Briarcat

…just minding my own business, then I realized the way out had disappeared

January 26, 2012

for Tuesday Tryouts: place

The Geography Project: Finding the Baseline

I thought I wrote this poem,
but looking for it, all the spirals
all the folds and stitches, all the scraps are filled
with other things and empty lines, and this
poem of memory and
geography is nowhere.

It must have been written in bed, where pens hide
between cotton quilt and cheap red acrylic which is
always warm (for the cat). and on dream paper.
In the motel of memory, there is always paper in the drawer,
a phone book too skinny to believe, and the same same bible.
And even when the whole family stays in ajoining rooms
we never unlock the doors and have a party, drifting from
suitcase to suitcase with plastic cups and crushed ice,
we never get to bounce, trying for the ceiling from other beds.

Of course, all the beds are alike, but we don’t know that then.
Someone draws simple line cartoons like this:
There is a world. A globe. A sketchy beachball
ottoman-like circle world. And a man: a sketchy
little thurber-man, standing at about the one o’clock angle.
As we all stand, whatever o’clock our home is.

He has to look toward his feet to see the horizon: it’s small
and all his events are squashed into the energy
entering through his iris, which turns them upside down.
But if he were enough of a speck to fit easily under the desk drawer
or inside the arching dome of a leafless forsythia; and content to sit
for hours on a step of back stairs turned closet, making ladders
of old hose and step-ins, that same horizon is enormously invisible.

Stand on the world, a seal on a beachball,
or crawl, printing crinoids on your knees;
the views differ, but the result is always inexact
cartography.

________________________________

This isn’t what Margo had in mind, but I had odd difficulties with the prompt. Maybe I’m not quite getting the concept, and it’s just something I’ve been doing already. I write my grandmother’s farm quite a bit. (It’s much easier to explore than our own house, which was small and uninteresting. Also, there is the matter of my mother’s anger, which was less likely on more neutral territory.) The house and the farm contain most of my personal myths, but there’s no telling it in a single poem.

I’m a bit bumfuzzled.

January 22, 2012

for: well, you name it: between

dVerse wants a “Border” poem.

the Whirl

gives us: ashen, knack, scald, sisters, crush, instinct,

story, scatter, urges, shards, charm, whispering

between

this is the deep hour, when old days expire
and the young, despair. outside of savings time.

a black-and-white, its bar of blue at ease,
shifts toward the Waffle House, by instinct

the cruiser has a knack for this dressage:
following a solitary cop’s desires.

and the cop
wants to study
the Nighthawks

ashen and florescent, drunken, sleepless;
scalding the charms of the night away
while the fry cook scatters and scrambles the shards
of crushed heroes, hunters, whispering sisters,
and a car, and a man with a story of his own.

_______________________

Waffle House is a chain of diners. One of their signature dishes is “Real Hashbrowns: all the way” ” Scattered, Smothered, Covered, Chunked, Diced, Peppered, Capped, Topped, Country”. You may also get them plain.

The fry cook is working center stage, and getting his (usually, for some reason, a guy) orders by ear. The music of the communication with the waitresses, and the choreography of movement in the narrow space behind the counter is fascinating at any time. I have been there (in the past, of course) a little more than tipsy, and a little less than straight, and in that condition, you can be astounded.

_____________________________________

It’s late. ( I’m in one of those spells of not-quite-insomnia. You listen to traffic sounds and wind) This combines a couple of prompts, and has smidgins of things that have been in the back of my mind, some of them for long enough that they’ve gotten in together and produced offspring. The voice here is all over the place. I was going for mood, but came way too close for comfort to sounding like self-parody. Still, there are some things worth salvaging. I think.

January 19, 2012

for the Poetry Jam: a reluctant return

Going Back in White and Black

Somewhere over the rainbow judy garland sang
in black and white and shades of gray with static
flakes across her face. The picture rolls, as if the film
has slipped its sprocket.
With tuning pegs, in the little white house on Hamilton
I can adjust the roll, the horizontal and vertical distortions,
kneeling by the TV on the wool rug,
making subtle gray changes.

how’s that? I will ask Sky King and Peter Pan, too,
in their black, white, and gray places: ships and planes.
I’ll ask everyone I see, comedians, boxers, cowboys,
Buster Brown who-lives-in-a-shoe. is it all right, now?

The rug was scratchy;
I believe it had flowers, but don’t
remember any colors.

1
26, Jan, 2012
for Tuesday Tryouts: place
2
22, Jan, 2012
for: well, you name it: between
3
19, Jan, 2012
for the Poetry Jam: a reluctant return

January 25, 2012

for Poetic Bloomings: form Quatern

Grandfather Laos takes short steps,
not striding like a rocking horse,
but distinct full stops, separate;
as if alleys were paved with glue.

Red-tied trash bag on a carry-stick,
Grandfather Laos takes short steps,
no movement transferred to the sack,
still slim with the early morning.

Objective as an old surgeon,
he lifts lids, inspects the contents.
Grandfather Laos takes short steps;
he is precise, professional.

The trucks will scoop up what he leaves
while he sits on his porch, sorting,
red-tied bag after red-tied bag.
Grandfather Laos takes short steps.

________________________________

For Poetic Bloomings, this is a Quatern. I’m not happy with the name “grandfather laos” (which sounds sort of patronising-cute), but “the old Laotian guy who picks through the trash” doesn’t quite make it, either.

Posted by b_y on January 25, 2012 in Poetry, Prompted Poems, forms, Poetic Bloomings and tagged Nashville, transformation, character, Observation.

1 Comment

January 25, 2012

for Poetic Asides: friend of a friend poem

In which a call from Howard is received

I got your number from Jim.
You don’t mind my calling because
I don’t mind calling you since you’re
politically motivated, or else
Jim wouldn’t have given me
your (I have it someplace oh, yes
on a napkin) number.

I’m writing a recount about the movement
and every individual that I’ve encountered
and want to include you because we never
met and never heard of one another haha.
but seriously we all have coffee once
and plan to write the movement back
come, and bring your copy of the Great Speckled Bird
Jim says you have one for that week we all
stood in the rain outside a fence I don’t recall
but everyone who remembers me was there.

Posted by b_y on January 25, 2012 in Poetry.

Briarcat

for Tuesday Tryouts: place

for: well, you name it: between

for the Poetry Jam: a reluctant return

for Tuesday Tryouts: place

for: well, you name it: between

for the Poetry Jam: a reluctant return

for Poetic Bloomings: form Quatern

for Poetic Asides: friend of a friend poem

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