Birds 21-23: Pinback Buttons

Here's a set of three more poems inspired by Becky's Pinback Buttons.
Thanks, Becky, for inspiration well beyond buttons.

Bat Babies	Bat Babies Bat mommies know that howling haloed babies will too soon unfurl translucent wings against the mottled moon and glide into a patient night that waits to take them whole. Bat babies only know they need to go.
Scribble Girls	Scribble Girls Miserable in their paper-doll skins, the scribble girls release their spring-wound souls, unwrap the ragged trappings of their tethered frames, bite down through bitter strokes that slash and bind. Everything they’ve long withheld unravels in a steady hum, until it all goes loose, goes numb, gapes wide, until it’s done, until there’s nothing more to hide. No longer dumb.
Beasts of Burden	Beast Burdens Kiwi cannot fly. Platypus is shy. Dodo wants to die. Oh, wait, it did.

Birds Howevermanybehind...

Can only say life has been allowed to get in the way of the writing (woefully predictable, I know, but life is like that)... however, a small flock inspired by Becky's pinback buttons is coming soon. Honest. I think.

9/11/07 UPDATE:
Ha! Sport the first...

XX. The Janes

Each Jane wants a new name:
a lush name, brightly fragrant,

brash syllables that shimmy,
sporting cadence and strength.

A name that tumbles headlong,
makes a mark, dares to spark.

Every Jane, on the inside, is alight.

Image of "The Janes," from Sweetie Pie Press (by Becky Johnson)

Bird Nineteen: Kittens in the Road

Yes, there were kittens in the road.
And, no, I am not over it.

Kittens in the Road

And finally, it is the kittens in the road
that unravel you.

not the dead daddy or the nightmares,
scolding grandmother yanking braids,
the bruising step-father or his menacing,
molesting son,

not the angry markered scrawl on
the back of the bus seat, bathroom stall,
ringing punch to the jaw, lonely walk home,

not the Humbert-Humbert softball coaches
proffering wine coolers and weed, hair-flip
mafia holding court with scowls and scissors,

not the infinite trail of pressuring boys in
pickups, pastures, parking lots,

not the pale genius-stalker sketching,
stuffing poems in your locker,

not the war, the global warming, rats
in the attic, the toothless, pneumoniac
grandpa in the nursing home,

not the miscarriage, the failed marriage,
the stroke or its lopsided aftermath,

but the kittens in the road,

carpool mothers neatly
maneuvering their clownish SUVs
around a mewling, matted mass

recklessly pawing the air, limp sibling
lying yards away and mercifully dead.

And you are both of them and
you cannot look away.


Photo by longhorndave

Birds Twelve through Eighteen: Seven Sevenlings

Oh, how blessedly easy it is to do everything BUT write.

Lest this hopeful effort be forever abandoned in unceremonious shame, painfully echoing the decade's-worth of (at best) half-completed journals I have lugged from underbed to attic to spare room closet shelf in each new house, birds of a sort themselves (mockingbirds, albatrosses, boobies)... Lest I succumb to paralytic fallen-behindedness, let me toss a few tiny, matted, poem-ish things out into the pollen-haze...

My friend Robin, my favorite reader and co-conspirator extraordinaire, sent me an assignment via American Poetry Journal... Sevenlings (a seven-line poem divided 3-3-1 with "sets of three" in the first two stanzas), a lovely, "approachable" form that gives me hopes of vanquishing the procrastinator demon.

My inner geometry freak insists on something square (and my inner penitent insists on copious pressure), thus, I shall offer seven sevenlings in seven days, beginning today (April 19, 2007)...

I. Spider Brains

"Spiders spin spider webs because they have spider brains, which
give them the urge to spin and the competence to succeed."
- Steven Pinker, The Language Instinct

At times I, too, have spider brains, compelling
me to spin, to string, to fling the constellation
of my need across uncertain space...

Tenderly treading each tenuous thread,
inspecting each anchor, securing each end;
Entangled in a never-ending mending.

Work is not always its own reward.

---

II. Awakening

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”
- Henry David Thoreau

One day, you will wake to find you have
exploded. Do not be alarmed: this is normal.
Brush your teeth, make coffee, put on pants.

Give yourself a moment (no more) to grieve, and then
get on with it: the work, the writing, the washing up.
Don't wait for the truth to set your fragments free.

No one but you will ever even see.

---

III. Beware Shiny Things

Despite the tornado, the house spun aloft,
an utterly pancaked witch, Dorothy’s
gingham pleats maintained their starch.

The slippers were overkill really, armed
as she was with her pocket-dog, pluckiness,
and complement of misfits.

Often it’s the shiny things that lead us astray.

---

IV. Take this Advice

When you encounter the wolf (and you will), resist the urge
to flee. Rather, meet his hungry eye; approach him where he stands;
embrace him, or, if that seems awkward, at least shake hands.

Do not beg, bargain or offer any cheek. Lay yourself open
to his fangs. If he insists upon a chase (this is common), indulge
a lap or two. It’s no use crying: Being eaten is your surest hope.

The only living is the kind that swallows you whole.

---

V. The Way to Swallow a Day

When practicing the art of wallow, take care to intend –
gather an ambitious pile of books, poke into cabinets and closets,
carry the phone as you meander room to room.

Mean to, make starts. Acknowledge only round thoughts.
Avoid angles, arrows, lines – anything to follow. Wait for it.
Soon enough, sundown will swallow what remains:

No more today, not yet tomorrow – the forgiving hollow.

---

VI. Elegy

As you survey the tragic kitchen of your fallow
American Dream, breathe steady. Bite back panic.
Pluck an apple from the perfect polished heap.

Subjugate your slapstick urge to fling this bitter fruit,
this bruised accuser, this mocking red-ripe prize
of your malaise. Don’t hesitate – simply swallow:

Every longing is digestible in time.

---

VII. This Will Happen to You

You can’t imagine that the steady, playful,
radiating soul you are mixed-up with will soon
disappear by whispers while you watch;

that witnessing disease take root, sprout silently
and blossom may, by turns, steal something
more from the beholder than the prey;

that one day you will need to walk away.


photo by prettywar-stl

Bird Eleven: 2-Day Poem Contest

I did actually write a poem last week, but I am thinking it can't be posted here because of submission rules. Thanks to my friend Robin, I participated in the 2007 CV2 2-Day Poem Contest. This challenge drove me crazy -- especially "laconic," "eschew" and "gyroscope"-- but, then, I am a professional assignment-resister.

When they've announced the results, I'll come back and post the poem...



photo by mimentza

Bird Ten: Ladybug Season

Now that I no longer "have to" write about red, I suddenly have something red to say...
My home blooms ladybugs for many weeks every March.

Ladybug Season

Our lives are littered with ladybugs –
a friendly plague emerging with each spring.
You gamely try to rescue every one.

Appearing in loose huddles along
the window sills, forming speckled
tableaus on the crown molding,

tracing invisible trails along the
lampshade seams and shutter slats,
searching for each other, for the way out.

I am their salty goddess. Never does
one fail to scale my offered fingertip,
to skate a ticklish path along my palm.

I will encounter their remains for months –
freshly wincing at each bitter carcass
crunching underfoot.

How I miss them already. Sad, dead
spotted things – forever crawling
when they had the chance to fly.

Image source: http://www.cirrusimage.com/beetles_multicolored_Asian_ladybird.htm

Some Books: 35 + 1 = ?

I have been procrastinating on completing this tag (from Jessica @ 9to5Poet), partly because it kind of felt like homework, but, mostly, because how on earth can I pick 35 books to represent myself?! Every book I have ever read -- good, bad, or indifferent -- is rattling around in my being...

I don't even know what this list is, except, perhaps, a stream-of-consciousness sample of some books that have stayed with me. I can only say these are the books that came to mind, in the order they came there, and I stopped at 36 -- that's how old I am this year. This is torture.

1. Roots - Haley
2. The Little Prince - St. Exupery
3. From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler - Konigsburg
4. Where the Sidewalk Ends - Silverstein
5. Danny, Champion of the World - Dahl
6. Maus - Spiegelman
7. Understanding Comics - McCloud
8. The House on Mango Street - Cisneros
9. The Language Instinct - Pinker
10. Crime and Punishment - Dostoevsky
11. Jane Eyre - Bronte
12. The Sound and the Fury - Faulkner
13. Bird by Bird - Lamott
14. Their Eyes Were Watching God - Hurston
    
15. A Whole New Mind - Pink
16. The Tipping Point - Gladwell
17. The Poisonwood Bible - Kingsolver
18. The Lovely Bones - Sebold
19. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings - Angelou
    
20. A Wizard of Earthsea - Leguin
21. Weetzie Bat - Block
22. How to Eat Like a Child - Ephron
23. The Hobbit - Tolkien
24. The Chronicles of Narnia (Set) - Lewis
25. Pippi Longstocking (Set) - Lindgren
26. The Color Purple - Walker
    
27. Reflections on the Gift of a Watermelon Pickle - Dunning, et al
28. A Day No Pigs Would Die - Peck
    
29. Heart to Heart: New Poems Inspired by Twentieth-Century American Art - ed. Greenberg
30. Preposterous - ed. Janeczko
    
31. The Cider House Rules - Irving
32. The Transitive Vampire - Gordon
    
33. Interview with the Vampire - Rice
34. Orbiting the Giant Hairball - MacKenzie
35. The Dot - Reynolds
36. God Went to Beauty School - Rylant

Image by gadjoboy

Bird Nine: Red Weather

I was determined to be a good kid and write something red-inspired this week, but my body resisted. For some reason, I kept thinking about Wallace Stevens' "tigers in red weather." And, of course, a strawberry kool-aid moustache. I am not sure I like any of these kooky vignettes even at all, but, nonetheless, here they are in their little red jackets.

(In the interest of "embodying" my work, I did indeed bite my own arm for the first time in 25 years to see how long the bite-marks would remain).

Poor bird -- perhaps it's doomed to a life of hapless flapping.

In Red Weather

the man with the kool-aid moustache
flings his boomerang briefcase
into the bloody sky and skates away.

the woman escaping the garden
strangles each tomato on the burdened vine,
lunges toward the low-hanging moon.

the uncle with hibiscus eyes
pulls a twisting niece onto his plump lap,
inhales her damp popsicle scent.

the boy with werewolf daydreams
sinks pup-fangs into his forearm flesh,
shivers as the crimson bite-marks fade.

the grandmother standing in the rose hedge
kneads her toes into the loam,
shuts her papered lids and waits to bloom.

Bird Eight: Look at Me

I first stumbled on Look at Me about three years ago (I think). I was discovering the joys of "found" art/objects at the time, and I found a photograph at the public library -- I planned to send it in, but I wasn't sure if it was old enough (I will send it now). I love the rules: the photos must be candid shots of at least one (unknown) person looking at the camera, from at least 25 years ago. (So, in one sense, Look at Me is the opposite of Running from Camera -- dontcha love it?) Frederic Bonn, owner/originator of the site, describes the collection:

"These photos were either lost, forgotten, or thrown away. The images now are nameless, without connection to the people they show, or the photographer who took them. Maybe someone died and a relative threw away their photographs; maybe someone thought they were trash..." (MORE)

These photos are ordinary, comfortingly familiar, surprising and heartbreaking all at once. Expect several birds. (Thanks very much to Fred Bonn for permission to "borrow" from his wonderful collection).

Image 177

Hansel Poses by the Oven, 1919 After weeks of plying the wretch with sausages and sticky buns, meat pies, potatoes and puddings, of daily squeezing the brat’s spindled finger to gauge its certain plumpness – the nearsighted hag grew suspicious. She groped between the bars with a gnarled claw, cooed as she was able, as to an errant pet, finally seizing upon a frayed woolen stocking, a chubby ankle, dragging it to her across the burred floor of the dirty cage. Suppertime, she sighed, as she caressed the dumpling flesh between her callused paws. The oven would be lit. The girl was called to clean his face, to mend and tuck his shirttail, to take his tender photograph: portrait of a memorable meal.

Bird Seven Revised: My Friend Robin is Right

My friend Robin was right, I think (see her Feb 19 comment on the original post -- I can't make it link here). I struggled with this part in the initial writing, was originally going to stop after "...so I can miss you," but it seemed to make the end come too abruptly. Now I see I could have stopped shorter, trusted the reader more. Thanks, Robin.

Valentine for the Runaway Man

Once, in the kitchen, he was standing at the sink, sleeves rolled, suds flying, scrubbing the paella pan, and she felt it coming on -- the terrible need to chase him away. This became a game. She stole up behind, sockfeet padding percussively in place, clawed hands poised like a hungry bear, a cartoon monster, a lunatic crab. "What are you doing?" he asked, and she answered, "I'm chasing you, of course. You've just forgotten to run away." "You're crazy," he laughed. "Please," she insisted, "Run away."

I promise, my love, that one day, I will run away for you.

---

Valentine for the Runaway Man

Once, in the kitchen, he was standing
at the sink, sleeves rolled, suds flying,
scrubbing the paella pan,
and she felt it coming on --
the terrible need to chase him away.

This became a game. She stole up behind,
sockfeet padding percussively in place,
clawed hands poised like a hungry bear,
a cartoon monster, a lunatic crab.

"What are you doing?" he asked,
and she answered, "I'm chasing you,
of course. You've just forgotten to run away."
"You're crazy," he laughed. "Please,"
she insisted, "Run away."

I promise, my love, that one day,
I will run away for you.

Bird Seven: Running from Camera (a Valentine)

Bird Seven is the result of a collision between Poetry Thursday (Idea = Prose Poem) and something my friend Tim linked to his blog, namely, this guy who takes photos of himself running away from his camera. I am absolutely drawn to the idea of exploring variations of a simple premise. I am also reminded again of an idea from Understanding Comics -- these photos straddle the balance between unique and universal beautifully... As a "reader," I can simultaneously view him as a specific individual and easily put myself in the photo. I love it.

So here's a prose poem (I think).

Valentine for the Runaway Man

Once, in the kitchen, he was standing at the sink, sleeves rolled, suds flying, scrubbing the paella pan, and she felt it coming on -- the terrible need to chase him away. This became a game. She stole up behind, sockfeet padding percussively in place, clawed hands poised like a hungry bear, a cartoon monster, a lunatic crab. "What are you doing?" he asked, and she answered, "I'm chasing you, of course. You've just forgotten to run away." "You're crazy," he laughed. "Please," she insisted, "Run away. Run away so I can miss you. Run away so I can feel for a moment how it would be if you weren't here."

I promise, my love, that one day, I will run away for you.

---

Here's the not-prose version. (Just want to state for the record that I wrote the prose/paragraph version first, and added these line-breaks after). Same words, same order, but I like this much better. Guess I'm not a prose-poem gal.

Valentine for the Runaway Man

Once, in the kitchen, he was standing
at the sink, sleeves rolled, suds flying,
scrubbing the paella pan,
and she felt it coming on --
the terrible need to chase him away.

This became a game. She stole up behind,
sockfeet padding percussively in place,
clawed hands poised like a hungry bear,
a cartoon monster, a lunatic crab.

"What are you doing?" he asked,
and she answered, "I'm chasing you,
of course. You've just forgotten to run away."

"You're crazy," he laughed. "Please,"
she insisted, "Run away. Run away
so I can miss you. Run away so I can feel
for a moment how it would be
if you weren't here."

I promise, my love, that one day,
I will run away for you.

Birds Four, Five, Six: Other People's Photos (Redux)

My initial Flickr experiment proved so worthwhile that I can't think of anything I'd rather do than explore more of the same. I have been mired in inertia for a week now, trying to come up with a shiny new bird, but the last one simply will not be denied a few feathered companions. And I do make the rules.

I am once again grateful for the amazing and generous photographers out there (each of whom has given me permission to use his or her photo)...

Photo by Dragonballyee	A man’s consciousness (generally) will rest upon the scarcity of skirt, estimate the taut geometry of thigh emerging and receding with each swaying stride. A woman may be most inclined to weigh the ass against her own – a pair of clefted cantaloupes see-sawing in imagined palms. And love, perhaps, (or hate) the bag (or shoes). A child will wonder mainly at the diamonds: burn to press his flesh against the rust-cool, gritty grid; to sear a moment’s memory; to wear (to write) the pattern as it walks away.
	Ramona had once imagined that years of marriage, the persistent, gentle sculpturing of everyday contact – hell, some sort of amygdalar survival trigger – would re-shape Richard’s extraordinary talent for picking the wrong time to do just about everything. Ha! Photo by Fonsico
Photo by Kandykorn	Stella knows this: A shopping cart conveys a world. A corner market is a star. Commence with the obvious cargo: bananas and oatmeal, Maalox and milk, waxed paper, pudding, and peas. But wheels matter most, wheels threading each day’s track, handle humming with the dissonant clack of sidewalk seams – a satellite signal reminding Stella’s body to move, maintain its orbit, seek bananas in a universe grown small.
Photo by CMRowell	She wore away one whisper at a time receding until skin unwrapped and sinew unlaced and bones unknit and everything everything gaped until unknowing enveloped a single sleeping seed whorled into a pomegranate planet.
Photo by DigiMom13	You are eight and your playground physics are these: cementing the fate of your palms and knees, you center your hips – a body at rest, push yourself off with solid-heeled thrust, build into a fury of pump-and-lean, kick at the sky in the blurred between, fueling the pendulum forward-and-back, expanding your arc until the chains go slack and your body flings free from its everyday scheme – opens wide to give wing to the flying dream.

Bird Three: Other People's Photos

I have been trawling the Flickr site recently and noticed, being the word-obsessive that I am, that a lot of pictures, though tagged, are left title/captionless... It got me thinking about how the title of an artwork can really influence how you interpret it, and also how the juxtaposition of words and images affects meaning.

A good reader/viewer always engages actively with a text, film, painting... participating in the making of meaning. Thus, it's insulting when a director, painter or storyteller gives the reader too much -- if you've no work to do, no effort of understanding to put forth, then there's no motivation to connect, no payoff... but if you are given too little, and can't find a way "in," a way to connect, that's no good either -- the artist has to seek the balance between... Scott McLeod beautifully explains this idea I am butchering in Understanding Comics (A book everyone with any imagination should read).

I have fairly well-developed reading/viewing muscles, as well as a tendency to imbue images, people, and objects with backstory. Such projection is a fundamental human trait. Brain researchers (I can't remember where I heard this -- I think maybe on an episode of NOVA) believe that the capacity for empathy is one of the most powerful human evolutionary traits. Maybe other people don't tend to extend it beyond humans and animals as much as I...

Anyway, back to Flickr, I stumbled on this picture, randomly, and was tickled by the caption. It made me like the photographer. It's sort of weird that the social web allows us to become routine, often invited, voyeurs into other people's lives, thoughts, creations. I know, and believe in the incredible potential of the real connections, extensions, creative leaps and communities that are made in this shared digital landscape, but I also believe that the sheer mathematics of it all means that we consume (view, read, listen, watch) way more than we (most of us, anyway) ever actively respond to.

Which leads me to my third bird... in which I poem-caption a few of Other People's Photos...

I began with a full-text search for "IMG" plus "kids" and then "IMG" plus "people." I have also gotten permission from each of the photographers to use their photos for this exercise (Thank you!).

	Cyrus was a nomad in his bones; Our need to hold him could not hold him still. We used to joke that he was born wearing wheels -- called him our "hummingbird boy," (or, "Sharkbaby," during ornery times); We gave him what we could for the journey; set him loose because there was no other way. Photo by Volkswitt
Photo by Pink Sherbet	At five, you never named your aches, but felt. Now silent, now with wailing, flailing, wrenching, spouting forth, unconscious swell – a spell too vast to be contained – you rained, would not be reined, remained submerged where loss collected, rant and tantrum intersected, made a mess, lived your distress with five's great knowing, wove your being through its core and wore it threadbare, felt it more. At five, you breathed it fresh – oh, surely, purely, how you held on tight and wept, then, dreamless, slept.
	I am never myself. I have a hundred selves. When you see me, notice the aching curve of eyelid, nostril, lip and chin, jawline and neckline, slipaway braid. Linger at my shoulder and apprehend this: I curve toward a self I have yet to invent. Photo by Ex.Libris
Photo by Gus is a Great Name	These tragic feet, these sugared doughnuts, these tender filthy piggies, these criss-crossed cuddlers, these mute messengers, these expectant soles, these compass needles, these leathered prayers, these hopeful feet.

Bird Two: So Much Depends

To me, William Carlos Williams' spare, single-sentence poem The Red Wheelbarrow has a wonderful concreteness and simplicity that perfectly conveys the beauty and significance of utility, the dignity of the ordinary. It also represents a stellar example of the kind of "word-picture" writing teachers try to tell us that poetry should be. Upon reading it, you conjure a vivid, immediate, immutable image. A contemporary poet who similarly celebrates everyday things with an amazingly apt concision (though not as spare as Williams' wheelbarrow) is Valerie Worth. I love her collections of Small Poems, even though they are for children (or maybe because they are for children). I love sharing them with children, too. My favorite is Zinnias -- which celebrates the flowers' resolute strength, concluding "I know/ Someone like zinnias; I wish/ I were like zinnias." I do wish I were like zinnias -- at least sometimes.

Williams and his wheelbarrow also remind me of the final lines in another favorite poem, Naomi Shihab Nye's Famous:

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,

or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,

but because it never forgot what it could do.

So, here's Bird Two... a single-sentence homage to an ordinary thing....

Church Key

Whether christened
in nod to brewer-monks
shuffling down into
the lager cellar,

named for heavy-headed likeness
to noble hunks of iron
fitted into pious locks
within towering oaken doors,

or labeled as irreverent wink towards
a different sort of worship...
I rejoice in its releasing
of my beer.

(I love, love church key -- the concept, the phrase and the object. The connotation and denotation make such a lovely, resonant clash.)

Bird One: Lessons in Who-Made-Who

My week's deadline (Saturday@Midnight) is fast approaching and I thought for a good while I'd fail before even beginning. So, I threw myself a bit of a softball -- couldn't face the dreaded "blank page" -- needed those training wheels to take the first step... Mixed metaphors aside... I feel good to have followed through.

My personal rules for a "ransom note" poem such as this are that all of the words must come from a single, citable source, and that all words must be "whole" words (as opposed to a letter sequence, or mashed-together syllables snipped from inside larger words), with the exception of articles and tiny prepositions (e.g. a, an, to) needed for coherence. I also believe in the importance of a visually balanced layout.

The impetus for this project came from Learning to Love You More -- a site I suspect I will revisit many times during this project. A cut-and-paste poem is not one of the assignments, but I thought of it while looking at Assignment #44: Make a "LYTLM Assignment," in which someone suggested a kind of "30-minute paint/collage free-for-all."

The magazine from which this poem sprung was ReadyMade, April/May 2006. It was somewhat challenging to compose, because the title and caption text was pretty limited in terms of scope and style. The text that emerged seems to be something of an homage to the momentum/change I am trying to instill.

So, it's a start... I hope a kindred spirit, or a reader or two will pass this way sometime...

(Click the image to view a larger version of the poem).