fallen verses

While I was driving to Iowa City for my Poetry Writing class, I thought of a road sign that would have been a good base for a poem, but then I forgot all about it, so this week, I’ve got nothing.  But go over to TOP and check out the poems based on road signs over there.

Totally Optional Animals

This week, Tiel suggested we write about animals. For the most part, I have no real interest in any animal but people, and precious few of those. So, here’s my totally optional poem about those totally optional animals. Other Totally Optional Artists have shared their poems here.

Hunting

if i should call you
the one that got away
it is as if i am calling you
a frightened doe in the woods
and as if i am calling me
a hunter with loincloth and spear

i hungered for the primal you
the sight of your flanks quivering
shivering in chill forest winds
your soft pelt spread-eagled
and ready to be warming

if i stalk you
from the downwind side
will you sense my presence
as always
your head darting
to the empty space i
will soon fill

my knife to never
again part
your flesh
you run
from
an
other
now

Totally Optional Places

Well, not really, libraries are still one of the most awesome of places. In my poems I tend to focus more on people than places, after all, I don’t relate to concrete or leaves, but to people. Personal preference and all that. So, something of a moment that could only have happened in a definite type of place, the previously mentioned library, was the basis for the poem today. It’s about the closest I’d get to a “place” poem.

To the Angel Using Windows XP

Believe me, that startup sound is
unmistakable,
But don’t worry about it.
Don’t worry about the way it echoes
Off these cabinets of books
Or bounces around the clerestory.
Don’t worry about how it was
Loud as a jet engine
Compared to a page flip.
Don’t worry about attracting the attention
Of everyone in the library-
it’s only me
And I gladly trade
The poor sonnet in front of me
To see you glowing and on silver clouds….
It may only be a trick of the light,
the glowing,
but it suits you.

So, if you want more placeiness in poems to read, go check out the Totally Optional Prompts “Place” Poem Page (alliteration, teehee) and read the thirty-some poems linked there.

Totally Optional Evocation

Spring’s Dream

Flowers rained from the sky.
Sunlight waterfall of daisies.
Sweet kiss of rose petals
my crimson shroud.
Stricken from confession,
I lay prostrate, wasted.
And honeyed-dew
coated the iris as it fell.
Beauty is no elixir for the soul.
I weep. There are tears of lilies
mourning your departure,
fair company, indeed,
in your absence.

---

I made the deadline, anyway. You can go to Totally Optional Prompts to read more evocative poems.

If only work was optional

This week’s Totally Optional Prompt is “work.” With some decidedly elitist quotes to color our perceptions. I dashed off the poem below. The italicized lines are from “Chain Gang,” recorded by Sam Cooke, among others, and I am unsure who actually gets the writing credit.

Desire Stronger Than Steel

Oh don’t you know
that’s the sound of the men
working on the…

revolving office doors to ultra modern lobbies without chairs
swiping the building pass to pile in elevated sardine tins ready to roll the lids off and watch you get eaten
practice privacy in a public boxes while having conversations with wives and children and husbands and boyfriends and maybe three out of four playing solitaire or watching YouTube videos as long as the boss’s door is closed
double-tall half-caff no foam latte life free with a full punchcard
parking garage attendant knows your name like it’s Cheers, “Hi, Norm.”
Deadlines mean you work over the weekend so you can afford the life you’re supposed to have because you have a corporate job and commute to your 4 BR 2.5 bath finished basement in the suburbs while you see your wife with the socially acceptably kept to the bedroom sexual perversions just long enough to have the kind of sex summed up as: even when its bad… while she gets out the vibrator and you get out the tie rack
lather
rinse
repeat
office doors are all revolving and “in” one day means “in” the next

---

As usual, when I see the page up, I will post the work-y poetics link here.Edit: Go to it!

Totally Optional Horse

The Totally Optional Prompt for the week was the poem Horse by Ted Kooser. Starting off there and heading:

Off the Wye River

We ride hard through fields of barley
to the river and the
copper-edged cliffs above.
Horses, loosely tied off
to the nearby white oak,
feed bags liberally supplied,
keep without attention
for our next few hours.
We strip down to skin,
folding our clothes
into the saddle bags
and leap from the cliff
screaming as the cold river-water
parts beneath us.
The splashes echo along the river
in the golden afternoon,
day given over to lazy floating.
The current carries your hair
in a chestnut streak,
but is too slow to carry us.
With the fall of twilight,
the fall of temperatures.
Back into our clothes
and wrapped in a quilt
we eat the sweet breads
and drink the wine
we provisioned ourselves with,
then ride home by starlight;
two wishes apiece
after comets flash.
With satisfaction,
I nudge my horse closer,
hold your hand for the ride,
give my wishes to the world.

---

Edit: More equine-y goodness here.

Totally Optional Strings: Multiple Allusions

This weeks prompt over at Totally Optional Prompts, was a short poem by Liu’ Chang-ch’ing:

Your seven strings are like the voice
Of a cold wind in the pines,
Singing old beloved songs
Which no one cares for any more.

I took that, some Neruda, a touch of Rilke, probably some other influences I’m not consciously aware of and wrote the following poem:

Pergola Romance

“In the distance, someone is singing, in the distance.”
-Pablo Neruda

The nightingale in the jasmine tree coos its sweet, enigmatic song for lovers. The moon is coy, showing half her face as if peaking around celestial corners.

Gauze curtains like morning mist obscure the pale glow of your body, naked, simple as light through darkness. Tendrils of your hair climb across the bed, growing on wishes and heartbeats.

Four pillars holding the sky encircle you, frame you as all of creation, in which creation occurs. Like the descended night I come upon you, enshrouding inch by inch the skin too delicate for sun. Smooth plains and gently rolling hills move like the tides at my touch: shiver, retreat, advance.

Our hearts find an allegro rhythm as the chords progress. My hands joined by your hands in the exploration of your world, the search for secrets, treasures and ancient wisdoms. The grace of mystery torn as the robe on the floor, shyness before experience lost as you roll me to my back and take spoils. Victor, woman, lover, you wash over the beaches and carry the sand and stones back to your seas, to the wondrous gardens too delicate….

Too delicate for such desire, you plateau, subside. The calm of the passing storm is upon us, flesh still leaping like lightning strikes, but softer, softer, softer. Weak, you lean forward, breasts against me, head on my shoulder. In the distance, the languid sounds of a guitar, six ill-tuned strings turned to wooing. In the distance.

The title taken from a song by Jim Harbourg.

Thus far, the Thursday post isn’t up, but I will add the link when I see it.

Edit: The Thursday Post is up.

In case anyone comes by here through googling some strange search term and has not heard, Tiel and Mike have set up a new writing community to take up the space Poetry Thursday used to fill: Totally Optional Prompts.  The prompt for this week, for which many people will be writing poems and posting links at their site which may or may not be somehow related, is based on a Chinese poem from the Tang Dynasty (circa a long-ass time ago):

On Hearing a Lute-Player

Your seven strings are like the voice
Of a cold wind in the pines,
Singing old beloved songs
Which no one cares for any more.

More details and exposition here.

Poetry Thursday is gone, :( . The traveling edition of it has run out of steam, :( . But, we cannot have Thursdays without Poetry (actually, I’m fairly sure most of us poets cannot have any day without poetry!) so Tiel and Mike have taken over the reigns of Poetry as it is incarnated on Thursday, with their new site: Totally Optional Prompts. The premise: each week, they will post a writing prompt (much as Poetry Thursday did) which the following Thursday you may or may not follow it as you post something Poetry related on your blog. For their part, they will provide a post where people can put Links! to their blogs to share these posts with other poets and poetry lovers. And all, specifically, on Thursdays! I’m not so keen on their icon, so I’ll not be posting that, but please do check them out. I don’t anticipate having internet access for the rest of the week, so I’m posting a bit early and won’t have my link on their Thursday post unless I do end up having access. We’ll see. I wrote this piece inspired by the prompt for this week:

Salt, Girl

I chase you into the cabin,
trailing sand showers in our wake,
and the echo of surfboards.
In the purple of twilight
your sarong is tinted
as I coil it on the floor.
In front of the fireplace,
the sea water dries quickly
and I taste the salt
as I kiss your breasts.
While I lie awake through dawn
and I hear the waves gently rocking,
I still taste the salt
and remember the sweetness.

As a note, I always welcome constructive feedback, even though I’d likely ignore it. :)

Edit (Saturday 10-13-2007):
All right. Because I never checked the lobby of the hotel for wifi access, I’ve been cut off since I got here Tuesday night. Now, about 24 hours before I leave, I see someone on the ‘net in the lobby sans broadband phone card. I drag the laptop down here, and after screwing around with some networking settings, got connected, and put the permalink to this post over at TOP. More delicious posts here.