Thursday, June 29, 2017

so...this is late, but Poetry Thursday



Sonnet V
~Elizabeth Barrett Browning

I lift my heavy heart up solemnly,
As once Electra her sepulchral urn,
And, looking in thine eyes, I overturn
The ashes at thy feet. Behold and see
What a great heap of grief lay hid in me,
And how the red wild sparkles dimly burn
Through the ashen greyness. If thy foot in scorn
Could tread them out to darkness utterly,
It might be well perhaps. But if instead
Thou wait beside me for the wind to blow
The grey dust up….—those laurels on thine head
O my belovèd, will not shield thee so.
That none of all the fires shall scorch and shred
The hair beneath. Stand further off then! go.

Friday, June 23, 2017

end of an era





I have been holding on to some news. I am not sure if it is because I was in a bit of denial or because I was worried that if I said something, it might not work out.

I got a job.

It's in New Jersey.

So I have been packing up my life.

And, as my car decided to keep to the timeline I imagined, even though I stepped away from the PhD program.



That is to say, in January it started falling apart, slowly, and painfully (for me).

There was no way to take the car with me. I couldn't even get it south so I could give it to my father's friend. Though I think I have successfully convinced my dad that it wasn't a good idea to give it to the friend who couldn't possibly have the money to sink into making it really drive-able again.

So, I had to make a decision of what to do with the car, the little green machine that has been my constant companion for the past 16 years.

It drove me cross country, away from my ex-husband, into my new life in Oakland.  It drove me to the next new life in New Mexico.

It served as my phone booth on those long drives between Oakland and Oxnard ... and sometimes, when I couldn't bring myself to talk to others, as the safe space where I could sing or cry or both.

It was faithful and dependable and constant.



I agonized about the decision, truth be told, though I might not have shown it. In the end, I decided to donate it to KQED in lieu of all the donations I have not been able to make in the past few years. Even as I was sure it was the right thing, it was so painful to let go.  I drove it down to the big avenue below my house so that the flatbed truck could more easily hook it up.
As I walked back up the hill to my apartment... to that messier before completely packed state, downcast and tears in my eyes, I spotted a car just like mine parked just where mine had been not twenty minutes earlier.
I am not sure what it means except that I thought, oh, you came back... may my little green car be happy either in someone else's home or as the parts that make other little green cars go...

Thursday, June 22, 2017

oops... poetry Thursday a day late


Beauty
~Ariana Reines
               Je suis belle, ô mortels! comme un rêve de pierre
               (Baudelaire)
These poisoned sensations have to be
Accepted if they’re to be
Overcome. Looking
Up calories on my phone

Not that I’m counting
Don’t even like numbers
It’s something vestigial
It comes in bad minutes

To teach my body something's in control
Something little & unholy, wrong idea
Of information, chiseling a transparent minute
Into myself with the afterimage of a form

If I did this kind of thing
On the bigger machine it’d be
Worse. Worse
Things than this are bombing

The world. A terrible
Fate is coming to power tomorrow. I’m reading
The early poems of Sherman Alexie. Desolation
Of secular life. I remember the luxury of speculating

All mystical traditions grew up
In the souls of a disciplined few
Turned in on themselves while under
Occupation by tyrants. That was then. This

Morning I could see one comfort: to become rock
Hard. Could imagine one comfort:
To have become rock. I had no
Imagination. I had his. I had theirs. “Formalism

& grammar are ways to be thin...” masochism
Merely thought of, the idea of a calorie
Most boring way to feel womanly doing itself to me
This morning I was panicking, burning, I was desperate

Scanning the body of my bedfellow
Its beautiful cheeks & chin
& long smooth abdomen
My silence growing fat like an old fruit

Still making me sick
It makes me sick I longed
For the wrong thing
I longed for death. I dreamed of stone
--
sent by hand
19 January 2017

Thursday, June 15, 2017

Poetry Thursday - back posting


What comes, will go.
What is found, will be lost again.
But what you are is beyond coming and going
And beyond description.
~ Rumi

Monday, June 12, 2017

Signs

My sister loved animals. On more than one occasion she told me they understood her better than people. So, it is easy for me to see signs of her in the animals that I meet.

She was the one who loved animals, but I was the one that animals always wanted to talk to or be near.

I have come to understand that animals appreciate my alpha vibe.  They are so happy to have someone else be in charge, and naturally wired to be drawn to the herd.  It works on cats, too, but in a slightly different way than dogs.  For some reason when I talk to the cats, they stop and listen.  It's a thing.  I have no control over it.  It just is.  The thing is, it used to really bug my sister, and all others that are animal lovers, that the animals would come to me for comfort and safety.

Now it makes sense that when my sister wants to communicate with me, or others, that she does it through animals.  My brother comes to me in dreams. And more than once he has actually reached out and touched me.  But my sister is less direct.  She shows up in possums and birds and butterflies.

Here are some from my long walk last week:
In these bushes is a moth (I think) black with a white stripe along the wings who followed me around on my long hike the other day.
I tried to get a picture of the large, yellow butterfly that was also hanging around, one of these landed on my head briefly.
Here was the black/white stripe one ... I just missed the open wings by a second.


Thursday, June 08, 2017

Poetry Thursday


My Mama moved among the days
~Lucille Clifton

My Mama moved among the days
like a dreamwalker in a field;
seemed like what she touched was hers
seemed like what touched her couldn’t hold,
she got us almost through the high grass
then seemed like she turned around and ran
right back in
right back on in

Thursday, June 01, 2017

Poetry Thursday

Heart to Heart

Rita Dove
It’s neither red
nor sweet.
It doesn’t melt
or turn over,
break or harden,
so it can’t feel
pain,
yearning,
regret.
It doesn’t have
a tip to spin on,
it isn’t even
shapely—
just a thick clutch
of muscle,
lopsided,
mute. Still,
I feel it inside
its cage sounding
a dull tattoo:
I want, I want—
but I can’t open it:
there’s no key.
I can’t wear it
on my sleeve,
or tell you from
the bottom of it
how I feel. Here,
it’s all yours, now—
but you’ll have
to take me,
too.