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!

From the ashen statue,
in the irrevocable hymn
of retrieving, in a bout
of levitating in consciousness
for an anchor,
the story whispered.

We’re both crushed by our urges,
and saved by them,
like finding a lost sister,
piecing & fitting
shard by scattered shard,
till we’re whole.

in a book,
a one way ticket, a fractious
deed.

Could it be youth who stared
down darkness
in an empty street,
underrated,
without a view?

There’s always a slogan for balancing
one against the other,
so here comes the ornate, sacred
love of enigmatic skin,
and then transcending all that
on a yoga mat.

Slowly the lullaby rises
in your throat, and you, my love,
holding out your porcelain cup
for a nice poached egg.

Do we need to say we need
lifeboats on the Titanic,
a regimen of going up & down
elevators, writing poems to spoof
eggheads, or showers of confetti
for one day of radiance?

There’s no need to say we will
diminish, stare out of windows to
some invisible spot guiding our soggy
gaze, ignoring the smoke rings
rising from bubblegum breaths.

We could be holy,
or vacuous, just an army
of industrious ants, lifting
a small apple peel
in the kitchen sink,
game for a holocaust
on any given day.

We just need to look at ant corpses
to radiate something else–
smoke rings, or eternal lilies.

Process notes: A somewhat provocative prompt from Margo, which is to write about “the things you don’t say”. I just read in a book, if you can’t understand it without an explanation, you can’t understand it with an explanation. Why do you think the universe is a mystery?

Food as substitute for a poem, because I’m sooo tired. With any luck I’ll be back with a poem, before WordPress goes dark. I feel the need. I feel Margo calling me, Write!