Posts tagged my poetry

Poetic Asides prompt: write a postcard poem.

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Postcards from Mexico

1.
Language has become
a stranger. Each
newly acquainted word
collapses awkwardly
off my tongue — el agua,
la manzana, la puerta,
el cielo tan azul,
el mundo tan nuevo
— until my tongue
is heavy, my jar is sore.

2.
I am climbing the Sun,
      steps leading up
         and up
         and up.
Nearby, I can see
   the Moon, smaller
             in stature,
      but equally impressive
 architecture of stone.
 
3.
Mi mamá Mexicana es como mi abuela.
Her white hair permed to curl, her face
wrinkled as a map, her knobly hands blue-veined
and soft, her faded brown eyes watery,
saddened by my recent betrayal:
abandonment of hearth
for the cool calm
of unknown streets.

4.
Joy is slipping
    past chain-
                linked fences,
 scaling the side
        of a pint sized
                    pyramid,
    laughing
in the pink
            light
as the day bleeds
          into night.

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These are just a few of the thoughts and images that came to me as I remembered my ten-week stay in Mexico. I’m thinking I’m might spend some time putting more of these thoughts down and extending the poem indefinitely when I have the chance.

Taking a lead from leavemeunderwater here, I’m doing some of the Poetic Aside’s promts. Day 1 is a “what got you here” poem.

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Trajectory

The trajectory of life is not so simple
as climbing into a car, slipping it into cruise control
and letting the road spool out like a thread before you,
while your thoughts gather and thicken like lint,
insubstantial and grimy dreaming of what you should
have said to your mother as she stood there,
washing one dish after another and placing them
into the bin, each clicking against the next as they settled in
to dry, your mother’s hands wrinkled and sudsy,
her words soft and tumbling over the slim folds of her lips
as she wishes and wishes and wishes you a life
constructed from the flimsy framework of her own desires.
Perhaps you sit there and say nothing, hand resting on the cool counter,
not looking for a towel with which you might help speed the pace
of evaporation, not joining in the act of restoration,
not returning the dishes their neat stacks within the cupboards,
just standing there taking sips of your long cold tea, and letting her
shape a dream of your life, if she must, letting her thicken the air
with possibility that is not really your own because it did not come
from your calmly beating heart. Maybe you look at the murky ring
your cup leaves behind and you think if would be so simple
to turn, to walk, to slip out the front door, to leave
you mother to her reverie, to crawl into the cracked leather seats
of your rusted out Chevy and let the engine rumble,
to shift into gear and just lurch into the world
into somewhere, into anywhere but here.

a cascade of light

lilluminates

a wind-caught plastic bag

I picked up this book because someone in an Amazon review called Creating Poetry a “muse disguised as paper”. It may not go that far, but it’s close. This book is full of writing prompts, each focused on the chapter’s subject, from Beginnings to Tone, Form, Research, Sound, Inspiration and more. There is plenty here for a poet to use and learn from, especially if they flip around from section to section, picking out prompts on an area of their writing they want to focus on. (I don’t think the best use is to read it from cover to cover as I did).

Occasionally, I thought the prompts for a particular subject were to specific, however, Drury encourages you to use this book as a jumping off point. It’s not necessary to follow the prompts to the letter, if the poem goes off in another direction.

Here is on of my responses to one of the prompts in the book. I followed one focused on ghazal’s a form of poetry traditionally from the Middle East, which arranges the poem in a series of 5-10 couplets, rhymed on the same sound throughout and using the subject of love or wine to represent mystical experience. The prompt I used asked that the reader write a ghazal of my own. You’ll note that I dropped the rhyme, like many American poets do.

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An Untitled Ghazal

The water in the vase is stagnant; the stems slimy.
A halo of petals on the table are emptied of fragrance.

We are always new, he says, always in the state of becoming new,
each dead cell replaced with its replicated offspring.

The leaves are dancing like translucent tissue paper.
The mottled light is bounding along the grass.

The days are an amalgamation of eyes blinking, hair growing,
lips parting, fingers thrumming over the flesh of the world.

He says, its not that time moves too quickly.
It’s that it moves too quickly.

The stars glimmer like fireflies trapped in tar.
The stars are a map of the freckles on your skin.

He says, silly rabbit, you have to have lived
what you lived in order to know what you know.

The Gerber Daisy leans against the glass.
A sun resides at the heart of its petals.

i make excursions

into the drizzling rain

just to collect

the weight of water

in my hair

I could have stuck to the trees,

kept to the winding trails, that twisted

through the shadowed light, could have lived

with my feet settled into the dark loam

of places unknown, unwandered, perhaps even

undreamed. But had I kept to the safe, secret places

of the world, how could I have known you?

True, your own forest is a maze of glass and concrete,

with roads replete with the buzzing of cars,

full of oil and bright florescent light, which makes me

far more lonely than the silence, empty woods.

But I would risk the wild, untamed city

for this one moment with you, here with you,

in this small unfurnished room, even if

it’s not forever, even if I am promised

only a shattered heart in the end.