Poem : Resiliating

Risiliating basically means when something resumes its shape after being deformed. Think of pressing your hand into foam. Or those stress balls.

A week ago my grandfather died. He was 90. His funeral was yesterday.

I hate funerals. They are unnatural. You sit on little chairs or pews, too close to each other, you say a few things about the dead person. You shake a lot of hands and hung a lot of people who barely know. You move on.

The funeral home in my parent's home town has been run by the same family for 125 years. They advertise with a sign that says they are a "Victorian crematory". They have a sign with a little horse drawn hearse on it.

The inside of the funeral home is decorated in shades of emerald and amethyst. Floral wallpaper. It smells of perfume. It is an old house, the rooms are oddly shaped. There are fireplaces.

The flowers around the urn, which was actually a box, were too shiny. Like they had been polished. Peace lilies have unnaturally shiny leaves already and the one by the urn glossed like the uncanny valley.

Funerals are definitely the uncanny valley.

---

Resiliating

At the funeral

lilies were glossy reflection

Light diffusing
around the edges
of the eye of a swan

They were the shape that lilies always form

Pristine loon necks
rising lowering
from a fountain of leaves

A school of boats
lolling on a calm water

—

Rooms breathe

Burn themselves
images on a television
left on too long

—

The old television
in the old room
filled with green

Is where the old man died

Where he breathed long
like a room
his ribcage became solid
then permanent

His heart leaving a imprint
a notch in space

We all burn an echo

—

Press hand to
mushroom soft mat of soil

Leave an imprint

Funerary green
on the retina
the rod and cone of it
a bobbing sound
over a mid-morning lake

Poem-A-Day #310 : When Lilacs Last

This is an erasure of the last section of Walt Whitman's "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d" is my attempt at distillation. Whitman used 100 words where 1 would work. He was amazing and infuriating for this reason. I think this version gets the same point across. Quickly.

You can read the full poem at Poetry Foundation.

When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d

16
Passing the visions, passing the night,
Passing, unloosing the hold of my comrades’ hands,
Passing the song of the hermit bird and the tallying song of my soul,
Victorious song, death’s outlet song, yet varying ever-altering song,
As low and wailing, yet clear the notes, rising and falling, flooding the night,
Sadly sinking and fainting, as warning and warning, and yet again bursting with joy,
Covering the earth and filling the spread of the heaven,
As that powerful psalm in the night I heard from recesses,
Passing, I leave thee lilac with heart-shaped leaves,
I leave thee there in the door-yard, blooming, returning with spring.

I cease from my song for thee,
From my gaze on thee in the west, fronting the west, communing with thee,
O comrade lustrous with silver face in the night.

Yet each to keep and all, retrievements out of the night,
The song, the wondrous chant of the gray-brown bird,
And the tallying chant, the echo arous’d in my soul,
With the lustrous and drooping star with the countenance full of woe,
With the holders holding my hand nearing the call of the bird,
Comrades mine and I in the midst, and their memory ever to keep, for the dead I loved so well,
For the sweetest, wisest soul of all my days and lands—and this for his dear sake,
Lilac and star and bird twined with the chant of my soul,
There in the fragrant pines and the cedars dusk and dim.

Poem-A-Day #291 : If

If

Write beautifully
words that could sear and pop
with the light of stars

They will cause palpitations
be boxes opening into boxes
revealing one lone puzzle piece

Rend yourself
the scraps of white cloth
will be made into scarves

Language will fill sails
or at least bring to mind
the image of full sails

Fragility
everything should wreak of breakage
and the feeling of tears on fingers

These true blunt instruments
these lines could be claw-footed bathtubs
that would fill with blood and flowers

Poem-A-Day #289 : Tension Break

Tension Break

Sight of a dandelion about to open

The tension

Paper tear noise of it

The fabric pull

In there a small quietness

The center

A vision of things as they could

Poem-A-Day #236 : The Spot of Our Sanity

The Spot of Our Sanity

The soft spot of our sanity - when pressed like a plum - gives its black juices to our fingers

Here is the sound of singing the brush of fabric against goosefleshed arm - it radiates heat

The spot will well up - saturation point like floodwaters filling the soil - will eventually give

Thumb through skin through meats - the smell of rotting rose petals - yellow beneath and pitted

Poem-A-Day #225 : What Will I Do

What Will I Do

          only to watch it die
in my hands - the daisy - obviously

the greenness of the grass
     it was too much honestly - burned - it was blazing

the daisy - obviously
          it burned in my hands

curled petals went white then not
          it was just not for me - only for the soil

     not for these too clean hands

Poem-A-Day #168 : Wood (Part 15 : To Pass)

I don't think this poem wants to go for 30 days. I will see where I stand on that tomorrow, but I think it might be over sooner than later.

You should start with Part One - HERE.


Wood (Part 15 : To Pass)

You're quiet : I don't want to give the impression that I'm all doom and gloom over here but that's what trees make me think of : I mean there's life too : so that house falls down and I can no longer stare at it from the foot of my grandmother's yard : but once it falls I mean really falls to pieces that's when things get interesting for real : that pile of house was holding space it was an ancient wanderer who managed to hold steady for who knows how long but there it was : and psychically it was holding focus : no one talked about it for sure I asked and people would sort of hmmm around it and no one would remember where it came from or how long it had been hurting out there : it was an injured deer on the side of the road it was a dead leg that gangrene had taken but it was being left to rot on the bone : and it was holding my thoughts and maybe that's why it lasted so long : I had nightmares about it I imagined being in its upper floors as it collapsed I thought about what it had seen in its time : I gave it life and it was my fault it didn't just go like it was meant to : I kept it alive when I should have also forgotten it : and that's not as sad as it sounds because I have obviously not forgotten it but I also have obviously allowed it to pass :

There's a meadow there now all filled with blooming flowers of all colors : and that's the point really : that sometimes you let go : you walk to the top of the mountain alone and you allow your body to fall silent and then to sleep : you allow yourself to become food for whatever is next because honestly you've taken space that wasn't yours for too long and maybe what comes next will be able to use what came before : this is beginning to sound silly : I'm just saying that things die and then there in that death will be the sprouting of something : not the same something never that : but close and wildly different and that new thing will path itself right through a new life and the old thing will eventually be forgotten by all but the memory of that spot will somehow collect those paths somehow : I mean that's why we go on right : because somehow we will be allowed to be forgotten but will also be allowed to be remembered :

Poem-A-Day #162 : Wood (Part 9 : Alyssum)

You can read Part One of this super long poem HERE.


Wood (Part 9 : Alyssum)

I stand at the dumpster and I think about how none of it matters in the end : I mean really matters : one day you and I will both be gone and a few people who will also be gone will remember us for a second : geologically even the trees will be forgotten before the rocks will give up the ghost :

I'm thinking about throwing out the frame it was an ex-boyfriend's it held photos of his family and there is that part of me that wants to hold on to even these fractured bits : like that dead tree at the garden with the crown all dried and brittle : why not take it down and get on with it :

The garden I planted on the patio died within a few weeks of starting it I'm convinced that it's because I didn't burn sage but it's probably just that the sun is wrong here : I planted poppies and nasturtiums and morning glory and not a one happened :

My grandmother's both kept gardens : simple and beautiful they dominate the nature of my memories : one with her vegetables and black-eyed susan and zinnia the other with peony and flowing geraniums and mint : both with fruit trees that I do not remember ever producing :

I think about alyssum and their softly ombré colors : purple into white : purple in : I'm again reminded of dogwood and the slightly tinged edges : the color of the inner rings of wood : a dark vein that bleeds out into light blondness :

You run your fingers over those veins for a moment : they are raised and the softer parts between lower with age and less hydration : everything darkens and will bleach of color eventually : dark veins raise and harden like a preserved body :

Can a tree be taxidermied : can the branches be raised into angelic wings and the flesh peeled back to reveal the muscle beneath and all of it mounted on a platform and lit nicely like a ghoulish tableau of what nature could look like if it were a horror movie :

Poem-A-Day #150 : Planting Marigolds

Planting flowers is perhaps the closest thing to religion that I will ever get.


Planting Marigolds (4/4/05)

The pressing
That's the important part
Getting the roots
to press down and
point the right way

You have to
dig in the correct direction
being careful
not to go too deep
or the roots
will touch the veins of earth
and run towards the center

But it must be deep enough
to tap the water

You have to make it
careful not to fill it to the brim
then let it soak down

This starts the life cycle

Have to say
several prayers
along the way
Crossing oneself
with holly wreaths

But the pressing
making the base
against the wind
telling the thread like roots

This is the way down
This is the way up
Choose

Poem-A-Day #137 : Dogwood

 I have been obsessed with trees and the cycle of seasons for my entire life. No trees manage to draw me in more than the dogwood. It's odd, early spring blooming without leaves. The little notches in the petals of the waxy flowers. The sort of node-like centers. It is the definition of ornamental. But also a harbinger tree. It foretells.


Dogwood (4/28/99)

Sore about the edges
Pulled out if its home into blinding light
Seared red by the womb
Scraped and bruised until chapped
Deep within still clean
Sweat and tears vein it
On display for all to see
The pain of it
The mark of being born

Poem-A-Day #120 : The 4Runner in the Arroyo

The 4Runner in the Arroyo

Broken tree limbs line the arroyo -

A sort of nest forms
          in this space - you are the egg
here             the sky lowers its
                    feathered ass right on down

This could get real new age in a second -
                     so -

You pull the collar up and brace for waves -

Does the burnt-out SUV pressed into the soil - forming
a wall for the dryness of this riverbed
                    mean
                              anything

Here - words become smoke -
shells popping on a battlefield -
          someday -
                    in the future -
poppies will red on this spot

Their spiny fuzzy heads will spin into tulle -

The small gnats of their seeds swarm against this space -
remind the SUV that it was once mobile -
red and full of gas -

Poem-A-Day #112 : Poem for Monday

Poem for Monday

Somavāra - missing miracle plant - sap flowing like rivers from stone
Day of white ageless horses rippling across the sky - the chariot - blazing - unidentifiable because of itself

Roots white and blind - a lotus filling slowly with dew

Moonday Blue (2013) by  Lim Heng Swee 

Poem-A-Day #58 : I Am Clearly Still Angry

I Am Clearly Still Angry

The clay pots sit where they were left in the fall - waiting and filled to the brim with last year's soil - the small rocks lining the bottoms of them taken from that house with the rose bush I endlessly obsessed over - caring more about its limbs than my own -

The sound of their breaking - imagine the sound of fired clay against concrete - the breath being pushed from the lungs of a body being beaten to death - ribcage cracking like kindling on a fire the wood so wet that all it produces is smoke and the smell of furnaces -

I want to promise that they will be protected from this - that they will have seeds in them - will have new sprouting heads - that I will not throw them one after another towards the highway that spirals into the distance like a great rubber band across the landscape -

But I can't keep secrets - and I hate the idea of things growing from these shells and I want them to sit dumbly in the rain the wind the blistering heat of summer - I would only plant to watch the green shoots turn yellow and white and wither -

I am clearly still angry -

But let this emotion enter and absorb the room - here the pots become vessels for something greater than growing - they are where we can place our organs as our bodies empty - I feel the pain in my back becoming greater - let me put my kidney here just for a moment -

The heart fits nicely in the small urn that had alyssum in it - purple flowers pop across the surface like barnacles - that we had that kind of water - that those small beak mouths could open and find their peace - that the sun wouldn't need so much from us -

How does the soil know when it is time to squeeze the roots until they break - that winter is coming - that the trail of vines is also a lower intestine - fuck these branches needing to be pruned - and these fingers for tracing the buds like life signs no one will notice the fresh scent of green anyway -

Source - Garden & Home

Poem-A-Day #48 : Chauffeur

Chauffeur

There are so many words about this - and adding to that pile is useless
                    I remember reaching the rose out towards you as you walked
          the line - it was peach and you took it and smiled into my face

Someone behind you would collect all the hundreds of flowers
                     and place them into a car
          a whole car for flowers

I think about the driver - the person in the suit and hat driving flowers
                    through the streets of Banbury - passed the cross
          naked and ringing in the light of all those faces

This was probably 91 and you were so loved and so shining and perfection
                    unattainable was yours - the woman getting it all
          and then some

It was before revelation - before you sat alone on the bench in India
                    the shock of your red and purple - the so very alone-ness of it
          the breaking down of the metaphor - accident - and not

The first wife - in the tomb - alone and objectified - glowing forth
                    how prophetic and strange
          that life can be both oracle and stasis field

Piles of static collect around this tomb and your own - they mulch
                    I think about my childhood - and I have nothing
          to further the sound of my voice

I don't have comparison - there is no doorway to open here
                   just the hanging moment of child arm and hand reaching
          out - a long stem covered in thorns - pointed like a question

The answer in that car - that will forever be driving away - forever
smelling of too many flowers

Source - Dave Chancellor/Alpha

Poem-A-Day #45 : Vacation

Vacation

I want to put lime blossoms in my hair
          linen robe against the breeze - there could be volcanos on the horizon
      but tonight - there is a softness to everything that hides the concern

The comet last night - it was a knife ripping open the sky like a zipper
      she lowered her robe and it would be day
          if only the petals didn't hide the sun in their raincloud storm

Here is a breakdown - I pull the jeans back on
          finish the last of the margarita - it is warm and watery and tastes like metal
      the salt aching my dental work

I will leave you here to dream about your apocalypse - it could be so fun
      us in our pink outfits tossing roses to the masses -
          I lock you in the room - drop the key in the planter at the elevator

I night myself and enter the breeze of spring - the dirt spinning over me
I want to put lime blossoms in my hair - I settle for ashes form what is left of us

Source - GHR2009