Exercising Again

Okay. I've fallen awake again. A good night's sleep brings so many things. So here's David's poetry exercise, which I still haven't gotten around to:

Write a poem 12 lines long, 6 to 10 syllables per line.

Use the following phrase and words somewhere in the poem:

Dramamine, oranges, and flat coke in a plastic cup.

cerulean
cellophane
Ironwood Road
starving
random

Allow yourself 12 minutes to complete this exercise.

Neil and David have versions on their blogs that you can check out. Neil's version is called Might As Well Jump. You'll have to scroll down a ways on both of the blogs to find them. The first phrase just reminds me of puking and I'm having trouble getting past that. But starving and random have possibilities. Have fun.

The Tip of My Tongue

Poetry class is getting easier. There’s more laughing, even when necrophilia enters the scene (thanks Neil.) Don’t you wish you were there? Seriously, though, there are patterns emerging. I think that I might be starting to hear the rhythms that at times have seemed so elusive. Who knows? All I know is I feel better, as though I might not be Helen Keller navigating this world. I keep seeing Gluck climbing down from the tree and realizing the things I want to say are on the tip of my tongue, which of course is a fairly dangerous place to be. I knew this semester would get interesting. I'll try and post another of David's word grids tomorrow, if you'd like to join the poetry fun. I'd do it now, but it's past my bedtime.

Bitching About the Cold

So, the gist of the story is we're all cold. The snowball fight was cancelled, called on account of single digits. School was cancelled, for the young and the old, but the able-bodied and middle aged still go about their business, do their chores. I'm huddled quietly typing in a room at IUSB. There were plenty of parking spaces to be found. No one likes this cold. Tonight I'll put plenty of wood on the fire, keep the world spinning around. The Finlander has traveled out onto the tundra for a couple days. So be it. He'll be fine...

Falling Awake

I’ve been falling awake lately. Maybe it’s winter. Maybe it’s middle age. I don’t know. I just wake up suddenly and completely and there I am. No gradual awakening. I’m there. It feels odd, but what can you do?

The comments I got back on the erotic poetry assignment were amusing. My erotic nature is obviously hidden. A third of the class thought I was writing on death. This would explain a lot of things.

The snowball fight of 2007 is descending upon us. Troops have been called home from college and the far reaches of our own county to do battle tonight. Right on schedule, the toilet on the cold side of the house has frozen up. We’re talking to it nicely, pouring hot water down its drain, asking it to wake up, soon.

Picnic at the Lakeshore

Remember the afternoon at the lakeshore

Finding the man on the stairway
Stunned you. Really

Suspended in the hammock listening
To the lake stroking the shore

Blue stones skipping across the surface
Rising, shaking the water from your hair

His hand cupping your fingers. Feeling
the snap of his wrist at just the right moment

Releasing the stones

Meyer and Thile Play Slow Fast 5/4

(Here's my mild bit of erotica for you. Sorry about the incessant rhyming. And I know, it really isn't in 5/4.)

Leaning forward in the amber
Listening, the notes are quiet, very low
I’m not sure I like what they’re playing
Maddening how slowly Meyer drags the bow
Thile’s fingers hover fretful and tentative
My God, just begin the frickin’ show.

All right, they have my attention
They’re starting something new.
Thile nods to pick up the tempo
Meyer smiles, shakes his head no.

Chasing time around in their pockets
I’m starting to feel the flow.
I’ve drifted to the clouds on the ceiling
Water drops glisten on the surface below
And the man in the balcony is winking

Lying back in the amber
Listening, your notes are quiet, very low
I’m not sure I like what you’re playing
Maddening how slowly you drag the bow.

Wonderful Typo

If you collect such, Google News has a wonderful typo headline right now: Palestine Leaders Plead for Clam on Streets of Gaza. At last. It's the very thing I have been waiting for.

Stone Soup

It's snowing, there is a ham bone in the soup pot with some onions, and my erotic poem is done. I think it's tame enough (and humorous enough) to be posted, but I'll let it set awhile before serving. And last night reading Louise Gluck I saw words streaming down into my consciousness. A man skipping stones on the surface of my body. Amazing what poets will allow you to see.

Moments

Okay. Before you get all psychotic about the grief poem and whether or not I need to go into intense therapy, consider this. It's a moment that I can recreate and show you what grief looked like at a certain space in time. I knew poetry, in one way or another, was going to be a major pain in the butt. I am definitely not posting the erotic poem here.

Breathing

(A revision of grief poem so it is intelligible, or more so, perhaps. Still, reading it to myself, the rhythm still feels off, like it ends too quickly or something.)

It’s been raining. Overhead, reachless
Water drops glisten across thick power lines

The pavement, too, shimmers, wet and black.
The cloudy backdrop, heaven, falls steel gray

And the gray boy still lies on a pier at the river
The man in yellow pajamas stops turning in his hospital bed

The woman in the garden puts down her shovel
To gather up the pieces of her fallen white hair

Their lungs have stopped expanding
It’s no longer possible to pull in air

Choked with river sludge, vomit, red packs of Winstons.
What the hell is all that crap doing in there?

Drink this coffee, take a nap
Maybe you’d like to journal, write something

When they surface remember
Keep breathing, keep pulling in air.