04-30-09
Letter from a Bear / Project Poem-A-Day: Day 26
I know this is April 30, but I kinda slacked at the end of the month.
Letter from a Bear
Every time one of us
kills one of you. You
come back with nets, and
tranquilizers, and shotguns
to avenge your brother.
And you say it’s to keep
your innocent families
safe. So we don’t roam -
aggressive mother bear – in
your comfortable
suburban dwellings,
break the illusion that
your place at the top
of the food chain
was earned, maul
your precious children.
Well, what about my children?
Who ever thought
what it meant for us to have
to see you in our homes,
your loud talking
scaring us from our sleep.
Do you know how terrifying
it is to see your tracks
next to ours? My ancestors
were murdered by yours.
Sometimes skinned.
Sometimes the focal point
of your smiling
vacation photos. Sometimes
hauled on the backs
of your trucks -
to show off the danger
you managed to avert in the woods.
The danger.
As if you weren’t the
one with the shotgun. As if
it was your children’s
heads hanging on our walls.
As if we ever attacked
you unprovoked.
We have been killed by you
for centuries. Over and over.
You’ve destroyed our home and
you insist on dragging your
broods through it
for a weekend getaway. Don’t
you get it? You are
latecomers to this party.
We have the claws and teeth
and natural distrust of outsiders.
We are supposed to kill you. And
that doesn’t change just
because you bring guns here.
Every time you see me, I am
coming for you. Take that as fair
warning. Come unarmed in here
again. I dare you.
I know I’ll eventually
die by your hands,
so I pray for
the chance to send more
of your brothers home without
clothes, and limbs, and faces.
More reasons for you to hunt
me. And declare revenge
in their names.
04-28-09
Three Years / Project Poem-A-Day: Day 25
Three Years
Magical, coo the uninitiated. The week ends the way
lyrics begin in three minute-long pop songs. Celebratory: as if
melodies were incidental, meaning were optional, and
rhymes and catchy hooks told less than the whole story. The crowd
dances to the rhythm of each others breathing. I hear my story from her throat.
Click the following links for a fuller context of this piece:
04-27-09
A Last Great (an American sentence) / Project Poem-A-Day: Day 24
I am putting this up late. I actually had it written in time, but the weekend was so busy, I slacked. I’m going to be less strict on myself now and say I have until the end of the day Thursday, April 30 to post 6 more poems.
By the way, the American sentence is a poetic form invented by Allen Ginsberg.
A Last Great
(an American sentence)
The trees dance joyously outside; their shadows thrash each other against the window like drunks on Lansdowne.
04-24-09
Picture of the Day
That’s hilarious to me.
04-23-09
Crooked Silence / Project Poem-A-Day: Day 23
Crooked Silence
Crumbling paper
walls, as frequent as
confused squawks
from a flock of
lost ducks.
Abandoned dirty hood scene,
poles top-heavy
with light.
Night falls, they
lean against
each other. Come
out and play,
he says, with
his chin on his chest;
the soles of his sneakers
lightly graze
the floor. A
grown man walks into the
sunset, back bent,
his shadow sliding
in the opposite
direction. Much of
the film is shown
in silence. The
private journals of
gods are misleading;
the lies they tell themselves
end up as entries
in his own. He crouches
behind his own fingers,
ready to slay sometimes.
The elderly forget
their own names.
04-22-09
Clothes and Shoes / Poem-A-Day: Day 22
My most recent joints – Days 20, 16, 17, and 21 – were all created through writing exercises I’m developing for work. Today’s also came from an exercise that incorporates a reading of an excerpt of Maxine Hong Kingston’s Woman Warrior. Probably a few more in this vein to come.
Clothes and Shoes
His pipe was broken.
They blamed me, the help, so I packed my
clothes and shoes to leave on foot.
Even if I had – and I did, but they
didn’t know, so – if I had broke his pipe
or broke her mirror, or whatever
prized possessions, if I burned their robes
into smoke, or dropped their old hair
combs, grinding them into frozen stone,
so what? I never hurt them as people.
But in that moment, they made sure to keep me
underfoot. They tore my jacket on the way out,
I was nothing to them; less than that,
I was a Chinese boy – maybe sent to be
her work from God. Challenging her
to turn me civilized.
04-21-09
Human / Project-Poem-A-Day: Day 21
Human
He’s tired of running backwards.
All his toes have done is ache,
and the muscles in his arches
feel like snakes in mating dance.
He barely even knows now
what he started running for –
let alone in reverse. Soon he’ll stop.
But there’s motive behind his actions:
he’s seen the future, and tries his best
to avoid that life, so it’s up and down these
city stairs and his neighborhood slopes.
He hasn’t fallen very often,
and all in all feels pretty good.
He isn’t even wearing sneakers,
but wearing loafers hasn’t hurt.
But so far, his whole reason
for starting this whole project now,
doesn’t seem quite as bad
as he imagined then.
There was motive behind his actions:
now he looks foolish, but it’s too late
to avoid that so he may still keep going.
People staring. Make a decision.
04-20-09
Project Poem-A-Day: Days 16 & 17 (makeup)
I was sick at the end of last week and missed two days of new poems. Although at the time I was gonna let those two days drop, I figured the whole point of the challenge is to write a whole bunch of new stuff – and so why not make up for those two missed days. So here they are.
Coyotes
“I’m not going to be very judicious,
I’m afraid,” as he struggled to haul kindling
to build a fire that night during his watch.
“They’ve run across here before – like birds, like a
line through one right through to the next one;
it’s hard to know which one to follow.” Memories
of their blighted homes floated behind his statement.
His shotgun leaned against his shoulder with a secret to tell.
“Areas…” he said, before rethinking his point.
“This is home to us, not to them,” he continued.
“If we could live peacefully together, I wouldn’t
bother being here,” as he ran
a finger down the seam of his jeans,
tracing the scar underneath, that he earned from
the last time he encountered his prey.
Broken Metaphor
Romance is a used pot of oil for deep frying,
holding onto flavors of past lovers.
The oil I use is suited for drinking.
With odor like the first step in the front doors
of a downtown late night diner. A reveler tastes
the pasture in his beef; the pickup bell sings muffledly
under the smoke of drunk conversations;
heat slides through nostrils and mouths
as air, proving more essential than oxygen; as
the lights bathe the room in dramatic white shadow.
In this kitchen, all the help bang elbows and egos
writing a melody that sounds the way
canned tomatoes taste.
Three years into college, I’m here to impress her:
the woman I might marry.
The oil is not suited for drinking.
The napkin dispenser is empty, I notice,
has this ever happened before?
I tap a rescue message with my pinky nail
against Formica, because if I live this down
I might find rhythm in music again.
It’s not called crying, it’s a teardrop;
everything I say is unnecessary.
The contained tantrum of pride
dropped its arms in the parking lot
at the end of a long day. The
flashing neon is childhood, a reassuring hour
in the bath, a bedtime song.
I break through the glass window without a sound,
pick up the pieces and return them to the pane.
The Big Guy is about to try something new.
In adulthood,
when there are no more problems,
we’ll be back here again, triumphant as game show winners.
The regal pool of ketchup wipes itself off the plate,
reveals skids of oil I forgot were there.
Eating to live is a way to survive, but not for us.
Ce qu’elle a dit, ce soir la?
The cup of coffee takes a final drag of
cigarette, coughs out a teaspoon of sugar.
The asphalt outside is wet from rain or
late night street-cleaning; we haven’t noticed.
As we stumble off the curb, we step
over a trail of romance before the sun rises.
04-20-09
Have Fields / Project Poem-A-Day: Day 20
Have Fields
A siren cuts through the fog, echoing. Cold
through sickly branches, the neighbor kids
hold snowballs behind their heads.
Shall we dance? Her eyes close, breathing
becomes free. Fade to black over
sounds of dinner.
A gloved hand pats the animal’s back,
returns her soul for another day. There are
ways to do good, without being good.
A defined moral is a dandelion picked in spring,
and kept until next year. Living room glare
flashes off and on; this is surely the 1980s,
when life was learned between commercials.
It can be hard not to seek an end to summer.
04-19-09
Padma’s Sonnet / Project Poem-A-Day: Day 19
Padma’s Sonnet
(a Shakespearean sonnet in iambic pentameter)
In mirrors, her reflection’s hard to read:
her eyes deceptively shine star and sun.
As rubies do, her mouth drives him to greed:
march strong to mines, then turn as if to run.
The actors know she’d never learn to sing
the arias that others write alone.
Requests are never taken by the king,
except when Padma deigns to steal the throne.
A fiction writer (who gets paid to dream)
in fantasy, should hardly dare to dwell.
Reality creates a simple scene:
she left him plainly, reason dares to tell.
She doesn’t mind to hang her heart in frame,
but lotus flowers bloom within her name.
