Day 15 - Final Tanka

Not a weekend of rest. Just a weekend of go. I achieved this quiet moment tonight to read more Kimiko Hahn and write some more tanka. It's a form I'm still working on and she never uses all the numbers she writes and she never uses them in order. So i'll have to consider. But here's a few more. And tomorrow starts Denise Levertov. Depending on if I write a Zuihitsu, another Japanese form.


Brooklyn Tanka

24
Upstate looks like Michigan but not Michigan. It must be the trees. Or me.

25
On the Hudson, the cliffs miniature all the cities. Shrunk cars wait for a toy train full of people impossibly small making gestures barely noticeable and speaking in voices no louder than dust rubbing together.

26
I am full to the eyes tonight. And a slow tug pushes me from my chair to my bed where Valerie is lying in X formation.

27
Let’s travel to the upstate of our minds. I hear a whirring fan, the night slush of traffic. A dream I never ended has a new twist to show me.

28
The words are enough nightshade to end this. I have your confidence. I will return. Leave in your mind a door cracked open.

Day 13 - Cheat Codes and Tanka Projects

So I'm doing it again. I'm saving a spot. Making a post without a poem. I have one, I just need to put it down. But the clock is ticking. Eight minutes left. Not my fault! I worked until 8. Went straight to Prospect Park where The Swell Season were playing. (The Swell Season are the two musicians from the movie Once.) Listened to them. Came home. Ate salsa and chips. Fell asleep on the couch. Woke up before midnight. Hurried to the computer.

I'm still working on tanka. And maybe tomorrow morning I'll have more developed, more numerous tanka to put up. Oh, that's part of my rules. I have to write poems like the person I'm reading. So as soon as I finish The Narrow Road to the Interior by Kimiko Hahn, I'll move on to another poet. Denise Levertov in fact. Ok, poem a coming.

1:05 AM

Brooklyn Tanka cont.


14
The hurt of our words is another kind of music. I forget and then I remember quickly.

15
I will cut the trees and listen to all absorbed conversations. I will sit open every ring of Merwin’s tree and listen to poems never scratched.

16
This can’t be. Another night, you crashed in your day clothes on our bed while I type away. All writing is selfish.

17
The moon hummed like a broken streetlamp. The world is a highway end to end.

18
There is no poem.

19
If I say ‘night’ and ‘our’ and say ‘flesh’, some will find conclusions. What if I tell you our night flesh is separated by the need to stay less sweaty?

20
This is our season. Long and warming to us.

21
When I wake up, I will help someone move. My hands have a start in them.

22
The streets need replowing, to be chopped and the wires rooted. The cables and pipes ground and fertilized with the slivers of a million manholes. We will grow a greater infrastructure.

23
Our landlord said the pipes are too weak for Draino. We nodded as if we’d never done anything. Our ceiling and above plumbing are replaced. We now walk on another questionable ceiling.

Day 12 - More Tanka

I went to a seminar tonight with the guy from Improv Everywhere, Charlie Todd. It was very informative about how to spread your internet self. How to get more famouser. I took notes. By tomorrow I'll be so huge, none of you will recognize me.

BROOKLYN TANKA, Part II


7
You are my everyday Coney Island. We are always on the Wonder Wheel.

8
You are on the edge of the rain and I am full inside of it.

9
Hummingbirds never come here. Though my sugar water is getting drunk.

10
It is hard to not speak the whole day. Then to be home so late all our words mean bed.

11
You wrote for lunch you had a bucket of chicken. I wrote I’d be devouring a BLT. And both of us were instead sensible. A first.

12
Under my skin are veins so surface close, I can’t get why I’ve never nicked one. Bad enough to see my blood run for air.

13
You have a vocabulary for all this world and I just listen to be described.

Day 11 - Insert Poem Here

Total breaking of rules. I just got home. I'm posting. With no poem. And I will add one post haste.

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Back. Wrote a tanka series. A bit styled after Kimiko Hahn's tanka cycles. Does it feel like a little cheating? Maybe. Does it do a little disservice to Kimiko? Assuredly. Here it is.


Summer, Brooklyn 2010


1
When I’m hungry, I’ll stuff and lull. When I drink, I find rivers to feed. When I still, I find my skin is holding me back.

2
No shadow surprises me. Only the shades Valerie shows me.

3
I chafe to hear any ‘doing my time’ talk. Just leave. The rivers and I will forget you.

4
The breeze is my favorite song. The fan is my favorite voice.

5
Prospect Park still gives me wonder. Like a paradise cut from a larger paradise.

6
Hide me under the hot streets. Wake me when they are knit together , when I can walk like Cadillac suspension.