One Poem at LWON

 

via Unsplash

My poem "Wildfire, Hundred Acre Wood" is up today at The Last Word on Nothing. You can read it here. 

Tink's Lament

What is she, this Wendy-Bird,
that falls and calls so prettily?
I've sung for years
in your silver-tipped ears
but 'twould hurt you none
to be quit of me.

She cannot fly; she has no light,
no flowers in her gown;
Yet for her name, you'd learn to write
and set your dagger down.

She'll leave you, boy, and take with her
the hearts of all your men;
And like a boy, you'll forget her,
and be all mine again.

This giant girl will make you cry
and scold you when you crow;
So leave her there, this Wendy-Bird--
the sky is ours. Let's go.


Illustration by Trina Schart Hyman

To Aristotle

Philosopher, you cannot know
the lengths that we have gone to.
From your home in our lungs,
our lashes, the clouds, the spiders,
the ever-bleeding maples,
it all must seem easy,
like breathing.






photograph by norisons

Homo Ridens

"When the first baby laughed for the first time, the laugh broke into a thousand pieces, and they all went skipping about...and that was the beginning of fairies." J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan and Wendy

And what was there to laugh about,
in this prehistoric night? Would the sound echo,
or would the black's nap suck it up
like so much spilled champagne?
And who was it that came along next,
and lifted the star-clad child?
Some vast nurse, who waltzing, swaying,
lullaby muttering, said,

Baby, it's not that funny.











photograph by Tamera

The Last Time I Saw My Sister

There were so many things I wanted
to know. What it means, exactly,
to breathe another in. How it feels
to drown. We all

Had questions for her, admonitions,
pleas. We came with salvation,
the crooked blade
our father sent. We had traversed

The shadows of slow whales
to reach her, but like all lovers,
she misunderstood.




painting: The Sea Maidens by Evelyn de Morgan

Variations on The Last Battle: Dawn on the Field

The thing you were, the things you had
have died, this blush is their blood,
and aren't you beautiful. Everything
has ended.





illustration by James Jean

The Last Battle

"So," said Peter, "night falls on Narnia. What, Lucy! You're not crying?"
"Don't try to stop me, Peter," said Lucy, "I am sure Aslan would not. I am sure it is not wrong to mourn for Narnia. Think of all that is dead and frozen behind that door."

C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle



I.
The earth split like a fallen man's skull,
and the burning skies painted every river red.
Everything ended. Stars crashed to the earth
and lay in the grass smoldering,
weeping, mourning their extinguished children.

II.
Embers. Dawn. A door in the air.
We are all blood and dirt. Through the gate,
only silence. If it is teeth and ice
it cannot be worse than this day.
I step through.




photograph by flickr user la fata matta

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, 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.

Forwarding Address

after Lady Brett Ashley

I do not write you enough
Love letters. You must have
A new hiding place for them by now;
That cigar box beneath the bed was three bare flats
And two cities ago. Times have changed,
My sky-eyed darling, but the raw hole still remains
Right where you left it,
In my breast.



photograph by RedheadRaye

From: roxanne@gmail.com

Heartsick boys wooed me wildly with your words.
It was you I loved, unknowing--

I ask you the same question now
a thousand times over, my own tongue
faltering into space, your silences as long
as nos.







photograph by Sarah Walker