Summer into Autumn

What do school children reap at harvest time?  Summer's end, back to school.  The last letters you don't mean to be the last are addressed to camp friends, stamped and stuck in the mailbox.  The red flag raised, the apples dangling in the trees, the lunch bag packed.  The ruler.  The Elmer's glue.  The nametags on the desks clean, not yet doodled on or peeling off.  Remember the creak of opening your desk?  Remember placing everything just so?  Remember the girls who had more crayons, the right kind of jeans?  Remember the ones who coveted your headband, your panda bear eraser?  Did you smile at the new kid?  Did you glare at the mean kid?  Was your best friend in the wrong class?  Was the boy with cancer back yet?  Did you know you loved the scent of pencil sharpener shavings and the grinding sound of the crank?  Were you aware of the keen rush of relief at recess time?  Were you smack in the middle of the red foursquare ball, the pinching chains of the swings, the freshly painted yellow lines?  Did you stop at lunchtime to be thankful for the peanut butter sandwich in its ziplock bag?  Were you happy or humiliated when you found the heart your mother drew on your napkin?  When did you start counting the days till Friday?  When did you start staring down the clock?  What did you look forward to?  What were you ashamed of?  What instructions did you miss?  On the hot walk home, your new shirt dampens under your crisp backpack bearing rustling forms, notes to parents.  Maybe you're lucky and get picked up and driven to the Dairy Queen for a special dipped cone.  Maybe the city pool is still open for one more week.  Maybe you go down alone to the cool basement with a juice box and plop down in front of Full House.  Maybe you envy your young siblings too little for school yet.  Maybe you wish you had siblings.  Maybe dinner was served on the porch, grilled.  Did you tell your parents about your day?  Did you like your new teacher?  Were you put in the advanced reading group?  Did you remember eight times four?  Did the new gym teacher seem nicer than the old one?  What would you wear tomorrow?  Did you lay out your clothes?  Did you brush your teeth?  Did you pray for something? Was it the thing you really wanted?  When did you start wishing to be a grown up?  When did you stop?  Was there a line you stepped over?  A bell that rang?  Did the wind even rustle the leaves?

The Blue Fairy's Lament

To sense the longing for unity that brought you into being.
To wish on the stars for something you don't yet understand.
To try and fail to be good.
To feel the gaze of the one who sees your lies plain on your face.
To misplace your trust.
To curl on the floor around your broken heart.
To find another's heart in pieces in your hand.
To wish and sleep and wake and try and fail again to be good.
To hurl yourself after any passing pleasure.
To chase the next and the next and the next big thing.
To drown in your thrashing confusion.
To stare into the darkness of your isolation.
To love.
To try.
To fail.
To dream good dreams.
To be human.

Kentucky Poets Week: Frank X Walker

I love Frank X Walker. I'm a little sad I didn't get to know him better while I was in Kentucky, but I did hear him read and I did run into him on the street one evening and I did shake his hand to congratulate him on winning the Lannan Literary Fellowship. He was the judge for a MUCH smaller writing award I won the same year, so I felt special shaking his hand in the middle of the road like that.


Frank X Walker has the best eyes. You probably think there are more important things about him than that, but if you ask me, it all starts with and comes from the eyes.


But okay, there is also the fact that he co-founded the revolutionary Affrilachian Poets and, in fact, coined the term "Affrilachian" in response to a dictionary entry that defined Appalachians as "white residents of the region of Appalachia." In his words here, "I believe it is my responsibility to say as loudly and often as possible that people and artists of color are part of the past and present of the multi-state Appalachian region extending from northern Mississippi to southern New York." The Affrilachian Poets collective now includes 25+ poets of color writing and living in Appalachia.


Frank X Walker also wrote my absolute favorite collection of persona poems: Buffalo Dance: The Journey of York, written in the voice of York, the slave from Virginia who accompanied Lewis and Clark on their famous expedition to the Pacific and back; the poems follow the narrative arch of the journey through York's eyes. I cannot say enough about how profound and beautiful and sensual and thought-provoking and moving that book is. Nor, sadly, can I share any of its poems with you because - as with all of my most treasured books - I have lent it out to a good friend and, two years later, have yet to get it back.  But I will be buying it again today, along with its sequel, When Winter Come: The Ascension of York.  And so should you.


So instead (as a bonus nod to Obama's visit to my hometown of Iowa City today!) I'm snatching a poem from The Charleston Gazette, posted on Election Day 2008 and in turn snatched from Jeff Biggers' blog on The Huffington Post the day before.

OBAMA SHUFFLE

by Frank X. Walker

To the seasoned black women in line behind me when I went to early vote

we move as if chained together, we move like we are
pacing out the complex steps to the new line dance

thank you for taking off work today, for standing
outside in the cold on sore feet for so long
bundled in winter scarves, long skirts, leather coats,
faux fur, bandanas, fatigues, sweats and jeans
clutching designer purses, book bags and paper sacks

to the right, to the right, to the right, to the right

thank you for clearing your throat
when anybody forgot to move the line

thank you for leaning on your canes
for looking over your reading glasses

to the left, to the left, to the left, to the left

for casting a watchful eye at the poll workers
and at me and at everybody within squinting distance

for wearing my mother's nose on your faces, for wearing
her shoes, for standing with your hands on your hips too

now kick, now kick, now kick, now kick

now move as if chained together, now move like we are
pacing out the complex steps to the new line dance

now walk it by yourself, now walk it by yourself

Kentucky Poets Week: Maurice Manning

I am a great fan of poetry written in the voice of another. I once wrote a series of poems in the voice of Tallulah Bankhead. (Did you know she had an affair with Billie Holiday? They had a falling out because Billie mentioned it to a biographer and Tallulah never forgave Billie before she died. But she did bring two dozen roses to her funeral.) A poet gets to think like an actor, to get inside the head of whomever it may be, and - with no script - to say the poem-worthy things that person may have thought.

Today's poet wrote an entire lovely book in the voice of Daniel Boone, who explored the state of Kentucky. I feel like I learned more about the pioneer from this book than I ever did in history classes and yet, as the late, magnificent Kentucky poet James Baker Hall puts it on the back cover of the book, "For all their tale-telling these poems are more often meditation and prayer than story."

Me being me, one of my favorite poems from this book is just such a meditation - on time. From (page 8 of) his great work A Companion for Owls: Being the Commonplace Book of D. Boone, Long Hunter, Backwoodsman, &c. I give you Maurice Manning.

The Meaning of Time

On occasion I would meet an Indian
in possession of a broken pocket watch
(one no doubt bartered from the British or
plundered from a dead settler), who had
no idea he held a device to measure minutes
and hours, who had no notion of gears
and had a one-sided concept of springs:
simple objects of flow, mouths spilling out
the watery secrets of the netherworld.
Would such an Indian study the frozen
hands and face to see how long it takes
to make a fire, gut a buffalo? Is sunlight
dripping on the leaves a question suitable
for clocks? Can a wounded man be spoken
of in terms of neutral hours? Is the whole
world endlessness? Yes, it is. The world
is endless cause and need, slow motion
and design. The world is irreversible,
no matter how much you let it tick down:
a white man boiling berries, tying and retying
his purse strings; a red man staring at the sky;
a silver case flashing moonlight: there is no
measure or meaning in this low world:
the present is always passing away; what matters
is nature, with even-tempered mischief, always
breaking her own rules, like a child at play.

Kentucky Poets Week: Coleman Larkin

After a very full weekend including 1 killer show, 2 days of gorgeous spring weather, and 3 songs that now have vocal tracks, I'm thinking it's a good time to let some other folks use this space for their words, so I can sit back and have a little quiet time. 

Luckily, I have recently made a trip to my old Lexington, Kentucky home (I lived there for 3 years before Boston) to visit friends and have brought back with me fresh blooms of inspiration from the rich writing soil of Appalachia.  If you don't already know about the literary legacy of Kentucky, please google "Kentucky writers" and explore a little.  It is such a wonderful trove of great writing.  Or just stay tuned to my blog this week because I'll be selecting some really wonderful poetry - new and old - from some of the best Kentucky writers.


Today, I have the honor of sharing with you one of my favorite people ever.  I first met Coleman Larkin in an intro fiction writing class with real live merry prankster, Gurney Norman.  We were partnered up to read each other some bit of something we'd written...which is how I found out the second and third things Cole and I had in common (after writing):  shyness and a "proclivity for the female neck."  Since then, Cole has become the first person I send anything to when I need a reader and every now and then I am fortunate enough to find his work in my Inbox.  He is quite possibly the only peer writer I've never felt competitive with; his work is so transcendent, I feel nothing but hopeful that he will keep the words flowing out into the world.  He's just...a writer.  A Kentucky writer to the bone (all that means is that you can hear the home in his words and that home is Kentucky).

Cole is also an award-winning journalist, a stand-up comedian (though not the kind most mothers approve of) and happens to write band bios on the side (including the current TBH bio), so twitter or facebook the man now - or just sit and wait until his work infiltrates your awareness.  Either way.


This is supposed to be my quiet time so I will now shut my yap and give it over to the poetry of Coleman Larkin.


LEXINGTON

Beyond windows tall as pride and the decayed Corinthian capitals of old Second Street a fraction stares through the night. My sweet striving city, angelic as you are. Neon. Cerulean. Halo. My sweet striving city of shoe shiners and the bow-tied and everything that pushes my pen. What’s your real name and how come every girl I ever love ends up on your high South hill where I can’t reach her? I’d like to die right on top of you, Lexington, and grow up a blue-green blade.


MY PREDILECTION

Did I mention my predilection for your sly heat? Cold shoulder be damned it sneaks and warms without cause or consent. My God. I’d like to take a night walk with you around the holidays, watch you melt through to the pavement like a rivet and blow kisses to the bums. Even the snow couldn’t stay frozen in your thick atmosphere. You’ve got one you know, a second skin of hot atoms that cloud and shake, a larger version of your self that’s invisible but not empty, a coalescence of earned insights surrounding you like a superimposed shadow. Not everyone has it, and I’m not sure if it’s good. But did I mention my predilection?



A LIQUID SOLUTION

“They should invent some sort of liquid solution to this problem,” I said, and you said you just preferred the sensation of me holding your hand and picking the burgundy polish from your nails with my own, taking extra care around the cuticles, amassing a palm of glittery platelets. But, come to think of it, the problem of which I spoke was that I saw a poetry in the action and assumed an exchange with you, you who has pianist’s fingers but doesn’t play the piano.


THE OTHER PARIS

Their homes float like luxury liners on frozen swells of green, and at week’s end they row into town and dock their Japanese SUVs and cobalt Beamers and their overkill trucks with calfskin insides in front of the historic storefronts where Mexican horsemen wait for the working months, their jagged teeth and sagging pawn shop sorrows imparting an uneasiness to the fur-clad women of The Other Paris. “Can’t nobody do nothing ‘round this place,” say the men, because they aren’t yet accustomed to the Commonwealth where looking is a bigger sin than doing, so they jingle the bells on their way into the Alta Vista where their wives align pastries and fumble with money they don’t understand but nevertheless earned, and everybody falls in love with everybody all over again because they remember how rare it is to find a soul that’s solid. Especially here. Especially in The Other Paris where it gets dark early and the fur-clad sailors row home to their grassy Atlantis while wet-bellied dishwashers with bad knees and brothers in need of chemo treatments carry their cold discs into the streets and stuff their cheeks with chaw, screaming “Never again!” again and again and again, their hearts steaming away, leaving syrupy reductions of present hurts and forgotten joys. If there’s a god he should bless them, wrinkled palms and all.

A hint about next week's blog theme!

Here's another poem for you!  Brand new, and a two-fold hint at what I've got up my sleeve for next week!

Till then, Happy Friday, friends!


Spring in Kentucky

I remember thinking that every shade of green 

had gathered at once - leaves on the dogwoods, 

stems on the lace growing wild in the ditch.  

I learned to harmonize on Russel Cave Road, 

clutching the passenger door round tight curves.

Singing gave the driver respite from shouting and 

I could hide inside the songs and watch 

the smear of hills and tobacco barns pass.

I often wished for escape on the white horse 

who faithfully waited alone by her fence.

Or to become the one creature on earth 

who could silence my belting companion:  

to slither away on a scaly green belly, safe

in the camouflage of endless bluegrass.

A poem or maybe a zygote

So I've been toying with the idea of sharing some of my poetry here, just for the art & variety of it.

I decided to start with something COMPLETELY unfinished. In fact, I think I wrote this in a late-night rush, off the top of my head. In fact, when I re-read it just now in an old journal, I had no memory of writing it at all and even wondered if maybe I'd written down someone else's work.  That, of course, made no sense because I only keep my own poetry in that journal.  So I guess I must've written it.  Anyway.  Here is a stream of words from my unconscious to your computer screen.  The birthing process in all its messiness.  Or is this just the conception?  I keep fighting the urge to rewrite this to try to make it make sense.  Maybe someday I will.  Till then, here's to disorderly, dream-like glimpses into the darkness


Invitation

Listen.  I am here in the fire light
with treetops sprouting from my head
and quicksilver birds flitting
from my mouth. I am here.
The river rushes 'round the dam
left from 1987 and the silt settles
into sentimental, sedentary rocks,
but they are not treacherous to climb.
I will leave heiroglyphs etched
with the static of my interior echoes,
I will launch in morse code the songs
I croon to the cold sky while you sleep,
and while all the strangers sleep along,
and while no one can cast a shadow
over the moon's watching-over.
Listen. Can you reach me? I am
both exactly the woman you know
and a midnight frontier you have not
yet mapped. I feel more than I can
tell you, so listen to the direction
my wild grasses lean and follow them
down to the silent underground village
that still lights itself up with flames.




p.s. Nikky Finney would have my head for "showing off" such unfinished nonsense - or maybe just for being too lazy to finish it yet. Yup. Sorry, Nikky, even though I know you're not online reading this, but rather holed up somewhere fretting & sweating over a word choice like the real & true poet that you are.

Some true things I'd like to tell

Dear Diary, I woke up at 6:30 this morning, raised my head to turn off the alarm on my iPhone (a little ethereal piano clip I took from Angelica by Lamb, apparently stolen from Debussy), saw a display of gold and orange streaks across the eastern sky over the tall buildings along the Charles. I thought of getting up. I looked at my phone and a text had come in while I was sleeping - a friend still in college asking me if I was watching the meteor shower. I missed it. I missed it when I was in college, too, even though I always sorta remembered when it was coming. I fell back on the pillow. When I got up an hour later, I did a sun salutation yoga series for the first time. Sunshine was glowing in my windows. It seemed the thing to do.

On Making Something From Nothing Or How Nothing Is Always Already Something: Sleep Deprived Ramblings For People Who Like To Laugh At Whiplash

I have half a mind to post a blank page here today.

Half a mind to ask you to contemplate the awesomeness 

of emptiness, the way it sparks with potential.

No one has found a way for beginnings to come without 

endings, that's the bad news.

The good news is that every end means a new beginning, 

which means the time is ripe to create.

And that's just what we're doing 

in This Blue Heaven right now. 

It's a germination period.

An underground growth period.

The ground only looks barren.

The page only looks blank.

It's about to bust out some rhymes,  yo.

Cuz that's how we ro'.  

I'm writing lyrics.

I'm learning to write lyrics 

that might could torpedo 

a heart or two.

I didn't make that line up.

A number of years ago someone said that to me 

about music -- it was like a torpedo to her heart -- 

and it changed the way I thought about 

a lot of things, forever.

I hope these songs will torpedo a heart.  

Or two.  

I stole a line from someone's great-grandmother 

and used it in a chorus.

But man was it a good line.  

I could have said it.

I even might have said it if given enough time.  

GP and KP are writing music for these lyrics.

Music with thrust.  

Torpedos are no good sitting inert in a warehouse.

They need someone to sit down with them.

Some people need to sit down with things.

I hope there aren't so many metaphors mixing and

bumping into each other in the new lyrics 

as in this blog entry.

I'll have to check.

Blank pages have no mistakes in them yet.

So there's that, too.

But we must weigh the risk, however 

high, against how hard we may rock.

Okay I stole that line, too.

I love everyone I ever really loved 

when I sit down to write.

I love you is always a quotation.

You did not say it first and neither did I.

That line is rightfully Jeanette Winterson's.

But man is it a good line.

There is nothing new under the sun.

Case in point.

But the juxtapositions, the juxtapositions can be new!

And so can the moon if we give it a little shade.

A little chance to go underground.

Leave the sky to the sly, mysterious stars.

Poe's phrase, man, doesn't it turn good?

I heard it first last night.

Night ends where dawn begins.

Or is it the other way around?

It's all the same f*cking day, man.

Janis Joplin.

It's all good news.

Let the metaphors be bumper cars.

Just buckle up and let 'em.

The (okay, My) Saneaholic's Serenity Prayer

Inspired by http://kalman.blogs.nytimes.com/page/10/ 

God grant me the serenity

to go really loony and start collecting all the things 

whose names I really love.

Roadmaps of towns like What Cheer, IA for example.

Packets of frangipani and white triumphator.

While I'm at it, maybe sticks and stones 

from all the places I'll travel all alone with books in tow,

both blank ones and ones with lines-filled-in.

Shells too, obviously, or yeah! 

a labeled jar for each beach's peculiar salad

of stones, sands, plants, and shellfish debris.  

(E.g. Useless Bay: crushed mussel shells & 

barnacles, gray stones, coarse sand.)

Oh- and more old typewriters like my Skyriter to clack out 

lyrics I like a lot and passages from the aforementioned 

books, and the beach jar labels, of course.

Grant me the courage to display all this stuff, 

including the books - yes even the Beebo Brinker Chronicles, 

all over my home; and the wisdom to only invite people in

who want nothing more than to drink something hot 

like chocolate or cider or one of my thousands of teas 

with names like Bee Balm and Honeybush

and be changed.