a brittle rope there was, quickly fraying

I was alone swimming out
to a burnished sea.

There must have been an iridescence
as I swam out, sun caressing
strokes, in a cocoon.
I floated back in a blur,
washed up against the back of rock,
scraping barnacles cutting on knee,
and that ruffian tongue rolled
so I could hear
the flinty sound of fear
in a chalky throat.

I often thought about the feeling
of being roughed up
on those austere rocks.
Maybe it was about extreme
solitude of being,
a foreboding lick of death.
A brittle rope there was,
quickly fraying,
and a soul drenched.

you think, it’s already spring

In the stillness of winter,
you hide the secret grief
as if it’s a lamp burned by
a wick of kerosene.

The crocuses have opened
in the back, and you think,
it’s already spring.

Perhaps the crows won’t come
flapping black wings.
Perhaps not today.

The flowers outside the window
pleased with small colors.
You rubbed your hand against
the massive bone of the hip,
the soft hurt of marrow.

Dusk steals into the clattering.

the moon in a red sky

Red illuminates the sky like a wolf
howling, come follow the flags
of the summit trail.

We hold the string of the sacred,
indigenous rituals tied
to cataclysmic fire.

All beginnings come to an end.
Death must be significant,
part of the intention.

The goddess failed to elaborate,
no mystery the human stays
fraught with demons.

Moon visits the baffling red sky
to say: you are happy only
when you love.

Process notes: It’s goddamn humid. And I was thinking about the evening sky, a glowing red. Is it me, or are the words offered up by The Sunday Whirl getting more difficult? Here’s my result, anyway.

on a starry night

Diamante stars dotted the sky,
winking at bodies, grinding against
each other, hooking our souls.
Earth stained the prints
on clothes, grass stuck
on wispy, naked arms.

We were looking & thinking
about the bleary contrast
between them and us.
These chance vibrations aren’t aligned
to clear meaning. They emerge by will,
pretending to be cobalt stars.

Process notes: I’m still a recovering Napowrimo-er. Anyway I did manage to wrangle with the 12 words from The Sunday Whirl, and here’s the result. I don’t feel particularly impassioned. That’s the trouble I guess. Maybe that’ll come across in the writing. A stupid hangover. Excuse me while I go puke.

on the last day, the body is a cathedral

The fire burns, peters out, burns.
What is the quiet choir inside the sphere
of closed eyelids? The painting with
mostly sea-green, a blue sky.
Eyes trace the line upward,
a flock of minute geese.
The silver glint of pewter
on the mantelpiece,
an ironic pat on the back
for two decades of work.

What else needs to be accommodated
slowing down memory lane?
Love squandered,
a parting in a back alley
in a younger age,
floating dust.

A conundrum that opens death,
follows a pathway to God,
a still beating of the intractable,
armored feathered heart.

Process notes: Napowrimo #29. I don’t know, but the poems are going deeper/shallower at the same time. Tomorrow will be the final day of Napowrimo. Seeing as the stars of poems burn and peter out. Twelve words, courtesy of Marianne, for The Sunday Whirl.

the dragon rises and then it falls

Saturday morning. Martha Stewart on TV–
you’d think the world rightly decorative.
It felt comforting looking at beautiful
craft on cake, Japanese paper strips
readied, seaweed spangles, a nice bow
for a cookie jar. My brain was scalloped,
like the origami. I could almost hear
the Chinese coda: a shimmying dragon.
Do you need a sprig of pink roses,
she asked? I snuggled deeper.

But the sweet hypnosis didn’t last.
Noise as loud as a food processor,
to be pureed into the sound of silence.
Like these words, culled, trimmed.
They’re a calibrated cacophony.
I’ve been fermenting for a poem,
aching for another ethereal answer
hiding in rolled-up shirtsleeves.

From this point, I will fall. Let fall
the pink roses, blown in the spring.
I have the body of winter. I’m a coiling
dragon whipping words, an abstract tail.
A tiny lizard-like presence, growing
enormous with cartilage. Then shrunk,
of no real consequence, my pulpy self
sleeping under a spirit-lined shelf.

Process notes: Napowrimo #22. The shape of this poem is a dragon, which becomes a lizard. I’m not sure what it is. It is what it is. Twelve words are from The Sunday Whirl, of which one (origami) was contributed by me. Is this April thing going to be the last for me? Do you even like listening to my words? Will my words become noise eventually? Who are my readers anyway? Stupid questions.

in which she grooved in a Latino dance class

“How can we know the dancer from the dance?”–Yeats, Among School Children

O godly dancer, teach her
the tricks of the body, its forceful
choreography of breaths.
Walk backwards, kick one leg in the air,
push forward, swirl, a dramatic glance
to the right, curl those shoulders
twice, and drop to the floor.
Sweet hip hop! This grungy exchange,
hands resting on flexed knees,
and everyone so muscular,
richer, with abs that smolder.

She raised her knees in turn,
up and down, lying on the floorboard,
raised one leg and got up to dance
those steps, again and again,
the clock ticking and rapturous,
and when the Latino dance instructor
said, repeat, there was no going back,
an ecstasy of bodies blending as flames,
and she was dancing in the groove,
in the unstoppable gyrating hip of the game.

Process notes: Napowrimo #13. I’ve caught up, finally. Here I am. In the poetic groove that is. Thirteen words, from The Sunday Whirl, leapt (and danced) on the page, thanks to Brenda, who was inspired by the auditions she’s watching. The words all seem to happily jive together.

the light was spoken

Light shines on the birds’ nests,
the sheep scattered on the slopes
the cow’s manure.

God said, let there be light.

It was too early for staggering
sorrow: broken feathers,
dried blood, buried bones.

The light was spoken.

In a syringe-like movement,
there comes marrow,
the story of mating
becoming destiny.

In the dusk,
there’re songs of lost innocence
terrible addictions.

The way you came to me,
by way of dark,
by way of light.

Process notes: Napowrimo #7. It is Easter, already. The light is blazing through the window. So I wrote a poem to embrace it. I noted that the Poetic Asides prompt is to write a poem where two or more people interact without speaking. And it seems to me, how in that scene, light is the medium. How we receive, it lies in how the light changes, as it were, in our minds. My mind, as it is, is full of eggs. I’m making cheesey eggs for breakfast. Twelve words, from the Sunday Whirl.

a clockwork orange tingling in my mouth

I’ve been luminous, I hope, trickily
putting oranges into the fruit bowl,
tapping a pomegranate with a wooden spoon
so the ruby seeds would all fall out.

What is the shape of the thing you’re looking for?
Its taste? Its smell? Is it making a point?

I wish I did know. I imagined these oranges arrived
neatly packed in a paper box, tied with string.

I used to pace the hall memorising names–
a clockwork orange tingling in my mouth,
a paw out for sweetness, and I’d turn over
so words could pet me in the belly.

With scissors, I cut the string,
names whispering as I took out oranges,
their shiny pitted surfaces returning
a pure definition.

The fruit bowl stands luscious,
brims with oranges & rubies.

Process notes: I’d count this as Napowrimo #1. If you’re participating, you could post a link over at We Write Poems if you like. The post should be up later today. The wordle this week, twelve seeds making up the poem, are from The Sunday Whirl.

the joy of food

chicken burger

chicken stew

chicken curry

Don’t you think it’s indescribable,
describing the joy of food?
Sheer verbosity!

It started with hand clapping
as when the Japanese chef cut through
a big tuna fish, slicing slivers
from knife to plate, sprinkled
with soy, melting tender in mouth,
oily notes of a supple craft.

My son sprinkles aromatic herbs,
sweeps up an alchemy of tastes,
measured precision not known before,
a filtering of acid, an acumen
stirred with concocted tastes
that’s as accurate as science,
as intuitive as art, and all
a gauge of the nurtured self.