Chinese Title?

Billy Collins, in a poem of his entitled "Reading an Anthology of Chinese Poems of the Sung Dynasty, I Pause To Admire the Length and Clarity of Their Titles," uses and admires long titles. This next poem has a long title, not because I really want it to have a long title, but because I wasn't sure what to call it, but I knew that it needed a title to help propel the poem. I wrote this today after talking with a friend about the storm we had over this past weekend (which was not so fun to be in, but gorgeous afterwards). Anyway, without further ado, the poem:

After a Speech, I Go Outside to a Freak Storm and Wonder About the Future

Then the hail barrage stops.

Then I hear its heckling applause follow

the curtain of heavy rain to a distant stage,

behind me or before me I cannot tell,

but at every turn the streets are silent

and littered with shadows.

Where to go from here? To the west,

the sun, like an eye pried open,

peers out from a deep cave of clouds

and spills its startled light over treetops,

while I walk below this strange burning

of glowing green leaves and flitting birds.

Eastward, a rainbow stretches this shaft

of dusk into an arrow, poised to pierce

the distance. And beyond, old thunder

and coming storms clash in the gray

while lightening cracks the thunderhead

wall that encircles my every horizon.

The Stars That Do Not Shine

It shouldn't be surprising, but the things I read, the classes I'm in, and the places I go constantly affect me and inspire me. That's why, walking around on a day to day basis, sometime poems just come to me and I wrestle down to paper what is was I just came up with in mind just minutes or hours before. So it is with this poem. It seemed a lot more natural and well done in my mind, but what I have isn't bad either. It just needs work and that's why I need you to read it and give me feedback. Please.


The Stars That Do Not Shine

Alcor, dark horse over labored fields,

Meissa, concealed eyes of The Hunter,

Maia, fourth brightest of The Seven Sisters,

and all the stars that do not shine

in the city, blaze bright in the country.

I discover this as I circle around

a northern hospital in Middle of Nowhere,

New Hampshire, connecting constellations

that the Greeks kept quiet and sacred,

because they were the humble gods.

This is after I spoke with a young farmer,

soon to be father, walking off his nerves.

It’s not like with cows, he said, their pain

doesn’t spill over me the way my wife’s does.

Then he returned inside to grasp her hand.

Back when I lived in the foggy Lethe lights

of the city, I could watch a man and believe

his gray tailored suit and smart shades, reflective

like a mirror, destined him. I deemed the brute beard

of a Friday fisherman meant his ill-fated scrap

lay with salmon scouring upstream.

Now that I have dived into my own lingering

black night, I discern the silence of stars

who do not shove their way into sight,

but struggle their massive souls across the fields

of time, like the shadows of giants before them.

Not all that catch the eye are luminous;

not all hidden to the crowds are small or dim

or without gravity strong enough to steady

a loved one’s world from its unstable spinning.

Here, I feel the stars shiver like a 10-ton bell.

They reverberate in the wind around this pastoral

hospital where I stand taller, healing as I hear

high-pitched cries snuggle into the deep warm glove

of a father’s arms as he names his newborn son.

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This poem was inspired by numerous things. Obviously, I'm constantly surrounded by Astronomy stuff, hence many of the star reference. Also, there's a Japanese manga about a character who moves from Tokyo to a small town and begins to feel like he can make something of himself there, while he couldn't in Tokyo, just as the stars that don't shine in Tokyo, surely do shine in the country. That was a major inspiration for this poem because I feel that there are many wonderful people who aren't known merely because they aren't in a well-known, or because they don't feel the need to compete for the spotlight. The character of the father in this poem was inspired by the last two lines of this poem, which are some of the lines that came to me in my mind, but I can't remember the lines I had had that led up to them and I thought as I was typing up the poem that I needed to show a character who did shine an who was unnoticed by many. Poetry is fiction; this never happened, but I'm still trying to reach a truth - that some of the best people aren't in the public eye.

Testimony of a Ugandan Child

The following poem was written after watching "The Thing That Happened," a documentary that talks about the power of education and also the stories of several children who had been abducted to the LRA, headed by Joseph Kony. The documentary, and specifically the words of the children who had been abducted in their younger years, touched me and I wanted to write a poem in their voice, using their words. And then my poetry teacher told us all that we had to write a Villanelle and I thought Yes, this is the best form to tell this story. Hence the following poem, largely filled by words not my own.

Testimony of an Abducted Ugandan Child, Six Years After Returning

            – inspired by the documentary “The Thing That Happened.”

This is my story. It’s difficult a bit to say.

This is the photo. I was a very young thing.

What am I worth? They kill you. Definitely.

They took my grandparents and brothers away

and up to now they are not there. Hear them sing:

this is my story. It’s difficult a bit to say.

On their way coming back they shoot them on the way.

They gave me a gun like this when I was crying.

What am I worth? They kill you. Definitely.

If you want to eat, you need to fight each day.

Like me now, even me I fear them coming.

This is my story. It’s difficult a bit to say.

If they have ordered that you should shoot, pray.

The gun was to fall down when they were seeing

what I am worth. They kill you. Definitely.

Two and half years. It was hard for me to stay.

They lied; said I could not do anything,

but this is my story. It’s difficult a bit to say

what I am worth. They kill you. Definitely.

Mid-Term Portfolio

Well, for my poetry class, I've been revising 4 poems to put in a mid-term portfolio. I think that each poem has undergone significant change since their inception, although who knows if my teacher will feel the same (she bases her score of of how much effort she thinks you've put into "revision", but her definition might be a little strange).

Anyway, all of these poems, except "1000 Paper Cranes" have been posted on the blog before if you want to read the original. I'm not posting all my drafts, but, if for some strange reason you wanted to read the drafts (???), let me know and I can send them to you. As usual, if you have further comments on how to improve them, I welcome critiques with open arms and "thank you"s.

1000 Paper Cranes

            - for my cousin, Julian

We are folding cranes as we enter the park,

bluebirds cheerful around us. You made

bluebirds with your hands: the dark paper

crimped between your calloused fingers.

Even now I don’t believe it’s not alive.

I remember showing you my first origami bird,

one wing dragging out of line,

the head scrunched by an awkward thumb.

The inner page peered out from every crease.

We are folding cranes to place beside the paper

stars you shared with the family after nights

of bending blank tips into openings. Mine glows,

heavy on the mantelpiece. I counted yesterday

its twelve red spires pointing into space.

We are folding cranes out of words, half-formed

in our throats. What can we say of death

that isn’t tenuous? Your shadow no longer

rises to meet you though you rose every morning,

hinged to home, to build up your mother’s

strength, unfolding your arms to take care of her

until you collapsed in your own room.

We are folding cranes from the memorial

programs, twisted in our anxious palms.

Filled with wrinkles, my paper crumples

as a speech ends. The crinkling around me

sounds like whispers and shuffling

feet. Everyone is leaving. Only ten days

before, we spoke about out grandfather.

Your level voice, your reflection crafted with care

brought us back to a different day,

remembering his last moments. I still don’t know

what death is. The petal fold I’ve made

is not a lily, but the beginning

of another paper crane, one of one thousand.

We are folding cranes for you

even as the sun folds its shadow across

the earth and knows what death is,

while we are merely learning the words.

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The Potpourri Effect

The engine stills & begins to cool.

I chuck keys in my coat pocket & slip out

the door into the gap between cars, ready to rush

inside again, slate sky somber

above me. Then I smell potpourri

from a bonfire of dry flowers smoldering

in the backyard & I remember

vials of orange & lemon oil

in a gift-store with a girl.

I was not yet wrapped like a bouquet

with memories laced to perfumes,

so the fragrances meant nothing

then. Winter kept us in until we hurried

back to my car, missing the crisp air

& skipping over melting patches of ice.

I adjust my scarf, crunch leaves, & reach

the welcome mat in moments.

My cold hands dig for house keys;

I’m still breathing the strange smell,

like crushed lavender & mint. Then I’m past it,

into a room dusted with carpets, tiles,

and closed windows. Stuck inside day after day,

aromas grow like vines against my gate.

In an empty January, I live beside bushes

of dried rose petals & cedar branches beckoning

a stroll outside, hand in hand with ghost perfumes.

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After the Flood, Vermont

Those who live off the land keep reaping

what’s done, while the roaring river banks the journey

between the junkyard and what’s left.

                                                            I wander the valley

to sink stones where the old bridge stood

like a mountain, and watch whitewater dissipate

downstream. Trees, shingles,

and earth snag in the bends.

                                                Months ago, what did I know

about permanence? I’d never seen floorboards

warped; I’d never plucked nails from rotten planks,

gutting a two-story cabin on the opposite side, where three

generations had farmed their fertile field.

Now the pasture lounges in muck like a ditched tire.

The road I followed here ends,

                                                falls fifty feet

into the slow river whose current carves small notches

between debris and boulders.

                                                Who loves

nature with its stubborn rebellion against us?

                                    its rolling hills, red dawns,

            and hurricanes? Those thrashing days, the thunder

            growled and my shout drowned. The rain

            slid down the slopes like a cold sweat

            and could not be held back by dirt,

            hay bales bound together,

or anything packed down

by powerless hands.

             

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Reading a book on its first-day release,

I eat in big bites. Words escape my lips

like crumbs. Far from intrusion

in a dim-lit attic, it doesn’t matter that I skim

some pages like overdone lima beans, or skip

to the end to see if it is satisfying and sweet

like strawberry pie. Footsteps clatter in

a separate world. The scuttle

of floorboard mice doesn’t disturb.

Instead, it becomes part of the meal, mixing

with the steak of the story, tender and rare.

After starving for days, I am hungry enough

to swallow everything: the rain ringing

in a catch pan, my mother calling me

down for dinner, even the moonlight

spreading a white cloth over the floor.

It is night. The feast is over

and my mind lumbers with a round belly

of ideas. My bones grow as I digest

the complete course and what it means

to be filled from first to final page.

----------------------------------------------------

Hope you enjoyed it! 

The Disappearing Trout

The following poem was inspired about an hour ago upon reading a wonderful essay called "On Behalf of Love" by Tara Boyce, wife of my good friend Ryan Boyce. Read it first or read my poem first, however you would like. Anyway, for a first draft, I think this poem turned out pretty well.

The Disappearing Trout

Once, fishing a lagoon, few miles from home, I imagined love

was the trout hiding in the brownwater,

                                                               camouflaged and fading

in and out of sunwater, its slippery existence often in question.

For a moment, a ripple, and my hands tightened on the reel.

Then the sky returned to the surface and the frogs laughed

deep in the cattails. The cardinals sang some serenade of sympathy,

while I tipped my cap and listened to two faint pulses linger in the air:

one in the lengthening tresses of shadows off the willow

                                                            covering me, like a brittle ribcage

and another in the dusk breeze that, when I opened my eyes again,

swept over the water like a school of fish fleeing the night.

The final ripples of light made me want to disappear also,

though above, love left its own hook dangling in the darkness,

so enticing that the trees leaned together

                                    and the moon followed a line of stars.

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It seems I've gone back recently to making interesting space on the page of the poem that I hope adds to the overall feeling of the poem. I think this poem turned out really well (though I suppose you could call it a second draft because I wrote it, did homework, then revised it and am now posting it). In case you haven't read Tara's essay, there's a part in it where she talks " love fades in and out like a rainbow trout in between shadow and sunwater." That by itself was intriguing until she turned it around and said "Perhaps love is not the fish in this metaphor. We are." To myself, I then imagined myself as the fish and, conversely, love as the fisherman, which image spawned the idea behind this poem and especially the last 4 lines of the poem. Is it that love fades in and out, or is it us jilting towards and away from love, love that wants to catch us if we would let it. That was what I wanted to convey, in a sense. Hope you enjoyed it!