Just One More Time...

As Addonizio is prolific in form poems, I thought I'd try again at the love sonnet. Not nearly as juicy, but what can I say...I'm just a big softie...

Just One More Time

It's one more time that I get to kiss you.
One more time to count all of your freckles.
One more time to wake up and remember
that your nose is incredibly special.

One more time watching you walk down the hall.
Just one more time to be thinking in twos.
One more time whispering nothing at all,
except I love you, I love you, I do.

Each time you climb out of bed or each time
doors close behind you as a chance to say
Whoever you are, please give me a sign,
blessed on my lips, just one more time today.

Because no matter how long we are one
I'll have one more time on the tip of my tongue.

When Poetry is So Good

I had the pleasure and privilege of supporting a course today and one of the participants chose to take more time for herself and do things that she enjoyed just for her. One of these things was to write poetry.

I couldn't resist at the break asking her about the poets she read, and when she asked for recommendations I couldn't resist talking about Kim Addonizio. Multiple poems came to mind-- "Fuck," "Bugdom," "Miniatures"--but this one is so good I had to type it up for you:

You Don't Know What Love Is

but you know how to raise it in me

like a dead girl winched up from a river. How to

wash off the sludge, the stench of our past.

How to start clean. This love even sits up

and blinks; amazed, she takes a few shaky steps.

Any day now she'll try to eat solid food. She'll want

to get into a fast car, one low to the ground, and drive

to some cinderblock shithole in the desert

where she can drink and get sick and then

dance in nothing but her underwear. You know

where she's headed, you know she'll wake up

with an ache she can't locate and no money

and a terrible thirst. So to hell

with your warm hands sliding inside my shirt

and your tongue down my throat

like an oxygen tube. Cover me

in black plastic. Let the mourners through.

- Kim Addonizio, What is This Thing Called Love

----------

I want to make words do this....

A Birthday Poem

We rode the train from Brighton to London yesterday through hills and fields covered in snow. It was beautiful. Breathtaking. And I decided to write a poem as we went, a poem about the different shapes of the day of my birth. Later on, at the party in Balham Bowls Club, I read it to the friends of mine who had gathered for the red balloon bash.

Here it is for you:

On the Day of My Birth

There was a pond kept neat for winter revelers

and we skated in seven degree weather,

four of us teens tucked away in a mountain secret.

Before that, the snow fell on Turre St.

in flakes the size of cotton balls on my birthday

as my friends took their sleeping bags

and backpacks from their parents' cars

and giggled their way into the house.

For the next three years, it snowed on the day of my birth

and we piled into Mom's peach mobile, drove

around the town looking at Christmas lights and singing carols.

Later, on the day of my birth,

my lover got on a place and moved home.

A year after, she came back to collect me

but first snuggled into the white duvet,

our room the third floor of an art deco hotel.

On the day I was born, I've been ill, my partner's been sick,

and I've worked a Sunday shift. My dad's given me an opal

necklace, to keep the fire of his love close to my heart.

My mom sends a book of poetry each year.

When I turned three, I'd celebrated in so many house,

I asked if I was now four. And once, we had a party in June

when I was five and a half and it wasn't the day of my birth at all.

Twenty-six years on, I've seen a quarter century,

made new homes and new friends, and ice skated

more time than I can remember.

A snowflake drifting on the day of my birth.

Dreaming of Warm Sunshine

Travelling home on the tube on Tuesday evening something reminded me of a back yard I used to play in as an older kid: nine or ten years old, playing with my friend Bree while her mom 'babysat' us. Bree was always a lot of fun and we made the back yard our playground even though it was mostly dust and fallen plums in the shadow of eucalyptus trees.

Catching Flies

Being with Bree, even catching flies was fun.

More than fun, it became an afternoon's mission:

holding her plastic atrium poised, we waited

for the right moment to strike, the other of us grasping

the purple lid that would ultimately secure the flies

in their new four-walled, see-through world.

The fact that her back yard--a softly sloping hill,

dust we kicked up and hundreds of fallen plums--

vibrated with little winged creatures didn't really bother us.

My memory, even then, tinted the scene in sepia--

tones of eucalyptus trees and childhood--

and her hair glinted gold down the length of her back.

She held me in wonder, even catching flies.

Poem #30 - A Sonnet

Well, today is the final day of November. A full month of poetry and as I looked back through the blog archive over the last 29 poems, I've realized how quickly and slowly the month has gone. So much has happened: newlywed poems, a friend's wedding, my cousin's birthday, writer's block, dirty haiku, and untranslatable words.

My poetry partner in crime, sasqi, also messaged me tonight to mark this eve of departure into the rest of our poetic lives. With it, she sent today's poem, a beautiful moving sestina.

Tonight, I took her cue again with a form poem. I found myself struggling to sit down and actually write (a month of poems is HARD, my mind said, and the dishes had been waiting for days...), but then realized, again, what to write about?

One of my message over this month with sasqi checking in on our poetic adventure was about how I was grateful for its timing. For me, it's been a year of celebrating my love and commitment for and to another person. Our second and final (?) wedding was in October and by the time the first of November came around, I found myself wanting only to write of her and my love for her.... *sigh*

Of course, as you know, I didn't write sappy love poems all month. But it did feel appropriate to end this project with a form poem historically dedicated to love: the sonnet.

Without much more ado then, I give you a love sonnet. First though, one more thing: I don't know yet if I'll keep writing a poem a day from December 1st onward, but I'm sure glad I did in November. And, I like writing to you again so check back here tomorrow.

Sonnet #30

Waking up beside you looks like all this:

your sweet face hidden by a quilt cover;

eyelids closed in absolute blissfulness;

a kiss waiting on your lips, my lover.

Rising in the morning with you brings such

joy for the day's possibilities that I

can hardly contain songs from my lips much

or from snuggling back into you beside.

But this is only the briefest of times.

Then the day stretches out before us--

away from the lands of duvets the clock chimes

and the hours become our heard chorus.

Still, my love, my sweetheart, my one darling,

there is always the song of the starlings.*

*Poetic inspiration to ee cummings and Josh Ritter

Writer's Block

or, otherwise, how to split my time:

How do I

split my time

between you, dear reader,

my first love,

and the one with whom

I share my bed,

our home,

the dreams and

silly things,

my her?

If Only - A Poem a Day in November

Hello, there. I've missed you.

It's been three months, maybe more. I've gotten married--twice. Gotten a promotion and a raise. Been in three different countries. And the writing, well, the writing has gone by the wayside for a bit.

And that's OK. Sometimes the creative outlets go by the wayside, life gets in the way. But, well, November seems the perfect month to re-kindle it.

At least that sort of appears to be the idea behind 'A Novel in November'--a national project to write a novel in a month. But I don't write novels. I write poems. And, thankfully, I was inspired by a poet friend who is joining her husband in writing a novel in November by writing a poem a day in November. So, with the clocks 'fallen back' now and the skies dark before I leave my office at 5:15 in the evening I, too, will be writing a poem a day and publishing a stanza--or two, or three--of it here, as my record. These are first drafts, like the novel. No more than the editing that happens in the instance of writing, set down to be reviewed later, but first endeavored to be written.

Thus, without further ado, 'If Only:'

I'd be your knight in shining amour;
your handsome, pro-bono lawyer; your short-skirted Girl Friday. If only.

Only then you'd be the helpless princess, the thrice-tried convict,
the lecherous boss who grabbed my ass and called me Billy Jean.


I think I'd rather just be me, and you be you, thanks. If only.

Reading Poetry

I've been considering spending the next year reading only queer women writers (can I make those identity categories mesh?) but, like I said, I'm only considering it still. To test the water, though, I've been reading quite a lot of Carol Ann Duffy. It's a hard job, let me tell you.

A favorite so far:

Text

I tend the mobile now
like an injured bird.

We text, text, text
our significant words.

I re-read your first,
your second, your third,

looking for your small xx,
feeling absurd.

The codes we send
arrive in a broken chord.

I try to picture your hands,
their image is blurred.

Nothing my thumbs press
will ever be heard.

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

Safe to say, my texting experiences lately have not been as anxiety-producing as hers...

Wedding Blogga'

Ok, so maybe blogga' is a totally made up word, and mis-spelled at that, but seriously I have been on a roll when it comes to write about the details for my legal hitchin' ceremony. I don't know what it is, but maybe because the big day is one-month away (officially) from today that I am start to get a bit relaxed and have a bit more fun in writing about it. Plans are a bit more solid too, and it's less of a "I think this would be a good idea" and more of "This is what we've decided and doesn't it rock?" kind of thing.

I seem to be able to blog all about it, and still make my fiancee laugh (thank goodness). The writing there though, one a day, it's not coming so easily.

Although, today as I walked to work on the first spring morning I really felt I could call spring, I was thinking, under the pitter-patter of mind-chatter, I was thinking in poetry.

Poetry

We took a train...

Then, we went by car to see

where we ate scones with jam and drank glasses of sparkling wine

for anything her heart desired

The Land of Nod

Just finishing up a last minute email, I paused to wait for the website to load; my head nodded down to my chin. Bobbing back up to an 'awake' state, I recollected a favorite poem from when I was little: 'The Land of Nod' by Robert Louis Stevenson:

From Breakfast on through all the day
At home among my friends I stay,
But every night I go abroad
Afar into the land of Nod.

All by myself I have to go, 
With none to tell me what to do--
All alone beside the streams
And up the mountain-sides of dreams.

The strangest things are there for me, 
Both things to eat and things to see, 
And many frightening sights abroad 
Till morning in the land of Nod.

Try as I like to find the way, 
I never can get back by day,
Nor can remember plain and clear
The curious music that I hear.

A few thoughts:

I didn't know Robert Louis Stevenson was Scottish.
The poem did seem longer a kid.
When I searched the poem, it wasn't the one I thought it was.
I still like the illustration with the quilt as a sea of waves. 

List of Poetry

The Times published an article/interview on Carol Ann Duffy today in which she said that all poetry is love poetry and she is infinitely interested in love because desire and possibility are everywhere. Part of my being was called forth as my breath caught: 'Why am I not writing more poetry?'

I entered a poetry contest last month with about my love and the Natural History Museum. I didn't win, and I didn't expect I would. It was a Queer London contest, and the title of my piece was 'Whale Poems.' Still, how do I begin to write again, to write again like I know what I am doing across the page. Because I do.

For Saturday - Poem a Day

For Christmas, my mom bought both of us a book we could read simultaenously, transtlatically: Poem a Day. I thought it was a brilliant idea; she thought it was kinda cheesy. As New Year's things go, I did alright for the first few weeks of January, but found my bookmark somewhere around January 21st last night when I opened it up again. As a I read from January 21st onwards, these are the things I learned:

• not all poetry before 1900 is terrible
• Keats was pretty cool
• Robert Burns kicked ass
  
• and part of me really wants 'My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose' read at my wedding.
  

For Friday - Erika Meitner

From 'Elegy'

...I was at the Museum
of Natural History today--

dinosaur bones set carefully, dioramas
of Neanderthals in cases reenacting hunts, and an exhibit

on body art entitled "Marks
of Identity" this is what I learned:

that in the afterlife, where all things are reversed,
dark tattoos shine brightly

to illuminate a path
for the dead. I learned

that women shamans
painted their bodies

with vicious snakes and jaguars
to protect them in journeys

to the spirit world. I learned
that the female body

must be marked
before it can serve

as a vehicle for the spirit.

Sometimes I Forget...

Sometimes I forget how easy it is to pick up the phone and hear an old friend's voice again. Sometimes I forget that sometimes each of us just wants to speak, and be understood.
Sometimes I forget how hard that can be.

Sometimes I forget how that the place I live doesn't matter, because I am me regardless.
Sometimes I forget that the place I live defines who I am, mattering indefinitely.
Sometimes I forget that I matter.

Sometimes I forget how curling up on the couch can be the one thing that saves you.
Sometimes I forget that curling up on the couch can keep you locked in.
Sometimes I forget how much others matter to me.

Bach

My friend Emily took piano lessons and horse riding lessons growing up. I was fascinated by this; either possibility had never really crossed my mind for myself. Emily would compete in Bach Piano competitions as we got older. I went to one, piled in the suburban with the rest of her family. Emily wore a black dress, I think.

For her 20th birthday, I got us tickets to go hear a Bach concerto at the San Francisco Symphony Hall. We sat in the highest balcony, leaning over the curved marble edge to peer down at the musicians, the vocalists, the harpsicord.

All throughout the concerto, I got lost within the music, wandered in the music, scribbling on my arm with a black ink pen: I had forgotten to bring any paper at all, did not know I would need paper to record--record...--the thoughts that came to me, the lines of poetry.

Lately, I have wanted to find myself in a symphony hall once more. I don't think I would have ever listened to Bach before without Emily. I miss both of them.

For Tuesday - Before Me

orange gerber daisy
bowl of apples and oranges
one mini pumpkin

You asked me once...

You asked me once what it was like in my head. This is the first line of a poem I started heading up I-5 home again. Birds in the trees. Low sun over the valley's hills. You asked me once what it was like in my head, and this isn't the poem, but this is what's it's like.

I drum the edge of the laptop to Coldplay that has randomly come onto iTunes. My love sings along next to me, absent-mindley. She is doing her own work, too. I like the acoustic guitar.

I also like you. I've been thinking of you all day, off and on, around and about. Fingernails tapping on the laptop again. It seemed somehow appropriate today: the dark grey, the rain pouring down without warning.

I still haven't checked my bank balance. I don't have job prospects for January. I ignore these facts-falsities-facts and imagine other houses, other days, other conversations.

I think I'm starting to censor myself.

Before Sleep

"And the angel said to her...
you shall call his name Jesus.
He will be great...
and of his kingdom there will be no end."
--from Luke 1

And my dream spoke to me...
you shall know her by her name "Love."
She will be great...
and of your love there will be no end.


----

another poem started...

You

(Is this the start of a Peter Pan series...? I guess my studies have seeped into my poetry)

Peter Pan had the kiss, a kiss all your own.

And maybe I was a Lost Boy, a lost boy.

Maybe it's not so surprising Peter Pan

was often played by a woman

on the stage; he needed her kiss.