River of Play

Poem About Beer

Now that oughta spike my numbers. But then, how often do ugrads google such things?

Ah, yes, and in re the Kat comment with the bug picture. . . I do try to keep my geek cred up, but I see that my struggle is useless. I must simply stand back and gasp. Mouth agape. Into which ailanthus webworm moths may fly.

And now here's the aforementioned poem. Eco? Hm. Here, the poet explores the evolutionary pressures of social groups. And it needs a decent title, so weigh in on that, please.

It can’t be hard to decide to visit a friend
even if I know he’ll want more of my beer
than his wife allows him. But why tell?
The game is excuse enough to relive college,
skip over the years of work, and come to this:
the children safely away with the women
and this is man-time, dammit! Another bottle
from the fridge. We can relax. Second half,
a co-worker stops by for chips, to show off his car.
We order a pizza, open more beer. It’s not hard
to visit friends, swap pictures of wives in bikinis
and not comment. The game is in the last quarter,
our team is ahead enough that we can stroll to the deck,
breathe sunset air, congratulate ourselves on success.

Weather for Students

Dear sweet gods above it is a lovely day outside. Clear enough to see into space. Temperatures in the 80s--so they wear those cute, asymmetrical skirts and lace gloves. The trees are turning the colors of a late autumn fire. All the more lovely because I'm locked inside a fucking box in a series of fucking boxes lining the inner hallway and thus removed from the outside by two (!) other fucking boxes. As far as I know, it's mid-70s, overcast and humming outside.

On the other hand, I like my class. Last night, they were entirely cranked up about this poem (for the link, the poet is reading. . . and it's NSFW, so cover your boss's ears). Did we talk about sex? Yes, we talked about sex. And did they do so appropriately? Yes, they did. And hilariously. Poems they also approved of: "My Papa's Waltz," "Men at My Father's Funeral," and "Kerosene" (by Rachel Zucker. I couldn't find it floating is cyberspace).

Soon, I will have new drafts of my own poems and I'll post them.

New Poem

Here's a tender, new shoot of a poem. Doesn't even have a title yet. Let me know what you think.

We’ve come to see a performance
and a hunched man performs
pounding on as many drums

as he can drum in one night
during one summer
in a dim cave with chandeliers

that is not a cave but a hall
a tall empty space and he’s hunched
and sitting like we’re sitting

but not moving as much as he is
moving as he pounds
on drums and reaches down to drink

like we grab something to drink
and move but we’re drinking beer
in plastic cups that sweat and sweat

like he’s sweating this one summer
and there’s a lot of darkness
filled with drumming and beer

around us, dark like a cave except
we’ve got chandeliers and spotlights
and low lights at each table

small like kitchen tables or tables
you’d drag out to a porch
during summer when it’s dark

like a cave but not a cave because
I can see fireflies and hear cicadas
and smell more hay than beer

when the neighborly shamans
come over to drink from sweating cups
and they play mandolins, fiddle, banjo

after the sun’s gone down
and there’s not time before or after
this sun, this porch, this cave

Clouds, Part the Second

This is a revision of a poem I posted a while ago. Not a savage reconstruction, but I've done some cleaning up, some slicing. I hope you like it.

Water Above, Water Below

Every cloud except the towering cumulonimbus
is flirty and inconstant. Watch them drift.
Lie down in a warm field with a blanket
or jacket. Have some wine with you
or coffee in a thermos or the memories of childhood
when your parents sent you out with a hoe,
a bike or a kite. All are good.

Imagine the clouds are young gods without responsibilities.
They have blown themselves here for amusement.
In one game, they surround airplanes
so that children will cry when they can’t see.
They long ago gave up on birds and their navigation
but they still like to chill cardinals that fly too high.
Cirrus, cumulus, stratus: they each play fair.

You really should pour yourself another glass.
Watch the clouds play chase and do impressions
that are poor because they are so far above rabbits,
ducks, dogs. Genitalia is almost always invisible to them.
The moon comes to color the clouds like old platinum
and the insect sounds change. Fires appear.
The field breathes cool moisture over you,
so pick up your blanket, walk down from the sky.

Good Po News

W00t! and Huzzah! After a dry spell, I've got an acceptance. It's a fun piece from a couple years ago called "In Response to Your Essay." I won't post it out of deference to the lovely folk over at Lilies and Cannonballs Review. Check 'em out and give 'em some love.

Quick Quick

High thee over to Poetry Mountain. Up for today's poem: The Art of Narrative in Painting. One o' mine. And there's a deelightful photo and site for your'n as well. I'll be adding the site as a permanent link after a bit. Be sure to check out their po-word of the day. A real vocab builder for when you hang out with, well, you know, pos.

Monkey Mind

While riding for over 2200 miles across the middle top of the US map, I had a chance to read a version of the Chinese classic Monkey, or A Journey to the West. The story concerns the adventures of Monkey--as you might have guessed--a magical being who has adventures and learns about Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism. The stories are frequently allegorical and peppered with pithy aphorisms and proverbs. He's bellicose, a braggart and a bit Rabelasian. Eventually, he achieves enlightenment. So he's got that going for him. The book has been described as an episodic folk novel. At any rate, I've been interested in Monkey for a while, and it was great to get to know him a bit better. Thus, we have the following, tender and new, poem. Not an ecopoem so much, but it does take up my games project that I can seem to get away from.

The Monkey King doesn’t know how to ask
to play the game, but the woman takes it down
from the shelf anyway and unfolds the board.
He reaches into the box to set out the pieces,
but they are glass and he is cut, several times.

He is never sure of the rules, keeps scratching
and she keeps pushing his hand away.
The telephone rings then is silent. It rings again.
Monkey holds cards in his calloused paw,
can’t decide if they’re money or demands.

He jumps up, chattering, and she walks out
into heavy green spring. Alone for a moment,
Monkey studies the board with its hammers
and paintbrushes, skillets and peelers,
diapers, pets and boxes and boxes and boxes.

He scratches, looks around, scratches again.
Who brought this game down? He searches
the box for directions. What does winning mean?
He hears ringing, smells flowers. Skies darken.
He cannot fold the board. It refuses to be put away.

Not So Delicate Lacy Underthings

I've always been one to play with aleatory composition methods. This poem started with some random selections from An Astrological Mandala (lots of great, random scenes in that--well worth picking up as a resource for stuckness) and some old lines and language I had clipped and filed in my always useful DEVONthink collector. It's still new and gooey, but I hope you like it. You can file this under the evolutionary theory approach.

I am surrounded by lace and the history of lace.
My wife wears heritage lace panties,
lace-making a family skill going back generations.
In the library two blocks from my home,
a digital archive of lace, of fine handkerchiefs
and the lacy trees of aristocratic families
sings a pixel song of literature, veins, knots.
I sit mumbling over coffee and lace corners me.

A middle-aged woman, her long hair
flowing over her shoulders
and in a bra-less, youthful garment,
wanders like a lioness through the savannah
feeling high, thinking of her own
valorous ancestors. Is there a Lace Queen,
she wonders, wrapped in a large stole of fox fur
like a real lady with blue blood wrapped in lace.

She is someone’s mother. Not mine.
She dreams of the Monkey King,
of the lace she will wear for him.
I will not lift from this space to care.
My family is the only family:
all history, all stories people tell
about their mother are stories about my mother.
My family doily is my family rhizome
needled and thumbed. We will dine on lace.

I'm trying to keep up with the books I'm reading. But keep in mind that I'm ripping through these things. First, becuase I need to have some material about them ready for the semester. Second, because I've been in grad school in English for five years and I can read like a cheetah modified for marathons. Wearing Nikes. And drinking espressos. Maybe even with a lot of sugar. Y'know, for the boost.

Poem, Re: Morgantown

As any of you who know me know, I would never suggest anyone move to Morgantown, WV. I love parts of that state, and I'm all about Appalachia, really. But I don't know anyone who's had a good run in Mo-town. Bad, bad mojo. So I write poems about it.

Noise Before Breaking

I had Ladies of the Canyon
and white carpets when I first moved
back to the mountains.

My wife and I slept in a house
where a single-bed woman kept photos
with yellowing silver on the walls.

I picked and pitted cherries
and cherries and cherries.
Someone else mowed the lawn.

I picked basil and wild, expressive
oregano that struggled to move
into the condos being built next door.

Walking took us on a road where
the locals we were trying to become
swerved sharply by.

White carpet. Single bed.
This was a quiet house.
You could hear the spiders’ claws tick.

Dinner was steamed greens
and whatever would fit
in the small pans of a single-bed woman.

We parked our U-Haul
on the kinked driveway—newly blacked.
We kept all our stuff locked.

Two years later
driving that same road
I could never find those condos.

Maybe it IS that Random

Here's a little ditty I think you'll like. It's an ode to aleatory writing practices. I need to work on it more, but have a tasty preview.

Life Is a Room of Empty Frames

1. Follow your natural disposition. You won't miss the target.
He lived in rooms with empty frames
and talked constantly to create the world.

We all talk about breakfast music
a third level deck
the other project
what I love and the space between us
the field and how many geese are in it
the watershed
your feelings, which are surprising,
like when you see someone outside a yurt
and then find them lighting butter lamps inside.

2. The eyes are the sun and moon.
The head the sky, the feet the earth.
You are what eats at you. Be surprised
at this, like when you see someone
and then meet them later in a fight.

The person within the person is the inner self
so we are always three in one. Four limbs
are four seasons, but remember
we're not measuring that way.

3. Balance must be learned. It is the first step.
Schools set mouse traps for copycats
and these are good, he said, handling
the subpoena, the letter from a judge,
the forty people and a couple news crews.

I asked her if she loved me, and she said
that she stopped loving me.
She surprised me then, like when you see someone
outside a restaurant and then they’re seated next to you.
I was sure I would have to get the treatment.

4. Stillness is the foundation,
action is the use. Action is the achievement of stillness.
After she leaves, you must handle
the paintings by the edges
the allegations
the art for these five issues
the partly eaten biscuit

5. Learn to listen to the gradual, quick, hard and soft.
These are good, she said, feeling
the way she does when the heat is at her neck
the fidget is inside her stomach
and she needs to relay at least some of this to Lola

6. Follow the footprints of history,
enter the gate of the method. Handle the beetroots
with exquisite care! Handle the competing uses
of the estuary! It expresses the way I and many other
barefooters feel: I will wrap your coercion
in anxiety and refusal. It will eat at you.

7. In every aspect, research and study. Feel the result with her hands,
the pressure in her head again,
the name of her sister right there at the edge,
the swell of the rivermouth giving way.

See that person there outside the hospital?
Isn’t it strange to meet them again
inside that tired statistic with the peeling linoleum?

8. One studies theory in order to overcome brute force.
I have moved to a place with winter
and very little water where hurricanes
find no attraction, where I can forgive,
where there are not a lot of old school potters
where my interconnection has not been set.
It is socially acceptable.