a translator's best friend

Okay, this translator's best friend, at least - I've been revising some poetry translations this morning and I need to stop long enough to sing the praises of J. I. Rodale's The Synonym Finder. (Totally unsolicited. I was compelled by its synonyms for the word "permanence," including "perpetuity, everlastingness, immortality, deathlessness, athanasia; imperishability, indestructibility," and a whole host of other words that certain uptight word processors and blogging softwares don't even think exist, phtbtbtbbbt. I love diction that eludes Microsoft Word.)

While I use it most often during translation, it lives on my desk and often comes in handy when I'm revising my own poetry, as well. If you've figured out the music you're going for in a poem or translation, this is the world's greatest resource.

After years of feverishly hunting through online dictionaries and thesauri, I recently dug out my reference books and I could not be happier. It's hard to articulate why I like them so much more as actual books - I'm not anti-e-reader. But for some reason, I'm finding physical reference books noticeably more enjoyable to work with.

So. Rodale's Synonym Finder. If you need more awesome words in your life, get it. In the meantime, I'm getting back to my translation. Peace.

(Hey, if you have a favorite dictionary or thesaurus, please tell me - I'm always on the lookout for kickass writing resources. Cheers.)

Creak, creak

If this blog were a box, it would be made of smooth-sanded hardwood and inlaid gold, and I'd be lovingly wiping away a thick layer of dust right now, having rediscovered it among a jumbled pile of loved but forgotten possessions.

Last posted on November 30th, 2009, upon finishing the second draft of my WIP. What's happened during the 16-month ellipsis? Well, most significantly, my 14-month-old daughter happened, who is now snoozing next to me. Almost no actual writing has happened on the WIP; it was reviewed and comment on in detail by an absolutely incredible crit reader, but the only work I've done in response to her comments has taken place in my head. I've read a lot of blog posts lately about moms who started (or went back to) working on a novel the same day their child was born. Kudos to them - it did not happen for me. I think I did write a poem for her the next day, and have written sporadic poems since her birth, but in no way did my writing life possess anything resembling discipline until a week or two ago.

In all honesty, that was due as much to a dormant period in my writing as it was to arrival of The Teensy One. Let me be clear: I'm not making excuses. It's been more than a few years since I realized my creativity goes through periods of dormancy. It used to freak me out, but once I figured out that the times of silence are always followed by outpourings of creative energy, I stopped worrying about it. Nowadays when the muse goes silent, I let her rest for a while, although I listen with a keen ear for her to speak again.

Although this latest cycle of creativity started a couple of weeks ago, the arrival of National Poetry Month helped me get back into a disciplined routine, which feels oh, so good - like a bird on wing. There are a couple of sites I've been using for daily prompts, both of which I found thanks to that perennial friend-of-writers, Twitter.

The first is @robertleebrewer's Poetic Asides blog, which he writes for Writer's Digest: http://blog.writersdigest.com/poeticasides/. Some good prompts here - some reliable and familiar stand-bys, and some creative prompts that provide good nudges to the brain to approach a poem with a fresh perspective.

The second, Instapoem, is a collaboration between @inkyelbows (Debbie Ridpath Ohi) and Rand Bellavia: http://instapoem.blogspot.com/. This blog features a series of one-word prompts, one for each day of the month, and the rule is to write it within five minutes of seeing the prompt. It's a great concept, although there are days when the word of the day just doesn't strike me; on those days, I just use a word from a different day.

Oddly, a lot of the poetry I've written since I got back into the swing of things has rhymed. I have nothing against rhyming or free verse, but I tend more towards free verse, generally. Not lately, though - it's a little disconcerting to have all these rhymes popping up, but I'm rolling with it and focusing on using them to challenge myself rather than as crutches for simplicity.

Today's prompt from Poetic Asides is to write a "what if" poem. Here's mine:

Songs for Abigail XV

The freight train howls its lonesome song
Cloud upon cloud piles white upon grey
The heron tucks its head under wing
What if you were alive today?


Well, now that the dust is cleaned away, I'm hoping to post semi-regularly on here. No promises, though; some days I'm lucky to get five minutes to myself for a quick writing exercise. Hey, a girl's gotta have her priorities. Cheers.

Revision's still, deep waters

In the last two days, I've revised eleven chapters of the novel I wrote during last year's NaNoWriMo. Technically speaking, that puts me more than 20 percent of the way through Round 2, which is a lot better than, say, zero percent of the way, or even ten percent. It's important to celebrate these milestones.

I'm starting to get a little nervous, though, because I know the real work is up ahead. It sort of feels like digging around in the yard and not quite knowing where the water line is, just that it's there. One of these days soon, I'm going to reach a certain point in the story and all this force is going to be unleashed.

So far, the revisions mostly involve making all the verb tenses consistent, tightening up sloppy or redundant writing, and smacking the occasional passive voice into action. A lot of it has centered around changing the chapters I wrote from a third-person POV into first-person. (I'm sort of glad I have no idea whether I wrote more chapters in first or third person in Round 1.)

But I worry that I'm taking refuge in technicalities. When I revise my poetry, I tend to get in there with both hands and tear it apart, move words and lines around, pull lines out and write 10-line exercises based on them to get at what I really meant, reassemble the lines and stanzas in different orders - in short, I rip my heart out, play hacky-sack with it for a while, and then put it back in place better-than-new.

Since I've spent a lot more of my life on writing and revising poetry than I have on fiction, I feel a lot safer during the poetry process than I do right now. Don't get me wrong; I go through plenty dark nights of the soul when I'm revising my poems, but y'know, they're just so much shorter than a novel. There's that stage of revision, right before it all comes together, when the entire thing turns into a royal, absolute mess. Then, like pulling the right thread in a cats-cradle, somehow it all magically ties together in a neat, ordered, beautiful way.

When we're talking about a 62,000-word rough draft, though, that absolute mess starts sounding a whole lot messier. In my imagination, it takes on downright scary, Titanic proportions. I know there are plot holes lurking like icebergs, just waiting for me to run into them. I also know I'm going to have to add some word count at some point, for this to be the length of a proper novel, and so far all I'm doing is tightening up the words.

Of course, one of the keys to good writing is for every word to matter, so I don't stress as much about adding to the story. If it's there, it'll come out; if not, it'll just be a short book. Better to be short than to have a lot of useless blather. My hope is that filling in those gaping plot holes will add to the length, too.

I keep telling myself I can make this entire first round of revision about the technicalities, if I want to, and then go through and read it more for the storyline. I can just keep segmenting down the necessary aspects of revision until they're in more manageable pieces - poem-sized, if you will.

But I've never labored for too long under the delusion that I really have control over my writing. Isn't that why we write? The words demand we write them, and we serve as their channel as best we can. Here's hoping I lose some of this control soon, and the story takes over.

silent night

New poem. At least insomnia's good for something. Will need revision, of course, but at least at 6:22 a.m. I've already done some creative writing for the day... I wish I could control the column width so the lines wouldn't wrap like they are, dropping the last word down. But then, there are a lot of things I wish.

silent night

the world lies silent and still, watchful with winter insomnia,
except the dog snoring at the foot of the bed, content in dreams.
silent watches of the night are never true, something always intrudes:
drip of faucet, wind stirring late autumn’s crisp husks of leaves
and the sound of my thoughts, trampling over and again through
my all-too-busy brain. what if, what if, what if, what if.
the world waits full of cruel possibilities, watchful of my careless steps,
waiting to drop the other shoe. the silent night
does not let me rest, the faucet echoes my relentless worry
over things I cannot control. keep the wind from rustling the leaves,
call the plumber I cannot afford, silence the mind from its fret and fears,
tell the people who think ill of me they are wrong. stop the sun, it rises soon.

what is left to us

what is left to us
in memoriam, September 11, 2001 - from wire reports

I wish you could hear me from underneath that rubble,
as I stand atop a broken heap
to proclaim your death
valid, my words falling thin across this jagged gash of landscape
barely ruffling the thick quilt of dust.
I wish you could.

I wish you could hear me
when I tell you I love you,
I miss you, your eyes, your lips, how they’d curl
over breakfast at a sly joke.
that I never knew you
but how I sobbed, how I fell
to my knees for you, your eyes
your lips gaping in fear
and that is why I am angry.
because you died afraid
innocent
as I would have died.

and what would you say,
what if you were on vacation
or thought your day ruined
because you missed your plane?
only to drop your glass later
choke out "there but for the grace of god – "
would you wait till you were alone to cry?

The Taliban’s last stronghold
was once a school for girls,
you’d say, eyes calm and clear, laughing a little.
on the grounds of fecund learning
walled in, they gripped the last
few feet of Kabul
from its womb.
its sterile, beaten, exhausted womb.

when the Persian New Year came
Khatol Mohammad Zai
a female air force colonel
jumped from an airplane
floated to the earth of Kabul
Zai said
“as a representative of women
I have shown we can jump from helicopters
women can do something as good as men
even something that is so difficult”

the floating down is easy
it’s ramming an airplane
into a skyscraper
at 500 miles an hour
that’ll make you grit your teeth.
floating
from the 88th floor
did you ask yourself,
who said they could play god,
they have no right,
did you say,
it’s not their choice
whether I live or die
or were you too busy
with your own
final prayer?

the girls’ school reopened
girls peeking out of tents
on packed earth soldier-trod
the girls wait
for their gutted school
to be rebuilt.
they will have to go year-round
but just for the first few years.
just till they’re caught up.

would you say, I didn’t want to die.
yes. would you say
I’m sorry I left angry
or I wish for one last kiss –
do you watch me cry
alone in our apartment
the kitchen counter choked with memories
of cutting boards seeped with garlic
and tomatoes staining, waiting for the pan?

and I am supposed to let you go for this?
I haven’t even gotten to bury you yet.
they still can’t find you.
I got to sort through
a few hundred men’s wristwatches.
I couldn’t decide between two of them.
I just left them both there.

and how I wish you could hear me

songs for abigail

Today is the year anniversary of my daughter's stillbirth.

I don't have a lot to say about it, at least right now. I've written about it a lot in past weeks, and talked about it with very close friends, but right now I just find myself sort of wordless and grieving.

Still, I would like to share these poems I wrote in the days after her stillbirth. I wrote many, many poems in those days, but these are my two favorites, in order of favoritism.

Songs for Abigail

VI

Still the bells and muffle the drums;
with solemn step the parents come.
With weeping hearts and lowered eyes
they curse the day that Abigail died.

Let the trees shed their leaves in the summer field
Let the autumn harvest refuse to yield
Let the birds fold their wings and forsake the sky
The world must be broken, that Abigail could die.

Tell the mourners in a somber throng
To quiet their cries and swallow their song
Let the silence beg the question why,
of all that is possible, Abigail should die.

Stop the waves on the ocean’s shore
Stop the seasons’ changes evermore
Stop the sun in its eternal sky
Let the world mourn that Abigail has died.


III

It’s rained every day since you died.
As if the world weeps with us
and the clouds could swaddle our grief.

A hollow place in the world
echoes with your absence
the space where you should be, and aren’t.

I can almost feel on my pinky finger
where your grip should curl, and surprise me
with its strength. But your hand lies motionless.

It is hard to believe our hearts can keep beating
when yours is silent forever.
That was not the miracle I expected from your birth.

the marvelous world

(we now interrupt the story revision in progress to bring you the following poem...)

the marvelous world

stay beside me, love, for all my days and nights
hold my hands in yours, sing to me adventures
of heroes and true love and the marvelous world;
look in my eyes and tell me in wordless joy.

hold my hands in yours, sing to me adventures;
walk by my side and make me laugh to tears.
look in my eyes and tell me in wordless joy
of the infinite sky, the vast ocean dreaming.

walk by my side and make me laugh to tears;
when the storms come, I shelter in your arms.
the infinite sky, the vast ocean dreaming -
how they roil and rage, shine and sing.

when the storms come, I shelter in your arms.
we are safe in each other, fire and air in sacred flame;
how they roil and rage, shine and sing -
how the ancient earth envies our life together.

we are safe in each other, fire and air, sacred flame;
we are constant and changing, we are beauty and art.
how the ancient earth envies our life together;
the old stories are true, but never so true as now.

we are constant and changing, we are beauty and art,
heroes and true love and the marvelous world:
the old stories are true, but never so true as now.
stay beside me, love, for all my days and nights.


...And now, a little context.

There is an absolutely amazing and wonderful woman named Kate - well, I am sure there are a lot of amazing and wonderful Kates, but this one is superlatively so and has been one of my dearest friends for lo, these many years.

Three years ago, Kate read a poem I wrote at my wedding - called, perhaps unsurprisingly, true love. And now, at the end of June, Kate will marry an excellent guy named Andrew (I don't know him as well, but he seems fully worthy to be her life partner, and I can give no man higher praise than that).

To my great honor, Kate has asked me to read a poem at her wedding, preferably one that I wrote. She did give me the option to read something someone else wrote, but I love her very much and wanted to do something original as a gift to them.

So there I was, faced with the task of writing a non-cheesy poem about love, something that would deserve to be read at the wedding of one of my best friends. After about 83,000 attempts, I finally drafted the poem above. I've put it through a few revisions by now, but I have until June 27th to make it perfect, or as close to perfect as I can get it.

You can therefore see, dear reader, why your feedback is much needed and appreciated.

A word on the form - this type of poem is called a pantoum. As you may already know, pantoums are a type of poetry that originated in Malaysia. There is little structure besides the pattern of repetition of the lines - no set number of syllables or stanzas, no rhyme scheme, no scansion. It's one of my favorite forms of poetry; the repeating pattern creates this great tension, then the pattern of the last stanza provides a fantastic catharsis.

A word to the wise - should you wish to attempt your first pantoum, may I suggest you drive it with verbs. At least, that's the only way I can ever figure out how to make 'em work.

Anyway, please let me know what you think. Much obliged!

(snow inspired) or, my life in parentheses

So, yes, I realize the last several posts on here have followed this theme of snow. I am somewhat obsessed with snow, I admit it. And consequently am quite happy to have a snowy afternoon, the house to myself, a good beer (Boulder's Mojo Rising) and the time to write.

Ah, Nature, she is a fickle muse (a la the Tick: "Gravity, she is a harsh mistress"), much less dependable than music. When a story's influenced by a song, I can just play the song or create a whole playlist that supports that mood, like I did with 'Mississippi'. When it's location, I can travel to there (or I can't, and just don't work on that piece for a while). But when a story's weather-inspired, nature torments me in the worst way sometimes.

Once again I'm editing my snow-inspired story, and I think I keep getting distracted at the same place every time I go through it. It happened again today (well, I do have Braveheart on the TV, which is pretty damn distracting). But not before I noticed that (hey, is that Stephen Fry?) Right! Back to the blogging thing. Um, yes - got distracted, but not before I noticed that the story's rather disjointed over the course of a couple chapters. The problem is, since I keep consistently flaking out during that part of the story, I'm having a hard time fixing it. D'oh!

Evidently I'm in quite the parenthetical mood (you might expect me to ask if you noticed, but I give you more credit for intelligence than that).

Hmm... it stopped snowing. I could deal with fixing the difficult-to-fix thing another day. Tempting. (Plus, I'm kinda hungry.)

Here, have a poem:

what to do

what to do when the words won’t come?
I could tie my tongue around a tree and
climb it. I could tear out my eyes
replace them with prisms
refract – reflect –
a new point of view.
All the noises blend into harmony at one
point.
Can’t pin it on a map, no signs mark this road
so I hope to trip over it, flip a page
glance up at just this instant
see it hesitate, flash out of view –
not even a color, just a sense of color light refracted,
gone. I stand breathless struck & ringing

hibernation

Exhausted; haven't been sleeping well lately. Tough to get a good night's sleep when you dream about work all night. But I'm not (for once) getting on here to bitch. I just keep having the first couple lines from this poem run through my head. Considering that it's springtime and supposed to snow later, it seemed like a fitting one to post.

...Okay, so I started this yesterday, and then didn't have the poem available to post. Here 'tis. I'm still tired & it's supposed to snow again tomorrow, so the relevance remains...


hibernation

tired, so tired, and this does not end here.
no, it never ends here. rows of small lead
weights attached themselves to my bones.
now they sway and clink whenever I move;
I walk as if under water. as if air were a force
I must reckon with. as if it drips and flows,
the task of inhale and exhale too much.

summer ebbs; I place myself in the quiet river
every day, offer myself to the water
asking for a baptism. like a frog I want
to shed my skin, emerge wholly new,
thrilled with wearing myself inside out.
I want to wrest myself from my skin, replace
my eyes, shed my hands and useless tongue.
let me hibernate, bury myself in the mud,
winter quietly; emerge rested, glad-eyed.

now deep in this waking dream, air sealed
within me, my mind draws pictures of spring
against my eyelids. I don’t want to get tangled,
caught half-born, eyes blinking, blinded.
the earth stirs around me, gathers herself, preparing;
she breathes in: my eyes open, I break from myself
I am free: alive: I can breathe –

dream, dream, dream

Holy stress, Batman. We're less than a week away from our biggest annual event at work, and I keep expecting to wake up and find my hair turned silver overnight.

It's days like this - especially grey, windy, lightly snowy mornings like today's - when I dream intensely of not having to work. Wake up, ensconce myself on the couch with a blanket, my soda, some breakfast, and the laptop, and spend the entire morning writing. What I wouldn't give to just have time in the day to focus for hours on my craft. That is my ultimate fantasy.

Instead, I write in my head as I drive to and from work. I write in my head while I'm at work, too, when things aren't too hectic. Unfortunately, right now they're rather too hectic. In fact, what am I doing blogging?! Okay, okay, we all need the occasional break, just to stay sane if for nothing else. Maybe I'll take another five minutes and write a haiku, just to feel like my creative life isn't totally demolished by the harsh vagaries of reality. (Who, me? Melodramatic?! Scoff.)

(early) spring haiku

clouds cover the sky
budding trees pause and shiver
the wind howls cruel threats

grey day

I'm always so happy when it's nice and grey out. I know most people like sunshine, but give me rain and snow any day. Even just overcast is better than sunshiny, in my world.

So this morning it's grey and lightly snowing, which makes me quite happy, even though I have to go to work instead of sitting at home and writing. I have a story I only work on when it's snowing out; I'm sure I've mentioned it on here before. So many of my stories I can only write in certain settings, like the pirate story I can really only work on at the beach. I think that environmental factor has a lot to do with the songs that influence my work, too.

I succeeded in getting up early this morning and writing. I hated to stop, though. I was working on the story for my dad, largely because I didn't realize it was snowing out, or I would've worked on the snow story instead. Regardless, it felt good to start making time for my creativity again.

There's something about this morning that feels so much like the morning I wrote 'San Felipe aubade'. An aubade is a poem you write for your lover upon waking with them. It's a lovely type of poem - not surprisingly, it originated in France. This one happens to rhyme, but I like the fact that there are no real structural requirements for this form, just the quality of waking with your lover. I wrote this years ago when we were down in this little seaside town in Mexico, in a tiny little cabana on the beach.

San Felipe aubade

Sleep we here awhile, love,
the thunder low and long
rumbles ‘cross the morning
like a half-forgotten song

you pull me closer, love
although you slumber on
your arm an anchor ‘cross me
as wave and thunder thrum

the sea sings to the sky, love
white clouds blanket round
December rain washes waves
holding the patient ground

the sea recalls the words, love
the thunder lows the song
the morning drowses lazily
sleep we sweet and long

the dragon story

Much stress at work; so much so that I'm working from home today because I'm sick but I can't take any time off with this workload.

So, naturally, it's the perfect time for me to get back into the short story for my dad, right? Right. I don't know why, but just now I had this random flash of not-quite-inspiration, more like just a sense of it finally being the right time. We'll see. I really do have to keep working right now, though. I hope in its current fevered state, my brain's capable of subconsciously writing it for me while I deal with other stuff, so I can just sit down later and have the story flow.

In the meantime, here's a poem I wrote years ago that I've always rather liked. I don't think I've posted it before.

pen & ink

write all over me. write
on my eyelids.
write on my teeth.
write on my stomach.
write on my lips.
write on my palms.
write on my tongue,
my back, my breasts,
write on my bones.

and then

slowly

read me aloud.

for abigail

So I just had to tell a former coworker that my baby died (in so many words) in front of about five people I really didn't know. I've gotten pretty good at this; I try to be kind to people because they're always so shocked and embarrassed at having brought it up.

Then I went into my office, shut the door, cried, and wrote a poem. Really, how do non-writers deal with grief? I can't imagine.

It's been 29 weeks today since I delivered Abigail stillborn. Only two things got me through those first few weeks after her death: my husband's love and my writing. Every morning I'd wake up knowing I had to face another long day without her, and I'd write for hours, then read it to Ben. It was the only thing that could ease the pain.

And yet I never posted any of the poems. I don't know why. I guess I was just waiting for the right time. Which is to say, now.

Here are two of my favorites, in order of favoritism.

Songs for Abigail

VI

Still the bells and muffle the drums;
with solemn step the parents come.
With weeping hearts and lowered eyes
they curse the day that Abigail died.

Let the trees shed their leaves in the summer field
Let the autumn harvest refuse to yield
Let the birds fold their wings and forsake the sky
The world must be broken, that Abigail could die.

Tell the mourners in a somber throng
To quiet their cries and swallow their song
Let the silence beg the question why,
of all that is possible, Abigail should die.

Stop the waves on the ocean’s shore
Stop the seasons’ changes evermore
Stop the sun in its eternal sky
Let the world mourn that Abigail has died.


III

It’s rained every day since you died.
As if the world weeps with us
and the clouds could swaddle our grief.

A hollow place in the world
echoes with your absence
the space where you should be, and aren’t.

I can almost feel on my pinky finger
where your grip should curl, and surprise me
with its strength. But your hand lies motionless.

It is hard to believe our hearts can keep beating
when yours is silent forever.
That was not the miracle I expected from your birth.

exorcism

Nothing like writing for getting those inner demons out. Actually I wrote a couple new poems tonight. One came in a fit of frustrated boredom - I was restless & aggravated & casting about for something constructive to do - and lo and behold this line popped into my head and I sat down & wrote a poem. I still need to sleep on it, but maybe I'll post it tomorrow morning (if it doesn't suck).

Anyway, it definitely feels like one of those nights where I have an overabundance of creative energy. When my writing starts seeking ways to come out, sometimes it can go in odd directions. Hence the following pantoum, which is tonight's other new poem. I love pantoums; the challenge is really worth it, when it works. It's a form of poetry that originated in Malaysia. The really badass poets will make theirs rhyme, but the crucial thing is the pattern of line repetition.

Caught

I roam from window to empty window
a restless ghost caught in currents of thought.
I wait for snow that will not fall
count endless minutes in the night.

A restless ghost, caught in currents of thought
I trace invisible patterns on the windowpane
count the endless minutes in the night,
narrow my eyes against the sun’s next rising.

I trace invisible patterns on the windowpane
my fingers fret and fold the blankets square;
I narrow my eyes against the sun’s next rising
try to will the ongoing, ever-deepening night.

My fingers fret and fold the blankets square
I place useless objects in a useless order,
try to will the ongoing, ever-deepening night
to stay firm, hold fast, but it slips through my hand.

I place useless objects in a useless order
wait for something to make deeper sense at last,
to stay firm, hold fast, but it slips through my hand,
leaving me restless and thoughtful again.

I wait for something to make deeper sense; at last
there are only a few final truths left to face.
They leave me restless, thoughtful again
watching the clouds, backlit by a half-moon.

There are only a few final truths left to face.
I wait for snow that will not fall
watching the clouds, backlit by a half-moon.
I roam from window to empty window.

Before I got into the pantoum, I thought I'd work on some previous poetry & settled on one that's been nagging at me. It still needs some work, but after messing with it for the last hour, it's gotten a lot closer.

I used to be beautiful

Long did I laugh in my days of youth
and I danced like the wings of the air.
I trusted the promise life whispered,
trod the twists of my path without fear.

“You’re beautiful,” strangers would say
as if in a dream, caught off guard.
I moved in joy, sang to the wind;
blithe and blind to Time’s vagaries.

Then my daughter, my first child,
died in my womb.
And suddenly

I was not the golden leaf shining bright
but a faded skeleton crumbling into winter.

And I was no longer beautiful.
I was invisible.

For who is left to mourn
but what is left behind.
A skeleton, crumbling
to invisible air.

Long did I laugh in the days of my youth
and the world lived for beauty, and I
loved the living of it. But the dying,
the dying of beauty is a hard thing.

And what was left behind, in Time,
you would not want to see at all.

livin' the blues...

So I was talking blues poetry tonight with my friend Grant, who's this amazing blues musician, and coincidentally this morning I was working on my favorite blues poem that I've written; it's been on my mind all day. Anyway, after percolating on this for some 14 hours, I think it's just time to post this poem and get it out of my system.

Okay, this is pissing me off - in the line 'south west north east', there's supposed to be a lot of space between the words, but blogspot keeps removing the additional spaces. Grrrrr... I hate auto-formatting.

wandering hermit crab blues

ann went down to the river
to get herself a lover.
ann thought it might be fun
to find one that didn’t run.

so. now ann crouches in a cluttered room
sees herself sweeping out kids with a broom.
ann cringes to watch the artistic wife
of her lover, her love, in a realistic life.

ann’s legs are hurtin and feet dust-bit.
ann’s eyes are tired of all this bullshit.
ann’s been walkin a long fuckin way
ann’s gonna get to a crossroads someday.

south west north east

space upon space piled in between
ann closes her eyes and sees what you mean.
her heart will slow its jumps apace
ann just wants to touch your face.
just want to see if that skin and bone
ain’t the doorway to my new home.

ann hangs her head and admits
a salty hermit crab she is.
scuttles about from shell to shell
careless sometimes; always means well.
too drawn by hidden rooms inside,
by tattooed colors, ocean-dyed,
she moves on in and sets a spell
till cramped legs make her shift
or she stumbles, takes a step amiss.
whether shell shatters, grows
out of fit or she outgrows it,
time comes, there she goes –

tattooed on this crustacean mind
every home my heart did find
time-scarred spirals I’ve had to flee
I leave them – yes. They stay with me –
shattered, perfect drops of shells
shards of mansions I knew too well.

(alice said)

Mad props to Soham for all the inspiring feedback she gave me on my poetry. I've been doing some more revision, and while many of the poems are still a bit too raw to post or re-post, (alice said) is ready for her turn. Granted, I didn't revise it much.

This is perhaps one of my all-time favorite poems that I've written - top five, anyway. I wrote it during my senior year of college, when I was completely freaking out about my life, and pretty much on the verge of a nervous breakdown. I actually feel that this poem prevented said breakdown, which is probably a very good thing. ; )

(alice said)

pick a place and start.
doesn’t matter where;
far too much to really
do anything. so i start
with the little things.

put aretha on the stereo.
kick some clean laundry
across the floor. hang my coat
on a chair besieged by books.
no space to vacuum the piles
left by off-kilter ashtrays.

sit down and
write a letter to myself:

hey babe. haven’t seen you in a while.
i hear about you sometimes, almost by
accident, and i just wonder:
what the fuck are you doing with yourself?

i’m sorry i threw the sink at you.
come home. i miss you like hell.

didn’t sign it though.
she knows.
she feels me think about her.

week later
got a postcard back

having a fabulous time, no idea
what i’m doing. does it matter?

yeah; just like her.
didn’t sign it either.

she’ll be back.

* * *

this morning another postcard
portrait of a woman on it
hair auburn, head turned
to one side. you can only see
one of her eyes
but what an eye.

it read
(it was hard to read)
coming home soon
not quite sure how – or when –
please please please
don’t go anywhere
shit i miss you, i’m going crazy out here

crazy i’m going crazy i’m fucking crazy i –
i hear the refrain play in her head
like it’s my own. start cleaning
to make it stop. she doesn’t know to do
stuff like that, doesn’t know how to stop
the head-hamsters of doubt and desire
that run their wheel all night all night –
you don’t know her like i do
when she can’t see the floor for the clutter
she forgets there’s a floor. she’s just like that.

thing about her is though
feet never quite touch the ground anyway.

* * *

put the postcard on my wall
portrait side out

dreamed last night
the auburn woman spoke to me

alice said (her name was alice)
“honey, when are you gonna chill out?
sometimes I think you haven’t learned shit.
remember when you knew
how to wait? honey
(she looked me right in the eye then, both eyes,
I couldn’t move, I couldn’t tell you what color they were,
her starched ruffled collar gasped as she turned
right in the eye she looked me)
lemme tell you something.

she always comes back.
girl, this is just life.

you two can’t walk far in this world
without running into each other.”

Deadline achieved!

Well, I handed over my poetry manuscript last night, in as good shape as I could get it. I'm so curious to hear what my friend's feedback is. Now, I feel like I need another big writing project... just as soon as I go on vacation, which is in three days. I could always try and work on the Peggy-O story, so swiftly abandoned, or god forbid, even finish the freelance articles I could actually get paid for writing.

Sigh. I'm tired. It's been a pretty hectic few weeks. Miles to go before I sleep.

I'm just going to close my eyes and select a random poem for today's poetry. This is from the 'Autumn' section of my manuscript, 'The First Year'.

wardreams

she wakes again with sweat
under the fine hairs
on the back of her neck
afraid somewhere no one can see

she rises and tucks her hair behind her ears
looks out the window
into the grey, yet-to-rain morning
hands clasped to her chest
folded
as if in prayer

Oh, the holidays.

Okay, okay. OKAY.

I admit it. I have not worked on my writing every single day lately.

In fairness, I've had a shitload of other things to do for the holidays, and am insanely busy both at work and trying to get ready for family to come visit. I managed to put in a little time during a couple days, but not even according to my regular routine, so everything feels off.

However, I am still deadline-sensitive, and I think I'm pretty close to having the order of the manuscript done. I'm also printing about a dozen of what I hope are the final versions of these poems.

So, for today's poem, I'm putting up one that's just gotten what may be its final revision.

eating my words

sometimes it is not the words spoken at all
ears deaf as a pond prick unbidden
sensing quiet orchards of meaning,
stretchings of silence thick as tangerines,
sweet as clementines, bitter as oranges.

our lips stretch over our teeth as we eat
our emotions raw, choking, slurping the juices
from grimy palms. cracked nails hunt down
escaping pulp, trapped between our teeth,
to be rolled by tongue-tip and swallowed
unconsciously, as one savors recent joy.

letting the loose ends go, calming the spaces
in between, framing with hardly trembling
fingers that which leaps: boxing the silence;
its soft corners rounding my gut, fleshing
the bones of my mind peach-soft, blooming.
the words hang as branches, shaking the air,
as what you mean
drops from what you say, silence ripe and red : : :

ugh...

So, all that blase talk below about round 2 being easier than round 1 was clearly delusional. Since each round has a couple phases - putting the poems in an order, letting it sit for 12-24 hours, going back and reading through and identifying what transitions don't work - I really spoke too soon. Or maybe I just shouldn't have read through them last night, when I was exhausted and trying to de-stress from a long day. For whatever reason, it was rather painful. I nearly gave up, found myself wondering why I even bothered to write. You have to learn to ignore those kinds of thoughts if you want to be a writer, I think.

But it reminded me of when I was in college studying with Suzanne Gardinier, who is an amazing teacher, and showed me how to really take a poem apart & put it back together. There's always a 'dark night of the soul' period in that process, too, right before it comes together beautifully & so satisfyingly. So I'm going to trust to that experience and hope this sonuvabitch comes together in the very near future. (It better, since I've only got about five days to my deadline.)

Update: I just went into round 3, and it is totally coming together! Very exciting.

For today's poem, I just flipped through the pages blindly and chose one. It ended up being rather fitting, since it's supposed to snow later.

winter poem

snow falls.
the clouds hide the stars.

but in the streetlight
a thousand stars
fly towards earth.

the wind's icy teeth
rakes through my bones.

i am alone
but comforted
by the world's desolate cries.

Round 2

Well, I survived the first round of trying to order the poems in my manuscript, and have moved on to round 2, accompanied by a ton of editing and attention to titchy little details. (Dictionary.com is trying to tell me titchy is not a word. That's ridiculous.) Round 2, I'm glad to report, was significantly less painful than round 1.

Here's the poem for today; I wrote this while studying archaeology in Ireland, about 10 years ago.

Tongue of Stone

yes and even bones decay in this earth,
dissolve in patient soil, below immense
megaliths, unyielding: portals, the key lost,
tongue held. we dig under stone bellies,
two clay beads, a gold torc, a cup, a pot. we smell
soft fragments of bone, unearthed. but our tongues
seek songs, and we beg the stones for sheet music.
six thousand years ago we wrote it ourselves
with ripped and callused hands, hands weary of silence.
we faced our tombs west, to daily drink the sunset. northeast
for the sunrise. we covered the threshold in white quartz
and it blazed a holy fire in the sun. then one by one
we sealed them off, walked away with a lullaby.
place your hand on the stone. feel it breathe.
learn to listen like stone. step lightly as you circle;
try to remember, seeing from all sides but one.

the stone laughs. poor humans – do you not
cry yourselves to sleep, eradicable as you are?
walk on , two-legger. someday you too shall curl
beneath me, cradled in my womb, waiting
as I wait. time will find you searching darkly
for the passage, the slow birth of death. learn
to wait. one day I shall light the torches for you,
mark the path leading deep to our mother’s womb.
there lie the questions you’ve forgotten how to ask.
and when eons from now your children beg me for answers
I shall sing to them
how you thought; what you loved; your forgotten name;
yes and even as your bones decay below me.