Novel Eye

Kid ~Simon Armitage Batman, big shot, when you gave the order to grow up, then let me loose to wander leeward, freely through the wild blue yonder as you liked to say, or ditched me rather, in the gutter…well, I turned the corner. Now I’ve scotched that ‘he was like a father to me’ rumour, sacked it, blown the cover on that ‘he was like an elder brother’ story, let the cat out on the caper with the married woman, how you took her downtown on expenses in the motor. Holy robin-redbreast-nest-egg shocker! Holy roll-me-over-in-the-clover, I’m not playing ball boy any longer Batman, now I’ve doffed that off-the-shoulder Sherwood-Forest-green and scarlet number for a pair of jeans and crew-neck jumper; now I’m taller, harder, stronger, older. Batman, it makes a marvelous picture: you without a shadow, stewing over chicken giblets in the pressure cooker, next to nothing in the walk-in larder, punching the palm of your hand all winter, you baby, now I’m the real boy wonder. On Being a Woman ...

Just a little autumn haiku. A leaf drifted past my window. Sadly it speaks of Autumn's coming

you write this: I tried to kill a f*#&ing hour today. It struggled in my arms And when I thought I had a grip I found I held nothing.

Smoke hangs in the air Earthbound fading cloud The smoker is gone

...but funny. http://www.knifegunpen.com/the-four-hundred-hour-workweek/

Watched the first episode. More on that as I digest it. Don was reading Frank O'Hara. I have a small book of O'Hara poems (not the one in the show) which my poetry teacher encouraged me (made me) read because I do not write like him. I like some of it--and I like it more than I did 15 years ago (how impossible that seems) now. Poem Instant coffee with slightly sour cream in it, and a phone call to the beyond which doesn't seem to be coming any nearer. "Ah daddy, I wanna stay drunk many days" on the poetry of a new friend my life held precariously in the seeing hands of others, their and my impossibilities. Is this love, now that the first love has finally died, where there were no impossibilities? -Frank O'Hara, 1956, Lunch Poems (For Matt, who is NOT writing about coffee and may have thought I had not noticed) 100 days to the election.

Actually the first part of this came to me--in that it actually happened--and I was trying to get it into a poem form for a few weeks. I'm not sure it works--like I'm trying too hard. I saw a crow motionless atop a pole So black and still he seemed a paper silhouette , the outline of a crow And seeing him, my focus dwindled, rendering the world flat as a photograph as when a flock of birds will look no more than charcoal marks across the sky.

Turns out much of my tension and foul mood of the past week was hormonal in nature. Some of it was because we have reached again, April 1st . WE INTERRUPT THIS POST TO BRING YOU THIS SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT Thank you, God. I went back to find that post from last year to link and thought I will take a stab at that again. And suddenly it seemed so obvious! It needs some fine tuning--word choice, etc. but I like this, and I feel this: If I should lose the little finger, say Of my left hand, I could learn to type around. And all the instruments I do not play Would prove no sadder loss than now. Other things I do requiring dexterous skill Could be--as good or almost--learned again. Most days I should not feel its loss at all Until it was as if it had never been. Yet, there would come a moment when Performing some small but delicate task I should find myself at a loss, as when I find there is no one else I can ask Questions I never thought to bring to you, And I cry to feel your death anew.

Reunion I have been invited Like the courtier in the powdered wig, Like a dignitary, profile of a mountain. I fear to write the word Like a chicken Laying her last egg Before laying out her neck. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * I saw this poem in a dream--nearly as I can remember as it is now. The dream itself is strange. I had to go somewhere about two hours away on Saturday--leaving at about 9:30. In my dream of Saturday morning my mother was here and going with me and she had to go to Lexington on Saturday morning BEFORE we left. So she and I and a friend of my husband's (on my mind because he hadn't returned a phone call--common with him--and my husband and I had been discussing it the night before) went to Lexington at 8:30. Lexington is about 30 minutes away from me because there is no direct way to get there--even though the distance is not that great. We go to this house and family business and no one is there. Me: Didn't you tell them you were comin...

The link gave me this: Often I have encountered the evil of living Often I have encountered the evil of living: it was the strangled stream which gurgles, it was the crumpling sound of the dried out leaf, it was the horse weaty and exhausted. The good I knew not, other than the miracle revealed by divine Indifference: it was the statue in the slumber of the afternoon, and the cloud, and the high flying falcon. (Eugenio Montale, Ossi di seppia)

Many umbrellas are passing by this eve of snow. -- Hokushi

a flutter of late flying birds move as one scatter like tossed pebbles above the highway dappling the cars through the brilliance of the late autumn sun and for a moment we are underwater

So, I've thought about posting this here for sometime. I feel it's unfinished but I don't know where it would go. Extremis You tied me to a sand dune, and left me baking in the sun Still I crawled back to you You sold me into bondage, to wolves and wastrels I bought myself back for you. I ran from you with hobbles on my legs. You cut them off with the teeth of your tongue. I carved totems from the length of your thigh bones. You made them into oars. I put you on a multitude of funeral pyres And spit on them every time. Everything I ever did for you I did under duress. Everything I ever did for you Was a bouquet at your feet. For years you kept my voice in your cigarette case. This house, this life, this skin Inside out for you. All the pictures need rearranging in their frames. They have fallen out of true.

So here are good pictures of my children. Which made me think of an old poem. I still like this poem--it's different from the kind of thing I usually write. The Dog Poem Yes, you have shaped us. Bred us down, up Dark, light, lean, round, sleek, full. Like tools to a purpose we have been formed As you form and shape and build with hands that flex and hold. Were we somehow more malleable, more honeable ? Our DNA more willing? But what you do not know is that under these customized hides, We are the first dogs, slipping high through tall grass, Short fur, the color of the Savannah, Tails, curved as totems, upright ears that rotate 180 degrees, Gleaming, unshadowed eyes, beneath smooth brows, Pointed muzzles, slim as the prow of your ships As an arrow, as a gun. A machine of the senses. We scent you and we are still in our contemplation. The pleasure of wind running through our fur the only motion. We scent you, dark and matted , tongues unsuited for grooming, In stolen skins. They ar...

I suspect most poets have one. This is mine. After September 11, 2001 Oh, God, You end with a mighty sob That should instead shake Nations to the core. What have we done? What have we done? If God was not dead before, Surely he is now, With a stake driven to the heart That is not self-inflicted. No one may call it that. Humanity itself the suspect, Victim, law and prisoner. How many death sentences For these crimes? How many life times in these prisons? How many lives To erase, to balance, to ease, The trenches, the ditches, the ovens, The jungle, the desert, the city. The heavenly fire (oh, do not give it such a name), The death in golden jars and in the flesh, Those willing to die, and those willing to let them. Who knew that humans, Could have so much pain in them. I am nothing in this but witness.

In trying to toss things I found some old magnetic poetry. It's surprisingly interesting (to me). Words in parenthesis are filled in now as is any punctuation. I recall a language like winter death I think we were sacred I was weak in my worship of you. Friend, together we (were an) essential symphony After her liquid she haunt(s) like eternity (A) fresh petal did him Ask his girl/woman/goddess men/boy(s)/mother(s) (the) sea/ (the) sky Do/did let rob (our) power? No, or to-want Put (it) out (there to) think (and) say go Ask, tell (and) manipulate Though, beneath less mean Smell storm rain like... but it, to me, (a) moment(ary) ache Please, may (I) scream and yet after ask some(one) who... Then why? (Now) languid and lazy (but) still mad (seeing) sordid blue (A) gorgeous breeze, (a) moment poinsoned (by a) goddes (and the) ghost of desire (like) coffee And that (the magnets, not the poetry) is something I can't quite bring myself to throw away, although I just keep moving it f...

... There will be time, there will be time To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet; There will be time to murder and create, And time for all the works and days of hands That lift and drop a question on your plate; Time for you and time for me, And time yet for a hundred indecisions , And for a hundred visions and revisions, Before the taking of a toast and tea. (excerpt from) The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock --T.S. Eliot Trivia--C.S. Lewis thought Eliot marked the decline of poetry. For JT (short). Eliot was born in St. Louis, and after attending a preparatory for Wash U., went to Milton Academy for a year, and from there to Harvard. ( JT went to Wash U. and did not study poetry).

Like I said I would like to travel more. I wrote this poem in college. I don't think anything has changed except now I'm approaching half of an average lifetime and I haven't added many, but now I've added two countries. My teacher didn't like it, and it is pretty simplistic, but I still like it (although I just tinkered with it). Scenic Routes Distances traveled are distances gained. So I have been in sixteen states. Perhaps seventeen. Around a third of the way. Some landed in in planes, or driven through. A mere in the way distance. In transit. On the way. And some probed intimately from side to side. Which brings the number that's known, well, down to perhaps three. Or four. OK for under a third of an average life, or lifespan, because each lifespan, from three months to one hundred and three--or four--years is just someones lifetime--no more/ no less. And I have known, or at any rate, met perhaps a thousand people, although...

Actually was very tricky and I did do it well. (This is hard for me to write but I'm working on it). The really great thing is that they said they were going to send me a disc later in the summer with some of my work on it (doing the same for everyone involved--personalized). Which can/will be added to a demo tape. So eventually I could have a link to it and you can judge for yourself. When I heard it was pick-ups I was worried because pick-ups mean doing lines you've already done because something went wrong. It could be you, or it could be technical. I, of course, worried that it was me. It wasn't. This project is a spoken disc to accompany a text book for high- schoolers . That's already been put together, apparently, with my original recordings. There is also an interactive software component and when they were doing that they decided that they needed more space between each line to break. Now, this is a poem. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Ang...

According to The Week it was suicide by weed killer (not OD as earlier reported) probably in reaction to her ovarian cancer. And that she had attempted it before, last year leaping from a bridge. How sad, and yet I can't condemn her. This too is very Vile Bodies and Bright Young Things. ...The first time it happened I was ten. It was an accident. The second time I meant To last it out and not come back at all. I rocked shut As a seashell. They had to call and call And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls. Dying Is an art, like everything else, I do it exceptionally well. I do it so it feels like hell. I do it so it feels real. I guess you could say I've a call. It's easy enough to do it in a cell. It's easy enough to do it and stay put. It's the theatrical Comeback in broad day To the same place, the same face, the same brute Amused shout: 'A miracle!' That knocks me out. There is a charge For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge ...