I always find it interesting (/weird/appalling/hilarious/mystical) to read over poems I randomly wrote on this blog at 4am on sleepless nights, or at 1pm during a lunch break, etc. Below is a compilation of my 2009 blog poems. I won't drone on with the disclaimers, but really...I made a point to not edit these poems at ALL. If I was 1/2 asleep while I wrote it, cool. My blog poems are, of course, very different from the poems I actually spend time on, editing over and over.
What I appreciate about blogging (or at least how I approach it), is how raw, random, pure, and impermanent it is...
Anyway, blah blah blah, here are the ol' 2009 blog poems....more to come in 2010
***************************
December 3, 2009
In Media Res
I found myself
with feet
on my chest and
bowling balls
in my arms--
mobiles hanging from each hand--
as I searched
and searched
for something
or someone to tell
me
that the survival
of now
happens.
I,
in the midst
of my own
perceived kaleidoscope,
felt a suffocation that existed
solely
in an anxious mind
that then somehow,
with no warning,
found comfort
in the quotidian
sighs of recognition
and the subtle
beauty
of something waiting
patiently
for a ray or glimmer
to make its rounds
when, really,
the darkness
never was.
******************************
September 3, 2009
By Now We've Discovered
That what a balloon needs
to rise is air, crumpled
paper will never relax,
and it may not feel
like the right time. Stars
are gas, gas!
The chord may not sever,
all we can do is flush
out the toxins, approximate
numbers and times per week
and how long did we go without
hot, salty water cleansing
our pores?
By now we've discovered
what it is to dip into one
another, suck
on the tip of the other's
sweet finger, make
a mess of ourselves through
lies, assumptions, lust
and wandering roamings
beyond dusk. Arm
always in arm
even when we're not
succumbing to the fact
that everything changes [and thank God
for that] and we don't
even have a point in mind.
What it is that we've discovered
is this:
the rolling wave never comes
to a halt.
************************
September 11, 2009
The Logos of Love, Now Updated
There are days I sit
back in my chair and dream
about words like fortnight
and hitherto and the people
who would offer them
as if they were tree
or weekend.
There are days I feel
those words in the air
as if they still belong
to what's inside [and how
true that is]. Days
where even the bus
driver has a "How do I love
you, let me count the ways"
draping over his shoulders.
[to be continued…]
************************
April 5, 2009
What is Left
Small, hard, silver gadget
wedged between The Agony and The Ecstasy
and the black heels that landed me
my first job.
The heels I wore all the way
from 55th to 96th and then some.
At 4AM I wake to see
moonlight bouncing off the orphaned steel.
Torn from dreams of Ferris Wheels, eyes
shut and what it feels like
to be stuck, paused, dangling
on top the one day
your friend doesn't join, I
twist out of the sheets, a snake
shedding its worn identity,
and walk, barefoot, to the piece.
It's not beautiful, this metal tool.
It defies the general warmth
in the room and is severe,
industrial,
next to the round corners of wood
and the sweet stories whispering
between pages.
Picking it up, I cradle it in my hands
and realize it is far heavier
than anything that size should be.
Dense; I suppose that makes sense.
This is what is left.
That night, those mornings,
afternoons brimming with color,
light, and heart, boils down
to a single metal hunk
resting useless on my book case.
In a way I envy it-- its stoic,
expressionless and solid
existence. Its careless
effortless cool
and nonchalance.
I place it back, release my grip
and notice the moon
has moved on, the room
is black and I cannot
see the path back
to sleep.
************************************
May 2, 2009
Hush, Memory
speaks
in the palpable heaviness
of my bedroom tonight. This heat
is something I had forgotten
until now. How it calls
out to the secret crevasses
of my subconscious. No breeze
to sweep away what
I had planned on saving
for next season.
[and then the next].
And somehow she's here,
stagnant in my mind, as if
the sap-like air cushions not
only my history, but now
the questions marks
of my grandmother's.
I roll to my my side
and she says, hush.
I'm listening now
to the memories I've fabricated
of her youth. Unraveling
a sweater
that never was. Composing
elaborate stories
in a lazy effort to understand the
narratives that course
through my being. My blood
whispers tales of ancestors
I know too well.
In the stickiness
of this sleepless night
[this sudden, impossible, pool of thought]
my throat locks, I see
my tiny grandmother, a woman
whom I never truly knew, the woman
whom my mother calls mom,
and I reach my arm out--
toward center of this
all too quiet room.
But things fall
apart, and
maybe
I am hoping
that her memories
can be lassoed, retrieved,
re-membered. Years, decades
of a life washed away
and replaced with blank
expressions and white waiting
rooms. X in the appropriate squares.
I'm going to tell you
five things,
now,
when I return, repeat
them back to me
in the same
order.
Cactus, mouse, hammer, spring, and pen.
Did you take your pills?
Have you had breakfast?
Do you want to go for a car ride?
Maybe this will work...
Don't strip away her dignity, please.
She was there
when I was born. Rosebud lips,
she said. What we share. These lips
are possibly all that we'll ever know
we share. But even those
are fading into the marks
of events past. Her voice now rests
within the severe parentheses
of shelved laughter, evaporating
frowns.
It's too much, this
heat wrapping around me.
Nothing moves. Thoughts come
and loiter, hovering in the molasses
of the night. Oozing, each waiting
for its turn.
***************************
February 19, 2009
These Things I Keep
I'm stringing together a necklace
of all my favorite words,
amber, fire, churn, and press,
hush, sweep, your caress.
Skin, skin,
rouse,
begin.
When it's final, complete,
the waltz of the letters
will rest
upon my chest, whispering as feathers,
breath, sweeping and swooping,
dipping and daring.
Skin, skin,
rouse,
begin.
Adorning, always, the jewels
bound--association,
fragrant memory. Tools
of my mind, reconstructing
the stories that lull
me into a deep slumber, night
after night.
Skin, skin,
rouse,
begin.
Buds, distant, deep, and wise.
These and more
behind my eyes.
Heart, tickle, hip, and skies,
around my neck,
in far off cries.
Skin, skin,
rouse,
begin.
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