Tag: poetry

how to write again after winter

~ CarolGM-Poet ~ 13 Comments

Look at your journal frequently

carry it around

move it from surface to surface

set a pen beside it   a pretty good pen

not the best pen

pick them up put them down pen and journal

decorate the journal   a sloth sticker, a Texas state park ghost buffalo

put a very small journal in your pocket to carry at all times

and a tiny pencil

read read read read read read read

become weak and jealous

because you love some other’s poems so much

keep reading until you are over yourself and focus

on loving those other’s poems wholly, without shame or jealousy

occasionally write on a scrap of paper like a receipt or the inside of a new sock wrapper

or squeezed unreadably into the margins of a printed article you read about writing

a word or a line that stirred inside you like rocks in a tumbler

that you might want to quote later or use as an epigraph

or title  

lose and

find these scraps and occasionally ponder those words

this can go on indefinitely

buy some colorful little sticky tabs

tab favorite pages in some books

believe you have things to say about the book’s ideas

or the grace of a line

like a poem you might start

and sometimes try to find on that tabbed page the stirring

bit though you won’t and this can go on indefinitely

try to not listen to your cat who prefers you

to be in a position where you can’t write

when he lies on you and otherwise

says nothing demands nothing except

not writing  

lifting the pen bothers him

think quietly stilly writing a whole thing in your head

this can go on indefinitely       this trying not to yet

obeying the cat

even now he covers your journal with his long milkweed body

his paws soft as desert primroses limp and white

so you listen to your cat

he chirps

this can go on–this now this now this now indefinitely

summer is arriving which is to say springs’ puddles become thunderclouds

the towhees make a constant racket

the iris smell of grapes and root beer (purple and brown)

the tulips are your first kisses long faded

crab apple blossoms litter your floor like of course snow

reject the tired cliches but still

you want to tell someone

when the cat feels you pick up your pen and try

to write what you want to tell and the cat begins to leave

you put your pen down

because after all he is the reason you are sitting down at all

when he leaves you pick up your pen

when he comes back you put it down again

this can go on indefinitely

your brain gets way ahead of your pen since you’re not writing

and when the cat returns

chirping and opening his silky throat to your hand

purring with a healing rough rumble

as if he were a mercury outboard engine gurgling beneath a lake

you want to tell someone

and of how your children are grown

your partner is patient

so what’s the problem?

a little shame opens in you like a hole in the ground

maybe just a small hole like the door to a cement ant colony or

a dark lily you like to breathe

do not go there     do not breathe that

not that cave or dark door or flower

or wait maybe you can pick up your pen and write about that

or list potential titles for your book in progress

didn’t you put a few on the margin of a Nature Conservancy magazine

or a 2 year old New Yorker?

and wonder if titles count as writing

Quench.   Fire Season.  Ghost House.

The Feral Lady Reflects on Gertrude Stein’s Portrait

this can go on indefinitely

titles      the cat’s return

and then a text bleeps

your phone always nearby witnessing

google memory is too full

you must delete

clean

pen down     phone up

a job dings in

editing

maybe you won’t try to write until that job is done

or until the days grow shorter

or colder

or the spring’s puddles fill with lightning and thunder and breakage

but the day is tender as a cat’s purr and his throat

you want to tell someone about this

you could pick up the pen

you could tell someone

your journal or your sister or a stranger

how perhaps writing isn’t as necessary as you thought

or it is

you pick up the pen and the towhees do not stop speaking

and the cat is asleep curled in a chair now

and the day is long then the soft evening

the sun’s purr   the moon’s silky throat

dark star in the farthest sky

you want to tell someone about this

you open your journal

pick up your good enough pen

begin to write

and the evening is as sweet as it ever was

as kind to you

as patient as you have been

and you think about how later you might write about a whiskey you call Truth Serum or tequila smooth as a cat’s throat–in light of your topic, how to write–or about the best pens, or how now the journal is open, the pen’s in your hand, then it’s touching the page

its first mark a tiny blue planet

Hello Old Friends and New Readers, 2024

~ CarolGM-Poet ~ 3 Comments

Just over two years ago my house burned down in the Marshall Fire. A lot of your homes burned down. Many animals died. Two humans died. A neighborhood died. And apparently I let my wordpress site die, but we escaped with our cat, a change of socks and underwear, our so-called important papers, our winter boots and coats, and innumerable friends and strangers who helped us recover–our gratitude can’t ever be spoken strongly enough. But I did take one journal and I kept writing in it, and a book is being born as we speak–a troublesome birth, but all births have quite a bit of drama involved I know from experience, literal and metaphorical. So I begin again, just past solstice 2023. Oh, I also learned that many journals won’t accept poems that have been on social media including wordpress. So no poems here except through links. Welcome back, I hope you’ll welcome me back as we together wake and find a little light floating like a raft we swim up to reach.

On the Occasion of an Art Exhibit on Bees

~ CarolGM-Poet ~ Leave a comment

Invited by the Colorado Poets Center folks (if you publish poetry, register yourself here http://coloradopoetscenter.org and meet the welcoming Beth Franklin among many others) to join other poets presenting poems involving bees at Art Bar and Gallery, I thought about many bee cliches as in the 18th century poem “How Doth the Busy Little Bee” (Wyatt) and chose to resist those tropes. Ever noticed how we think all members of a species look alike until we finally pay attention? Ever notice how we sometimes project our own values onto non-humans (in that case, untiring industriousness)? One result of that projection is the current practice of forcing the labor of bee colonies. This isn’t a great poem, but a poem for the occasion. coloradopoetscenter.org 

Against Wyatt’s How doth the little busy Bee   1715

We have seen in the bee ourselves unresting, 
our busy buzzing with business. We proclaim
hurrah workers! what helpers! what devoted underlings
to the Queen! And: poor drones, so strictly directed.

 If we have a day of rest we watch you unresting, 
clones, droids, tools.  Stop.  See now your trade in sweet beauty,
your stripey variations from wobbly to wide, 
from black to brown and golden, or green; 

how each wing’s gossamer net spreads, arresting in
your singular beauty, and how each of you is beautiful 
in humming, beautiful in interpetive dances,  
beautiful with your semaphores of fluorescence,  

each bee sky writing beautiful important arresting
poetry while your hive watches with their blazing dark eyes.
Very detailed macro portrait of bee Very detailed macro portrait of bee bee eyes stock pictures, royalty-free photos & images

Poem for Isolation

~ CarolGM-Poet ~ 11 Comments

to: prisoners, refugees, immigrants, aged infirm, quarantined, us.

What I need to write now

is a different sort

of poem, one that

dings like a text or better

rings like a phone

call and when you

answer it is

your best friend, brother,

child, something, someone like

that, and everything is perfectly

fine, they say, the night’s heavy

snow is melting under spring sun,

something like that happens, and

let it be a poem that

doesn’t surprise you

at the end of it

with some scary real

news or moment of existential

panic like we get

every day. No,

I will write a poem

that could be everybody’s friend, could be

a hug, a kiss, could be

the delivery of oranges,

or the neighbor’s plum trees

flowering with certainty

there will be no late frost

no kiss of death

so when I share

this poem, I will edit out

the kiss of death,

will cut it short, and the flowers

will ease into fruit in this poem

over several warm months,

and when the poem of your phone rings

it will actually be your doorbell

(you have a door and a bell in this poem)

and there will be your neighbor,

your best friend, your children,

something like that, someone,

this poem, a hug during

the time of waiting,

not a poem of longing. Why

must I always follow

the poem to there,

a sorry visit to my heart,

a shocking fact in my mind,

some science that insists

on being spoken,

that it may be a very long

time before you have a door,

or a bell or a door bell rings,

if ever, but still,

when you open the door,

let the poem of us

be surprised and wait,

cherishing the light in our faces,

then let us reach out

and touch each other’s hands

then step as close

and hold each other as close

as a clam to its shell

mud to a shoe

a cat on your lap

fish in water, carpet to floor, bird to sky, egg to nest, worm to dirt, tree to root, type to page, planet to gravity.

Then let the poem be with you

like you and it are two peas

in a pod, that is

as close as the you-to-me

you always are

wherever you are.

Let my poem touch

you till you laugh.

p.s. Peas come 6 or 8 to a pod.

The poem will have a party!

Edward Hopper, Sunday Morning, 1930

Midwinter Night, Solstice December 21 2019

~ CarolGM-Poet ~ 2 Comments
Fairbanks winter solstice, courtesy University of Alaska

What People Mean

Cousin Anne writes that the light that generally accompanies visitations has been seen at the Nighthawk cabin recently.

Midwinter sunset rolls out the red carpet for our mother

and midsummer dawn casts a gold path for our father

and the world they travel turns parallel to ours.

Transparent but visible, it overlays us,

think of 3-d lines in a comic book. 

Lightly, they embody themselves here, now,

their hands like clear latex gloves sheathing my hands.

Now we are dunking a pinwheel cookie, family recipe,

in a chipped mug with reheated coffee

and when I get up to light the candles

my mother’s hands cover mine and she shows me how

how to hold the match and strike away,

how to smooth with our hand a white cloth

where we’ll lay our ritual winter feast.

Free Cat Dreams

~ CarolGM-Poet ~ Leave a comment

Thought you all might like a break from Chained Dog Dreams. These are our cats Natty Bumpo and Little Bear. They engage in synchronized dreaming. I wonder if they are both dreaming of sunshine. You can order Chained Dog Dreams now from me directly (leave a comment) for cover price of $19.95; I’ll pay shipping and will sign your copy if you’d like. It is also available as a special order from bookstores (through Ingram), at the Denver Book Bar, Narrow Gauge Book Cooperative, libraries, and through Amazon and Barnes & Noble. I have a few accidently wine soaked ones for free.

Coming right up, Book Celebration!

~ CarolGM-Poet ~ 9 Comments
It’s a bookstore, it’s a bar, it’s a center for community conversation. Grateful to be there soon, thanking family and friends and word folks with good food, good drink. Come early for a bottomless mimosa and sit by the fire..

https://www.bookbardenver.com/

from Chained Dog Dreams, the Newt

~ CarolGM-Poet ~ Leave a comment

As a Newt, I Found Summer to be Disastrous

The condition of my skin determines the condition of my health.

When my colony and I perceived the margin of our pond

drawing an ever-smaller circle on its clay beach

we decided to crawl out to seek bigger waters

and failing that, have a worthy adventure before desiccation.

It is in my nature to hang stilly in warm still shallows of a silty pond,

to meditate on the nature and meaning of immortality,

to brush shoulders with other newts,

to draw in insects and algae with a slight slow

opening and shutting of my mouth,

to sift oxygen from water with the slowest fanning

of my external lungs.

Instead, I stepped out, tiptoed for many days and nights

across wire sharp sand and ticking grass

trying to keep my tender belly clear.  My palms calloused.

I sheltered from sun beneath the shadows of stones,

singing whenever I could a song for rain.

I thus arrived at your door to ask for a dish of water

before tip-toing on across your asphalt drive.

I remember helping to lead an equity retreat in Taos NM some late Augusts ago. After a session, I swept up a number of these small dry bodies from the corners of our meeting room. I learned from Galen that newts often have to travel when their vernal ponds dry up. When I found some living newts in the kitchen, I sketched the small dark creatures and journaled about them and this poem developed. It was a sad time. I did return them to their nearby pond, an intervention I’m not sure was a good one. The moment foresaw global warming and today’s reports on the deaths of salmon. The grammar of animacy (see Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass) in poetry–and in many children’s books–comes naturally when we empathetically don the persona of others unlike us. If in Potawatomi even the wind is alive, it also was in the language of Christina Rossetti who wrote “Who Has Seen the Wind,” in which the trees bow down their heads when she passes. We might dismiss this as personification, but in English, it is how we do adopt languages of animacy.

Geodesic Dome Plants at the MCA

~ CarolGM-Poet ~ 4 Comments

Is it an accident or brilliantly witty that the rooftop at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver that is showing an exhibit of Drop City Founder Carl Richert’s geometric mystical paintings taking off from Buckminster Fuller designs has these plants outdoors? Thinking of starting a family based blog about synchronous events and twinning etc. open to all to contribute. Yes?