riotheclown

I woke up pure
with anger,
the way a baby's cry is pure,
the way the moon looks when you're lost.

But before I could write it down
the day began to unwind it.
Dream fading as
the cold floor greeted my feet
Recollections
not of the dream
but of having forgotten it before.

The flesh gets hard, the skin puckers to an ugly scar.

I forget to unwrap the anger
to give it air
to let it cry
to see it
and thank it for keeping me alive.

So I do it now, my coffee growing cold as I type, sixty-five and barely a reason to try, but I try.

The moon wanes,
Babies sleep in their mothers arms
Anger dissipates along with pain
scars turn silver
like the edges of forgotten dreams.

I'm not pure. But I'm healing. Late but still alive.

Day Eight, prompt: spring cleaning magic:

I shake out all the missed opportunities
Beat the rugs, dank with obligations and routines,
Open the windows and let out the dreams.

There will be no evidence
of what might have been.

I keep the house clean.

Cast Iron Pots

My brother's wife was taking his cast iron pots to the donation bin.
Everyone in my family was taught that you had to have cast iron pots and
you had to keep them forever
god forbid, some disaster ended you
and they were lost until a bunch of
archeologists could dig them up.
But even still they'd be good,
just needing bit of scrubbing and seasoning.

No one outside our family
can understand this
need to hang on
to something so
impossibly
heavy.
or why we tell a history hidden behind a patina of alteration.

one pilgramige or another
possessions of the fallen passed down the line,
iron pots clanging.

So we conspire.
I tell him I will go to Value Village
and buy them all back

—give them to her for Christmas—

adding another chapter in the mythology of our family's resilience, and iron.

While Riding the Bus

I READ A POEM
where an advertisement should have been.
I got very excited and
I looked around
nobody else seemed to notice.
They were hanging on to poles,
looking at their phones,
or
if they could see through the mash up of bodies and bags
looking out the windows.

The words were what I would have said,
maybe they were mine
for it seemed they fit right in my brain
like eggs in a nest
like a hand in a hand.
I had no pen so
I sent myself a text.
It read:

dionne brand--i have been losing roads to light on

So, once I heard, (thanks to a pre-recorded jazz show on BBC radio two) I wrote this:

Give me Billy Holiday

What can I say?,
I'm a sucker for the sway
Don't give me modern
give me a dip and a good sashay,
soapy Billie jazz
that's a little bit sad,
a sultry-eyed lover
a good talker--no truth,
smoky air, whiskey and a corner booth.
I've been alone,
got myself to blame.
Before too long
I'll be alone again,
and you know
I think I might love you
and so
lets see what a little moonlight can do.

Sea gulls flying in formation like each is a knot in a crocheted blanket thrown from heaven
while I make my way in my little human meat boat across the ocean of concrete,
hauling my shopping cart towards the illusive shore, I mean store,
as they dive for morsels of garbage and cigarette butts.

Sometimes my little dot turns and looks at the beauty of it all.

Excerpt from a poem by Mary Oliver Click on her name to see the whole poem.

I wanted

the past to go away, I wanted

to leave it, like another country; I wanted

my life to close, and open

like a hinge, like a wing, like the part of the song

where it falls

down over the rocks: an explosion, a discovery;

I wanted

to hurry into the work of my life; I wanted to know,

whoever I was, I was

alive

for a little while.

(…)

You don’t want to hear the story 

of my life, and anyway 

I don’t want to tell it, I want to listen

to the enormous waterfalls of the sun.

mary oliver

I read a poem
where an advertisement should have been,
I got very excited and
I looked around
nobody else seemed to notice.
The words were what I would have said,
maybe they were mine.
I had no pen so
I sent myself a text:

dionne brand I have beenlosing roads land to.light on

I Googled “Dionne Brand” and she doesn’t look like me. I just thought, reading her poem that, as the words kissed my little grey matter, they belonged to me.

I read a poem
where an advertisement should have been,
I got very excited and I looked around

nobody else seemed to notice
I looked for a pen but I had none so
I sent myself a text:

dionne brand I have beenlosing roads land to.light on

I Googled "Dionne Brand" and she doesn't look like me. I just thought, reading her poem that, as the words kissed my little grey matter, they belonged there.

This is Mierl Laderman Ukeles manifesto.

Art has no value
The human condition is not curable but maintainable.
The right drugs can make it possible
to cope with the side-effects.
Having been valued
on the basis of an ability to
generate more economic activity,
people in need are filling up all the waiting rooms everywhere.
They need a diagnosis, or a sentence.

The torturing of test subjects has become a cottage industry.
Stay at home moms in far away places
sell the results to pharmacuetical companies.
Sometimes
they get on television
or sell the rights to their stories to movie companies
generating more economic activity and making it possible for them
to buy the products that are advertised during the intermission
or along the side of computer screens
while people far away watch them
on You Tube.

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Entries tagged with poem

I Work up Pure

APAD, day eight

APAD, day four

APAD, day three?

I missed the fact that it was Billy Holiday's birthday

This actually happened.

How poetry can trim so close to the bone the essential truth of what we wish...

I had a poetry crisis on the bus...final cut

I had a poetry crisis on the bus!

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