New Muse

Missives from Atlantis

2007-01-02T15:37:00.000-06:00

[Possibly] part of a longer thing I'm gonna write:

MISSIVES FROM ATLANTIS

I.

MISSIVES FROM ATLANTIS

We queue by the dock, hot, confused, not
making eye contact as we clutch our wallets close,
as if they might fly away. PENNY FERRY,
reads a sign, HAVE YOUR TOKENS READY
and we wonder dully what would happen
if we had come without our money, whiskey,
cartons of Lucky Strikes, and family heirlooms
fabled to be solid sterling. Cranes
pad between patches of land still above water,
picking at the piles with iron claws:
Drowned cats, twisted fenders. Hey, pal,
got a Smoke? Nope? Trade ya for
a candy bar. Then she walks away
singing Hey, Oy! Sailor boy…
Slice the layers of fog like wet newspapers,
Slit straight through the smog pulled all around us
like a mildewed shower-curtain. Frogs
and mosquitos and parrots taken to the wing:
hell, even the water won’t stay in its grave,
wet claws knuckling from the ruddy slick
to haunt the air. Hack the waterlogged limbs-
scythe a clearing through the clammy mist-
There it is. Mon dieu! Flambeau! –a fire,
motley stragglers sullen in its light,
erecting makeshift shelters in the shadow
of broken billboards.-machete-armed, wild
in t-shirts. Welcome home. This is it,
Be it ever so humble: This is all you get.

Bookmaking

2006-09-06T15:01:00.000-05:00

I've decided to take another crack at binding the collections of poems (1998-2005) I gave to Hope last September, just before our wedding-- a collection that includes the series of poems that gave this site its name, New Muse.

I'm just not happy with how I bound 'em before. Rather than drill straight down through the entire book, I'm going to sew eight-page foldover folios that themselves get sewn and glued together. It'll be a bit of work-- probably more than the last attempt-- but the book should open better. The problem with the old one is that its binding is so tight that it is hard to read the words towards the inside edges of each page.

This means I have to re-format the darned thing for eight-page folios-- which I'd have to do anyway, since Word dropped all my formatting when I got a new computer.

So, probably going to be writing less lately, as I concentrate more on "publication" than "production."

different meters

2006-08-27T15:49:00.000-05:00

Humph. After trying a couple of poems using primarily tetrameter, I've decided I don't like it much. Not as much as pentameter and trimeter, at least. Usually, when I use meters of varying lengths, I predominantly use one length, and occasionally substitute a different one. I don't think I'm going to use four-beat lines as the dominant ones anymore, for the most part.

Crossposted on "Eat This Scroll"

2006-08-25T15:50:00.000-05:00

[Acts 9:1-9]

Driving to the nursery
with Hope just yesterday,
suddenly I couldn't see:
At first my eyes began to tear
and then began to burn,
until I could barely peer
at the interstate
through the saline film of pain
that wracked my vision, made me moan
and blink and shake my head
and close one eye and then the other
a second at a time--
All this at sixty miles per hour--
Unable to see the speeding blur
of traffic all around.
So this was it: I was sure
I'd hit another car--
Blinded, frightened, finally,
I got the us to the curb, and she
ask if I'd heard a voice:

"Paul, why do you persecute me?"

Consistent Pentameter

2006-08-11T10:15:00.000-05:00

Man, I totally forgot how easy pentameter is compared to an irregular metrical form. I've been writing these Veintets (twenty line poems with odd metrical patterns and overlapping rhyme schemes), and haven't written a plain old, straight through pentameter poem in a while. I used to write an entire poetry blog in pentameter, so I forgot how easy and fun it is.

Oh the poem in question is to be found on my other blog, by the by. It's a new blog which is going to be just for meditations on scripture: sermons, poems, notes, reflections, whatever. Check it out.

Torch and Trumpet, Empty Pots, and God

2006-08-10T09:58:00.000-05:00

[Crossposted on my new blog, Eat This Scroll.]

He woke from a dream of fire:
hundreds of children holding mason jars
full of captured stars
buzzing in the glass like molten bees.
He woke to the sound of fire:
three-round bursts, the tintinnabular
nightmare symphonies
of battle-cries and sirens through the trees
and all throughout the tents
the men were in a panic, shooting far
of the mark, rifles seized
by riotous spirits, each lieutenant's
sudden imcompetence
raining death upon his own allies.
He falls down to his knees
as the night explodes beyond the barbed-wire fence.
Far off, the enemy cries
"A sword for the Lord and Gideon!" at the skies,
which have dawned upon
a history full of hideous precedents.

What the Raven Said

2006-05-19T13:27:00.000-05:00

(After Steve Roberts' "Eye Blood")

Oy mate, see that?
Naw , just joshin' yer;
You're dead, an 'sides,
I've got yer eye.

The ropey bit, that there's
the optic nerve. Part of the brain,
that is, ter get technical.
Bit gristly. But loads better'n
nose, any day of the week. 'Scuse me.

[empty socket stares back up at
an eye like a bead of black mercury,
as it cocks its head and bites
into the ripe globe of flesh,
chews the globular muscle and swallows
it nearly whole in a gagging motion
of its throat, eye jelly
rolling down the beak...]

Vitreous Humour, mack. Not
"eye jelly." Light of the body,
the eye is; an' lights is good eats.
They used to think the last thing
you saw was burned like a dagguereotype
on the back of the eye, but I know
you never saw the one with your name on it.
Ought ter ask old Hummin and Mummin 'bout
that one. You know, Memory and Thought,
hang out with that old one-eyed bugger
they hung on that tree...

...Me, I was never one for coming back.
Old man Noah let me off that boat,
I was gone daddy gone. You want pigeons
for something like that. Anyway,
thanks for the chat, pal, and lunch.
See ya in the funny papers, pal,
if I don't see you first.

Sticky Renga

2006-05-15T20:07:00.000-05:00

like silk-trail merchants,
a caravan of ants treks
across the child's face

the lollipop rod now lies
face-down in the wood shavings

how did the june-bug
single out my windshield
in a world of cars?

how did the cat cross the road?
see that spot on the asphalt?

Renga Bitters

2006-05-15T16:15:00.000-05:00

saucers stacked on the stove
(the sink is already full)
stubbled with brown mold

dishwater, rancid flotsam
settling on the drain like silt

still has his boots on,
and no pillow for his head--
but piles of laundry!

dreams bubbling up through the black
tar pits of hungover sleep

moist socks and sneakers--
rich earthy exhalations
from their snoring tongues

even the skin mites grumbling,
"ach, it's sunday, let's sleep in."

Ardor Ain't Strength, But at Least I'm Trying

2006-04-19T16:07:00.000-05:00

I just saw a college kid dressed
in a Superman shirt
on Sherman street,
kissing a girl in a yellow skirt.
He swept her –literally— off her feet,
stumbled two steps
holding her waist,
then faltered and fumbled under her weight
and set his Lois on the concrete.
It was so great—
a moment so sweet
and baldly metaphoric— what a waste
that you weren’t there to see it too—
How love has no fear
of love’s own weight—
But I hope you’ll have the grace, my dear,
when it turns out that love has not
turned me into
Superman—
to walk on with me, hand in hand.

A Lament: After the Queen of Sheba Left

2006-04-19T15:43:00.000-05:00

Of course, love poetry is vanity--
All vanity, and a chasing after wind,
as if mere exhalation could transcend
the limits of distance's brute inanity.
All my wisdom cannot serve
for even the slightest expression of my love.
What's worse, my mightiest flights of poesy have
no power to conjure the slightest of her curves,
nor can my most exacting incantation
spell an end to our separation.
No spell can hope to raise a djinn so hot,
nor summon any succubus so sweet
as the smallest droplet of her sweat.
All my subtlest lines are paper-flat
before the mystery of her breath
hot on my face, and in her tangled curls
meaning means nothing, words condense to pearls
of perspiration falling on my neck--
Until she's back, I'll dream about
her wet hair, and the air that she breathes out.

The Night We Saw the White Stripes at the Bowery

2006-04-03T10:20:00.000-05:00

I meet you at the record store
on my way back from work;
You're trading band-names with the clerk,
some indie girl whom you adore
who's trying to decide if you're a jerk.
"See anything you like?" I ask.
You scan the NEW USED racks.
"Nope, let's go. See ya dork!"
She looks up from her CD stacks
as we walk out: "Sure, whatever bitch."
We walk back to your place to watch
some Star Trek and relax;
Three hours later (first we catch
Next Gen, then DS9) we go
to grab a bite to eat before the show.
We shovel hot fries down the hatch,
chase 'em with a Coke;
"She likes me," you say as you chew,
"And I sort of like her too--
But her taste in music is a joke."

Untitled

2006-04-03T10:12:00.000-05:00

It's empty now, the faux-ming vase,
but it still smells faintly of ash.
I ash and stare at its face,
a stylized portrait of a woman,
properly subservient, tiny feet
at her master's heels. Father's ashes
over the Mississippi, but mother's
in the faux ming vase that was their
wedding gift, from her mother in China.
Don't drink, it's stupid and
American. Study, do you want to grow up
to work in Burger Hut, study.
Her hands, yellowing under the nail polish,
buttoning up her shirt. The room is dark,
late afternoon whispering in
between the shades, and her picture
hangs on the wall, stern-lipped
as if it could say with its eyes,
why the fuck did you flush my ashes,
Phuong, this is stupid thing, disrespectful,
American thing to do. And don't smoke,
do you want to grow up to be dead?

So... as promised...

2005-12-23T17:29:00.000-06:00

I promised the inestimable StevepoetSteve that I'd write one of his "twenties" if he wrote one of my "veintets." I'm who I am, so I'm not promising not to change the rules (or, knowing me, more likely to add new ones than break his). Here's to tryin':

TWENTIES

Now is, roughly, the late September of our discontent.
Is it still so early? Our tongues have grown rough with poetry;
It wore our teeth smooth as o's with consonance, rode us like dogs,
wore us like sports-jackets until even the glue factories wouldn't want
us, patches on our sleeves or no. But still, this ragged voice
pitches its keen above the static of our atoms evaporating.
It sounds as much like our everyday speech as the viola
sounds like the cat whose gut's drawn taut over its bow. And now,
like howls torn from their throats, if we no longer speak at least we'll
howl. Now is the early winter of our slow descent!
Now all is November! Now we bore ourselves as we remember
all the stunts we pulled in college, and we are perplexed to look at
the time, and find it is still so early. Surely, we think, by this
time our skin should have cured to vinyl on our bones, the joints in
our limbs cracked like fortune cookies. Can it be so early?
Limb after limb refused to leave the tree, and even the leaves,
after what seems like a skyful of winters, are still (or almost) green.
What do we do? Let's hurl ourselves astride these rusty skateboards,
due to break down any minute, down the stairs:
to grind and grind: the drawn-out, lingering, best days of our lives

Cross-posted poem by guest host, Steve!

2005-12-23T17:21:00.000-06:00

My friend Matt-Steve, whose poems you should go check out because they will make you weep sweet tears of coffee and/or blood, finally decided to take me up on my offer to "swap" styles. Here's him taking a crack at one of my "vientets."

DRUNK ON MY OWN POWER
Plucky young adventurers sneak into my lair
I keep my TV on when I leave
They find my keychain which boldly says STEVE
They snoop on the floor and find most of my hair
When I get back they’re stoned
On my couch and the red-headed girl says hello
Out the window I hear a strange animal bellow
The gladitorial combat I sense they have honed
For several years is as useless as their dropped swords
I slip under my sheets
Folding the blanket carefully so my feets
don’t touch and I question the vandal hordes
and how they had traveled here and where
were they from and how today on the eve
of my birthday they cleave
each other apart and the survivor just stares
at me and hands me the blade like I loaned
it to him and I can’t take it because I’m yellow
and the blood has given me the frights of hell O
how I feel like a bird that’s been boned!

Irrelevation

2005-08-16T22:53:00.000-05:00

“it all happened so fast” and though he’d heard
all about time slowing down at
such times it wasn’t so much that
as it got very full—

when the truck’s front grill
slammed the pine trunk, didn’t think No
or holy Fuck or even Not Yet—

as the left headlight
shattered sparked glass
into the black and bark
he knew
he was going to die

and his life never “flashed before his eyes”
with less than seconds of it left,
but the curious jolt of being reminded—

—time that damn-fool Blake
talked him into that bungie thing—

—diving off the high boatdocks
at Beudreaux’s, that moment—

and what did shoot like a load of buckshot
through his head as everything in the truck kept moving at
sixty-miles per except the truck itself
was the surprising Anything is possible—

because nowhere in his head did it say
this could every happen—if this what the hell
else was possible?

—deer could leap cowlike over moons and
out of the paths of oncoming trucks—

—babies grow angel-wings
and sing elvis flying through the air and—

—the other lives: country singer
artist doctor soldier saint stunt-driver serial-killer—

the half-moment when his head and the shatter-
-proof glass burst in a halo of cracks—before
his skull stopped moving at sixty miles per hour
but everything in it kept right on into the inner
windshield of is skull—didn’t think
so this was it so much as I could have been anything

(from The Arcana Fragments, ca. 2001)

The Lucky Ones

2005-08-16T22:51:00.000-05:00

It is, perhaps, morning, and let us imagine the sun
is just breaking over the dream-gray lids of dawn.
It is cold, in the morning, this time of year,
and the oak leaves turn their backs to the heat
slowly, like iguanas. See—there, where the woods end?

Where the trees taper down to scrubs and weeds
and finally the dense matte of grasses and wild
anemones: this is where you see it happening,
when you think about it. A mourning dove sings.
None of the bodies in the field still bleeds,

except the few left bruised and alive and strong
to dig the mass graves. The green is torn and flung
over their shoulders, and they scoop out earth
like pumpkin guts. Did they actually long for death,
these last few, and they threw down one by one

their children and women, their sickly old like crows,
or did they look nervously toward the soldiers, poised
like scarecrows with their guns in line? Did they seem
to them like something no longer human, like meat
without souls? The corpses were arranged in rows,

like large sardines. It was done; the pits were dug
while rifles warmed their long necks in the sun.
If they stared back over the hills to the distant
walls and homes of their town, we don’t know about it.
About half marched back, exhausted, through the mud.

(from The Arcana Fragments, ca. 2002)

They Fall

2005-08-07T18:59:00.000-05:00

The Indian-mint crushed underfoot
sends up a pleasing scent into the night,
into air thick with summer pine.
Their whispers fall away; the air drones
with fireflies like will ‘o whisps, ghost-souls.
Their eyes shine in the darkness like two owls’.
One last night. Summer’s done and now
the farewell campfire’s dead and damp with dew.
They walk on solemnly, slowly, steps imbued
with powerful importance. As they head
to the same spot as every night, the glen
across the stream, the shorter of them grins:
it’s still amazing—they’re both new to this—
but they’ve uncovered—God!—new ways
of being in the world. Both feel remade,
recast in bronze, shining like a god.
Above, a sudden flight of shooting stars:
the taller of them thinks of Icarus
(or—which one was it—was it Dedaelus?)
The clearing’s circled round with black-barked trees
and weeds that arch their backs, that stretch and reach—
The two boys sit on an old fallen branch,
take out their cigarettes with sweaty hands
and light them up. One thinks of fiery brands
and vengeful angels. One just smiles and holds
this stolen fire, this much-forbidden coal,
against the sky’s stern curtain with a smile.
Their eyes are burning low now, and they find
their fingers moving closer, then their hands
are clasped. A shot of heat-lightning fans
the silence, but they’re focused on
something like hubris, or like awe:
They are both beautiful. They are new.
They can do anything. And they do.

(from The Arcana Fragments, ca. 2003)

Hope Chest

2005-08-07T18:56:00.000-05:00

If I could trap my hope inside a book
like a modern-day Pandora with her box,
whenever reality mocks
my expectations, I could take a look.
Isn’t it that way: no number of locks
can imprison disappointment, pain, and loss,
but even the feeblest grip
has strength enough for hanging onto hope.
(It clings to our limbs like hanging Spanish-moss,
hides the noose, and lines the lynching-rope.
Sometimes, she is cruel,
crying “Peace, peace!” when there is no peace.)
And yet, I’ll trust her. Let my doubting pass
and I will gladly play the occasional fool;
Better to release
despair and try than fear and never dare.
If I could trap my hope inside a book,
it would be her name. When things look bleak
and all hope is scarce,
If I just say her name I’ll gain it back.

Absinthe Makes the Heart go Find Her

2005-07-27T12:56:00.000-05:00

Now is the summer of my disconent,
useless as an empty bottle.
I've hurled my disconsolate
body against walls to shatter
like glass in alleys after a frat-party;
Thrown shots like a berseker in pitched battle;
Hurtled buckshot and Bacardi
at my lover's ghosts.
This summer: an interminable Mardi
Gras desperate to drown itself in tourists,
frothing with a beer-inspired mock gladness--
As if happiness consists
of making more noise than sadness.
And still, these days without her pile
one on the other, bricks in the wall of absence.

All the Colors that Her Eyes are Not

2005-07-22T23:55:00.000-05:00

Though I could write a poem about her eyes--
(A poem! Though I could fill a book with them--)
--to never hymn another's eyes again?
For hers are not the color of the skies;
Athena's storm-gray gaze,
nor cloudless blue, nor overcast azure.
Nor are her eyes a clover-strewn pasture
of emerald, peridot, or grassy jade.
Oh, all the colors that her eyes are not!
Each with its own voice, its note!
New muse: although I could-- no, could and will--
forsaking every other, praise your eyes,
and yours alone, and seek them when I rise,
and when I lie back down again-- still,
those other colors' sounds
that roll over the tongue like polished gems--
cerulean, citron, amber, aqua, flame!
And yet, your name is lovelier. I'll be bound;
Banish all those pigments from my pallette
that her eyes are not.

The Weaver's Daughter

2005-07-22T23:50:00.000-05:00

she told me once that she believes in fairies.
she was the kind of girl who said things like that,
who painted medieval tapestries across her walls.
I’d been watching her—there were often spirals
of flowers along her arms, or pen-drawn runes
which made her look distracted and misplaced.
she agreed to an evening: on the way to the movies
she told me suddenly to stop the car: a cat
was walking along a fence-top; she was enthralled
with things like that. she said there’s meaning in small
occurrences. she thought every moon was a new one.
I could almost believe it: the way her black mane
tore starlight from the sky—but it was cold.

next week, I brought a book on dante rosetti’s art;
we spent the day painting pomegranates on the ceiling.
in my mind there was never a time when she was done
painting pomegranates on ceilings, she was like that.
the dragons on her walls seemed to take on depth
as she told me about her evolution; she had read
about them in some book. a paint-green breath
seemed to curve their sides as I teased her, their eyes
nipping at me. the fan-air played its slender fingers
through her grass-green hair; the room spun with it.

we just had one more date, two weekends later.
she never wanted to go to coffee-shops, or dinner,
and even at school, most of her was still
walking the forests of some imagined England.
even when friends came to see her at home, bells
rang out of ruined stone cathedrals in her ears.

that last night when her parents were out of town
we had spaghetti and wine, listened to records.
my mouth found its way to her neck, my shaking hand
to her crescent waist, lower. we kissed, then,
but when we pulled away, her eyes were twin
sad princesses, locked in some witch’s tower.
she had something to tell me. she stopped the music,
blew out the candles, and opened the curtains.
a bar of white solidified between the window
and fixed upon her forehead. she turned to me.
the horn shone like a slice of moon. you have one
too, she told me, you can see it under the sun.
well, not see it, but it casts a dark, dark shadow.

(from The Arcana Fragments, ca. 2001).

Jogging Mantra

2005-07-13T11:31:00.000-05:00

Keep on running at my steady pace.
You make me want to be a stronger man.
Build up my body's temple to your service
With the strength of your supporting hand.

You make me want to be a better man.
Though love's no competition, or no race,
Still, I will do my damndest to deserve
The least drop of your overflowing grace.

I was jogging this morning and this little snippet of doggerel began running around in my head. It began as one line-- "Keep on running at my steady pace" -- and the desire to keep myself running without feeling like I had to try to keep up with the other joggers, who are faster than me. If I try, I tire too quick. Pretty soon it had become this whole mantra/prayer thing. Heh. Just thought I'd share it.

Astrolabe and atlas of my love

2005-07-12T11:45:00.000-05:00

When I close my eyes
I see her, sunnier than any skies,
the smile lines like a sunrise on her face.
Her body charts my future's boundaries--
a neck, an arm, a waist--
the map to trace
the countours of my life. That I should be
cartographer of such uncharted grace!
My hope laid out like virgin territory--
each hollow, hill and valley
of my faith in tomorrow
as visible as a countryside to me.
I'm not so blind as to think the plains and furrows
of our life together hold no sorrows,
but I have faith that soon
the tears our crying sows
as saltwater with water laughter's bloom,
and her bright voice will laught the rain to scorn.
Though dusk may draw up like a sheet, her eyes
will open like the dawn.

--> I challenge you!: You listening, Matt?

2005-07-10T14:49:00.000-05:00

So, I watch this anime called "Marmalade Boy," a girly serial-romance that's basically "My So Called Life" in 90's Japan cartoon-form. Many of the cultural references and lifestyle was pretty familiar (resembling 80's U.S., really), but sometimes the differences are pretty significant. For example, the show gives the impression that the Japanese are all running around yelling "I challenge you!" to settle their differences. The forms these "challenges" take is absolutely comical: basketball games, ski dares, tennis matches, or junk-store sell-a-thons.

So: this one's for Matt-Steve especially, but for anyone who wants to have a little fun with form.

Matt, let's write a few poems in each other's forms; I'll do one of your "twenties" if you write a "veintet."

--> form: veintet

2005-07-10T14:14:00.000-05:00

- 20 lines
- iambic (pentameter/quatrimeter/trimeter) in a regular, repeating pattern (like 5 quatrains, or 4 quintrains)
- rhyme scheme also in a regular repeating pattern (but not the same one as the rhythm scheme)

Thus, the cycles of rhyme and rhythm overlap and syncopate, because they are of different lengths.

Example:

~/~/~/~/~A
~/~/~/~/~B
~/~/~/~/~B
~/~/~/~/~A
~/~/~C
~/~/~/~/~D
~/~/~/~/~D
~/~/~/~/~C
~/~/~/~/~E
~/~/~F
~/~/~/~/~F
~/~/~/~/~E
~/~/~/~/~A
~/~/~/~/~B
~/~/~B
~/~/~/~/~A
~/~/~/~/~C
~/~/~/~/~D
~/~/~/~/~D
~/~/~C

In this example, the rhyme-scheme is a simple repeating ABBA scheme (that is, a four-line pattern), but the rhyme of the iambic pentameter is broken up every 5 lines by a trimeter line.

Djinn

2005-07-10T14:01:00.000-05:00

I.
From the lips, from the rim
of the pipe's glass lip,
they rise up, robed in smoke,
unroll like rising smoke into the room--

They coil upwards like billowing bolts of silk--
a wire-wide curve of light along each brow.
Their thoughts are gas,
their minds a scalding mass of steam--
tesselating augurs, arabesques of thought.
Smoke floods the tunnels of their brains,
fills the gray sprawl and expands...

2.
Cinnamon and sandalwood: halos of vapor
slide around them like slow snakes--
What do they carry so lightly?
Flowers sown of fire line
the sleeves of their ice-black gowns.
What lies as light as ribbon
in the folds of their bundles?

The young boys are now empty
earthenware, discarded on the couch.

3.
These gods smolder, shudder inwards,
converge beneath the blacklight.

Dim in the room,
exchanging vocal glances.
The tight-locked geodes of their skulls
nod, condense slurred syllables.
The air blurs into incense,
their robes' embroidery unravels...

They trail down to the lips
of glass-eyed boys lounging on the floor.
They are sucked back to the fog
of a meat-mind,
tongue of dust,

into the true thirst--

[from The Arcana Fragments, ca. 2001]

Pygmalian pauses to admire his bride

2005-07-10T13:49:00.000-05:00

It isn't that I doubt that every block
of marble holds some future Galatea,
straining to be shorn of excess rock;
But how many possible Galateas are there?
It's not the line I write that haunts,
but for each word I use, twelve ghostly words--
each in its way as fitting and as right--
gutter like smoke, unwritten and unheard.
It's not the choice itself that paralyses;
It's the death of all those choices.
I wonder whether Michelangelo
(that seer of possibility in stone)
just before the hammer's shattering blow
heard the other could-be statues moan?
So with each word, the others fly
like chips or marble, or like bits of bone.
Her cheek emerges; other faces flee.
The dust settles. What is done is done.
I take her hand. Why was I so scared?
She's lovelier than I could have dared.

--> lost poems

2005-07-09T16:41:00.000-05:00

I'm sure all of you are familiar with that old story, perhaps apocryphal, about Ernest Hemingway losing all of his works. Whether the version of the tale you're familiar with involves him losing them in a Spanish bar, or in the back seat of a French taxicab, or in a field-hospital during the Great War, the grist of the story is this: Hemingway wrote a lot of things, and lost them. All. Typewritten. His only copy. Everything we have of his, so the story goes, is whatever else he wrote.

Now, whether this delightful little nugget of narrative has any truth in it or not, this story is a wonderful parable about something that happens to every writer: we lose things. We burn the only copy of a poem written about an ex-lover in a fit of rage. We accidentily use the bar-napkin on which a sudden jolt of inspiration was scribbled. Works disappear electronically and instantaneously, in a whoosh of electrons. I personally can think of over 20 poems I've completely lost, for various reasons, including stolen laptops, Internet Server errors on livejournals, and careless record-keeping.

What's strange is how much it hurts to lose a poem. I can't figure it. But it does-- I am quite literally haunted by the loss of several of my works that I'll never see again.

Why?

I mean, theoretically, I wrote them, so I could write them again-- or ones substantively similar. But the loss is crippling. It feels as if I managed to wrest something beautiful and worthwhile from the chaos of life and happenstance, only to have it yanked back into the abyss. It makes it difficult to write anything else; I become obsessed with either recreating the same poem-- which I know to be impossible-- or defeatist about the likelihood of anything else I write being as good. This fixation with lost poems can become quite manic-- I've torn through my old papers and notebooks like a madman looking for poems I lost years ago, knowing that I've already been through them.

Why?

I wonder whether it isn't like a little piece of me is lost. Or a little bit of the way I make sense of the world, at least.

Untitled

2005-07-09T16:27:00.000-05:00

Together on the love-seat after dinner,
enjoying a quiet sit.
I'm reading my old poems while you knit
what might become a sweater.
I'm reading what I wrote three years ago,
each line an invitation
to rethink my life now (and my vocation)
and you would like to know
why I have never written a poem for you.
My poems were thick with girls
before I met you, but there were strict rules:
wait for the other shoe
to drop before you set your love to paper,
let art redeem your loss
but never jinx your happiness with verse--
love poems court disaster.
Anyway, I rarely write these days,
as if writing were a glitch
I've since debugged. I see you've dropped a stitch,
all your hard work, erased--

Water to Wine

2005-07-09T15:44:00.000-05:00

Another visit this afternoon-- again to her small cell.
In her long white gown-- that unadorned robe
that hangs to her bare feet-- she's like a Medieval saint.
She has that air about her-- she doesn't seem to care
about the tubes leeched to her arms, the cold
machines behind her with their foreign thoughts,
or that she's dying-- just that childlike smile
when you walked in. Those hands that played like water
over the strings of cellos are still now, and bunched
over themselves, like dead spiders. It's so wonderful
to see you, she says. They say the soul's a harmony
strung along the body, and she's humming
along her whole whole being, now. She's become so beautiful,
now the cord of her life's stretched taut as catgut,
and you want to tell her so, but instead you tell her
about the dream you had of her-- how she stood
with you at the edge of a slivered stream,
how she glowed-- he she smiled as she reached
one hand into her side and pulled out, one by one,
gleaming stones from her own flesh. She smiles, then,
but it tires her to stay awake so long.

The cancer's burning her up faster now,
turning her to light and tight-bunched lumps of gold;
now the doctors are sure there are mere days left.
You stay with her most nights; you finally sleep
leaned up against the wall. The machines don't rest.

A rattling breath; you start awake. She's opened eyed--
a red-eyed box emits a shrill-- she looks
as if she's trying to say something-- her lips
flap open, closed-- she moans-- and then--
From her blue lips, the glistening damp wings,
the oily-black insectile legs emerge--
A dozen butterflies swarm from her mouth
and flood the room--
the roar of gem-like wings--

[from The Arcana Fragments, ca. 2001]

My body knows it's not alone in bed

2005-07-08T14:52:00.000-05:00

Sunday, six AM: the eyelids rolled
like windowblinds against the light that bleeds
in through the windows, eyes drawn back, the blood
burrowing further inward from the cold.
Under the comforter's weight
the body curls into its animal heat,
a sightless puppy nestling toward the heart-
-beat of its mother and its littermates.
It only wants what we all want: this warmth
as close as your own marrow.
In my dreams, it isn't yet tomorrow,
the coals are not yet cold piled on sleep's hearth,
I don't have to be anything but my breath.
I'm not yet hooked beneath the gills by time,
dragged up by a line
of scheduled moments ground between my teeth.
For now the blood-warmed flesh, that sweet, dumb creature
briefly liberated from the reign
(others would say tyranny) of the brain
shivers, and moves to reach her.

obligatory picture post

2005-06-23T00:30:00.000-05:00

Pay no attention to the man behind the pinkness. This is pretty much just so I can link to my picture and get this image on my blog template.