Sunday, July 31, 2016

A Thought About The Future

I have begun to tire of the conventional metaphors so prevalent in poetry today; the clouds, always fragile, the flowers, fragrant, the rivers, always fluid. 

When such predictability comes to the art of verse, a change becomes imperative; an avant-garde breakthrough of linguistic innovation, one that molds the next steps in the progression of this elusive tongue, i.e. a cherry tree should be duly recognized if she wants to fuck a plum. Art should be beyond boundary; the prescriptivism let go, of vigilant grammar, of the caged anatomy of poetic structure.
 
The letting go part is key. And it isn’t always easy. 

There is an association often made among works of literature that poetry must be beautiful. And in my opinion, that viewpoint is flawed. Beauty shouldn’t be, by default, the goal of our spoken language – poetry should break, poetry should appall, poetry should disgust, just like we humans do. 

And as for myself –I want my poetry to be nothing but dangerous; sometimes derisive, sometimes even bone-shattering. 

Saturday, July 30, 2016

Apologies

Rilke’s Boat by Ernst Jandl

Taking a stroke
Sitting there

Sitting there
Taking a stroke

It is this poem I once belittled –
            For its apparent simplicity
Calling it childish, unworthy
            Of literal adoration –
That floats back to my mind,
Over and over again, when I am by myself,
Feeling down, or sitting in silence.

Two pairs of lines, gliding
            Down a gentle creek of words,
Feeling on my tongue, each turn of oars,
            And the sky above, a blue infinity.

I murmur to myself, when the moon
            Is caught in a throe of tides –

Row, Rilke, row.

Brooklyn Cemetery

The aerial view portrays the old cemetery ground, not
As one of lone bereavements,
But a quaint, obedient conglomerate –
            A collective sorrow, made pale with time. 

The sun on the opposite sky is wide awake,
            At this peak of day; its light
Making dials out of tomb stones
            On blades of grass that have grown, so slowly,
Over jaws of the jagged burial plots –
            Like a striking beard more thickened and greened
With the slant of Summer rain. 

It looks to me, through the plane’s window, not as a place
            Of rest or even lingering melancholy, but an arena
For playful afterlife;
            One trim shadow holding the heels
Of another, swapping stories, comparing artifacts –
            Finding, by surprise, each other’s common histories.

Dissection Lab

The goal of today’s lesson is to learn
The parts of a flower. A real example, she says –
The living kind; the plastic prototypes, the paper cuttings
            Do not suffice; disdainful, her sentiment.  

She takes it out of a bag, our first patient –
A stem of sunflower,
And lays it down on a bed of wax.
We surround the table, a nervous school of surgeons,
Our fingers, eager, our eyes, observant, our minds,
Scribbled with studied notecards.

And in a few minutes, a fresh new blade is
            Squeezed between her practiced fingers, and she makes
A perfect slit through its chest; a bloodless cut, that extends
            Down to its boneless waist, then up to its sticky skull,
Peeling off its arms, in the process, its ring of golden petals,
And an umbrella of crying ovaries.
 
We learn its parts with no mistake, feeling over and over again,
            The shredded organs, with a pinch of sharp forceps –
Tweezers, dissection scissors, geometry dividers –all
            Engorged under the gaze of a magnifying glass;
The ligules, the disc florets with its neck of V
            On which sits a honey bee, and pollinates,
Makes more, the rapid hum of ancestry.

And having mastered, within an hour,
            The complex anatomy of a flower,
We wrap in paper, the cold corpse of our mute altruist,
            And flick it into a can of trash, wherein lies
A constellation of departed sisters, the flower cadavers,
            While the eggs in their sacs, toss and turn,
Still itching for a man.  

Friday, July 29, 2016

Friend

You came up to me
            At the intern event, and said –

I’d love to hang out with you,
            Get to know you better;
Adding, somewhere in there,
                        I want a new colored friend.

Your intentions were good, no doubt.
But I still felt shitty;
Your meditated, conscious outreach –           

And my color
                        Standing ahead of me.

Thursday, July 28, 2016

Summer Cold

A cold has built its nest
                        In the vacant strip of land
Between my neck and chest.

The doctors say, There is no way
            Of breaking it up, if built
By architects of the viral world.

Limited are the options for relief, they add:
            One, the natural course of Time,
And two, the lozenges

Made plump with balls of zinc. I employ
            Them both –
A combination, of Nature’s tread

As well as the medicine factory’s
                                    Grim offerings,
And play this game of waiting

Until the nest is displaced,
            With no more children to feed,

And the only motion forward is

            A new construction project
In someone else’s territory.

Wednesday, July 27, 2016

Paint

He was seated in the train car to my left,
            Holding, a bag of bagels –sesame, multi
Grain, cinnamon raisin – a cup of hot coffee,
            And a wooden club, I imagine, for an upcoming golf tournament.

I was reading, at the time, a page from the New Yorker, an article
            Critical, about the crash of the British economy, the page itself
Littered with a sprinkling of cartoons. And a side column ran
            The risk of Trump, and his mockery of a disabled man.

Between Secaucus Junction and Newark Broad Street, my neighbor suddenly asked,
            You live in New York City? I said, Why I sure do. What about yourself?
Livonia, Michigan, I learned. A visitor, like so many others.
            And after a few minutes, Any recommendations for places to see?
I blurted, almost reflexively, the Whitney Museum of Art. It is life-changing,
            I was sure to add. What’s there to see there? I said, Among other things
Jackson Pollock's works.

He laughed, and said, You mean that paint splash guy?
            Yes, that paint splash guy. He said,
Yea, I’m not paying 25 bucks for such third-grader art.

Tuesday, July 26, 2016

Broken Thoughts in Transit

1.

No shame in admitting
That I like my poems cooked medium-rare,
While you prefer them well-done.

2. 

Caught a butterfly, yesterday,
            Stealing butter from my fridge.
That darned thing
            Just wouldn’t let it go!

3.

I can almost feel your vulva
            Tighten, between your thighs,
At the mere thought of a wet swizzle stick.  

 
4.

She wrote in her resume, under Relevant Skills,
            I love to throttle orchids.

We immediately offered her an interview.

5.

Who knows why the Earth feels
            So herniated today?

6.

I’ve orgasmed almost twice now
            From just listening to a Mozart symphony.

7.

We made flowers out of flour,
            Combs with honey,
And Love, with packets of vanilla wafer.

Pillow Cover

Exhausted from the hours of flight through hot sheets
            Of air –the sky itself
Reduced to a trickle, clouds hiding under a shade of leaves,
A handful of birds, fly right to your door, and knock
With the curve of their beaks, paled with thirst. 

You answer right away, yourself in a hurry, and watch
            Their feathers, thinned with drought, and the Sun’s aged fury.
Come on in, Come on in, you say. So they do, hopping in rhythm,
            Falling hard for the flowers on the rug, and onto the lap of your couch –
And sit on the pillowcase, where they continue to be,
Giving you company at the dead of night,
When your mind is restless with despair, and buckling with the weight
Of an all-consuming sense of longing. 

One in particular, his thumb-sized body,
A smooth gradient of orange, his wings,
A coat of forest green, looks through the lens, and into me,
Telling me softly, that he is happy.  

Sunday, July 24, 2016

Planetary

Waking up next to you, I feel as if the world
             Outside has come to a pause; your face, fragile, white,
Your chest sitting quietly over a cage of ribs, rising
And falling like practiced clockwork. I stare above
At the painted ceiling, the sun overhead – a burning coin,
And before I know it, I have slipped into a dream,
Feeling, now, like Neptune, and you beside me, like my moon.  

Thursday, July 21, 2016

The Swimmer

It seemed as if, your entry, was a way
Water inhaled you into the lane.
 
You stretched your arm muscles a while, I noticed
Between consecutive laps, and started shortly after –
 
An alternans of eager strokes; the freestyle,
The butterfly, your palms fixed with intent,
 
Your moves, perfectly chiseled;
Each motion, seeming
 
Premeditated, duly purposeful. I observed,
Through the eyes of my damp goggles,
 
Spouts of water climbing soft steps of air
Then falling back down; disappearing, later, 
 
Into a chest of currents. Your breaths,
On each count of three, blown out on opposites,
 
Feeding thrill to my ears. I imagined the pink
Of your lungs darkening with each routine of stroke.
 
Most impressive, though, the motions of your legs –
Bouncing along the gouge of waves, or at times
 
Slicing through the underbelly of water,
Like nervous blades of scissors.

Wednesday, July 20, 2016

Evening

Sitting on the terrace,
Watching the stars,
Sipping on a glass of chilled rosé -

All of a sudden, I hear
A dandelion
                     sneeze
Onto a piece of blue cotton.

Saturday, July 16, 2016

Tongue Twister

When we were younger, yourself
            Aged six, myself nearing five,
Mother and Father took us,
            In the summertime, to a beach town, hot
In the belly of the Tropical ocean, thick
            As a buffalo, roiling around, its pores
In the cool, salty breeze –a town in India
            Named Poori.  
 
We’d walk to the waves, and playful, let
            The cool blue water curve around our feet, crashing
Into dense bouquets of foam and bubble, the lash of water itself
            Forming delicate anklets around our legs.

You would want to play the game, you’d say,
            Of tongue twisters. Repeat after me:
She sells sea shells on the sea shore, over
            And over again, till words would trip
Over saucy lips smothered with sunlight, the sounds
            Sticking to the walls of our mouths,
Our tongues embittered with confusion –we would laugh out loud,
            And giggle at the end; our summer afternoons
Thickening with songs, creamy to the tone,
Of gulls, herons, rookeries of white flighty albatross.

Closer to dusk, our bodies lathered in sweat, our feet caked
            With sand like fresh sawdust, we would walk
Into the lip of the blue-green ocean, and swim away, in the direction
            Of the vanishing horizon, our arms roaring beside our ears
In loops, falling, in soft whispers of splashes. The clouds,
            Oh! The beautiful clouds, would float across the sky
Like a necklace of swans, their slender necks bobbing and dipping
            In the colors of sunset, graceful and feminine, spun, as if,
In a lariat of freshwater pearls. Sister, I would clench my fists, then,
            In comfort of you, I would cry in my motions, feeling safe
With you, over a bottomless bed of breaking waves, and then swimming fast
            In your direction, I would hug you on a pause, so hard,
I would wring out a smile, and jostle around with a splendid calm,
            Feeling then,
not, at all, like your brother,
But your little twin sister.  

Thursday, July 14, 2016

Tongue And Lip Design

What if I gave
            your laziest circle,
                        a saliva-dripping
                                                            lick?

Wednesday, July 13, 2016

Hobbies

include,
            going on dates with consonants,
            buying bras with crickets,
            shaving grass,
            flying kites in the rain,
            smoking hymns,
            dancing
                         with sunflowers,  
            popping pomegranate seeds,
            licking walls,
            talking to spoons,
            burning hair,
            swallowing chocolate flamingos,
            saying over and over again –
                        Cotton
                        White Cotton  
                        Lavender Cotton
                        and feeling my tongue soften,
            tearing clouds in half,
            gossiping with pineapples,
            squirting poems into ice cream cones,
            and swimming,
                        swimming,
                                    swimming,
                                                in one drop of water.