Quote from "For the sake of a single poem" by Rilke
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Posted:Mar 10, 2021 12:23 pm
Last Updated:Jul 6, 2021 3:05 pm
5010 Views
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Quote from The Notebooks of Malte Laurids, by Rainer Marie Rilke
"For the sake of a single poem"
And is not yet enough have memories. You must be able forget them when they are many, and you must have the immense patience wait until they return. For the memories themselves are not important. when they have changed into our very blood, into glance and gesture, and are nameless, no longer to be distinguished from ourselves— then can happen that in some very rare hour the first word of a poem arises in their midst and goes forth from them.
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2
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Gray poems
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Posted:Mar 10, 2021 6:47 am
Last Updated:Mar 11, 2021 2:19 pm
5347 Views
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Gray poems
started January 24th, 2021
There are poems
that are easy to share
that want to be seen-read-heard
then there are other days
when gray skies
reflect my gray disposition
silent be silent
say the critical voices
don't scar the world
with this
and so my mark on this world
has often been
one of absence
but to deny these gray poems
is to deny myself
is to deny the crocus
blooming through the snow
for if I don't give expression
to all of it including the gray
then the beauty in me
also stays hidden
unexpressed-unrealized-unknown.
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5
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Alone together
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Posted:Mar 8, 2021 1:59 pm
Last Updated:Mar 12, 2021 5:33 am
6856 Views
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I wanted to find out in what way the specialness of my experience could be made to connect me with other people instead of dividing me from them.
—James Baldwin, Nobody Knows My Name
Alone together
started November th, 2020
We all at times
feel alienated.
Tell me about it,
that thing that
makes you feel
so different and alone.
I might understand
or at least I can listen
and for a brief moment
we can be alone together.
Have you been
a stranger in the only home
you ever knew?
I have.
Do you feel
anger shame fear
all the time?
I do.
Have you silently screamed
for fear if you let the sound loose
you and your world would shatter?
I have.
Did you find your people on a psych ward
and know it was the only time
you would be surrounded those like you?
I did.
Have you ever felt so uniquely formed
you are sure others
wouldn't recognize you as human?
I have.
Do you fall in love with words
shaping them into poems
to show yourself and others
that silence is not the only option?
I do.
Hear my words
find yourself in them
find your own words
and for a brief moment
we can be alone together.
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8
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Canoeing
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Posted:Mar 7, 2021 4:48 pm
Last Updated:May 4, 2021 6:40 am
6587 Views
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Canoeing
written March 7th, 2021
I have spent the last few days
canoeing the Mackenzie River
making the journey in a
with maps and words.
As I read it takes back
to canoeing in my youth
the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness
along the northern border of Minnesota.
I can feel the paddle
pulling through the water
and hear the loons
crying at night.
The land around
almost untouched since
Huron, Chippewa, Cree
Dakota and Ojibwa eyes
were the ones
that had ever seen it.
Now I in thought and memory
the clear cold waters of the lakes
the portages through forested hills
taking me from one gem
of a lake and a memory
to the next.
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4
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They want
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Posted:Mar 7, 2021 5:43 am
Last Updated:Jul 6, 2021 3:07 pm
5955 Views
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They want
written February 6th, 2021
They think they want
the body
the sex
the words
but it's not my words they want
the words in me
waiting to spill out
some listen for a while
but they know what they want
and it isn't
this body
this sex
these words
me.
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5
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He, the moon, and I
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Posted:Mar 3, 2021 2:39 pm
Last Updated:Mar 13, 2021 5:13 am
6932 Views
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Midnight. Heaven is
bathing, the window open.
Just a kiss away.
—Jane Miller, "American Odalisque", The of Tongues
He, the moon, and I
written March 2nd, 2021
My love and I
look up at our night skies
during this midnight time we share
our eyes looking at
the same stars
in our heavens so far apart
the moon baths us
in its gentle light
embracing both of us
I am envious of the moon
touching my love
when I can not
so I ask the moon
to kiss him for me
lovers are we
he, the moon, and I.
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5
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Until there is no more
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Posted:Mar 1, 2021 5:07 am
Last Updated:Mar 9, 2021 4:45 am
6240 Views
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In the song of the man in his room in his house in his head remembering
And then no more?
—Thomas McGrath, "Ordonnance", The Gift of Tongues
This poem has a soundtrack. 2 songs that play along with it are "The Knife Feels Like Justice" by Brian Setzer, and "Rock and Roll Dreams Come Through" by Meat Loaf.
Until there is no more
started January 31st, 2021
I remember the songs
crying from the radio
the words I couldn't say
giving expression to the searing pain
helping my soul fly away
until there was no more
I remember my room that was light pink
the color my fear still is today
the secrets in there breaking open
like the stains on the carpet
that everyone must have seen
the tears in your broken eyes
that could not be cried
until there was no more
I remember the house that room was in
a house that was no home
me a hermit crab without a shell
war without and war within
until there was no more
I remember what was in his head
the self-loathing, isolation
paranoia and bitterness
that were his gift to me
from father to beloved
until there was no more
What remains
is the remembering
and the not remembering
reality shimmering
into and out of existence
until there is no more.
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3
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Precarious Balance (in 3 parts)
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Posted:Feb 27, 2021 6:12 am
Last Updated:Feb 27, 2021 9:41 pm
6984 Views
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Precarious Balance (in 3 parts)
started December 3rd, 2020
(1)
My balance
has never been great
others walk paths
and at the world around them
I
at my feet
watching for things
that might trip me
(2)
I walk along a tightrope
strung a few inches over the earth
my balance precarious
not realizing
I could step off at any time
onto the stable earth.
(3)
Life is a precarious balancing
of the joy and the pain
singing-tears
holding onto each other
shatter-whole
the impossible duality
agony-bliss
found in juxtaposition
love-destruction
we try balance
not-enough-too-much
somewhere within
everything-nothing
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3
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Writing Poems
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Posted:Feb 24, 2021 5:32 am
Last Updated:Feb 27, 2021 8:26 pm
7386 Views
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Writing poems
written February 17th, 2021
These poems
don't seem like much
as I sit at my desk
with the blinds open
writing on the green graph paper
I have always written
engineering homework
and poems on.
The exhaustion doesn't hit
until I post them online
moving the handwritten original
from unfinished to finished notebook.
finished (for now)
finished (but not quite right)
finished (but not good enough)
finished (but not worth speaking out loud)
finished (and to hell with it post it)
Something about that act
makes me want to
go back to bed
even though the sun
is bright in the window
sure that
I will never emerge
to write another word.
Thank goodness
that feeling isn't permanent
or this unfinished notebook
now filled with bits and fragments
words forgotten as soon as they were written,
would be filled with blank pages.
And the finished (but not quite right) notebook
getting heavier each day
with MY words
that have been released into the world,
would only have that one poem in it.
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6
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Now I become myself by May Sarton
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Posted:Feb 24, 2021 4:15 am
Last Updated:Mar 10, 2021 12:24 pm
7122 Views
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This is not a poem I wrote. It is one I found early in my life and had read for me at my wedding in 1992? Something like that. Terrible with numbers. I forget about this poem, and then find it again about every 10 years or so. I guess that's an advantage of a memory like mine lol. There's good things to discover again and again.
This poem is everything to me, every time I rediscover it and read it. I found it before I had started writing poems. It means even more to me today as I'm writing. I hope the ending of the poem can feel like mine someday.
Now I become myself
by May Sarton
Now I become myself. It’s taken
Time, many years and places;
I have been dissolved and shaken,
Worn other people’s faces,
Run madly, as if Time were there,
Terribly old, crying a warning,
“Hurry, you will be dead before—”
(What? Before you reach the morning?
Or the end of the poem is clear?
Or love safe in the walled city?)
Now to stand still, to be here,
Feel my own weight and density!
The black shadow on the paper
Is my hand; the shadow of a word
As thought shapes the shaper
Falls heavy on the page, is heard.
All fuses now, falls into place
From wish to action, word to silence,
My work, my love, my time, my face
Gathered into one intense
Gesture of growing like a plant.
As slowly as the ripening fruit
Fertile, detached, and always spent,
Falls but does not exhaust the root,
So all the poem is, can give,
Grows in me to become the song,
Made so and rooted by love.
Now there is time and Time is young.
O, in this single hour I live
All of myself and do not move.
I, the pursued, who madly ran,
Stand still, stand still, and stop the sun!
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1
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Pictures
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Posted:Feb 22, 2021 7:12 am
Last Updated:Jul 6, 2021 3:11 pm
7219 Views
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Pictures
Written February th, 2021
He likes take pictures of
breast back ass pussy.
He says they make his dick hard
and I do love that.
Love seeing the pictures of
and knowing his reaction
them.
I hardly know myself
sometimes it seems
the breast that is mine
the body that is mine
this face that is mine.
As I am turning my phone
for him take pictures
I see my face smiling back
and I take a picture
of smiling.
He asks why I am laughing
bent over the bed
him behind
fucking my ass.
I tell him I am laughing
because I see a woman
I don't recognize
and she looks happy.
Who is that?
Can I learn
smile like she is
in this picture
I can't stop looking at?
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7
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Solitude
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Posted:Feb 17, 2021 7:18 am
Last Updated:Feb 18, 2021 11:31 am
9828 Views
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Solitude
written January th, 2021
The writing prompt says
to describe someone
you wish to tell something.
It sounds so easy
except I have cultivated distance
and silence
even within myself.
The conversations I have
are of trauma and pain
and the crying for comfort
which even
the conversations with myself
rarely provide.
I plant and tend
these silent days
and silent years
that make this
silent solitary life.
If silence were currency
I would be rich
beyond imagining.
Perhaps one day
something or someone
will grow in these
well tended
fallow fields.
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2
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Chameleon
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Posted:Feb 16, 2021 5:04 am
Last Updated:Feb 20, 2021 12:46 pm
10615 Views
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Chameleon
written February 15th, 2021
the chameleon
delights
in finding vibrant
others
to reflect on his
skin
taking on one's
brilliance
until the next calls like a
siren
the beauty of each uniquely
intoxicating
until there is the inevitable
absence
no one to love
him
for the reflection on his skin of
them
without
them
who
is
he?
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3
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