Drowning

I needed to write this.

Questions for critique:
Do the italics and such work? Do they make some sort of sense?
Imagery - does it flow well? Does it make sense?
There are parts of this story I have of course not told (though, if you go back through my poetry, I have written to this person many times). Do I at least convey how I feel about our relationship well?


"Beast"

The cold slither of Mercury fear
knots silver in my stomach—

I am a gateway,
a stone staircase descending
into the waters of the Styx.

He waits for me in the graveyard,
a Christ who rises towards me,
arms outstretched like a great
new-age vampire come
to lead us all to our graves—
waits for my death and zombie birth,
when I will be dragged
from the embracing dirt
and buried in his pale arms.

I am no Ophelia.
I fill my pockets with stones
and leave stately footprints on the riverbank—
down to sleep I go,
beside Arthur and his court.

Raise no cross over my head,
mark not where I lie.

Bethlehem-born, he carries deserts in his wake,
leaves no drop of water
for me to drink.

Let me go to the sea
and search for pearls forever
where I cannot be found. 

Time

WOW it's been AGES. I've been really busy, but I've finally got something else to post.

As usual, any and all comments welcome!!! :)

"Timeless"

Inhale four dimensions—
an expanse like desert sand,
a second body of heat brushing lips to skin.

The cry of kingfishers resounds
heartbeats on spindly legs
with feathers catching
one hundred summers of wind:

Exhale—
a sandstorm
fills and empties
hourglass tulip bulbs. 

South African Tea

I'd love some comments on the imagery, in particular how much sense it makes! I'm concerned about the bit with Latin, and about the combination of tea and famous painters....

Any advice on trimming this down?
Any words or images that you know NOTHING about and make NO sense?

All comments welcome <3

"Rooibos Tea"

Breathe deep the chai haze—

Picasso's djinn,
a muse of eggshells and grandma's lace tablecloths,
cradles the tea kettle to her chest
and abandons Latin words and names—
flotsam and jetsam dribbling
irrelevant among the little red tea leaves;
the driftwood of genus and species bumping
against the shores of the South African scrublands.

She hovers orange and indigo,
a quavering flame of dreams
and drained tea dregs—
divination with a soft-spiced voice
at the bottom of the mug,
never quite gone—

a flock of Van Gogh crows
frozen in their hayfields.

Eclipse

I'm liking some of the shorter pieces I've done recently. Decided to keep the title the same as the topic; any suggestions for changing it would be great, though! :)

Any advice as to how I can tighten this up even more is appreciated. How do you like the imagery?
I know there isn't much space for real "flow," but does it work for you?

"Eclipse"

Breathless,
Grandmother Moon clasps
night to her bosom,
and curls, quiet and closed
before the sun;

a black-eyed Susan
blooming in a dying sky. 
 

Fairytales

I kind of had fun creating my own little folklore for this one :) I'm curious to hear what kind of story you come up with!

For critique:
Are there too many details in the "things not to do"?
How does it flow?
What does the ending (the part in brackets) mean to you?

"The Witch over the Mountains"

Listen:
in her youth, one day she
flew up over the mountains,
turned her hair black and
went to dance with the goblin king.

Hush, children -
she is the earth itself.
Only eat your chestnuts after roasting,
and do not walk barefoot in the grass;
she reaches for you.
Beware her grasping soil fingers.

Take no apples or sweets,
trust not to luck or coincidence,
always close the garden gate,
and pick the bugs from wildflowers
before taking them home -
or else the goblin king will take you
to dance with him, too.

[Over the schoolyard:
a vulture of perched storm clouds,
a sudden, brief god
of cat's cradle strings
and splayed fingers.
And moist earth, like parted lips,
electric and open to the rain,
casts her spell.

A flock of seraphs
hovers at cloud-edges to watch.] 

Salt of the Earth

Not...terribly proud of this one. I feel like it could use to be tightened up. I'm trying to move away from the first-person perspective that has sort of plagued my poetry for the last couple months. Not sure how well I pulled it off. Any and all comments to that effect are appreciated.

"Dry"

Bring the heat -
a second skin to shroud the horizon in dust.

A call and response:
sing, cicadas,
trill your stick legs and bead eyes.

Not daring to look back
and not knowing why,
you listen to the rattlesnake buzz -
it speaks in its low hum and hiss,
a song of grasses and endless sky.

Draw the salt up through the dirt -
crystals sprout from hair folicles,
paralyze eyes open wide.
Schrodinger's ghost haunts
the in-between places,
the gap where salt gathers in veins
and in the marrow of bones.

Stretch: a crystal demon,
a pillar of salt
spreading petals skyward.

North Carolina

I realized I keep kinda writing these little haikus about my home state. I went ahead and just...combined them all. An ode to North Carolina :)

I would eagerly accept any comments. Please be aware I have gone with the "real" definition of haikus - that is, the 5-7-5 format is simply a "guideline." None of the lines will exceed 5-7-5, but some will have fewer syllables. The point of a haiku, after all, is simplicity, and adding a word just to fit in an extra syllable or two seems to defeat the purpose, haha.

"Haikus for North Carolina"

Thunder rolls--a dark,
heaving August dragon crawls
flaming toward sunset.


Last night's rain drifts
Heavenward, an old ghost
from the asphalt.


A ceiling of milk
tempts and teases, but
curdles, and sours.


A drop of water
seduces but leaves earth
parched as paper.


Moments before dusk:
silence fills the hollows
along the Blue Ridge.


We spend a summer
on edge--translating breezes
into hurricanes.


By night, the anger
of wet branches; by morning
just drizzles and wind.


A line of thick thieves,
rain-laden and steaming, lurks
into the rising night.

Thought

Oh, the process of writing. What joy, what fun.

How do you feel about the phrasing in the second stanza? Do the sentence fragments work?
Does the third stanza make any sort of sense? I worry it just sort of hangs there....comments appreciated.
How do you feel about imagery overall?
What section is the strongest/weakest? Why?

"Meditation on Thought"

Begin the quiet storm of fidgeting,
metronome-pen beating—
a drum, a drum:

Tempestuous—tearing
fingers through hair,
black eyes
crawling along
the insides of my lids.

My mind grows scrublands.
"What do you mean?" and,
"What do I mean?"

I tend slowly toward the abstract.
Pine trees sprout from my hair,
a forest of church steeples.
Whippoorwill am I,
chestnut-child Evangeline,
and my fingers stretch
architectonic
to build me bridges of stone,
a whole cathedral of bone archways.
My Michelangelo eyes sit restless
in a face of white and green marble.

The smallest drop of rain
against the window
and my thoughts collapse—
I must begin again.

There is a secret
fingernail-screeching
as the drops of water
roll down the glass. 

Equinox

This one was...interesting. I hope you like it. More funny business to do with identity, but it kinda ended up getting split into two people.

I'd love the usual comments on:
imagery - how well it flows, how strange it is, etc
sentence structure - I fear the presence of run-on sentences
phrasing - I've really gotten stuck in this "I am/we are" rut and it's starting to annoy me :( Thoughts?

"Equinox Lovers"

We come into being twice a year—
a balance of shadow and fire,
a half-lit moon face
pale blue and reflecting a still sun.

Sunflower faces follow me
westward, an ember
dying in a flame of thunderclouds.
Resonant and careful I am,
my molecules built on changing shapes.

You say to me,
"You're too young to be so shy,"
so I stand up and take your hand.

I am a glacier quivering atop cliffs
overlooking the North Atlantic,
but you exhale and
set me to smoking—

blowing candle flames free
like dandelion seeds.
We've learned to keep our breath
cool and slow,
draw it out steady to catch the wish
with a last puff.

We are a pair of Arctic winds
howling down Norwegian coasts,
flopping like fish into open hands.

I am a freshwater salmon—
cook me gentle, peel back my scales
and pull away my pink flesh
with a fork.

I've sought loves like evergreens,
whole forests of pine sap
at the midpoint of summer and winter,
at the crash of seasons
like waves on cliffs.

You are my old woman
speaking
to a silent theater
of all the Adams and Eves
and all their countless generations,
palm against creased palm,

a paragon of quiet
and falling evening—
the measured equilibrium
from my wrist to my thigh.

"Hush, now,"
you say to me,
"you're much too young to be so shy,"
so I take your outstretched hand
and close my eyes.

With a whisper I send
the night's first eleven stars
into the sky.

Thunderbird

This was an attempt at translating this photograph into words:

I really loved the colors of the bricks; it made me think of a desert, and then I started reminiscing about the time my family went out hiking at a national park in Arizona, got lost, and had to hitchhike our way back to our car. I hope the memory aspects of the poem helped translate the image itself.

All comments appreciated!

"Brick"


We forget the four wooden walls
that pressed their shape into rust-red clay—
the color of the dust on our shoes
from when we walked quartz crystals into the Arizona desert
and burned them clean beneath a ceiling of sun
so we could hear their voices:

a Thunderbird call,
sweet and high like the pounding of blood in our veins.

In the clarity of dried and smoking sage bundles,
a small image of you and me
gives itself over to the cactus plants
sprouting through the cracks that form
at right angles to each other.
We were told about the way we made our crystals part of the desert.

We got lost in the labyrinth of saguaros—lightning rods
in a sea of dust and stone.
In a moment of truth we held brush twigs in our hands:
baby thunderbirds
crackling against their cages,
whose mother's call guided us back to the highway.

The pattern beneath my feet is a stairway,
a bolt of lightning.
We sweep thunder under our wings and in our wake.

Quietness

There's this barn that I always pass any time I travel from my home in North Carolina to visit friends and family on the east coast. There's a little farm in a field beside the highway. It's just lovely :)

As usual, all comments appreciated :)

"Storm Quiet"

You spread yourself like Anansi-spider

across the border between Virginia and North Carolina,

all red and dry—

you ought to be a desert.

Land spirit,

the voice of your tin roof has fallen silent.

Heat storms crackle their lightning earthward,

treacherous and tempting,

but you can’t summon the rains for your fields anymore

and the grass roots

can’t draw the humidity into their whistling stalks—

their sound, too, has stilled

with a brownness beneath a scathing sun.

You wait for one more autumn

and its offering of apples.

When your children finally arrive

red and slippery as foals

you may go down to die

and perhaps the patient pre-storm silence

will break.

Thunderstorms

This one is sort of...semi-autobiographical. There are images and specific experiences taken from this summer that I've included, but the story itself is fictional (Obviously, since August 22 hasn't happened yet, lol).

Any and all comments appreciated.

Do you get a sense of grief or loss from this piece?
How do you feel about the length? Are there too many vignettes? Do you think some of them should be combined?
Imagery: are there any places where I need to trim it down?
Tone - what do you think? Consistent? Inconsistent? Weird?

Sorry about the length! I seem to be writing a lot of long pieces lately.

"Thunderstorm Physics"

June 21st

This morning I woke up and
wiggled my toes, as usual,
listening to the drumming sound inside my head.
By lunch I was thinking—
Good Lord, where have all the thunderstorms got to?
—normally, I could pluck them out of the air like
apples on strings.

Isaac would have been proud of me.
When cold air and hot air meet…
But no. That's thermodynamics, isn't it?

June 27th

Today Mom shattered
the vase she'd been arranging sunflowers in,
and I watched the glass pieces skitter across the floor
like rain—
it's been so long since it rained
—before I ran to put shoes on and get the vacuum.
The clouds today are wispy,
cotton not yet spun for dresses.

Gases act differently in a vacuum.
All the equations become easy,
yellow and buttery like sunshine.

July 4th

In the mountains for the Fourth.
Wood shavings scatter over my hands
smelling of cedar.
I was making
something, until the wood cracked and splintered
in my hands.
I have a shard of it trapped under my fingernail.
The thunder rumbled like war drums
but there was nothing to put out the fire
when one of the fireworks went all wrong
and I had to go get a bucket.

All systems tend toward a state of equilibrium.
The drought is bound to break sometime.

July 6th

Driving home,
I could see the grisly, thick clouds
sitting low over the peaks.
Lightning crackled in there somewhere like brainwaves but
the stretch of road we drove down was lined with gold fields
yellowing and wallowing in the sun's heat.
I could smell the sickly-sweet grass, the swan-song of
something in its death throes,
like lilies beside a hospital bed.
The storm was a vulture clawing at the mountainsides.

Time moves faster the closer you are to the ground,
and objects moving away from you always
seem to be running.

July 15th

This afternoon I
shredded the pages of the book I was reading
on the floor of my room.
I couldn't even remember the title anymore,
and the order of words lying on the floor
made the way things happened make some kind of sense.
The clouds passed overhead like towers ready for a siege
but did not quiver once.

Really big objects drag space and time along with them.
No wonder each breath feels like an eternity.

August 1st

The August air is an ocean.
Mom's door stays closed most of the time, and I
go for long walks, drowning myself in the pollen and the humidity,
carrying an umbrella in hopes that
a passing cloud might find a reason to stay.
But like a magic charm, the umbrella keeps the rain
from touching our shriveled grass, brown as dried leaves.
The small patch of earth in the backyard where we used to grow tomatoes
stands empty.

An object moves at a constant speed unless acted upon
by something else.
I am waiting for the equal and opposing reaction.

August 22nd

I was sitting on the porch swing today when
Mom came out of her room.
She sat down next to me and held my hand,
like we did when I was little and we waited
for Dad to come home from work.
My lungs shook in my chest and I didn't have to breathe steadily anymore.
The sky broke open like a glass vase shattered against the floor,
and the rain washed the tide of yellow pollen from the porch,
washed the little tomato plot clean.
The thunder
held the sky open for us, for us alone.

And for a moment we betrayed quantum physics and knew
exactly where we were
and how to pick ourselves up and set ourselves going again.

Pulchritude

Not terribly sure about how clear this one is, but I like it.
All comments appreciated.

I'd love to hear thoughts on the little italicized parts - good/bad/neither?
Also, as usual: imagery? flow? I'm not satisfied with the second line, any thoughts on it?

enjoy

"Labyrinth Children"

I rebel against the boiling
Icarus-blood in my veins,
but still fill the labyrinth walls Daedalus builds around me.

Fire in the sky

We turn our bare bellies toward the sun and
are told we have to be pretty,
have to sweep away the light dusting of hair on our arms.
The early sting of hot wax
scalds like sunburns and redemption,
residual heat softening our skin
baby-new.

We pull feathers from our skin like scraps of time.

Our father builds splints and wooded frameworks,
and we turn our faces to burn them in blazing skies.
We wish only to sprout branches and grow ourselves sunward,
green needles flashing.
Daedalus looks for us, gleaming sunspots as we are —
a sound sharp and sticky like pine cones.

We are leaves, and a flick of their hands
sends us spiraling into the wind.

Comer's Rock, Virginia

Spent this past weekend with my partner at his grandparent's cabin in Comer's Rock, Virginia, and it was FANTASTIC. I had so much fun, and the landscape is simply beautiful. Therefore, it seemed about time to write my poem about the town; most of the "town" is actually just the landscape. The town center is comprised entirely of a post office, a gas station, and a fire station. But the hills and mountains around it are amazing.

As for the poem itself: I'm still rather unsatisfied with it. I'd appreciate some thoughts on...
Imagery, as always;
Flow - I'm a bit concerned about how well it reads and about where I've broken the stanzas;
and Line breaks.

As always, I'd love to hear your thoughts! Enjoy :)

"Grassroots, River-roots"

I am no Wordsworth, but
I have become an extension of the hills,
a bristle-cone pine above the quarry.
The way the earth falls down to dusk
makes spreading myself this close to heaven
like breathing.
My mountains curl around me
gold and green, my cliffs fall
clear like flutes
across my chest.

Whistle me a song, Mother Idoto—
your summer and lightning
bring the rain.
Your mist presses its palms
against my face, presses
its smoke into the depths of my folds.

Valley winds, neither you nor me,
sweep me from the rock faces
and bring me back clean as red Virginia clay.
Black-eyed Susans pool
sun-like,
raw leaf edges catching—
still and quiet feathers.
My mountains grow
more real in my shadows, in the
green that's so green it's blue,
in the clarity of cloud pinnacles.

Idoto, rushing wide
as the Potomac, you bear
a crown of mountain laurels on your brow,
a fistful of Queen Anne's lace
in your upturned palms.

I stretch myself as a slate mountain
with crystal-sharp bones, beacons
within fields of grass
sweet and golden as honey.

My Idoto is a row of wind chimes
rippling across river water, gathering
cicada crackles and the
whisper of dappled butterfly wings.
My clover blossoms sweeten and ripen
like grapes.

Idoto sinks her streams
into my heart, prickles
sweat down my neck.
Her clouds spread onto
my foothill skin, smelling
softly of pine sap.

   We rise,
future summer rains,
   toward the sky.

Folklore

Sooooooooo I'm not entirely satisfied with this one. I feel like I somehow need to conclude it better. Generally concerned about some of the imagery, as usual. It feels...uneven. And I sort of like the format, but I also don't. Comments appreciated!

PS. Thoughts on a title? I hate this one >_<

"Tall Tales"

I find myself taking posthumous advice
from Anansi.
        I swallow him regularly as I sleep
        and morning birds snap him up in their beaks
        and carry on singing.
His careless webs span
the inhale and exhale of chasms.

I regularly hang my head
upside-down beneath bridges.
        Only the ducks bellow at me
        and demand nothing more than
bits of bread.
 
I try to pile stones along roadways
but the walls are never tall enough
for Mercury to hide behind;
        children or sprites follow behind me,
        skipping the wall-stones across ponds.
Mercury whispers from all the wrong places,
        suction-cupped to the kitchen window
        and fleeing up and down the glass,
a silver bead that boils and burns my veins.

I don't set even a toe
inside rings of mushrooms
        and I wield "I wish" with care,
        but there are no more elves or goblins
        hiding under my bed
or at the bottom of the well in the garden.

I have never seen nightmares tangled in dream catchers,
but still I am careful with plants like mistletoe
that have been the death of gods.

Rocks and Water

Based off Deb Talan's song, "Rocks and Water" (which can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoRVzSup5WY). It has such a wonderful warmth to it...like the desert at night as it's still losing its heat...

I couldn't resist writing a poem about this one. Unfortunately, I am entirely unsatisfied with what I have. At some later date, I will likely write another one, because I just love this song too much to be satisfied with what I have come up with.

Comments appreciated!

"Desert Widow"

Isis bears the sienna brown of a desert -
she is a terra cotta jar,
twisted and turned by expert hands
to be evenly baked by a lidless sun.
Her hands are a scroll of flax or parchment,
old, careful, experienced,
a cluster of pictograms
with knuckles sturdy as rocks standing guard -
a pride of lions against the sky.

Her sun
is a nest of copper wire,
the smell of blood
breathed in through open mouths.

Isis grows sunflowers between her toes
and goes down to the water at sunset
when she is lonely.

She sits by the riverbanks
and waits for the spring floods
that carry her husband home.

Isis is red clay -
crisp, sunburnt,
and covered in ivy,
full to the brim of nighttime rainwater.

Cycle

Okay, believe it or not, I did actually write the following poem with cycles in mind. I'm not sure how clearly it came through...

Written in the form of a sonata, which you can read about here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonata_form) if you're interested. Written mostly to the sound of Yo-Yo Ma playing Beethoven's cello sonatas. check youtube if you're interested

Just to clarify: a la orilla del mar = by the shores of the sea
a la luz de la luna = by moonlight (therefore, la luna = the moon)

What do you think of the format? Do you like the way I've broken up the "solo" and "accompaniment"? Does it work?
As usual: how well does the imagery flow? Do you like the images themselves? Do they fit well together?
How do you like the repetitions?  Is the "theme" (by which I mean musical theme, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theme_%28music%29 for reference) fairly evident?
Any other thoughts?

"A la Orilla de la Luna
      Cello Sonata in E minor with piano accompaniment"

La luna brushes
The spirits in their seasons
Against the wall,
Then tilts and turns
Toward darkness.

A la luz de la luna,
The dead tilt and turn
By the light of the moon.

                        she says it with a smile
                        that cuts your
                        knees out from under you:
                        'a la orilla del mar.'
                        by the shores of the sea,
                        in the season of snow
                        she still grows up from the earth -
                        saw-grass climbing dune crests.

                        the magician wolf-child
                        twists her fingers
                        and does not trust her words
                        the whole of winter -

                        and in spring
                        a spade turns the garden
                        from weed-green to brown,

                        flames turn the fields
                        from brown to volcanic black,

                        while, cello between her knees,
                        she plays to the ghosts
                        who know her name,

                        plays her cello
                        to the red wallpaper
                        soft as cream.

The black water
Beneath la luna
Shines pewter at
Its wave-crests.
The salt smells
Like summer hurricanes.

                        a la orilla del mar
                        the sand still clings to
                        the heat of the day.

                        the milky way
                        is a waving field
                        of wheat and silver barley grass,

                        and the wolf-child's padding feet
                        track sand inside the house.

                        she plays
                        with sand under her fingernails,
                        and her spirits
                        kneel and bow
                        to pick it out of the carpet.

                        their faces are painted
                        on the red wallpaper -

                        red
                        like the fires
                        in early spring fields.

                        and the magician
                        runs her fingers
                        through the barley grass
                        to teach it to sing.

With a sigh
La luna turns away from the sun.

                       'a la orilla del mar,'
                       she says with a smile like cream.

                       she grows up from dune crests
                       with her cello between her knees
                       and autumn leaves
                       burning into the carpet,

                       returns her ghosts
                       to what they once were
                       as crumbled leaves
                       and old wheat stalks,
                       brown and gold as ashes.

                       a la orilla del mar
                       the cello-player
                       sends the spirits to the earth,

And autumn fades
To the season of snow,

A la luz de la luna.

Psalms

Wow. I have been waiting to write a poem that really encompasses my homesickness since I got here, and finally, 3 weeks before I'm headed home, I've written it. But I love it :)

So yeah. Questions for critique:
How do you feel about the dialect? Too strong? Not strong enough?
Plot: is the "story" cohesive enough?
How do you feel about the words themselves? Does it get too close to prose?
I'm also concerned about the beginning of the "David" stanza - does it make sense, or do I need a better transition in there?
Thoughts on imagery in general, or any other comments are definitely appreciated!

"Psalm for the South"

Momma gave me a quilt when I left home
so I could lie me down in green pastures,
jus' like her black book says.

I learned to read
in a town where the churches got porches
jus' like everybody else.

Taught myself astronomy
with cogon grass ticklin my bare legs n'feet
n'ticks on the backsa my knees.
I couldna shown you
the long necklace'a stars
people say is a dragon,
but I could hunt down rabbits n'hazelnuts
on their way to Heaven.

Since I left
I've seen long plains a' steel buildins
that crowd out the sky
n'shine their own stars.

Grandaddy Solomon still sings to me in my sleep
in Grandma's old wicker rockin chair,
still reads to me from Momma's black book.
I like him better'n God.

My first music lesson
was the wind in the blue grass,
my breath vibratin the green ribbon
crushed between thumb-joints.
Since then I've learned from voices jus' as sweet.

I read lots more than the black book, these days.
I've walked through lotsa valleys,
dryer'n salt or wet as an afternoon in March—
walked there myself
with a cane I cut from the oak tree out back.

Sometimes Grandaddy Solomon
sings me the songs David wrote.
I don't like David much.
His graspin hands
never reached for anything,
jus' begged to be filled.
He ain't strong as Grandma,
with her hands knotted like wood,
n'he ain't strong as me.

I've got more time on Sundays now,
but I dress up anyway.
It's a holy day,
sure as the summer brings pollen
to paint the screened porch yellow.
Whether God says it's holy or not.

I shoulda known
you gotta get everything for yourself.
I shoulda known
I could study a universe
in the hickory trees along the driveway.

The bricks for the tall, new city buildins
may be baked in the sun, just like ours.
But I'm gonna build my home
from wood n'stone first.

I still know when a thunderstorm's comin
n'when it's gonna break.
I know the shape'a clouds
n'the way they fill with heat.
It's something in the air's smell,
the way the electricity gathers on your skin
n'pulls you towards Heaven.

Death

Was listening to "the Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond" again (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXGVFJqSqqg&feature=related), and thought it appropriate inspiration for this poem.

The idea of a "low road" is a common means of reaching death throughout many cultures, but so is the sea :)

My major critique question about this one is: I tried to make it sort of a narrative, but I'm worried its a bit too prose-ish.
Other than that, what do you think of the different "refrains" - too much? Any additional comments?

"The Wide Ocean Road"

So you’ll take the high road

And I’ll take the low,

And I’ll be in Scotland ‘afore ye,

For me and my true love

Will never meet again

On the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond.

~~~

The oracle-crone came today

from across the sea

wrapped in her wolfskins

and bearing runes in her fist.

She speaks with cracked, salt-dried lips.

I am a little sea-bird

that was shot from the ship’s prow.

We have sailed

seeking the well of wisdom

at ocean’s end,

guarded by the elf-king of old

with his storm eyes.

In the gloaming we taste

the sea-salt on our tongues.

I am the gray sea-bird

that passed my night beneath the waves

with nothing but brittle feather-spines for a cloak

and with the salt taste of blood in my mouth.

She is the feathered serpent

from beyond the sea,

come to tell us all

in a voice smelling of brine

one day, even the great ships

will pull only sand in their wakes

and their iron hulls

will lie like empty oyster shells along the beach.

Only the ferryman will remain.

The ferryman sails

bundled in his heavy cloaks and furs,

drifting in a place

where his hair must always be haloed

with ice.

The oracle-crone catches me,

a ghostly sea-bird in her palm.

One day, she says,

even she will be set out for the waves

with sea-salt crystallized on her lips

and her body will wait for the wooden timbers

to carry her down.

Alice

I am AMAZED at the speed with which I cranked this out. Considering it has rhyming in it. For a prompt. Okay, so 2 hours isn't exactly a SHORT period of time, but still.

I'm quite pleased with this ^^. Playing with rhymes a bit on this one. Rhyming styles used: imperfect rhyme, internal rhyme, and eye rhyme. These are all wikipedia-able.

I really quite love this BUUUUUUUUUUUT as usual, I have some questions for critique:
1) most importantly, I have that random little "cheshire" line in there that I absolutely love, but I'm worried makes NO sense to anyone else; well I mean, it's not SUPPOSED to mean something, but there is a rhyme (HAH! literally! bahahaha...) and reason to it. Thoughts on it?
2) I'm concerned that some of the imagery is just a tad random (not including the cheshire line), even for an Alice-y, madness-y poem. Thoughts on this topic?
3) Line breaks: what do you think? I've gone a bit more rambly for this...
4) If you have any specific questions or comments, let 'em rip!

"Alice of Sky and Earth [A Mirror is a Looking-Glass]"

[Cheshire treasure shepherd, nest, sir, chest. of.
                                                                          drawers.]

I am only as real
as the teeth that spread themselves into a smile,
the eyes that wait to see the air ripple.
I fear people who call things simple.

I kneel at the hearth and dirty my knees in the sienna-brown earth
and throw fistfuls of ashes
against the mountains—
great stalactites growing down into the cover of clouds.

The theory of relativity
says that I can
borrow time by
turning back the hands of clocks.

I would remove
those shining prison teeth one by one.
My body roves
the length and breadth of well-shafts,
roves like the machines built for Mars; but not for me.
I am above and beyond
the dictations of up and down.

At the seaside I may translate sky to ground
and very gentle, tremble, tremble—and drown.

Cold Mountain, North Carolina

So yeah. Not much to say about this one. Not as happy with it as the others, but I still like it. Any comments appreciated :)

"Cold Mountain: the Madonna's Many-Colored Cloak"

Motherly, she is.

Just before dawn she lies
soft, gray and pink,
an elegant contour
of earth against sky.

She grows to noon
when she sits
straight-backed and proud -
a Catholic grandmother at mass
in her starched green dress
with pine-needle lace.

Humble me, Lady.
I lay myself flat
against your stone
and spin with you for a while.

At dusk I leave her again.
She sighs, raw and imperious
in robes of purple and gold.
Her face falls first
into its familiar wrinkles,
then drifts quietly into twilight blue.

I love her slopes best
on damp mornings
from a distance.
The clouds pour like milk
over her shoulders.

Texture

Accompanying music: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIIKHFN0svc
I have been wanting to write a poem about this video for AGES! I think it's magnificent and there's so much texture in it! Still not entirely sure what I think of the poem itself. Not as tactile as I'd like. But I tried to sort of give the language a little texture, too - what do you think of the gentle drawl?

I'd love comments on imagery/composition/flow/etc

"Love Song from the Wool to the Lace"

Unroll me,
smooth and gentle-like.
Gentle like wool.

Darlin',
you can rock
back and forth to me -
I whisper between your fingers,
soft 'til I've been gathered up by rough wooden sticks
and made whole again -
a sweet tangle of colored thistles,
clinging to your ankles.

I can be rubbed and crushed
safely between palms,
but I barely dare to take you in my hands,
my spider-lace.

You are twisted silk, dear,
sighing Victoria wallpaper,
finger-tip tender.

Twirl, lover.
Let me feel your threads
flick their kisses against my cheeks.
You are the prettiest thing I've ever seen.

We nod our heads together,
long hair and silk skirts
tickling our toe-tops.

Tenuousness

 So, I'm worried some of the imagery here is a little too...cryptic. But for now I can't seem to find a way to say what I mean without explaining too much. Doing so is DIRECTLY contrary to the immortal words of Mark Twain.

 And we must avoid that at all costs, mustn't we?

"Mouse-child"

I am
delicate.

I should be a sprite
that would go whirling
across the air
with unbuttoned coat.

But thighs and breasts
give me a name
that is not mine.

I must walk as a mouse,
the way I was taught
in ballet class.
I must not be an elephant.

But, Oh! to be wrinkled and gray!
To walk like a pendulum,
great legs swinging!

I am tenuous, tentative -
a child told
she is too old now,
she can't say what she likes
anymore.
That she must take care
to keep her knees smooth
and unskinned
from tree-climbing.

We Will Become Silhouettes

I hate the working title for this. I'd love some suggestions. I'm also wondering about the da-da's...good/bad? needs work?
Theme music: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEILFf2XSrM

"Absurd"

She creates and destroys
in the same breath,
a cardboard figure
molding clay with her tongue
and her thick thighs.

She hums a storm down on your head.

[da, da, da, da.]

The clouds—silk
cutout shapes—
bend and stretch
against the sky.
There is no hardness
anymore.

[da    da    da    da]

The dandelions are
fragile to the touch,
a single breath blows
their puffs away.
She gathers them in her arms
and tries to turn them yellow again.

[da
        da
                da
                        da]

The war begins and ends
with a minute of radio silence.
Days fall like yellow weeds.
In this endless wind
even the stones are only
silhouettes.

But she can bend them with her fists.

[da
da
da
da.]

Let us begin...

Hello. I'm Jes and I'm a poet. After completing the 2011 National Poetry Writing Month and wanting to keep myself in the habit of writing often, I've decided to challenge myself to complete 100 poems on 100 topics. Some of these topics are people, some books, some songs, some places. Some are concrete objects, and some are abstract concepts. My intention, at the end of this project, is to self-publish a book of poetry.


So!


Let's get started! I've left comments open to anyone who wishes to leave something constructive. If I have particular requests for critique I will post them. Though not all the poem titles will be the same as the topic they are written for, I will be using the topics themselves as the official post title for each poem, to keep everything neat, and so you can look through them by topic. Enjoy!


My list of poem topics that I will be using is as follows:

<sub>1. We Will Become Silhouettes [ X ]
2. Carbon</sub>[  ]
_{3. Pulchritude} [ X ]
_{4. Tenuousness} [ X ]
_{5. South by southwest} [  ]
_{6. Cold Mountain, North Carolina} [ X ]
_{7. Thunderstorms} [ X ]
_{8. Psalms} [ X ]
_{9. Asheville, NC} [ X ]
_{10. James Taylor} [ X ]
_{11. North Carolina (in general)} [ X ]
_{12. Particle physics} [ X ]
_{13. Isaac Asimov} [  ]
_{14. Terraforming} [  ]
_{15. River of Lover} [ X ]
_{16. Bogota} [  ]
_{17. Erinaceousness} [  ]
_{18. Virgil} [  ]
_{19. Zen Buddhism} [  ]
_{20. Voodoo} [  ]
_{21. the Arctic Circle} [  ]
_{22. Fairytales} [ X ]
_{23. Leonardo da Vinci} [  ]
_{24. Dream transcription} [ X ]
_{25. Sojourn/the Monomyth} [ X ]
_{26. Herbalism} [  ]
_{27. King Arthur} [  ]
_{28. Gothic style} [ X ]
_{29. Change} [ X ]
_{30. Heirlooms} [ X ]
_{31. Texture} [ X ]
_{32. the Universe} [ X ]
_{33. the 'Verse} [  ]
_{34. Quietness} [ X ]
_{35. Immortality} [  ]
_{36. My Hands} [  ]
_{37. Famous Quotation} [  ]
_{38. Classical Composition} [  ]
_{39. Thunderbird} [ X ]
_{40. Drowning} [ X ]
_{41. Down to Earth} [ X ]
_{42. Superfluidity} [  ]
_{43. Piezoelectric Surfaces} [  ]
_{44. Personhood} [  ]
_{45. Constellations} [  ]
_{46. Hitchhiking} [  ]
_{47. Electricity} [ X ]
_{48. Folklore} [ X ]
_{49. History of Writing} [  ]
_{50. Weaving} [ X ]
_{51. Bonfire} [  ]
_{52. Salt of the Earth} [ X ]
_{53. Enigma} [  ]
_{54. Hermit} [  ]
_{55. Language} [  ]
_{56. Thought} [ X ]
_{57. Cliff Diving} [  ]
_{58. Fear} [ X ]
_{59. Boundaries} [ X ]
_{60. Flightless Bird, American Mouth} [  ]
_{61. Soul} [ X ]
_{62. Quartz Crystal} [  ]
_{63. Eclipse} [ X ]
_{64. Python} [ X ]
_{65. Steam} [ X ]
_{66. Elementals} [  ]
_{67. Hippy} [  ]
_{68. Ice} [  ]
_{69. the Nine Muses} [  ]
_{70. Alice} [ X ]
_{71. Technology and Humanity} [  ]
_{72. June flowers} [ X ]
_{73. Frivolous} [  ]
_{74. Taoism} [  ]
_{75. Comers Rock, Virginia} [ X ]
_{76. Black-Eyed Susans} [  ]
_{77. Where Our Destination Lies} [  ]
_{78. Sapience} [  ]
_{79. Good Omens} [  ]
_{80. Puzzle Pieces} [  ]
_{81. South African Tea} [ X ]
_{82. Odysseus} [  ]
_{83. Hinduism} [  ]
_{84. Hermaphrodeities} [  ]
_{85. Barefoot} [  ]
_{86. Divination} [  ]
_{87. Grapefruit} [  ]
_{88. Rocks and Water} [ X ]
_{89. Equinox} [ X ]
_{90. Time} [ X ]
_{91. Resurrection/Reincarnation} [ X ]
_{92. Qualia} [  ]
_{93. Complexity from Simplicity (Emergence)} [  ]
_{94. Luck} [  ]
_{95. Satellite} [  ]
_{96. Magpie to the Morning} [ X ]
_{97. Albert Einstein} [  ]
_{98. Death} [ X ]
_{99. Vincent Van Gogh} [ X ]
_{100. Cycle} [ X ]