a clothesline summer

The mornings have gotten chilly and the nights undeniably cozy. Not to mention the turning of the leaves. I guess this means my fabulous summer is really, truly over.

I wrote this a few weeks back, in a matter of minutes, actually (more rare than not). When summer was still lingering and homework was looming over my head. More a result of procrastination than creative genius, there were a few words that still needed tweaking. The ushering in of fall helped me put in the final touches. One day, I wil write poems in French. The humming of my summer isn't complete without French sounds.       But.  That day is not today.

And so. An ode; or a eulogy, if you will.

a clothesline summer
minutes like postcard stamps
hung out to fly
then passed from hand to hand
in warmth not quite
cold nights not quietly
we danced on toes
we crossed out bridges
on pages, over seas

how can one know
without the swelling of the wind
makes windows call
gives voice to cracks and alleys thin
that doorknobs do
that from dark keyholes sing
the peace of home
a bed for backs so wearily

those dog-eared maps
which from the folds we found
like unwound twine
foreign knots to mark our feet
or rather where
and from beneath our skin
we carved out stone
and there stopped our searching


to understand
to live forgetfully
in ink that fades
according to the rain
in vacancies
left by what once words did fill
our mouths without
in teeming streets
from which a certain humming sounds

Fall in the Springtime

Wrote this in February. Seems appropriate now. Yeah, pretty much.

Mid-February
of a pregnant winter
and still they cling.

As faint and tattered stains
terminating the dark silhouetted tree branches:
the gray sky like a sidewalk stricken with cracks.

Somehow, where the lines are thinnest,
they catch the wind;
the branches to which they hold,
less still,
and out of place.

Still,
a slight rustling,
like hands waving.
A reminder, of sorts:

That after hours,
seasons, minutes, days
of weathering
the snow sleet icicles wind rain,
defying gravity, (among other laws):
they will not fall.

Until the branches bring forth blossoms,
that push in a refusal of cohabitation,
and grow them out
and into downward flight.

THE Bell Tower

I held off so long on posting this. At first because I thought posting poetry on a blog was, as my friends and I say, "cupcakes" (Yes, it can be used as an adjective or a noun. Derivation of the adj form naturally is cupcakey, but sometimes the extra syllable can get excessive).

Obviously, I got over that reservation about a year ago.

And then I wanted the timing to be perfect: when this poem would be the quintessential encapsulation off what I was feeling; the only route of expression I had left to me. The irony is of course, that when I wrote the poem, I didn't understand it. It was like IT taught me something I didn't know. And yet. I can't say it was the product of all these thoughts or feelings at the time for which this poem was the only outlet. It never hit me like that, and I keep waiting for it to and I don't think it will. And yet. It's always been there. Not hitting, but pulsing, perhaps. Or ringing, depending on how you look at it.

And so here it is. The poem whose name this blog bears. Not because the timing is perfect. Not because I even still care all that much about this poem. But because I'm feeling poetic but not enough to write. I'm feeling numb but not enough to want to feel. And so, in my laziness, you're invited to join me as I try to remember what is already there.

The Bell Tower

A crater’s birth was mine,

A hollowing of bone and sinew,

Downside-up, downside-up.

I only want to hear the pealing of bells again.

Yes, the bells have always tolled for me

A stranger’s story,

They call in diatonic scales to fill the gaps between my ribs;

between the true and false pairs whose job it is to protect the peace.

“Together”, the belfry cries, “together,”

Aware, as I am, of the spaces (air) between.

“Don’t you realize that the cage you carry in your chest

is no match at all.”

You might call me a bell tower;

I throb instead to make good use

Of such sound structural design.

Not all bell towers house bells.

And some bell towers have no belfry.

I only want to hear the pealing of bells again.

In the countryside, or in cobblestoned lanes,

On trains that distort the echoes

In my chest and make me catch my breath;

It’s something to feel the life inside the hollow.

Some days, I am the ringer of the bells.

Eventually defeated by the inertia

Of the back and forth that I began;

There I dangle from the ropes,

Follow up to follow down,

Or let go

Entirely. And I never enter

Those heavy wooden doors,

Nor pay the toll.

I only want to hear the pealing of bells again.

And oh, love, how you call

Like the church bells;

I never heed them

But just revel in the sound.

On a out-dated note, happy thanksgiving. I am grateful for a great many things. Things that if I tried to make a list of in my current state would probably end in me hunched over my keyboard and silently sobbing. (Because naturally I cry when I'm happy, haven't we figured that out yet?) Another post for Monstrous Liar. Another night. Note to self: start that list with the letter 'F'.

But for now, for tonight, I am grateful for the copy and paste. For this space on a screen I have that is mine to share and the people I share it with.

But especially that I have heard. The pealing of the bells.

Now off to bed with me before this sentimentality engenders some sick, mutant, sappy and-might I add-poorly written novel. Can I still keep some of my integrity, please?

Street tar and summer'll do a job on your soul

I was going through old emails and folders today. I've never really kept a journal. But I did write emails. Oh, did I ever. And if you think my public blog posts are intimate, well. You can only imagine my emails, right?

So I'm thinking of undertaking some copying and pasting and filling in the gap years. Which means I'm naturally tending to an electronic journal. At least for that project. When, and with what time, is, as always, the question.

I came across some old poetry I'd written and then emailed to myself. Remember how I told you I was never the kid with my moleskin. Never with a pen. Not even a pencil with an extra big eraser. I've always tended to the keyboard. But, easy as it is to loose notebooks and pens and planners, it's as equally easy to loose (or loose track of) files.

The title of this song was taken from a Spoon song, Black Like Me. Which is the title of a book I came into possession of by way of my father but never actually read. And I keep meaning to.

I've been listening to this song and this line just speaks to me. And they've been repaving the street in front of my families house. And I was thinking, driving down it the other night, about the layers of street, of tar that is buried under this new layer. I know they sometimes strip the street before repave it or whatever. And I was thinking about the cars that drive on that road which just made my feet itch to be bare and be the first person to run that road barefoot. And I was brought back to a similar scene from my youth when that same street was being repaved. And, being kids, we walked in the still wet tar. And oh, was it hard to get that tar off.

But somehow, I don't remember the black stains. I remember yellow and black. Laughing. Honeysuckle. And I want to say a straw.

I was thinking all these things and naturally I thought, "I need to write that down". And then today, going through my old forgotten email folders, like a weed pushing up through the cracks in concrete, this poem found its way back to me. I had completely forgotten about it. I have no recollection of having written it. I don't remember how I felt when I wrote it. What I was trying to feel. It was 7/10/06. Lisa's birthday. Three months before I left to Quebec for my mission. I want to say it's incomplete. Though since I can't remember, I can't really say. I do know there is no period at the end. That's a pretty good indication I emailed it to myself in a sense of urgency. I do not forget periods lightly. Ha ha.

I must have beckoned it once, years ago. And then, I beckoned it a few days ago and it found its way, faithfully, back to me. I can't take that kind of coincidence lightly and I hope you understand why.

I'm posting it here. Unfinished. Untitled. (Because while I may steal their lyrics for my blog titles, I will never steal Spoon's lyrics for poem titles.) Like the stripped down layer of the road before the tar is laid, it's where the memories are, even if buried. And I'll let it see the light before I forget about it again:

Urban feet get stuck in mud too, you know.

Hot concrete on calloused feet,
Deevolutionized by the sun from road
to the soft tar laid one early morning
Years ago.

And isn’t that just how it is?
Time, I mean.

Because I remember the laying of that tar.
Hot season, burning blackness, had to stick our fingers in it,
Feet and toes.

Baby, all I wanted was to one day walk a million
different such streets in rushed stilettos.

I somehow imagined that the air I breathed higher would be deeper,
My pulmonary cells wished for that, involuntary.  Make this blood bluer,
They said.  Bluer.  More blue.

Such imagination.

I spent the early seasons waiting for fall,
fall wanting to return to spring,
Unable, nuclei, to imagine

Betwixt

And

Between.


Because sometimes prose just doesn't cut it. And because free writing is my therapy.



Not going to lie. I am onto something, into something deep.
And all the heresay is, well, here to stay.
This is me dodging the bullet, spitting it out.
And would you believe, I'd call this a confession.

Never a straight shot but always sure, always true,
I'm going to pound this one out the only way I know how.
Which is to say
lexically:

There is a joy that pathos will never know.
The turning of the last page of a book.
The hands of a clock.
The measurable distance between you
and me.
Feet. Inches. Centimeters.
That day always follows night.
Never a point d'interogation without a period
after.

These are joys, right?

But to not know dusk
or twilight or the blank page and a paint brush in hand.
A second glance.
A lightness.
A fever.
The fire at the back of your throat, behind your eyes
and deeper still.
A remembering that the body is only half of the whole.
These, Logos would not know.

Psykhe was once and maybe still is the word for soul.
And what could be more?
But my-ologies haven't taught me where -
by what joys
- I can pull out my map of this world,
the whole world,
and mark an x for telios.

And is this maybe vanity?

In a forest that I cannot see, for
the trees are phobos.
Like I said, I'm in real deep;
and it's getting overgrown.
Even if I had a map I have no where to put my feet
or find the road less
traveled.

When I close my eyes I hear,
when I open my eyes the trees,
inscribed like the ancient walls:
gnothi seauton.

BUT! sometimes,
less is
more.

The Stethoscope: a not-so-Christmas poem

I have been in a poetic mood lately. Sometimes I try to resist this fact because everything I come up with seems to originate from the same vein. It's getting a little old. Real old, in fact. This is precisely why I need to travel more, read more, and forget less. Now, I'm not sure about the whole blogging my poetry thing. This blog's namesake still hasn't been posted and I feel like that should come first. But what the heck, I'll get crazy and mix things up a bit.

I wrote this this morning.

(As a side note, you know, I think we need to reinvent certain aspects of the English language. Like the usage of demonstrative pronouns.Proposal: if you are using a demonstrative pronouns that is also a complematizer or if you are using two demonstrative pronouns, there should be a dash between the second demonstrative pronoun and its noun. So that this sentence would read "I wrote this this-morning". And the sentence,'Don't forget that that cat has really sharp claws' would read 'Don't forget that that-cat has really sharp claws'. Because really the nouns in their abstract senses are "this morning" and "that cat". I recognize that I am a huge nerd and that no one cares, but we should think about it anyway.)

And so here's the disclaimer: I know that this has nothing to do with Christmas. Not even winter. But actually it's kind of the versified brain child of my last post, which is why I'm posting it here.

All the same, Christmas was wonderful. I hope yours was as well. Joyeux Noel.
(Yeah, I just stuck that there to make a rhyme. What did I tell you: poetic.)


The Stethoscope

Living happens quietly

like the stealth of breath into the lungs

and diffused, unseen, unheard into those small rooms

from whence something else emerges.

Like the roll of the sea, like rock eroding to sand,

or a raindrop that cuts through a summer breeze.

Like the heart and its whispering.

Quietly.


But life happens in the beating of a heart, the pounding

throbbing, music beginning: sound.

And it’s not a pretty sight,

our coming into this world; desperate, wailing.

Loud.

Exert, and the breath gives itself away,

sometimes gets caught in the chest,

sometimes frantic to get out.

And the roll of the sea can become a roar,

a crashing of foam on boulders,

or a torrent that thunders while winds howl.


Measured breath, measured beat;

sometimes living happens suddenly.

For all of our planning, life can abrupt and exert,

immerging us in its sounds;

not always a pretty sight

but a delicious, deep, resounding call.

from whence something else emerges.

Yes, love can happen quietly.


But I,

I am no whisperer.