Why I Don't Send You Dirges (On Reading McDonald's "Anniversary")

How strange, these days, that love--
improbable, impossible, unforgivable--
not grief, is the birthing tide
I've come to ride to quiet morning shores.
Each night erases the last.




photograph by flickr user el neko
original poem here

Preface à 'Mystères de la main,' or, The Inventor's Daughter

after Adrien Adolphe Desbarolles (1801-1886)

She held Hyde Park
in the palm of her hand;
She offered London to me--
Gold lashes lined two forest pools
that would have drowned me outright,
had she offered those
as well.






Glove Map of London (1851) by George Shove
Inspired by Persephone's shove

Interlude: Other People's Poetry

Atonement: new work from Cassandra Barney.

I would love to write something to accompany this image but the painting itself is so eloquent and poetic that anything else would be overkill.

Heptonstall

Sylvia Plath, pale patron saint
of all this rising sadness, I must know
that this is the last life,
this unrepentant madness.

In Heptonstall the chalky door
of your smallest and final cocoon
bears the scars of the nails of virgins,
the glittery spots of dried-tear moons.

Someone has left you sugary sweet peas,
wrapped in thin pink paper. I hope
they did not wake you. I hope
there is no waking.

Interlude: Other People's Poetry

I’m for reckless abandon
and spontaneous celebrations of nothing at all,
like the twin flutes I kept in the trunk of my car
in a box labeled Emergency Champagne Glasses!

Raise an unexpected glass to long, cold winters
and sweet hot summers and the beautiful confusion of the times in between.
To the unexpected drenching rain that leaves you soaking
wet and smiling breathless;
“We danced in the garden in torn sheets in the rain,”
we were christened in the sanctity of the sprinkler,
can’t you hear it singing out its Hallelujah?

Here’s to the soul-expanding power
of the simply beautiful.

...I’m for best friends, long drives, and smiles,
nothing but the sound of thinking for miles.
For the unconditional love of dogs:
may we learn the lessons of their love by heart.
For therapy when you need it,
and poetry when you need it.
And the wisdom to know the difference.

The solution to every problem usually involves some kind of liquid,
even if it’s only Emergency Champagne
or running through the sprinkler.

-Taylor Mali, from "Silverlined Heart"



Hokey? Yes. Very. But there's a lot to be said for Emergency Champagne. Photograph by flickr user Little Princess

Interlude: Happy Birthday, Cassandra Barney

Today is the anniversary of the birth of one miss Cassandra Barney, my inspiration, collaborator and friend. Take a minute today, if you will, to cruise over to her blog and send her birthday wishes, or just think glittery thoughts in her general direction. She works hard, plays hard, dreams hard, and loves hard, and I only hope today is all that it can be for her, that she is inundated with affection and children's drawings and good wishes.



Thistle
Hard work, love that endures hardship, defiance, protection

I never saw my mama’s feet sleeping.
Mornings they trod a triangular path:
garden, fire, table.
Mid-day she walked in circles sewing,
mending our dresses as we read our lessons.
As the sun set she strode stripes through the fields,
barefoot among the thistles to bring the cows in.
When the stars pricked holes
in the black paper above, her heels creaked
a half-moon of floorboards around the big bed.
I dreamt every night of fragrant weeds and grasses,
and knew that when I woke
the footsteps below would always be hers.

The Wayside Sacrament

Never lose an opportunity to see anything that is beautiful. It is God's handwriting - a wayside sacrament. Welcome it in every fair face, every fair sky, every fair flower.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson





long-exposure conjunction photograph by Glynn Lavender

A Public Service Announcement, for You Specifically

To the angels of the anonymous confession, to the benefactors
of jagged burdens, to the stars that fade
upon inspection, to you for what you said:




photographs by flickr users jillalyn and glass_doorknob

Got something to get off your chest? Tell me.

33: Coming Clean

Lay your sleeping head, my love,
Human on my faithless arm;

I copied but did not send it.
I thought a phone call, maybe, but knew
The whirlpool words in my own mouth
Would give it all away.

There is no pressure I have not imagined:
Your teeth on my throat,
Your hair in my hand,
Your eyes on my salted lips. All these

Tide to and from my sleeping shores like trains.
And, too, the gravity
Of my own crumbling, wet face, the heft
Of your apology.

(Once you wrote me a confession, a treatise on starry unknowns.
Wrote it out in one long night,
Found it too true and threw
The whole thing away.
I know this because you told me.)





Original poem by W. H. Auden
Photograph by flickr user tomo.1981
Inspiration by you

Interlude: Other People's Poetry, or, 29. You're a Genius all the time

Essentials

1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for your own joy
2. Submissive to everything, open, listening
3. Try never get drunk outside your own house
4. Be in love with your life
5. Something that you feel will find its own form
6. Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
7. Blow as deep as you want to blow
8. Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind
9. The unspeakable visions of the individual
10. No time for poetry but exactly what is
11. Visionary tics shivering in the chest
12. In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you
13. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition
14. Like Proust be an old teahead of time
15. Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
16. The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
17. Write in recollection and amazement for yrself
18. Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
19. Accept loss forever
20. Believe in the holy contour of life
21. Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
22. Don't think of words when you stop but to see picture better
23. Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning
24. No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge
25. Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it
26. Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form
27. In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness
28. Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better
29. You're a Genius all the time
30. Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven

-Jack Kerouac, d. October 21, 1969

Small Epistle
You were no angel, Jack but neither
am I and our kisses, writ on dusty paper, will shatter
the very firmament. We seal the envelope
with tongues of young love. Will you come back
when you get this? Not for me.
Not this time.

Ghost Day

Today, August 15, is the Festival of Ghosts in China. Families burn incense and prepare elaborate meals, leaving empty seats at the table for their ancestors. Paper boats and lanterns are dropped in the water and set on fire, that they may illuminate the waterways for the lonely souls at sea and bring them safely home.

You can read more about Ghost Day here.



photograph by Vincent Chung

The Fourth of July

for everyone who writes

Today, to me, you are Fitzgerald,
and I know I've just got Gatsby on the brain but you,
you, my love, and your swirling clouds of the Hamptons--
there is none who can match you.

That glowing shape in my chest inflates
with your unwitting touch, you
could not know just how bare my shores lie
when your high tides have gone.

So much is wrong, here, everywhere,
at the bottom of the coffee cup, at the top
of the apartment building--but the aloe
of your voice will cool the burns of even the sun
today.



photograph by Todd Atteberry

Cannon Beach

The gallery show in Oregon was a tremendous success. After a dramatic unveiling (apparently that's how they do it in Oregon) Cass sold nearly all of her paintings. The gallery owner was so pleased with the results of our collaboration that he has invited me back for next year's show, where he wants to have a full-scale poetry reading and offer hand-bound books of my poetry and Cass' drawings for sale.

I am adrift in a sea of thankfulness.

For several years I studied Japanese tea ceremony, an intricate process that facilitates the most wonderful stillness I've ever experienced. Many of the steps of the ceremony involve bowing: to the host of the ceremony to thank her for having you, to the guest who drank before you to thank her for showing you the way, and to the guest who will drink after you to thank her for allowing you to drink first.

"And now," said my ancient sensei every time, "is making the one more bow: thank you to whole universe."

Thank you, to whole universe.


Now that the show has been Officially Unveiled I'll be posting the backlog of poetry...once I finish all this work that piled up while I was skipping down the Oregon coastline. You can check out Cass and I waxing ridiculous on collaboration on Youtube.

Four

I am glad for
Your clay-smooth walls,
That square corners make solid
Grounds for your love.

I am touched to
Stand here in your village,
Where the fine tree line shades
A pale park.

I am weighed for
The stands of three nests now,
And one head and one heart
And four fingers.

I am wading
Hip-deep in this tide now;
There are truths
Where my fingers can find them.

I am leaving
This yellow-sky city,
And by now you should know
What for.



{inspired by the above} painting by the lovely Emily McPhie

Unrequited Poetry, Episode 2

Ghost
for Susan Orlean

I saw it, you know,
On a shelf in the quiet movie-man’s home—
Did you? I
Touched it, let my fingers fall
Into the magnetic pull
Of its heartbreaking white ribbons.

I looked for you
Where you said you would be,
In the gold light at the bees’ dance,
But all behind them
Was blurred and pollinated,
And you did not emerge.

I have crept toward
The shape of you: subconscious selections
In afternoons, hair dye,
Potted plants, all
Give me away, my embarrassing thirst
For that cool slenderness,
Success.

I touched the ghost
In the quiet movie-man’s house, and knew
In that instant
It wasn’t real. And
Did you, in all
Your fruitlessness, freeze
To see a glass house full of them,
Blue in the electric light?

I wonder if you stayed
To the end, if you touched them
Not breathing (like I did), if you
Read my letter, if you saw
My ghost.

Let the Sun Shine In

Mike Doughty is a terrific songwriter, a great musician and despite all that an amazing guy. His song "Fort Hood" was part of the inspiration for my "Valentines" poems. Take a look. (And keep your eyes peeled for a goofy redhead in a red shirt.)

The skinny: Politically minded post-punk rocker Mike Doughty took to an alleyway in his current hometown of Brooklyn, along with some friends for his new video for the song 'Fort Hood.' Although the video showcases a dance party, the song itself carries a heavier meaning. "Fort Hood is the base in Texas that's lost the most people in Iraq and Afghanistan," Doughty explained to Spinner. "I went to Walter Reed last year, met some guys who had lost limbs, and came out scared and grateful. I grew up an Army brat in the '70s, when many of the adult males around me were in Vietnam, and there was lots of strange behavior that I now recognize as PTSD."

Processing

Glance at the sun.
See the moon and stars.
Gaze at the beauty of the earth's greenings.
Now,
Think.

Hildegard von Bingen


Let the beauty you love be what you do. There are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the earth.

attributed to Rumi




photograph by Marie Hochhaus

Tanka for My Mistress

after Sei Shonagon

I.
Her tears slide like rain
On rice-paper walls; I find
A comb for her hair.
My mistress’ dog has died,
And the rain is no comfort.


II.
The small pink blossoms
Beneath her eyes have faded,
And a voice like a cat has
Taken them. It matters not
To me either way.




Heian-era paper doll kimono by Liana of Paperdoll Blog

For Mrs. Sapnar, Whenever I May Find Her

And what I did not know then--
what I pretended not to see:
How much really did depend
on that ridiculous wheelbarrow,
How someone else's rain crept
into my veins and stayed.

starstruck (so bright and bitter cold)

I stuck all my stars to your wall;
they fluttered to the floor.
I remember your voice, so sure and pleading,
years ago through plastic speakers.
You sang. Green paper stars settled in my hair
like confetti. We were late.
I stepped from beneath the steady stream of longing then,
constellations of regret in my wake.