Blink Again!

This is a poem I wrote over the summer while my family was in Uganda. Not that this poem has anything to do with Uganda, it's just that I got almost zero response from it while my family is usually the only one to give me feedback. But I kept on feeling like there was something to it, so I took it in to my poetry friend and he really liked it, gave me some advice, and here I am reposting it after my edits. I think it's turned out pretty nicely. It's a little long, so I didn't post it with any other revisions. Enjoy!

A Story of Blinking

-inspired by a painting by my sister Madelene

After the home had grown

too old for the children,

the youngest of four returned to see how small

her room had become.

The bed lay tucked-in around the shadows.

The lamps were lost

in hazy sleep.

The stuffed animals watched

the intricacy of the wallpaper

not recognizing her

enough to turn their heads.

The curtains, drawn and faded,

could have belonged in a doll house.

Perhaps that’s what it had been.

A fairytale

like the ones that had leapt from the pages

into the midnight

beyond her attic windows,

the highest tower of her house.

Now the books slumped

against the scarce selection

on the bookshelf,

the memories she read too many times,

and some she never read.

She flips past the green

hardcover of one, the best one,

and remembers the small town beginning,

then return with elixir at the end.

In between, there was only an anxious tug

onward to the next page.

She herself is lost in that middle.

Her art hangs scattered on the walls,

acrylic paintings and oiled emotions

she forgot to take with her:

a hidden garden and an orchard.

She can smell the lavender perfume

and the maturing pear ready to plunge

down to a grounded world

within the dried paint.

A pencil sketch of her father reading,

an unframed canvas of her mother playing

the cello. The girl listens downstairs;

it is her favorite melody.

She hears the call to return

behind the varnished background

inside the painting.

And finally she discovers the last one, a small canvas

smeared with dusk

and words scratched into the powdered clouds

like faint stars:

Once upon a time in a far

away place

he climbed to the highest 

and she waited for him–

and the moral of the story is

you blink your eyes like maybe

I’ll disappear like a frog princess

if you blink fast enough–

and they lived happily ever

after

She closes her eyes and remembers herself

as she was when she filled the room,

flitting from moment to moment like a hummingbird,

gathering stories from snapdragons.

Her eyes reopen to a chalked sky. She leaves,

wishing it would rain, and descends

stairs that are steeper going down.

Rainmaker

Hello all from Savannah, GA. I think my trip down will be a source of poetry for a while to come; it's been a good time. Here's just one poem that I've written, but I'm giving it in three forms because I felt like playing around with the space. The first form is the poem with some added space, the second is normal, and the third is just a different space renditioning. I like the first one better, but both are interesting. Basically, if there is no difference between the normal and ones with space, then I'll just leave it normal, but a part of me likes the interesting space because it slows down the poem, I feel. Let me know what you think or which one you like best!

Rainmaker

I make it rain

                                    inside

without dense clouds,

                                    glassy

eyes, or my crimson

                                     clock.

A wide mirror

                                    catches

the rattled beads of

                                    mist.

In the kitchen I burn

                                    water,

letting the bubbles

                                    surface;

and from that troubled

                                    pool

it’s simple to send

                                    warmth

out to the cold morning

                                    space.

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Rainmaker

I make it rain inside

without dense clouds, glassy

eyes, or my crimson clock.

A wide mirror catches

the rattled beads of mist.

In the kitchen I burn water,

letting the bubbles surface;

and from that troubled pool

it’s simple to send warmth

out to the cold morning space.

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Rainmaker

I make it

                         rain inside

without dense

                        clouds, glassy

eyes, or my

                        crimson clock.

A wide

                        mirror catches

the rattled

                        beads of mist.

In the kitchen I

                        burn water,

letting the

                        bubbles surface;

and from that

                        troubled pool

it’s simple to

                        send warmth

out to the cold

                        morning space.

New Drafts

Sounds like an oxymoron, doesn't it? Yet that's what these are. I'm lucky enough to have some great people look over my poetry and help me improve it - my mom, my sisters, a poetry grad. student, and my poetry professor, who is also a poet. Each one gives me additional perspectives on ways in which I can improve my work. For them and for those who just love reading my poetry anyway, I am re-posting some old poetry in their new and improved (hopefully) state. To see the old ones, you'll just have to search the archives; it's not that hard to do. Enjoy!

The Earthquake

Perhaps there was a jostling of the heart

that I didn’t notice.

Then, while I waited to be served,

my mind in a book, the book in my hand,

the hand relaxed on the edge of an old table,

the table may or may not have moved.

The waiter asked if I had felt it,

the echoes of the earthquake,

200 miles away, past twisted rivers,

and battered mountains. He told me

boxes shook in the back room,

though nothing spilled: no broken

bottles to clean up or fires to put out,

though closer to the center,

buildings cracked, pipes split,

water and gas gushed

into a street muddled

with a mess of panicked people.

But we didn’t mention it, couldn’t fathom it;

we forgot it,

and laughed about my lost

chance to experience an earthquake.

Nearby, another calm customer still read,

unaware and absorbed in his bubble blue letter

from a place I don’t know,

a place I can’t even imagine,

a place that doesn’t exist.

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Death by Conviction

Even in dreams you can be stabbed; I’ve tasted it:

the cold dagger sliding into your breast

from a person at the door; the anger different than

the blade, less confined than steel, yet larger

than the house, or the trees that shroud it.

But the anger also is the blade, hidden inside

a dusty cloak, as suddenly revealed as it is buried

within your tired cage. The deep shock throbs

in cycles of sleep, a wound that kills you

once, and then the dream repeats.

Each time, you cannot stay

dead for long; there is a mission to fulfill,

God’s truth to share, the reason for their hatred and

your many deaths. Your mind begins to learn who

to trust, when to speak, and when to flee.

Awake we don’t recall these warnings.

The dream leaves no photographs,

only watercolors stirring in the memory that

recall a sting, a frustration to escape, and

a betrayal of faith. Of every detail lost, I fear

one: the face of the enemy.

A man or a woman, young or old, stranger or

familiar? I observe them all now; I sense knives close

to their skin, coiled against threat. I know also

the weapon beside my own heart and resolve to

melt it away, or lives will be lost.

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To Take Your Place

Your room drags me in: a vacuum, grasping my body

like a shaken child.

I see a bed to sleep in, shoes to walk in, and drawers to open,

all lit by the blue glow of the alarm clock

blinking on the floor.

When you left, all this remained untouched, tidy, anxious

for your return:

the unruffled bed, lines of shoes, and folded clothes

(as if obedience could make people

stay).

And I, standing in the midst of it, split

myself in two to take

your place.

I could wear your white hat to hide from the sun, your polo shirt

to protect my lungs.

Your work pants are covered in the dirt of trying

to build a life

away from the endless hallway in our apartment,

the locked doors, the cluttered corners

where my books lie half open beside my winter jacket,

another skin I shed.

If I could put on these remains, what would it be?

An armor? A disguise? A mockery?

I’m not older than the clothes given me

nor stronger than the wall I lean on.

Your voice won’t form in my throat;

it’s stuck deeper, within veins of memories

unable to bleed.

I can’t even cast your shadow,

taller than myself

and more whole than either of us.

I am heavier for trying to hold you in my mirror.

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“Only The Words Remain, Floating In The Air”

In the passageway of his home made of broken garage doors,

northern Mexico, on a ditched dirt road sloped off of Main Street,

his daughter, recovering from live wire shock, twitching at his legs,

he told me this of unkept promises, and I whispered it in my heart.

I imagined airplanes that never touch down, that circle

with whale shadows, that sweep through the saline sky,

and swim between the gathering clouds of more gray flights

and jets of smoke. It’s all I can do to hold my breath

when I’m a return passenger, stuck where air thickens inside.

But other marbled days I’m your childhood balloon man

who handed you the red and green ones at the fair.

Parents buy so many balloons; it’s not out of the blue

to hear that one more child has floated away,

clutching the thin strings of a rainbow cloud.

The wind shoves and some days I don’t come home either,

rocked in a silver current as cold as winter streams.

At times my feet pounded down a steep green hill,

but more often I forget the grit of dirt and the strike of gravity.

              And the words remain, floating in the air,

static charges waiting to connect, to return to earth.

This truth is as strange as the dark side of nature:

these clouds rising, the ensuing crash of rain and thunder,

the light flashing blackness, the explosive echo.

Across the world, lightning leaps the hollow chasm

between abandoned wires hung high in the dusty air

and where we stand, as proud as trees on a crimson plain.

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If you made it through all that, congrats to you! You win "awesome" points. Thanks for reading and, as always, let me know if you like something or if you don't and why. Or also, if you see a change I've made that you don't like, also let me know. Thanks!

Before Roots

Before Roots

The old tree’s roots are stable; I wallow in its shadow-leaf pool

for seven short minutes, head perched silent on the sloped bark,

arms nestled in sparse grass, legs root-like in shallow arcs,

en route to higher learning.
                                                        Though in truth I rose one mid-fall

to that thin treetop and felt the tender tip – the youngest branch –

now I neither climb, nor anchor an excuse not to move.

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

I was lying underneath a tree on my college campus for several minutes in between appointments and I was remembering how it had been so long since I had climbed a tree and regretting it and I was wanting to not move and also thinking about a poem I'd read recently which starts with "The hook links to whatever's stable and in between all that I began to formulate the idea for this poem. That was one heck of a long sentence, but yeah, that's the way it goes.

On Leaving Home

I've been posting like crazy this month. Anyway, two poems about leaving home: the first is my most recent poem, and the second is one of my oldest from high-school days. Enjoy!

The State of My Room Before I Left Home

The door closed and sticky from blue

tack and poster tape; the fold-up chair

folded into the closet corner; the carpet

covered by laundered clothes, ready

to pack in my case, large as a coffin;

it gaped its black body on the bed.

The desk was clean of crumpled paper

drafts, pencils, and clocks (cleaner

than it had ever been, similar

to how they dress the dead in suits

they didn’t wear, and pay with their lips

the respect they didn’t receive.)

Old shirts hung limp in the wardrobe,

left behind, empty of my torso

for years; unused pants didn’t kick

from inside the wooden bureau;

instead the quiet thumping broke

from the stuffed animal on my pillow.

A foot pounded the hard empty case

in one last breath of rejection;

and draped over the large white bear

my brother handed down, my arm clung

across its fuzzy chest, its face only one

of a hundred dead expressions.

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

This poem started with the last four lines that just popped into my head while I was at church today. Don't know why, but there they were (not exactly as you see them now, but the concept). So I started to think about why I would be clinging to a teddy bear in my room and I felt like leaving home was the most appropriate subject for that. And then, as I wrote the poem, all these other death images started coming to mind, but it worked out I think. I like it at least.

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Leaving Home

Leaning against the doorway,

I watch the shadows

            settling across the room.

I listen as the rain falls

            gray skies past my windows:

                        a strange and listless gloom.

Wish I could wait

            just a little bit longer.

Eyes lingering on my suitcase,

I want to turn on the lights,           

            to chase the shadows away.

I long to lie beneath my quilt,

            beside my empty desk

                        and memorize my room’s array.

Wish I could sleep

until I was stronger.

            

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It's funny how my two main poems about leaving home have been written large timespaces away from actually leaving home, as this one was written either junior or sophomore year of high-school, while the first one was written today (And I consider myself as having left home Winter 07). I don't think either poem actually captures the real feeling I had - for to me it mainly just felt odd and unreal, yet natural. Still, I do believe that both capture bits of emotion - the first, the feeling of the end of childhood and the passing of something important in life - the second, more the desire to linger in the comfort of the known and to not forget the past. I like them both and I hope you've enjoyed them too!

A Little Locura

These poems perhaps only a few will read, but from those who follow me regularly (i.e. my family) I'd like some comments on how to work with them. One is from months ago, one from a week ago, and one from yesterday. Let me know what you think. I'll also provide commentary, as usual.

Let’s Be Rebels

It’s Friday night; I said let’s

look up an exotic recipe to cook,

shuffle cards and deal a game we’ve never played,

while we wait for the seasoned meat

to become tender.

Tonight, we can chase fireflies across a dark field,

listen as cars howl behind a patch of pines,

chuck a ball around, or a disc, or words:

I’ll hear you in the alley between abandoned buildings

and you’ll find me beneath the brooklet bridge.

These days, the rest want a less memorable evening.

The herd squeezes into a smoky disco joint

and fill their mugs from the river Lethe.

Suddenly strangers in a room of strobe shadows, they forget

who they are, where they are, or why.

Let’s you and I remember this night!

Let’s pull the moon close.

Let’s learn to swing dance in the empty park.

There we can spin until our clothes flutter in the light

like flags of rebellion at midnight. 

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So I have this theory which says that I'm a rebel. It seems many people claim to be rebellious nowadays when in truth, they are just following the herd. The "rebel" without a clue is nothing more than a follower. So why am I a rebel? Because I'm against the actions of the masses around me - in the case of this poem that would be getting drunk or smoking their lives away each weekend. The best times I've had have often come from spontaneous fun and doing something new. So all that is a bit of what I was trying to get at with this poem, the only trouble is that I feel this poem gets a little preachy and perhaps sentimental. I like the image of the last line, but somehow I don't like how I put it. It feels a little forced. I don't know - I just feel like this poem needs some reworking but I'm not sure where to start.

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The Madman’s Room

It only looks like a door, white and wooden

face to my room, hinge resistant

and unblinkable. A stone before a tomb.

Who can enter? A moist must leaks like sweat

out the cracks, the odor of doom–

dead skin flakes, dust, and garbage stacks.

Even incense can’t mask the grating at dark:

the itching clicks or jolts of frr! gt! shh!

Silence! Fingers snap like an odd clock’s tick.

And I, I twinge at these sudden night jerks

beyond the wall, where the empty man glooms

a ghastly racket that shivers down the hall.

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No real comment for this one other than to say that poetry is fiction; i.e. I don't want to worry anyone. I just want to know if it works well.

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Solidity

Punch your scrunched fist against me;

we could both fit on a pinhead –

the room inside each atom of your hand is barren:

           

            The edge sand whirls far

            away from the desert’s eye

            where cracked land stretches.

This is your yellow palm.

The electrons circle in thin lines stadiums from the core:

            Thick oceans revolve

            the top layer of earth’s onion

            never tasting depth.

Our eyeballs watch like this.

The nucleus is abandoned to watch the stars spin dizzy:

            The sky’s center flame

            burns and twists in a dead space

            we can’t hope to touch.

So smash your red fist against a table, a wall, a home.

Feel the emptiness reject you.

See how little of us exists.

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This entire poem comes from a mind-boggling concept that I was recently reminded of in astronomy class. In reality I'm not angry nor is anyone angry at me (so far as I know), but it was the example in the book to "Smash your fist against a table" and then to realize that because of all the empty space inside each atom, the truth is that all that matter (you and the table) could fit on the head of a needle if scrunched together. Yeah, it blows your mind to think about it. And so I started to write the poem and then I realized that I'd have to use some technical terms, but that I'd have to ground these terms somehow with images, so I opted to try the use of extended metaphors which I decided to put into haikus. A while back when I was reading the Iliad, I got inspired by his use of long extended metaphors that he would put , though all I've tried so far are short ones. Anyway, because the topic is a little confusing, I was wanted someone else's perspective and opinion.

Thanks! Love y'all!

The Train Yard...

The train yard is my backyard

Mostly, the train tracks are unused

except by red spray cans and the graffiti

artists dry of imagination. School boys

trapeze the thin rails; they practice their poise,

balance their cool, burn up their fuse

‘til its gone, and the bus rolls in.

Harry saw the deep metallic lines

and begged me to stop by the rusted tracks

to hear a train smoke its stack

if it ever chugged through town.

We waited 10 minutes. He whined

When, when will it come by?

It never passed us and I

saw them as skid marks that couldn’t slow down;

two black ruts where the government wheeled

us along until we didn’t ride.

Every week Harry plays awhile, then feels

the steely cold deepen and we slip inside.

Rare midnights the whistle blows,

but I gave up the black window long ago,

content to listen to high-pitch descend

like the wails of any other ghost

lost on a limited circular trail.

I wished it would end.

And then it came while I drove along the rail

in middle March; out from a teething tree

its cars drove in tandem beside me.

I became the train and we did not budge

from each other. It rattled like a toy

shaken by the violent curiosity of a boy

who’s found it sounds much

like blue rain. I was caught in the pull:

my old childhood hitched behind

that giant block, the iron cargo hull

packed with heavy gifts and we resigned

then to age, give, and be forgotten.

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One thing I love about taking a poetry class is that I'm constantly inspired. Oh, not always directly by a certain poem, but by words here and there, or a structure I hadn't considered or noticed. There've been several poets by now in the course who have had poems with 6-line stanzas, sometimes with consistant rhyming, others no.

I wrote this poem because of two things: the time I spent with my niece and nephew last weekend, and, yes, Harry wanted to see the train tracks all over town and wanted to see the train roll by (although it neve did). And then, it is also true that I was driving home one evening (and I do live next to the railroad tracks) and I found myself driving alongside the train at almost the same speed and I thought it was pretty cool. 

And then, I just started thinking about how I could put these experiences in poetry and what I could learn and eventually I wrestled the poem onto a page. I hope you enjoy!