Here's a weird and experimental poem I wrote recently. The poets in the writers group I've been working with were very mixed on it. Some liked it a lot, most did not. I think most had no idea what I was getting at. The consensus is the beginning is better than the end. I think the beginning is more accessible, but personally, I like the ending. Let me know what you think. Trust me you wont hurt my feeling if you think it sucks, I've heard that already.

MEDITATION AS WATER

The porch is ethereal
I sit in the rocker and breathe;
Watching the river of my thoughts
Flow through internal night.

The waters are swift and clean
And happiness floats silently -
A smack of pelagic jellies
In a strong ocean current.

Eddies in the stream spin-off,
Turmoil at the edge of perception.
Ephemeral maelstroms of
Stress and distraction -

The sharks of my thoughts,
Death and dread, cruise.
Jurassic neurons spark
Their ancient frenzy.

Monkey brain, monkey brain,
Who the fuck are you?
What hubris of worth
Floods your vessel?

Azure light and a grain of rice.

The first trap held a leg.
The flesh gnawed at the knee
And pulled out at the hip.
The denuded femur
A translucent white,
Needle thin bone, so frail
Compared to the steel
Will displayed.

The second held a corpse.
A delicate, large eyed
Flyer, broken by the
Copper snap.
The blood stained fur
And missing leg told
The story well enough.

I removed the tiny body
Held it in my palm
And weighed its fate.
A ladle of pig iron
on the foundry trunnion
could not tip the scale.

Fenway's diamond wrapped in green.
The sleeping jewel of Boston, the long-ago home
of the Babe and the Splendid Splinter,
Yaz and Fisk, born again on an April day.

All around, the Nation's red flowed
like blood down Beacon, Boylston and Brookline.
B's blazing a top wide smiles.

Under the shadow of the The Green Monster,
Lansdowne street is littered with the jetsam of camped fans.
The hardy faithful who waited through the morning chill
for a ticket. Now steam rising from the griddle of a
sausage vendor fills the air with scents of onions and peppers.

We enter the park, under the bleachers, to the
swarm of grown adults feeling the inspiration of Spring and
long lines for beer and hotdogs. The people posing with
the statue of Wally act like the children they are again.

We fought the throng through the park's dark belly,
Going against the flow until a man yelled, 'Make Way'
as a phalanx of blue coated police escorted jeweled
rings toward the waiting lords of the diamond.

Two cold beers for fourteen fifty seemed cheap
as they sloshed in their plastic cups. Calls of
'Got cold beverage here', elicits laughs
but no fewer bumps.

Anonymous elbow to elbow
I climbed the ramp with Peter Gammons.
Just two fans emerging into the sunlight of a new season.
The man in front of me turns and stares for
a minute and exchanges pleasantries with
the famous one of us.

During the ring ceremony, tiny hands clutched the billowing
new banner. 2004 would not be eclipsed.
The ghosts of the curse reminds us one more time
just how special that season was.

Big bellied men hid beers under magic seats,
laughing and bellowing, 'Sheffield you bum'.
My wife took picture after picture
And a self-proclaimed Fenway virgin cried
as we all remembered leaner days.

This winter I've been re-reading Opened Ground a great collection of Seamus Heaney's poems. Among the collection is this really beautiful short poem that has stuck in mind.

Sloe Gin by Seamus Heaney

The clear weather of juniper
darkened into winter.
She fed gin to sloes
and sealed the glass container.

When I unscrewed it
I smelled the disturbed
tart stillness of a bush
rising through the pantry.

When I poured it
it had a cutting edge
and flamed
like Betelgeuse.

I drink to you
in smoke-mirled, blue-
black sloes, bitter
and dependable.

The line I fell in love with was - She fed gin to sloes. I had no idea how sloe gin was made but this line put a magical image of someone keeping and feeding little creatures to create the poetic elixir. Well it turns out this process of creating Slow Gin wasn't just a flight of Heaney's imagination. I finally looked up Sloe Gin and it turns out there's a fruit called a Sloe and you put them in a jar and pour Gin on them to make real Sloe Gin. Not quite as magical, but it's still a nice poem.

Tonight I found an old journal of mine containing random free verse poems I wrote many years ago - I seem to recall I was sick in bed at the time. They follow some of the basic themes I've blogged about in the past so I thought it would be interesting for readers to see a few of them.

Great green ocean, white capped,
blue waved, black hearted. An aquamarine
vision of life and death.

Great opulence of life.
Too much for a landlubber.

Sleep against the tide,
littoral dreams
give way towards
pelagic sleep

The seak skin, dry
and smelly still
wrapped the bones.
The herring hunter
is not playing today.
The fate of seals
is the fate of me.

Black wave
folding inverse
blue back upon
the mirror.
The crystal shine
cracked and
burnt above the
water.
It's cold and
I don't know
my way home.

I've been rereading Harold Bloom's How to Read and Why the past week and found this passage this morning that I wanted to pass on.

Poetry at the best does a kind of violence that prose fiction rarely attempts or accomplishes. The Romantics understood this as the proper work of poetry to startle us out of our sleep-of-death into a more capricious sense of life.

I woke up this morning with bits of this running through my head. I flushed it out over lunch. I admit it's a weird topic for a poem, but heck, why not.

Ride of Madness

I'm riding your mare again,
Mr. Stroustrup.

She's still nimble and quick,
But only a beast of the stack and heap.

Her stable is littered with machines
And I'll fitting harnesses.

Contraptions of good intent
That chafed and rubbed.

A fine beast, wild and finicky,
Now in neon plastic tack.
 
We stood on the edge of the future
And watched the fertile meadow beyond, 

Being plowed by modern engines
Slick in their glossy paints.

She dreamt of succulents and clover.
I dreamt of old friends and wine.

She's still nimble and quick,
But only a beast of the stack and heap.

Something happened while driving to work the other day that made me want to post. The thing is, it's more a picture than a story so a standard post wont suffice. Here's my attempt to put it in words.

I'm driving to work,
A low mist hangs in the air

The wooded twisting road opens,
Onto a field of dead corn stalks,

Near a farm stand where I buy Silver Queen
On August weekends.

From the dragging cloud above
Emerge thirteen Canada geese,

Flying so low, you could almost
Hear the rub of their bones.

The arms of their formation make
A perfect vee - an arrow,

Aligned on the road
But pointing home.

I needed a mental break this afternoon so I wrote this new Abecedarium. The last line is contrived but I liked it before that.

Abandoned burrow carcass -

death eats first.

God hides in justice

killing low men,

negligent of power's quick rake.

Sullied townsfolk utter vile words.

Xeric, yearning zepher.

Choose another path,
for this way is closed.

The path you've chosen is unsound,
and expensive to maintain.
It's not a safe path.

You could fall through the cracks
It happens all the time.

You would be swept away by the current
taken to a place you didn't intend.

We can't let you make that kind of choice.
So, this way is closed.