Open Studio Poem #3: USE THE WHOLE PAGE
The point is growth toward beginning.
Start again—nothing flat or square—
this time learn to move in three
dimensions—cubic, spherical. Can you
write like a dancer? Paint
like an actor? Draw like—
a potter? Remember knitting—
how to turn a heel, shape
a sleeve from a strand.
DO THAT WITH WORDS.
USE THE WHOLE PAGE.
FILL IT WITH SHAPE AND
COLOR AND SOUND AND FLAVOR—
BITTER GREENS AND HOT PEPPERS
AND LEMON ZEST. WRITE
BIG AND ROUND.
USE THE WHOLE PAGE
ANOTHER ZUIHITSU because I have to write something
1.
It’s as if someone is deliberately making things so bad that nobody can stand it. Almost enough to make me believe in the Beast, the AntiChrist, or something like that.
2.
We hoard dark roasted coffee beans in little brown bags in the freezer. I think I have enough now.
3.
I’ve been trying not to look at the news every hour, but I can’t help it. It’s the only way I can participate, living here, in this little green bowl.
4.
Chipmunks live under the front steps. They scurry out to get food, scurry back in for fear of hawks and weasels and our dog. But they’re never safe from weasels.
5.
A very satisfying conputer game: drag random clusters of jewels into rows and columns on a board laid out in squares. When I place a cluster, I hear a lovely “click.” When I complete a row or column, I hear a very satisfying “ping.” I can’t stop playing this game even though it makes my neck sore.
6.
I had to get coffee beans out of the freezer last night. They were so hard that I couldn’t grind them till this morning. I know that some people don’t like to freeze beans, and some people say one should grind the beans right before brewing, but I don’t care.
7.
I have painted a piece of cardboard with a color called “Tea Room”—one of those small samples of paint available for a dollar at the paint store. When the paint was dry, I drew square tiles with a black marker and installed it in the cardboard box castle we made to illustrate fairy tales for the grandchildren.
8.
The Great Crested Flycatcher sits on a high perch to hunt for insects. If she misses an insect on her first pass, she pursues it in the air. Unless her nestlings object, she offers the whole insect, wings and all. If they do object, she pummels the insect until the offending wings break off.
9.
Many twigs, new-leafed, blew off the trees last night in the wind. When I walked the dog down the driveway early this morniung, I picked them up—at least, most of them—and tossed them back among the trees so they wouldn’t have to dry and turn to dust on the driveway stones.
POET IN GARRET, NOVEMBER
~attributed to Jan Vermeer, 1703
You see at once that she’s cold,
the way she hunches
over the table in the fireless
room. Light from one small
window slants across her page.
She is half-turned toward you,
her lips are parted, her eyes
focused on a word appearing
just above your right shoulder.
PRACTICE
Let there be no routine.
Let the white cat disturb
your meditation,
the black cat interfere
with your tai chi.
May the dog demand
to go out while you’re trying
to pray.
May your husband knock
on your study door
because he cannot find
his glasses.
Your old friend will call
while you are chopping onions
in a mindful way.
Answer the phone.
ADVICE
Write until you’re tired.
~Janice M. P.
Write till no more words
come out of your pen.
Till the skin wears off your fingers.
Write through the banal, the tedium,
the common feelings every animal knows.
There are no new feelings.
Even love is old.
Write until the metaphors are used up,
until the symbols are nothing but stupid.
Write until there is nothing left.
Not a wish, not a thought, not a care.
Then start the poem.
PASSAGE
She went to the oracle
bringing an offering
of incense, a white pebble,
a drop of blood
on a leaf of thyme.
I am empty she said.
Go deeper the oracle said.
But I’ve seen the crystals
growing from the floors
and ceilings, I’ve slipped
into the green waters filled
with white salamanders
and blind fishes,
I’ve touched the walls
covered with luminous worms
and spiders with legs
as long as my arms.
Go deeper the oracle said.
I’ve been all the way in,
she said, all the way
to where the walls
are covered with paintings
of antlered men
and dancing women,
of suns and moons
and disembodied hands.
I’ve tripped over the bones
of wild bulls and giant bears.
Go deeper the oracle said.
But there is no door,
no passage,
leading beyond that deepest cave.
The only way left
is the way back out.
Ah then, said the oracle.
Ah.
THE STORYTELLER
Oh, the wildness of the teller in her cave of bone!
She finds dragons in stumps, faces in every carpet—
how will she make it cohere?
Was it once upon a time, or ever after?
Snakes and bears are real enough,
and mirrors trying to reflect what’s fair.
She searches her fallible senses
entwined with shadowed remembrances
and pieces a pattern, a dream, a tale— something
that might be true, or that someone might believe.
The smell of whisky, the texture of satin,
a whisper behind a half-closed door—
10 RULES FOR POETRY, #9
Don’t keep anything for yourself:
the scent of white iris or wild grape flowers,
the empty spaces between stars,
the russet tail of the crested flycatcher
and his raucous, tuneless voice. Don’t keep
linnet’s wings, or the hummingbird
who bathed this morning
under the spray of your garden hose,
or the scarlet tanager, always just
out of sight in the oak.
And don’t keep uncertainty. And tell us
when you mourn. When you are afraid,
don’t hold it close. When the world
is too much with you, when darkness
comes every morning, when the center
cannot hold, when everything
you love is falling away, when dust
is rising and settling on every inch
of grass and skin, when the brief
candle flickers, don’t keep it.
Tell us, tell us how we aren’t alone.
Honorable mention Comstock Review contest, Fall/Winter 2016
NOT POETIC
~after a discussion with fellow poets about the uses of euphemism
If shit’s not a poetic word,
then how about excrete?
How else can one describe what’s left
of things we creatures eat?
For water one must often “make”
urine ‘s not elegeeic;
and piss though not poetic,
is onomatopeeic.
I’m sorting through my old poems and posting a few that I still like. Including this naughty one, written maybe nine years ago.
INVOCATION
Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story
of poets in April, of twists and turns.
Driven to and fro by words and noise,
haunted, solid, cursed, concealed.
Many things they saw: unpeeled oracles,
flying seducers, flights of sparrows,
long months dressed in black or gold.
Thrumming weathers pulsed through their bones.
Even so they saved each other from disaster,
no gods or sirens seduced them.
their own wild recklessness kept them all–
children and fools, they ate the moon,
their muses leapt into their arms
and wept and laughed, and explained their lives.
Wrote this one in 2013.
