Walking out

Backstage is such a hole compared to the house,
the lobby, the balcony, even the restroom—
dark corners, funny smells, greasepaint and mildew,
all the dust of theater ghosts left since the first curtain call.
Backstage thin hallways, no wider in places that your shoulders.
You stand sideways, back against the backside of the proscenium,
flat black and pocked plywood, looking fine on their side only.
Ropes, cables, counterweights, power cords smeared with oil—
you are no more than a prop yourself, standing there
in the slip of air between the wings passing time with the graffiti
marked high and low by generations of exuberant closing-night casts—
names that have gone now—I mean that have stayed—
while those who they belonged to... Maybe I can find someone I know.
Jack something. Jasper. Who’s that? Ellen Roseberg. Janice G-something.
James no last name. A lot of Ja- names in show biz. I’ve noticed that.
Jason Bostick. I wonder if he’s back here somewhere,
or in the greenroom over a border of bulbs around a mirror—
always operating at about 75% with the rest burnt, loose or missing—
the heat of the greenroom. As the audience settles itself, I remember
seeing Nora, Nora Ephron I want to say, but that couldn’t have been it—
she bent over and I looked right down her blouse. She seemed older
than I was at sixteen. Those tits. Even now. Looking down her shirt
and she didn’t know. And Jay opened the bathroom on Laura, peeing.
When she came out, he bounded up to make a joke of it.
“That or feel awkward for weeks,” he reasoned. He was right.
That time Frank Brady had me over to his house after a show
and laughed and said “Look at what my mom sent me!”
A diagram of a hemorrhoid. TMI. She must’ve sent it for a reason.
But I did the standard thing: switched the subject,
pretended it didn’t happen. I haven’t seen him in 25 years.
The last audience is seated. A change in the air echoes back here.
There’s the microphone, watercolor light, curtains. I’m not ready
in this tight black netherworld nowhere. They should make this place
like the entry to a slaughterhouse, like that autistic doctor did.
What’s-her-name. Funny name. Sojourner. Journey. Prentiss. Shirley.
How she designed slaughter plants so cows wouldn’t fear so much,
so they could be held kindly and go peaceful. Doctor Azure. Doctor Bliss.
Doctor Cradle. Doctor Donnybrook. The gates open ahead.
Light takes my face.
I’m on.

June 28, 2011

One week after the longest day
of this endless tragic year
I glance out back
at my budding summer garden
to discover the rain
playing a viola
hosting a surprise party
for the baffled world.

Solstice Prompt: Poem of Change

On this outstanding wheel-turning time of change, you are invited to write a poem of change, a solstice poem. What is at its greatest, most refulgent? What is turning inward?

This is a time of year known for midsummer celebrations across many faith walks, including celebrating the yin (with the turn toward the dark), bonfire jumping, first fruits, divination, and celebrations of the hearth.

What is changing in you? What are you celebrating?

Post labels: solstice, prompt, [poet's moniker]

Lament of the Obese Wraith

Now that I'm dead I need more exercise.
Death strips you thin, they say, but they're dead wrong.
I roam back alleys, heavy with regret.

In my day men loved my supple lies,
my breasts like loaves of bread, my promises.
Wise men thought twice and gave me up for Lent.

Now I buckle sidewalks with my thighs,
trigger earthquakes, stagger like Queen Kong,
half her height and twice as corpulent.

An irate priest once tried to exorcise
my bloated presence from his parish yard.
I stuck in his gate 'til winter was half spent.

Greed transcends the grave, entices flies,
distends the ego, basks in disregard.
I haunt dark corridors, fat and out of breath.

Frieze in time

Frieze in time

Ah to smell the white sweet pea blossoms
in the cradle of civilization
rocked by the poetry of Hafiz.

& to wish on Delta trucks of hay
as they zoom through fields of tomato lies
on the 70 mph asphalt
as “heart of stone” plays bye byes.

& to seize the moment christ breathed his last
as you google the five greatest metaphors of all time
starting with “the right people on the bus”
that even the Sufis
do not frieze
in rhyme.

Green Haired Surfer (Catawamp)

Everything changed yesterday when I saw the surfer
Even keel on a hill with slope:
vibrant, bleached, soft green tresses

like kelp beds of meadow drawn
down the back ditch in wild array. She loped
on wheels, serene blesser.

The ocean of rasta moss was drawn
back loosely, her uphill float
an effortless glide the earth caresses.

Inspired, I imagined quitting, becoming an ocean outlaw
to flow through smooth terrains and sprout
locks like wildernesses.

My revery of soft foam crashes
against the tunnel of day job cloak.
I ponder a green freedom that reality distresses.

Peerless, ample surrender, undulant flashes
beckon as the mountain of suits gropes
for my throat. Only the growing earth gets me out of these messes.

Is it the ocean color or the serene stashes --
equilibrium of butte -- that in my heart stokes
what verdure expresses?

Everything changed yesterday when I saw
the green haired surfer. A moment became arctic, frozen,
in embodied growth. What senses

will that tidal rift awaken, gnashed
by the gravity well of two sheering continents, space stolen
from time, what bright, grass-colored lenses?

Or new eyes even? A waterworld mashes
in the orb of one eye-terrarium saved
by a momentary green-haired rider - I'll never know her name, what sends

her out on Friday night twilight, this merwoman who washes
across my awareness, the quake
of gentle green she condenses.

(If a song, the refrain...*)
Even suited, I will be this surfer. Dashing,
verdant Medusa uprising, like new continents shaking,
a mesmerizing body of peace.

6/11/11

* Note: Little sound file of the refrain...Newb at Garage Band, have to wait for it to start...

untitled (about what)

I’d like to welcome all things without names.
Not almond slivers, spring fever or motherboards.
Not baby’s breath, embouchure, heliofranticulating or stein lids.

But this poem isn’t a muster roll call, award pageant or paean.
It’s an open field of summer that barely contains its own accord.
It’s something like the unnamed soul of a fictive goat kid.

I want to invite not those things either but my own mind to the game
of conceiving what things might fall through a sky-lintelled undoor.
Try to describe in a teenager’s vocabulary the face of God.

Does everything called a dandelion look the same?
Please don’t label the line between the winter tree and the apple core.
The phenomena of names is only a grown-up cloud

that has insertions where some other welcome waterflame
verbing unaboutly holidays its last shardcords
(of deselected ancientless pluribus-tethered kiteydids).

untitled (adjustment)

After last Sunday’s memorial ritual,
only dance could release the enzymes
that turn grief into a citrusy meringue.

And 12 hours after that trance, my muscles
seized on the stillness of aftertimes,
stalwart through pain’s harangue.

This creaky morning I guessed 1997, fall,
as the time Zeda, my grandpa, lay supine,
his soles and my belly conversing in a language

invented mythic eras past. Breema, it’s called.
My wife-to-be demonstrated its inclines.
Zeda and I: a waterwheel in the Yangtze.

For 80 years, no message befell Zeda Paul,
but his body opened, proving simplicity sublime.
His form, the cello, and mine, the bow, sang.

Now with all those calendar grid lines fallen
and rigor mortifying the tissue that grips my spine,
Juliet’s dead mother and Zeda met in a tango,

came down in the veil at dawn’s inkling of pall.
Zeda bent to heal me, sighing a sign.
My vertebrae tapped a tambourine.

His presence tick-tocked craniosacral
equilibrium into my body as I slept in timeless
proximity to the true truth about the great ring.

Catawamp Form: Healing Poem

The body heals by degrees,
by flashing sunwise whorls and spirals.
The ocean of blood beats pulses of mending.

Tissue bridges are architect's decrees
with big bang energy in building gyres
as life rafts between catastrophe's sending.

Using tears what healing weaves;
can we stop the universe's fire?
Water's warmth carries originary blessing.

My shoulder is an ancient monument built by thieves.
They stole the night stars in choirs
by flood tide's rending.

My rotating sinew is cantilevered greed,
arc of galaxy arm collapsed to grasping desire
to hold canteloupe while bending.

Healing redraws creation's grief.
While throwing stars and eating constellations' flare
We receive the balm of forgiveness' tending.

It heals because of blueprints we retrieve
from ancient libraries carried in stars within DNA's lair,
where we read of matter's branching.

We heal because we remember and believe.
We take the galactic dare
to incarnate as water blossoms, dancing.

Prompt: Catawamp Poem Form and/or the concept of "Catawampus"

Here's a new poem form that came to me this morning. It's called a Catawamp.

A catawamp is a multiple-stanza poem. Each stanza has unique rhyme endings, let's call them A, B, and C (or it could also be A, B, C, and D), which appear in cascading sequence in each stanza. Each rhyme family, A, B, etc. has its own metaphor or body of metaphors it draws from that inform the content of each line A, B, C. No syllable constraints. The Catawamp is about change. It has a transformation point, or describes, within the often contrasting or elemental bodies of metaphors, a transformation. Often the rhyme scheme somewhat changes during or after the transformation in the poem to signify the transformation. (I'll respond with an example to make it easier to understand). Please write a Catawamp or otherwise frolic with the concept of mountain lions, wild animals, or things askew, as the term itself "catawampus" conveys...

Here's how Leif in Washington describes the meaning of catawampus, in case you'd either use the word itself as a prompt, or just because it's interesting to learn new things:

A "catawampus" can be a fierce, imaginary animal, the sort of vicious critter that jumps you in the woods shortly before you're never seen again. But "catawampus" can also mean "askew" or "out of whack," as in "Larry's elopement with Eloise knocked Cindy's wedding plans all catawampus." Neither meaning can be definitively traced, but "catawampus" in the eat-you-alive sense may well be a variant on the American folk term "catamount," short for "catamountain," or mountain lion.

The "askew" sense of "catawampus" is a real puzzler. The first element of the word, "cata," may be related to "cater," also found in the related word "catercorner" (or, as many folks know it, "cattycorner" or "kittycorner"). "Cater" in these words comes from the French "quatre," or "four," and "catercornered" originally just meant "four-cornered." Today "catercorner" means that two things are diagonally across from each other. The "wampus" part may have come from the Scots word "wampish," meaning "to wriggle or twist," which would certainly seem to fit with "catawampus" meaning "askew" or "crooked."

Prompt tags: poem, catawamp, [poet's moniker]

Picture Credit: Lion Cub by Beverly Joubert

A Natural Resource

I found a spark in the Virginia City cemetery

Mary Anne Sparks
1824-1855
in repose
in reprose

gold struck again
gold rush rebegins
2011

the blog bleeps, I write
“will the cotton candy be replaced by water cannons?
“will the hills be torn athunder by torrents of water?”
to free little gold sparks to enrich the few
rewrite, repan, replay
a natural resource

them thar hills to be torn apart one last time
Mary Anne Sparks
will have to move forever

narrative nebulae

What precedes the start of a story arc?
A place devoid of heat, sound and motion,
a still space fraught with potential to spark.

With the house closed and the theater dark,
a bald bulb burns by no one’s attention.
This precedes the start of the story arc.

Then a door opens and light finds its mark.
Humors boil in dramatic reaction,
still spaces fraught with potential to spark.

Beginnings self-invent within each quark,
lightning-fired intrigues of excitation
that proceed to start every story arc.

Soon, there’s the amoeba, and then the shark,
and then the rise and collapse of nations,
still spaces fraught with potential to spark

A ship docks. A cloaked figure disembarks.
What was nothing is now expectation.
What precedes the start of a story arc?
A still space fraught with potential to spark.


***
Also note, my new performance is newly on YouTube!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtlifxOnrJY

dark moon (returning)

when i begin

to imagine

the drop of me

has risen

(effusive ebullient effervescing)


from the river of me


(bereft at parting)

(imagining completion)


i fall

back

into myself




relieved
by the mystery
of totality.





near the dark moon
(graphic source in this)

Sparking [5/30-6/5]

Sometimes we are catalyzing, sizzling, zinging, sparkling, sparking, barking, praising - helping our creative friends on new artistic adventures.

Write a poem inspired by the word "spark" or by the concept of how we can support our friends in creative adventuring...

Tag words: poem, spark, [poet's moniker]


First image: Dalal, oil painting, "A Field of Energy"

Awkward Moment

I tasted infinity in my wife's meat loaf
but was afraid to tell her as she's a
sensitive cook

and besides we had guests.

So I swallowed hard and asked,

to no one in particular,
"What single-syllable sound would you choose
for your epiphany?"

to which my wife replied,

"You're just asking that

because you don't like the meat loaf."

"I don't much care for infinity," I confessed.

"Makes me feel negligible,"

to which all our guests applauded.

"But you are insignificant," said my wife.

"We all are, in the great grand scope of

eternity. In six billion years,

what will it matter?"

We all grew quiet and stared

into our napkins.

"I have an answer to your question,"

said my wife:

"∞"

Infinity sounds like this

Infinity sounds like this

melody manque
text-ure
black coffee cup -cough-ee
tandem addictions ride head long
panic strikes- heart stops - recoil
flee go around get to the
outside air-space

i thought i glimpsed the moon
it was a slowly revolving
lit up cross in the Oakland sky
i thought about visiting the church below
a little later i thought about going
into a movie that already started
it is a Zuni fetish of mine

he got off the bike & sat back down at the fountain
he thought about cotton candy
& water melon pickles
carry down the sum
of the Tigris & the Euphates
in human tears & earthly minutes
(kohl and lace)
musk & mules
2 kivas that meet and form one
earth & sun

asonic bells bring momentary
pain relief clouds merge (red with)
to stencil his radiant design
dissipates into flawed seconds we carry forth
into the dancers rattles
in each circle
the sound of seeds being cracked
timb-r thee tree fell silently.

Yow

YOW! Bit hard
the inside of my mouth.
Why the hell does this happen every time I write a poem?
Chewing away on the
rubbery gristle of
undigestable thoughts
I've inadvertantly devoured
the inside corner of my lip.
Poetry should never be
this hard.

Tune

i.

if sound were a chamber, walls with windows,

(like the inside of my head)

the sounds my mind makes would be

more crisp than yowl

more staccato than inflammatory

an incisive moment of all-sound

cacaphonic not symphonic

i don't know where to carry the boombox of me to

where to play the music that is me, that my thinking

produces. it feels like there's no where

in the freeway and mower hum a day world

airplane guzzlebuzz

for me, perhaps the faroff noon birdsong

is closer, better than clocktick

maybe i sound

more like apple blossoms, less like garbage truck

more rockshine, less garlic press

more chimetone, less crow caw

more magnolia flower spires and azalea blasts, less truck roar and brakegash

ii.

mother dying in a hospital bed

dying more quickly than you or i

at the asymptotic almost-null point

where time expands outward

bridging monstrous chasms

this is when all sound falls away

when time opens up like the ruddy giddy

shutter-stop caesura

between standing up

and finding yourself passed out on the floor

five nurses clucking

iii.

may time always carry us so,

some times a bridge, some time is a gurney

comes to a close, pushes us through the pinprick

(needleprick)

into something more spacious than this, something

fabulous, more like flying carpets, less like hospital gowns

iv.

when my mind, the sound chamber

of me, recomposes itself

after this rattleblast hospital trauma

(only a moment of witnessing the endless trauma that is her daily ken)

settles, how will this have changed my whistle?

what will the acoustics be like

in my headstrong head?

i pray for choral tuning, bell-like, amphoric

so that is my word, my one word, my fe-fye-fo

TUNE TUNE TUNE TUNE

blow across the lid of me

wind of making

tune me whole

This Week's Prompt: Approaching the One syllable - Containing Infinity

Words like Om (Aum) - represent single syllable sounds encompassing many sounds within them.

Yowl. Craw. Plume. Swee. Gong. Chuff. Flum.

What single-syllable sound would you choose for your epiphany? And what poem would express and context that sound?

A potentially fruitful tangent:

(A poet's rendering:) Asymptotes in math represent that the closer you get to a point, the more infinite the space remaining.

Related lyrics for a riff:

Slip slidin' away

Slip slidin' away
You know the nearer your destination
The more you're slip slidin' away

How can a sound be a chamber for sounds within it?

Labels: yowl, poem, poet's moniker

Graphic credit - Wikimedia - Asymptote - in context

No crisis

Beside and beneath the rows of wheels,
the crow moves her crumb with a sound like “mine!”

At last, I’m in short sleeves again, a Hawaiian print
that attracts bees. The neglected sidewalk back
to my desk, cars pass above and beside me.
This is Marin and the world. Summer promises
a tiredness, the urge to unplug while deadlines
turn brittle; anyway, I’d just as soon get fired,

drop to sand as warm as wintertime flannel or
into grass to become the tomato in the salad,
to penetrate the backyard, treasure map in hand,
and stop there by the broken statue, twining
cobwebs around my pinkie. Setting out to rake
the leaves from the library of last autumn,
I stay to the shaded stacks, then let the piles sit.
They could melt away while I rest on a stucco wall,

using the stillness to try to unknot this feeling,
this urgency, this incessant incessantness
that something must be done, now and always,
faster, more efficiently, for the good, for me,
for you, to make everything worthwhile.

Such is the knot. Such is the shady spot.
The smell of jasmine will move me
when we are ready. There is no energy crisis.

Poetry weeds

On
Man blackened
manless hill
Yellow pollen
blazes sun warmed fertility.
Poetry weeds
f*ck in air
Earth’s self cure.

creation (how poetry can save the earth): the musical, concept treatment 1

Sounds:
percussion backbeat, in a pulse, with space between: ticky ticky tock tock ticky tickety tick tick tick ticky ticky tock tock ticky tickety tick tick tock

oboes and flutes: high ethereal long slow sounds

clarinet: low slow sounds, pulsing alternating with the oboes and flutes

(Direction: oboe, flute, and clarinet weave around behind the narration, except for the noted percussion pulses)

Narrator, lecture-style, part 1:

in the jam, in the boot of the car, in the boot of the year, near 2012
when all around with arms upraised the mad scramble
clickety split of the roaring furnace of a warming planet
makes us think we've gone to hell in a handbasket,
poetry reminds us that there is all the time in the world

percussion backbeat, in a pulse, with space between: ticky ticky tock tock ticky tickety tick tick tick ticky ticky tock tock ticky tickety tick tick tock

poems dilate time, create nests of leisure and spaciousness
creativity, as in the expansive moments of our most recent expansion
BIG BANG where change happened in milli-jilli-nanoseconds
creativity also can slow us down, into the breath whisper silent
stillness between eye blinks

percussion backbeat, in a pulse, with space between: ticky ticky tock tock ticky tickety tick tick tick ticky ticky tock tock ticky tickety tick tick tock

poems bring us back to our hearts, where we connect
with the infernal heat of all creation
including the guidance from other star peoples
that we are held in cycles beyond our ken
nestled in the nest of earth, woven of feathers and fluff,
a preciousness pervades

percussion backbeat, in a pulse, with space between: ticky ticky tock tock ticky tickety tick tick tick ticky ticky tock tock ticky tickety tick tick tock

by awakening love,
poetry can save the earth
by resuscitating our capacity to care, our earth empathy
poetry can save the earth
by reminding us of what we share,
poetry saves us, to be whole and present, right here,
right now right here right now
[Direction: "right here, right now" continues and threads through percussive interlude]

percussion backbeat, in a pulse, with space between: ticky ticky tock tock ticky tickety tick tick tick ticky ticky tock tock ticky tickety tick tick tock

Because I am a molecule, a cell in the body of Gaia
and poems are like ribbons of DNA, a code of guidance
in how we can proceed to thrive,
poems are part of the earth,
can save the earth, aché!

percussion backbeat, in a pulse - this time with oboes and clarinets also, also with echoes of the last two stanzas, a culminating flash of furling fires of creativity: "right now right here right now" and the words of the last stanza:
ticky ticky tock tock ticky tickety tick tick tick
ticky ticky tock tock ticky tickety tick tick tock

Scooter Cascadia 5-3-11 12:19pm

The Prompt Now: Can Poetry Save the Earth?

In a time with a perception of energy scarcity, how can poetry help change climate change? How can poetry help us plug into a gejillion watt source of energy, everywhere available: human creativity?

What if we were able to solve the energy crisis by plugging into our creativity, directly? What would the world look like?

Take a flight of fancy and imagine, for better or for worse, literally or metaphorically (or metaphysically)... How can poetry save the Earth?

If you're interested in this topic, check out this recent book: John Felstiner's Can Poetry Save the Earth? (2009)

Keywords: poem, energy, [poet's tagline nickname]

Cleopatra - beloved by her father

Behold. Cleopatra.
The richest woman in the world holds a deadly asp
to her bare nipple.
Ouch! Touche!
She had searched the Egyptian dynasty for the
perfect poison to give Anthony - the Playboy.
She used subjugated subjects for her trials.
Some lived, some died . like you and me.
So Cleopatra came to milk the asp for its venom
that would be Anthony's last
She stood atop a block of petrified wood
outside of Ephesus where she and Anthony after they wed
honeymooned in the past.
as
Paul spoke in the amphitheatre
of
other worldly things
instead of
the asp that then struck Cleopatra dead.

Falling Swan

“Falling Swan”

The river bucks its bed, rising erect

upon its flowing fork. What is a swan

that’s not a river? Rocks, flows, plucks, drops, drifts

all wriggling in in the temporal delight

of gravity defiance. Strings take flight!

As when waves break into misty insects,

the whole seems to split suddenly and fall

back into a familiar bed, but then,

the reclined body hovers, suspended,

beyond angelic midair river swan.

[This is based on a still from a video clip, viewable here:
http://www.openingceremony.us/entry.asp?pid=3238&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Very%20Short%20List%20-%20Daily&utm_campaign=VSL]

blue boy

the painter gave me my brother's face
i was always running in the woods
scruffian mudflap
knee scowl tree tromp



why they gussied me up
and the painter stole sky for my cloth
i'll never know



i was a force of nature
not this delicate aristocrat
they stole my unborn brother's face
shined me beyond recognition
and made me into a boy
stole the sky and moved all the dirt to the back
what kind of picture is that?

This week's prompt: Ekphrasis (4/18-4/24)

Ekphrasis is the dramatic description
of a visual artwork in the medium of words.

This week, choose a work of art as a starting point. Then write a poem
to respond, describe, deepen, reflect, explore, react, explain, transcend...

If possible, post the image with your poem (using the insert image function—
the button in the toolbar that looks like a tiny landscape painting), or post a link to the image
in your comments or as part of your post.

The work pictured here is by Donald Tarahonich.

Keywords: poem, ekphrasis, your name.

ethical lacunae: worldwish

i.
in the phone conversation
she speaks of liking silences
[when the person we're supposed to be helping
and haven't
is flummoxed to find euphemisms
for their disappointment]

"liking" here means
savoring someone's discomfiture--
which is something
that is ethically co
m
promising

ii.
last night i watched the new star trek
on hd - first time watching on that type of machine -
and i knew i was lost forever to the bright
deep beauty
on the other side of the wall
where it is still possible to be gallant, just,
and make a difference

i will walk through, doubtless

iii.
is this better than liking terse walls of silences,
to prefer
escape?

iv.
the deeper worldwish
in the heart of me
is for right-here-breath,
staying-with,
abiding

the notsilent silence of tidal windtreebreathing
the notsilent peace of skin-in-earth

Plan 2 - a short story in progress

Plan 2 – a short story in progress

Plan 2 heard its rice burn whine just before the motorcycle pulled up near where he sat. The operator was a guy wearing a blue neck kerchief and a helmet with blue and red x-rays on either side. He was mustacheless with a blond goatee. His blond hair came out from behind his gray helmet. He was wearing red high tops with green laces. The bike was an imported Panda VI chrome and red. The guy backed the bike into the curb. Plan 2 came over and got on back.

“Where to?” the guy asked

“Santa Cruz dude”.

“That’s in California man.”

“I know. Let’s stop at Tulane first”.

“Who ya gonna call” read the banner flying from a wooden two-story Tulane student apartment building. Across the street from it an answer on another white banner with black dripping oily ink

. 1-800-BLOWOUT Their toll-free number provides a clue

As the cycle slowed then stopped Plan 2 hopped off and went around the back of the blowout banner building. The wooden steps to the second floor were red-paint flecked and slippery from too hot sun. At the top there was no one visible through the glass window of the door. Plan 2 felt the door knob turn under his hand and he strode in. He went down the hall to number 23 and did a light three rap knock. Tuh tuh pause tuhng. A blond girl wearing après ski boots with fake fur over blue jeans and a levi blouse tied at the waist answered. She smiled and said “That was fast”. Plan 2 reached in his pocket and handed her a white envelope. She reached into her jean’s pocket and pulled out a silver money clip and counted off 3 twenties. Plan 2 looked up from her bare belly button took the cash and said “ See ya”.

II

Plan 2 dialed on his phone that 1-800 BLOWOUT number and was directed to a menu where he pressed 2 for Clean-up opportunities. It reminded him of the options courts gave for weekend service. One time he even got credit for volunteering time at an art center doing screen printing. He had liked that. There had been women and paints and cool machinery. Now he got another 504 area code number to follow up through. He called and finally got a live person who said he had to complete a phone interview to proceed any further. Cool. He said he was ready.

1-800 Blowout Survey

“Can you fish?”

“Can you operate a portable P.C.?”

“Are you allergic to any chemicals?”

“Can you swim?”

“Do you have a car?”

“Do you have a driver’s license?”

& that was it. Leave your cell phone number & an email address.

Plan 2 tugged his hat down low dialed his cell again & punched Lisa’s #.

“Man, I just did the 1-800-Blowout survey.”

“And?”

“They want to know if you can fish.”

“And?”

“Anyone can fish.”

“I can’t.”

“I told them I can.”

“You better watch out. They will send you to clean up one of the alligator swamps.”

“They might. Well, wish me luck Lisa.”

“Good luck.”

“See you later.”

“After a while.”

Plan 2 snapped his cell shut like it was an alligator’s jaws.

query

What is your true nature, it asks me,
Part lover, part Zen teacher,
slapping the back of my hand
Til I awaken
You want mountain? Easy--
Sling me across the landscape
like the body of a voluptuous
sleeping grandmother
yes,
a voluptuous, sleeping
grandmother,
or a river
calling one fickle moment after next--
go on, just try to step into me twice

I could claim my calm pool and my drop
rapids and my many many eddies
But that’s too easy
because really what lies at the bottom
of each breath

is the line of ants doing the bunny-hop
along the edge of my bathtub,
and you know what we are all asking,
what you are already thinking—

Why do ants carry their dead?

this tiny army of pumped-up amazons
hoist their fallen sisters onto their backs
and carry this mystery with each body,
as they spill into the hole at the edge of the caulking

..they carry them back and devour them to absorb their memories

...they are delivered to the great ant graveyard
and laid to rest where their sisters,
like weeping elephants, will visit
season after season, to graze their antennae
against the beloved and hollow exoskeletons

..that when they tap each other as they pass
on opposite commutes, they’re playing
an endless game of telephone,
so when the deceased are dismantled
like old motherboards
the punchline data is finally retrieved,
the fruit of a million messages
passed a million times.

I sit for 20 days in silence,
every moment a wrestling match
with god, and a hope
to emerge with my life purpose,
or at least a better sense of humor.
Instead, I emerge from the cave
with only this:
Ants..carry…dead…why?
and the oracle I consult
heaves up a thousand pages of Darwin
and a thousand more, asking the same question

I know the answer is there, but I prefer,
I think, to end my days not knowing,
but imagining,

because
every time I ask, that long line
of the humble and mighty sisters
carries me back to the colony
where everything,
sublime and grotesque,
is happening at once

This Week's Prompt: Playing Telephone

During this time of Mercury retrograde, this week's prompt relates to the telephone. Write a poem where the lines play telephone with each other, or where the poem is sparked by a line from a telephone conversation. Modern riff: text or tweet sparks the verse.

Alternately, on a Star Trek riff, how can poetry be like telephone conversations with the past or future, or with some other part of ourselves? What would you want your Star Trek communicator to look like and function as? -- Or what would your character's signature line be, rather than "Beam me up, Scotty"?

Bonus: a Star Trek Communicator sound - this one with music

Post keyword labels: telephone, poem, [poet's moniker]

every question

only north facing shadow pockets still cradle snow now
hope's eager trembling made flesh
looks like daffodils plump emerald leaves
only 2 inches high when it snowed again
and again
now at 4 inches they have decided to make a run for it
their elongated swelling explains how
crumpled yellow satin, bunched and morphing,
is gathering everything it has to fling itself
(how opening is like a leap and a freefall)
and uncurl into this decidedly uncertain world.
it is the answer, the same answer everywhere
to almost every question i ask.
the river, slamming our april fools snow down into the valley,
agrees.
guttural cooing to and fro,
the tree hidden bard owls repeat it.
teenagers strut in sudden april tee shirts,
they know too.
spring hopes eternal.
and the world answers every question i pose
straight from the senses of babes
now now now now now.

Drum Solo - My Icon

box harp

rattletrap luster of the box
from penney's, sunrise peach, bent-ended
with the rubber bands arrayed
in longwise plinths

i am in the strumming fingers
of this gimcrack lyre
the music rising as air castles
from this fount of pling



2 april '2011

Squeezebox Sonnet