The Last Meal

as you sit

elegant

in the soft lampglow

i notice

careful shoulders

              sloped away

no telling word

hurdles the pearls

pulled tight

on dimpled neck

-------------------------------------

I know, this is very late. I've been slack about writing new poetry. Laziness plays a big role. Not felt well the last few weeks, some kind of tummy virus, which did give me poopertunity to make some new doo-doo jokes but otherwise left me uninspired. Anyway, last night Sam Peralta hosted the dVerse FormForAll, prompting us to try our hand at writing Twitter poetry--that is, poetry that fits within the character limits imposed by Twitter. I thought, Surely I can write a poem of 140 characters despite illness and laziness and lack of inspiration and all the other enemies of creativity. So here it is, exactly 140 characters (using creative spacing for a few characters). I also tried to channel my inner Wallace Stevens, in memory of the anniversary of his death today. The title is not actually part of the 140 character limit. If that troubles you, just pretend it's not there.

Wallace Stevens: Banal Sojourn

Today is the anniversary of the death of the American poet Wallace Stevens. His work, especially his earlier work, displays a remarkable command of descriptive language. Stevens is never ordinary in his descriptions, perhaps due to his belief that the Self is, in some real sense, a creator of reality—that is, the human observer, as a perceiver, defines the world for him or her self. Well, enough of that. Here is one of my favorite Stevens poems.

Banal Sojourn

Two wooden tubs of blue hydrangeas stand at the foot of the stone steps.

The sky is a blue gum streaked with rose. The trees are black.

The grackles crack their throats of bone in the smooth air.

Moisture and heat have swollen the garden into a slum of bloom.

Pardie! Summer is like a fat beast, sleepy in mildew,

Our old bane, green and bloated, serene, who cries,

“That bliss of stars, that princox of evening heaven!” reminding me of the seasons,

When radiance came running down, slim through the bareness.

And so it is one damns that green shade at the bottom of the land.

For who can care at the wigs despoiling the Satan ear?

And who does not seek the sky unfuzzed, soaring to the princox?

One has a malady, here, a malady. One feels a malady.

Coleridge: Kubla Khan

Today is the anniversary of the death of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Brilliant thinker and poet of the imagination, his work has been a great help to me. I post this poem—one of his better-known works—in his honor. If it seems fragmented and hard to follow, he claims to have written it after taking an opium-induced nap. (Coleridge suffered from lifelong ill health, and became addicted to laudanum, a mixture of alcohol and opium.) He wrote down what he could remember of his dream, but never could recover the rest of the vision.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge. 1772–1834

Kubla Khan: Or, A Vision in a Dream A Fragment

IN Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.	5
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills
Where blossom'd many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,	10
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
But O, that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted	15
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced;
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst	20
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion	25
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reach'd the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!	30
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,	35
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!
A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she play'd,	40
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me,
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 'twould win me,
That with music loud and long,	45
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!	50
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

Senryu and Haiku

Senryu

this delicate skin

housing organ blood bone soul

a wilderness tent

Haiku

the snow falls in piles

floating on the frozen ground

like little white ghosts

Tuesday night means dVerse OpenLinkNight. It's actually Wed. morning, but there's still some time to write a poem, send it in, and join in the friendship of fellow poets. 

A Dead Deer Reminds Me of William Blake

A Dead Deer Reminds Me of William Blake

She hit it before she had time

to swerve or stomp on the brakes—

the deer wide-eyed in the windshield,

then stretched out on the roadside

as if placed there on purpose.

A tan and white mound of once-life

now dying, the round red intestines

exposed on the grass still

digesting the last meal of clover.

While the deer stubbornly died

she trembled at the curb

in helpless sorrow and cried,

and I couldn't help but think that her tears

were proof that sometimes we can

even comprehend Blake:

Every thing that lives is Holy.

But what about the dead? Blake again:

If thou art the food of worms,

how great thy blessing!

A day later the buzzards gathered,

nodding bald heads in agreement.

_______________________

Last October I wrote my first poem for dVerse, a marvelous online poetic community. It happened to be a Meeting the Bar prompt. So imagine my happiness to find that for tonight's Meeting the Bar Tony Maude has invited us to choose a prompt from the previous year to use as inspiration for a poem. I blended a few prompts together for this one--obviously, Victoria's Literary Allusion prompt. And Anna's prompt, The Unfathomable, which I didn't have opportunity to write for the first time around. One might also judge this poem as an example of Anna's High/Low Art prompt. At any rate, while it's been a fun year, I wish I could have been more consistent. A poet's family cannot live by words alone!

Louisville Slugger, My New Pet Bat, Tries to Fly

Annie Dillard: I Mean to Change His Life

One day I'll get back to writing. Until then, here is a nice passage from Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, a book I highly recommend for both clarity of expression and depth of thought.

"I have often noticed that these things, which obsess me, neither bother nor impress other people even slightly.  I am horribly apt to approach some innocent at a gathering and, like the ancient mariner, fix him with a wild, glitt'ring eye and say, 'Do you know that in the head of the caterpillar of the ordinary goat moth there are two hundred twenty-eight separate muscles?' The poor wretch flees. I am not making chatter; I mean to change his life."