The Language of the Brag
I have wanted excellence in the knife-throw,
I have wanted to use my exceptionally strong and accurate arms
and my straight posture and quick electric muscles
to achieve something at the center of a crowd,
the blade piercing the bark deep,
the haft slowly and heavily vibrating like the cock.
I have wanted some epic use for my excellent body,
some heroism, some American achievement
beyond the ordinary for my extraordinary self,
magnetic and tensile, I have stood by the sandlot
and watched the boys play.
I have wanted courage, I have thought about fire
and the crossing of waterfalls, I have dragged around
my belly big with cowardice and safety,
my stool black with iron pills,
my huge breasts oozing mucus,
my legs swelling, my hands swelling,
my face swelling and darkening, my hair
falling out, my inner sex
stabbed again and again with terrible pain like a knife.
I have lain down.
I have lain down and sweated and shaken
and passed blood and feces and water and
slowly alone in the center of a circle I have
passed the new person out
and they have lifted the new person free of the act
and wiped the new person free of that
language of blood like praise all over the body.
I have done what you wanted to do, Walt Whitman,
Allen Ginsberg, I have done this thing,
I and the other women this exceptional
act with the exceptional heroic body,
this giving birth, this glistening verb,
and I am putting my proud American boast
right here with the others.
Sharon Olds
***********************************************
Happy 16th to my youngest today! I managed
to mortify him already (bought a cake shaped like
a guitar).
He said, "Mom, are you ok? Ummmm, I could see
you getting me something like that 4 or 5 years ago,
but, ummm, well, are you ok?"
Clearly I am not ok. I should have baked him
a chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting
and decorated it myself.
I have no explanation for the cake (it's actually
made out of cupcakes).
All I could say was, "Well, you do like music and sometimes
you play your guitar and I just didn't know what you
wanted and I thought it would be kinda funny
and you guys would get a kick out of it and, well,
you're right. It is kind of weird, isn't it? For me to get
that and not know how weird it would be and all, and, well,
I'm sorry."
It's all ok. We're ok. Funky brain here.
Thursday, January 11, 2007
Tuesday, January 09, 2007
Learning the Language
We grow into who
we are. Step by tiny step
into a future laid out
before us like the language
we would grow to speak
and learn to unlearn
and then relearn,
despite our rants
and our raves,
in spite of ourselves.
No. The first raw taste
that sits on the tongue
like beets. Too red, too
root-filled to ignore.
No again. This time
the unsavory bits of chopped
spinach, a green we swallow
in reluctance. We have not yet
learned the loveliness of
green and No, nor the unbridled
joy of sating ourselves
with tuberous things. Things that grow
underground in the dark, wet
places we are yet to know.
And then, one day, a normal
day in most every aspect
of the word normal, all of our oral
expectations are met, and it’s
a resounding yes! as mother
pokes the spoon in. An unspoken,
understood yes! that fills the room.
Yes, I will eat that. And this. And more
than you will ever guess in your long life,
Mother. Eat, masticate, at times
regurgitate. Mess myself up in ways
you never expected, you who followed
the step-by-step.
I have grown into an occasional
bite, shunned an entire meal.
I have learned to love the observed.
A bottle of merlot, a fifth of tequila,
a shot of gin and tonic. These
are the substantial elements
of my existence.
Step by step, I fight my way
through briars no one else sees.
I drop from a pine fifty-feet tall
and come out unscathed. I watch
the slender bend of my ankle
get chewed up in the spokes
of a wheel lost in time.
But man have I grown!
The likes of growth so seldom
seen in all of the animal kingdom.
A regular anomaly of sorts,
my body an organism, my brain
a refugee. My use of language
once again relegated to a simple
Yes, a fitful No.
We grow into who
we are. Step by tiny step
into a future laid out
before us like the language
we would grow to speak
and learn to unlearn
and then relearn,
despite our rants
and our raves,
in spite of ourselves.
No. The first raw taste
that sits on the tongue
like beets. Too red, too
root-filled to ignore.
No again. This time
the unsavory bits of chopped
spinach, a green we swallow
in reluctance. We have not yet
learned the loveliness of
green and No, nor the unbridled
joy of sating ourselves
with tuberous things. Things that grow
underground in the dark, wet
places we are yet to know.
And then, one day, a normal
day in most every aspect
of the word normal, all of our oral
expectations are met, and it’s
a resounding yes! as mother
pokes the spoon in. An unspoken,
understood yes! that fills the room.
Yes, I will eat that. And this. And more
than you will ever guess in your long life,
Mother. Eat, masticate, at times
regurgitate. Mess myself up in ways
you never expected, you who followed
the step-by-step.
I have grown into an occasional
bite, shunned an entire meal.
I have learned to love the observed.
A bottle of merlot, a fifth of tequila,
a shot of gin and tonic. These
are the substantial elements
of my existence.
Step by step, I fight my way
through briars no one else sees.
I drop from a pine fifty-feet tall
and come out unscathed. I watch
the slender bend of my ankle
get chewed up in the spokes
of a wheel lost in time.
But man have I grown!
The likes of growth so seldom
seen in all of the animal kingdom.
A regular anomaly of sorts,
my body an organism, my brain
a refugee. My use of language
once again relegated to a simple
Yes, a fitful No.
Monday, January 08, 2007
A comment regarding my poems:
I do think they suffer (suffer is too strong a word) from the fact that the writer seems to need to write them more than the reader to read them. In most successful poems, the equation is reversed. I think you'll write better poems about the experience in a few years.
This comment comes from someone whose writing
and opinions I respect a greal deal. I wish I could
reverse the equation, but wishing won't make that happen.
I'm disappointed that the work comes off as needing
to be written, but I think he's right.
And, I'm a little confused. Don't most writers feel
that what they write needs to be written?
I don't feel discouraged by his words, but I wonder if anything
will ever come of anything I write. Some of us are meant to
be readers of poetry and to just love the experience of it.
We don't all have to write it, but at one point in time, I thought
I may have something close to the ability to write not just a decent
poem, but perhaps even a publishable one.
I've had only 2 published--one online and one in a print journal.
Not to bash online poetry, but I still aspire for print pubs.
Alas, I may never see my name in Poetry or the New Yorker!
Which makes me think of the book Running With Scissors.
The author's mother was certain she was going to be the next
Anne Sexton, so she actually gave legal guardianship of her son
to her psychiatrist so she could focus on her poetry, or so says
Augusten Burroughs in the book, but VF printed an article
recently stating that the family he talks
about in the book questions the liberties he took
in his memoir.
***************************************
For now, I can only content myself with writing things
I need to write, and, as my friend says, maybe in a few
years I'll write better poems. Not just about the experience
of losing my dad, but I hope about all experiences I feel compelled
to write about.
This from Jane Kenyon:
Not Writing
A wasp rises to its papery
nest under the eaves
where it daubs
at the gray shape,
but seems unable
to enter its own house.
I do think they suffer (suffer is too strong a word) from the fact that the writer seems to need to write them more than the reader to read them. In most successful poems, the equation is reversed. I think you'll write better poems about the experience in a few years.
This comment comes from someone whose writing
and opinions I respect a greal deal. I wish I could
reverse the equation, but wishing won't make that happen.
I'm disappointed that the work comes off as needing
to be written, but I think he's right.
And, I'm a little confused. Don't most writers feel
that what they write needs to be written?
I don't feel discouraged by his words, but I wonder if anything
will ever come of anything I write. Some of us are meant to
be readers of poetry and to just love the experience of it.
We don't all have to write it, but at one point in time, I thought
I may have something close to the ability to write not just a decent
poem, but perhaps even a publishable one.
I've had only 2 published--one online and one in a print journal.
Not to bash online poetry, but I still aspire for print pubs.
Alas, I may never see my name in Poetry or the New Yorker!
Which makes me think of the book Running With Scissors.
The author's mother was certain she was going to be the next
Anne Sexton, so she actually gave legal guardianship of her son
to her psychiatrist so she could focus on her poetry, or so says
Augusten Burroughs in the book, but VF printed an article
recently stating that the family he talks
about in the book questions the liberties he took
in his memoir.
***************************************
For now, I can only content myself with writing things
I need to write, and, as my friend says, maybe in a few
years I'll write better poems. Not just about the experience
of losing my dad, but I hope about all experiences I feel compelled
to write about.
This from Jane Kenyon:
Not Writing
A wasp rises to its papery
nest under the eaves
where it daubs
at the gray shape,
but seems unable
to enter its own house.
Sunday, January 07, 2007
Before Sleeping
I'm tired. In ways I can't explain.
So tired that everything else looks
tired too. Like the rural mailboxes
lining the road on US 41 South.
They lean into the curve of road,
colors faded, flags dangling and broken
by their sides. Year by year, they
have been laden with the heaviness
of obligations hard to fill (final notice--
we turn the gas off 8 a.m. Monday)
and known the emptiness of no Christmas
or birthday cards.
****************************************
Too tired to complete anything. Gone all weekend.
Drove lots. Paying now.
I'm tired. In ways I can't explain.
So tired that everything else looks
tired too. Like the rural mailboxes
lining the road on US 41 South.
They lean into the curve of road,
colors faded, flags dangling and broken
by their sides. Year by year, they
have been laden with the heaviness
of obligations hard to fill (final notice--
we turn the gas off 8 a.m. Monday)
and known the emptiness of no Christmas
or birthday cards.
****************************************
Too tired to complete anything. Gone all weekend.
Drove lots. Paying now.
Thursday, January 04, 2007
Stuck
Tonight, the southbound
sings relentlessly. I hear
and I don’t. Not like before.
Before your death, lonesome
was comfort in each whistle
blow, in each reverberation
of a window pane.
Pain becomes the immeasurable.
I am stuck at the stoplight west
of the hospital, eyes fixed on the building
whose white walls witnessed your passing.
Death, grief, letting go--these are things
I have no reference for measuring.
Room 370. I’ve walked by it too
many times to count since that last
night in April when you breathed
your last breath, alone, unimpeded.
I can’t remember why we weren’t there
with you. I don’t understand
how I couldn’t know, standing there
at the stove, making pinwheel sandwiches
for a Friday brunch, that you were gone.
The light changes to green,
the color of new. My reverie ends
and my foot responds. I make the left
turn by the CVS. Within seconds,
mind cogent and focused, I marvel at the way
a body keeps moving, long after
the dying, too soon for forgetting.
************************************************
A rewrite. Too telly I think but more grounded
images. It's just good to write. If you stop by again, jim, let
me know what you think.
Here's another I'm working on. I think it has a long
way to go too. I am rusty, rusty and suffering from
major brain fog, but I shall keep trying to write. I've
always found it so cathartic and healing and helpful
and frustrating and amazing and fun and difficult, etc.
etc. etc.
************************************************
In A Quiet Room
The back rooms of this house
are quiet tonight. My son reads
The Moon Is Down as I watch a story
on television about widows and mothers
who've lost their lovers and sons in Iraq.
He calls me to his room to ask what genre
this Steinbeck novel fits and how to answer
a question like this: "List memorable quotes.
Tell why they are significant."
And when he reads the first quote to me
that he finds significant, a quote about
Dr. Winter, a simple man so profound
that only the profound recognize him as such,
I think of the widow on the television,
about the last night she spoke to her husband,
about the profound way simple things
like the weather and the holidays occupied
their last conversation. And all the while,
the winds outside were shifting, the weather
turning, the men inside never knowing that death
would become the dictionary to explicate profundity.
Tonight, the southbound
sings relentlessly. I hear
and I don’t. Not like before.
Before your death, lonesome
was comfort in each whistle
blow, in each reverberation
of a window pane.
Pain becomes the immeasurable.
I am stuck at the stoplight west
of the hospital, eyes fixed on the building
whose white walls witnessed your passing.
Death, grief, letting go--these are things
I have no reference for measuring.
Room 370. I’ve walked by it too
many times to count since that last
night in April when you breathed
your last breath, alone, unimpeded.
I can’t remember why we weren’t there
with you. I don’t understand
how I couldn’t know, standing there
at the stove, making pinwheel sandwiches
for a Friday brunch, that you were gone.
The light changes to green,
the color of new. My reverie ends
and my foot responds. I make the left
turn by the CVS. Within seconds,
mind cogent and focused, I marvel at the way
a body keeps moving, long after
the dying, too soon for forgetting.
************************************************
A rewrite. Too telly I think but more grounded
images. It's just good to write. If you stop by again, jim, let
me know what you think.
Here's another I'm working on. I think it has a long
way to go too. I am rusty, rusty and suffering from
major brain fog, but I shall keep trying to write. I've
always found it so cathartic and healing and helpful
and frustrating and amazing and fun and difficult, etc.
etc. etc.
************************************************
In A Quiet Room
The back rooms of this house
are quiet tonight. My son reads
The Moon Is Down as I watch a story
on television about widows and mothers
who've lost their lovers and sons in Iraq.
He calls me to his room to ask what genre
this Steinbeck novel fits and how to answer
a question like this: "List memorable quotes.
Tell why they are significant."
And when he reads the first quote to me
that he finds significant, a quote about
Dr. Winter, a simple man so profound
that only the profound recognize him as such,
I think of the widow on the television,
about the last night she spoke to her husband,
about the profound way simple things
like the weather and the holidays occupied
their last conversation. And all the while,
the winds outside were shifting, the weather
turning, the men inside never knowing that death
would become the dictionary to explicate profundity.
Wednesday, January 03, 2007
Stuck
Tonight, the southbound
sings relentlessly. I hear
and I don’t. Not like before.
Before your death, lonesome
was comfort in each whistle
blow, in each reverberation
of a window pane.
Pain becomes the immeasurable.
I am stuck at the stoplight, eyes
fixed on the brown walls that witnessed
your death. These are things I have no
reference for measuring.
Room 370. I’ve walked by it too
many times to count since that last
night in April when you breathed
your last breath, alone, unimpeded.
The light changes to green,
the color of new. My foot responds
and I make the left turn by the CVS.
Within seconds, I marvel at the way
a body keeps moving, long after
the dying, too soon for forgetting.
Tonight, the southbound
sings relentlessly. I hear
and I don’t. Not like before.
Before your death, lonesome
was comfort in each whistle
blow, in each reverberation
of a window pane.
Pain becomes the immeasurable.
I am stuck at the stoplight, eyes
fixed on the brown walls that witnessed
your death. These are things I have no
reference for measuring.
Room 370. I’ve walked by it too
many times to count since that last
night in April when you breathed
your last breath, alone, unimpeded.
The light changes to green,
the color of new. My foot responds
and I make the left turn by the CVS.
Within seconds, I marvel at the way
a body keeps moving, long after
the dying, too soon for forgetting.
Monday, January 01, 2007
Late April
Six months to the morning since the day you died.
Another heartsore Friday full of sun,
temps in the sixties, a stirring in the trees.
We have put a winter in between our griefs--
between the gaping hole and greening sod,
between the wet funeral and the dry one.
There was a comfort in the numbers then.
We counted priests and limousines, flowers,
favors, the sympathies and casseroles
of those who came and followed to the end
in keeping with the common sense that holds
a strength in numbers: the more the merrier.
Late April now and now the number One
assumes its upright stance--the walking wound
that pauses among monuments to count
another season's emblements of loss:
one grave, one stone, one name on it, one rose,
one fist to shake in the face of God then go.
Thomas Lynch
*****************************************************
It was in the sixties here yesterday, but winter
has returned. It's grey and windy and around
40. For me, this would be a perfect day to go
to the cemetery, but I'm not sure I will.
It's a 40 mile drive there. I'm not sure
I can find the green plastic cones I'll need
to place the artificial flowers in to sit next
to the stone. I'm not sure if my stomach
is going to quit hurting. I may not have time
to cook my traditional meal if I go. I may throw up.
I may develop another headache. I may have to drink
a glass of wine first and then I couldn't drive
or wouldn't drive because I would not want to
be arrested for drunk driving even though I would
not be drunk. I may need to finish the laundry
or take the boys home. I may get a phone call.
I'm not sure if I have the right clothes to wear.
I'm not sure that I can bear to look at your name
on that stone, Dad, and keep myself pulled
together. I'm not sure that I believe in much.
I'm not sure I can think of a good reason to go.
I'm not sure where you are or what good it does
to stand in front of the white marker that bears
your name and rank and the lines "Home the sailor
From the sea", part of a poem Mom wanted to put
on the stone but there are rules regarding such things
at the Veteran's Cemetery so there wasn't room for
the entire poem. I'm not sure I even know the poem
though Mom and I talked about it when we were
filling in the paper and making sure we counted
out even the spaces between the numbers and letters
and tributes to you and your life. I'm not sure
but I think the best thing I can do is lie in bed
today and work crossword puzzles and think about
words I've never heard of or have heard of but would
never use them the way they do in crossword
puzzles, and I'm not sure but it seems like a strange
thing to call those puzzles--crosswords. Cross words.
I am sure we had none of those before you passed or left
or died. I am sure it's easier to say I lost you
than it is to say you died or you are dead.
No. No cross words, Dad. Just words about the dead
you had loved and lost and the mower you wanted
to buy when you got stronger and could mow the yard
again and the promise I made to you that I would
not talk about what you said and I'm not sure
why I told you I wouldn't talk about it but I think
it's because I wanted you to rest easy that night.
No cross words then, Dad, nor any or rarely any in all
the years you were my father. I am sure of that.
**************************************************************
I found these two poems:
Requiem
UNDER the wide and starry sky
Dig the grave and let me lie:
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.
This be the verse you 'grave for me: 5
Here he lies where he long'd to be;
Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.
Robert Louis Stevenson
*****************************************************
Home Is the Sailor
Home is the sailor, home from sea:
Her far-borne canvas furled
The ship pours shining on the quay
The plunder of the world.
Home is the hunter from the hill:
Fast in the boundless snare
All flesh lies taken at his will
And every fowl of air.
'Tis evening on the moorland free,
The starlit wave is still:
Home is the sailor from the sea,
The hunter from the hill.
A.E. Housman
Six months to the morning since the day you died.
Another heartsore Friday full of sun,
temps in the sixties, a stirring in the trees.
We have put a winter in between our griefs--
between the gaping hole and greening sod,
between the wet funeral and the dry one.
There was a comfort in the numbers then.
We counted priests and limousines, flowers,
favors, the sympathies and casseroles
of those who came and followed to the end
in keeping with the common sense that holds
a strength in numbers: the more the merrier.
Late April now and now the number One
assumes its upright stance--the walking wound
that pauses among monuments to count
another season's emblements of loss:
one grave, one stone, one name on it, one rose,
one fist to shake in the face of God then go.
Thomas Lynch
*****************************************************
It was in the sixties here yesterday, but winter
has returned. It's grey and windy and around
40. For me, this would be a perfect day to go
to the cemetery, but I'm not sure I will.
It's a 40 mile drive there. I'm not sure
I can find the green plastic cones I'll need
to place the artificial flowers in to sit next
to the stone. I'm not sure if my stomach
is going to quit hurting. I may not have time
to cook my traditional meal if I go. I may throw up.
I may develop another headache. I may have to drink
a glass of wine first and then I couldn't drive
or wouldn't drive because I would not want to
be arrested for drunk driving even though I would
not be drunk. I may need to finish the laundry
or take the boys home. I may get a phone call.
I'm not sure if I have the right clothes to wear.
I'm not sure that I can bear to look at your name
on that stone, Dad, and keep myself pulled
together. I'm not sure that I believe in much.
I'm not sure I can think of a good reason to go.
I'm not sure where you are or what good it does
to stand in front of the white marker that bears
your name and rank and the lines "Home the sailor
From the sea", part of a poem Mom wanted to put
on the stone but there are rules regarding such things
at the Veteran's Cemetery so there wasn't room for
the entire poem. I'm not sure I even know the poem
though Mom and I talked about it when we were
filling in the paper and making sure we counted
out even the spaces between the numbers and letters
and tributes to you and your life. I'm not sure
but I think the best thing I can do is lie in bed
today and work crossword puzzles and think about
words I've never heard of or have heard of but would
never use them the way they do in crossword
puzzles, and I'm not sure but it seems like a strange
thing to call those puzzles--crosswords. Cross words.
I am sure we had none of those before you passed or left
or died. I am sure it's easier to say I lost you
than it is to say you died or you are dead.
No. No cross words, Dad. Just words about the dead
you had loved and lost and the mower you wanted
to buy when you got stronger and could mow the yard
again and the promise I made to you that I would
not talk about what you said and I'm not sure
why I told you I wouldn't talk about it but I think
it's because I wanted you to rest easy that night.
No cross words then, Dad, nor any or rarely any in all
the years you were my father. I am sure of that.
**************************************************************
I found these two poems:
Requiem
UNDER the wide and starry sky
Dig the grave and let me lie:
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.
This be the verse you 'grave for me: 5
Here he lies where he long'd to be;
Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.
Robert Louis Stevenson
*****************************************************
Home Is the Sailor
Home is the sailor, home from sea:
Her far-borne canvas furled
The ship pours shining on the quay
The plunder of the world.
Home is the hunter from the hill:
Fast in the boundless snare
All flesh lies taken at his will
And every fowl of air.
'Tis evening on the moorland free,
The starlit wave is still:
Home is the sailor from the sea,
The hunter from the hill.
A.E. Housman
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