I should like your poems
I could like your poems
I would read them if I had time
I have time and I don't read them
do I find them too putrid
do I find them too mannered....
I do find them interesting
and I would read them if I could
and really, I should....
and I will
if I can.....
I might
if I may
I shall
if I do....
....they're asking me to prove why I should be allowed to stay with my baby in Australia, because I'm mentally ill......and they think I should leave......
a rather interesting little poem there, ISN...I'm not quite sure how to take it....but, I suppose it means you've been reading my stuff, so I suppose thanks!
mostly, I like your poems.....but seeing as I'm honest, I have to express my reservations......but I can't reply to each poem.....as you're so prolific....but on the whole, I really think you're brilliant....:)
....they're asking me to prove why I should be allowed to stay with my baby in Australia, because I'm mentally ill......and they think I should leave......
I only see him for a short moment
Ambling along the sidewalk by my car
Maybe fourteen, maybe nineteen, who knows,
Backwards fitted cap obviously new,
A Hook-Ups board tucked deep into sweaty
Armpit hell. The slick wooden board quivers
Under the gyrations of the boys’ fat.
Suddenly I’m scared he’ll actually
Try to hop on it right in front of me
So I can helplessly watch it shatter,
But he just glances sidelong at the car
As I pass, and heaves massive oxygen
Into still-young lungs. Somewhere, in some past,
Reside dreams of photos in magazines,
Shoe deals, and medals bestowed on half-pipes;
Long afternoons at the park grinding curbs.
Now he’ll have to settle in like the crowd
For long car rides, Atkins-diet saneness,
And, briefly, just once, slow dancing in rain.
Don’t think you can fool us
We are not as self-important
As you’d like to think
With our televisions and cemeteries
And flowerbeds
Rushing rivers we dam
And move around like serpents’ playthings
And you with your, well,
Cemeteries and flowerbeds
But more too
Divorces and wars
We know what those are
We are afraid of them but face them
What choice have we?
We are not long days not one of us
This fact eludes no one
Not the three year old
Not the ninety year old
I suspect even kittens know it
And inside our sandwiched moments
There are many beginnings too
The birth and the paycheck
Throwing rice at the couple
And where do you come from
With your Christmas and train rides
To reinforce life’s most endearing dread?
From dreams, carnivals.
mostly, I like your poems.....but seeing as I'm honest, I have to express my reservations......but I can't reply to each poem.....as you're so prolific....but on the whole, I really think you're brilliant....:)
I have to thank you for your honesty, ISN....I was away on a business trip for a week and so couldn't reply right away....while I do enjoy constant praise, it is a good reality check for someone to say "It's not all great"....that being said, the use of the word 'putrid' really floored me (I'm the sensitive writer-type, you know).....mannered, I can understand, but putrid? I suppose I can find it within me to continue....
I am writing wildly
Poems about total nonsense
(who fucked who
and the meaning of life)
With unabashed glory;
I am scribing vividly
Accounts of lives in shambles
(people who dance on tables
for money,
men with nothing to worship,
women who--while showering will--
slice their wrists with
disposable
razors in nonlethal ways
for the attention of nobody whatsoever,
groups of folks with so little to do
they fire rifles at the moon)
With undiminished enthusiasm.
I am charging forward
With images and words
Nonsense
About life on fire,
On metal striking bone
Pushing for someone (or something)
To take note of it all
(the children riding clouds in umbrellas,
the chimneys falling down brick by brick)
Because sooner or later
It will all catch fire
(in fact, things catch fire all the time)
And let there be no doubt
That I am a happy man,
Free to roam the sidewalks of this town
At any hour I want
Pausing to glance in the darkened showroom windows
At the walk-in humidors and elgant truffles
Of the specialty shops
That close at nine;
And let there be no doubt
That I am a happy man,
Lazily pacing the floor of my apartment
At noon in my sweatpants
Farting and eating Pop-Tarts;
And let there be no doubt
That I am a happy man,
Reading a book in the park
With my Starbucks coffee and a fresh pack of smokes
Listening to the kids play tag
The sun brighter than a thousand smiles;
And let there be no doubt
That I am a happy man,
Watching seagulls take off and land
Take off and land
In the parking lot
In the lock of mid-December,
Grinning at secret improbabilities.
I am a happy man,
It's true,
And on dark winter nights
(when it gets dark so early
and cold so fast)
I just close my eyes
And imaigine I'm strumming a guitar
Gently strumming an old old tune
On my blue guitar
As the fire cracks and pops an accompaniment
And Dodger, the faithfull Dachsund,
Nuzzles my feet as if he were slippers.
Oh! To be alone and happy,
It is not so hard!
It is on sunny days
I can best picture her
(walking nearly running)
Mouthing crazy sentences
And imploring me not to
Speak to her father
Or anybody for that matter
And not to ever forget her
Or the time she almost fell
In front of a subway train
Or the time her two-hundred-dollar hat
Blew off the upstairs balcony
Or the time we sat all day on the cabin porch
Counting flies and then stars
Or the time we changed a tire together
On that dirt road in Maryland
But of course I am forgetting it all
As I usually forget everything
Except perhaps that way she smiled,
Her pencil-thin lips turning up
Like the sterns of sturdy boats.
this has absolutely nothing to do with how good your poem is.
Just a funny little coincidence, this happened today:
we have been studying onomatopoeia and I made a worksheet that stated, "the fire cracked and pooped."
Oh, my goodness! Did the kids make me laugh in the hall at my own mistake? You bet.
Sitting beside my mother in the pediatrician's office
My tiny unsure hands clasp a brightly hued book
Which I earnestly and quite seriously pretend to read. Are you reading, honey? she asks, grinning,
And I, thinking she is fooled, reply, Yes Mommy. She nods, still smiling. I am very young.
And now years later letters tumble out hell-for-leather.
It is too easy to mistake learning for love, words for wisdom.
And the world goes by so fast
Sometimes.
All the concrete
Anonymous trees
And today, the rain.
Things run by so fast
Some say
Reaching your hand out the window
Could rip off your arm.
I believe this.
Stopped at a traffic light,
The rain slows to a patter.
I can see folks milling about,
Buying soda out of soda machines,
Under the hoods of their cars,
Pumping their own gas,
Paying, paying, paying.
The light turns green
And I am off again,
Fast through the world.
The rain joins the chorus of movement.
It is quietude I seek, you see,
in this room
in this quiet room
I seek it away from you,
these moments passed
unretrievable
unremembered
anonymous moments
where your face does not
present itself to me,
fades with each
steam-soaked moment.
Top-notch stuff, Groovemeister! I like the very subtle shifts of nuance, in lines 1-3, between the existential state of quietude your speaker presents, and his description the physical quiet of a room. I also like the consonantal equivalences of "m" and "r", which suggest, in their very sound, a round, warm room, a womb! This insular, soundless place is the speaker's protection from the spectre, the recollection of the poem's addressee. The build up is good, too, from monosyllabic to polysyllabic words ("unremembered", "anonymous moments") which beat like a heart within the womb, a place of distance and comfort from an unwelcome memory.
Yet, one asks: although the poem's chief subject is this room, the speaker seems to overreach himself in claiming he is safe from his memory, though he claims it fades. This is one reason why I like the poem so much; it understands irony in a nutshell, and with it, much of our human predicament: our failure to escape those who affect us most deeply. The phrase "you see" beautifully gives the game away: the addressee is most vital to the poem, and is asked to see what the speaker sees in retreat.
You were wearing those loose brown pants
(the ones I like)
the day we saved it's life;
we stepped from the hot car
onto the shade-specked access road
(our feet had just met)
and the whir of cicadas
(or were they just crickets?)
was distinct and distant
in the air around us.
You were pretty that day
(and I was handsome)
although we rarely touched;
the woods, I am certain, noticed us.
The turtle in front of the car
wasn't pretending to move--
it may as well have been
a steel shoe,
dropped and forgotten
by some steel, green-hued princess--
I tapped it's shell with my Converse
and it sucked it's snakey head
inside. I gasped, the way I always do
when turtles do that,
or when anything green
moves too fast.
You picked it up
like it was a softball
and sat it gently on the mushy
leafy road shoulder,
although I suspect you didn't care much
for the creature;
still,
your indifferent demeanor was like
telling the world
(or at least those woods)
you didn't really care one way
or the other,
but you were sure gonna change things.
Walking back to the car,
I decided right then
that you could have me,
that I'd be your Prince Turtle,
your Hot Shining White Sugar Man.
Comments
I could like your poems
I would read them if I had time
I have time and I don't read them
do I find them too putrid
do I find them too mannered....
I do find them interesting
and I would read them if I could
and really, I should....
and I will
if I can.....
I might
if I may
I shall
if I do....
Ambling along the sidewalk by my car
Maybe fourteen, maybe nineteen, who knows,
Backwards fitted cap obviously new,
A Hook-Ups board tucked deep into sweaty
Armpit hell. The slick wooden board quivers
Under the gyrations of the boys’ fat.
Suddenly I’m scared he’ll actually
Try to hop on it right in front of me
So I can helplessly watch it shatter,
But he just glances sidelong at the car
As I pass, and heaves massive oxygen
Into still-young lungs. Somewhere, in some past,
Reside dreams of photos in magazines,
Shoe deals, and medals bestowed on half-pipes;
Long afternoons at the park grinding curbs.
Now he’ll have to settle in like the crowd
For long car rides, Atkins-diet saneness,
And, briefly, just once, slow dancing in rain.
We are not as self-important
As you’d like to think
With our televisions and cemeteries
And flowerbeds
Rushing rivers we dam
And move around like serpents’ playthings
And you with your, well,
Cemeteries and flowerbeds
But more too
Divorces and wars
We know what those are
We are afraid of them but face them
What choice have we?
We are not long days not one of us
This fact eludes no one
Not the three year old
Not the ninety year old
I suspect even kittens know it
And inside our sandwiched moments
There are many beginnings too
The birth and the paycheck
Throwing rice at the couple
And where do you come from
With your Christmas and train rides
To reinforce life’s most endearing dread?
From dreams, carnivals.
I have to thank you for your honesty, ISN....I was away on a business trip for a week and so couldn't reply right away....while I do enjoy constant praise, it is a good reality check for someone to say "It's not all great"....that being said, the use of the word 'putrid' really floored me (I'm the sensitive writer-type, you know).....mannered, I can understand, but putrid? I suppose I can find it within me to continue....
Thanks again for the honest appraisal.
Poems about total nonsense
(who fucked who
and the meaning of life)
With unabashed glory;
I am scribing vividly
Accounts of lives in shambles
(people who dance on tables
for money,
men with nothing to worship,
women who--while showering will--
slice their wrists with
disposable
razors in nonlethal ways
for the attention of nobody whatsoever,
groups of folks with so little to do
they fire rifles at the moon)
With undiminished enthusiasm.
I am charging forward
With images and words
Nonsense
About life on fire,
On metal striking bone
Pushing for someone (or something)
To take note of it all
(the children riding clouds in umbrellas,
the chimneys falling down brick by brick)
Because sooner or later
It will all catch fire
(in fact, things catch fire all the time)
That I am a happy man,
Free to roam the sidewalks of this town
At any hour I want
Pausing to glance in the darkened showroom windows
At the walk-in humidors and elgant truffles
Of the specialty shops
That close at nine;
And let there be no doubt
That I am a happy man,
Lazily pacing the floor of my apartment
At noon in my sweatpants
Farting and eating Pop-Tarts;
And let there be no doubt
That I am a happy man,
Reading a book in the park
With my Starbucks coffee and a fresh pack of smokes
Listening to the kids play tag
The sun brighter than a thousand smiles;
And let there be no doubt
That I am a happy man,
Watching seagulls take off and land
Take off and land
In the parking lot
In the lock of mid-December,
Grinning at secret improbabilities.
I am a happy man,
It's true,
And on dark winter nights
(when it gets dark so early
and cold so fast)
I just close my eyes
And imaigine I'm strumming a guitar
Gently strumming an old old tune
On my blue guitar
As the fire cracks and pops an accompaniment
And Dodger, the faithfull Dachsund,
Nuzzles my feet as if he were slippers.
Oh! To be alone and happy,
It is not so hard!
I can best picture her
(walking nearly running)
Mouthing crazy sentences
And imploring me not to
Speak to her father
Or anybody for that matter
And not to ever forget her
Or the time she almost fell
In front of a subway train
Or the time her two-hundred-dollar hat
Blew off the upstairs balcony
Or the time we sat all day on the cabin porch
Counting flies and then stars
Or the time we changed a tire together
On that dirt road in Maryland
But of course I am forgetting it all
As I usually forget everything
Except perhaps that way she smiled,
Her pencil-thin lips turning up
Like the sterns of sturdy boats.
this has absolutely nothing to do with how good your poem is.
Just a funny little coincidence, this happened today:
we have been studying onomatopoeia and I made a worksheet that stated, "the fire cracked and pooped."
Oh, my goodness! Did the kids make me laugh in the hall at my own mistake? You bet.
Your poem is great!
My tiny unsure hands clasp a brightly hued book
Which I earnestly and quite seriously pretend to read.
Are you reading, honey? she asks, grinning,
And I, thinking she is fooled, reply,
Yes Mommy. She nods, still smiling. I am very young.
And now years later letters tumble out hell-for-leather.
It is too easy to mistake learning for love, words for wisdom.
Sometimes.
All the concrete
Anonymous trees
And today, the rain.
Things run by so fast
Some say
Reaching your hand out the window
Could rip off your arm.
I believe this.
Stopped at a traffic light,
The rain slows to a patter.
I can see folks milling about,
Buying soda out of soda machines,
Under the hoods of their cars,
Pumping their own gas,
Paying, paying, paying.
The light turns green
And I am off again,
Fast through the world.
The rain joins the chorus of movement.
in this room
in this quiet room
I seek it away from you,
these moments passed
unretrievable
unremembered
anonymous moments
where your face does not
present itself to me,
fades with each
steam-soaked moment.
Yet, one asks: although the poem's chief subject is this room, the speaker seems to overreach himself in claiming he is safe from his memory, though he claims it fades. This is one reason why I like the poem so much; it understands irony in a nutshell, and with it, much of our human predicament: our failure to escape those who affect us most deeply. The phrase "you see" beautifully gives the game away: the addressee is most vital to the poem, and is asked to see what the speaker sees in retreat.
Clever work!
(the ones I like)
the day we saved it's life;
we stepped from the hot car
onto the shade-specked access road
(our feet had just met)
and the whir of cicadas
(or were they just crickets?)
was distinct and distant
in the air around us.
You were pretty that day
(and I was handsome)
although we rarely touched;
the woods, I am certain, noticed us.
The turtle in front of the car
wasn't pretending to move--
it may as well have been
a steel shoe,
dropped and forgotten
by some steel, green-hued princess--
I tapped it's shell with my Converse
and it sucked it's snakey head
inside. I gasped, the way I always do
when turtles do that,
or when anything green
moves too fast.
You picked it up
like it was a softball
and sat it gently on the mushy
leafy road shoulder,
although I suspect you didn't care much
for the creature;
still,
your indifferent demeanor was like
telling the world
(or at least those woods)
you didn't really care one way
or the other,
but you were sure gonna change things.
Walking back to the car,
I decided right then
that you could have me,
that I'd be your Prince Turtle,
your Hot Shining White Sugar Man.