Facebook game...on pg 57 instead (poem by Anne Carson)

XIII. IT IS A MONOPRINT OF DEGAS SHOWING A WOMAN'S HEAD FROM THE BACK CALLED THE JET EARRING

Inside information.
He sought her. He sought her everywhere. Through the nakednesses
of his imagination. In sorrow. In foxholes. As deer flicker way off in a wood in late
winter.

He knew he would destroy the deer.

He sought her in her virginity everywhere in it (fray'd and fled) from top to bottom
of the little looms of the whitish green and the shivering.
He sought her in the ribbon of her missal.
In the faded black smell of its sateen.
In punctuality.

He sought her in the word mistress but she wasn't there, he should
have sheltered in that doorway from the beginning but now
it was night.

He made night seek her too.

Possible night, impossible night, pegs, strings, stringing her to her own
impersonation of
him.

His hand to brush a mark from his face it was her face.

Hesitate,
oh hesitate.

from The Beauty of the Husband

New Poem - Thursday is writing day

Work (first draft)
National Poetry Day, Bath UK 2008

When the work of going to the office
Fell away from me
The smooth clack of to do lists ticking
The ordered stationery
The linear threads of projects following through each other
My hands were empty of myself
And full of uncertainty.

Full of tiny lives and the mad blue hours
Awake when the restless horde on trains seemed still
Looking out onto moonlit gardens
At our unkempt hedges
My own raggedy attempts
To claw back the ravages to my will
Say this is work.

Working love invisible
Each fold each smooth each bend
Soggy runnels of water
Clothes plates children floors eyes
Overflowing
I am more and more invisible
Each day full, each day filled
Needs more work, needs more love.

Needs the still center, like I need it
Walking the knife blade, burns
Meridians blossoming beneath my hands
Light crackling, intent on showing paths
Full, I am the empty vase
Trusting to the adept work of my palms.

by ppo

copyright remains with the author October 2008
Photo by Kak Teh

We come full circle, blogversary

The wild garlic was unfurling along the cliff as it is now. I began writing this blog in March last year, tentatively, speaking to my many selves, speaking from my many selves. Hoping to bring them all together into a whole and connected one. I think I've succeeded, because nowadays, I'm a lot more comfortable in my own skin. I'm a lot less afraid of what I might find, well anywhere. Bringing light to dusty corners of your psyche can do that for you. Finding amazing friends and community along the way, that's a truly unexpected blessing. Thank you my friends, and my mentors, my guides along this journey.

Here is a poem about voice and grief. Many, many years ago now, I attended a funeral of a girl in my class, she was a young mother, she was diagnosed with a particularly fast acting form of leukemia and was dead before many of us even found out about it. As I drove through the evening home through the landscape of rural New York, this was just like what the spirit of place was saying:

Bare Boughs still this Spring
(In memoriam)

Rain and apple trees.
Lilac buds swell on black stems,
Secret, clitoral, rapt.

I can’t untie this knot, deep
where things come from, deep
at the bottom of my voice.
Joy, sprung rhythm,
clenched and petrified:
A fist, that born words batter against.
A fever in the blood.

By the stream, the clay leans
toward the water, eager for swiftness,
eager to reflect the sky,
Deadpan.

Only the colours of old paint,
Spread and bloom,
Like roots.


Don't let this be a gloomy poem - the spring here and now, is full of hope. Let's wish the knot untied. Let the fist unclench.

Happy Blogversary to me.

Aunt Leaf - by Mary Oliver

Needing one, I invented her –
the great-great-aunt dark as hickory
called Shining-Leaf, or Drifting Cloud
or The-Beauty-of-the-Night.

Dear aunt, I'd call into the leaves,
and she'd rise up, like an old log in a pool,
and whisper in a language only the two of us knew
the word that meant follow,

and we'd travel
cheerful as birds
out of the dusty town and into the trees
where she would change us both into something quicker –
two foxes with black feet,
two snakes green as ribbons,
two shimmering fish –
and all day we'd travel.

At day's end she'd leave me back at my own door
with the rest of my family,
who were kind, but solid as wood
and rarely wandered. While she,
old twist of feathers and birch bark,
would walk in circles wide as rain and then
float back

scattering the rags of twilight
on fluttering moth wings;

or she'd slouch from the barn like a grey opossum;

or she'd hang in the milky moonlight
burning like a medallion,

this bone dream,
this friend I had to have,
this old woman made out of leaves.

Work in Progress

You know how you have work that isn't quite right, and you sit on it, take it out and revise it, and it still isn't quite right? Well I have this one I am not willing to give up on, but am stuck on where to go next. Can anyone give me feedback on which bits they 'get' and which bits are ?huh? ect, you know, just reader's impressions, doesn't have to be full analysis! Maybe it will light a fire under this work and get me to finalise it. I'll post it here, I promise not to get upset by anything anyone says...and I thought since I have explained chamomiles below, it may be less obscure than I think...

Chamomile Mother
for L and B

You tasted them equally–
Mother’s milk, chamomile tea,
One sweet, one bitter healer,
Soothing the night’s darkness–
Strict in the day’s relentless light.

Flower water and fragrance,
Bathed you and laved you,
Matricaria Chamomilla
Rubbed it on the hard knocks of
budding independence,
Remedy for your tears.

Bitterness to cool your blood,
Purify that daisy chain of dreams,
Your mother will tell you all the truth if you ask.
It won’t be pink through her chamomile glasses.

Love doesn’t come into it.
Love’s like the planet Mars to this plain tale.
An evening star over it all,
A daily wonder to be explored.
Curious companion for life.

What I Miss Most

Rain Trees at the Taiping Lake Gardens

I read this poem at Readings, organised by Sharon Bakar at Seksan's on the 26th of May. It was my first time reading poetry in Malaysia.


I.

What I miss most
Are the rain trees,
The limestone hills in the North;
The sight of a big brown Brahmin bull,
With a bright white egret on its hump,
Under the attap thatched roof,
Of the rickety wood bus stop.

Tin mine white sand,
With weeds struggling to live,
In the barren silverness.

Rice paddy patchworks unfold,
Railroad tracks follow the coast, where
Tiny silhouette huts stand,
Husks of boats, fishing nets,
Abandoned to the wind.
The moist warmth still echoes on my skin.

II.

When I am here,
I am as indivisible as the water,
Crashing as the waves,
Onto Ferringhi Beach.
I forget where two worlds,
Will pull me apart.

I can lie under the casuarinas,
And kiss you,
Like I will never, never leave,
I will stay, stay and whisper
(Like these waves),
Insistently into your nights,
Never letting you sleep.

We watch the fishing-boat lights,
Move far out at sea,
Singing their false songs,
To squid swimming towards the moon.


Published In Earnest Spring 198_ Harrisonburg, Virginia

PuisyPoesy update-check it out!

Moon joke
(click on above link)
Zoom in as much as possible to the max.

I have just guestblogged for Puisypoesy and Sharon has kindly put it up!

Check it out and leave a comment to let me know you've been there. Join in the discussion :)

Arrival of Leaves

New cell, new surface
Full of green blood
Power is calling from root
Hold, hold, hold
Reach, be bold

Bolt from the sun
Burn and turn into green creases
Bark thicken, wind teases
Time is now, taller, layer
Distance from the decayer

Free the shackles of husk
Ramsons be your bride
To stem the tide
Turn over new leaf
I have arrived.