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.

I’m set on the idea of poems about skating; though I personally don’t have the skill yet to make it work, I like to try. Here’s one of three I wrote this weekend after some back-to-back trips to the Orem and Logan parks.

Raising My Generation

This guy with surfer hair,
my age, maybe just a little less,
old enough to fear
the pain, young enough to let that pass,

kicks off fierce, rolls right in,
almost soaring
over the fat, rusted coping
floating down to the transition,
which entices to the flat

there he pushes twice or thrice,
lifts his knee for extra speed,
drops down to the lower bowl:
a rushing waterfall
that slings around the wall
and launches up and over the hip,

I gawk at how he tucks a little grab
to show he meant it
now he pops above the lip,
lands, board in hand,
nods at me
to go.

Another poem worked out faster than I’m comfortable doing, motivated by the fact that last time I did Napowrimo I didn’t think so much, fuss so much, revise so much, but simply made the daily deadlines. At least in posting early drafts I’m more motivated to return to them quickly to edit.

Collect

I hunt along the sidewalk
for buttons worn off with use
collecting for a child's necklace
or to sew on a friend's jacket
but no one wears their clothes that long

I check for coins in every pay phone slot
saving for a dollar
but every booth is now an empty husk
their phones have flown away to hide in pockets

I search for scraps of literature
a hundred years old or more
but all the copyrights have been revived

I leave the city, looking for a mountain trail
but all the trails I used to know
are orphaned, overgrown
despite my striving quickly am I lost

I sit in a cafe, order tea to stay
but they have only paper cups.
   At this, at last, I protest
going home I promise
to never wash my coffee mug
so it, at least, will, over years,
layer on sediment and finally be full
a record of this living

Day 8 of napowrimo hit me with regret that I hadn’t wrapped up drafts of 4 poems in the queue. Then I reassured myself that I don’t have to write great poetry to write poems, and kicked out this:

Senility

The doors weren't unlocked and opened
but blown off with a sneeze.
Yet what we didn't see
was the coughing mothers,
who were told, or else, remembered
to drop their brooms of bounded golden hair
and come indoors to oil all the hinges with their phlegm .

We didn't see; we sat
in the pews, our backs to what went on outside.
And, waiting for sitting to be affirmed,
we grew bored, our eyes servicing the stations,
hoping to be paid off like a whore.
Then the Father of the Babysitters,
enraged at how we traded torn out pages from the hymnal
(we had heard that they might make a map),
and further enraged to find himself disarmed,
his sword and shield buried with his brother in a tomb,
swung our Savior from the wall,
leaped down from his sanctuary,
caught us in the angles of the cross
and pushed us out the gaping doors.

In the streets we were emasculated by its nakedness--
the old mothers having swept the clues away.
We wandered until we found ourselves alone
each standing at the center of a million-pointed star.
And round our face a headstall and a halter
for which we gripped the shanked reigns.

But in the shade of blinders we will hold
until, restless, we fidget down an arm,
calling to the dead, who answer, "Nothing"
or else are too content to take our call
and the star arm grows more narrow as it goes
or else is it only just a trick of sight?

Are we walking? or does the ground rotate beneath us?
And do these blinders that we wear grow larger?
Or does this landscape simply grow more dense?
The trees, cathedrals, garage shops,
the garbage mounds, the craters pull together
toward a black hole at our true horizon
it inflates, or, rather, we diminish.

Ah! Ah! Too late!
To change our minds,
to take some other arm.

Which is in worst taste? A light-hearted poem about suicide? Or a light-hearted poem about patricide? Take your pick in today’s (not-quite-finished) Nanopowrimo entry:

Inevoedipal

MOTHER.
Son, where were you after school?
I ask because your dad's a fool:
He's shot himself, and wouldn't you know it
he didn't leave a note to show it.

SON.
I can't believe you'd even ask
if I did this bloody task.
Even though it takes a while
poisoning is more my style.

MOTHER.
Darling that's not what I meant!
I figured you were innocent.
Just let's agree it's not a lie
to be each other's alibi.

SON.
Of course, dear mother, I'll attest
that you were no where near our nest,
that we were on my paper route
when father blew his old brains out.

MOTHER.
As if I hadn't enough stress
your father's made an awful mess
by shooting himself without warning.
I haven't time this week for mourning!

SON.
I must admit it makes me sad
to hear about the death of dad.
By taking his life in his hands
he's spoil'd my own avenging plans.

MOTHER.
The only thing that is a bother
about the death of your poor father
is that he shot off half his face
and left me to clean up the place.

SON.
Many people often said
that they'd be glad to see dad dead.
They'll all be sorry when it's disclosed
that we must keep the casket closed.

MOTHER.
In retrospect I should have guessed
that your poor father was depressed.
If I had known he'd no endurance
I would have paid for more insurance.
/or/
If he had brought his woes to me
I would have raised his policy.

SON.
Here's another cause to fret
compounding on our family debt:
You know that mobster that I hired
to ensure that dad "retired"?
We're lucky that he didn't cause it
but will he refund my deposit?
/or/
Now that there's no one to whack
do you think I'll get my money back?

MOTHER.
If there's one thing I can't abide
about your father's suicide
it's that he took the easy route
before he took the garbage out.

SON.
Seeing father on the floor,
fingers round his forty-four...
at risk of being reprimanded
I have to ask: was dad left-handed?

Inspired, of course, by Harry Graham’s “Little Willies” (which are often too horrific even for me) this was baked in my fevered skull while I lay in bed most of the weekend.

T

First poem for NaPoWriMo 10, tardy due to the flu.

The Quails on 10th N

Quail beads crossing the road
split as they meet another bird
its glider wing stuck up,
its dusty feathers a finger gesture
to the oncoming lane.
Half of the divided flock bobs up and down,
line up like pearls in the crook of the curb;
the rest are like dull stone by the crushed cousin.
When another car comes
they glisten in the sun, give in,
and take wing to the other side.

It’s no fun to make excuses, to claim biographical distance from a poem, but I do so here (as I often feel I must) to make it clear this is no confessional:

"Repair"

A blue tear of electricity flashes from the outlet;
I'm only plugging in the oscillating fan,
but this reminds me of the passion
I suspect still glows inside you.

And there in the library's bindery,
alone in a closed-off workroom
the steamer reminds me of sweat we have made,
years ago when love was fresh.
But now we are like this brittle spine,
this split horse glue.

And yet I dream (as the steam reactivates
the amber, lustrous, waxy seam)
of love reversible:
bound in the old way,
though cracked, the break is clean,
is easily repaired when pressed together,
when soft, when hot again,
as it was at first.

Knowing what I must do, what I came to accomplish,
with a putty knife I scrape the glue,
mixing it with the unprotected pages' dust,
stirring in the passive dirt
that sifts down on all that are shelved,
reanimating corpse germs of others' coughs.
So gold turns to gray.

Soon the smell overcomes me;
I bolt for the door;
The electric fan that I relied on
can not make dead things fresh again.

The end of the third stanza was:

So gold turns gray,
as the sexterns are made clean.

A sextern is a particular kind of (typically stitched) section, consisting of six bifolios. I chose to use it originally because it provides some balance to the image of dirtied glue, while providing what I thought was a relatively mild double entendre. Apparently there’s a more modern use of the word “sextern”, and that coupled with the ambiguity and additive nature, I decided to cut it.

Here’s a poem that I worked out early this morning as I was mulling over some snatch of Frost on a stuck freeway leading on to work.

"Fruitless"

Winter will come
while I work this sloping field,
these rows,
one by one,
row long
impressing on the earth.
And if the day turns and yawns
before I finish there will be
no sign of anything,
leaving me in the evening
an hollow head
leaning back against the chair, black
all around the hearth fire.
I waken to find the snow
skirting the mountain,
hiding the work of yesterday's row.
I begin the next row down,
tearing the snow's doily with my boot;
I work fast to keep the heat; my blood
surging around my brain when I stand and look,
to seek mustard tufts or
plots of burnt-out ground that the night's first snow
could not confound.
When I bend again a puff of steam, my breath
rises as if from something scorching under
ground.
Winter will come.

This is a repost from last year’s NaPoWriMoNov Google Wave, for archival purposes.

These poems were fun to write in a spare half-hour when the pleasures of the senses did something to reinvest me in life. For that reason alone, I think, they are worth keeping.

Little Cafe, Little Couplets

A scone: soft, dense, spare-crusted hill;
cinnamon conqueror of the will.

A latte: feather to the mouth;
caramel clips North, spices sneak South.

A fugue: the lightly caressed dance;
a flirt insistent on romance.

Alone: all others left behind;
accord and yearning whip the mind.

Pleasures come and go, yet fleeing
blunt the pricks of human being.

I sat down to write tonight faced with 4 unfinished sonnets those last 2 lines always kill me) So instead of writing something new I decided to end these one way or another. This one is still pretty shackled, and may not be worth salvaging.

Go West

The door latch clicks, the clutch balks at your foot,
the seat belt bleats, afraid to be obsolete.
A paper coffee cup has taken root
between you and the dusty passenger seat.
So slam the gas, burn off the rubber week,
and spray the grumbling gravel minutes out
But won't they pile into a phantom peak
engorged by wasted time and failing doubt?
It towers overhead; its fat, white coif
portending snowslides. So you flee,
you skip your exit, break engagements off,
leave town, turn west, and drive into the sea.
In the brine the engine rusts and springs unwind
with all the cars all the others left behind.

I have several alternate endings, but this alone is tough enough to post. But in the spirit of participation, I push on…