Tangled Rope

This living hand, now warm and capable
Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold
And in the icy silence of the tomb,
So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights
That thou wouldst wish thine own heart dry of blood
So in my veins red life might stream again,
And thou be conscience-calmed--see here it is--
I hold it towards you.

I encountered this bright and brief poem this afternoon, courtesy of Chris‘s recent lightening of his library:

Risk

by Robin Becker

The kildeer nested on the ground--
seconds from the horses' hooves
and the graceful arcs of the canter.
Each time we rounded the turn, she stood
over her speckled eggs (I could
see them from my horse's back)
and made a display
of her fierce white feathers.
How I admired her! Audacious
before the iron shoes!

It’s been a long time since I’ve had time, let alone will, to sit and draft a poem. Let’s credit this one to intolerable psychic pressure and leave it at that. Thankfully, only that part of the poem is true.

Eve of the Empty Apocalypse

We've turned away from the sun;
In the East, the Rocky Mountains loom,
their tallest painted purest white.
They say these, too, will shake apart
or crumble down to dust.

I leave, driving east,
hoping to slip between the mountains
before the lunar oracle proclaims their doom,
instructs their snowy crowns to haunt the valley.
And if I'm never seen again,
oh well,
I'll any some day break in their abyss,
so why not now? And seal our final argument,
which conjured Christ and Sartre,
Camus, Prince, my father, and the Buddha.
And yet I kept Everett's Schrodinger's secret safe,
galvanized|encouraged by my squinting son,
who's blue eyed smile says, "Bye-bye,"
to prophecy that I'll return
with certainty so perfect that it quakes
the ancient church across the street.
I feel its stone walls leaning,
I bear its weight, but
no meaning,
and burn what scion faith I can't refute.

Notes

Two things I know I don’t like: the imprecision/abstraction of the final line, and the fact that “Eve” is only implicitly in the poem.

I originally had “Schrodinger” instead of “Everett”, which has a better poetic ring to it, and is probably less obscure, but I couldn’t tolerate the knowledge that Schrodinger didn’t necessarily endorse literal conclusions from his famous thought experiment. If I can be corrected here, I’d be thrilled to change it back.

I just finished re-reading Matthew Yeager’s poem “From ‘A Jar of Balloons, or The Uncooked Rice’” (link is to extended version), and the more I think about my disappointment in the poem the more absurd–both the poem and my reaction–appear to me. The poem begins with a fairly novel concept: an extensive list of simple but personal questions that range from the banal to the sublime. The feel of the poem is unfortunately random and haphazard, like a game of Would You Rather without a partner–and that you allow to persist too long. A better–or at least more fitting–response to this poem than writing about it, in my opinion, follows:

Response to Yeager's From "A Jar of Balloons..."

N
large
very
Y
?
N
gray
me
Y
N
N
N
27"
showers
$20
Y
layers
neither
eat
3rd
NA
Y
mildly
Y
1
fair
N
above average
Y
17
Y
NA
Y
chest-high
N
cake
both
N
Y
N
Y
both
N
bottom
mix it up
easy
center
N
window
Y
"damn"
<20
above average
Y
N
poor
Y
depends
one
temple
NA
white, cream, green, red, tan
Y
bicycle
N
N
Y
N
Y (elaborative)
often
Y (rhetorical)
Y
NA
NA
depends
palm out
existing, persisting, [private], etc
N (elaborative)
Y
black
smooth
peel as I eat
tear into
N
both
Y
N
Imperial City
crying
drive
Y
N
N (rhetorical)
N
both
Y (rhetorical)
Y (rhetorical)
Y
sinking
Y
N
Y
crowd
Y
Willem
3
N
Y
Y
Y
depends
no response
#2
4
occaisionally
N
NA (rhetorical)
Star Wars toy gun
Y
don't know
est. 12
N, Y
occaisionally
obligatory
Y (rhetorical)
walk around by myself
N
depends
Y
"out of sight out of mind"
N
NA
real
star
Y
right rear
don't know
Y
Y, N
Y
butter
depends
depends
Y
last week
N
Y
N
NA
don't know
NA
N
don't know
Y
Y
N
depends
dysentery
Y
poor
October
N (elaborative)
depends
don't know
rarely
N
family members
rarely
either
N
Y
Y
N
depends
N
pecan
depends
N
N
depends
poor
don't know (rhetorical)
few or none
varies
Y (elaborative)
Y (elaborative)
N (elaborative)
Y
N
N, Y
don't recall
Y
Y (elaborative)
send back
N
work
putting on socks, or walking
Y
NA
reading
all of the above (elaborative)
N
N
Y
N
NA
none
NA
NA
N
depends
Y
N
NA
50
NA
Y
N
N
Y
N
depends
N
Y
N
NA
me
Y
flexibility, resilience
Y
N
Y
don't know
Y (rhetorical)
Y
N
sometimes
Y, N
depends
not for myself
N
it's a form of tyranny
NA
above average
don't know
N
don't know
NA
Nick Cave in The Birthday Party
N
N
$5
Y
Y
Toys R Us
average
average
Y
sometimes
NA
Y
Y
NA (rhetorical)
don't know
"kitty-corner"
N (rhetorical)
N
NA (funny)
1st degree
Y
sometimes
tea, books -- fewer things as I age
opera
poetry
oh, Y
Y
both
N
N
"I can get this"
Y
Y
Y
don't know
GRE Literature, or that one history of the English language final
oscillate
N
Y
very
2002
Y
4
Y
Y
grandfather
brother
N
fair
good
NA
N
N
clip
N
N
N
both
Y
N (rhetorical)
12 hours

Did I miss any? Do
I care?

I broke my promise to write poems only in meter this year for the following cathartic/medicinal, and unfortunately melodramatic entry, partly inspired by the practice (though let’s not compare products!) of Lehman’s Journal in Poetry concept.

Friday, Five Fifteen PM

As the sun sets I say I've worked,
and then I look for proof
---easier to do some days than others--
harder, I admit, in this job than in that
one which I'd once sworn lifeblood to.
Work in the library bindery was done by hand
resulting, each day, in a heavy stack
(some volumes very slim, some tomes,
some simply stitched sections)
evidence I'd solved the hours.
                                                       But that
didn't work out, I didn't persist;
I moved, I went to school, I fell in love, I vowed
to keep it as a hobby.

Today at five I made a list
of things I'd done at work:
I met, I talked, I read, replied,
I wrote, I lied. My boss reminded me
to check my tasks before I left.
It'd grown quite long, this chain of things to do,
but not to fault my trying.
Instead, I think, it testifies of
my value to the firm,
the things they need of me
today, tomorrow, and beyond.

Strange how when I worked with books
I passed into the outside world both full and hungry.
Nowadays when I walk home
inside I'm dense and empty,
hard, compressed, yet of such stuff
that's light enough to drift away
beyond the amber glowing clouds
like a pale balloon whose final path
will not be seen, whose rubber skin
will fall,
fit for fish to choke on.

Wherein the image of towing the safe is meant to be homage. And what the hell: “V”, just because.

Love-Letter Number One

While you watch TV and cross-stitch, quite alone,
I sit to write my first love-letter.
All sharpeners gone, I use my teeth until the pencil's center bleeds.
The paper ends up mottled from my wet strokes,
the pencil soaked and flaccid from my sucking.
I find no stamps in my drawer, just
the Walther pistol you left loaded, safety off,
find an extra cartridge on the floor, just in case.
I place the letter in the iron safe from which our cat escapes
and tow it with tied bed sheets down the hall.

You've gone to bed; you're fast asleep.
So instead I fill your work shoes with the petals of spring blossoms.
Not knowing these are beds for apple worms;
you squish them in the morning as you walk to work.
The old janitor grins his three teeth as he washes your feet
his course hands dipping your toes in his battered mop bucket
water seeps out from under the custodial closet's closed door.

From the cubicles down the hall, typing resounds a dance club hit
causing the windows to vibrate, threatening our poodle-shaved cat
who dangers the ledges, nine floors up.
Realizing his escape from the apartment
I've followed you to work, careful not to be seen,
embarrassed when I realize that you've realized the worms;
I take the elevator while you take the stairs
hoping to beat you up.

Inside I'm held in a velvet bear trap.
Strangers in suits tip-toe to spit on my scalp.
As each leaves on each floor I calculate how long,
in this humidity,
until my hair is dry.

"Going down," the bellman says.
Half-way down I "Open Doors",
I chalk a line upon the wooden wall.
Half-way again, half-way again,
until the chalk disintegrates, and then
until my fingernails are ground away.
We reach the basement where the bellman sets me free.
The warm wet stink of peeled bananas, molding plums, spoilt meat,
and residue of oily cheese, ocean sea, hair spray, and hand cream
make treacherous my walk across the concrete laminate floor;
I tip-toe in my socks, sticking to avoid a fall,
leaving a trail of cotton threading as I go.

The basement stairs lead to a hotel lobby, walls lined
with kinetoscopes, the antique kinds we'd romanticized.
I find you there, too,
checking-in with a taller man
whose felt fedora hides his face.
He sets his forearms on the desk,
and I watch you stroke his under elbows from behind.
Thus you lead him from the desk clerk to the elevator hall,
while he threads the room key through his fingers
fast and faster.
I hope he'll rub the metallic strip away,
but instead it flashes light in each flipping pass,
blinding me like waves on the noon-time sea.
The smell of brine, the roll, the pitch of the ship
is all too much: I flee,
balancing a fragile line upon the baseboards
back to my bed, my abandoned room.

All night I roll in my sheets,
I wake to find myself bound in knots,
that you had returned during the night.
For I had written the one thing I must do,
the one thing I can't know, but know must do,
on Post-It® notes, leaving one in each room.
But each has been erased, or
in the case of ink, embroidered over.
Each of these is signed
with your crimson fingerprint--a testament to your will
and the prophesied apostasy of thimbles. 

I'll write that one thing down once more,
eventually, when it falls by,
as a letter to myself, stamped, sealed, and sent
safe until tomorrow's mail arrives.
The first day it comes I see I've addressed it to you,
so I write, "RTS - NOT AT THIS ADDRESS" on the envelope,
and, again, again, at an angle, erect
the carmine mailbox flag.

My poor attempt to follow Chris’s very interesting Venus poem with images centers on Artemis. Immediate reflection tells me I want this briefer, more elegant.

In the moon, in the night
you bathe, palming pool water
into streams upon your skin.
It glistens like stars,
traces constellations on your back--
a map of the impotent,
failed suitors caught
between shadows of your shoulders.


Diana Palace of Caserta

The sheen of your silver hair
wanes as you turn toward me.
Cut close it shows more skin, more neck,
the angles of your frame,
the bulb of your pale breast
draws me to the open
where, naked, I quake in the midnight air,
shaking like a hound before its master
falsely, feebly held together
like the water in your cupped hands
I break upon the pounded shore.


Modesty, Metropolitan Museum of Art


The pink I thought I saw
blossom on your milky cheeks--
was it coyness or rage?
Your eyes, black as a bear's,
tear a path to the mouth of the creek bed
show their black unto your silver bow,
your endless quiver
from which you slide a single shaft.
Fingering it's notch
you draw it back.


Diana of the Tower, Augustus Saint-Gaudens


You who give
but won't receive, release
the string, send
the straight and stinging arrow
into me.
Its piercing cancels any chance to catch my breath;
I moan, I twitch, I shudder,
emptying for death.


The Archer, Johann Philipp Ferdinand  c1930

Prone on my back in the understory,
trees and night sky above,
now all is still:
obsessive lust,
doomed desire,
absurd attachment,
burdened brotherhood
all are falling free.
I wait for my heart to beat,
for my lungs to heave,
for you but once to find,
to stand over me.


Diana, Jean-Antoine Houdon c1790


Forced to it, I must admit
I am your enemy
a predator of liberty, of celibacy;
at last, at least your prey.
Standing over me
your short hair lets slip
a drop of its potency,
spattering warm on my dying lips,
a liqueur of your triumph--
no bacchanalian fete with wine-soaked tresses,
but quiet, wild, and solitary.



Do you watch? Or do you merely pass?
I strain to gasp, to say, to wish,
Unmastered idol, virgin of self-mastery,
beware, for others soon will come,
beware, the banshee's ardent call,
beware, the hermit's friend-lorn letter,
beware, the promised rest, the earned calm,
beware, and never let your hair grow long!

Part II of this poem “Guide” is ottava rima:

II

My muscles locked, my lungs devoid of air,
I struggle to my knees, do all I can
to grapple with my guide's chimeric stare.
Though fierce, its eyes suggest an honest man's;
despite its tarnished scales, its clotted hair,
the fecal stench its winged panting fans,
I realize that here is native brawn
so, answering its crouching, I climb on.

Note: I felt a bad taste in my mouth as I finished this, so sour was its working. Well, it’s effort, it’s practice.

Part I is in “rime royal”.

I

As I survey the memories of my world
I'm lifted by a certainty of love,
for who deserves to have these veils unfurled?
Who has earned this coming guide? this dove
whose thundering wings blow tumult from above?
All fear now fails! And all my thoughts are drowned;
disarmed, dismayed I stumble to the ground.

Here’s another skate poem–one of the first skater sketches that I’ve tried–that I really want to come back to and “fix”: make elegant, make meaningful, whatever. As it is it barely describes the skater that I hoped to illustrate, but I can’t hang on to it right now.

Total Commitment

This black guy with earphones in,
waits,
watches over the local kids
whites, hispanics,
riding, some catching trucks up on the lips
and stumbling down
some scooping up and over spines,
one little hoard flips their boards,
lets them skid out of control
or, landing chicken-footed,
proves that each knows how to curse

Then he moves,
drags his board by the nose,
steps on, speeds along the platform,
ollies big
off the lip of the quarter-pipe
doesn't flip the board,
doesn't turn, or twist, or spin
just seven feet of air
bombing down onto the flat

and his board spins out from under
and his body splays and slides

He rises up, climbs the trans
rides again, ollies big
falling hard, without a word
just the pound of his torso on the ground

the kids turn as they see kids turn
some have stopped to watch him mount the wall
he goes again,
same start, same drag,
same solitary ollie off the lip
and as he hangs, brutal in the air,
I see it in his face:
he's here alone;
he'll rise again;
it doesn't matter how he lands.