What You Don't Eat Can Make You Fat

One thing I can say about lawyers is that they are wordy. Very wordy, as in printer reams filling two or three recycling bins a day wordy.

So funny to find such a brief message when editing through some of these documents they produce:


Blue Plate Special

Patience is a dish best served cold.
--found phrase

Somehow reminiscent of molded mousse
or ham gelee.
So formed the phrase

so patent the metaphor.

Black and White

I've always been amazed by the amount of times crows appear in literature from across the world. And not just in literature, but in other works of art, too. Songs, paintings, photography.

Sort of petroglyphs. Symbolizing just what is the subject of this short poem, written after reading a poem by Joy Harjo dealing with crows:


Earnestness
This morning the question gleams with particles of sun. There's crying; there's laguhter. What do you make of it?
--Joy Harjo


You see the black-limbed tree caught across
broad harvest moon dotted full of crows,
their calls like dry barks in dark air.

Then there's Sara's painting, all air & wax-rendered
sky, half-buried crows
dance beneath breadth of surface.

You hear the poet's voice free itself
from the radio in bright stars; extol
the virtue of crows, their black-clad
parson seriousness alert against snow-choked hills

You see Native American song
comparing crows and death like arrows to the heart
and the nature of the universe--

But like notes on a page of Chinese writing,
the melody escapes you;

Dim crows get caught at the back of your throat.

A Taste of Summer

Never found a real home for this piece. Well, a small internet journal, but not a permanent home.

I wrote this at the Beginning of the Affair. Sort of reminds me of that poem by Carolyn Kizer that details a month seeing someone...and then it was over. Well, this was three years, so I was feeling no pain and the living was easy in the summertime:


LITA SORENSEN

As perennial as the grass

—found phrase (from The Desiderata)

returning each year from brown rags

so are the strobes of the heart
each perfect plum or dulcet berry
A ripening.

Does spring know it shall come this far
or does she hesitate further
bowing willows on river banks?

For feeling is a burst we may sometimes fear
and then grow slowly to want.
The petals open as single words. Leaves fold into thought.

These are not questions for chance but for exquisite reason
and they lay strewn like Cyrillic
markings among the greediness of summer.

There too, is doubt pronounced in the
slenderness of stems, so distant in their connections,
holding the heavy heads of flowers above rain like new milk.
They have seen nothing, touched nothing but sleep bent in memory
of a voice grown dark, soft in meanings
the lateness of the hour closing blind eyes
across lands, across highways, across cities.

Endlessly
summer morning open, bring with them
a drowsy furor; whole small countries of their own making, of dreaming
fine dreams with strong desire in open fields. In clarity, in light, in rented rooms
and beyond this,

all as if reason for care, when sun shines through trees again.

From a Single Line by Rilke

War. Movies. Roadtrips. Keats, Shelley. Grecian urns. Veiled concerns.  Riots.  Racism.  Modern history. Strip malls. The feast that is always the sky.

Originally published in Blueline, SUNY and at Hollins College in LA:

For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror

(found phrase) after Rilke

That first flush of daylight against the hills -
the rosy fingers of antiquity
still with us, now, leavening
the sky across black branches
curving, hatched and glorious:
alive, as we eke human cries
through days and centuries, believe
our own words and the purpose of our deaths.
She disdains us at these times -
casting serenity in shadows of trees,

holding her face in plain veils

like women whose countrymen forbid them -
she keeps her power briefly, then
in the permission of flowers to bloom freely
along highways. In dawn spilling blood
beyond colorless earth as we lay still sleeping.

Are Poets 'Romantic?'

Or is that just something someone who doesn't understand the real beauty of language, image, sound and day to day life would say?

I vote the latter. Of course. I don't much care for the empty verse which is an advertisement or a TV reality show. And in a metaphorical sense - to spell it out - because some need it spelled out: that means a sham or a shadow of what things actually should be, because they have been so hackneyed and so formulaic that even if valid, only a structure remains.

Not truth or beauty. You know Keats would agree. And it took me a while to understand that ode - even though I grasped it back in high school.

This is a poem built on a latin phrase, runs through Omaha, NE in the snow and the wisdom of cats. Orignally published in Dislocate, the University of Minnesota's literary magazine:

Prediction

My small cat crouches outside the screen door -
still open, through winter is coming. Even stone lions
outside libraries shiver; blind but smiling,
smelling the air and listening for snow,
tasting it on the tips of their cement tongues.
It will taste like silence.
Now he waits outside, old leaves
trailing behind him down Jackson Street
as if they could follow autumn. I have
already taken in the flowers -
the chrysanthemums believing they must
bloom in December, the lethargic
ficus tree.

"Tough Cat," my neighbor christend Robert,

though the name doesn't fit -
he's sheep-faced; chin snow-cupped
like a clown. He hesitates with the wisdom
of the very sad or very funny; decides

at the last moment to bolt.

But this bravado will not last.
The cantakerous sky tells the future.
Semper Fidelis, stone lions state wisely,
bringing on the expectation of snow.

Pin Curls: All That Goes Around, Comes Around

It never ceases to be an amazement to me that I originally wrote this poem at the age of 18 and published it years and years later in an academic press.

It reminds me (and sometimes I need this) that all things are possible, given focus. There is, yes, such a thing as being overly creative, all typical protestations of writer's block aside.

Originally published in Yemassee, the University of South Carolina's literary magazine:



Vinegar & Water

Half asleep, dreaming my words
I am curling Grandma's hair a she leans across me
whispering crepey powder and faded love letters, and talking
about pretty girls who loved only books

But that was all right,

as I wound the pin curls sprayed with vinegar and water
and smiled 14-year-old righteousness at the reflection in the mirror
as our eyes met countenance repeated
letting my words grow tight and round.

Last night, dreaming, I realized she was right: I do lie.
remembering her death face after writing my book about rescues
which no one wants but approach wistfully, like piquant masks
forming circles of eyes and mouths and caricaturing us all.

I find a list is imminent - an inventory of pins and needles -
crucifixes all, and of my births
wrapped individually so she can't touch their realities
I wonder if she was right:

Meaningless context like band-aid marriages and dreaming in color
to see the pictures,

Not all that pretty.

There are gray strands in her hair in the mirror
in the tone of her eyes - refracted visions -
If I can conquer this window, I can pin anything.

The Omaha Music Scene

Omaha, NE, where I basically hail from and where I lived for a number of years, has a very vibrant music scene. That includes the indie rock movement of the 90's through today, plus active jazz and blues venues.

Any town along the Missouri or Mississippi rivers is likely to have such.

This is a poem written about the river and the railroad and the town - and transcience, like childhood or other drifting things. Originally published at Texas A & M:

Porch Front Blues

I can see

Peonies break their crowns

on the sidewalk in summer -

no longer the leonine orbs remembered

of childhood.

The city is a tumbleweed

that looks as if it will blow

down river, south, twards Texas.

Even the new green is a ruse,

hiding bits of garbage

and tanned old men who gather behind

the house to drink vodka

and sleep, wrapped lossely in their skins.

Transients migrate north

in summer. I have heard them

talk shop in the library steps -

say Nebraska is a nice place to be

when the weather is good, but

cold as stone in winter.

I have seen them sleeping

free as new released birds

in the library chairs

face east toward the riverfront

windows a sky

made of glass and clouds -

all part of their vision.

Today, air blows hot

a bubble of heat

quivering over buildings that have stood

one-hundred years

painted old men of the prairie

their structures sound,

but wrinkling a little.

I guess it is all just snapshots

we hold for ourselves -

The ideas we have of people and places

shut out the rest easily

drive by, drive through -

the cracking streets,

so clean through car windows,

plastic bags blowing in the wind -

new flowers.