Three Conjoined Haikus

I.
I lit a fire in
a quiet room yesterday.
Red racing to black

II.
around the edges
of a loose-rolled newspaper.
A sound like raindrops.

III.
I guess things are not
so far apart in nature
as often supposed.

After Their Stillbirth

Since he, bright little salt water fish,

swam from her to the distant deep trenches where

for survival, life must make its own light,

she has lived the tenuous life of a tide pool creature

deposited by her own out-rushing water

to cling where she could find solidity,

enduring the ebb and flow of salt tides.

By necessity, she has become hardy—

able to weather her harsh landscape

of sharp edges, buffeting current, capricious sun.

Biding time in this precarious tidal hole,

she considers swimming
after him, that slippery being, never

really hers. What holds her to these

restless permanent shallows

is knowing the bioluminescent organisms

of those darkness-held reaches

must consume any life drawn too close

to feed the light of their own.

This poem was my attempt to enter the mind of someone whose experience out-reaches my own-- a fictional person, but a real experience. I was trying to use metaphor to convey emotion without sentimentality. So, apologies if it is terrible. The whole thing began with the phrase "the tenuous life of a tide pool creature." I was trying to think what kind of life that was and who might be living it, and this is what I got.

On Trying to Force a Poem

This poem is a small animal—

maybe a hedgehog—a little

prickly, a little wary,

that may be coaxed into

a patient hand, schooled to stillness.

This hedgehog-poem might be trapped,

forced, broken-lined, bristling,

savage, and dissonant;

but such an animal will never

trust. It’s untamed words

will always seek to slip their lines.

Still a subtle scribe can trick

this verse tame. A paused pen

may soothe the feral lines to lie—

not quiet, never sleeping—

but breathing, alive

upon the page.

Metavillanelle

In college, I had a professor I didn't appreciate at the time. It's odd, because I have one of his books of poems, and I really like them, and he also did more to challenge us to become real poets (not just blank verse scribblers) than any other professor I had. Maybe it was his personality for which I had no love. I really don't remember. What I do remember now is that he made us write different kinds of poems to stretch our minds and force us to see poetry as something more than just a blob of words with no rules. I didn't get it at the time. I had written sonnets and heroic couplets and I had no fear of meter and rhyme, but I was still in that first-love with poetry that led me to spew youthful emotions into broken lines on a page and call that a poem. Anyway, thank you James Reiss, author of, among other works, I'm sure, Ten Thousand Good Mornings and sometime professor of English 320 at Miami University, for making me write syncopated verse and sonnets and pastorals and villanelles and whatever else you made us do that annoyed me at the time. This leads me to my own personal challenge of the last week or so, finally finished to my satisfaction:

I dreamt in verse that waking couldn’t quell.

For once I set my mind a task to write

a verse that lent itself to villanelle,

it labored through the day, and when night fell

my restless mind lay writing through the night

in dreams of verse that waking could not quell.

At dawn a daydream kept me under spell:

that poem’s lines were written out of light

in verses bending rays to villanelle.

If by the end of day I can’t compel

the verse to close with lines that fit it right,

I’ll dream in verse no waking dreams can quell.

In house, or yard, or bed asleep, I dwell

with wakeful lines that whisper through the night

in dreams of verse no waking thoughts can quell

when seeking lines to bend to villanelle.

You have heard this kind of poem before, whether you realize it or not. (Click the link. Do it. JUST DO IT!) It is, as it knows itself to be, a villanelle. I think the name came from the villain that came up with the format because it is a complete pain in the brain to write one. This is the second one I've written in my life. The first was somehow lost to computer data perdition, but I do remember that Prof Reiss kept telling me, no matter how much I worked at it, that my two tag lines didn't evolve enough over the course of the poem. I had no idea what he meant, and frankly, I still don't. Hey, J.R.-- how did I do this time?

In Aching Times

in aching times

            my heart

grasps tendrils

            of not aching

in cold

            my stomach

imbibes morsels

            of heat

in grayscapes

            my eyes

see purples

            of passion

as such

            tells no my sadness

your love

(e.e. cummings is an influence of mine.)

Writer’s Block

The Muse is trapped and tapping

on the glass walls of my brain:

incessant, rhythmic rapping

redefining migraine pain.

Disregarding common sense,

I take a walk alone

into the night dark street

and down the center line from home.

The captive Mistress Artist

swells her cadence in my ear

until the lines I can't release

spill over as a tear.

I wrote this in college when I was apparently very frustrated by writer's block and also had had way too much caffeine. 

Approaching Winter

The dead ones reach to brush star specks

From the sky-black collars 'round their necks.

Each wizened, blackened, vacant limb

Hails Orion, daring him.

The stubborn ones cling to their leaves:

Fall vanity of handsome trees--

circumspect, then, drop dry scales.

Wind’s whispers wane as Autumn pales.

They’ll all be barren dead ones soon,

Stark with sticks to frame the moon.

Sonnet for a Man I Don't Love

The night’s surreal and muted by the breeze.

The moon, complacent, brushes back the clouds.

She glimpses us between the leafless trees;

Recedes again into her shadowed shrouds.

Mocking leaves lay cackling in the grass,

Paper-frail in contrast with quartz dew.

Misted corners frame the panes of glass

I seem to gaze through as I look at you.

Solid sighs sublime1 in midnight air.

My crystal breath leaves no trace of mist.

Still as cold as when it entered there,

The night I breathe again escapes my chest.

I think you talk of nothing though you talk of dreams. 

Around your fevered words my ennui streams.

I wrote this in college, after a particularly annoying "date" with a guy who clearly had only one thing in mind. The original version contained this footnote:

1: Sublimation is the chemical process by which a substance makes a transition directly from its solid to its gaseous state. The verb form is, in fact, "sublime v.: CHEMISTRY
(of a solid substance) change directly into vapor when heated, typically forming a solid deposit again on cooling."

Tautology

Valentine's Day is coming. You'll probably be seeing a LOT of cynical poems with the word "love" in them between now and them. At least, from me. But this one isn't so cynical.

if I love
because we finish each
other
        's sentences,
is that love
or just accord?
if I love because
we are so in step,
is that love
or marching band?
if I love because I
see me in you
that's not love,
it's a mirror, and not
even a well-made one
at that.
if I love what
makes you tic,
that's timely,
but is it love?
if I love because
I helped to make you,
that's artistry,
and if I love because
you made me,
that's worship.
but I love
because I love
and despite what
I may not like
because love
defies
reasons.
love is.
tautology.

Raindream

When I wrote this in college, it was a prose-poetic short-short story. That's a lot of dashes. Anyway, I have no illusions that this is some brilliant piece of work, but I'm sharing it for fun. When I used to read it to classmates, it was always interesting to hear the different interpretations they would make about what mood was being communicated by this dream-image.

Dusk, a confusion of falling

water and leaves, full

moon rising, grown

children dancing in

puddles. Hundreds

of them, maybe

thousands, naked, unselfaware.

Brick buildings everywhere, all

dark windows. Cars

parked along streets; no

cars driving. Traffic

lights change color on

impotent schedule.

The whole world as if

deserted except for

the dancers in puddles, maybe

thousands, wet leaves

clinging like lichens

to faces, bodies, hair.

Streetside drains clogged

with leaves; gutters,

torrential rivers

widening, widening

meet in the middle. Street

lamps kick on. Everyone

still dancing, laughing

silently under the silent too

full moon.

The child-woman hears what

rain patter speaks. No

other sounds but

watery sounds, raining

and splashing

in puddles their feet.

Her hair stands

at angles little spikes

from her head. Mud spatters

up legs, mud between

toes, leaves stuck

to shoulders, breasts,

thighs. Maybe

rain falling fat, luscious

drops, maybe the

moon, but everything

has on-taken a cadet blue sheen.

She is dancing

in the street overloaded

gutter-torrents swirling

half way up to knees.

Looks to the sky

unblinking,

solemn,

dancing,

silently laughing too. Raises

her arms to shoulder

height, welcomes all

that falls from the sky:

an expansive gesture.

All around her: dancing,

blue-gray

unclothed,

unself-conscious,

silent in puddles of mingled

street lights and moon.

Leaves float

gutter rivers, sink

in puddles,

leaves, leaves,

falling thick as rain, coming

from trees and from

nowhere, different

as children, no two

the same. Somehow,

the leaves blue-gray

yet brown all

the same, sticking

to bodies, clinging

with desperation

of love.

She falls backwards slow

motion, spread-eagle-reckless.

A trust fall and water

catches her softly, spreads

in stop motion out

from her body a momentary hole.

Ripples spreading undisrupted

by the flow of the street-river, only

by raindrops with ripples

of their own. She opens

her mouth to swallow the sky.

A Sycamore leaf the size

of her head comes to breast,

out of nowhere. She

picks it up, holds it

to her ear, but

hears nothing, still

just the interference

of footfalls and rain.

So she holds it

out from her prone

body, leaf, big as her head.

She cries, Look!

This is my heart!

Here is my heart!

All around her

dancing. Hundreds,

maybe thousands,

dancing, naked

in puddles and

blue-gray moon.

She rises, dancing with

them, still calling.

All laughing,

silently laughing

with the moon

to the rhythm of

rainfalls and

footdrops.

Here is my heart!

My heart! No one

hearing, all

still dancing

in puddles

as water-laden

hearts fall

all around

them and

    sink

                            or float

away.

On Violence

Upon Hearing of Shots Fired at a Texas College on 1/22/13

Is this a once-a-month thing now?

Once media frenzy has died down from the last time,

it’s apparently time for more people to do the same.

Then we get Breaking News!

X people shot at Y school/mall/theater/bus in Z city!

Is that the problem—

that we all have not yet turned

off our TVs? and

Broken.

The.

News!

YouTube is not notorious enough,

and reality TV has completely lost touch

with reality,

so now any Joker with a flak jacket

and enough guns

feels the need to put a new spin on Survivor.

Any world cosmopolitan could wonder,

tracking international headlines,

if America has turned away

from Bonds, A-Rod, and Giambi;

full of steroidal rage

to take up a new national pastime.

And yet, is it so new?

Men have long conquered as death--

bringers since before the gladiators
commanded arenas in Rome.

Now in the age of

Soldier of Fortune,

boys are invited to play

the game.

But in what kind of game
are movements of bullets

played on a gameboard of children?

The Ending

This is the way America ends.

This is the way America ends.

This is the way America ends...

With a “bang” that murders its future.

Kitsch Revolution

On Poets

Poets in coffee shops--
Poets in wild glades--
Or in the New Yorker--
the ones who got paid.

Poets in back yards--
versing from porch swings,
penning their romance
with homelier things.

Poets in Japan praise the
blossoming cherry tree.
Poets in churches raise
ardent verse from bent knee.

Poets in Iraq are
protesting bombs.
Poets in grade schools are
loving their moms.

Poets with rhythm skip
Double Dutch ropes.
Poets are everywhere
scribbling their hopes.

Communication

What if I wrote you a love poem,
but it was so densely worded,
you thought you'd been given a millstone
instead?
Would you feel loved?
Or would you feel ground up
and spat out
like grist for the mill
of my intellectual
snobbery?