Seed bearing pack of fruit,
a load of testimony read left
swizzle stick in an instant flick
already sick the sky comes down
and the last rider rides
between thunder and cups,
the final laugh a brave sigh.
"The right of freedom of speech consists in speaking the truth."
30.4.12
28.4.12
.
Fall Out
I looked back for a moment and noticed,
who let people play their tricks on us, why
did we agree to cover up
the facts -
I hoped to try, to win.
How do wind chimes know how?
Between a drapery of wind, C minor
or is it B flat?
Hard to tell in the succumbing
darkness, space all along
revs up to time lapse
our keepsakes, a few droplets-
drift slowly down, tears perhaps
from other wind-torn planets,
other plastic makers and killers.
I looked back for a moment and noticed,
who let people play their tricks on us, why
did we agree to cover up
the facts -
I hoped to try, to win.
How do wind chimes know how?
Between a drapery of wind, C minor
or is it B flat?
Hard to tell in the succumbing
darkness, space all along
revs up to time lapse
our keepsakes, a few droplets-
drift slowly down, tears perhaps
from other wind-torn planets,
other plastic makers and killers.
27.4.12
Repost from September 2009
Norma Cole Reads in Bisbee
Attending Norma Cole's reading last night was fantastic. Not because of the poems (they were quite fine and finely chosen and executed) but because of the poet. Ms. Cole is diminutive, coal eyed and fine boned and carries a beautiful black cane. She holds her right arm which has grown slack and the hand contracted since her stroke several years ago, the way all people with left-sided brain injury do, at a ninety-ish degree angle starting at the elbow. She gathers her work with one hand and speaks carefully with hard won grace in an error prone but steady diction.
She was accompanied last night by Mr. Charles Alexander of Chax Press who drove her down from Tucson yesterday afternoon. He introduced her work and described her poems as delicate and finely-tuned pieces of visual art and that is quite apt. A truly nice guy, editor and poet who read with Ms. Cole in Tucson the night before but chose to sit the reading out last night. I spoke with Mr. Alexander for a few moments at the reception after the reading and offered to give him a flu shot today. We discussed H1N1 a little bit. Before the reading, I had to shsh my husband who tried to peddle the book I am working on right now, afterall, he doesn't know any better.
I then took my turn in front of Ms. Cole with my copy of Where Shadows Will, Selected Poems 1988-2008 in hand. There isn't much to say to a poet whom you've never heard of, never read and of whom you are asking an autograph. I held the book so that she could scrawl her signature and enter the perfunctory greetings that poets of stature usually enter onto the first page of a book and thanked her. I asked her if it had been a stroke and when it had happened. "It must have been hard" I said. Hard isn't the word for aphasic. Aphasic is the word for aphasic and for a poet who has been described as a "powerhouse" reader, it doesn't begin to describe the agony this poet must have been through as she struggled to regain the use of her instrument: her language, both literally and figuratively.
As I turned to leave, I stopped, turned back and said, "I liked "before the war". I told her that yes, all my work is "before" and "after" the war and explained in a few short words what I meant by that. She took my book from my hands and opened it immediately to the page and showed me a poem titled Sumoud. I looked at it and read it out loud to her and to my husband who was standing dutifully by and he was the one who insisted I go to the reading in the first place, he knows my tendency to avoid such things overall. I choked a bit on the words:
"A stranger of mine, he spilled his drink. I took it as a sign. My village was erased from the map."
Who wouldn't choke on such a thing and me in particular. It is the same choking I get when trying to read the poem of Taha Mohamed Ali in which he describes the feeling of not saying good-bye to the people you adore when running from a village or city that is being attacked by an oppressor.
The poem Sumoud (which means Resistance in Arabic my husband informs me) begins with the epigraph, a quote from Jean Said Makdisi's Memoir, Beirut Fragments (reviewed here by the typically Awful and Arabophobic Daniel Pipes who simply cannot understand the attraction of Beirut or the bitter attraction of war (for poets/writers/memoirists) because he is an amoral idiot):
"Once I saw a bride standing on the sand..."
Ms. Makdisi relates, "How can this be? How can brutal warfare and beachcombing co-exist in adjacent streets?" My point exactly when I wrote this poem in February 2008, a full year and a half after our flight from Beirut:
Sawridge Hotel, Fort McMurray
When I think of Beirut
I think of hair,
of weddings and war.
A never-ending cycle
of hair, weddings and war.
On our way out
we spoke to a man
on his fourth or fifth
flight from an Israeli
incursion.
I think of hair, weddings and war.
Ms. Cole's beautiful line in which she finds a sign in a stranger who spills something (the truth): his village is erased from the map, and I find my own sign there. This is how poetry is for me. It ought to touch a stranger and certainly, Ms. Cole not only touched me but inspired me. She has struggled no doubt to regain her ability to read her work aloud in public. It was just as strenuous to hear, just as strenous to watch her climb the three flights of stairs to the Central School auditorium and the few steps that lead up to the stage. I hope she thinks it was worth it because it certainly was worth it to me.
I only stayed a few minutes more at the reception. Although there were a handful of poets present that I know, I cannot say I know them well enough to chat and wanted to go home and nudged my husband that we'd pay our respect to the poet once more. I returned to Ms. Cole and as people ought to do if they have any manners, I bid her adieu and thanked her for coming once again.
Salaam wa alaikum I said. Her very beautiful face lit up and her body lurched forward and she gave me her best Salaam. I returned home with such a precious feeling and a book in hand. Such a precious sign.
Attending Norma Cole's reading last night was fantastic. Not because of the poems (they were quite fine and finely chosen and executed) but because of the poet. Ms. Cole is diminutive, coal eyed and fine boned and carries a beautiful black cane. She holds her right arm which has grown slack and the hand contracted since her stroke several years ago, the way all people with left-sided brain injury do, at a ninety-ish degree angle starting at the elbow. She gathers her work with one hand and speaks carefully with hard won grace in an error prone but steady diction.
She was accompanied last night by Mr. Charles Alexander of Chax Press who drove her down from Tucson yesterday afternoon. He introduced her work and described her poems as delicate and finely-tuned pieces of visual art and that is quite apt. A truly nice guy, editor and poet who read with Ms. Cole in Tucson the night before but chose to sit the reading out last night. I spoke with Mr. Alexander for a few moments at the reception after the reading and offered to give him a flu shot today. We discussed H1N1 a little bit. Before the reading, I had to shsh my husband who tried to peddle the book I am working on right now, afterall, he doesn't know any better.
I then took my turn in front of Ms. Cole with my copy of Where Shadows Will, Selected Poems 1988-2008 in hand. There isn't much to say to a poet whom you've never heard of, never read and of whom you are asking an autograph. I held the book so that she could scrawl her signature and enter the perfunctory greetings that poets of stature usually enter onto the first page of a book and thanked her. I asked her if it had been a stroke and when it had happened. "It must have been hard" I said. Hard isn't the word for aphasic. Aphasic is the word for aphasic and for a poet who has been described as a "powerhouse" reader, it doesn't begin to describe the agony this poet must have been through as she struggled to regain the use of her instrument: her language, both literally and figuratively.
As I turned to leave, I stopped, turned back and said, "I liked "before the war". I told her that yes, all my work is "before" and "after" the war and explained in a few short words what I meant by that. She took my book from my hands and opened it immediately to the page and showed me a poem titled Sumoud. I looked at it and read it out loud to her and to my husband who was standing dutifully by and he was the one who insisted I go to the reading in the first place, he knows my tendency to avoid such things overall. I choked a bit on the words:
"A stranger of mine, he spilled his drink. I took it as a sign. My village was erased from the map."
Who wouldn't choke on such a thing and me in particular. It is the same choking I get when trying to read the poem of Taha Mohamed Ali in which he describes the feeling of not saying good-bye to the people you adore when running from a village or city that is being attacked by an oppressor.
The poem Sumoud (which means Resistance in Arabic my husband informs me) begins with the epigraph, a quote from Jean Said Makdisi's Memoir, Beirut Fragments (reviewed here by the typically Awful and Arabophobic Daniel Pipes who simply cannot understand the attraction of Beirut or the bitter attraction of war (for poets/writers/memoirists) because he is an amoral idiot):
"Once I saw a bride standing on the sand..."
Ms. Makdisi relates, "How can this be? How can brutal warfare and beachcombing co-exist in adjacent streets?" My point exactly when I wrote this poem in February 2008, a full year and a half after our flight from Beirut:
Sawridge Hotel, Fort McMurray
When I think of Beirut
I think of hair,
of weddings and war.
A never-ending cycle
of hair, weddings and war.
On our way out
we spoke to a man
on his fourth or fifth
flight from an Israeli
incursion.
I think of hair, weddings and war.
Ms. Cole's beautiful line in which she finds a sign in a stranger who spills something (the truth): his village is erased from the map, and I find my own sign there. This is how poetry is for me. It ought to touch a stranger and certainly, Ms. Cole not only touched me but inspired me. She has struggled no doubt to regain her ability to read her work aloud in public. It was just as strenuous to hear, just as strenous to watch her climb the three flights of stairs to the Central School auditorium and the few steps that lead up to the stage. I hope she thinks it was worth it because it certainly was worth it to me.
I only stayed a few minutes more at the reception. Although there were a handful of poets present that I know, I cannot say I know them well enough to chat and wanted to go home and nudged my husband that we'd pay our respect to the poet once more. I returned to Ms. Cole and as people ought to do if they have any manners, I bid her adieu and thanked her for coming once again.
Salaam wa alaikum I said. Her very beautiful face lit up and her body lurched forward and she gave me her best Salaam. I returned home with such a precious feeling and a book in hand. Such a precious sign.
22.4.12
Coma
I have been in this device for a thousand years,
a sleeping beauty full of hotcakes and my leatherbelly
a ginger piece of crepe has thinned, my hands fell asleep
full of frostbite, decorticate, instrumental, lean.
Do not wake me up until tomorrow, like the devil
who waits to be sentenced and knows
it is hopeless I'd rather wait, collect my thoughts
here in this blessed peeling where the sound
of bird talk drowns in the blink of an eye.
I have been in this device for a thousand years,
a sleeping beauty full of hotcakes and my leatherbelly
a ginger piece of crepe has thinned, my hands fell asleep
full of frostbite, decorticate, instrumental, lean.
Do not wake me up until tomorrow, like the devil
who waits to be sentenced and knows
it is hopeless I'd rather wait, collect my thoughts
here in this blessed peeling where the sound
of bird talk drowns in the blink of an eye.
6.4.12
7.3.12
So What
Since the couscous will last a year, they bought triple
for a family of five. How old were we when we decided
that the Asperger's Syndrome you suffered from
impaired us both? The finding came so late,
after the children had gone and messed up
their own lives in their own ways, did it
really matter? Neither one of us capable
of new love, incapable of moving again
so we slept and laughed about our condition.
You swept differently, sweetly you said,
"Asperger's Asperger's"
like some dumb old janitor.
Since the couscous will last a year, they bought triple
for a family of five. How old were we when we decided
that the Asperger's Syndrome you suffered from
impaired us both? The finding came so late,
after the children had gone and messed up
their own lives in their own ways, did it
really matter? Neither one of us capable
of new love, incapable of moving again
so we slept and laughed about our condition.
You swept differently, sweetly you said,
"Asperger's Asperger's"
like some dumb old janitor.
10.8.11
5.8.11
The Chosen
There where he waited to be born,
a pilot or minister of poetry
shrugging off his duties,
an aristocrat. We who stood
in line also wore baggy clothes,
clung to each and every whisper
time to go time to go (chorus)
excited particles and shot
into the universe in all directions.
As I stand in front of the post
to hand my brother a few bucks
amongst the beggars
who still cling to each other's sides
as if success might rub off
on them one electron at a time,
a fellow poet cautions me not to
write of my philosophy
and instead, I do.
There where he waited to be born,
a pilot or minister of poetry
shrugging off his duties,
an aristocrat. We who stood
in line also wore baggy clothes,
clung to each and every whisper
time to go time to go (chorus)
excited particles and shot
into the universe in all directions.
As I stand in front of the post
to hand my brother a few bucks
amongst the beggars
who still cling to each other's sides
as if success might rub off
on them one electron at a time,
a fellow poet cautions me not to
write of my philosophy
and instead, I do.
26.4.11
Waiting for Example
How to look clearly at the unclear
world, to engage the pumps
of its systems, estimate replacement
value corrected for all ambiguous
loss and damage, how to create
mod revelation, transform gospel
into kilowatt hours, I digress,
the place is full of left hand histories.
To look clearly at the world
as if words could do justice
to examples of intensity
when you call me first
the morning becomes
as important as water.
Here where I am terrified
of loss and as such, losing.
How to look clearly at the unclear
world, to engage the pumps
of its systems, estimate replacement
value corrected for all ambiguous
loss and damage, how to create
mod revelation, transform gospel
into kilowatt hours, I digress,
the place is full of left hand histories.
To look clearly at the world
as if words could do justice
to examples of intensity
when you call me first
the morning becomes
as important as water.
Here where I am terrified
of loss and as such, losing.
18.4.11
The Structure of Solar Wind Pretty sure they've found us here sunning our traitor hearts involving the wind to such speeches. Half of us wonders and the other slips into and steps over awards, Black Dahlian kiwanas clubs, fortune teller screams. How about a serving or two? Lukewarm, possibly - a marathon of quick sleep throws down an effort to please, to lose carnage, to make reservations. See how the cars indicate and predict, one's outside the hospital while the other's between point A and B, 25 mph as if nothing is wrong.
24.3.11
23.3.11
The Culture of Resistance
as Manifest Destiny
takes hold of entire
Middle East as expected:
Moqawama English Website
Hizbullah Secretary General His Eminence Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah delivered a speech in support of the revolutionary peoples around the Arab world on Saturday night. From the Sayyed Al Shuhada complex in the Beirut Southern Suburb, Hizbullah SG appeared via video link, and discussed the latest regional and domestic developments.
Between the Culture of Resistance and Wikileaks, the US/ISRAELI Middle East plan is going up in smoke right before the eyes of the world. Make no mistake, this is what that looks like. Pay attention. It's gonna take a few years from here.
as Manifest Destiny
takes hold of entire
Middle East as expected:
Moqawama English Website
Hizbullah Secretary General His Eminence Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah delivered a speech in support of the revolutionary peoples around the Arab world on Saturday night. From the Sayyed Al Shuhada complex in the Beirut Southern Suburb, Hizbullah SG appeared via video link, and discussed the latest regional and domestic developments.
Between the Culture of Resistance and Wikileaks, the US/ISRAELI Middle East plan is going up in smoke right before the eyes of the world. Make no mistake, this is what that looks like. Pay attention. It's gonna take a few years from here.
All Our Cracked Voices
These might be the last
burned cars where hens hunt
and peck, drab green
noises heart break in the distance
the body parts in stunned engines.
War children hide between houses
and behind skirts quickwashed if at all,
squirrelly, quiet and big-eyed.
Borrowed goods are returned
by doubt and shame
not so much a pair, more
like siblings of fear
near such grand exits
as the sky ends twice.
These might be the last
burned cars where hens hunt
and peck, drab green
noises heart break in the distance
the body parts in stunned engines.
War children hide between houses
and behind skirts quickwashed if at all,
squirrelly, quiet and big-eyed.
Borrowed goods are returned
by doubt and shame
not so much a pair, more
like siblings of fear
near such grand exits
as the sky ends twice.
15.3.11
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