Flossing the Horse

It feels a little like waiting for dental work.

That's not an analogy I want to try to sustain. It takes me into areas too false or too true. For example, "If you'd been flossing, you wouldn't be afraid of the dentist."

In other words, maybe my poetic failings--specifically, that big, recent one, being rejected for the MFA program I'd dreamed about and actually worked toward--are entirely at my own doorstep.

I need to get back on the horse. (The horse that I ride to the dentist, I guess.) So I will do this. I will continue to run the risk of humiliating myself in public by, once again, being a very imperfect poet in front of everyone. I'm a little queasy just thinking of Wednesday.

If there are any other poets reading this: The April poem-a-day challenge at the blog Poetic Asides will not only continue this year, but feature judges, prizes, etc. More info here.

Thanks for reading

I'm done for a while. I thought I would continue into October, but I think it's going to be more fruitful for me to revise these drafts, and others, than to start producing more of them on any kind of a schedule.

Thanks for reading.

Guy Fawkes Day is coming

ANTICIPATING THE FIRE, A MONTH HENCE

I envision what I will burn:
the form of that beast that pulls me down,
the pictures of evil, the memories of sins
everyone but me has forgotten

and some--but never all--
of my cravings.

Another one recovered

One of the poems in my head as I tried to sleep this morning. It doesn't have a title.

the giant snail crossed the sky
like the universe’s slowest meteor
suspended by the trail of its misery
blotting out the winks of wishes

some hid their faces
some raised their lenses
some sent prayers through the slime
some cheered and chugged

when its work was done
when God was good and ready
when the book was three pages from Fin
the rain came

washing them in the muck and springwater
baptizing them under the knowledge tree
staining tuxedos and burkas

maybe it was the beer that melted it
maybe it was x-rays
maybe it was never there

and they added tears and snot to the rain
the marks of their fears, their weakness
the ugliness of midnight

the shell is there still
mirroring the spiral moon
once every day

the sun slips behind
and for an hour
they dream of salt water
and clean edges

Two to go!

Hell, I might actually eke out 30 poems in 30 days, if I can stay focused later.

I wonder whether such acquisitive creation is a worthy goal. I have in front of me a Walgreens shopping list, on the back of a quote by Stanley Kunitz: "Poetry isn't written on a schedule."

Off to Walgreens.

Been trying to write this one for years.

Not quite there yet.

THE ONE-EYED MAN IS KING

When the meds are right and his wife’s away,
he is the mayor:
debonair in his seersucker robe,
strolling in flat-tire slippers
past the laughing fallen, the stunned stoned.

He carries, inside the pack of Kools
(for which he gets lights from the ladies
behind the double glass),
the Virgin in vinyl crocodile,
half-sewed bugle beads, faint tiny photos
of some baby with a tinfoil crown.
Some Catholic thing, given to him
by that Mexican fellow in the Guard
who ran onto the marksman field.

Could be luck, he thinks, but he’s never sure:
his only sureness comes when it’s time
to go back to the tiled halls,
flirt with the nurses, throw back
the dope in paper shotglasses.
He thinks about giving it away
to that pink-haired boy
with the wrist straps, who bums
his cancer sticks and laughs sometimes.

But when he’s gone, the tiny parcel
is in my hands: his daughter, who carries
half his illness in her coils,
who wonders what god’s luck
this token brought him.

Vindictive tombstone

This is the tombstone I cited the other day in the poem about Huffman Cemetery. I didn't get the wording quite right in the poem; It's even more mordant than what I remembered.

I first saw this stone about 15 years ago, when a friend and I were in the same cemetery, looking for the grave of an old friend of hers. I was pretty astonished by it. But maybe I'm just misinterpreting it?

Of course, it pales next to the recent whopper of an obituary that was widely publicized.

I mean, I get that it's satisfying to have the last word, but maybe it's better not to say anything, let the unmarked plot be covered over by foliage and Coke cans. Or flush the cremains down the toilet, if it helps.