Last Hours of 2010 poem

Every regular day as I leave home,
some faint tongue of fate whispers, “Accidents
happen.” There’s my daughter in the window,
waving goodbye, voice faint behind the panes.
Is it life or my perception that slows?

Somehow that moment crossing the flagstones
fills with such longing and love and regret
as though every tragic, comic, mundane,
epic journey of the Mandelbrot set
of life grows from each goodbye and hello.

Still I go and come in a bittersweet
ballet with many storylines wending
where they may. A world blooms when the car starts,
its fragrance accidentally undoing
all other worlds for now, for today. Then

the day transpires, and soon I’m returning
home safely. (My wife asked for this ending.)

darkness

1.
when i think of light
i think of nuclear bombs
a dazzle so bright
capable child of our technologics

lit, it melts our eyes

2.
the nun from africa
talks about how
it is too hot mid-day
sun is a menace
where she lives
night is the balm there, night the time
for getting things done
night, the cool, receptive darkness
enswirls her, a time of conversation
and connection,
laughter and action

3.
because of sky god confusion
some burn their eyes in upward glances
defying earth

4.
i will gladly receive
the gifts of worm duff and leaf goo
the rot of earth
which birthed
this toasted hazelnut rice stuffed squash
these little leaves of thyme
minting my tongue

some sun, sure, but remember
the greater embrace of clay (volcanic molten ash balls long ago
lobbed to our now, capable of holding water and so many minerals)
and the endless dundering sundering
rock tumble of pangaea and glacier
across geologic aeons which gives
us this fertile
dirt:
earth

5.
down into the dark caverns in earth belly
down the earthworm superhighways
down the muckpiles and festering fresh rot
fungal beloveds and mycelial mushroom muscle

down into the cunt of the earth, the earthwomb,
the throbbing life always in labor and always in birth
somewhere fallowing elsewhere nourishing

beyond our projection of terror given by birth-stealing
religion (pretense of fecundity)

beyond our learned aversion to mystery and
glorification of cause-effect

beyond our recent primacy on sight and
loss of low light or night
movement

6.
we can still walk the night path, a life
giving chant on our earth loving tongue,
gently receiving the moist cool linger
a kiss of darkness to bless our way

7.
as we learn to stop poisoning the earth and it becomes
impossible for corporations soon denuded of their false bodies
to profit short term off of long term poison

as we lose our fear of the wild rampage of life
and reconnect with our inner wilderness
our sex high howling pleasure and savoring succor

8.
i will give you back your sky gods and internecine
nuclear fire shatter; you give me back the earth

9.
no need to ask or give; we reinhabit.
daily
in slither and wriggle,
dance and shout
in organic dill and dogwood blossoming
this gorgeous, fertile
larger body,
arm of our arms,
leg of our legs,
planet supple
huge and healing
dark and moist
depth revealing
we-earth
we-earth
we-earth


26 Dec 42010

Bonus Razzle Prompt for Winter Stills - Favorite Words/Scrabble Poem

Greetings Imunurian Poets,
I am imaging us at a winter table, sipping tea. We are enjoying a mellow evening of poem making with scrabble tiles near a roaring fire. Some of the words I might use would include quiescent, quaff, blooming, razzle, bless, sail, and gloaming.  Please feel welcome to make a poem with some of your favorite words (or you could use some of these). Your poem could be spare like a leafless tree or frolicsome as your mood depends. You can write your poem in tiles or letters, evocative haiku or splendid word-fountain, laser beam or galaxy, your choice. Holiday blessings from  : ) Scooter near Solstice 2010

Label: Razzle, Poem

Winter

like a clock of sunrises,
somewhat cloud muzzled,
winter comes, spreading her cape
of dead plants and twigs,
birds in droves
of pippery, and deep
fallows. the core of me slows
to a crevasse, a whisper,
not even wind in this
valley. the only snow's
inside, but that's enough:
to be wiped clean to nubs,
nibbled by those
who aren't fully asleep--
and slumbering in the slow breath
of those who are.

a time of bedazzlement
if sun peaks through to the smile in me.
but mostly blackness wombs me
in winter.
winter rings
the almost full moon
in a circle of light, a glowsphere miles out
from her fresh gaze, accentuating the fathomless
blanks of space.
deep in clearing the heart
of me, that deep in
these moonportals of cold white
embalm the night in me.
these inner snow flurries
this cold
winter.

Season’s undoings

Great earth snakes change guard
over tiny us, slide in in new skins.

Winter pours from the ground
to lay across the woolen world

in cool, nest-sitting repose.
It abides, eating my certainty.

The shapes of summer’s purposes
melt in its smooth belly.

I can’t guess what I knew
in fall or spring. For now,

just walking to that chair and
sitting down seems the only thing.

Its Own Wonder

i.

The dark left as itself
impresses upon me a whole,
a depth incomparable,
a wonderment beyond
what typically is taken
as the simple absence of light

For the dark is itself
a deep nourishing, a salve
to my bones and beingness as
I walk in the dark, sampling
this exquisite treat of the
unnameable senses

True would be the loss
to suffer nyctalopia*, although
many do without knowing
this condition is theirs,
we've become so blind
within the hierarchy of light

ii.

Dusk finds the ground within
such that surfaces dissolve
give way to the softer core heat
This communication begins
its emanation, naming each
thing anew as dark arises
In contrast, intentioned light
overshadows and can carelessly enter
the exquisiteness of the dark
where naturally listening things
recede into their essential
incognito. The dusk is that listening

iii.

What do we have in common
with the dark? Are we not dark,
dark in our marrow, in our quiet,
in so many yet to be
realized ways?

And how are we similar to a flame?
The flame, kin to the dark, is it not
ever tender to the shadows?
Lighting a flame, our dark
dances within, with, and around us.

iiii.

As a sweet melancholy
unlike anything
I am drawn to take to the dark,
an exquisite entry

A prescription unique,
a remembering
timeless
walking forward looking deeply
eyes open and open again,the vastness of the dark field,
to deeply see
what cannot be seen
what cannot
be perceived
through a different wonder.



*nyctalopia |ˌniktəˈlōpēə|
noun ~ the inability to see in dim light or at night. Also called night blindness .

This Week's Prompt: Dark

  

Darkness.

The Dark.

Darkening. 

Pitch dark.

Dark chocolate with dark beer.

Darkrooms.

Dark matter.

Donnie Darko.

Dark field.

Dark eyes.

Crepuscular.

Benighted.

Aphotic

Make the absence of light your field of exploration this week, or find light within the dark. 

     You could even write your poem by candlelight or flashlight if you wish.

     Keywords this week: "poem, dark"                                                                                    

The days of paper routes and phone books

We would sit in the cherry tree,
high up on thin limbs that could barely hold a breeze,
looking for fruit that had ripened yet somehow escaped the squirrels.

We would sit under the bushes,
inside the bushes in fact, where grown-ups would never think to look.

We would hide inside cabinets and closets,
sometimes hide so well we wouldn’t know
the others had given up seeking and turned to snacks.

We would haul the dog up to the tree house
and pretend we didn’t hear our parents calling.

There were screens on the windows, of course,
but just the one screen in the house,
the size of a sheet of loose leaf,
and we were forbidden to watch its black and white opinions most of the time.

The phone was attached to the wall,
which was fine because people rarely called,
certainly not during dinner.

We didn’t think it was idyllic.

It wasn’t. It was just the suburbs
and kids came home from Vietnam in boxes
or ended up like Uncle Ray, pumped full of lithium
in Pilgrim State for trying acid or being gay or both.

The girl next door got picked up for breaking in
and stealing mom’s jewelry while we were on vacation
and suddenly the cat was missing an eye.

A microwave was merely some mystery of radio relay,
so dinner was more likely to be cold...
and it wasn’t called domestic violence yet
even though the churches were full of folk music.

We would hide under the eaves.

We would crawl beneath our beds.

We would sit inside the bushes,
bitten by brambles, bleeding from needles and thorns.

But it was quiet there, secret and safe,
and no one could find us for hours at a time.

a sharp remembering

I.
you don't have to teach me
i said
once two hands are on,
and my fingers close around
the scuffed, oil honed snath
curving
into angled reaping lance
i am gone, can't hear you anyway

II.
in the morning we are quiet as harvest begins
gruff greetings as each arrives
animals provisioned, cow milked
get ready for a long day now
that the sunrise has boiled over
from all that madness
into a bend of pure blue,
and the dew has all returned to heaven.

now even the birds have begun
attending to everyday chores.

check your blade for sharp up against the sun
any dull bit, too wide to splice light,
will glint and sparkle and needs attending.
your back stays straight, arms as well
arc your torso a stiff hip twist
follow the elliptic side to side
with every full swing
as if your pelvis were the earth.

III.
i go in and out of believing in human past lives,
sometimes ancient antiquity
is tirelessly thronging with my people,
my blood kinned to so many of history's helices,
that i rest confidently cradled
in the long learning journey i ride.

the rest of the time it is obvious
that mostly i have been dirt, tree limbs, stones.
and that is that, beautifully.

until i pick up a scythe. or a sickle.
and then god plucks me,
the ground cracks and swallows me
and with instantaneous precision
drops me directly onto a sweat painted field
into the metered beat of swinging tools
the whole farm full out to help.
metal flying close to the ground
without knocking rocks
grain sundered into swaths
braced to be banded
and stacked in stooks.

i am content here
as regular as breathing
as familiar as the smell of my bed
reaping by hand
the wedded cells of sky earth and water
united in biological matrimony
a million times over
in each golden stalk, each budded head of wheat
that sways in the rosy acreage
as one breathing thing
which we have come to bow, fell, level
and lay down to dry
for a snowy night's worth of bread.

Future of IMUNURI poets

This Week's Prompt: Time Machine

Enter the poet's time machine, 100 years before now or 100 years hence. What are you doing? What are you dreaming? What do you eat? What do you think about? Who or what do you care about?

Whether you're in a Jetson's flying zip or a horse-drawn carriage, channel your poet-ancestors or poet-progeny from across the deep rumples of time.

If you feel inspired, you could even invent or revisit poetic forms in the time machine.

Welcome to the rifts and wild adventures of timespace!

This week's keywords: "poem, time machine"

Junk Drawer

Floorboard time capsule spy stash treasure chest,
secret identity told in tchotchkes,
smudgy paraphernalia sitting chaste,
where are the doors opened by all these keys?
Yesterday’s faded clarities have chased

postponed questions from this walkie-talkie:
Why shouldn’t I eat up the cold, red plums?
What messages live in these inky streaks?
Who speaks from the holy medicine steam?
This drawer collects the whimsy of your choice.

Decant the junk onto the floor. Vacuum
off the layer of homogenous dust.
Now you have to winnow, to make more room—
so meet each object anew and adjust
the boundary between preserved and decayed

memories. Then close your shrine to sweet rust,
your miscellaneous matters of trust.

How to Write a Poem

First off, give up trying
to write a poem.
Just give it up!
Do something else instead:
basketball with a homeless kid,
laundry, taxidermy, nap.
Send roses to the obese neighbor
in the blue house up the street.
Email your dead mother.
Call three friends and make fun of them.
Walk across town barefoot
in search of the burning bush.
Gargle with baking soda,
brush your cat's teeth.
Wait for a moment when your heart is quiet,
then grab a pen and paper
and quickly scrawl
your soul's most recent dream -
not a poem, not a poem.