Revision: Dreams of Dust

I remember the night of ‘star dust’

Though now more like a vivid dream

After everyone was fast asleep,

But we just couldn’t say good night.

Huddled near for the sake of being closer,

Hands tangled tight like tree roots.

We now talk about things like hair roots

And how one day we’ll be dust.

Speaking words that could stand to be closer,

And huddling near is usually just a dream.

Visiting drives turn day to night,

When tired bones lye to sleep.

To pass the time we sleep

buried under blankets like strange roots

shaking up the soil that is night.

Wondering about flight by pixie dust

so we could leave behind these dreams

and soar to be closer.

When finally you are closer,

we fight this battle of sleep

till days and hours seem dreams,

and forgotten go all our ancestors roots,

they’re swept away as dust

into the waning night.

You rest your head on my chest at night

as if head to heart we are closer

like the TV’s layered coats of dust.

Sometimes we give into sleep

while sheets wrap us like roots

subduing us into sultry dreams.

Sometimes you feel like a dream.

A cruel joke played by the night,

but I awake to see our interlaced roots

as we grow together closer

every time we fall asleep

and slowly over the years turn to dust.

I hope you’re with me for the closer.

When the bright light shuts our eyes to sleep,

And we get to soar through air as dust.

New Outdoors

Fields of concrete pavers

providing the soil for barren trees

surging with current

to stiffen any climbers.

Mountains built on cheep vinyl

lightning rods protruding

claiming this roof in the name of

a handful of broken families.

Starscapes of flickering lamps

lighting that path for shooting

comet cars trailing dust

to be coughed out by gazers.

O the beauty of New Outdoors.

Rocks and Islands

It’s a white hot knife

piercing weak skin…

Even stones break

and steel yields

when the right force is applied.

Those words.

The force to crumple

a shelter of optimism

for rebuilding with new insight.

Inspired by Brenda Jones: Dreams of Pie and Pope

Perhaps it’s the pope

decreeing dreams of fish-Friday

and slices of giant bunt cake.

Un-eatable.

Intoxicating.

Like a prison.

Built on the unattainable…

Desires.

Hungers.

I Don't Like the Cats on the Table

They walk in a box filled with their excrements

… you know.

If they could wash those tiny little paws

…it’d be okay.

Sink knobs are far to complicated, but

…someday.

They’ll have an understanding

…with me.

We’ll keep them of course, for you

…I promise.

To the Clouds in My Head

Too many words floating

around my head through,

ears trying to hear

music and rhythm

mashed together in confusion.

To just grab some,

to write them down,

in something you can feel

you can hear.

Words.

Gone

I’ve gone to see Friday,

because Mondaytuesdaywednesdaythursday

roam about at snail speed.

He’s cordially invited me,

and has a place for me to stay,

the weekend.

We’ve made plans you see,

Friday and me,

to do those fun things

the ‘weak’ days cast aside.

A blank-stare-vacancy-sign

and a body stuck between

Monday-schoolday-workday-Thursday

conceal the mind’s disappearance

to lazy grass nests and sleeping in

late.

Friday sits beside me,

calmly watching as the world

catches up.

Untitled

It’s the thing that slips between the fingers

as sand from the from the tropical coasts.

There’s one last grain, one last letter,

but falling captive to gravity and to doubt.

Like groping hands in thick black night,

stumbling for a clue or trigger.

The honest truth, there isn’t a hope,

just wild guesses in the dark.

Giving up would mean the end,

defeat in this civil war.

Mind always wins at intensions war,

and the casualties are always forgotten.

That first letter and the sound that it makes.

His first name and how you met.

Their first words and breath,

all grains of sand slipping past.

1/3 sestina Untitled

I remember the night of ‘star dust’

Though now more like a vivid dream

After everyone was fast asleep,

But we just couldn’t say good night.

Huddled near for the sake of being closer,

Hands tangled tight like tree roots.

We now talk about things like hair roots

And how one day we’ll be dust.

Speaking words that could stand to be closer,

And huddling near is usually just a dream.

Visiting drives turn day to night,

When tired bones lye to sleep.

I hope you’re with me for the closer.

When the bright light shuts our eyes to sleep,

And we get to soar through air as dust.

Crest

I

I am my father’s

Colors.

Lanky build, brown hair, tired eyes.

I wave them proudly for all

And one day I want

To be a father just like you.

Don’t die.

There’s too much yet to say,

There’s too much to fix, build,

And share.

II

You were just a boy when your father passed.

You the eldest son of three

Making the sacrifices to make ends meet.

But I found your aspirations, hidden in a drawer,

Collegiate grades and letters buried thick in dust,

Dreams never accomplished.

Selflessness is what I see, I feel,

All for family…

I wave my father’s colors.

I dream my father’s dreams.

Silence of Words

It’s a good long walk from there

To here, under thick-black sky

Where the path weaves to and fro.

The sparrows sleep and blossoms

Close, like mouths enjoying quiet.

Two parallel lines in a nest

Of muted green. Searching eyes skyward

For the falling pieces of gold

To make a wish upon.

One hand this way, one

Heart that way. Silence

In that vacuum held

Its unshakeable grip of words.

The car will turn for the sun peaking

From its tree covered

Hide, and I return to mine.

Time Tells Of

Sunny mornings in fields of dull gold

we blaze trails through shoulder high field-grass.

The story is never the same.

You’re a motorcycle thug cruzin’ the strip,

I’m a marooned sailor looking for home.

You were always the stronger

more clever one of us.

Fields weren’t big enough though

to escape your blowing winds.

Fluorescent lit afternoons in faded 60’s desks

we push papers and tests till hand cramps.

The story is always the same.

I’m knee deep in homework,

You’re up to the eyes in a book.

A certain understanding grips

with the clock robbing minutes.

We drive quiet streets of understanding

this old town could never hold you.

Glowing nights from phones and screens

we shoot empty words from separate states.

The story never came.

You’re dressed in your white coat,

I’m drifting eyes shut in a canoe.

When I re-find home...

Symposium

I attended the Q and A dialog between Patricia and Ben. They started off the commentary on why/how they began their careers began her career when she realized the her works not only affected her, but also those surrounding her; she was fortunate to have a social circle that also supported her efforts and job. Ben’s explanation was somewhat different, in that he looked for the aspects of horror; he believes that these are thing things that evoke the most feelings in people, terror, fear, horror. I was mostly interested in Patricia Smiths conversations on her book though.

Patricia Smith was an outsider to the Katrina disaster, which influenced her writing, and she was worried that she might not be portraying them the way they saw fit. Upon the completion of her works though, it was met with mixed emotion, for some it was a work that helped them to cope with the situation and to help keep this disaster in the minds of the public; others though, thought badly on, being distasteful and such.

Patricia uses her writings as a way to process her emotions and thoughts though; she tries to resolve thoughts on religion and tensions. Her family used to be a faithful family till her father died in a robbery which seemed to have set her mother on a different path. Patricia tries to work these thoughts and feelings out through her creations though.

As a funny tid-bit, she commented on the George Bush poem, “only single syllable words.” Patricia really tries to put herself in others shoes and feel as they feel.

The Boy from School

I am a boy that knows,

how to get that GPA,

and fight for alpha male.

Stone body built

firm sinew

eyes of bullets through skin.

You have to understand

the breaking point of sticks,

our bones must be stronger

than his.

I am a boy, slippery as an eel.

Facades will get me far.

RR #5

"We read contemporary writers and imitate their line breaks, or their similes and worry that we shouldn't, that we'll only create bad reproductions instead of original works."

"We want a presence that convinces, one that engages and seduces a reader into the world of our poems, a voice a reader will want to listen to. When we fail to produce this voice, the poem fails."

"If you're studying some one's style, just about every aspect of her poems is worth considering."

"Of course, there's a mysterious element in poetry that seems to resist intellectual analysis, and this is good."

"The high road is filled with long, Latinate words - "expectorate" instead of "spit," "indefatigable" instead of "untiring," and so on... Taking the high road is tricky, but some writers have done it successfully. The danger of is that you'll sound pompous and overinflated; the danger of ordinary diction is that you'll sound ordinary."

Drive

Anxious eyed driving,

new like a kids first.

Smooth T and the jeans

with the rips. Hair sculpted

un-kempt

A circle of stretched skin

cool, under clammy fingers,

and a petal push

to go faster than a cycle.

Eyes like two candles in the twilight,

as a child in a storefront peers.

The hollow resonance

of bending metal define

the silent gasps.

Through spider-webs projected

red fur, no body found.

RR #4

"...We live in a figurative world; our language and our thinking, our very perceptions, are metaphoric. We continually make comparisons and connections, often without even realizing that we are doing so, so comfortable are we with seeing in this way."

"Figurative language is a way to deepen and intensify the themes and concerns of your work."

"... Metaphors aren't always contained within poems in discrete bits; often, entire poems work on a metaphoric level. This is one fo the pleasures of both reading adn writing poems: the recasting of one thing in therms of another, the revelation of the ways outwardly different experiences can be seen to have a similar core."

"A poem may consist entirely of ltereral images, but they may well resonate with metaphorical meaning."

"... those 'passionate midnights' in the basement are a metaphor for the work of shaping the materials of a poem, writing and revising until the magined world is fully formed. In developing your own figurative images, don't worry if your language is clumsy or confusing at first. Just have patience, and keep digging."

RR #3

"We are all haunted by images, both light and dark. ... That partly explains why they're so powerful, why we respond to them in a much more visceral way than we do to generalized abstractions."

"Put simply, though, an image in poetry is language that calls up a physical sensation, appealing to us at the level of any of our five senses. Images may be 'literal': the red kitchen chair in a dim corner of the room; ... Or they may be 'figurative', departing from the actual and stating or implying a comparison: the chair, red and shiny as fingernail polish."

"Magic. That's what an image should do, produce a bit of magic, a reality so real it is 'like being alive twice.'"

"Poets need to keep all five senses - and possibly a few more - on the continual alert, ready to translate the world through their bodies, to reinvent it in language. Images are a kind of energy, moving from outside to inside and back, over and over, a continual exchange."

"Images are the rendering of your bodily experience in the world; without them, your poems are going to risk being vague and imprecise, and they will fail to convey much to a reader."

RR #2

"They arrange their thoughts in lines without much sense of why they are doing so, beyond the hope that if what they write 'looks' like a poem, it will mysteriously become one."

"You'll need to get a feel for the line, for what it does when it is very short, very long, and every place in between; you'll need to be able to test its weight and heft according to the rhythms of the language you've strung along it; and you'll want to use it to create tension or relaxation, to emphasize words, to speed up or slow down your reader's eye, to fulfill or thwart expectations."

"...it's especially important to pay attention to the tools we do have, to become aware of the sounds of language and begin to work with them - both in your choice of words, and how you organize those words into lines that are meaningful - not only in what they say, but how they say it."

"The rhythms of certain lines also swerve to intensify the contrasts in the poem."

"We're made uncomfortable when words that usually go together are suddenly severed from each other, like adjectives and nouns ... articles and nouns ... when even verbs are split up."

RR #1

"There is a world inside each of us that we know better than anything else, and a world outside of us that calls for our attention - the world of our families, our communities, our history. Our subject matter is always with us, right here, at the tips of our fingers, at the edge of each passing thought."

"... unless we're able to transform the raw material of our experiences into language that reaches beyond the self-involvement of that person standing at the window, so that what we know becomes shared knowledge, part of who we are as individuals, a culture, a species."

"These and other poets began with the simple idea that what they saw and experienced was important to record, and that the modest facts of their lives, what they knew within the small confines of their limited, personal worlds, could contain the enduring facts and truths of the larger world."

"The poet has mixed the ordinary with the fantastic to convince us that the dead, indeed, act this way. At the end of the poem, the dead merge with the memory of the living - parents or relatives who 'stayed up / drinking all night in the kitchen.'"

"If you have a life full of drama, then of course that will be your material. But don't wait for something to happen before you begin to write; pay attention to the world around you, right now. That's what poets do."

Mowed Hair

One more millimeter one more day

birthed, expelled, pushed outward.

The stem of brown color rising,

sliced, cut short and stifled.

A fatal fate for its green haired friend,

waiting just outside.

The Whir of whooshing blades pass through,

to chop it at mid height.

The Cycle

Winter starts this part,

with its pure yet featureless face.

Harsh Winds. Chill Bones.

Quiet Emptiness

Spring-time dazzles and shines,

it’s odors caress the nose.

Sweet Lilacs. Dancing Bees.

A sight desired to behold

Summer is like a still life,

of the Spring-time’s flashy growth

Warm Rains. Sunny Shores.

Content with nothing more

Fall is not the end,

but a maturation through lost time.

Vivid Colors. Clear Skies.

A realization of is splendor

Winter longs to come back in…

But Spring has taken hold

I pray winter not return