Poem-A-Day #339 : Hope Chest

Hope Chest

The box full of things - unnamed as they are -
hold the history of place in the reflection imposed surface

The sun comes from behind eclipse - it
momentarily explodes - loses itself - becomes a break in the lack of air

This is opening - a seam of paper tape - a fold
sun echoing in pulp - in dust

What are these broken lines of thought
burning a hole in the universe of a closet - they flap like broken doves

Beak cracks - the rubble of it - a light bearing
fruit - rotting and burning and searing the faces of memory

Poem-A-Day #312 : Pyrite

Pyrite

Let the record show that we were at least genuine - in some things - that the field of ourselves was sewn with attempts towards beauty

at times it was fallow and covered in snow - and in those times the seeds could relax - they could - wheat rests in ice to grow for early summer - can this not also be true of ourselves

I know the arguments for and against - the sighting of the hawk fighting the raven over the rabbit - there is a wheel that we are tied to

it perpetually takes us under water - rocks us against the spokes - winnows us - separates bone from meat

Field metaphors are about growth and death and cycles - they crop up like weeds in the words of great and lesser poets - they are reserves of water sitting beneath the earth - waiting like oil to be drilled from their ancient tombs

what a beautiful nostalgia - the wide-brimmed farmer aloft his perpetually churning machine - no sign of drought or of hail or early frost here

The lie in that America is obvious to any reader of any book on any subject - even not farming - but the hope in the bread belt - the grains of it a sort of pebble across the water of culture - that is nice to look at to hold to the light and to see ourselves in

does that negate ourselves - make the want of truthiness to be invalid - it at least makes our claims pyrite though no less amazing in their reality

Poem-A-Day #287 : Some Days

Some Days

Clouds are striating
they form a road into the distance - telescoping
there is a forgotten city beyond the horizon
where everything is perfect

Some days I just don't know

The letters lay themselves across the tracks
they tie themselves down
and they wait for the train to come

This isn't about poetry - that is tired
this is about the break along the horizon
that birds peel themselves out of - a cartwheel of fire
contained in the barrel of the sky

Let's plant things there
see if the line melts if perspective will allow
the flowers to look like skyscrapers

Words cannot stand today

Or any day really

Language tries to reach - to unfathom
it calls to us from a distance unmanageable

The lines of clouds race themselves
like soap down a drain

Poem-A-Day #272 : On the First Hold the Collar Close to Your Neck Night

On the First Hold the Collar Close to Your Neck Night

The sound of train tracks cooling is a baking sheet in the oven clang

These are house noises - the world
is a house making noises - the cooling
is the world making house

The pie was delicious
                         at least everyone said so
               why is it so hard to believe those sorts of statements
          conditioning - because - praise is ego and ego is inflatable

And no one can float on it alone

The oven cools it has a stone in its belly and the stone is blackened

On the first hold the collar close to your neck night the world sighed deeply and said that the years are getting harder to come back from

It closed up itself
curtains and all the doors
were resealed this autumn the windows leak still but...

Picture a train track popping - the back
of it breaking and curling upwards into the dark sky

It shatters into ravens and they
shatter into a rain of snow hard as glass
glinting like fresh asphalt

Jacobin Pigeon

Poem-A-Day #257 : November

November

Burnt skin          is tight across fingers
the prints are shallow          there is whiteness everywhere

At some point your self was erased and why didn't you notice it

The red in the wagon was a warning          you could sit in it
pretend that you could steer it downhill          how does chin feel on pavement

One morning you woke up and the birds wheeling in the sky didn't recognize the land

The two children hit each other with rebar          it is November
the land is in the midst of its throes          the mountain snows in

There are ravens in New Mexico they croak in the treetops they are alarm bells

John J. Audubon - Birds of America (1827-1838)

Poem-A-Day #204 : Last Chance

Last Chance

All the trees in the world are trying
to keep this place locked and double-locked

The gates are chained and the path is
suddenly less clear there is no sky in the sky

I am rocked in its cradle - a colicked baby
I would have never suspected this of myself

Being able to tilt the cradle onto the floor
to muss the world until it is all blankets in furrows

Undo the ease of life and run a left-behind goose
in the midst of coming winter

The last chance Eleanor in some mythic story
rocks going only uphill etc etc etc

Excitement drowns the voices screaming from the lake
get out of here get away turn back re-lock

Turn tail goose the winter is not so bad
there will be shelter in some field or other

You will find a table to sit at that isn't vile
diseased or full of broken plates and your brother's flesh

Bones light as the air I cannot see
feathers and all that floating like dust on the wind

When the gate opens you will find yourself
moving without movement forwards always forwards

Poem-A-Day #153 : Dead Bird in the Garden

Am I gothic? I've been accused of being gothic.

I'm going to finish out the month of looking back with a weird poem about gardening that is not about gardening at all. It does feature two obsessions of mine: 1) Birds; and 2) Decay. So there we go.

Starting tomorrow I'm going to take a friend's advice and start a series of poems about wood. Just wood, it sounds boring right? It is going to be AMAZING though, I swear. How much wood can a Michael chuck if a Michael could chuck wood? 30 days worth, if we're lucky.


Dead Bird in the Garden (4/28/05)

The sky is a gray sweep
of clouds making their brushstrokes
a perfectly windy sky -

Here the reel will speed up
as shadows blur on the landscape
if there were sound in this movie
it would be a lone viola -

Dip your fingers in
the rust-mud colored clay
that nothing will grow in
pull the rock from the shell of earth
roll it in your palms
put it back -

The heavy rains have
cracked and broken open
the small mound
the insides glow fiercely -

A small pool of black stares up
it has feathers that fold wet velvet
they are falling away -

Here is a rib poking out
a hip-bone the tip of wing -

A sudden sweep of air
across the breaking soil
the rest falls away -

A radish beneath the skull -

Poem-A-Day #128 : Green

I was just as obsessed by colors and light as an 18 year old as I am as a 35 year old. Below the poem in my journal is one of my favorite bits of poetry. From David P. Young's The Man Who Swallowed A Bird:

Once I swallowed a bird,
felt like a cage at first, but now
sometimes my flesh flutters and I think
I could go mad for joy.

The original:

Green (3/17/99)

Calm, cool

The color of springtime country

Makes me long for tall grass

to run through

roll in

Lay and look at the sky

Surf the endless

fields of ocean

Calm, cool

Next to anything it is

perfect

Always relaxing

Nature in color

The edit:

Green

Long for the tall grass - the shade of big land

the stalks - thick and whip-like

The sound of speed - of knee high by the fourth of July

the thickness of summertime maple leaves

The sky bleaches against all this boiling pigment

all of this dampness - this scent of grass

The most restful of states - run in it - let it stain your jeans

the feeling of wet - the prime of your life

Poem-A-Day #122 : O'Clock

O'Clock

Every thing is a mirror for mortality

The tick of the clock is obvious though it hides gears wearing each moment rounding their teeth like a rodent itching a plank of wood

Think about the grease pasted over the turning mouths

In the back of the mind a story about how oil is the remains of dinosaurs that was pressed like apples until the cloudy mists collected in cloudy jugs

The clouds settle themselves on the horizon like vinegar under the oil blueness of sky

A news report of a bird wing preserved in amber and then the image of a bird losing its wing in the thickness of tree sap the image of it chewing its own limb off

We always end up talking about James Franco cutting off his own arm in that one movie

Not 127 Hours

Poem-A-Day #5 : Winter Morning

Winter Morning

Hash of leaves      soft    under foot
      the pillows on the bed still smell like you

Pine is caramel      vanilla      tar
      [the sound of birds]      sunlight waxen      drips

Dust Jacket : When Women Were Birds

When Women Were Birds
Designed by: Abby Kagan
Art by: Adly Elewa

Empty journals are frightening.

All those blank pages.

That silence.

From Terry Tempest Williams book:

"They were exactly where she said they would be: three shelves of beautiful cloth-bound books . . . I opened the first journal. It was empty. I opened the second journal. It was empty. I opened the third. It too was empty . . . Shelf after shelf after shelf, all of my mother’s journals were blank.”

A blank journal becomes a sigil of unshared personal histories. And that is where the fear comes in.

What are we if we leave only blankness behind?

You could look at a blank journal another way. As hope. A future untold. And a new journal is that. A soft bed for thoughts, hopes, life.

This cover is both comforting and menacing.

A bed of feathers. A pillow. Nature. Birds in flight.

But these are the feathers of a bird of prey.

A peregrine falcon.

The most widely spread of the raptors. It has been clocked flying up to 200+ mph. It is the fastest animal.

How are blank journals like a peregrine falcon?

Peregrine means 'to wander'. As a mind. As the possibility in a blank page.

The artist, Adley Elewa, designs for Penguin Press. The photo also resembles a flock of birds in flight. Again. The mind let loose.

Sky Chase by  Manuel Presti

Again. That silence is both soft and beautiful. And also deeply troubling.

A quiet mind is a home to infinity. And to nothing.

Finding a room full of journals. That were your dead mother's. Then finding them empty.

Nothing left but that blankness. All that blankness.



Dust Jacket is a sometime article about the design and art of book covers. The idea is to shine a spotlight on the work of the designer separate from the author. Literally judging a book by its cover.

Job

Job 8/9

Sharp against metal
the woodpecker is clearly confused
is waking the deathwatches from
their dark hollow ladder

Lying in bed the comforter is light
it is July and the trees shake themselves
the dog is chasing something small
and chipmunk-like into some brush

The river flooded its banks
it took the sand moved it there
and buried the new flowers
up to their stamens

The steady rhythm of the tapping
of beak on abandoned rungs
is a clock winding up
is the hiccup before fresh breath

Cuckoo

Cuckoo 3/27

Sit on this

I will push your babies to their death

Feed me keep me warm teach me to live

Sit on this

I will abandon my child and you will be kind

Like a basket baby down a river

Sit on this