Poem-A-Day #147 : Study on Rain #2

This is the beginning of the other part of Study on Rain #2 I posted.


Study on Rain #2 (7/17/04)

There,
across the street
huddled around
a half-dressed man
who is crying,
are other half-dressed people

Through sobs,
What will I do
now that I've
killed...

And is he talking
literal moments of time
actions with reaction
or
can there be metaphor at
10:00 in the night
with two young girls
in their underwear
standing over him,
consoling him

Later in the street
she was clothed then
standing,
we took the girl home
at 3AM in our car she said,
There are some times
you're just tired
you know?

What to think
of a reverse pieta

And then the mother
the next morning
was there asking,
You took her where?
I didn't know my
son had friends over
tonight...

Poem-A-Day #134 : Vessel

I'm pretty sure this is a really sarcastic response to Ode to A Grecian Urn by John Keats. I'm not sure where the oysters come in. I didn't keep notes. It is obviously me trying to ask what is and isn't art. A question that I still struggle with.

Keats dies at 25 and only published 54 poems, yet he is perhaps considered one of the most important English poets of the early 1800s ,if not of all time. This is Poem-A-Day #134. I've already written over a thousand other poems. Either I'm winning or I lost before I started.


Vessel (10/13/99)

Is it kitsch?
Tacky?
Does this object
leave you a little cold?
Is it the appropriate time
or place
for it?
Is it art?
Or is it
boredom
formed into shape
Is it social commentary?
Is it egocentric?
Does it deserve attention?
My span can be short
so it needs to shock me now
This could be art
Or worth nothing
Is it subversive?
Does it mirror?
Is it just a vessel
filled with oysters
and hydrogen
fused with oxygen
and nothing more?

A drawing by Keats of the Sosibios vase.
Which he never actually saw in person.

Poem-A-Day #102 : Wolves

Wolves

Her face is a radiating dial -
The gate beyond the garden that hovers behind her through the window is open -
Wolves -

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