Some people you miss more than others. Goodbye Bill Kalenius, you did better than most.
http://www.columbian.com/article/20090929/SPORTS02/709299935/COMMUNITY+SPORTS++VLC+founder+made+a+lasting+impression
Dead Rower Villanelle
I don’t understand why after you, things just didn’t stop.
Nothing has to be like this, stroke
after stroke after deathless stroke. Things
were sharper with you
around. Now? Even air feels like water
without you.
All those early morning lessons, and all I can remember are your instructions on the water;
to not fight it, how to move it, that the wanting will come in waves, about ripples and patterns. Stop
this, please. This feels too much like your elegy and I wanted to remember you for your stroke. Before all this breakdown, I’d ask how you did it. You’d sigh. There are more important things.
Let’s talk about your stroke,
the catch is still late. Damn memory, and the awful things
we hold on to. I keep remembering the water
and how you never really understood that storms could hurt even imperious you.
Please stop.
You taught me well. Some things
break down. You?
Never. Sure as the water
that stopped
you breathless every day, sure as your stroke.
I miss your broke down baseball cap, the lake’s water
at six in the morning, how you never stop-
stopped, I mean. I keep coming back to the wrong things.
Tenses will trip you,
like a stutter in your stroke.
After you leave, little things will break me. Fragments of things; your healthy hand and your licorice, you and your licorice, your smooth stroke over the water in holy cycles, ripples and patterns.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Friday, September 25, 2009
Six geese a laying, out of season
This is my take on the anatomically correct trend that swept lit arts last year. Mostly for Nikki.
The Anatomically Correct Love Poem
And you tell me that my heart will beat two billion times in my life
each beat an event as surely as the day
that the first amphibian looked at land with some kind of hopeful aspiration
is a red letter day on some god’s calendar.
Think about it, you tell me.
lub
Your first breath is demarcated by the right atrium gasping for oxygen depleted blood.
Your mother cries with relief
dub
Your nineteenth custard that summer on the boardwalk in Atlanta, before it burned down.
The right ventricle exhales drowned blood into your lungs and you learned how to smoke
that summer.
lub
Your first cliff dive. The Illinois river. Your toes, the edge. The light, the blue.
Your surrender. The left atrium swallows blood.
dub
Your failure, the last time you try to remember your son’s name. Your synapses struggle
valiantly, like an old Lab struggling to stand. Your left ventricle releases blood, still hopeful.
Everything moves in cycles and systems, you tell me.
The smoking instructor made your son,
the blood that began in your bones moves your legs to break them.
The heart is a muscle the size of a fist, you tell me.
Keep on loving, keep on fighting.
The Anatomically Correct Love Poem
And you tell me that my heart will beat two billion times in my life
each beat an event as surely as the day
that the first amphibian looked at land with some kind of hopeful aspiration
is a red letter day on some god’s calendar.
Think about it, you tell me.
lub
Your first breath is demarcated by the right atrium gasping for oxygen depleted blood.
Your mother cries with relief
dub
Your nineteenth custard that summer on the boardwalk in Atlanta, before it burned down.
The right ventricle exhales drowned blood into your lungs and you learned how to smoke
that summer.
lub
Your first cliff dive. The Illinois river. Your toes, the edge. The light, the blue.
Your surrender. The left atrium swallows blood.
dub
Your failure, the last time you try to remember your son’s name. Your synapses struggle
valiantly, like an old Lab struggling to stand. Your left ventricle releases blood, still hopeful.
Everything moves in cycles and systems, you tell me.
The smoking instructor made your son,
the blood that began in your bones moves your legs to break them.
The heart is a muscle the size of a fist, you tell me.
Keep on loving, keep on fighting.
Friday, September 18, 2009
Fivers
Wow, the clever numbered titles are starting to fail me. I can't wait till I get to like, 34. These were for a prompt about writing a political poem and a non-political poem. I like my political poems to be subtle, which I think is an underrated trait in writing.
Sometimes I Hear the Creek, But Mostly I Hear The Freeway
from my window, in the night.
They sing
and mutter
though I can never quite translate.
I wonder what this language sounded like one hundred years ago,
they told me there were salmon here
one hundred years ago.
My Pleasure are Small, and Private
the unbroken skin of apples. the old reds, the young greens.
the wool of the sweater of my father and how it collapses across my shoulders like a cat
the voice of the girl I nearly drowned with, her laugh
the rain on the pond. the turtle, watching reproachfully from under the lily pad.
I do not regret any of this, my world so small and shallow.
Sometimes I Hear the Creek, But Mostly I Hear The Freeway
from my window, in the night.
They sing
and mutter
though I can never quite translate.
I wonder what this language sounded like one hundred years ago,
they told me there were salmon here
one hundred years ago.
My Pleasure are Small, and Private
the unbroken skin of apples. the old reds, the young greens.
the wool of the sweater of my father and how it collapses across my shoulders like a cat
the voice of the girl I nearly drowned with, her laugh
the rain on the pond. the turtle, watching reproachfully from under the lily pad.
I do not regret any of this, my world so small and shallow.
Friday, September 11, 2009
Four Everything
Oh, I haven't written one of these self-indulgent autobiographical poems in a while.
Poetry as Punches (More Genuine Enthusiasm, Less Sentiment)
Sugarbaby, honeydear obligated audience: here are the facts mapped as tidily as cobalt isotope tables and yellow fever charts:
I swear to Jesus, sometimes you can’t tell if they’re about to throw up or laugh
and I was never very good at telling the difference with disastrous results
and some people say I’m a series of disastrous results, but one time I caught a hummingbird and it burned in my hands like an ember and when I was younger I used to start fires outside my Presbyterian church
but now that I’m older I plan to start them on the inside
(and not to diss my home state but flannel ain’t much of an export) and
in the depths of the fullness of my heart I’m afraid I’m utterly unlovable, I used to want to be a nun
so someone would be obliged to be there when I start drooling into my Ovaltine.
You know what I’m saying?
You know what I’m saying.
Because postmodernism means getting to say here is the insides and the complications;
the pain laid out as sharp and as abstract as cubic zirconium and
all this glints like the light in the eyes of Medusa’s dead snakes.
I’m afraid but not ashamed, just afraid, because this poem goes ratatatat in all the wrong tempos and
I remember this violin recording where you could hear her breathing
but I can’t remember my mother’s mother.
Look.
I want the revolution but I also want things like modern dentistry and rubberized hair ties..
I don’t really like feminism. Does that make me a bad feminist?
I didn’t start liking music until Joe Strummer muttered to me that hardcore could use more handclaps and less handholding.
I don’t think that just because you’ve started cupping cigarettes in the curve of your hands and acting awful tough lately makes you a real adult.
I didn’t do any of those things they tell you I did, it’s all dirty lies, I’m respectable now.
I don’t wish harm on any of you, really. I just want what I want more than magnets want iron and more than the body desires resurrection, even from six feet under.
I didn’t use to believe in the Holy Spirit, until I felt her breath on my shoulders. It’s like four again, and August again.
I don’t regret coating the glass walls with love poems scotch taped up for you, you, you; only that you never bothered to read them.
I didn’t read the rest, but that didn’t stop Leaves of Grass from pissing me off for two weeks.
I don’t get me wrong. I believe in many beautiful things. I just don’t really want to talk about them. The truest things are inarticulate.
I didn’t go to the show because I didn’t want to spend eighty bucks and a Tuesday night on standing on concrete for the off chance I might touch Jon Bon Jovi’s thigh. That’s just not who I am.
Poetry as Punches (More Genuine Enthusiasm, Less Sentiment)
Sugarbaby, honeydear obligated audience: here are the facts mapped as tidily as cobalt isotope tables and yellow fever charts:
I swear to Jesus, sometimes you can’t tell if they’re about to throw up or laugh
and I was never very good at telling the difference with disastrous results
and some people say I’m a series of disastrous results, but one time I caught a hummingbird and it burned in my hands like an ember and when I was younger I used to start fires outside my Presbyterian church
but now that I’m older I plan to start them on the inside
(and not to diss my home state but flannel ain’t much of an export) and
in the depths of the fullness of my heart I’m afraid I’m utterly unlovable, I used to want to be a nun
so someone would be obliged to be there when I start drooling into my Ovaltine.
You know what I’m saying?
You know what I’m saying.
Because postmodernism means getting to say here is the insides and the complications;
the pain laid out as sharp and as abstract as cubic zirconium and
all this glints like the light in the eyes of Medusa’s dead snakes.
I’m afraid but not ashamed, just afraid, because this poem goes ratatatat in all the wrong tempos and
I remember this violin recording where you could hear her breathing
but I can’t remember my mother’s mother.
Look.
I want the revolution but I also want things like modern dentistry and rubberized hair ties..
I don’t really like feminism. Does that make me a bad feminist?
I didn’t start liking music until Joe Strummer muttered to me that hardcore could use more handclaps and less handholding.
I don’t think that just because you’ve started cupping cigarettes in the curve of your hands and acting awful tough lately makes you a real adult.
I didn’t do any of those things they tell you I did, it’s all dirty lies, I’m respectable now.
I don’t wish harm on any of you, really. I just want what I want more than magnets want iron and more than the body desires resurrection, even from six feet under.
I didn’t use to believe in the Holy Spirit, until I felt her breath on my shoulders. It’s like four again, and August again.
I don’t regret coating the glass walls with love poems scotch taped up for you, you, you; only that you never bothered to read them.
I didn’t read the rest, but that didn’t stop Leaves of Grass from pissing me off for two weeks.
I don’t get me wrong. I believe in many beautiful things. I just don’t really want to talk about them. The truest things are inarticulate.
I didn’t go to the show because I didn’t want to spend eighty bucks and a Tuesday night on standing on concrete for the off chance I might touch Jon Bon Jovi’s thigh. That’s just not who I am.
Friday, September 4, 2009
Threesies
These are about the three laws of thermodynamics. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_of_thermodynamics, if you're looking for the real stuff.
Nothing Goes Away
The lie will resurface eight years from now
and she will leave, howling.
The carbon from your aborted baby will resolve itself
into your second son’s wedding ring.
The energy we spend is never wasted,
the split atom’s fury powers crumbling cities.
The electrons are shared;
they travel from the continent of one atom to another unchanged.
Time spent walking the baby up and down and up the hallway
will metamorphose into that baby’s hours hovering over your deathbed.
Myths resurface like bodies,
the old flood rises and rises and we never forget
and nothing ever goes away.
Everything Gets Worse
She told me and I have to believe her. First
the rains came and the cats drowned. Their yowling
woke the baby, who didn’t scream
at first. That waited until we had nothing to eat
(that’s a lie. You can eat candles did you know that? Leather is
alright, if you boil it.) And the baby screamed until she died
and she joined the others in the black waters. That was bad
enough until the sun sank and we lived in a world
of amorphous grays and steam. It was too hard to keep track of things
that mattered and I lost her. I finally now believe
that the arc of the universe bends towards injustice
after all.
Things Fall Apart
After all things wind down, and the systems of obligation have worn out-
the rubble still stands. Its sunset there, always. Don’t worry.
We can use the old movie theater as a bunker.
We know this in our bones, which are eroding
hour by hour counted on clocks that are already winding down,
that this too won’t last.
The bunker is already breaking into stones and sand, nothing to be remarked upon.
It’s only natural.
Nothing Goes Away
The lie will resurface eight years from now
and she will leave, howling.
The carbon from your aborted baby will resolve itself
into your second son’s wedding ring.
The energy we spend is never wasted,
the split atom’s fury powers crumbling cities.
The electrons are shared;
they travel from the continent of one atom to another unchanged.
Time spent walking the baby up and down and up the hallway
will metamorphose into that baby’s hours hovering over your deathbed.
Myths resurface like bodies,
the old flood rises and rises and we never forget
and nothing ever goes away.
Everything Gets Worse
She told me and I have to believe her. First
the rains came and the cats drowned. Their yowling
woke the baby, who didn’t scream
at first. That waited until we had nothing to eat
(that’s a lie. You can eat candles did you know that? Leather is
alright, if you boil it.) And the baby screamed until she died
and she joined the others in the black waters. That was bad
enough until the sun sank and we lived in a world
of amorphous grays and steam. It was too hard to keep track of things
that mattered and I lost her. I finally now believe
that the arc of the universe bends towards injustice
after all.
Things Fall Apart
After all things wind down, and the systems of obligation have worn out-
the rubble still stands. Its sunset there, always. Don’t worry.
We can use the old movie theater as a bunker.
We know this in our bones, which are eroding
hour by hour counted on clocks that are already winding down,
that this too won’t last.
The bunker is already breaking into stones and sand, nothing to be remarked upon.
It’s only natural.
Friday, August 28, 2009
It takes two to tango
I think I can, I think I can. College is hard and sometimes lonely. I wrote this when I was sitting in a courtyard, texting my best friend because no one would talk to me in real life. People are strange
The Biographies of Strangers
1.
I spent a year falling asleep in bathtubs around southern California.
2.
My mother wasn't my mother.
3.
I love my sleep. Life has a tendency to fall apart when I'm awake, y'know?
4.
The moon sings for me, but I may have hit my head on something.
5.
I have scars on my hands from touching certain people, but I made sure they had broken jaws.
6.
I'm pretty sure it's peanut butter- but oh, fuck allergies.
7.
Rehumanizing is such a long process
The Biographies of Strangers
1.
I spent a year falling asleep in bathtubs around southern California.
2.
My mother wasn't my mother.
3.
I love my sleep. Life has a tendency to fall apart when I'm awake, y'know?
4.
The moon sings for me, but I may have hit my head on something.
5.
I have scars on my hands from touching certain people, but I made sure they had broken jaws.
6.
I'm pretty sure it's peanut butter- but oh, fuck allergies.
7.
Rehumanizing is such a long process
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Theme post! Poem one!
I've gotta tell the truth here. I am a lazy, lazy writer. Which really wouldn't be a problem, except I want to be a damn good writer and when those two crossbreed, the result is like a mule - unproductive. As I head off to college the fabulous Mills, I am afraid that the inevitable distractions of college - like oh say, earning a degree- will distract me from one of my real passions in life.
So this is my challenge to myself. I am going to write a poem a week for all four years I am in college. If we take a second to do the math, thats 52 poems a year multiplied by 4 years so
52 x 4+= 208 poems.
My God, that is a lot of poems.
But that's part of the challenge. If I can stick to this, I can do just about anything. I've fallen through on a lot of things in my life. I want this blog to be a practice run on how to follow things all the way through in my life.
And with that said, here's poem numero uno.
Barbary and Bengal
they say that gladiators fought the Barbary lion in the Coliseum
that if we flipped over cobblestones onto their bellies like beetles
we would discover dried varnishes of blood, DNA gathered by the sword.
those lions, they say, fought gladiators and pirates
(people who no longer exist except as Halloween costumes)
we don't think of it much, they way we don't think of lies
that broke down, kisses that broke lips, but tigers used to tread in Turkey.
there were lions in Italy, until we killed them.
at the death the twentieth century, the only Barbary lions and Bengal tigers
were left in private collections; Saudi Arabian oil sheiks, Russians
who ran from the collapsing empire with their pockets full.
aren't we all private collectors of one kind or another?
our memories padding the locked cages of our minds smelling of predator and fear.
The only things that survive are clawed.
So this is my challenge to myself. I am going to write a poem a week for all four years I am in college. If we take a second to do the math, thats 52 poems a year multiplied by 4 years so
52 x 4+= 208 poems.
My God, that is a lot of poems.
But that's part of the challenge. If I can stick to this, I can do just about anything. I've fallen through on a lot of things in my life. I want this blog to be a practice run on how to follow things all the way through in my life.
And with that said, here's poem numero uno.
Barbary and Bengal
they say that gladiators fought the Barbary lion in the Coliseum
that if we flipped over cobblestones onto their bellies like beetles
we would discover dried varnishes of blood, DNA gathered by the sword.
those lions, they say, fought gladiators and pirates
(people who no longer exist except as Halloween costumes)
we don't think of it much, they way we don't think of lies
that broke down, kisses that broke lips, but tigers used to tread in Turkey.
there were lions in Italy, until we killed them.
at the death the twentieth century, the only Barbary lions and Bengal tigers
were left in private collections; Saudi Arabian oil sheiks, Russians
who ran from the collapsing empire with their pockets full.
aren't we all private collectors of one kind or another?
our memories padding the locked cages of our minds smelling of predator and fear.
The only things that survive are clawed.
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