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Add your short poem to the comments (there's really no deadline). Find out why this blog was started and what it's all about.
Blog Archive
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2007
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December
(31)
- Day 31: Resolution
- Day 30: Credit where it's due
- Day 29: Experimental poets
- Day 28: Donald Revell
- Day 27: Found poetry
- Day 26: Ghazal
- Day 25: Gift
- Day 24: Constructing memories
- Day 23: Humor
- Day 22: Borrowing from favorites
- Day 21: Daily rituals
- Day 20: NOT about the event
- Day 19: Ekphrasis
- Day 18: Haiku
- Day 17: Animals
- Day 16: Going back
- Day 15: Words, words, words
- Day 14: A note to you
- Day 13: Enjambment
- Day 12: Prose poem
- Day 11: Juxtaposing images
- Day 10: Poetry websites
- Day 9: Myths and fairy tales
- Day 8: Object fetish
- Day 7: Memory
- Day 6: Maybe the first ever postcard poem*
- Day 5: Acrostics
- Day 4: Billy Collins, animated
- Day 3: Where you carry them
- Day 2: Music as inspiration
- Day 1
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December
(31)
6 comments:
Abandon the castle
travel back out
of the woods toward
your humble hut back to
your faithful cow who
never asked much not
for princess poise nor
corseted curtsies
certainly not
the crush of
happily ever
after.
I’ve coiled up my hair
for good, no longer
needing him to climb
for my freedom.
Out comes the scissors,
20 years of growing
gone in seconds and I
feel like I could fly.
Down the tower and
across the moat I run,
finally understanding
“once upon a time.”
I was thinking postcard so these are pretty minimalist. Our internet was down yesterday so couldn't post then.
Narcissis
Me
Me
All there is
Is me.
Daphne
Frankly,
I would rather be a tree
than me.
Apollo
How could she
want to be a tree
when she could be
with me?
Icharus
I few to close
to the sun.
We fell into the sea
My melted wings
and me.
This isn't exactly a postcard poem, but something I've been fiddling with for a while. Sorry it's so long. Maybe it should go in the prose poem section. It's supposed to be stanzas of five long lines each, but that'll probably get messed up when I post it.
It's probably obvious, but I really hated that my grandmother had to be in a nursing home.
Grandma's Bacchanal
It is Thanksgiving and we had an early feast in order to come to the nursing home,
bearing baskets and large pieces of Tupperware filled with canned and home-
cooked seasonal sugar-free goodies, to have dinner with grandma. My wife and I wait
in the lobby while my mother dresses her mother—slipping thin and limp limbs into her
best pajamas, a maroon two-piece, paisley print silk outfit with Laurel scrawled across
her chest in thick black marker so no one will steal them (It must have been her roommate, the orderly tells us about the theft of her Easter dress, as if the catatonic woman behind the curtain could come alive with motion at night), and fitting a white daisy in her snow-strand hair. My wife plays songs on the home’s baby-grand piano
to the few residents sitting in couches and wheelchairs, facing TV, away from TV,
glancing stealthily at the alarm-protected doors, which open and close as families
come and go after punching in the code (5-2-8-3 on a broad sign above the keypad, just out of a wheelchair’s reach). They sway with the rhythm. A woman turns, smiles,
and give us two thumbs up, while a man leans to the sleeping woman next to him and says he only likes Stravinsky. He wheels himself toward the dining room, where an aid
sings Ricky Martin to a patient who won’t eat his tapioca. I hate coming here. The smell doesn’t bother me, as it does most people, as much as the fact that I can’t take
my grandmother away. As sincerely as she begs some days, we have to leave her here
when we go. My wife, hearing the man’s preference, plays from Rite of Spring and he looks back with glee, having only moved a foot or two. Mom wheels grandma out
and she glows, obviously aware of how pretty we think she is. But she is deaf.
She can’t hear the music so we open the piano, place her head next to the gaping
instrument, like an alligator ready to snap at her, and hope she can feel the chords
and rhythms. The man who likes Stravinsky is standing now, much to everyone’s surprise and joy, and is waving his arms like he wants to fly. I clap for him
and his knees bend backwards. He steps out of worn loafers with cloven hooves instead of feet. Everyone begins to clap and he tears off his pants, hips now haunches, legs hair-covered and strong like they haven’t been in years, his penis erect with operatic pomp. He begins to jump, reaching for the ceiling and his horns nearly break the tiles. The others stand, the woman who gave us her happy approval spins her wheelchair and her
hair grows, long golden strokes pour over her shoulders and her clothes become transparent blue silks, her body the taut form of a nymph in dark water. The music
grows faster and the residents feel themselves quicken. Faster, faster! the satyr howls, bounding over couch and chair, kicking in the television playing holiday special reruns
of Three’s Company. He laughs with violent joy, his animal ecstasy terrific,
and all feel horns push through their thin scalps, wreaths bloom from fake
pearl necklaces, skins lift, breasts swell, ground becomes firm beneath goat feet
and bare feet, and from the kitchen comes the man who wouldn’t eat his tapioca,
draped in white robes with gilded trim, a crown of laurel leaves on his head
and wine flows from his open arms. The satyrs and nymphs, centaurs and maenads
cheer in unison. An orderly—the one who denied having stolen birthday
and holiday gifts—runs into the mythic horde with leather restraints. He reaches
for a woman and she flows like a fountain out of his hands. He reaches for another
and she becomes an oak, rooted to the concrete floor. Another bursts into a cloud
of petals and he screams for order, screams for respect—you can’t do this here!
This isn’t possible! In the confusion he wraps the restraint around the first thing
he can grasp, but the satyr, who is now over eight feet tall, tears it from his wrist.
The orderly falls to his back, the massive beast seizes him by his scrubs and hurls
the fool through the front doors, which beep frantically, and everyone cheers, passing
wine-filled goblets among themselves now, chasing each other, breaking
their wheelchairs and food trays. But grandma still sits next to the piano, an expectant
look on her face as if she is sure she’ll hear something if she tries hard enough.
I take her chair’s handles and push her to the center of the crowd, circling now, dancing
in a feverish bacchanal. I dance with them and watch as grandma’s eyes become large,
her mouth gaping with awe. She feels the energy around her, she bobs her head
with the music, lifts her arms to her sides and begins to lift out of her chair. Feathers,
scarlet and brilliant gold, emerge from her hands and arms, from the loose skin of her body. Her clothes fall, wings still extended, beak pointing to the fluorescent lights above her and she rotates slowly as we race around, cheering, praying that she’ll have
what she has longed for—and soon a tiny spark drops from her hanging tail feathers,
scents of myrrh and amber waft up in the frenzy, the sparks become flames licking
the tips of her feathers and grow to an incendiary inflorescence. The cheap ceiling tiles ignite despite being dense with asbestos and the sprinkler system deploys, showering
us with pungent wine, red as ancient blood. My eyes water as the flames become so bright and soon there is nothing left of her but a mass of ashes into which thick drops of
wine plop and crater. They continue to dance as I lean in and see something move in the fine dust of the dead. A baby cries, gasps. I reach in and pull her from the ash and wine washes her face. My mother takes the baby and feeds her at her breast. We hear windows crash and oxygen tanks explode and a chorus of mirth as we walk to our car and drive home. The child falls asleep as the sun rises over the hillside, Olympus at dawn.
Peter, I really like that. Thanks for sharing!
If there was a beginning
the woman’s body owned it
the moment a stone was cut from her leg
and she became separate from everyone.
And all the others came to her,
offered food but instead
she ate their boundaries
so they could spill out and spread
without tension—not to be
spread thin
but only expand
to become the ocean
large
and become the life and charity in it.
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