Day 19 - Back with a Nightmare

So two nightmares. 1) My office is having a pushup competition. I don't like competitions. Because I'm not good at most competitions. Because they're usually physical.
Oh, the competition is against other parts of the tv crew. I think we're challenging accounting first. Then we'll move onto editing and the teamsters.
Everyday we have pushup time in the office. My wing meat is hurting. I did 65 pushups yesterday. Yeah, that's right. 65.

Here's something inspired by Kinnell.

Dear Stranger,

Pause. Identify
what you are without.
Isolate. You. Minus
everything else.
Say to a mirror –
This is me:empty.

Pause. Lies.
I sense you are not skinned,
barnacles on the underside
of your heart.
Memories stick like residue
from band-aids, from splashed cola.
I hear sand in your shoes.

I get it, stranger.
We are jealous of our ballast.

Here is a solution.
A mile from your house is a bear.
Don’t worry if you are not in bear country.
There is a bear out there.
Drive to it. You will know it
by the way it stumbles, mad as the moon.
It has lost its eyes, it has dulled its paws.
Put it down.
Reach both hands into the mouth and peel
the fur off him.
In the recesses of this bear,
there will be a smaller bear shaped cavity.
Wrap the non-bear in a blanket.
Oh, bring a blanket.

Now find an open road to the sky
and breathe into the mouth,
until your lungs are flat.
Now back steal the air,
it will be bittered, taste its rust.
As dimensional as regret, as thin as slight.
Now this go, breathe as far as you can,
past the lungs and space,
until you are aware your body is a deep well,
and your air is unending
and you are light with it.
And now your bear will wake.
Full of hunger, weighed down with you,
ready, for this is how bears get born.

Day 18 - Levertov, Me, and a Morning of Writing

So here was the morning assignment. I wanted to use the structure of her poem, "About Marriage". Which I won't adequately show here because of the blog restrictions on line length and spacing. This is her first line:

Don't lock me in wedlock, I want

marriage, an

encounter -

So I took this idea of marriage and made it my own concern. The feelings I have about calling Valerie my "wife". I think it makes her less. Like she's a half person identifiable only by her title, that she would be the same as other "wives". I frequently just say "Valerie".

The middle part of Levertov's poem was about an encounter with birds. I frequently dislike poems about birds or flowers or anything where poets just list off scientific names to birds or flowers. I hate any poem that starts with...."I spied a bird while sitting at my desk" and then so forth onto comparing that bird to the world or their life and then the bird flies away and I'm at home gagging.

So thinking of that, I forced myself to write myself sitting and writing and thinking about stuff. Now I'm not sure if the middle works yet. But I like how the poem turned out I think. Levertov study, away!

A Four Letter Word

I don’t say wife when I speak of you
it is tethered
to old earth-
(heavy, connoted)

I tell them instead of the rainstorm
built for us

(the sun, sensing its time

nudges at my attention

I have a fan set

to Paper Storm

and my yesterday knots

have piped from me

into the watertable

I keep my books close

a room of teachers often

but sometimes an audience

the applause of pages

somewhere near

you are cleating the earth

to move at your speed

my words are wings

we have become momentum)

there was a rainstorm
that while we walked through
woke every tree
though it felt like we did
like we were inevitable here

Day 16 - Part 2, Levertov Study

Let me show you what I mean by a close study. I try to write a different version of the poem I'm reading. I try to imitate it with my own words. I try to stay in the same cloth. In further drafts, I'll break the seams. But for now, and this one is the closest I may have written, I stay close. First is Denise Levertov's poem. Afterwards is mine.

Gone Away

When my body leaves me
I'm lonesome for it.
I've got

eyes, ears,
nose and mouth
and that's all.

Eyes
keep on seeing the
feather blue of the

cold sky,
mouth takes in
hot soup,
nose

smells the frost,

ears hear everything, all
the noises and absences,
but body

goes away to I don't know where
and it's lonesome to drift
above the space it
fills when it's here.


MY VERSION NOW. Though it's daunting to put up a poem right after a master like Levertov.

I Need What I Don't Want

When my guilt leaves me,
I'm lonesome for it,
I still have

anger, confusion,
closed eyes and fists,
but that's all

Anger
keeps the mind
filled with blood,

though confusion,
makes my years
fold together
like a map

the present gets crowded

perhaps because I close my eyes
and still smile
smiles of fists, smiles
that shout 'regardless'.

I need guilt to steer
because it's lonesome
to walk without the past
guiding at the elbow.

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.

---

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.

Day 6 - William Stafford, Super Genius

So this morning I did a close study. Where I tried to craft a poem as close to the original poem as I could while still making it my own. In fact, when Valerie saw me at my desk, I was holding the book in one hand and writing in my journal with the other. She accused me of just copying other people's poems for my own.

So here's the poem. It's my own. I didn't copy despite what Valerie said. Because if I just copied it then it would be better, wouldn't it?

I tried to imitate the way Stafford jumps from image to image while keeping the idea of the poem on the same track. We'll see how it works after I come back to these and edit them.


Vine

Early in April we steadied our hands,
our hunger was a sound, a secret name.
To be more than this,
to have our dreams speak back.
We are not a forest cleared,
but there is a creeping vine in us,
we will keep the stones we climb.

And though it was silence at first,
our hearts were shored up.
Walking through storms will pass
them faster. I have hope
and you have a fist and both
can grow feet.
We each have blood to spare.

Now we see the stars unclothed,
they are still as far as stars
but winter is a promise,
not a drought, our home
a workshop of thought. We are
travelers of a night fantastic
and all our own.