I set fire to a poem, red sparks rise and roll into the sky, cooling the further they fly from my hand. Embers tumble awkwardly, left then right, no longer my proxy, like passengers on the night breeze. Losing their crispness, the colour difference between them and the stars- actual balls of fire- confuses me. Moments from pages, from life, drift down like summer snow and I am compelled to accept the ironic and paradoxical. I released them before their flame could consume me. Yet, I expect to feel some of their warmth as they come to ground. And when one hand can easily wipe the charcoal smears from the other- all the permanence that those words once served, once held, is gone.
ars poetica
lifting words from paper
In high school my teacher believed that a life was best understood through poetry. My teacher loved poetry. I did not like poetry. I did not know how to love words or otherwise. And I could not imagine words enough to make my world any better. But, I did like her. I compared her to sunsets and music. Her favourite piece- If by Rudyard Kipling fed anger and angst into starved souls for many students, mostly because our particular cohort was filled with scientists and carpenters, mathematicians and athletes- so English class as a rule existed outside their practical minds. If could not exist without then. Poetry was an abstract maze. Impenetrable. And inescapable. Kipling and high school expected us to delay our gratification, to live up to expectations, and to slow down enough to notice. Rudyard wanted us to wait, and to be lied to, and not to look too good, and be skeptics of truth and our friends, and not to cry or hold friends close, and to start over, again and again and again and never breathe a pained word of it. And then, in the end, accept that others will blame you for their same misfortune. English class became too much with all of the if this and if that. Even if I could break with habit, I understood inference quite well and the message was that even if I suffered nothing would be learned from it. And likely, when I am most broken someone will likely say if you'd only done things differently then ...
storage solutions for emotional baggage part 2
When crisis arrives,
it's often in svelte boxes.
Generally it
needs loose parts
to become not-nonsense;
without invitation,
it reaches into the edges
of my brain,
shuffling and disturbing
odds and ends,
lifting and
divining meaning
in the miscellanea
only found
at the back
of that shelf.
Arriving unfastened,
mostly,
and held in place
by sheer tenacity,
words and
meanings of words
tumble from its grasp.
I hear my mom saying-
use your words honey.
If they could
be kept from falling
and rolling under
tables and chairs,
I would.
She also has told me to-
hold my tongue.
Confusing.
And funny that poetry
still came from
impossibly form fitting
tensions like these.
Memories never
fit
back into a box.
And sometimes
will not
fit into each other
either.
I have so many of
these moments
shelved with impunity-
an
as-is section
near the bathrooms
just around the corner
from the café
where you choose
between bitter truth
or mushy metaphor
for
your last loonie.
With little paste
to connect ideas,
every line
needs to have en
jambment
to make sense,
stressful that one thought,
potentially,
might never end...
The grammar of poetry
writing has always
been negotiable.
Entitling also.
It's purchase
often made
with words that
my ass is not really
prepared to pay for.
There are
just so many things
that do not fit
back into boxes.
Or on to shelves.
And when they come out,
like broken instructions
for living a
fixable life,
they avoid
specificity.
Storage solutions
instead of
problem solving.
Their intentions
masked and shadowlike
are troubling.
Poems,
forged figurative
and fearful,
not eager
to become prose.
the fact that someone notices
we are mostly memories
hoping to be recalled;
given purpose and consequence
in that instant instance
just before the page turns.
what was it we just talked about?
you know,
the gloom that brightens
and slumps at the same time.
the craving that our body of work,
our remains,
continues to vibrate and clang
in some useful measure-
still.
in retrospect,
piece after piece,
a life re-sembles
some of the art
that frames it.
but
these are not materials
of matter.
not mortar or 2by4.
no rebar, no shingle.
they will not ever
sit level or
settle into a
foundation.
memory is metaphor.
moments, echoes.
most is just
fleet foxes daring us
to follow around the tree,
tails flashing a beckoning
or a caution,
warning,
in the last minute,
that we have
left the path.
left our home.
we are chapters,
not categories or
title pages,
thumbed and dog eared
by another reader
and our story,
like the fox's print,
will disappear
under iridescent
snow before it
is ever
truly
found.
endless horizon of aspiration
I sit
in my classroom,
lights off,
halo'd by a single lamp.
Class has just ended.
Laptop open
and some found text is
bouncing around
in my head.
A conversation between
Krista Tippett
and
Rebecca Solnit.
"what if everything
we’ve been told about
human nature is
wrong, ..."
Normally,
I would wait out
the day.
Save my words
for the drive home,
let them interrupt
my music,
distract my driving.
"and we’re actually very
generous, communitarian,
altruistic beings..."
Funny, how the quiet
classroom feels dangerous
somehow.
Like the moment
just before a moment;
Unsettled arrives
and gets settled
in.
Can I write like this?
In empty time?
Non committed.
Not wedged
between other
moments.
As a choice?
"... who are distorted
by the system we’re in
but not made happy by
it?"
A hopeful thought;
it could be
dedicated.
It could be
a new routine.
First I
would have
to admit
I am caught up,
completed,
box checked,
ready.
Eschew
the guilt
of not being
an impossibly
over cooked
swamped teacher
at the
moment.
Then accept the
pause after
prep's done;
waiting
in a notable
piece of space;
peace
before the
parking lot
empties.
No commutes
necessary,
yet.
But as I put on my
headphones,
that will block out
most noise,
I get this itch
of dread in
my head.
"What if we can actually
be better people in a
better world?"
What if
the phone
rings?
What if
an announcement
bellows?
What if
a student
catches sight
of my other
side?
What if
I want to shed
the adjective,
leave
the comparison,
drop
the metaphor;
exit the
comparison
between
where I am
and what I
should be?
"Excerpts" from On Being Podcast with Rebecca Solnit.
if truth mattered then poetry should not exist
the truth does not matter in poetry. like, when you wander along a memory, of let's say a beach, the water, the sky, the wind are conjured. sand is assumed, stones also. waves and crashes soundtrack in the background. then it gets muddy. was there a gull keening nearby? sun? no sun? did I go there to swim or sit? one day, someday when I need to depend on my pages to assuage the forgetting I am not sure my own words will be helpful. likely they will conspire to convince me, to confuse me, to tease me. to remind me that they are temporal, secular, and that they are only in service to my memories, not me.
words keep wolves at bay 