What I Assume

Mirrors on the Inside

Must have been some miles
through cringing and crunches on a winter sidewalk
this guy comes in and orders coffee black
bits of ice hanging stuck in his silver beard,
his breath still warm enough
to fog in his glasses completely.
I noticed. He nodded.
“They're mirrors on the inside,” he says,
“but I can see my whole face twice in them.
Imagine, seeing your self up close
each time you come in where people are,
every flaw, every scar, every
unshaven needle of hair.
All the time.
It'll drive a man to kill, if he doesn't
find a way out.

“But if I take these glasses off
I'll trip over the chair just sitting down,
straitjacket and entangle myself just
getting this damn coat off.
I'd even miss my mouth when
I mean to sip the mug, and then
sue you for making the coffee too hot."

I smile, he grins. Then blows his heat up
refills himself with fog, and explains,
"So I keep them on, I try to ignore myself,
and stare at the glass itself,
the gray ghost wrapper
that I control.
It fades away again and again."

I dug this out of a moleskine I’d used on the ferry from Plymouth to Santander in 2007. I revised it as I typed it.

How the rainy years do vaporize!
Each day more translucent than the others!
We ache across the fog of gaping love
like estranged brothers,
throwing breadcrumbs to the wind-blown skies.

April has been declared National Poetry Month by poets.org, and a week into the month Chris Lott described how he planned to write a poem each day in line with NaPoWriMo. The name NaPoWriMo is lamely appropriated from NaNoWriMo, the generally obnoxious National Novel Writing Month wherein artistic conflates attempt to burn through writing a novel in 30 days. While the energy of NaNoWriMo inspires me in the same way the discipline and fervor of Ray Bradbury’s practice does, the idea of an organized, collectively proceeding writing effort frustrated and annoyed me, particularly since it clearly valued quantity over quality. It certainly favored people who had no jobs (a surprisingly large crowd, by the way). Add to that the vocal dominance of NaNoWriMo participants who are either self-aggrandizing or self-degrading, and I knew this was not an activitiy to me.

But Chris Lott’s engagement in NaPoWriMo intriguiged me; a poem-per-day struck me as do-able, and Chris’s very practical list of self-imposed “rules” demonstrated that he, at least, wasn’t afraid to do his own thing, independently. The idea of joining him in this effort also provoked some vague feelings of comeradery, so I chose to do the same, though I rejected the name NaPoWriMo and simply called my efforts “poem-per-day”. My hope was that I would stick to the schedule and thus forcibly return myself to writing poetry, a pasttime that I’ve sorely neglected in the last 6 years. The goal of writing one poem per day would be rigorous, but not so difficult as to negate the quality of the poems I was working on. I soon realized that quality could be a priority, but in the confines of whatever hour or two I had each day to put a poem together, it was impossible to make each poem “good”.

Though I can’t speak to the quality of my output during April, I did hit quite close to the mark in terms of quantity: from April 6th through April 30th I wrote 26 poems, and posted these on my web site, What I Assume. I wrote nearly every morning before work, and spent a few evenings catching up. On several days what I wrote were more poetic exercises than full-fledged poems. A couple of the poems I thought were good at the time of writing, and I know most of the poems had at least one good line, but I think only in retrospect, some months later, will I be able to look back with any sort of objectivity.

Another interesting phenomenon had to do with my choice of subjects. I began with a string of fairly gloomy, stereotypical subjects for a poetaster, but soon found myself terribly bored and in fact embarrassed with the uniformity. So I urged myself to change subjects, mash-up exclusive ideas, and write on things I really wasn’t comfortable writing on.

To add to the excitement of writing a poem-per-day, in the first week I also threw down the gauntlet and challenged Chris to write a villanelle sometime during the weekend. We both did, then he reciprocated my challenge with the torturous ghazal. I returned the final weekend with the deceptively simple-looking bref double. These excursions into poetic forms was both frustrating and delighting; I’ve always loved poetic forms, and in college fancied myself apt at writing formal poetry. But either I oversupposed my abilities back then, or I’ve lost quite a bit of of ability since then. What fascinated me in writing these forms is despite their apparent artificiality, their formal elements help, or rather, force the author to carry through certain themes, ideas, images, or resonances. And while I’ve often thought that formal meter and rhythm risked neglecting meaning or intent, I found the limitations–particularly in length of lines and stanzas–directed me to focus on my meaning and intention more precisely, and with less waste.

At least that was my perception during the writing; what the final outcome is, I’m too timid to suppose right now. But this very strong and impactful month is an experience that I intend to repeat–not next year, probably not the year after, but not too far in the future. It is a precious, exhausting experience that was worth every ounce of extra effort, but that I do not want to normalize by making it an annual tradition. But some year, some day, I will sit down again and decide, “Poem-per-day, for the next thirty days.”

April 30th

Snow runs straight across the road parallel and pale gray,
plankton on the unseen currents.
Normally Summer upstages Spring here,
but this time April ends with this howl,
having inhaled numberless seasons of mockery.

A magician, before diving in the tank
to break his breath against death,
first fills his blood with euphoria,
and stores it.

Everything is backwards.
I've wakened from the walking sleep of day
ending the warmest April in this freezing fool's night;
The heater in my car feels cold like a vacuum;
Classical plays on the punk rock station;
Twenty minutes ago my head rested on my wife's warm ribs,
who scratched my hair-thick head.
My nose whistled, a mewing puppy,
comfortable and quiet in the face of peeling laughter
the universal joke whispered every day.
I've never caught the punchline, but I've heard enough;
even though they get the details wrong,
details don't matter.

The universe, they say, will contract like an elastic band,
and with itself bury itself,
or it will expand until the elastic breaks.
And if it contracts, it will expand.
either way it must have somewhere to go;
oblivion or persistence—involuntary either way.

And now the snow has stopped, on the road:
remnants of a light Spring rain.
And the car has warmed.
And the green light grins, Go.
Go to a place you never go
for a hot drink and a cinnamon roll.
The light licks it's green lips,
Go,
and,
There's nothing you've forgotten,
nothing left at home,
except the funny passing moments
you call love.

Eventually the puppy will begin
to dig holes for his bones;
not out of practicality, but because they are so precious
he knows not what else to do.
He'll plan to come back,
but never will,
having forgotten the holes and the bones, and any
way, having
somewhere better else to go.

Anthropomorphizing Spring

Laid lazy across the horizon two mountain ranges form feuding families,
a mix of soft curves and angles, both are draped with snow white stoals
two jutting peaks, warrior guardians to the rift between them,
a canyon tomb of their clans.

Beneath an unbending, single-minded cloud, who spreads it's eagle wings and shades
grow gray rows of outcast trees, starved branches eerily ashamed of their budding greens
and the baptism their roots shared with the grass in the winter run-off.

While the trees meditate in the cold spring wind the grass just bristles;
as it's million precocious leaves wait to begin cheerleading for the tulips
youth misled by perennial beauty, by the winter run-off,
rushing towards the dry, interminable summer,
or, of their own accord, misleading.

An English sonnet wherein any resemblances to people living or dead is purely coincidental. Inspired, of course, by Richard Lovelace’s Song (To Lucasta, Going to the Wars).

Going Out

Yes, dear, I'm going out, though it's past ten--
But don't wait up; relax your aching head,
stay: watch TV, or chatter to a friend,
sleep and warm our sanctimonious bed.

Where? Though any answer can't suffice
or satisfy this pure, protective question
let's say the store to fetch a bag of ice
a prop to freeze my fiery intention.

An affair? What could that offer me?
Besides furtive eyes and red smiling lips,
besides impulsive sex, and mystery--
these toys can't touch our anchored, wedded ships.

Don't say a word; parting is sweet sorrow!
I'll return by twelve, or, at worst, tomorrow.

A bref double, using one of Turco’s identified forms. This was based on a short story I’d written in China.

Clacks and Clatters

Foreign matter clatters hard on the floor.
Sleep is broken in a crashing instant--
--listening to waking, nakedly prone…
It's just the cat, strutting her distemper.

But there's something else: silence, a knock
I stumbled to, and answering the door
I found a bare-boned, calcite skeleton
clacking his jaw, and waiting to enter.

I offered it a chair, left it alone
returned with tea, but poured out slick, dull clay.
Clack. He said. So I applied and shaped it,
fleshing a clay mask out from the center.

My own was mirrored in the face it wore;
I tore at my hair but found only bone.

Some Things Organic, Some Mechanic

Autumn leaves in Springtime, mashed or matted,
dried and pallid through the frozen months
remind me of my son:

Five-years-old in October and falling
into lumpy leaf piles, reaching at the aura of magic they still retain,
the budded green from which they grew,
the way they whisked about in the winds of summer,
shaded his eyes in hot july, and tangled with a flying toy.

Wars in space come easy, as future racing cars, and dragon fantasies.
but he would not guess why the plane his great-uncle flew crashed,
assumed it was shot down, or sabatoged,
mixed up my description of a DC-2
with a photo of a lithe little Curtis Hawk,
who’s wings he imitated in a dive.
He popped his cheeks, a parachute blooming orange in the sunset
before shuddering to a safe, if sudden, landing behind enemy lines
He expected the brave pilot, in black and white, buried his silky friend
before making a quick escape beneath the same starry black sheet
that now and then peeks in from his bedroom window.

Like leaves that fall in the night, unseen, he could not yet know
sixty years ago in Sainte-Mère-Église
hundreds of the same tiny parachutes cascaded down
and if the anchors that weighed evaded the flames of foreign buildings
burnt to light the night,
if alive upon landing fell victim to NAZI machine guns.

For him it is all soft pillow,
a story good or bad, to ease the anxious stillness between lights off
and pushing away thick blankets to feel freely a radiant morning
until, for the first time, morning pushes back
and cotton to time is spun.

Walking

A human has two opposable thumbs,
is compelled by lightning and rainclouds that storm upon his brains
as on the plains on Venus.
With these man makes endless imitations.

His two legs that walk or run him
like a bicycle's wheels
are easily mis-balanced when slowed
If he steps toe to heel, if lungs dilate
he'll fear falling over
if he adjusts his pace, the placement of weight
mind and body bend to be a tuned kaironmeter
the tunnels in his head, a breathing triad:
in, out, stop
each phase qualified equal.

Then may he finally see the brown dirt path,
with weeds thereby dusted,
green stems arrayed upwards,
gray bark with blackened cracks
from a burn a dozen summers ago,
finally see the first bud, smooth like plasticine,
a new leaf, all things observable,
as Man, once again, becomes a mirror
containing everything and nothing.

So may he shrink, the dilatory respirate
until breathing, time, and nature again gain
touch, taste, smell, form; recede to the original.
Or else are released and forgotten
in favor of the easy imitations that we can control.

Uniform

Six o'clock has silently slipped past
under these fluorescent waters like
dregs and silt unstirred by the current.
Obdurate but not immortal I
kill the lights, close the door, start the car
underwhelmed by the finished workday 

Petrified at the café table
endlessly I fill number puzzles
numbed, cracked, and crumbled from my chisel.