,
mad as a hare,
and should be in chains

Sleep deep sister star

Sleep deep sister star
dream dark
in the circling night
and remember me