Poem In Your Pocket and Bundle Boards

Jackson surprised me last night by telling me he had to have a poem for "Poem In Your Pocket" day today for school -- Mrs. Sharma, bless her Language Arts teacher's heart -- was requiring all the kids to pick poems, write them down, and carry them around! So, I dug out of the garage (where it is in temporary storage while we are temporarily living in this funky mint green rental house on a hillside) my box of poetry books I use when I teach. The good news, is that right away Jackson and I were able to find a poem, about wolves howling. "They howl and it seems to comfort them" or something like that. A perfect teenage boy poem. He wrote it out by hand, and by the time he was done, he almost had it by heart, a fine unintended side effect. He also sat on the couch and read from that anthology, "Talking to the Rain," for at least 30 minutes. I had to bite my lip to keep from telling him how happy I was to see him reading poems -- not a perfect teenage boy's mom thing to say.

(Check out the cool blog about books I found while looking for the wolf poem!! They have a whole list of kids books.)

In the meantime, I'm writing two poems: one about bundle boards and one about something else I can't remember right now. I'm tired. It's not as bizarre as it sounds.

PAD 10 Crash

Michael called yesterday morning, Monday, why would he think anyone would be here on a Monday morning, except we all were, Jackson and I sick, Bob eating strawberries and reading Andrew Sullivan. Michael was trying to sort plastic containers and find their matching lids. What a waste of talent. Here's a photo of Stella, after we moved into the rental house, after she performed the miracle Tupperware Sorting Trick -- I don't think many of them are actually Tupperware anymore, but I still call them that. Can't forget those great parties.

Here's the poem I wrote about Tupperware, I wrote it yesterday.

Elegy for the Dead That Held Fast

Envelope flower pot jewelry box coffin
Handbag briefcase coin purse satchel
Mason jar hat box girl scout canteen
Letter box ink well match box tureen
Canister cake tin wardrobe cradle
Tool shed wood shed button box cedar chest
Pickle barrel laundry basket soap box
Wheel barrow soda bottle lobster pot

And here's a photo of a beautiful hat box I found -- somebody still makes a beautiful thing out of wood.

PAD 8, 9 Rehashing

Okay, three days to make up for, two here, one in the next post, I don't trust blogger. I have been writing, just not blogging. Still waiting for my fans. Fat chance of a fart on the farm finding me.

pad 8 from about april 2

This is not a poem filled with symbols,
symbolism, images. Driving to work
I'm always writing these poems,
looking for birds, egrets white
in their wedding dresses, wings
tucked into their tails, tight
dive maneuvers or wide
right over my car, speeding
the ugliness of the cars,
hawks, always I see them only
one at a time, decked out in his
claws, proud on tall chain link.
Today the white and brown,
the possible wings, are just
trash, muddy newspaper nests of
rain water, flapping bags,
electric white slashed to
those same fences. Not a poem
among them. Not even irony.

pad 9 from march 20

in my car
small against my legs, back
big view, hills, rain
enormous sky flying by
blue or wide

my head touches the roof
air tastes like breath, mine, kids'
breath off banana peel
debris

it's very quiet here
except the banging of my mind
against the glass
a hammer, a song,
a laugh.

PAD on Bad Days and the Comfort of Sharon

I've been sick, Jackson's been sick, Stella's still sick. Not the swine flu, the "high school field trip to the Shakespeare Festival in Ashland Oregon" flu -- Stella brought it home with her. Today I ran my car into the back of someone in a dusty Lexus on the way to a meeting in Palo Alto. Our heater's broken so it's very cold in the house.

I had my last GATE class this morning at Regnart, where I've been teaching fifth graders. This year we had fourth graders in the fall and fifth graders in the winter. It's easier on me that way, only 20-25 kids at 7:30 in the morning instead of 45 all at once, mostly incredibly smart boys who want to write about exploding toilets, hate, and Sponge Bob, unless it's the mostly incredibly smart girls who want to draw pictures of cartoon fairies on their notebooks and write poems with long words about flying and colorful rainbows and other things that make me want to scream. It's also always the most badly behaved boys who write the most interesting things -- and girls -- well, it's just the wrong age for them. It's a miracle that I kept writing after I was in fifth grade. At all.

So, I didn't pad on Sunday or Monday, and today, I have some notes but I don't like them. We'll see. I've discovered Mark Doty, whose name I've long heard, but whose poems I've just begun to read. Reminds me of Larry Friedlander a little bit. Lots to learn. He has a good blog. I'm also reading Sharon Olds again, because no matter how crappy I feel, her poems always make me feel better, no matter how grim her poems are, how crunchy with sex (embarrassing) or slimy with parents, her poems comfort me. I wish she had a blog. Too private, I guess, which is strange, considering what she writes -- or at least, considering the voice in her work. She is so beautiful. Someone confused me for her, once, at Squaw Valley, accross the parking lot. My hair was long and out of control, and hers wasn't so gray yet -- I've never felt as beautiful again as I did that summer. Mark Doty is pretty beautiful, too, it seems. Maybe I just need new glasses.

PAD 7: Not A Baseball Poem

Jackson's team didn't win today, but almost, it was very close. He made a diving catch behind first base and dropped the ball, even though everyone thought he had caught it, even the umpire. Your son has a problem with honesty, said another parent, which I guess is true since he told the umpire he dropped the ball and the runner was safe. We all laughed, even Jackson, who takes these games so lightly, I wish he took his life lightly, too, the anxieties of his adolescence creep up around him day and night.

Today's poem starts with baseball and ends with pregnancy. I'm grieving for Stella who is separating from me so easily, and I am realizing that after my life of keeping my distance, of holding my mind separate from her, she is going to leave for real very soon, just as I am learning to love her with my mind as well as my heart.

(Suddenly) The Doe

After Jackson’s baseball jersey, number 10,
dries, the Gatorade splots, ketchup smeary and
grass-stained dirt scrubbed out quickly in cold
water, I open the front door to move
back against the house my pink folding chair,
on which I had dried it, actually on which
it lay while the April sun dried the damp
places, and step into the yard, and there
see her leap up, too awkward to leap
quickly, it’s more of a slosh and heave,
like a dinghy too heavily laden with
children in life jackets, the bag full of lunches,
and the blanket, soft blue and oyster shell plaid
I remember from my childhood, bumping
against the side of the bigger boat as the last
kid steps in, and he falls into his seat, as
the little boat soon turns and lumbers away
toward the beach, an up stumble onto her sharp
small black hooves, butt and tail caught in old
holly, before she backs off and escapes through
torn chicken wire and falling fencing, long
ineffective again her and others of her
kind, brown deer who continue to thrive
at the edge of the city of Cupertino in
shady garden corners, like this one
where she rested until I came, with her
burden in her brown belly, with my clean clothes.

I think it might be fun to write a whole sequence of poems, in which the word 'suddenly' never appears, but which describe a series of events that do happen that quickly, in a present that doesn't really exist, between the series of moments that are either the past the past the past or the future the future the future.

Seahorse Interlude

My friend Michelle posted a photo on FaceBook of a seahorses at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. It made me think of a seahorse poem I wrote a long time ago -- right at the beginning of my own personal poetry renaissance-- after a prolonged dry spell, no poems. Here it is, for Michelle and any one else who likes seahorses -- I wrote this in 1997. I wrote several version of it over the next 3 or so years, and I would write it differently now. I remember I wrote it during a workshop at UCSC -- and one of the other participants said it was indecent -- too much sex.



Seahorses

My lover wants me like the sea
He lays me down in fields of seahorses, blue and green

In our secret ocean the white fish die
and spill their eggs like gold coins

His singing anchors me to this
underwater world, I can drink
the whole sea full of salt

Anemones like hungry children
reach up for us in their pale
friendly way

luring us down
into the dream
down into
his arms

His brave brown ship carries me
away rocking on scarlet wind,
endless, and liquid, and true

I don’t care for anything here
except that he plays--

play yourself like the dark waves

play me like the foam on the storm--

PAD 6: John Lennon Saved My Life Again Today

Well, I'm having a good time with pad -- that's for sure. I love this one.

John Lennon Saved My Life Again Today

Sharpening my pencil in my

mint green battery-operated sharpener

shaped like a Hopi fetish of a bear,

my mother-in-law

had one on her mantle, a lovely

half clamshell shape, turquoise

with a strand of dried grass wrapped

around it, almost a belt, at the widest

part, or a Zuni fetish, as I learn

at the Native American Southwest

belt buckle website, with pencil

shavings where the face would be,

pointed down toward the table

in front of that green body,

maybe more of a light sea green,

and sparkly like a sandy beach

sparkles, or the pearlized finish

on a bowling ball, or glittery

fingernail polish, anyway

sounds just like the first four bars

of Revolution before Ringo

hits his drum once, six before

Paul starts his funny scream

and eight before John starts in

singing – that grinding wood

graphite sound I normally can’t

stand, sets my teeth on edge

like a blackbird on a black

board – well, not really –

except this grinding is exactly

the right pitch, I think of

John every time I sharpen

a pencil, and depending on

the day I might feel like

crying, or like today, not.

PAD 4 & 5: Yes, it's discouraging but that's okay

Since I've taken such a stand -- write a poem a day! -- nobody has come to the blog to comment or -- probably even -- to not comment. And it was a drastic stand for me to take, and the commitment is hard. But at least I love the outcome. I wonder if I can take a similar stand with regard to losing weight, or flossing my teeth every night, exercising enough -- only yesterday I promised my physical therapist I'd stretch every day and today I have not. There is still tonight.


Yesterday's PAD (April 22) should have been this:


For Michael's Heart

For Michael's heart
I would. And he
doesn't need to know.
Weights and measures,
scales, turning the pages.
This faucet, that
doorknob suffices in beauty
or does not, but when
we don't ask those
questions, I propose,
the heart hears voices
filled with answers
still.



Today's poem is going to be harder. I want to write about Paul, my contractor's foreman, who's from the Bronx, but who speaks Spanish to the guys working on the crew remodeling our house. Oscar and Jose, they were on the roof today, pulling out the old sky light, framing in the space for the new one. Paul was babbling on in Spanish, and then he said "siente and a quarter" and then more Spanish, and then "siente and three quarters" and it caught my eye -- as if he'd flung a fly fishing line at me and snagged my ear with the fluffy feathery hook. Ouch -- got me to turn my head, and when I said it back to him, they all laughed, all three of them. I want to put this in a poem, but I don't know how to. And, even though this is a lot of writing, this blog entry does NOT count as pad. This paragraph is not a poem. Even if I call it one. Not even a prose poem. I don't believe in that form, anyway. (A topic for another day). So now what?

I put this idea forward as a poem a couple of days ago, but that was cheating. As penance, I made it into a sestina for today's pad.

The New Season: A Baseball Sestina

Oh boy, I can smell it in the evening, the boy
Glinting in a white uniform, still clean, the ball
Fresh in his hand, now fleeing from his hand, now away from him
Fleeing through even the new air
And the new grass, green
The way a new green is brighter next

To a new clay infield, next
To the boy
Leaping across the new green
Outfield where he catches the ball
Like a new boy. The air
Is not really new, but these molecules belong to him

In a way that the grass belongs to him
And the next
Swing of the bat through the new air
Belongs to the boy
With a new taste in his mouth, and the ball
Still white, not yet having met not even one green

Blade of grass is his. You put up the green
Umbrella in the stands for him,
I bring my cooler, we grip our hats, we clench our fists into new balls
Of baseball fury, rows of brand new parents next
To definitely not wiser rows of parents, my boy
And your boy battling out there in early spring air

Pushing the fine tasting air
Back and forth between themselves, across green
Sprawling fields, themselves sprawling one boy
After the next
Into the dirt, their bodies rolling full out with the hymns
Of sliding, ballads of dropping the ball,

Haiku of pop-up, ball
Drops out of air
Into glove. Or in the next
Inning perhaps an entire symphony of green
And brown stains up and down every inch of him,
My boy.

It’s a game of give my boy take your boy glove hat bat ball
Yell for him, spit into that clean gleaming air
The green vowels, the white consonants, the next game.

PAD: 3 Very Small Baseball Poems

Baseball Season



1.


Oh boy

he caught the ball

threw him

self into air

over green

running between

one white

base and the

next



2.


Night-time light
warm air smelling like
boys in the grass



The first poem was originally intended as a sestina but I obviously have a lot of work to do to get that going -- the second one is a non-traditional haiku -- not much apart, together I'm more hopeful.

I'm interested that W. S. Merwin got his second Pulitzer today -- I'm still not sure if I like his poems, but so many other people love him (Pulitzer number 1) and now love how he's such and old man (Pulitzer 2).

I shouldn't be so cynical during baseball season.

PAD 2 Jumble Beams Holding Air

My friend Michelle (the only person who reads my blogs besides my father, boo hoo) commented that a photo of me in the new house was "jumble beams holding air" which is a great start to a poem. Here goes. Thanks, M.

A Remodel Nightmare

Where I live is no longer there –
roof ripped up, walls ripped down,
jumbled beams holding air –

a house’s privacies laid bare
to anyone who happens by from town.
Where I live is no longer there.

No bed, no piano, no window, no chair.
Ghosts of blankets, ghost of gown,
only jumble beams holding air.

Up along disfigured stairs
I step, gutters sag like a widow’s frown,
where I live. No longer there:

a place for me to brush my hair
a room to echo with my sounds.
Jumbled beams holding up the air

don’t look that much as if they care.
Safety and chaos now must share
where I lived, but am no longer there –
just a jumble – beams holding air

Aeneas in the Underworld

I know this may seem a bit off topic, but in Boland's poem "The Journey", she riffs on the journey of Aeneas into the underworld that Virgil writes up so horrifically in Book VI of The Aeneid.

"Immediately cries were heard. These were the loud wailing of infant souls weeping at the very entrance-way; never had they had their share of life’s sweetness for the dark day had stolen them from their mothers’ breasts and plunged them to a death before their time."
—Virgil, The Aeneid, Book VI

Here's a link to a blog "Monster Brains" where this is described, and with a beautiful photo of Brueghel's painting on said topic. (You have to scroll down to Sunday, June 22, 2008 to see the entry, but the whole blog is worth checking out -- amazing photos of monster art. Who knew?)

Jan Brueghel The Elder - AENEAS AND THE SIBYL IN THE UNDERWORLD, Oil on Copper 1598

Okay: A Poem A Day: For Bob

I used to do this whole poem a day thing, actually for about 18 months, then stopped for a long time. I heard all the clarion calls to write a poem a day (PAD) for this year's Poetry Month, but I have been negligent. Then I started cruising the blog land of poems and started to feel badly. So I will pad again, starting now. And since it's the 19th of the month already, I will pad until May 19th. It's going to be really hard. I'm warning you, those of you who may notice, that I am seriously out of shape. Let's see what I can do.

Moon Over Half Dome

My love borrowed
a corduroy jacket,
golden, soft, too small.

My love knelt
in new weeds, old dirt.
In evening wind.

My heart, startled,
rose like a search light
behind ancient granite.

Anyone
who looked that night
saw the moon.

Disorganization

Today I found the quote that I need to launch my thesis. I've been reading and reading about Eavan Boland -- poems, essays, articles, criticism -- and here's the sentence that will get me in, get me a title even, if I am lucky.

"The disorganization of the beloved moment"


Isn't that great? It's from an interview with Elizabeth Schmidt, titled "Where Poetry Begins: Eavan Boland in Conversation" published in American Poet (Spring 1997). You can read the entire essay at the Academy of American Poets website.

I'm not crazy about this photo of her, but there needs to be one, shining above me like a beacon right now. So here: