Poems

Qué será

Qué será

Peace in the Peace Park,
here on the headland,
where cool grass slopes
down to the water’s edge.

Geese have nested close by
and gifted us with goslings.
Golden balls of fluff, they walk
on the land right now,
but soon will take to the water.

A thin, yellow line, they will
paddle behind their parents,
webbed feet invisible
beneath the water’s flow.

And I, in the metal coffin
of my over-heated car,
sit and watch them, envying
their freedom of movement,
waiting for whatever will come.

My beloved draws near.
I sense as much as see her,
as I covet her strong steps,
the ageless sway of her body.

Alas, I am growing old,
and not with any grace,
but fighting it all the way,
and qué será, será
is all that I can say.

Rebirth

Rebirth

“El mundo nace
cuando dos se besan.”
Octavio Paz

A new world is born
when two people kiss.
The hummingbird sips
at the hollyhock’s lips.
Bee enters the blossom
and, sated, comes out.
A butterfly perches,
flutters its wings.
The sun enters a cloud:
radiance is born.
Silver linings
morph to gold.
The sun’s needle stitches
the world together.
Oh to be a part of Eden,
Paradise born anew,
in the moment when
lip meets lip and the tongue
is a twister, touching down.
Two hearts a-whirl,
their world aflame.
Their world reshaped,
new shapes now born.
Wild flowers swaying
in an age-old dance.
Life’s journey renewed,
not always by chance.

How would you describe yourself to someone?

Daily writing prompt
How would you describe yourself to someone?
View all responses

How would you describe yourself to someone?

I wouldn’t. Why should I? I might give them a self-portrait, or a painting of me, by my friend Moo. Or I might give them a poem or a book of poems or short stories. That way they could see me for themselves or read about me and make a decision about me that way.

“Ah, would some power the giftie gie us, to see our selves as others see us.” Robbie Burns, if I remember correctly. For those who don’t follow the Scottish accent – the giftie gie us = give us the gift. I don’t have that gift. What I see in the mirror when I shave is not the same as what people see when they look at me with their own eyes or, with their own ears and minds when they read my words or hear me read.

Meanwhile – I invite you to read this. There’s a little bit of me in there somewhere. If you can find it before it floats away down the plug-hole.

Self-Portrait

I smell. I whiff. I gloriously stink.
My arms, my feet, my crotch, reek with beauty.
This is me. I am still alive. I’m rank.
The time has come, the Walrus said, to take
a shower. I strip. I weigh. I obey.

Hot water streams. Bathroom steams up. I draw
faces on grey glass, smiling, glum. Soft soap
works its miracle turning Japanese
nylon into a rough body cloth that
rubs and cajoles all putrid dirt away.

Butterfly from its chrysalis, I step
from the shower, sniff with caution, and stench
no more. I am clean. I no longer pong. 
My body has been taken over by
perfumes no longer mine. Who am I now?

I am no more myself. I am no more
my own gorgeous underarm muscular
ripeness. I have left my odor circling
in the soap suds and drifting down the drain. 
What a pain. It will take me a week or 
more to start smelling like myself again.

Words of Wisdom

Words of Wisdom

“You can’t write about life if you haven’t
lived it.” Words of wisdom from the poet
who wrote The Old Man and the Sea.

“But,” I hear you say, “what did he know
about writing? He never took any courses
that taught him how to write, nor held a certificate
from a prestigious school that guarantees quality.
Nor was he a poet, he only wrote prose.”

And yet, the prestige of that ivy-covered,
ivory tower leads poets… I pause for a moment…
– to where exactly? Into debt, of course, and also
down the paved path of their own destruction.

What kind of life do they live, those writers,
who only exist within their cerebral boxes,
and never step outside them unless they are
ordered to build an even bigger box?

Have they walked with street-walkers in Madrid?
Have they sat beside the poorest of the poor,
in Oaxaca, shivering in thin cotton clothing
beneath falling snow? Have they visited Madrid’s
Plaza de España, stepping high to avoid the blunt,
bloodied needles, shared, to take away the pain?
Have they pan-handled in Yorkville or slept
in sleeping bags, by the Royal York, in the snow,
at 40 below, on the gratings above the Subway?

“The unexamined life is not worth living,” some say
Socrates said. But what I think is ‘the unlived life is
not worth examining.” Tear down the walls that
inhibit and limit you. Go out into the world and see
what others see and feel. Only then, come back,
stab your pen into your veins, fill it with your blood,
and set before us what was done to you, what you
experienced, how you survived, and what you felt.

Comment: Once again I thank my friend Moo for his illustration – Building Bigger Boxes. It goes well with the theme of this rant, or is it a poem? A verbal rant to echo a visual rant, perhaps, or vice versa.

Heartbreaking

Heartbreaking

How many have broken their hearts,
reading what I have written, as I have
broken mine, reading what others wrote?

My words reach out, naked, stripped
of false trappings, fake images,
my flesh and blood damp on the page.

Who knows where my words will land,
on fertile ground, on desert sand, or will
they lie on dry, stony paths, infertile?

So many people now scorn living words,
preferring those dull dry three-word chants,
fists clenched, or raised, that hypnotize.

Their love of words, thoughts, ideas, life
have been coffined in confining boxes,
cardboard castles, corrugated cans,
that they lock, then throw away the key.

Comment: Thank you Moo for your painting – Words fall like leaves and drift away. It make a fine companion to the poem.

Listen!

Listen

When I cannot write,
I take a paint brush,
and start to paint.

When I paint, I listen
to the brush as it moves
itself over the canvas.
I listen to the colors
as they demand attention
and tell me where to place them.

I listen to the paint as it says
‘just here, not too thick,
not too thin, a swirl please,
gently now.”

I also listen to flowers, trees,
the wind in the willows,
the songs of falling leaves,
and the voices of birds
that mourn their empty nests,
abandoned on the branches.

Comment:

This poem also came from yesterday’s prompt – what do you listen to? The act of ranting, based on a prompt, usually generates imagery and ideas that can then be used in either poetry or prose. For me, the secret is to cut away the dross and to search for the gems that are often hidden within verbal outpour. This leads, in my opinion, to enhanced creativity.

Voices

Voices

I forced my characters
into the roles that I chose for them.
Sometimes they complained
and refused to obey me.

Late one night, they came
and knocked on the window
that opens in my head when I dream.

They started to complain
about how I was treating them
and demanded that I change my ways.

I listened as they yapped, and yammered,
and strewed their growing pains
on the counterpane before me.

When I woke up, I remembered
what they had told me and I wrote
down their stories in their words, not mine.
Then they came to life and spoke through me.

Comment:
This poem and the next one both came from yesterday’s prompt – what do you listen to? The act of ranting, based on a prompt, often generates imagery that can then be used in either poetry or prose. The secret is to cut away the dross and find the gems that are often hidden within the rant. This leads, in my opinion, to enhanced creativity.

One Small Corner

One Small Corner

 And this is the good thing,
to find your one small corner
and to have your one small candle,
then to light it, and leave it burning
its sharp bright hole in the night.

 Around you, the walls you constructed;
inside, the reduced space, the secret garden,
the Holy of Holies where roses grow
and no cold wind disturbs you.

 “Is it over here?” you ask: “Or over here?”
If you do not know, I cannot tell you.

But I will say this: turning a corner one day
you will suddenly know
that you have found a perfection
that you will seek again, in vain,
for the rest of your life.

Comment: This is the title poem of the book One Small Corner – A Kingsbrae Chronicle, written at the first Kingsbrae International Residences for Artists (July, 2017), and published on Amazon – Kindle that same year. This is the video that accompanies the poem. https://www.kingsbraeartscentre.com/ – turn up your sound. My thanks to all those involved in that first residency and especially to Mrs. Lucinda Flemer, Geoff Slater, and my fellow resident artists, Ruby Allan, Carlos Carty, Elise Muller, and Ann Wright. One Small Corner, along with some other publications, can be found by clicking here. Special thanks for the making of the video itself go out to Geoff Slater, Jeff Lively, and Cameron Lively.

Ghost Train

Ghost Train

I remember the little electric railway
that ran on a single loop around
the kitchen table, diddly-da-diddly-da,
just like a real train, except no smoke,
no puff the magic dragon, no sense
of a schedule or arriving and departing
when circular time is meaningless,
as are the numbers on the sundial
when the sun isn’t shining,
or the hands on the clock’s blank face
when the numbers are missing,
and you don’t know whether you are
looking in time’s distorting mirror
or are standing on your head
in the Antipodes, and all the while
the clock hands are marching round
and round, tick-tock, and there is
no track by which time can be tracked.

And the runaway hands go round the track,
and the electric train goes round the table,
 and the ghost train hoots whoo-hoo,
as it vanishes into the timeless tunnel,
then exits, the engineer, like Rip Van Winkle,
grown old with a long beard, and the carriages
all covered with cobwebs, and skeletons
leaping out of the compartments,
then sitting beside the travellers
as they snore on their seats.

Comment: Another poem based on a prose prompt. What a great source for poetry those prompts can be, when you don’t take them too seriously and allow your imagination to run riot and your memories to flow. Not automatic writing, but writing that springs from an absurd, surrealist approach to the crazy world that surrounds us. Rain that causes the yucca plant to grow, then falls so hard that it is battered to the ground by the very thing that gave it life. And so it is with my memories of the many trains on which I have travelled and with which I have played. Once upon a time, I couldn’t conceive of life without the railway. Where is it now? I haven’t been on a train for more than fifteen years. Strange how their ghosts flit through my dreams at night: fast trains, slow trains, the wrong train at the wrong time taking me to the wrong place in time. Ah, the poetry of trains yet, “ni temps passés ni les trains reviennent.” And you can give yourself a glow of satisfaction – thank you Tommy Reed – if you recognize the quote, and two more if you know who Tommy Reed is. I use the present tense because, although long gone, he is ever-present in my mind.

Today’s painting – another gift from my friend Moo.