Regarding Your Silly Assed Expectations / a draft

Regarding Your Silly Assed Expectations / a draft

I have struggled with a second language
The way you wrestle a carry-on bag,
a laptop, a purse and Victoria Secrets shopping bag
as you depart your flight at the terminal.

My tongue manages to say things—
It’s not dependable. Not the way an open window is.
I’ve thought a lot about it. Perhaps too much
of an intellectual leaning. I’m perplexed
to the point of linier grief.

Passing through customs I suppose I can be insouciant.
It is only after the fact that I wallow in subverted dismemberment.
My head rings with the lyrics “too late baby” and I swallow a lump
hanging beneath my chin.

It is the expectation of everyone that I assimilate. I say, “Fuck that!”
Is it a crime to be only marginal in a second language
where most are only marginal in their first?

In customs I declared a bracelet left to me by my grandmother,
Two hundred twenty-nine Paso, a book of matches
with Hector Barilla on the front, my clothing, toiletries
and a cheap paperback, "Say It In English."

Inevitable (draft)

Inevitable (draft)

The prodigal son is just one of many
though he knows expectations run high.
There is always this red velvet carpet
that divides his thought process.

The future is some worm baited taunt,
and awkward as being caught with a cousin
at the Perkins family reunion.
It takes the swim of salmon upstream

to break a biblical cycle
that darkens the sky and
chokes off free will.
Times like these you swear
You’re an orphan.

Giving Up - a memoir

I've finished reading Giving Up - The Last Days of Sylvia Plath by Jillian Becker. This small memoir now joins the dozens of biographical books and essays I have read about Sylvia and Ted.

This book is quite small. It need not be extensive because Jillian's contact with Sylvia was indeed short and the book only relates to that short period of days prior to Sylvia's death, when she sought refuge for her children from her distressed state with Jillian and Gerry Becker.

Much of what I read is merely another historical account of those days. As far as new perspective, it provides little, but perhaps a tad closer look Sylvia from a first hand perspective.

The most interesting things are:

• Jillian's assessment that Dido Merwin truly could not stand Sylvia but was quite fond of Ted and saw him as an equal in stature to his husband Bill. This is not surprising, as the tone of this is set in the Anne Stevenson book "Better Fame." I suppose it was nice hearing someone else say what I believed I has surly not mistaken in reading Stevenson's biographical account.
• Jillian's view that Sylvia had perhaps lost her passion for poetry at the end. This based on the fact that she was critical of Sylvia's last poems and thought them to be doggerel rhythms that seemed to stamp on the grave of poetry. She may not have liked Sylvia's poems, but the ones on question are among Sylvia's most powerful and passionate works. Once she was finished with them, perhaps she might have been drained emotionally, but It is hard for me to consider them a sign of a loss of passion. They are full of it!
• Jillian Becker expressions about her own emotional response to Sylvia's life and death are expressed in heartfelt terms. She truly was in a unique position those final days, and some have perhaps suggested that she and Gerry (as well as others) could have and should have done more to save her. Her response to these suggestions is very reasonable. They may have kept Sylvia alive a few extra days, but they did not have the power to change the many external issues that added to Sylvia's issues. Jillian herself describes herself as a poet (though a humble one by the company she kept) and one addicted to poetry. She says she grew out of that addiction due at least in part to the painful involvement in the lives of poets. (Ted, Sylvia, Assia & her husband - perhaps others with which she was acquainted with)
• It was noted that Sylvia left no suicide note. Not new information, but she reminded readers that the final poems she left would have been painfully clear to Ted if no one else.
• The issue Jillian took with Ted's poem Dreamers, which she calls sickeningly anti-Semitic and the explanation she offered.
• The fact that while Jillian and Gerry were present at Sylvia's funeral, there is no mention of the mystery man (mentioned in other accounts) in her account of those in attendance.
• Taking issue with Sylvia's iconic stature by the feminist movement.

These are what I found most notable among pages (roughly 75) of the short memoir which is now a part of extensive Plath biographical reads.

draft [Desolate Brand Name]

Desolate Brand Name

A deserted brand rested on the counter.
Alone, it could not move about.
There was no heart-to-heart, no clatter
Not even gossip to weight it down with guilt.

The brand became generic
Of its own accord.
A brand name, insignificant
With no one to call out to it.

The night grew into the severest ebony
It had ever know—
Failing to see beyond the room,
Beyond any hope—
It sought its own demise,
But remained helpless on the counter.

Her Ancestors Lived Deep Within the Crack of Vanity

Another poem of mine is up over at The Flask Review in their current issue.

Another Poem published...

Autumn Sky Poetry edited by Christine Klocek-Lim has published one of my poems. The current Volume 7 can be seen here. My poem, We Missed can be seen directly here.

Do check out the other poetry in this edition. Christine has done an excellent job putting it together!


words

Weekend Recap...

I was excited to learn that Kim Addonizio will be coming to town in November for a reading. How cool is that?!

Meanwhile, I've been working on drafts of a new poem this weekend.

This, in addition to visiting my mother, taking my wife's computer work station apart and moving it upstairs and reassembling it and running shopping errands.

Earlier this evening I did some reading and editing as well. Oh, I'm also bemoaning to fact that the baseball season is coming to an end. [sigh]

Oh, I tried a blog exercise of randomly clicking on one of the blogs in my sidebar, then doing the same on that blog, and on and on till I went six deep. Sort of a six degrees of separation. Kind of interesting to see where it leads.

2 < 33

When tragedy strikes, there are often words that follow. Words of sorrow, of anger, frustration or guilt. There also comes a silence or at least the ineptitude to adequately verbalize.

Kelli yesterday posted a link to an article from the Roanoke Times about a poem by Bob Hicok, poet, and Virginia Tech English professor. In the poem, Hicok writes about shooter Seung-Hui Cho and the professor's feelings of guilt for not doing something to stop his former student who on April 16 took 33 lives including his own at Virginia Tech. Hicok was of several professors in the department to voice concerns about Cho after reading a play the student wrote in Spring 2006 about a student who plans a mass school shooting. Nothing came of their expressed concerns.

This and other incidents and in some cases non-incidents have sparked a debate about where one crosses the line in writing literature between artistic expression and cause for concern.

Paradoxically I see this in Hicok's own poem with a painful examination. In a most powerful twist, these words ring out of his poem titled "So I Know"

Maybe we exist as language and when someone dies
they are unworded. Maybe I should have shot the kid
and then myself given the math. 2 < 33
I was good at math. Numbers are polite, carefree
if you ask the random number generators.
Mom, I don't mean the killing above.
It's something I write like "I put my arms
around the moon."

There is something to be said for putting our arms around the moon.

words

The Rug

Horizontal stripes thrown down
Bar the floor from leaving.
We watch all day
It never moves from prison.

You and I are visitors
Neither saying much
And the floor isn't talking.

Perhaps it has spoken things to others,
Later used against it.
Dirty truths that were never intended
Beyond its horizontal plane.

Child Soldiers [draft)

A slumping night
Wept for those pressed into duty battle
By grown men with archaic presence of mind
To plunder the natural order- peace-

It is all remedial arithmetic.
More soldiers equals more tokens in their hands.
More chips they can gamble away
With low maintenance child warriors.

No enlistment paperwork or die-cast metal tags
To string around their necks.
No toe tags for the dead.

No one knows where they come from
Or cares where they go;
No duty to notify families or messy emotions.
Just a simple war-
With child labor.

I'm In Poor Mojo's Almanic(k) Issue # 342

One of my poems accepted earlier this year is finally up at Poor Mojo's Almanic(k).

The direct link Beautiful Music.

A Monday Medley

This is the start of a grueling week of getting things in order to be out of the office for a week. So much to do, so few nerves left to stretch.

A few bits from my journal this last week:

• a pretentious line from a love song / neither recalls the tune
• tracing a smile with his finger / her red lips kiss his index
• the days are ruled / by tweezer fingers /picking here, picking there
• crystal frost clinging to the bony flesh /of the best face one could put forward / under blistery circumstances
• a mind is a terrible thing to use when it's fucked up
• no one's here but scamper feet / who've come to witness my headache- / a mind with anxious classical thoughts / the Greek gods eavesdrop through paper walls

~0~

755
for Bud

You there when history was made
I saw you in high def
You didn’t want to be there
Your face said as much
Your looked so uncomfortable in your skin

Later you talked on your cell
I wonder who it was
There was no excitement in your face
I was excited for him
You should have stayed home

The Breakdown ofThinking (Draft)

The Breakdown of Thinking (draft)

A once pristine constellation of small gauge wired pathways,
Moved data about with intrepid speed.

This territory later would clog down and misplace
Important bits of knowledge lost in the cobwebs that stretched
Tilted in corners of the shell of an aging command central.

If older is wiser, it is also part of a strange pathos;
More is less, expanse is limited, there is always a but—
These come with a price that never seems to be negotiable.

Sunday... I believe it is too early

Sunday morning and my mind is largely in sleep mode. I did notice something worth checking out over at Jilly's: The Reanimation of Ted Williams' Frozen Head.

Then I noted that Kelli responded to the NPR series "This I Believe" and her response can be read here. Thinking about this reminds me, I did one many moons ago, and decided to see if in fact that mine made it past the circular file. To my surprise, it did, and can be found here.

I've had breakfast and need to find what I did with my medicine but thinking about where I last had it is like doing mental calisthenics and it is too early for that. Ouch!

Kraft Macaroni & Cheese

Went to my mailbox yesterday and much to my astonishment found a stamped piece of a Kraft Macaroni & Cheese box cut the size of a postcard. On the flip side a note about one of my poems that appeared in the Grist - 2007 ( State Poetry Society Anthology).

It was of course a pleasant surprise. The writer acknowledged liking my poem titled "Sport Utility Poem"* for "pzzzazzz and sasss-"

I found the writer's approach using recycled box both enterprising and heartening. It had to have passed through a couple of other hands in order to reach me and that gave her a way to make a statement by example. The writer was a poet peer and she expressed herself in verse with an Ode To Michael Poet.

While this was not a situation where a poem had a life affirming impact on another it was none the less the kind of acknowledgement of an others work I blogged about a few days back that I noted as rare. It is I suppose, one more reason this box of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese was especially tasty.

* this poem first appeared in the Rockhurst Annual Arts Review in 2006

So Many Questions (draft)

Gravity driven cracks of despair
Map the years of his face
And give character
Where otherwise none exists.

Reading him offers more questions than answers—
Like why has he so little to say
Verbal or otherwise?

If time has been kind to him
It would be subjectively debated.
Perhaps he was not meant to live this long—
Or he could be far younger than imaginable.

He seems so alone. Why is he alone? Is he really
Alone— was there ever someone in his life
That smoothed out the cracks
That ask so many questions.

An Oral History Not Withstanding (draft)

Counting stops
Momentarily—

Across the acres of indifference
To a score no one cared to keep

And narration will not reveal
A winner as such
And maybe that an event was
Ever held

Will be in doubt,
As the birth of a sparrow
Claiming nothing to its credit
Passes without notice.

Father's Day

Couple of items from Father's Day.... A Waterman Phileas fountain pen -burgundy and black marbled ( picture doesn't do it justice) and my ASU ball cap complete with "Sparky" the Sun Devil. By the way, ASU won their opening round of the College World Series Saturday. They play again tonight.

The pen is from my lovely wife. It is gorgeous and way more pen then I would have bought myself. Writes as smooth as honey. It will certainly make both journaling and hand written poetry drafts much more enjoyable.

Speaking of Father's Day.... Enjoyed this piece about Donald Hall & the poems he wrote on the passing of his father. While he write about the experience right away, the poem took 17 years to complete.

The Guerilla Poetics Project has blogged on Poetry Live & it is worth taking a look at quickly - Like before it goes away!!! It is a nicely put together site and merits the attention of the poetry community at large.

Here is a really cool site. If you enjoy awesome photos - check this out: street:haikuby an xiao. I'd love to do some collaborative writing with photos like these.

Only recently I've been turned on to Charles Simic. How he had slipped under my radar I cannot say. Here is one of his poems to enjoy: My Noiseless Entourage

a draft

Scraper

Breaking ground in forced exposition
Hoisting aloft the engine of ingenuity
Panels fastidiously fastened to iron girders
Reflecting upon a day stars dream

Of colossal architectural spawning
From the mind’s envelope pushed past all others
Higher vision touching nothing but the wide open
Thinness of molecular indifference to volume