fallen verses

I wrote the piece below for my workshop class and is a “found” poem by the criteria the instructor set forth. Because of the formatting, I had to post it as an image, which I set so you could click it and see the full image which is slightly larger than the one below.

I haven’t been posting much anything here for a while. This semester at school has kinda killed any creativity I might have thought I had at some point. Like it or not, most of my writing is brought on by reading. Specifically, reading things I enjoy. Haven’t done that in a while. Modernist texts- blech. Marxist, feminist texts- blech. Reading with theory in mind- blech. I hope today finds everyone in teh intarblogwebs well and not stuck in the tubes. I have had to write some terrible pieces for my poetry workshop class, I may post those at some point so you can /point and /laugh at them. For today’s amusement, a short poem I wrote during my poetry workshop class while I wasn’t paying any attention to the nice grad student who teaches it. Sorry.

(Fragment)

Torn foil and cork still on the screw-
One bottle- one glass-
the dissipating residue of sweet German grapes

Down a short hallway a muffled figure in a bed that has only one pillow.

Read Write Resolve

resolutions

resolutions
to resolve
to re-solve
to solve again

translation:
the awareness
born of champagne
that we will always
make the same mistakes

Images seem really hard right now. As does quality. So, just because this is not stellar, don’t think the rest of the poets at Read Write Poem aren’t writing stellar poems. Some of them are, actually, talented. Go, read their poems about resolutions. Have some champagne, you know, that bottle still in your fridge.

A New Year’s Sonnet
or
A sonnet in which the poet ponders writing the suddenly changed date of the new year.

For the next few weeks, upon occasion,
I will forget and believe it is last
January again. Then, scratch of pen,
The mistake corrected, proper order
Restored. But what is this renumbering?
Has one day so changed it deserves a new
Name, unique from the one before? Snowfall
Today new snow, each kiss claimed from fresh lips?
The lips of last year were pleasant enough
For a midnight kiss. The days ripped from the
Wall and scattered like the snow-buried leaves
Of every autumn, marking that midnight
Just a little farther away. Might want
To check that date, this isn’t last year. No….

You may, if you paid any attention, have noticed the lack of silly things like rhyme and meter. Yeeeaaahhh…. …. I decided not to hold myself too strictly to traditional rules for Sonnets. Poetic forms change over time, change their formal elements, change their cognitive elements, change according to new languages and cultures as they spread. I don’t think we live in the same culture and use the same language such fascinating writers as Shakespeare. Ergo, keeping to the same strictures they wrote under is somewhat silly. They had no problem adapting forms and language to suiting their needs. From the Italian, the English chose to write in iambic pentameter instead of hendecasyllables. They opted to use a different rhyme structure to accommodate the relatively rhyme-poor English. They changed the themes of the sonnet from Petrarch’s love besotted obsession to a more general use. Eliminating the volta in favor of a rhetorical couplet.

I opted to eliminate the rhyme. I don’t care much for rhyme. I removed the metrical nature of the sonnet. I used a decasyllabic form because that fits natural language better (IMO) than iambs. I returned to the Italian octave / sestet division. My sonnet pays homage to some aspects of the history of the form, but is unafraid to stand on its own formal, slouchy, untied-shoe feet. And that’s just how it’s gonna be.

snow snow blowers snow
covered cars snow shovel
one body holding it

Now, go over to Watermark and read more and better haiku.

She’s a good witch!

And, perhaps unfortunately, I don’t recall enough of the Wizard of Oz to be really clever about that, so, please, pardon the inane cliche. Carolee and I were playing catch-up with this week’s Read Write Poem prompt, provided by Ceridwen, to work on a collaborative piece. It was an enjoyable experience and a tad bit tricky working with someone else’s ideas, but that also helped the poem open up in directions I wouldn’t have gone. (an aside: i hate the word “collaborate” and the derivative words. It does not have pleasant feel when speaking it, or when typing it.) Other people have collaborated and posted their poems over at Read Write Poem already, so check them out if you wandered here from elsewhere, and be sure to check Carolee’s site for her thoughts on this. This is the Carolee and Tom poem:

Expect Longing

Countdown counted out suddenly
face to face with tomorrow
drunk on imported champagne,
I look to you for a midnight kiss.

For a kiss, I ask, for lips
around this open wound, a tongue
to lap away my worry-words.
This new day tell me, tell me….

Tell me of tomorrow’s failures:
the resolutions forgotten,
the weight that will wait
to be taken from suntanned flesh,

the light I’ll waste with longing,
nights paced away in planning
as if lists and flowcharts led
anywhere but the bottom of the page.

For tonight, I’ll map my designs,
roll smooth, crisp blueprints into tubes,
wonder tomorrow how to stop the ink
from draining through these purple veins.

What mouth will meet these lips
blue with the residue of faded ideas?
What tongue will taste this mouth
rank with discarded promises?

You kiss me slowly then press your cheek
against mine. I look past your shoulder
at the other revelers, still holding
each others’ tongues and I am jealous.

During the process, Carolee suggested we each take the poem we wrote and use it as the base text for a “found poem” exercise. I took… well, most, of the words from the poem, played a little with capitalization and punctuation and have the following “gem” (ironic quotes here) for you all:

Residual Expectations

Down- sudden.
Tomorrow drunk
and a midnight kiss.

I ask for lips,
a tongue
to lap my
new day.

Tell me…
tell me…
tell me of tomorrow:
the resolutions,
the wait for flesh,

the light,
the longing,
the nights.

Tonight-
smooth.
Wonder.
Don’t stop the ink
from draining
through these
purple veins.

Meet the lips
with the
residue of ideas.
Taste the mouth
with promises.

Kiss me.
Slow.
Look past,
revel,
hold each other
and I am.

Very indirectly inspired by Duchamp

Analogue: Hatshepsut

exactingly carved replica
porphyry
encased in glass
title plaque: Beloved
no jewels
no paint
no cuts of lace
no clasping bodice
simple straight-leg pants
buttoned shirt
low heels
eyes as
dead in stone

More, I suppose, about dreams and the deaths thereof.

For L.

I wanted to write a poem about you, perhaps
a sonnet in the mode of Petrarch, but the words
were inexplicably distant. I thought, for a moment,
that I was not able to write, that I was out of verses,
but then I wrote a haiku about the last red berry
seen through my window stark against the field of snow.

I wonder if Petrarch ever had this problem,
or if his inkwell poured the name Laura onto the page,
leaving him to collect the sheets and sign them.
The truth, I suppose, that it was one afternoon
and we barely spoke, has not deterred poets before,
but the words are so far away, and the berry right here.

Read Write Novelly

This weeks Read Write Prompt from Christine was to hack apart the end bits of some chapters from a book and use them as the basis for a poem. I picked up a copy of The City of Falling Angels by Jon Berendt, and I won’t mention what words I used because most of them got revised out of the poem. I took a different tack with this poem, and didn’t use first or second person pronouns. I’ll be honest, it feels weird not to use them, I almost want to change the whole thing just so there can be an address, but, I shan’t.

Acqua Alta

Beneath trumpeting angels, a faded
yellow splashing in this spring’s acqua alta,
it’s residents prepared and softly laughing
at the tourists in salt-ruined shoes.
Soon the Palazzo Barbarro will crumble,
sink into the insistent, hypnotic tides,
bastion of terrible beauty, coral reef to be.

City carefully level with the sea. A masterpiece
of engineering’s failure. The opera houses,
and the museums, the cafés and piazzas
laconically gather the last dust blown across the
Mediterranean before it reaches dry land,
idle as tired children catching snowflakes.
The little drowning angels of marble
will blow their trumpets as
Neptune’s kin blow conch shells,
battle for the souls of fishes.

Like something out of a Madonna video.

Hallucinogenic Toreador
an ekphrastic poem after Dali

What flourish. What magnificent cape. What slender sword.
Blood blooming like roses on the flank of the beast,
roses blooming in the dust of the arena.
Triple-thorned dance of the bull-fight
and applause.

Which woman will take you to her room, bathe herself
in rose water, bare her soft breasts to you,
feel your calloused hands on her
soft belly and thighs? Which woman?
Which room?

For you, there is no struggle, no excitement
and there is neither for the bull.
A moment’s passion for the cut.
The cheers are the buzzing
of flies.