Recently in poetry Category

hit the brakes! avoid
the woman switching lanes
with me still beside.

---

Ah...driving in LA, always an adventure.  Do the holidays make us drive worse?  Today's near miss was at least the 4th time in the past couple weeks where someone has attempted to change lanes despite the presence of my vehicle next to them.  Most of the time, they realize their blunder and quickly move back to their lane.  But the woman driving the Jeep today, just kept coming, completely oblivious (at least by appearances), never fully switching into my lane and cutting off the person who was in front of her in her original lane.  To be fair...I did this to a motorcyclist myself in the past couple weeks, but he was sitting in my blind spot splitting lanes.  I was driving the vanpool minivan.

fall grieves the loss of

family covering earth

with tearfull leaves

 

---

ahh...the best laid plans.  I had intended to make this a weekly feature with the posting of the first haiku on Nov 4th.  But then I was called to jury duty and the past two Wednesdays were my only days in the office (and therefore quite busy). 

 

This weeks haiku is inspired by Alicia's grandpa, Stan, who passed away last week, my grandpa, Harold, who taught me what it meant to love (and passed away in August 1995), and my other grandpa, Mike, who is facing the upcoming second anniversary of my grandma's death.

fog filled mornings a
reminder so. cal. summers
do indeed relent

---

I've decided I need to get back to a habit of writing more.  Both on this blog and in general.  So to help kickstart this goal, I'm going to start posting a haiku every Wednesday on the blog.

Maybe

Sweet Jesus, talking
    his melancholy madness,
       stood up in the boat
           and the sea lay down,

silky and sorry.
   So everybody was saved
       that night
           But you know how it is

when something
    different crosses
        the threshold--the uncles
             mutter together,

the women walk away,
    the young brother begins
        to sharpen his knife.
            Nobody knows what the soul is.

It comes and goes
    like the wind over the water--
         sometimes, for days,
              you don't think of it.

Maybe, after the sermon,
     after the multitude was fed,
          one or two of them felt
               the soul slip forth

like a tremor of pure sunlight,
    before exhaustion,
           that wants to swallow everything,
               gripped their bones and left them

miserable and sleepy,
     as they are now, forgetting
         how the wind tore at the sails
              before he rose and talked to it--

tender and luminous and demanding
    as he always was--
         a thousand times more frightening
              than the killer sea.

--Mary Oliver from House of Light

On Beauty

No, we could not itemize the list
of sins they can't forgive us.
The beautiful don't lack the wound.
It is always beginning to snow.

Of sins they can't forgive us
speech is beautifully useless.
It is always beginning to snow.
The beautiful know this.

Speech is beautifully useless.
They are the damned.
The beautiful know this.
They stand around unnatural as statuary.

They are the damned
and so their sadness is perfect,
delicate as an egg placed in your palm.
Hard, it is decorated with their face

and so their sadness is perfect.
The beautiful don't lack the wound.
Hard, it is decorated with their face.
No, we could not itemize the list.

Cape Cod, May 1974

-- Nick Laird (via On Beauty by Zadie Smith)

from Saul William's email list:

 

We have overcome.

Except those of us now in Gaza. Except those of us whom police kill. Except those of us who are suspects. Except those of us whom the church hate. Except those of us damned to taste good. Except those of us held by fate. We are meeting in the capitol. Word is, freedom will not wait.

All that once was never shall be.
All they could do won't be done.
All we sang of is now happening.

[note to self:]
Must write
new songs
to become...

...And so it was. Through the collective imagination of the people, the force of will and human potential, and an unflinching ability to hold himself to task, Niggy Tardust was liberated. His ability to see beyond the boundaries and obstacles of 'genre', 'race', and suppression, allowed him to encompass a grace and sound that embodied the all. All that had stood against him, now stood with him. All that had claimed a lesser harmony, now craved voice and resonance. He stood with poets, painters, dancers, students, children of the night who had transformed themselves into a million bright ambassadors of morning, and proclaimed,

"We declare declaratives and deny the official. Based in the landmark of the G-spot, we have overtaken ourselves and overthrown our forefathers. Let there be light within the light and let it answer to the name of Darkness. We are forever risen from the deadly: the anti-virus and the All Stars. Granted power by forces unbeknownst to us. Made in the likeness of kindness. We offer anger to the angry and fear to the fearful. We dance at our own funerals to forsake the mourners...

...This is no time to cry! This is no time at all! Here is the moment of the overlooked and the unforeseeable. We are the elected officials of the people: poets and artists. We are the declarative statement of the inarticulate, the irreparably damaged goods of the bad meaning good. We are the government! We are the government! We are the government!"

by R.S. Gwynn

Her e-mail inbox always overflows.
Her outbox doesn't get much use at all.
She puts on hold the umpteen-billionth call
As music oozes forth to placate those
Who wait, then disconnect.  Outside, wind blows,
Scything pale leaves.  She sees a sparrow fall
Fluttering to a claw-catch on a wall.
Will He be in today?  God only knows.

She hasn't seen His face--He's so aloof.
She's long resigned He'll never know or love her
But still can wish there were some call, some proof
That He requires a greater service of her.
Fingers of rain now drum upon the roof,
Coming from somewhere, somewhere far above her.

for roses & cigarettes 
 
i dreamt about your bed 
or mine it wasn't clear 
just that once (or twice) 
 
do you remember that weekend? 
the one where the past was forgotten 
when we went over that cliff and 
we unravelled into each other 
 
or do you remember this weekend? 
the one where we drenched ourselves in rays, 
our feet in the ocean... 
connecting us to the rest of the world 
and each other 
 
this is where we are, 
    we be, 
            we see 
we make love

by Saul Williams:



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