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.

Succession

I have been thinking of most depictions of the desert in film and video and what seems to connect most visions...wondering why hourglasses and sand seem to inextricably linked to such landscapes.

It is true that remnants of the past remain here more than in other places. During my first excursion into the desert hills around seven years ago when I arrived and everything was new, I found several bleached animal skeletons, an old corral dating back to the 1800's, and an an old adobe ruin.

When I wandered into the town from the desert, they all looked at me oddly. And they still do:

Desert Noir

The past layered like an onion:
once you pull back skin a rawness revealed
crumbling black light on the desert floor
bones & azure skies seem to drift
towns don't care for mythologies.

The same rock, soil and ash
shifted into hills and into earthen houses

the shadows of mountains in the distance stir
flowing like quicksand, the clouds

You knew it was time.

Good Enough for Government Work

With all the union activity going on in Wisconsin, I am reminded of this poem I wrote in part after viewing curbstones in a small town that were stamped with 'WPA.' Also, this violin and the story behind it actually exists. It was the first instrument I learned to play on, although I remember my teacher hated it because I guess a Stradivarius it was not.

You couldn't have told anyone in my family that.

Initially published in the Spoon River Poetry Review:

Adagirl No. 1
(inscription found on the inside of an old violin)

Washed free of the fields, now only to bake bread
and wipe the faces of her children,
my grandmother still kept
a garden, and sang songs
of frivolous things like lemon trees
while her husband sat and ate.

It was 1931 and the picture was not that rosy.
They ate potatoes, shuttered windows,
kept a bible near.
Town fathers placed wayside cornerstones
Grandpa engraved for the WPA.

Still, there was Grandma's pastry - flaky as new air,
smelling faintly of fresh lemons.

That was the year Grandpa made the violin -
stowed in a corner of the cellar
with a room full of canned goods.
Carved and whittled the spine and waist and body
of sweet cedar, fitted and preserved
with rosin & wood lacquer.

Strung her so she sang sound as any fine instrument.

For Valentine's Day, A Poem

I came across this article in my Twitter stream today, which pretty much gets to the heart of the matter:

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/journal/article.html?id=182917


The poem to come was published a few years back by a small journal, The Tusculum Review, in Tennessee. And yes, the love poem is one of the most difficult things to write, I guess because you always risk ridiculousness and purple prose with anything that has to do with an intangible like the feeling of love. It is OK to be ridiculous in the feeling, but poetry is that most earnest of art forms, where you don't want to suck.

Like many real life romances, this one had an introduction, a bridge, chorus, refrain...and an end. Interestingly, I never did get to drink a good Georgian wine - but the rest came true:



Lines Composed While Listening To Barber's Adagio


Because the strings pulled from the cello of this my heart
have been snapped too sharp, used too much but without precision

Because these, your long silences, sound tender as a newly healed wound like some nameless elegance

Because your moods like leonine clouds that track over the sky this October night sustain me like tears and I would give you more than words; poor notes, theories of that which could be and that which will never be

Because these lines like bold strophes of abstract art might a little shock you

Because the rhythm of your voice, its poetry, its own abstraction has found itself lying among the pleasures in my thoughts

Because I do not know the true color of your eyes: dark like sherry or some sparkling foreign wine with solemn lilt I know nothing of

Because the days grow long because longing has its own grace because time is short because this aimless song these relations of words are nothing
but ceasing echoes.

The Painter and the Painting

Like the story of Dorian Gray, this poem tells a story of a painter, a painting, a personality and the marks that personality left behind. Unlike the character of Dorian Gray, the subject of this poem lived up to all expectations and probably his own, too - as noted, at least from afar.

Always a worthy opponent, the attempt at a description was well warranted:

A Red, Abstract Painting

Passion colors all it touches in its own hues.
-Balthasar Gracian

This is the color left behind prosaic marks aside and upright

In prone madness

For what once right but now discarded
drowned

Not by anything laid down but by viscosity and flurry

Even wind on the snow there cries
Bleakly through spare dark trees and black water

Red is but one significant shade of this music
it glows
From above and below like illumination

or fire

A span but a hand's breadth away

A war where there is only a door of black water

Above and beneath so you see shimmering rifts
Like moonlight crossing slowly the water
Like touch, not paint.

The Farmer's Almanac

A source of common wisdom, I was always amazed at the stuff you could find out in the Farmer's Almanac, although you don't see it for sale too many places anymore.

To me, the speech in such a book has a particular rhythm and flow, just as the days and weeks and months that ruled agrarian society did. Sometimes I see the need to return to such rhythms, as they are more natural. People forget they are also organic beings in an organic world - imagine themselves something foreign.

The following is something of a 'found' poem. Edited and shaped.



Farmer's Almanac: A History

Root crops go in on the full of the moon
and above ground vegetables go in on the full of the moon

Sage is good to season meat.
Chamomile calms you.
Mix black tea with most of these to dull the strong flavor of some.

Look for Praying Mantis, Lace Bugs & Lady Bugs in the spring of the year

They do a good job controlling pests
planting on the full of the moon.

Mohave Sojourn: An Invocation

I have always wanted to write about the desert, ever since I read Dr. Andrew Weil's dedication in the preface of his book, Optimum Health, detailing that his manuscript had been completed at a house in the "middle of the Sonoran desert." The romance behind that phrase was palpable and it stuck with me. Then I saw the film and read the book The English Patient, by Michael Ondaatje, and the desert again played on my imagination--through the sweep and scope of the love story that began in a more barren landscape than any of our North American deserts.

I live here in the desert now, but I still feel like something of an outsider, to be honest. The first poem I ever wrote about the desert was rejected a couple years ago by a journal in Nevada--promptly--which kept me from writing about it again until now. I felt I obviously needed more training. I also fear I will never be a 'desert rat,' as some here are wont to call themselves.

Yet the desert has its clear-eyed romance, it is undeniable.


Mohave Sojourn
Invocation, after Rilke

That it be here to end in the desert
sand and naked rocks gracefully countered
amid dead limbs of trees near the melt of rivers
with bottoms of stone and creeks fed by stream.

That it be here the skies all you imagine
the clarity which forgotten like a pavane to a death
once sung distinctly slows to a fade
the night quiet like that and full of creatures
drifting there among ancient pathways.

That it be here return to shoulders of the night
the purple silhouette ready, clearly in those mountains
that frame the floor as if it were sky.

That it be here sun an escetic prophet following
mystic bones and desert fathers to Joshua trees
parched; knows curcifixes knows wind as eternal lament
moves mountains in short order; the eye of an agate
the pinnacle of diamond.

That it be here for ache to live beyond the river
this thirst, this quench--this rich-willed land

That it be here is to lie--drenched, sweet
and dream of oceans.