In the technology of the city
within which I trod with insouciant feet,
I wish to thank my lucky star
for the rays upon the palm tree
that mirrors the symbolism,
without the shortness of breath,
or the smoke of a black country.

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (1780-1867), Alexandre Desgoffe (1805-1882)
Venus at Paphos
Circa 1852

We’re still the empty bones,
after all these years,
with all the hemming and hawing,
and the excavating of art,
and I want to say, it’s all good
real bad, amidst the lamentation
of convalescents, and those who fail
to convalesce, expiring upon the thin
stalk of the artist’s brush.

Here, I’ll give to you
the pomegranate in Venus’s palm,
parrying with a distracted Cupid,
propped by a classical temple
of a resurrecting sun
still rising in the East,
and you ask, who’s this Venus
with the sloping shoulder,
and the squashed breasts,
without a corset, to hold them in.
Well, I answer, at least,
there’s the symbolism
of the myrtle tree,
without the brier.

Note: God stands among the myrtles, as quoted in Isaiah 55:13: “Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree: and it shall be to the Lord for a name, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.”

Process notes: Another poem falling out of my pocket. Another pebble in the labyrinth. Thanks to Brenda who pulled out words from a book of poems for The Sunday Whirl. To be honest I don’t feel all that motivated. Like maybe, I should go to another kind of room sort of feeling. I guess you could say, people like Brenda keeps me going.

Au Revoir Simone is a feminine electro-pop group from Brooklyn with an ethereal look & feel. This is one of the tracks from their The Bird of Music album.Their press sheet said, “The Bird of Music is an album steeped in hazy dreams, thoroughbred horses, soft winter snows, dusty rays of sunlight and lovelorn wishes. It is a record of dichotomies, carefully marrying cold beats with warm voices, joy and sadness, the human and the machine.” Website here.

I’ve been thinking
imbibing those nascent things
in a pantheon of doom
suffused with light.

I’ve been missing
the one with the tattoo,
full of grunge,
and humor, and darkness,
inside my vertiginous eye.

I’ve been sleeping
with the meteorologist,
whose predictions are an assemblage
of signs, from God,
who’s everywhere,

in the crevices of light & darkness,
in the falsehood of ceilings.

Process notes: The image prompt from We Write Poems is an iteration series by Fred Muram. It’s full of surrealistic suggestions, and mine is only one suggestion, against so many other probabilities/possibilities. You can read the others over at We Write Poems on Wednesday.

Michael Kiwanuka was included in the BBC’s Sound of 2012 poll and was named as the winner on 6 January 2012 (according to Wikipedia).

When I write, sometimes
it’s of no consequence whether
it’s about ragged lettuce,
colas & burgers, objects with shape
and vapor, as long as I take them out
from a manila envelope.

Real objects act as sidebars
to the story I am writing,
logs to make into tables
& chairs. There, the glint of trophies,
the lacy tablecloth,
the sheaf of papers,
the tumble of cushions.

They’re all inside this
crucible, as if there’s a God
of all things, as synthetic
& as real, as inane & as lofty,
as easy & as difficult,
patiently transgressing objects in space
to find the seal, a torch,
a centre of gravity.

Process notes: Margo challenges us to write about place in poetry. She talks about baseline landscapes, perhaps the primal landscape of your childhood. I feel though, my present space is my primal landscape. It most defines how I live, and the writing I do.

And here’s a great interview video about space & meaning.

The greatest thing is when someone says they come into a room and they have this incredible feeling. Whatever it is, I say the word feeling that way, because it can be so many different things. I think there’s something inspiring about connecting to someone’s subconscious.– Principal designer, Robin Standefer

Together with architect Stephen Alesch, she talked about the importance of harmonizing textures, combining interesting objects together in unexpected ways. Ultimately it’s about the way we interact with space and objects to have a dream-like moment.

source

We’ve been fluttering in
small circles, is it time we leap,
gossamers of air?

As we listened to the blue
bird on the windowsill, we began
to shun the dull & boring.

What you’re singing
makes me feel as if I need to be
something beautiful.

It makes me lithe,
my gummy feathers fluffing up,
like some titular thing.

And we’re off, tasting the air’s
voodoo chill. The owl says,
we’re full of capriciousness.

The lissome air becomes a draft,
a soaring aspiration,
the love of song.

I stared at the lilies
so pink, stayed in
the present tense, rumble
in the music,
in some chronological
sense, because it took as long
to figure out.

That time isn’t meant to
be one long string
tied to your ear,
it bends, it gets into
terrible knots,
creating sensations
like strings,
like music.

That gold glitters on
my sister’s neck,
linking her back to
a heart of diamonds
so sweet, my father’s
little keepsakes.

Process notes: Gautami’s prompt for We write poems is to write about keepsakes, apart from material things. She writes, “I wrote a poem out of nothing and everything. We hoard keepsakes of material things apart from our memories. And I tried to create a poem from that memory, keeping out material things.” We surround ourselves with these keepsakes, often in material forms. The irony, of course, is that the invisible is real, the visible is not, but often we behave as if the opposite holds the truth.

The boat, powered by two oars.
The lopsidedness as you swung
left and right.

I try to imagine the new moon.

Before breakfast, my son made
seafood pasta, and somewhere
between the taste of scallops
& fusilli, the air was hinged
with a door & a gorgeous double
rainbow, against the blue.

Somewhere, a bird,
a different sky, a boat
of unconditional love.

Happy happy new year of the water dragon! May good fortune smile on you the whole year through!