Isaac Asimov

A rispetto! In iambic tetrameter. I chose to go a bit silly ^^
Despite the minimal imagery...I hope you enjoy, haha.

"A Love Letter, Written for but Never Given to, Isaac Asimov, From Mars"

I am still new to writing verse.
Forgive me, I know it's ghastly,
But you're my entire universe,
My love, you're the laws that bind me.

Mars is lovely this time of year,
Please, my love, come visit me here:
The red dust in our eyes like dew—
My heart-gears will turn just for you. 

Carbon

WHOA ANOTHER FIXED FORM PIECE? Crazy talk. This is an alliterisen, base syllables 11.

I'm doing a fixed form challenge this month, so expect more posts! I hope you enjoy reading these as much as I enjoyed writing them, internet. I'm finding the challenge of fixed form to my taste :)

"Carbon Winter Heart"

I welcome winter with still, stalactite heart,
a new creature of carbonite, mirrored and mirthless.
I grow grizzled and old, December-dead,
diamond-dreaming, but graphite-grained and losing myself,
organic only by carbon content.
Lacking heart-valves, void: free of my changeling-child,
I am fully frozen, a newly caustic queen. 

Buddhism

So. I wrote a sestina. It was hard.

The end.

Enjoy!

"December Buddha"

December cracks open like hazelnuts,
crinkled brown and brittle, dry from the fire,
cold-crisp and crunching as needles of pines.
As usual, wisdom comes just in time,
reminder to hold on to my forest,
to my stories, to make myself buddha.

I am lacking, no quiet rain-buddha,
born, as I was, a tight-curled hazelnut,
but I do send roots into my forest,
and in summer spread Colorado fire.
I find that more and more I pass the time
among the kings that are my totem pines.

In North Carolina, December pines
not for sun but for a softer buddha,
a figure to remind the month that time
ends not with January; hazelnut,
it curls in on itself, warm with the fire.
It is my roots, winding through the forest.

Some days I wait for rain in my forest.
I love how it trickles down my crown-pines
to soften days and keep away brush-fire.
In the spring I am not a flame-buddha,
want only streams for floating hazelnuts:
all my riddle answers are, "time, time, time."

The mackintosh flesh marks the passing time:
it still remembers which of the forests
was its home, that the roasted hazelnuts
were its brothers, and softening, it pines
for who I was in Virginia, a buddha
of spring, among the hay bales, soothing fire.

Then, I was water to cool the fire,
too small a paragon of space-time,
not seeing myself: quiet wind-buddha.
Now, December returns me—my forest,
in a whispered winter of silver pines
that will birth me again—a hazelnut.

I embrace my fire, my sprouting forest,
the water that with time stretches the pines;
settle as my buddha, my hazelnut.  

PUBLISHED!

I'm so pleased to announce that my poem "Divination as a Means of Finding a Way Back" has been PUBLISHED! So so so many thanks to the wonderful staff at Alliterati!

If you're interested in reading the piece, or seeing some of the other WONDERFUL visual and lit pieces that have been included, take a peek at the emag version:

Open publication - Free publishing - More art

PS. This week's music:

Bogota

This piece was inspired by the lovely Natalie Royal's song, Chimbote.

monachopsis
n. the subtle but persistent feeling of being out of place, as maladapted to your society as a seal on a beach—lumbering, clumsy, easily distracted, huddled in the company of other misfits, unable to recognize the ambient roar of your intended habitat, in which you’d be fluidly, brilliantly, effortlessly at home.
(For similar words, see this page:http://www.dictionaryofobscuresorrows.com/)

As you notice, I took some inspiration from the definition ;) I'm planning on recording myself reading this, because when I write in Spanish, I write for the sound. The problem with writing in Spanish, is I'm really trying to write for native Spanish speakers, so I'm trying to make use of all the possible meanings of the words I've chosen, if that makes sense. I suggest that those of you who don't understand Spanish look at the original and the translated version together.

"Santa Fé de Bogotá"

Simón Bolívar found you como una Flor de Mayo.

I know that in your swelling city heart
you long por el mar, por la sal del mar,

but instead you straddle the roads,
hunker down over your landscape and breathe
your car fumes, inspiras las fumas como sombres,
espiras tranquilidad inquieta.

Colombia, madre, you have become
bloated in your old age, have grown your
ankles, pálidos e inflamados;

you should have been a sea lion,
morena y rapida y a la cresta como la espuma.

Mi alma, I will bring you the sea salt to run through your hair,
diamonds with which to crown your sea-mane.

~~~

Simón Bolívar found you like an orchid.

I know that in your swelling city heart
you long for the sea, for the salt of the sea,

but instead you straddle the roads,
hunker down over your landscape and breathe
your car fumes, you breathe the smoke like shadows,
breathe calm restlessly.

Colombia, mother, you have become
bloated in your old age, have grown your
ankles, pale and swollen;

you should have been a sea lion,
brown and quick and cresting like the sea foam.

My soul, I will bring you the sea salt to run through your hair,
diamonds with which to crown your sea-mane.

Hinduism

Feels like AGES since I've written anything. Played around with style a bit, so I don't feel COMPLETELY lazy about this piece.

Composed during Ara Batur by Sigur Ros
Imagery inspired by this gorgeousness:

Firestarter

I know I didn't mention much Hinduism, but...there's a kind of wistfulness for Shiva here that I'll claim counts ;)

I should add:
Pyrokenesis is the psychic ability to create and manipulate fire (essentially).
Spirography was a toy I had as a kid - you used little interlocking gears to make cool designs with your pen.

"Spirography and the Gift of Pyrokenesis"

Already I feel stiffened,
wrapped-round with my wedding-bangles—
circumscribed, a horror amidst spirographs,
the ballpoint-pen circles that have transcended themselves
into curling picture frames or paper cages.

In my gown I am become a pillar,
I have not tasted curried air,

but already a river will still my tastebuds,
the mirror into which I shall be sunk, prow-like,
with the ship,

and the curling pen-lines that drift in my eyes
prepare the currents that will wash over me
and make of me nothing.

Shiva I would rather be—
would that I could pour my flaming heart
over my ashen and lace body,
leave its embers in the grass like seeds;

I would go up in smoke, no Helen for Troy,
only gasps making their own way for
Calcutta.  

Voodoo

I dunno how I feel about this one. I was feeling the pine trees, but I also wanted to write something for the topic "voodoo," which I've written into a lot of poems, but which I haven't had as the main sort of "theme."

Comments appreciated!

"Totems and Godhood"

i. Confronting giants.

I take the pine tree as my totem,
learn to love the nakedness of its nether-regions
and its northerly fibers stretched and waiting
for the weft to its warp.

Girlhood is still a part of me as the
learning what I am. In the end,
I haven't climbed a tree in a long time;
I am small, and scared, and ringed round with walls,
and I beg the moon to teach me
to use my pine trees as a ladder.

ii. Young love.

You, sir—
you are pine chips, and I carry you
like a fetish in my mind.

You are a vampiric sweetness
to suck the breath from my body:
unknowing, the feeling of yearning;
I am fibrous—celery stalk,
pale and clutching my thread self together.

iii. Transmogrification.

Watch as I become a giraffe,
stretch until my bones
will not bend to let me drink.

With age I become a god,
brittle-boned and cackling; with age
the osteoporosis will leech my fibers dry
and my pine sap blood will freeze in my chest
to keep me warm in winter.

My fingers—blue-green and spindly,
and though never-married my insides
are ringed-round with bands.
And I'll settle down with a cuppa,
tinged with the whisky my grandmother loved so much.

iv. The autumn comes to lead me home.

With no god to forgive me my ghosts,
I sink down into November brown,
and let the wood-rot take my roots.