A Word is Not a Home
A word is not a home
but we set our tables
between its walls,
cook meals, annoy
friends, abuse ourselves.
Sometimes I misplace
one, and can’t find
my house, much less
the window’s desk
or the chair behind it.
But if I wait, something
always takes form in the fog,
an arm, a ribcage, a feathered
hope struggling to emerge.
Inept, I take comfort
in these apparitions,
accept their offerings,
lose myself in mystery,
find shelter there
in the hollowed curves.
The transliteration on Chinese-poems.com reads:
Spring sleep not wake dawn
Everywhere hear cry bird
Night come wind rain sound
Flower fall know how many
Dear Friends,
Brick Street Poetry, Inc., a literary nonprofit based in Indiana, could use our help. Like many nonprofits, Brick Street depends upon donations to augment their projects, which vary from a monthly poetry reading series, to placing Borrow a Book boxes in state parks, publishing a literary journal and various anthologies, and establishing a neighborhood literary art park (to offer free workshops), just to mention a few.
This month they’re raising funds by asking people to vote, via PayPal donations, for favorite haiku in a just-published online anthology.
I’ve decided to help out by — what else — writing poems. See my post of September 5th for details.
Why am I doing this? I love poetry. If I, poet, reader and book buyer, don’t support Brick Street’s mission, who will?
I invite you to join me in this project and help out by reading, commenting, heckling, encouraging, insulting, cajoling, praising and yes, if circumstances allow, sponsoring me and donating funds (to Brick Street, not me). This might not be of much interest if the poems were simply going to languish in a file somewhere, but such is not the case. They will be posted online daily, beginning September 8, warts and all, for the world to peruse. That’s right – you’ll see my daily work, unpolished and raw, finished or not, and if you listen closely you may hear whimpers issuing from a certain garret in northwest Indianapolis.
Thanks for listening.
Bob
Dear Friends,
Brick Street Poetry, Inc., a literary nonprofit based in Indiana, could use our help. Like many nonprofits, Brick Street depends upon donations to augment their projects, which vary from a monthly poetry reading series, to placing Borrow a Book boxes in state parks, publishing a literary journal and various anthologies, and establishing a neighborhood literary art park (to offer free workshops), just to mention a few.
This month they’re raising funds by asking people to vote, via PayPal donations, for favorite haiku in a just-published online anthology.
I’ve decided to help out by — what else — writing poems. See my post of September 5th for details.
Why am I doing this? I love poetry. If I, poet, reader and book buyer, don’t support Brick Street’s mission, who will?
I invite you to join me in this project and help out by reading, commenting, heckling, encouraging, insulting, cajoling, praising and yes, if circumstances allow, sponsoring me and donating funds (to Brick Street, not me). This might not be of much interest if the poems were simply going to languish in a file somewhere, but such is not the case. They will be posted online daily, beginning September 8, warts and all, for the world to peruse. That’s right – you’ll see my daily work, unpolished and raw, finished or not, and if you listen closely you may hear whimpers issuing from a certain garret in northwest Indianapolis.
Thanks for listening.
Bob
Last November, Jenny Enochsson, editor of Tistelblomma, an online journal based in Sweden, asked me a few questions…
I cull and offer this and this,
and these last definite whorls
or later star or flower, such
rare dark in another world,
outdistancing us, madness
upon madness, the crest
and hollow, the lift and fall,
ah drift, so soft, so light,
where rollers shot with blue
cut under deeper blue as the
tide slackens when the roar of
a dropped wave breaks into it,
and under and under, this
is clear—soft kisses like bright
flowers— why do you dart and
pulse till all the dark is home?
I am scattered in its whirl.
* * *
This cento is composed exclusively of lines taken from fifteen pages in the Collected Poems of H.D., 6th printing, 1945. Hilda Doolittle is a fascinating figure in 20th century American poetry. You might look at the Poetry Foundation’s biography for further information:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/h-d
My poem, “Mr. Dobie’s Desk,” is live at Northwest Indiana Literary Journal. I am grateful to editor Joseph S. Pete for taking this piece. The photo below is of J. Frank Dobie’s desk. In another life, I was fortunate to have been able to spend time writing at it.
Laocoön
This figure of complexity
persuades a lingering
glance, the two-fold
inclination entwined,
horror expressed
in tandem, the sons’
limbs compressed
as the father struggles,
realizing true
sacrifice, the inward
grasp of storm and
wrath and serpent,
his face
echoing those yet
to come, breached
walls, a city in
flames, the cries
of warnings unheeded.
Laocoön, through Virgil’s Aeneid, is the source of the phrase “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.” The poem, which first appeared in The Blue Hour Magazine, was inspired by the sculpture “Laocoön and His Sons,” which resides at the Vatican. You might find Wikipedia’s entry of interest. Originally posted on the blog in February 2016.
Moths
Small moths stir
in the darkness.
I feel their
wings brush my
face, my hands,
remembering the cry
of something unseen.
It is windy
again this morning.
* * *
“Moths” first appeared here in July 2015.
The Garden
But what of this notion
of the romantic?
It rained last night.
I could smell it
before it fell,
each drop a perfect
sphere until the final
moment. This
is fact, impractical but
lovely for its truth.
* * *
Initially posted here in January of 2014, the poem was published many years ago (30?) as a poetry postcard offered by the literary journal Amelia. I admit to being wrong about the shape of raindrops. But hey, they start out spherical…
O at the Edges 