Poem-A-Day #308 : Prayer-curse For A New Year

Prayer-curse For A New Year

Coyote's bowed head in the flashlight
and the thickness of frost out across the field
is a sign of something in the New Year

A hunted thing - silence in the crook of a tree
mistaken for meaning and darkness

You could crawl in that space - live out a life
unexamined - the hermit - a cowl and staff ready
if only you could open your drawn-on mouth

On the drive home you cannot escape yellow eyes
the sign of possession in every movie ever made

The trickster god opens his mouth and fills
the world with flies and sparking lanterns
polyhedral dice fall in clatters on the tin roof

The sound of grass shattering is a year-is-over sound
a year-is-starting promise that could -

Poem-A-Day #307 : Jan 1

Jan 1

Won't the sky just drop it

                    it just stares with those questioning clouds          knows
          that answers are stupid - listless
                                                                    broken masts on beaches

The fucking sun will not stop unblinking

                    another wonderous day has set upon us          years even
          in their ruminations - they are villains
                                                                    knives to throats and heels

Perhaps we war because we see the tempo and cannot keep a beat

                    unable to un-bond from the churn of the calendar
          even in the face of all the universe - we cannot          yet
                                                                    do away with it

Bring ourselves to unhinge that door rusty tho it is

Mayapocalypoetry

Every year, in early January, I make a new folder on my desktop for that year's writing. Then at the end of the year I move the folder into the broader 'writing' folder on my external hard drive. Thus I complete my organizational rituals over my writing.

I don't print my writing out. Keep it in a filing cabinet or any of that. This is more out of cost than any real strong feeling on the issue. And space. I'd need another room for all that paper.

This year I am on track to only having 12 new things to show for my year. One a month. This is the smallest amount of work I have ever produced. Ever.

I can blame the novel. The move. The relationship. Whatever. It is not the truth though. The truth is that I have less to say in 2012. Or less I am interested in putting down.

I was discussing with J the other day about a decision I have to make. There is a certain type of poem I write that seems to get published. You can check out the latest Spittoon for an example of what I'm talking about.

That poem, is about a relationship. Or about language failing in a relationship. Or about how you are never as close as you want to be. Never exactly the same while being EXACTLY the same.

So what is the decision?

Publications seem to be into my 'relationship' poems. Ones with clear 'I' and 'You' and maybe some hand holding and some walking and a dose of existential ennui. And I am clearly able to write those things. But -

Who WILL save your soul?

Am I THAT writer? EYE ROLL!

The decision is to either put my energy in that basket and do it whole hog or, to continue as I have.

I'm not saying to turn my back on writing that fulfills me. Just to attempt to focus on writing that seems to be connecting with people more. Should I write a whole swath of 'relationship' poems? Trying to fill them with whatever I can to make them interesting, in the hopes that they find an audience?

I like to joke that the writer who wins is the one who keeps at it longest. After everyone else has fallen to the side they have no choice but to hand you the Nobel.

I have no solution. J thinks I can do both. With only 12 poems this year, I am clearly in need of making a commitment to A thing. But is it even a choice?

In the meantime, I have been re-working the novel and writing poems about taking my skeleton on walks. I count them as 2013 poems.

Lang Syne

Lang Syne 12/30

She’s sleeping on the couch.

And I’m watching some news show.

There is that sound of her sleep breathing. Static-y.

And while she is silent I turn to her:

            Mom – I think I am the person you think I am and I
            think you are the person I think you are – somewhere in there.

            And we are all the people we say we are some of the time.

            The news is about war, famine, earthquakes in Haiti.

            And those people are something like the people we know.