Morning
All year long there is
the table by the window,
blue cups with white rims,
the black teapot.
There are sometimes flowers,
when we remember.
There are paisley napkins,
and always oranges.
The window looks down
into a courtyard,
and sometimes up
into blue sky.
by Frederick Smock
i was here. thinking about blue skies & a plate of orange slices.
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have i told you before? have i?
that i like to lie in bed at night with the lights out and watch little movies like this one on my ipad.
just before i fall asleep.
dreaming of bus rides through snowy hills.
and little cafes just like this one.
I DO.
i click the HD to make the HD go away. makes things faster. more efficient. easier.
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If I'm very lucky when I am 86 I will feel just exactly like the lady in seat 38C. We all will.
The Lady in 38 C
gets confused. She thinks I’m her nurse.
“Nurse!” she yells. “My finger!”
So I bring her a band-aid
and put it on even though she’s fine.
“Oh thank you nurse!” she yells.
“You’re a good one.”
She winks and smiles and the woman next to her
glares into her computer.
I think the old lady’s charming.
She’s 86, still pretty. Her eyes are blue.
Her hair is a cloud.
She looks exactly like what’s outside.
She’s the only air in this cabin, the only light.
“Nurse!” she yells, and I look back
over the sad heads, eggs in a carton,
faces pressed against
the mite-ridden blankets
and pillows they fought for,
and there she is, beaming.
“Nurse,” she says. “Where are we?”
I take her hand
and look out the window.
I scratch my head, smile
and say, “Somewhere
over Idunno.”
She’s the only passenger
who’s ever gotten that joke.
Up here, nearly everyone is miserable.
I count on small joys to get by.
The woman in 38C says, “Oh, Nurse!”
and the woman next to her
who probably thinks we’re somewhere
over Idaho, that wonderland of Hemingway
and golden potatoes,
rolls her eyes and bangs the computer keys
until the seatbelt sign goes on
and the captain says,
“We’ll be experiencing weather.”
which is what people say
instead of scary things like storm and turbulence
and pretty soon the plane is bouncing
and the woman with the computer
grips her armrest
while the old lady throws her arms up
like she’s on a roller coaster and yells,
“They should charge extra for this!”
by Lori Jakiela (former flight attendant)
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The White Sky by William Stafford
Many things in the world have
already happened. You can
go back and tell about them.
They are part of what we
own as we speed along
through the white sky.
But many things in the world
haven't yet happened. You help
them by thinking and writing and acting.
Where they begin, you greet them
or stop them. You come along
and sustain the new things.
Once, in the white sky there was
a beginning, and I happened to notice
and almost glimpsed what to do.
But now I have come far
to here, and it is away back there.
Some days, I think about it.
sometimes i like to swallow poems whole. but that one i kept going back to nibble at it. i've featured poems of william stafford here before. they're all good. edible even.
like the epis blooming out back.
even the ones that are wilted are still luscious.
this week i got some ultra inexpensive acrylic craft paints from the martha stewart satin line. lots of pretty colors! they have a matte finish when dry which is kind of a nice change. the periwinkle purple color is one of my usual liquitex brand paints.
i started this visual journal below in january 2011. i just have a few pages left. it's been left alone to fend for itself for months at a time while i was off galavanting with other lovers. like my travel journals or sketchbook or inspiration journal. i also have a stack of wood panels out in the garage i've been wanting to dig into, but that means i would have to drop everything else for awhile. NO CAN DO.
i saw this quote today and it spoke to me. screamed at me actually. i took notice and wanted to share.
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for 48 years i had a love affair with the moon. but now i like starshine best. it's hard to choose. i certainly don't have to. not really. but when i was in chiapas this past winter, i saw such brilliant stars in that inky black sky and looked at them for so long with such deep wonder and love... that i knew after that i'd have to break up with the moon. and marry the stars.
this video has nothing to do with stars but i thought it was exquisite with a capital E.
you will too. i just KNOW it.
and this poem has everything to do with stars. ~
Looking at the Sky
by Anne Porter
I never will have time
I never will have time enough
To say
How beautiful it is
The way the moon
Floats in the air
As easily
And lightly as a bird
Although she is a world
Made all of stone.
I never will have time enough
To praise
The way the stars
Hang glittering in the dark
Of steepest heaven
Their dewy sparks
Their brimming drops of light
So fresh so clear
That when you look at them
It quenches thirst.
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here. a small sliver of poem. to go with the glimpses into my travel journal.
taken from New Years by Dana Gioia
because sometimes i like the little bites better than the whole piece.
But can this blur, this smudgy in-between,
This tiny fissure where the future drips
Into the past, this flyspeck we call now
Be our true habitat? The present is
The leaky palm of water that we skim
From the swift, silent river slipping by.
The new year always brings us what we want
Simply by bringing us along—to see
A calendar with every day uncrossed,
A field of snow without a single footprint.
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it figures that the second i wrote that the 2nd grade punks were shaping up, they all started sharpening their tiny fangs, hissing, spitting, cursing, writing nasty notes, making animal noises, blowing imaginary trumpets (loud), plugging their ears, and growling.
aw well. 1 step forward. 10 steps back. it's all part of my master plan.
i came home and read this poem. and felt better.
thanks anna maria for pointing me in the direction of charles simic. he's a wonderfully strange person. and everyone knows i love the weirdo poets the best of all. my bretheren.
My Turn To Confess
A dog trying to write a poem on why he barks,
That's me, dear reader!
They were about to kick me out of the library
But I warned them,
My master is invisible and all-powerful.
Still, they kept dragging me out by the tail.
In the park the birds spoke freely of their own vexations.
On a bench, I saw an old woman
Cutting her white curly hair with imaginary scissors
While staring into a small pocket mirror.
I didn't say anything then,
But that night I lay slumped on the floor,
Chewing on a pencil,
Sighing from time to time,
Growling, too, at something out there
I could not bring myself to name.
by Charles Simic
~
oh and also. i made arrangements to skip town the second my winter vacation starts. going here:
elevation 7500 ft.
guess where.
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Friday. A day set aside for rejoicing. Instead of thinking about the 312 things I have to do back at school on Monday, I came home and read a poem.
I thought about how I watched this flower open in the dark on Thursday night. While I stood out back shining my flashlight on the opening petals. A real live magic show.
This is a night blooming epiphylum. She only blooms at night and only lasts until late morning. If I hadn't been doing laundry in the garage. If I hadn't of looked across the patio at the exact right moment. If I hadn't found my flashlight in time. I would have missed the show.
I bent my head down close and heard the petals brush against night air. A tiny whoosh of air. So tiny I might have imagined it. Except I didn't.
Enjoy your weekend pleasures. I'll just be here. Sitting out in the sun. Listening.
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The Word
Down near the bottom |
by Tony Hoagland
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In one of my early visual journals I have this poem written. I remember how funny I thought it was when I came across it in a book I was reading. I read it aloud to a friend. We roared with laughter. You have to have a certain level of appreciation for your own past or current paranoia in order to like it. It appeared the other day in Writer's Almanac and with no one around except Buck Moss to listen, I read it to him. Sit still for a minute. I'll read it to you.
We Who Are Your Closest Friendswe who are by Phillip Lopate |
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~
More summer reading. So good! The east coast Moss troupe and I retire to the patio each early evening for reading & cocktails. Yesterday found us here. A little known jewel of a park where we lolled about on blankets & pillows reading and picnicking until early evening.
The day before we scooted up the coast for a Santa Barbara adventure.
The weather has been mild and pretty close to perfect. Happy summer dreaming from LA...to wherever in the big wide world you happen to be (!)
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Bright sky and warm sunshine. It feels like spring. A little tree on my back hillside has turned emerald green with all the rain. Velvety moss is growing on my bluff. That sounds like, but is not in fact, a metaphor. Really.
A rose has bloomed. Her heady scent wafted over to me as I pruned then fertilized my roses. I planted a geranium in a pot. Admired the lemon tree. Sat outside watching and listening. All week sunshine is forecast.
I'm still organizing and categorizing in my art room. This flat file recently came to live at Moss Cottage. Things that have been in plastic bins are being assigned new living quarters. So far everyone is getting along.
Sometimes a poem feels like a story. That's how this one felt. I read it slowly aloud, then again, and again. I decided it sounds better if you repeat the last 2 lines. I'm certain Theodore wouldn't have minded.
It reminds me of moving through the world. It reminds me of a train trip I never took. I might need to add a 49th thing to my list.
Night Journey
Now as the train bears west,
Its rhythm rocks the earth,
And from my Pullman berth
I stare into the night
While others take their rest.
Bridges of iron lace,
A suddenness of trees,
A lap of mountain mist
All cross my line of sight,
Then a bleak wasted place,
And a lake below my knees.
Full on my neck I feel
The straining at a curve;
My muscles move with steel,
I wake in every nerve.
I watch a beacon swing
From dark to blazing bright;
We thunder through ravines
And gullies washed with light.
Beyond the mountain pass
Mist deepens on the pane;
We rush into a rain
That rattles double glass.
Wheels shake the roadbed stone,
The pistons jerk and shove,
I stay up half the night.
To see the land I love.
I stay up half the night.
To see the land I love.
by Theodore Roethke
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First a small slice of a poem by Mary Oliver. Let's start things out right...
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
In a few days I won't be a fortysevenyearold anymore. Inspired by birthday lists I've seen all across the cyber galaxy I set forth to cobble together one of my very own. A plan of what to do with my one "wild and precious life" before I turn 49 next year.
48 Things
1. make lemon curd marmalade with lemons from my tree
2. go see a live performance at the hudson
3. go on a stairway walk in silverlake
4. go for a hike at point lobos
5. take 100 photos at La Foire Nationale à la Brocante et aux Jambons
6. roadtrip all the way up hwy 395
7. make envelopes lined with wallpaper
8. teach another online class
9. plant some fruit trees in the front yard
10. make a blurb book of istanbul
11. finish the blurb book of the amalfi coast
12. find the lost coast in northern california
13. walk through a redwood forest
14. drink a cup of hot chocolate at Angelina’s
15. take a spanish class
16. paint a room pale grey
17. see death valley
18. go to a ghost town
19. bake a blueberry pie
20. explore an unexplored area of downtown on foot
21. walk up the hill in back in the middle of the night in my pajamas
22. blow bubbles out the car window
23. take a bus somewhere
24. go for a walk in the rain
25. put up 2 bulletin boards in art room
26. clean out the garage. again.
28. travel to a new city in mexico
29. pick strawberries
30. get lost
31. copy a poem in my journal during a faculty meeting
32. walk on the beach paths in pacific grove cambria under starlight
33. meet a stranger for dinner in paris
34. walk aimlessly around the santa barbara botanic garden
35. map out locations of leo & pipo's pasteups in paris. photograph.
36. find street art in paris. photograph
37. teach myself some manual camera settings
38. make a wild dance mix cd. dance to it.
39. spend a few nights in ojai
40. read a book by lantern light inside my tent bedroom during a wind storm
41. roast marshmallows on the back patio
42. make at least 10 collage panels
43. move more eat less
44. plant some herbs
45. go to san francisco with lianne
46. stop at a fruit stand
47. build a campfire
48. eat a chicago hot dog. in chicago.
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More photo favs that I took in 2010. And a lovely winter poem because sometimes I dream of snowflakes.
~
once a snowflake fell
on my brow and I loved
it so much and I kissed
it and it was happy and called its cousins
and brothers and a web
of snow engulfed me then
I reached to love them all
and I squeezed them and they became
a spring rain and I stood perfectly
still and was a flower
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Just playing in my new book. I like the way a journal is a container. It holds what I put inside. Maybe tonight, on this last day of November, it will hold a poem. Maybe this poem. Maybe you'll want to read it out loud. It's nice that way. Go on, I'll listen.
GATHERING LEAVES
by Robert Frost
Spades take up leaves
No better than spoons,
And bags full of leaves
Are light as balloons.
I make a great noise
Of rustling all day
Like rabbit and deer
Running away.
But the mountains I raise
Elude my embrace,
Flowing over my arms
And into my face.
I may load and unload
Again and again
Till I fill the whole shed,
And what have I then?
Next to nothing for weight;
And since they grew duller
From contact with earth,
Next to nothing for color.
Next to nothing for use.
But a crop is a crop,
And who's to say where
The harvest shall stop?
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There is movement beneath the water, but it may be nothing. There may be nothing going on. And then life suggests that you remember the years you ran around, the years you developed a shocking lifestyle, advocated careless abandon,owned a chilly heart. Upon reflection, you are genuinely surprised to find how quiet you have become. And then life lets you go home to think about all this.
Which you do, for quite a long time. This is life's way of letting you know that you are lucky. So you have a sandwich,and pie for your late night dessert. And then go back to bed, to dreamland, while outside, the starfish drift through the channel,with smiles on their starry faces as they head out to deep water, to the far and boundless sea.
plucked from STARFISH, a poem by Eleanor Lerman
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Driving through the streets and finding one cache after another of decaying posters. It's like stumbling on a thick seam of diamonds. Over and over again.
Then small snapshots of the same poster. I'm hooked! Small records of the street. Moments in time. Reminds me of a little fragment of a larger poem. Here. This one..
This is what stenographers do in courtrooms, too,
alert at their miniature machines taking down every word.
Where there is a silence they sit still as I do, waiting
and listening, fingers resting lightly on the keys.
Under the music I can hear the rush of cars and trucks
on the highway and every so often the new kitten, Felix,
hops into my lap and watches my fingers drumming out
a running record of this particular June Tuesday
So convinced am I that I have found my vocation,
tomorrow I will begin my chronicling earlier, at dawn,
-billy collins
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1. bondibirds,
2. Yellow
Painted Chandelier, 3. just
peachy, 4. meyer
lemon gift, 5. Untitled,
6. WHITE
CHERRY BLOSSOM, 7. ...,
8. order
here, 9. Stuck
in Berlin
Recent Flickr faves. And a poem. Sometimes I favor humor over sentiment. Okay. Almost always.
Variations On A Theme By William Carlos Williams
1
I chopped down the house that you had been saving to live in next summer.
I am sorry, but it was morning, and I had nothing to do
and its wooden beams were so inviting.
2
We laughed at the hollyhocks together
and then I sprayed them with lye.
Forgive me. I simply do not know what I am doing.
3
I gave away the money that you had been saving to live on for the
next ten years.
The man who asked for it was shabby
and the firm March wind on the porch was so juicy and cold.
4
Last evening we went dancing and I broke your leg.
Forgive me. I was clumsy and
I wanted you here in the wards, where I am the doctor!
by Kenneth Koch
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Here I am. A mosaic and a small bite of poetry. Because I love the pieces sometimes more than the whole.
Ocean
Goodbye again. Say there is a little song in my head
and because of it I can't sleep or change my mind
about the future. Now the song runs all the way down
to the beach where I sit as if the sky
were my room now. No one, not even you,
can hear me singing. Not even me.
As if the music rose from the mouth of the ocean.
No mouth. Like rain before it reaches us.
Like wind twirling dresses on the clothesline.
by Jason Shinder
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On this cold, rainy Los Angeles night as cloud piles move overhead and wind blows and rattles the windows of Moss Cottage, I deliver a poem. That I took the liberty of cutting into pieces. Because when I'm not cutting paper scraps I'm cutting up poems. Here.
God bless the experimental writers.
...help them as they
type away, knowing their readers
are few, only those who love to toil
over an intricate boil of language,
who think books are secret codes.
Every day they
tack improbable word onto im-
probable word...
by Corey Mesler
My sister sent me that poem. My other sister sent me a long envelope today. I thought it was a letter. Inside 2 security envelopes.
Goodnight. Back tomorrow with the winner of the giveaway!
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Assurance
a sound when autumn comes. Yellow
pulls across the hills and thrums,
or in the silence after lightning before it says
its names - and then the clouds' wide-mouthed
apologies. You were aimed from birth:
you will never be alone. Rain
will come, a gutter filled, an Amazon,
long aisles - you never heard so deep a sound,
moss on rock, and years. You turn your head -
that's what the silence meant: you're not alone.
The whole wide world pours down.
by William Stafford
it's stopped raining. But yesterday in the car small sections of the poem read themselves to me as I drove home.
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I'm here! I have things to share! A cat. $1.99 Trader Joe's bags. A super cool video. A poem. More visual journal pages. Raise your hand if you have a good source for wood panels to paint & collage on top of. Besides the commercial art stores, I mean. 2 thumbs up if you are okay with ending my sentences with prepositions.
The rose is from a small pack of vintage collage papers I picked up in Lisbon. It's an old decal sticker that you have to soak in water to release. I just glued the entire thing onto my page.
You who love peaches, eat this poem:
From Blossoms
From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches.
From laden boughs, from hands
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.
O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
the round jubilance of peach.
There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.
by Li-Young Lee
Go for a walk in the mountains of Basque country with Julie & Sebastian. You will DIG this video. No kidding allowed on Sundays. Go on press play.
I just ordered an adaptor to connect my laptop to my LCD projector so I can show cool things to the baby werewolves. I can't wait to get it! After I show THIS to them, we're going to cut paper, and stick stuff to other stuff and it's going to be fun! YAAAA YAAAA!!!
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A poem about a bear to go with my travel journal pages.
Self-Portrait as a Bear
by Donald Hall
Here is a fat animal, a bear
that is partly a dodo.
Ridiculous wings hang at his shoulders
as if they were collarbones
while he plods in the bad brickyards
at the edge of the city, smiling
and eating flowers. He eats them
because he loves them
because they are beautiful
because they love him.
It is eating flowers which makes him so fat.
He carries his huge stomach
over the gutters of damp leaves
in the parking lots in October,
but inside that paunch
he knows there are fields of lupine
and meadows of mustard and poppy.
He encloses sunshine.
Winds bend the flowers
in combers across the valley,
birds hang on the stiff wind,
at night there are showers, and the sun
lifts through a haze every morning
of the summer in the stomach.
sigh. wasn't that goooood?
Meanwhile at Moss Cottage a new addition to the small flock of pigeons who have taken up residence in my oak trees. Look! Pure white with feathered feet, one of which has a tag. I'm in love! Pigeons are handsome birds. They're stout, have the loveliest colored feathers, can fly fast, and are docile and friendly. Like cows really.
This explains why I've started to covertly feed them under the cover of
dark. Cracked corn and other grains. My next door neighbor who just
put the plastic owl on his roof will kill me if he finds out,
but.......he won't! I'm clever and stealthy. The white dove MUST eat
in the manner in which he had grown accustomed before he made his great
escape into the urban jungle and moved into my tree. I know what you're thinking. Feed one and soon you'll have thousands of pigeons roosting on top of Moss Cottage. No I won't! You'll see!
My new bunch of punks are more like lambs than monkeys. I can hardly believe it!
This post is rolling around like a marble in a big box. Going nowhere. Going everywhere. EGADS!
Going to put my feet up and stare into space. And think about lumbering bears with flowers in their bellies. And pigeons, lost doves, and lambs.
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Saturday. Late morning. 66 lovely degrees. The windows are open. It's a regular orchestral feast with tree trimmers, helicopters, twin-engine planes, dogs barking, birds twittering back and forth, traffic humming softly down the hill. Someone just laughed. Someone else just screamed - at their dog to stop barking I think. Someone is rattling glass bottles into their recycling bin. There goes a leaf blower doing a solo now. Here. Have a small slice of a poem, not the whole thing. You won't need it.
I
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What She Was Wearing
this is my suicide dress
she told him
I only wear it on days
when I'm afraid
I might kill myself
if I don't wear it
you've been wearing it
every day since we met
he said
and these are my arson gloves
so you don't set fire to something?
he asked
exactly
and this is my terrorism lipstick
my assault and battery eyeliner
my armed robbery boots
I'd like to undress you he said
but would that make me an accomplice?
and today she said I'm wearing
my infidelity underwear
so don't get any ideas
and she put on her nervous breakdown hat
and walked out the door
by Denver Butson
I'm donning my true crime pajamas and heading off to bed on this Thursday-turning-into-Friday evening. Then I'm going to read this poem 5 more times and laugh myself to sleep. And tomorrow when I'm on the way to my class of bare-back riding ninja turtles, I'm gonna look down at my criminal mischief boots and smile
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Ars Poetica #100: I Believe
Poetry is what you find
in the dirt in the corner,
overhear on the bus, God
in the details, the only way
to get from here to there.
Poetry (and now my voice is rising)
is not all love, love, love
and I'm sorry the dog died.
Poetry (here I hear myself loudest)
is the human voice,
and are we not of interest to each other?
-Elizabeth Alexander
A quiet morning doing quiet things in the small cottage. Enjoying the sunshine after a brief hiatus. Making collages. Listening to quiet sounds around the house. Mewing cats and birds outside the windows. Choosing a fragment from a complete poem of the poet we all discovered last Tuesday. We don't just like her. We love her.
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