last day of National Poetry Month

It’s Poem in Your Pocket Day.

I have a Naomi Shihab Nye poem in my pocket called Because of Libraries We Can Say These Things.

A friend on my Facebook mentioned in her status that I reminded her that it’s Poem in Your Pocket Day. One of her friends made fun of the concept: “does pocket lint count?”

So I wrote a pocket lint poem. pffft! I call this “insta-poetry” since I wrote it in less than a minute. I sometimes do what I call “method writing.” I dug my hand into my pocket, scraped the fabric with my nail and found a lovely wad of lint.

Pocket Lint

Sometimes I like to stand
in the middle of my house
with hands thrust deep
into pockets.
Nails scrape out lint
from the fabric’s corners.
Sometimes I pull out the soft mess
and drop it into my palm.
The first wad looks like a tiny blue fish,
the second comes attached to a quarter.
I’m flush. A fish and a quarter,
enough for a small meal.

Because I’m a poetry dork, I googled “pocket lint poems” and … and… LOOK WHAT I FOUND!!!!!

a very cool site called 2Pens&Lint: a New Direction in Poetry. Looks like “spoken word poetry.” Lovely, lovely. They have a new book coming out tomorrow, May 1 (or Christopher K.P. Brown does) called New Day. Go visit. It’s interesting. May not be your cup of tea, but it’s intense and energetic.

I love finding new sites, new ways people are sharing poetry.

mundane

I have burned the top of my right thumb. Blister forms. It doesn’t hurt much now, but I do appreciate a good sting when muffin pan that has been in a 425 degree oven meets skin. (Yes, I did say “fuck,” and I said it in front of my daughter, who laughs when I apologize for cussing and says, “You have no idea the stuff I hear every day.”)

I only do something self-destructive like burn my thumb (or top of my hand or top of my wrist) when my mind is occupied with things like novel scenes and short story endings, with lines of poetry and plans for collections. The burn is a sign that even if I appear to be a sedentary person, my mind is working away.

I have no theme, but I want to write in this window. It’s a pretty window, blue words drifting down either side.

I have given up creating poetry prompts. I don’t feel at all bad about that. April is my month to wallow in poetry, but since no one is paying me to create prompts these days, to teach poetry these days, I feel obliged only to swim in the stuff for my own sake.

I swear, if I were getting paid to do something else, anything else, I’d give away poetry things for free, well, to kids.

I was going to pull a line out of my novel in progress and use it as the first line of a poem. So I flipped open the folder I have that’s filled with an older version of this terrible “novel-that-will-not-be-finished [GASP] but-will-not-die” and let my eyes fall to the middle of the page where I swore I would grab the first words I saw and make art out of them.

They were, “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I mutter. I had scratched out the “fucks” and replaced them with “shits.”

High art, I tell you. High art.

It’s impossibly beautiful out again today. My daughter and I are hoping to go see The Soloist later. She has put this in her Facebook status where her daddy can see it. I think he wanted to go see it with us, but I can’t. I shall now confess that I don’t mind seeing films with him (he is my friend most days even though we don’t live together, any more), but I don’t want to see this film with him.

I can’t explain that, so I won’t.

(reminder: this is not a blog; it’s a journal.)

random and inconvenient

I feel every inch of my body
pushing to be out in the wind,
aging inside the green stalks
of my garden’s uninvited wild onion.

I want to dive into the dirt
in my messy flower bed
until the odor of onion bulb
reaches my earth filled nostrils.

and who are you to believe that you can just dive into the earth like that and find what you’re looking for?

Once, I thought I would complete an opus,
an oeuvre, a series,
or at least a trilogy.

Now? I feel lucky to finish writing up grocery lists.

feed the body, not the mind, shrivel, shrink, atrophy.

I indulge my sense of touch
by rubbing my tough finger pads
across the lap top keyboard.
I’ve worn off the “C,” the “E,” nearly the “D” and “F,”
left hand types harder than right,
pounds down like hammer.
Angry? Frantic?

It’s unfortunate that I ignore my own advice,
my pleas to myself to shove through,
dive into the work instead of the earth.

Doesn’t matter, now. Just doesn’t.

I will run outside soon in green-blue flip flops,
slap pavement, turn face upward
and lick the sun.

what I have done instead of writing on novel:

I have:

read short stories
put down the short stories and picked up Terry Pratchett’s Nation
dozed under angel blanket
allowed toes to grow cold
brushed teeth
made grocery list
tried to come up with reasons not to go to grocery store because I didn’t want to leave the house
remembered that car was running on fumes and I would barely be able to get to the school a couple of miles away and back to pick up daughter if I didn’t fill tank
left house to fill tank
decided, “Oh, what the hell. The grocery store is right there, the list is in my pocket, I might as well shop”
regretted heading into the grocery store as soon as the first co-shopper parked his cart in the middle of the aisle in front of the tomatoes and refused to notice I needed tomatoes
survived
returned home to stow groceries
wrote more magnetic poetry poems
read blogs
checked email
checked email again
read online version of local paper and snarled at school funding comments
sat staring at word processing page up on computer named “Lilynarrativecont..doc”
read first sentence, “Lily narrative continued:”
closed document and found behind it a totally different file called “splatterrevise.doc”
read first paragraph: What the hell was I doing prowling down a dark hallway in an office building at 2 a.m. on Wednesday in mid-October when I should have been home sleeping? I was trying to do what any self-respecting 19-year-old college drop out would do: find myself. But not in the way you might think.
laughed
looked at clock, which read, “1:59 p.m.” and realized I had just enough time to brush teeth again (ate a candy bar), pet the cat, wash a couple of dishes and wipe down the kitchen counter before I left to pick up child from school
saved this, rose from chair and did those things

composing directly in the window

words plucked from my magnetic poetry cookie tin (this could be my National Poetry Month prompt for day twenty-three):

imagine, monster, chair, more, strange, write, volume, will, do, over

As usual, the words are just triggers for me for more words, odd clumps of images that mean nothing, nothing, just an exercise, like stretching before a good, long run.

*

Imagine that a monster
(or a metaphor)
sits on a chair in your study,
purple pustules oozing
into blue velvety fabric.

He doesn’t mean to stain
your portly recliner,
only means to rest for a moment,
just until the sharp green outside
settles into something with a lower volume.

*

Spring seeps.
Imagine you write a last letter
to your favorite father:

Dear Daddy,
I saw you again today
walking from the parking lot
into the local diner.
You carried a rolled up newspaper
under your right arm
and swayed from side to side,
like a thinning, brown bear.
I knew you by your thick, thick hair
and your thick, freckled knuckles.
Love,
me

*

Once more,
you will sit in the plump, blue recliner
and write into being
strange women who dance
in the center of your study.
They sprout purple and green feathers
from their pearly skin, flap their arms,
touch the tops of their feathered feet.
They do nothing but dance
and smile.

*

(reminder: this in not a blog; it’s a journal)

April 20, a sort of poetry prompt

Write about rain.

April Rain Song

by Langston Hughes
Let the rain kiss you.
Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops.
Let the rain sing you a lullaby.

The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk.
The rain makes running pools in the gutter.
The rain plays a little sleep-song on our roof at night—

And I love the rain.

and

The Rain

by Robert Creeley

All night the sound had
come back again,
and again falls
this quiet, persistent rain.

What am I to myself
that must be remembered,
insisted upon
so often? Is it

that never the ease,
even the hardness,
of rain falling
will have for me

something other than this,
something not so insistent—
am I to be locked in this
final uneasiness.

Love, if you love me,
lie next to me.
Be for me, like rain,
the getting out

of the tiredness, the fatuousness, the semi-
lust of intentional indifference.
Be wet
with a decent happiness.

and how about a little Charles Bukowski?

We Ain’t Got No Money, Honey, But We Got Rain

Bukowski’s poem is long, but worth the read. Still, I’ll just let anyone who gives a shit follow the link. Tried to find a site without ads, but couldn’t and don’t have time to look any longer. Need to get back to work, life, panicking, love.

my free write on rain:

Dash through desert

skinny preteen hides in El Paso’s sandy heat
all spring
all summer
thought of rain lights her black eyes silver
flashes yellow down the insides of her brown arms
the leathery callouses on the bottoms of her bare feet
raise dust as she runs down dry, scorching sidewalk.
she thinks of blisters as she runs
how they are filled with liquid before they burst
how like rain clouds they are
how satisfying their sting is

on her thirsty skin

no prompts, just poems & lists

I’ve lost the urge to make up or steal and then post poetry prompts. It’s the sun, the not sun, the solitude, the sound of the washing machine, fear of leather, the small bite of dry cat food that tries to embed itself in the bottom of my bare foot.

Whatever.

Daughter is scheduled to come back here this afternoon, but because she attended a sleepover birthday party last night, I’m guessing she’ll be too tired to gather her things, do the cleaning chores she always does at her dad’s before she leaves, drum up the energy to move from there to here.

It would be all right.

(this is part of my magic. If I say she will stay away, she will come home to me)

My body aches this morning, but I don’t mind. I don’t know if it makes sense not to mind, but unless an ache is sharp and prevents movement or sitting or doing, it’s simply a sign, to me, anyway, that I’m alive.

I love this poem by Mary Baron that I found at Poetry Daily this morning:

Summer mornings

Brow must salaam to belly
these mornings, frown, if at all
softly
sitting up in bed
finding the body
is still there

(the small boy

at the swimming pool, touching
the collie’s face above the eyes—
that’s her soft frown)

If at first light
we can no longer fly, still
feet swing lightly to the floor
the spine flexes and
shoulders shift willingly, accepting
their burden
the sweet, insistent flesh.

Mary Baron

Storyknife: New & Selected Poems
Sheep Meadow Press

*

and just because I have been thinking about fairy tales lately and how terrible my body is right now, during this sedentary phase of mine, here is a poem I love by Jane Yolen (who writes some of THE most wonderful kids books):

Fat Is Not a Fairy Tale

Jane Yolen

I am thinking of a fairy tale,
Cinder Elephant,
Sleeping Tubby,
Snow Weight,
where the princess is not
anorexic, wasp-waisted,
flinging herself down the stairs.

I am thinking of a fairy tale,
Hansel and Great,
Repoundsel,
Bounty and the Beast,
where the beauty
has a pillowed breast,
and fingers plump as sausage.

I am thinking of a fairy tale
that is not yet written,
for a teller not yet born,
for a listener not yet conceived,
for a world not yet won,
where everything round is good:
the sun, wheels, cookies, and the princess.

from Such a Pretty Face May 2000
Meisha-Merlin Publishing, Inc

there. that’s enough.

a to do list:

make a bed
no, make two beds
vacuum up the noises left over
from the sleepover two weeks ago
pour the sounds of girls falling off beds
candy wrappers ripping
laughter, whispers, sleeping breaths
from vacuum’s dirt cup
into a zippered storage bag
hide in bottom drawer of “lingerie” chest

brush solitary crumb
off kitchen counter
spray cleaner
scrub brown coffee stain
from green surface
sniff citrus scent
from finger tips
cough once

wash, dress, brush,
launder, dust, mop, scour
dip sharp finger
into fat belly to see how far it can go
before it gets lost

think about singing
sing
think about reading
read
think about writing
write

eat
drink
clean
clip nails
file nails
shred cuticles
bleed

I haven’t eaten breakfast yet, though I’ve been up forever
or at least since 8:30
I suppose I should eat some breakfast.

(reminder: this is not a blog; it’s a journal)

a poetry prompt for April’s seventeenth day

I will move into this prompt slowly because it raises difficult memory.

(a ridiculous tangent: I have been wondering lately if people are only interested in people who are interested in them (meaning that people are only interested in themselves), if they are interested in people only because those people read their words or books or watch their films, listen to their music, follow their links to their blogs or art sites or sites where they insist that they can help these interested people to make a million dollars by blinking three times and not looking into the sun or they can help people maximize their parenting skills into ways to make a million dollars, monetize their clutter, their asthma or dogs or kitties or portals, but only if they pay attention, look, listen, see, exfoliate, succumb, subsist, allow, fade, vanish, reappear only to look, listen, see…..)

Let me see if I can draft this prompt properly.

Write a memory poem about something that you almost remember or don’t want to remember or can’t remember or think you remember wrong. You can think, “I don’t remember when…” as you start drafting the poem.

April’s 16th day, lame poetry prompt

Bad night’s sleep
leads to fumbling fingers
and thoughts
that won’t quite escape.

Pick an object. When I give a workshop to younger kids (grades three through five or so), I like to give each student a stone I’ve collected from my back yard or from walks in the woods.

I ask them to study the physical properties of the stone/object – its shape, size, color. How does it sound when they drop it on their desk? Is it heavy or light? Is it rough or smooth? Some of the kids actually put the tip of their tongues to the surfaces of their stones. Probably not wise in this day of scary infectious diseases.

I ask them: What does the stone remind you of? What isn’t it like? Where would you find it? Where wouldn’t you find it? What season is it? How does it make you feel? How is it like you? Go inside of it. Become the stone; write about the stone as if it is you. Let your imagination find the stone’s center and its magic.

(gosh, this definitely seems lame today)

Stone

Go inside a stone
That would be my way.
Let somebody else become a dove
Or gnash with a tiger’s tooth.
I am happy to be a stone.

From the outside the stone is a riddle:
No one knows how to answer it.
Yet within, it must be cool and quiet
Even though a cow steps on it full weight,
Even though a child throws it in a river;
The stone sinks, slow, unperturbed
To the river bottom
Where the fishes come to knock on it
And listen.

I have seen sparks fly out
When two stones are rubbed,
So perhaps it is not dark inside after all;
Perhaps there is a moon shining
From somewhere, as though behind a hill—
Just enough light to make out
The strange writings, the star-charts
On the inner walls.

~ Charles Simic ~

that’s it. I’m lame today.

the sun is shining, and I really should get myself outside for a nice, long walk to clear my head.

April, day 15, not a prompt (ok, maybe a little prompt)

(started at 11:20 a.m. paused to chat with a friend for a little while)

1. I have been awake for a half hour. Eyes are allergically puffy, back is tired from just lying there for so many hours waiting to bend.

2. I am only just now discovering the extent of the damage to my food supplies from my daughter’s weekend guest – a 13-year-old girl who eats as much as a 15-year-old boy, lithe dancer’s body (really), the food slips quietly and gracefully down her gullet, and you don’t realize all the mini-cinnamon rolls have gone until you come back for seconds or that she has consumed four enormous pieces of pizza from the large pie that my daughter and I would have spent days trying to finish.

3. I am excited about novel work today. Until it’s time to do my not-a-husband the favor of picking our daughter up from school (he has a class that he teaches until an hour past her dismissal bell), I can focus on piecing together the sloppy, but fun mess that is Lily’s problematic life. I have a tool now. Woo-hoo!

4. I have no poetry prompt today, just will share a poem excerpt that I received in my email as part of Poetry Daily’s celebration of National Poetry Month. (Each day, a current poet picks a poem and writes a mini-essay on what the poem means to him/her).