sometimes I wonder (revisited)
Sometimes I wonderif she ever existed.
—found poem
Sometimes I wonder
if she ever existed.
Only a smile now
a gesture
copper hair flashing
she fades even in dreams
artist in the supermarket
She stands in the aisle like reverse Stendhal:frozen, her hand extended over the mound of apples.
Apples push into her like the fists of a lover
knocking at a locked door, urgent, juicy, plump.
It's always like this: fruit overwhelms, vegetables
scream longing; fresh trout imagines a sizzling grill,
beef lounges in a marinade, ready to sear.
She wants to paint, to cook, to knead warm
transit
Night. City street after rain.Early autumn leaves cling to the pavement
like wet hair on a waiting face.
Amber and blue incandescence
lies in pools for walking entrances,
performances and exits,
as the occasional soloist mimes
man walking alone on the street
concert
engine idle just beyond theancient boathouse
river calm and waiting silent
to the weed beds
and the spaces vast, beyond
ease the throttle slowly forward
hear the engine twist
inside the music
The part I sing in our quartethovers above or below the melody;
often it sounds like the French horn.
The Lead's note sounds familiar;
the Bass is the solid foundation;
the Tenor lilts above all, thrillingly;
my part, the Bari, fills it all in.
cocoon
Inside the silk threadsis what will come:
beautiful wings,
gleaming reds, yellows, blues,
curves and strength,
the freedom of flight
instead of plodding,
gnawing eating.
lotus eaters
This is the first in a series I started a while back. I should write a few more on this . . .everyone on the street was
somewhere else
listening to music
words from another time
another place
after
She used to purr when she leaped onto the bed;I prefer to think of her arrivals.
I could read her expressions through the fur:
glad to see me (and usually was):
relaxed eyelids, fur sleek off the face;
impatient with my stupidity:
Mauve and Gold
If a god were eating strawberriesWhen that sunset happened,
I know he'd stop in mid-bite
With red sweet juice dribbling
Down his chin onto his toga
And just stare and do a god-thing:
driving home
The sun set just before we turned west onto the roadthat curved into the pure black landscape silhouetted
against the absolutely clear tangerine and indigo sky.
As our headlights revealed and dismissed the familiar
meanderings of this riverside route and its clusters of cottages
On being mistaken for myself
Photos never lieexcept when they must,
with a minimum of mendacity,
tell welting whoppers
about how egregiously old
the old codger has become.
I have studied photos
taken years ago
that make me look
what was left
First they took away the all moneypoured it into the government trough
and they fed the war in Afganistan
but still that wasn't enough
so they crucified the artists
and they stood around and laughed
Welcome to wordcurrents
June 19 My new poems here to date: 1081
What 1024 poems, 56 reviews look like
“Popular Posts” (June 19 ) I am amazed to discover that some of my posts have been viewed almost 10,000 times in the past two years.
“Comment: just a detail” (June 13 ) Why do designers, who are presumably artists, screw up school theatre space so badly?
“Comment: Thoughts on editing, managing a body of work” (May 26 ) As the title says, thoughts on keeping track and refining the work.
“Poetry: j’accuse!” (March 21 ) An essay on the state of the words poetry, poems and poets in popular culture.
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Popular posts
I was surprised to learn that some of my posts have been viewed much more often than I realized. I think I installed this feature in April of 2008; so that is when the post count started. The most popular is approaching 10,000 views. I am amazed.
Popular posts April 2008 to June 2010
Comment: just a detail
Licking old wounds is considered to be counterproductive, and it usually is; but sometimes it can be instructive. Please bear with me.
During intermission Friday evening at Cornwall Collegiate and Vocational School’s production of The Threepenny Opera, by Kurt Weill and Bertoldt Brecht, the common somewhat frantic theme of conversation in the audience was about the “damn air conditioning”, which was drowning out almost all the dialogue and some of the singing. This may be just a detail for building maintenance crews, but it is a significant detail for the audience and the performers.
Here was a pretty credible production of a very difficult vocal work, (more…)
Comment: Thoughts on editing, managing a body of work
I have been experimenting with Picaboo, a photo book company that allows for integration of photos and text, and expedites on line sharing and hard copy publishing. This service is similar to iPhoto, available on Mac. I find the process quite exhilarating, as it involves going exploring my archive of poems and photos. I shall be posting some samples here eventually.
An interesting method of finding poems here is to search for keywords; for example, yesterday, I was looking for a poem to post with a collage of photos from our flower garden. I searched using “garden”, and found a list of about forty poems (and a review!). I really enjoyed the process of reading the poems and revising. The process searches words in the posts, and categories and tags I have attached to each post to allow searches to find it using concepts that refer to the theme or content or location and so forth, even though those words may not appear in the post.
Two of the poems that turned up when I searched “garden” were “Lament of a Pillar of Salt” and “Lament for a Pillar of Salt”. I listed them in my Favourites for easy return to them.
One of the problems with trying to manage a sizable body of work is (and this applies to writing a novel or bringing together a collection of short works) is keeping track of it all. “Favouriting” is one simple way to do that. Another very cumbersome method is going through my binders of hard copies, which include works not posted here. Searching the blog gives me another method, but that is cumbersome too, if I want to be comprehensive. Being able to maintain several lists of favourites would make things easier, I suppose.
(Possibly to be continued.)
Haunted
The violin speaks long, sweet:
then pivots on a whim,
nails my spine to a long
empty hall inhabited by
echoes of wooden benches.
Youth cannot stay
but its sounds (more…)
Stompin’
They say that a modified goose-step
is hilarious–a silly walk.
A laugh-track accompanies
the man in the bowler hat
slinging his foot out at shoulder level
well above his brief case (more…)
concupiscible
She was blonde, pretty:
she smiled at the three older men
as they sat down at a table near the bar.
I know you
she smiled
and sat at their table.
Did we sing for you once
one of them asked, (more…)
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