Notes on a Quest....

Poem for today....

Call Me
Frank O'Hara
 
        The eager note on my door said "Call me,"
        call when you get in!" so I quickly threw
        a few tangerines into my overnight bag,
        straightened my eyelids and shoulders, and        

headed straight for the door.   It was autumn
        by the time I got around the corner, oh all
        unwilling to be either pertinent or bemused, but
        the leaves were brighter than grass on the sidewalk!

   Funny, I thought, that the lights are on this late
   and the hall door open; still up at this hour, a
   champion jai-alai player like himself? Oh fie!
   for shame!  What a host, so zealous!  And he was        

there in the hall, flat on a sheet of blood that
        ran down the stairs.  I did appreciate it.  There are few
        hosts who so thoroughly prepare to greet a guest
        only casually invited, and that several months ago.

Let's see you find the world now.....

Last News About The Little Box

by Vasko Popa

The little box which contains the world
Fell in love with herself
And conceived
Still another little box

The little box of the little box
Also fell in love with herself
And conceived
Still another little box

And so it went on forever

The world from the little box
Ought to be inside
The last offspring of the little box

But not one of the little boxes
Inside the little box in love with herself
Is the last one

Let's see you find the world now

FP....he wrote this...

And it's like a song I can't get out of my head...  I love it.  In other news, I made a friend.  A real friend.  We made dioramas all evening and watched the SpongeBob Square Pants movie.  We had fun.  We decided we liked hanging out and would continue to do so...

Off to NYC in a matter of hours.  Here's a poem by FP...

The Blue Booby 

by  J.Tate   

The blue booby lives
on the bare rocks
of Galapagos
and fears nothing.
It is a simple life:
they live on fish,
and there are few predators.
Also, the males do not
make fools of themselves
chasing after the young
ladies. Rather,
they gather the blue
objects of the world
and construct from them

a nest—an occasional
Gaulois package,
a string of beads,
a piece of cloth from
a sailor’s suit. This
replaces the need for
dazzling plumage;
in fact, in the past
fifty million years
the male has grown
considerably duller,
nor can he sing well.
The female, though,

asks little of him—
the blue satisfies her
completely, has
a magical effect
on her. When she returns
from her day of
gossip and shopping,
she sees he has found her
a new shred of blue foil:
for this she rewards him
with her dark body,
the stars turn slowly
in the blue foil beside them
like the eyes of a mild savior.

Track

    
by Tomas Transtromer

 

2 A.M. moonlight. The train has stopped
      out in a field. Far off sparks of light from a town,
      flickering coldly on the horizon.

 

As when a man goes so deep into his dream
    he will never remember he was there
    when he returns again to his view.

 

Or when a person goes so deep into a sickness
    that his days all become some flickering sparks, a swarm,
    feeble and cold on the horizon.

 

The train is entirely motionless.
    2 o'clock: strong moonlight, few stars.

Creative Writing

One of my students
has written a story:

It's the end of the world
and an alien spaceship

is circling the planet
trying to make contact.

Hello? Anybody down there?
But it's just as they suspect.

After the atmosphere ignites —
nothing. Not a whimper. Even

our germs are dead. Now
they'll have to start over.

What a drag! Other planets
in the galaxy are doing fine

but you and I, the human race,
we just can't get it somehow.

Perhaps reptiles might work
or something underwater…

And so it goes for fifty pages —
fifty million years in fact,

one dimwit, evolutionary dud
after another — until finally

Homo Erectus! our old friend
back again. Talk about irony!

The best minds in the universe,
eon upon eon of experiment

and here we are, right back
where we started, doomed —

perfectly ignorant, oblivious
to art, language, metaphor...

yet hearing voices nonetheless,
the genius of creation itself

mumbling at us from a cloud.
So what can we do after all

but sweat blood, struggle,
learn to write it down —

never mind the spelling
the ribbon without ink —

the lords of the universe
are circling the planet

like moths around a desk lamp
and the whole dorm is asleep.

by Michael Van Walleghen from Blue Tango

I know I don't like to post poetry but...

Perhaps Michael Landon made me slightly braver.

I agonized between two different drafts of this poem today. But thanks to those from my list serve who finally and most helpfully just offered an opinion on which one to go with.  This one will go into the hands of Famous Poet tomorrow.  It went through 33 drafts when all was done and said.  Needless to say, I'm slightly obsessive.

(poem removed now...thanks for reading!)

Tonight, I wrote a poem about Michael Landon...

Yes, I did. 

Tomorrow is workshop and I spent all my time this weekend working on that damned website for my client.  So tonight was my only chance to get a poem done.  In the end, I went for humor.  Because I needed cheering up.  And I have no idea whatsoever if this works.  Still, I'm always fascinated by the idea of Michael Landon.  And the fact that he still has actual fans maintaining website dedicated to him is well....nothing short of brilliant.  I mean this site features the Michael Landon Word Search.  I remove my hat and bow to insanitygreatness.  Wow.  Someone took the time to build this. 

For a day or two, I will post the text.  then I will probably take it down.  Actually, if my workshop hates it, I may leave it up.  Anyway, here it is:

Venice Beach

 

It’s the way the sky melts.

Trickles down through the palm

trees like warm honey. Latticed bird wings. 

Heaven! Shade gives way

to more shade under a perfectly

ripened sky. Where large umbrellas

harbor beautifully tanned legs

sipping drinks garnished

with smaller umbrellas.

Later Michael Landon emerges. 

Inhales the crisp, burnt air and sees

the promise of smog on the horizon. 

An orange highway cone sunset. 

There’s the beach!

A lone lifeguard races by

on the golden sand

clutching a life preserver. 

No one is drowning.

Three poems....

And because I'm paranoid, I don't like to post the text of my poetry here.  Still, because this blog is private and not public (invitation only really...an audience discovered by links or other means), I'll share with those who come by the audio files of my stuff.  Comments welcome.  It's a risk, but I'd like to share what I'm doing. To see if any of it makes sense.  Some of it may or may not....

Fade

Water Thief

Salt Ponds

The Sun

The Sun

All colors come from the sun. And it does not have
Any particular color, for it contains them all.
And the whole Earth is like a poem
While the sun above represents the artist.

Whoever wants to paint the variegated world
Let him never look straight up at the sun
Or he will lose the memory of things he has seen.
Only burning tears will stay in his eyes.

Let him kneel down, lower his face to the grass,
And look at light reflected by the ground.
There he will find everything we have lost:
The stars and the roses, the dusks and the dawns.

-Czeslaw Milosz

A Bishop poem....

This was written for Lowell, who as many of you might know, was bipolar.  He was in the hospital repeatedly with manic episodes.  He was very much off his rocker.  But...a good poet.  Not my favorite, actually, but a good one.  But Bishop, well to me, she's been the voice of sanity to me over the last year.  A brilliant poet.  Anyway, thought I'd put it up here for Miguel (who doesn't even have internet access from the hospital. Now THAT would drive me crazy!)

And one of my friends wrote me alluding that it sounded like things were hard right now after he read my blog.  Couldn't be further from the truth.  Hell, Miguel is in the hospital not me!  The visit I paid him was as much out of concern as it was out of curiosity as to what a Bronx psych ward looks like....  And it was an interesting field trip. Miguel knows me well enough too that I was fascinated by the whole thing.  Also, the heat...well, it's become a badge of honor for me.  As in "See?  Now I'M a New Yorker!!!"

I quite my job yesterday. My boss was devestated.  Actually, the team was pretty sad.  But happy for me.  I think they will try and keep me as long as they can justify it.  And in other news, I just got an email today saying I made it into James Tate's workshop class for the fall.   If you don't know who Tate is, well, he's this really famous poet.  Pultizer and all that...  So I'm excited.  Should be fun.  Or terrifying.  All depends on how you look at it.

Ok...onto the poem.

The Armadillo

by Elizabeth Bishop

For Robert Lowell

This is the time of year

when almost every night

the frail, illegal fire balloons appear.

Climbing the mountain height,



rising toward a saint

still honored in these parts,

the paper chambers flush and fill with light

that comes and goes, like hearts.



Once up against the sky it's hard 

to tell them from the stars--

planets, that is--the tinted ones:

Venus going down, or Mars,



or the pale green one.  With a wind,

they flare and falter, wobble and toss;

but if it's still they steer between

the kite sticks of the Southern Cross,



receding, dwindling, solemnly

and steadily forsaking us,

or, in the downdraft from a peak,

suddenly turning dangerous.



Last night another big one fell.

It splattered like an egg of fire

against the cliff behind the house.

The flame ran down.  We saw the pair



of owls who nest there flying up 

and up, their whirling black-and-white

stained bright pink underneath, until

they shrieked up out of sight.



The ancient owls' nest must have burned.

Hastily, all alone,

a glistening armadillo left the scene,

rose-flecked, head down, tail down,



and then a baby rabbit jumped out,

short-eared, to our surprise.

So soft!--a handful of intangible ash

with fixed, ignited eyes.



Too pretty, dreamlike mimicry! O falling fire and piercing cry and panic,

and a weak mailed fist clenched ignorant against the sky!