Me and poems and whatnot

If you've come here via some poetry-related link...well, I don't have an ending for that sentence. Like everything else here, this post is a work in progress.

I've used this site whenever I've done a poem-a-day run. I often do the challenges in April and November at Poetic Asides. (I did the April 2011 one, but I'm having trouble posting my poems; maybe I'll go back in and post them when I'm using a better browser.)

Anyway, this stuff is pretty rough, in general. I've had poems published in several places, and I'll try and get those links up here.

And now...back to my day job. Cheers.

The finish, for now

Yeah, I'm running late. I'm in New Orleans, at JazzFest, overloaded with images, underloaded with energy.

Unsure of how to create the last poem of April (well, more or less), I pulled a random tarot card. Seven of wands.

The Day Before May Day

Before me, a serf wields a flowering stick,

half carrot, half bone. He does not look at me,

but at the ground next to my right foot. Between us,

more wands rise from a precipice. His world

is mostly sky. What feeds the branch he holds?

What is his purpose? Is he ready

to fight impediments, or

is he the impediment?

Maybe he’s yanked out an adolescent tree,

nipped it in bud. If so,

he’s got much work ahead.

They keep coming.

You are never the youngest for long.

I give up. go to the magic book

provided by U.S. Games.

“It is a card of valor.” “Six against one.”

No, I will pretend, against evidence,

they are an advancing morris side, ready

for a stick dance. They rise from death

up to this windy precipice

and though he meets them with fear,

they will teach him the old moves,

if not the old secrets.

Prompt: "And Suddenly..."

And Suddenly My Yogurt Bit Back

Down below the part that’s healthy, the ectoplasm
where industrious bacteria feed and fuck,
there lies the prize, the bliss-rising fruit
of the cacao bean, that dessert for the virtuous,
ambrosia for the fauxhemian saint. Yesterday,
some full-grown coworker asked me
“What is macrame?” The cutoff date: 1965.
Born later, and you missed everything.
Still, these tall kids in the office, with their
earbuds and tramp stamps and superior hair,
they’re buying the same stuff as me
these days, the organic-guaranteed brand
with the mellow brown cows on the cup. They’re
sucking up the same mind-altering sweet bugs,
stirring and stirring until the nutraceutical goo
is engulfed by the good stuff.
Chocolate Underground, baby. Dig it.

Run on, brave sentence, run on....

This is a quickie. I had to work to get the meter more or less right, and in the process I've left some lazy language in there ("bright" needs to be swapped out). But it meets the Brewer prompt, which is "end of the line."

The Neverending Fender Solo

What matters isn’t that he plays it loud.
What matters isn’t speed. What matters is
the way, when all seems done, he comes around
to find a lagniappe, a hidden clover
bearing four leaves, deep buried among threes;
as if God gave him elemental breath
attenuated, never labored, bright;
as if each of us dreamed of being trapped,
our streetcar barreling down Lombard Street,
with switchback after switchback bringing thrills,
or fatalism, fear, raw ecstasy,
and when it seemed we’d hit the water’s edge,
that trolley would create another track
stretching before us, unbelievable,
longer than any one of us could breathe.

font problems

I need to sit down one of these days and figure out why the fonts in this blog are so wonky.

Seems like the only time I sit down, when I'm not at work, is to write poetry.

Oh, right. And to watch Law & Order. And eat macaroni and cheese.

Anyway, if anyone reading this can offer me advice on the fonts, have at it.

(And no, this isn't intended as a poem, even though the layout kinda makes it look that way.)

Never too late for hope

Hope, Northeast D.C. Style

Hubcap hung from a tree

catches sunlight, headlights,

blends the blinding

and the beautiful.

More than five times

Stealing

The first time,

I was four. Mom took me on a walk,

and just over the District Line

we found a tree shedding sweet

persimmons.

The second time,

I had a yen for the three-cent sinker

in the fishing aisle of

Youngblood’s Hardware. That, and

the bright green filament line.

The third time

I gave, letting Lena Walters

see my answer to the question

“How many candles fell

in Miss Havisham’s rotting parlor?

The fourth time,

it was a kiss, under the rampant horse

in Washington Park

with someone else’s

husband.

The fifth time was yesterday.

Or maybe there were six.

It’s hard to remember, to number

such sins.