Poetry Fridays

It's Poetry Friday. Let's go into our weekend prepared "to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life". Every Friday post a poem- yours or someone else's.

Transfiguration

This mountain is her temple, to which she
ascends through briar-tangled valleys of shadow,
where she waits greedily to suckle from
the sun as it rises, filling her belly with fire.

Satiated, the tips of her hair glow,
emblazoning her with a halo infused with
ancient power, raw and elemental.
Handmaid of the cosmos, her soul is magnified.

Shaman wizard woman who holds the light
of a thousand generations before and after.
Outstretched Orans hands radiate the prayer
of touching birth and life and lovers and death.

Crowned heraldess of the stars, she calls forth
the serpents and dragons to stand upon their backs.
They carry her down to the world of men,
returning , disguised again behind wrinkled eyes.

1.21.11

For Veteran's Day- A Poem by Brain Turner

Sadiq

It is a condition of wisdom in the archer to be patient
because when the arrow leaves the bow, it returns no more.
Sa’di

It should make you shake and sweat,

nightmare you, strand you in a desert
of irrevocable desolation, the consequences
seared into the vein, no matter what adrenaline
feeds the muscle its courage, no matter
what god shines down on you, no matter
what crackling pain and anger
you carry in your fists, my friend,
it should break your heart to kill.

Brian Turner's debut collection, Here, Bullet, won the 2005 Beatrice Hawley Award from Alice James Books. He earned an MFA from the University of Oregon before serving for seven years in the US Army. He was an infantry team leader for a year in Iraq with the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division, and prior to that was deployed to Bosnia-Herzegovina with the 10th Mountain Division. His poetry has been published in Poetry Daily, The Georgia Review, American War Poems: An Anthology, and in the Voices in Wartime Anthology published in conjunction with the feature-length documentary film of the same name. He currently lives in California.

http://webdelsol.com/LITARTS/Alice_James_Books/Turner/Brian_Turner_chapbook.html

To Michael On His First Birthday

To Michael On His First Birthday

There is that you in a far off dreamtime
Where you were so new and wrinkled
Smelling not yet of this world.
So many faces surround you with
Wonder and awe, marveling in
Humility before you.

We built a fortress
And the wise women gathered
Who fed us and came to you
Each kissing you leaving a mark
On your soul with her gifts.

You discovered the allure of the night
Resisting sleep so that all secrets
Could be yours to hold
Because life and death merge
In the shadow lands.
All wisdom is held there.

Those days are whispers,
Sounds almost heard but dampened
By the fog rolling in after midnight
As backyard dogs howl guttural and wild,
Lonely for the pack.

You became a great teacher, who
Trusting in depths within my soul ,
Compelled me to return again to the abyss
But the wise women were there
Reminding me to learn from you
And to not be afraid.

Now closer to the mouth of the cavern,
Daylight dances haphazardly on the walls.
We linger in the darkness so we
Are not blinded as we emerge
And lose our way.

Your little hand rests in mine,
Our hearts and breathing fused.
My great spirit guide,
I know you will not leave me
For we are one now and
Our shared strength is unconquerable.

Poetry Fridays

Alrighty---to break my bloglence here (we have been plagued by illness after illness and then moved into a period of great Michael fussiness which we seem to be slowly moving through)--let's go with a Poetry Friday.

It's Poetry Friday. Let's go into our weekend prepared "to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life". Every Friday post a poem- yours or someone else's.

Here's a little one I wrote today...which isn't really the poem swirling around in my brain, but maybe a sort of warm up exercise for what is coming....hopefully.

Reading Year

Dickens for the winter,
wrapped in thickness and safety and warmth.

Spring for things never read,
full of discovery and newness and expansion.

Hemingway for the first hot days,
clear and quick and a drink in hand.

Summer for Tennessee Williams and Southern writers,
ambling and languid and brutal.

Scholarly works and realism fill Fall,
cold and inside and impersonal.

Poetry Friday....with a twist.

Poetry Fridays where we say:

It's Poetry Friday. Let's go into our weekend prepared "to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life". Every Friday post a poem- yours or someone else's.

This Friday I'll post a poem I just wrote. I haven't written a poem in an awfully long time--but part of my Lent is to try to write something everyday and this is what I ended up with.



The blackness of the
fingered
trees
Their tortured grasp of
gnarled
hands
That reach moonward through
blue-black
night
Creak whispers into
changing
wind
As stillness groans just
out of
reach.

2.18.2010

Poetry Fridays

It's Poetry Friday. Let's go into our weekend prepared "to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life". Every Friday post a poem- yours or someone else's.

(Okay I know technically it's Saturday, but they say it takes 28 times to make something habitual--so sometime in the summer this ought to be an actual regular feature on actual Fridays.)

Let's visit a couple poems of Frank O'Hara's.

A True Account of Talking to the Sun at Fire Island

by Frank O'Hara

The Sun woke me this morning loud

and clear, saying “Hey! I've been

trying to wake you up for fifteen

minutes. Don’t be so rude, you are

only the second poet I’ve ever chosen

to speak to personally

so why

aren’t you more attentive? If I could

burn you through the window I would

to wake you up. I can't hang around

here all day.”

“Sorry, Sun, I stayed

up late last night talking to Hal.”

“When I woke up Mayakovsky he was

a lot more prompt” the Sun said

petulantly. “Most people are up

already waiting to see if I’m going

to put in an appearance.”

I tried

to apologize “I missed you yesterday.”

“That’s better” he said. “I didn’t

know you’d come out.” “You may be

wondering why I’ve come so close?”

“Yes” I said beginning to feel hot

wondering if maybe he wasn’t burning me

anyway.

“Frankly I wanted to tell you

I like your poetry. I see a lot

on my rounds and you’re okay. You may

not be the greatest thing on earth, but

you’re different. Now, I’ve heard some

say you’re crazy, they being excessively

calm themselves to my mind, and other

crazy poets think that you’re a boring

reactionary. Not me.

Just keep on

like I do and pay no attention. You’ll

find that people always will complain

about the atmosphere, either too hot

or too cold too bright or too dark, days

too short or too long.

If you don’t appear

at all one day they think you’re lazy

or dead. Just keep right on, I like it.

And don’t worry about your lineage

poetic or natural. The Sun shines on

the jungle, you know, on the tundra

the sea, the ghetto. Wherever you were

I knew it and saw you moving. I was waiting

for you to get to work.

And now that you

are making your own days, so to speak,

even if no one reads you but me

you won’t be depressed. Not

everyone can look up, even at me. It

hurts their eyes.”

“Oh Sun, I’m so grateful to you!”

“Thanks and remember I’m watching. It’s

easier for me to speak to you out

here. I don’t have to slide down

between buildings to get your ear.

I know you love Manhattan, but

you ought to look up more often.

And

always embrace things, people earth

sky stars, as I do, freely and with

the appropriate sense of space. That

is your inclination, known in the heavens

and you should follow it to hell, if

necessary, which I doubt.

Maybe we’ll

speak again in Africa, of which I too

am specially fond. Go back to sleep now

Frank, and I may leave a tiny poem

in that brain of yours as my farewell.”

“Sun, don’t go!” I was awake

at last. “No, go I must, they’re calling

me.”

“Who are they?”

Rising he said “Some

day you’ll know. They’re calling to you

too.” Darkly he rose, and then I slept.

The Day Lady Died

by Frank O'Hara

It is 12:20 in New York a Friday

three days after Bastille day, yes

it is 1959 and I go get a shoeshine

because I will get off the 4:19 in Easthampton

at 7:15 and then go straight to dinner

and I don’t know the people who will feed me

I walk up the muggy street beginning to sun

and have a hamburger and a malted and buy

an ugly NEW WORLD WRITING to see what the poets

in Ghana are doing these days

I go on to the bank

and Miss Stillwagon (first name Linda I once heard)

doesn’t even look up my balance for once in her life

and in the GOLDEN GRIFFIN I get a little Verlaine

for Patsy with drawings by Bonnard although I do

think of Hesiod, trans. Richmond Lattimore or

Brendan Behan’s new play or Le Balcon or Les Nègres

of Genet, but I don’t, I stick with Verlaine

after practically going to sleep with quandariness

and for Mike I just stroll into the PARK LANE

Liquor Store and ask for a bottle of Strega and

then I go back where I came from to 6th Avenue

and the tobacconist in the Ziegfeld Theatre and

casually ask for a carton of Gauloises and a carton

of Picayunes, and a NEW YORK POST with her face on it

and I am sweating a lot by now and thinking of

leaning on the john door in the 5 SPOT

while she whispered a song along the keyboard

to Mal Waldron and everyone and I stopped breathing

Poetry Fridays

Okay, in a hope to get my act together and blog regularly this year, I am going to try to provide some structure. In this vein, I am creating Poetry Fridays!

It's Poetry Friday. Let's go into our weekend prepared "to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life". Every Friday post a poem- yours or someone else's.

Today we'll have some ditties written by one of my favorite poets Charles Reznikoff. These are all from the collection Jerusalem The Golden.

56
Meeting often, we find that we cannot meet enough,
and words are counterfeit, silence only golden,
and streets at night are beautiful.
I find the valentines are true, the hearts and arrows-
sighs and misty eyes; and the old poems-
I find them true.


58
You think yourself a woman,
because you have children and lovers;
but in a street
with only Orion and the Pleiades to see us,
you begin to sing, you begin to skip.


64
If you ask me about the plans that I made last night
of steel and granite-
I think the sun must have melted them,
or this gentle wind blown them away.


70
Out of the in exhaustible sea
the waves curve under the weight of their foam,
and the water rushes up to us;,
the wind blowing out of the night,
out of the endless darkness,
blowing star after atar upon the sky
out of the inexhaustible night;
wave after wave
rising out of the sea.