Cliff Diving

Hmmm. I like this, but then I don't. Totally came up with an awesome idea for a setting for a dystopian futuristic novel today. Now I just need to actually write it...but let's be realistic here, I'll never have the drive to actually FINISH that idea.

NaPoWriMo day 26. Almost done!

PS. Why yes. That *is* a reference to Bladerunner. Oh, Harrison Ford. So beautiful at that age.

"The Plunge"

What have we to look forward to
but a dystopian future,
lives of running along knife blades,
lives like cliff-diving
and searching for our seeds in sand—

will they be balls of string, leading us to the sea
or minotaurs ravaging our bones?

—seeds that we will christen ourselves:
deserts devoid of sun.  

Satellite

This went....somewhere

I meditated on a prompt to think about something that didn't happen. And this resulted. What the hell?

No, I have never been fitted for a wedding dress. But damn, did I have to fend that one guy's mother off.... It was a near miss, let me tell you...

Comments appreciated!

"Trajectory"

I wonder what would have happened
if we hadn't awkwardly made out on my couch
that night.

What I most dread is that there was something
inevitable about it, that your mother
fitting me for her old wedding dress
dragged the whole thread of my life
inexorably forward.

That we were somehow built as
satellites; and all I can do
is think about all the other stars
I might have seen if some NASA scientist
had calculated the trajectory of my flight
just wrong enough, and set me free
of the earth's gravity field. 

Puzzle Pieces

NaPoWriMo day 22: OMIGOD A LONG POEM? NOWAI!


I feel like there are pieces of this poem in other poems. I've directly lifted my "poem" from yesterday. I thought it needed a place in a larger piece.

I'd love to hear any and all comments, but I am especially interested in how the piece flows, and in how well you think the three sections work.

"Puzzle Child"

i. Childhood Memory
As a child, I took my world in
through my palms, took in monkey bar splinters

and made myself for the first time as a weed beside
Walden Pond, as a clump of tenacious leaves fearing anthills.

My philosophy began as a collection of wood posts
marking the limits of a man's life at a time in mine

when names were simply the sounds that belonged
to people, not the other way 'round, when the stories

didn't yet blossom from my head, were still
daisy buds or infant Athenas. But I have always been

a mottled creature, a moss growth of
corresponding shapes. As a third-grader, I

marked these shapes on a world map with
brightly-colored pins, without understanding their names.

ii. Blood Memory
In my mind, Eastern Europe is
a black forest drowned in mist.

It stretches across the Atlantic
to the mining towns of Pennsylvania

where my great-grandfather filled his lungs
with black dust. It is the bodies of my great-aunts,

those earth mothers with their cliff bodies and witch laughs
and I am sure they all must polka in their graves.

Sicily is the bone-deep nourishment,
the roots of tomato vines and basil plants

tangled in my veins, crawling into my chest
through the recipes we only know through our blood.

Ireland's softness—its songs and its stories
have crept their delicate way into my breast,

but I see them only as a coastal village—
a stone church on cliffs overlooking the sea

and the raised voices of my family members
as we sing our laments with pressed palms

and say an Ave for those who are already gone:
We sleep no more in Ireland's sunshine or shadows.

iii. Earth Memory
Virginia is always tinted with red clay.
I was a deer, then, flashing frightened through

the wooded stretches of paths to avoid the demons
that waited for me. October brought piercing cold,

mackintosh apples and a harvest fair when I
buried myself face-first into a haystack labyrinth.

I fashioned myself as an elf-child, sang of
fifteen birds in five fir trees and gathered

sprigs of holly in winter to hang at my doors
and windows, to ward off the evil faces in the dark.

North Carolina came as a shock, a wave of stifling heat
and humidity that broke against me, swept me up

in its arms and dragged its feet in my wake.
I waded through its eddies and swirls

and coughed up whole trees of yellow dust
in August, waited for its thunderstorms in

hurricane season, the balm to soothe our
collective parched throats that rarely came.

Ultimately, I took in my home through my palms,
through sawdust and not doing handstands so I could

avoid the red ants' nests. I have given up trying to
sculpt myself, have let my many selves run riot,

let even my sweat run like rampant animals,
clear and quiet, burrowing into my armpit hairs.

I feel most at home in the summer,
when the years-long drought possesses the land

like a herd of horses, when even the rain that comes
flashes over my land too fast to do anything

but run with the dry brown horses
away to the sea, when the clouds

gather their electricity, slowly,
like a crown over my head.

Always, it is the thunder that heralds my homecoming,
the thunder that calls me homeward.  

Terraforming

I actually am quite pleased with this. Formatting it has been terrible, though. Augh. Still working on formatting. Any advice on how to justify text would be MOST welcome.

I also appreciate all comments and critique!


"Terraforming"

i do not know what to say to the moon when i
wander between the mesa shelves, a cliff
dweller and an unwanted library book
passing from hand to hand and never quite
brown or red enough to hide myself from the
coyotes. i remember something of the south-
west—my hands sticky with desert powder
and cactus sap, and a feeling i can't explain
without the gleaming scrub brush beetles to
draw my nazca lines. i can tell you, though,
of when i willed myself to fit within the
cracks of canyon walls and tried to sink my
toes down into the colorado river. terra will
not fit my form, so i must longingly fit mine to hers.

June Flowers

WOW I actually got this poem done EARLY today. Probably because I am trying to put off work on this final essay. *sigh* NaPoWriMo day 16!!!

Based this piece off the LOVELY photograph:
http://browse.deviantart.com/photography/people/expressive/?order=9&offset=24#/d23klyf

I'm not sure what I think of the piece. So much of what I've been writing lately feels like bits and pieces of something bigger. Hmm. Perhaps for my final day I shall take all my scraps and fit them together?

Anyway, written for the topic "June flowers" for my 100 Poem Project. Check out some June flowers from my part of the world here: http://www.exploreasheville.com/seasonal-fun/spring/flower-bloom-schedule/ (click on the reddish "June" button just below the description.)

"Losing my Head for the Summer"

I am wildflower,
a flame azalea drawing
its roots up from the asphalt -
an ox-eyed daisy,
ox-blood and whirling,
hair like the tops of cogon grass
caught in a
westward wind.

My head will come back to me
in September,
chased by the tornadoes
from across the Plains;
it will catch me up in time
for hurricane season

when I will don my hat again
to keep my head from spinning
and to ward off further freckling.

James Taylor

Now the first of December
was covered with snow,
and so was the turnpike
from Stockbridge to Boston.

All the Berkshires, they seemed dreamlike
on account of that frostin',
ten miles behind me,
and ten thousand more to go...

Oh, James Taylor. I love you :)


So yeah. Bit of a play on "Sweet Baby James." NaPoWriMo day 15! Two weeks complete!

"On Account of that Frosting"

My mom can't help chuckling
when people wax poetic
about the Smoky Mountain slopes in October.

Says they must've never seen the Berkshires,
glowing dreamlike and bonfire-frosted
in the autumn sun.

Particle Physics

Helen's Bridge in Asheville is said to be haunted by a woman who hung herself from the bridge after losing her daughter in a fire. Apparently she is still looking for her daughter. If you wish to summon her, you must say "Helen, come forth" three times while sitting beneath her bridge. Those who do so say that their cars refuse to start after the fact, and some claim they have captured this ghostly lady on film.

I don't care, I was just intrigued into writing a poem about it :)


I was trying to work in some particle physics imagery; not sure how much I like it/how well it works. Thoughts appreciated.

"Helen's Bridge"

Helen, come forth.

You never went as far as Greece.
Hell, you never left the mountains.
I found myself drawn to the road
that runs beneath your bridge,
my fear like an electric charge
dragging me in ever smaller circles to you.

I should tell you:
I am afraid of heights. The thought
of a single length of rope suspended from the bridge
as all that keeps me from crashing against the asphalt below
makes me shiver.
I am not your daughter. Do not take me with you.
Perhaps I may discharge the energy that keeps us bound
with burning sage, a respectful nod and
a quartz crystal thrown into the ravine.
May it fill your gaping heart hole and
let me go.

Helen, come forth.

But I cannot chart your wave and function—
I may never know the time and place of you
at the same time.
I dread you following me home,
looking over my shoulder in the mirror
like a particle seeking its mate.
We are opposites, and were I to
press my fingers to the glass
we would evaporate in a flash of light.

I will not summon you,
I will be careful to only ever
speak your name twice, and beg you
to let my car start up again normally,
let my headlights lead me faithfully home.

Sweet lady who will never see Troy: rest in peace. 

The Universe

FAKE LATIN TITLE! YAY! Seriously not even close to real Latin. ANYWAY.

I created my own poetic fixed form for this piece. This was TOUGH. I wanted to do something that was a combination of haiku and vilanelle, and THIS is what I got.

For those who are interested, the structure is thus (note that I have followed the rules for haiku as far as syllables are concerned, therefore the syllable count is more of a guideline):

A (5 syllables)
B (7 syllables)
C (5 syllables)

A (or close variation, as you see above) (5)
X (5)
X (5)

B (7)
X (7)
X (7)

C (5)
X (5)
X (5)

X(5)
X (7)
B_v (7)
C_v (7)
A (5)

X_v indicates a variation on the wording of the line. Because of this, I am titling my poetic form "Variation on a Theme," 'cuz why the hell not? Please note: X simply means whatever line - it is a stand-in for "other line."

Here it is! Comments welcome, except I'm not going to change anything 'cuz this form is HARD TO USE.

"Microcosmia Universa"

Microcosmic:
prepare yourself for the plunge.
Now—take a deep breath.

A microcosm,
silent iceberg tip,
silent like stars.

Prepare yourself for the plunge.
Lacking the stamina of
sea lions, you may drown.

Now take a deep breath;
heart as nebula,
as hydrogen gas.

The oxygen leaves
lungs flat as comet tails.
Preparing for the plunge,
lacking air for a breath—
micro-cosmic.  

Change

I have been dwelling quite a bit on death lately, haven't I?

NaPoWriMo day 9! All comments welcome!

"Pygmalion's Bride"

We're all fixated on death—
arrows, all, streaking towards our targets.

Ovid understood it,
understood the metamorphosis
of sinew and bone to soil.

A one hundred foot long
pink lightning smear stretched
along the highway
where the reaper reached out his hand
and plucked a rabbit from the side of the road.

The day when target, arrow, bow and hand become
one and the same—
transformed to something more than stone
and less than flesh—
for now is small,
a mayfly I may swat away
     with a complaint about the open window.  

Boundaries

NaPoWriMo day 7! One week in!!!
Completed based on the prompt from the official blog today. I did a purple poem :)


"Figs"


We dragged ourselves from the earth's
purpurous hollows,
with pomegranate seeds in our bellies,
the violet light of dusk blinding us.

Marked, we were.
Purple as death—
slathered with mulberry juice,
fresh as the womb.
We pressed potpourri to our eyelids,
crushed lavender in our fists
and drowned our fingers
in the quiet amaranthine soil.
Our fingernails came up
        dyed indigo.

And one day we blossomed figs
and cried
when we split them open and realized
we still had pomegranate seeds inside.

We are barely a shallow line in the sand
between here and never-been-born.

Weaving

So far this piece is untitled. NAPOWRIMO DAY 6. Spending the weekend down at Wrightsville beach with my partner's family :)

All comments appreciated!

"Untitled"

Grandmother used to sit me in her lap and tell me
the story of how Momma Moon taught our ancestors to weave,
how she sent her drop-spindle down to us like spider's silk.

And I imagined Momma Moon climbing her way back home
        across Appalachian pine trees.

Vincent Van Gogh

NaPoWriMo day 5! I am off to Wrightsville beach this afternoon. Looking forward to chilling out a bit (more) :)

Had some fun with this one!

All comments welcome.

"When I am Old I Shall be Like Vincent Van Gogh"

When I am old
I shall go about in an old straw hat
with my ears bandaged, for I will not need to hear.

I will lie in hayfields
and watch the crows fly into a sky so blue
it reflects the hell that is waiting for me.

And I will cackle to myself
and wait to become an ornery old scarecrow
with a stick so far up my ass it keeps my aging spine from slipping.

At last,
when the darkness comes for me, I will put on my purple funeral dress
and lay out tea and cakes for the reaper, for I can't see a reason
not to be civil about the whole thing.

Down to Earth

NAPOWRIMO DAY 3!!! :) (For day 2's poem, look here.)

WOO HOO! MORE ORAL LITERATURE!

I created my own fable :) This was fun. I was inspired by today's NaPoWriMo prompt, and by Peter Gabriel's Down to Earth (from the end credits of Wall-e!).

I had fun creating an Aesop-esque fable, but I tried turning it on its head a little bit. See if you can figure out how ;)

Not entirely sure about how smoothly this reads. Oral literature is so different from simply prose or poetry, but I was still definitely trying to write a poem. Any comments to this effect are greatly appreciated.

I'm also worried about the flow in general, in terms of the balance of story and imagery. Thoughts?

All comments welcome!

PS. YES, SPARROW AND FOX ARE BOTH MALE. The point of the story isn't their sexuality.

"The Wedding of Sparrow and Fox"

One morning,
Fox left his den in search of food.
He searched the ground and found nothing,
and searched the trees and found nothing,
and finally looked to the sky,
where he saw a sparrow with lovely, shining feathers.

For a while, Fox simply watched, gathering his courage,
then finally he stepped forward and called out,
"Hello!
What are you doing up there?"
Sparrow whirled and wheeled and called back,
"I am enjoying the feel of the wind in my feathers
and the sun on my back."

Then Fox asked, "Won't you come down to earth and speak to me?"
Sparrow looked at Fox's lustrous, russet fur
and thought of Fox's kind, soothing voice.
But Sparrow remembered the stories Grandfather Aesop told,
and so he also saw Fox's gleaming teeth.
"No thank you," Sparrow replied,
"For the breeze is too lovely and the sky too blue."

So Fox thought for a moment, and then said,
"Then why don't you sit on the top-most branch of that tree?
Then you can enjoy the blue sky, and still talk to me."
And Sparrow couldn't see why not,
so he flew down to the highest branch of the tree
and together Fox and Sparrow laughed and talked.

---

And from then on,
every morning Fox left his den and went to the tree
and Sparrow came down from the sky.
And every day,
Fox would say to Sparrow, "Why don't you
come down one more branch? The sky is just as blue
and we will be able to hear each other better."
So every day, Sparrow hopped one branch lower.

And things went on as some things do,
and as Sparrow moved closer to the earth
he also grew closer to Fox,
until one day Fox asked Sparrow to marry him.
Sparrow ruffled his feathers with pleasure and embarrassment
and said yes.

Then on one fine spring day,
all the woodland creatures came together to celebrate.
The ceremony took place beneath garlands of
Queen Anne's Lace and Black Eyed Susans,
dandelions and daisy chains.
Choirs of birds sang hymns,
Great Horned Owl performed the union,
and Grandmother Grizzly prepared a wedding feast
of salmon and honey.

After the ceremony was over,
Fox and Sparrow met by their tree.
Sparrow perched in the lowest branch,
and Fox looked up at him adoringly, and said,
"Now that we are going to live together,
won't you come down to the earth
and join me?"
And with a smile, Sparrow did.

Fox went home happy to his den that day,
with new feathers for his pillow
and new bones to pick clean his teeth.

And the question we must ask ourselves is not,
"Why did Sparrow leave his branch?"
but rather,
"Why did Fox wait so long for his meal?"

Gothic Style

Woot! NaPoWriMo poem 1!!!

Written for my 100 Poem Project, for the topic "Gothic Style." I played off Edgar Allen Poe's poem "<a href="http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/annabel-lee/">Annabel Lee,</a>" generally considered to be a pretty creepy poem...

Poor Ed. :(

Anyway, I'm not entirely satisfied with this. That last sentence: oh, my, it goes on FOREVER. And I'm not QUITE sure about some of the imagery....hmmm....

All comments appreciated!

"Oh, Ed: I am not Your Annabel Lee Anymore"

You have learned to move
with the silence of ghosts,
the tense noiselessness
of bricked-up walls
—shut out the night, and
shut out the night.

I, too, have changed.
I am a mausoleum,
my darling Poe—
you curl up inside me like a child.

But there is hardly anything left to hold;
all that is left of me
is a house of moth-eaten lace,
green as arsenic,
collapsing amidst purple lightning flowers,

falling wingless over cliffs
that crash like waves against a dark sea.