My Little Me Thread

[Angeline]

Ezekiel (draft 2 unfinished 9/27/13)

Coulda been a hermit
endowed with probability
planted in the sand
dreaming manna sucking dry
windblown as a battered stick
empty but resolved.

Coulda been a prophet
lifted by a breeze
Behold they come Behold their need
for succor bring forth wine
multiply divine the Cloths of Heaven
for their carnal eyes
conjure golden robes
resplendent beetling jewels
linen woven thin as mist
raiment like a cloud
the skies will make a miracle,
vivify the shroud vanquish fire
from its bones
animate the flesh
order spirit into limb.


Ezekiel was not to be.
I am instead a daughter
of Jerusalem bound loosely
to a Covenant a chattel sacred
vessel if only for a son.
Maybe I am righteous
maybe I am virtuous
maybe I'm indifferent or diffident
considering the rock or falling
moments of the Sun
accessory or witness of a vow
that is not mine.
Maybe I am impure
harlot or my blood unclean
anima of Earth
hidden by the Moon.

 

[Angeline]

Blue Lester revised 9/30/13

Tenor man how can you
be so mean to me baby?
Swing me up drop me down
with that tone moony round

but hollow as if every star
dipped briefly in the dark
nodded for me alone.

Your breath to my bones,
rhapsody the horn the hat
the news from one frail ghost
who casts me in a spell
of pain of past of nothing
left to lose.

Prez at the window
drifting to the bar or dragging
slow fading on the avenue
beat down by years
so close but still too far away
from me lost in the fog of you.

I ain't got nothin but my muse, baby
Singin thin but old as blues, baby.

 

[Angeline]

Bastard Ghazal

In a moment waves thunder only to effervesce
but you are a mountain, unassailed silence.

Silk patters through your fingers, streaming
though from a distance the skin seems dead.

How's that planned community working out?
Is the gravel combed? Flowers hung?

Comforters and scented oils, clove and wintergreen,
all the little ivory figures that attend you.

You must be happy justifying testifying
bidding the night Good Morrow in wavering truth.

 

[Angeline]

Ghazal at Home 2

Suddenly the night quieted. The gate squeaked.
We leaned into each other, into the Moon's promises.

I counted your years, places you'd occupied, songs
swaying the long lines. Pavement doo wop. Sha la la.

Things happen because they happen.
There are no explanations, only circumstances.

I was happiest when at my most anonymous,
alone with my reflection in a dark hotel room.

Oh do not ask what is it. There was nothing left,
proximity like an air shaft, breathless dead space.

 

[Angeline]

10/12/13

Ghazal at Home 3

Questions and questions. What do you know
of covered mirrors or lamentations?

She brought us June's first strawberries,
wild small and sweet. She shared handfuls.

Why should you imagine those lilac days,
you and your crazy drunk grandmother, inaudible.

This is how they taught me: lech lecha,
get out, go for you, go for yourself.

The lessons came as if from the wind,
voices on the perimeter of absence.

 

[corndog_]

That last line is damn fine!

Ghazal at Home 3

Questions and questions. What do you know
of covered mirrors or lamentations?

She brought us June's first strawberries,
wild small and sweet. She shared handfuls.

Why should you imagine those lilac days,
you and your crazy drunk grandmother, inaudible.

This is how they taught me: lech lecha,
get out, go for you, go for yourself.

The lessons came as if from the wind,
voices on the perimeter of absence.

 

[Angeline]

That last line is damn fine!

Thanks. I'm trying to write a bunch of those poems, try to work a theme across them.

 

[Angeline]

10/15/13

Ghazal at Home 4

From the window the city flowers
the good Midwestern sky low and bright.

My door is locked but oh I think about
nightingales uncaged and careless lords.

The young students are birds and flowers
bicycle horns and laughter calling calling.

Can time exist outside space? I asked you
that and more but I'm on another planet.

Once upon a time was blessed free
morning read beneath a tree.

 

[Angeline]

The iamb is prosaic, marching like a metronome _ /
The anapest declarative, a somewhat leading tone _ _ /
A dactyl is persuasive, issues orders and commands / _ _
While trochee will entreat and call but not demand / _
A spondee is rhetorical, repetitive / /
the pyrrhic barely there _ _

 

[Angeline]

11/03/13

Sunday Practice

He asked if I practice narrative poetry
as if I have a practice
or do anything but stare and hope
for the best and occasionally
check a thesaurus and try to ignore
the fact that you are in the next room
working the remote like Bach,
the television another being who is
either really rude or crazy babbling
about halftime and foot powder which
I simply try to ignore though sometimes
I check the rhyme dictionary but nothing
ever rhymes with shaddup
except maybe whaddup and I don't
do dialogue.

It's not as if there are no narratives
spilling into the night around me
even as night has fallen too
early because we are saving daylight
except there isn't any to be saved
at the moment and even if
there were I'd still hear the neighbor
with the dog named Sorrow
say, "Did you wee Sorrow? Did you?"
and I only wish I could ask him why
he named his dog that and if sorrow
can ever truly be wee? But this is not
a narrative so who knows?

If I could write a narrative poem
the Sun would rise or the skies
open the phone might ring
with news, big news, good or
no wouldn't matter because some
plot would rush in to save me
from myself, pitiful me tied
to the railroad tracks of these
lines and we could all Gasp
at the climax, Deus ex machina,
as I nimbly sprint into the
distance and you all throw
roses and wish me Godspeed.

 

[Angeline]

Knock my I out take that

roll away the colorless tide
of afternoon away the particulars
pronouns narratives have you
heards and other neighborly
meanders stumble farther a field
toward a purer syntax

architecture of structure
if not meaning
rooms without views stair
cases that end on the other side
of nowhere tumbling hapless
into confused and empty mirrors.

Where's my summer day and what
is my love like if not a red red
bed of stupid stuff that wants
skin breath heat.

 

[Angeline]

11/17/13

There's nothing like a breeze in there
a metronome ticks, air exchanges
even the room shrinks yellow near
the bottom of pages I'm rearranging

shuffling incidents tossing lines
like yarrow sticks patterned in the dust
dead spaces between rune and rhyme
I'm not afraid to fail nor fall nor thirst

but these were lies these simply words
that could not speak: fear greed mistrust
abandon me abandon your guttering
flame your bloody rudderless thrust

One of us petal the other one thorn
One of us dying the other one born

 

[Angeline]

Have you heard that long-headed
man curved on the night who swings
on the moon smooths it out slow

paints it blue with gold a long flash
that falls and flutters down and down

town baby the city rolls we finger
snap and pat our feet to hurry
midnight hurry dreamland warm--

Daddy plays the horn
at the Royal Roost
a chicken shack on Broadway
and 47th ivey-divey down
town, not The Street, but close
enough for jazz and otherwise
known as the Metropolitan Bopera
House.

Duke tilts an ironic smile
Diz gapes and jives the First Lady
of Song is coiffed in a halo
of fur, eyes closed somewhere
there's heaven (how faint the tune)

the hi-hat shimmers the spot
shrinks and here's Dex
behatted, a rumpled punctuation
a horn and plumes of smoke
a tone poem, New York City, 1948.

where Daddy plays the horn

Darn that dream
that drifts into your eyes
and fills the aching air with
satin slipping clouds to dance in
honey beams bide the breeze to
warm the trees and sway the limbs.

Darn that dream
a tenor man who breathes to
slide his sound into
your willing skin the world
comes pouring in gardenias soft as
whispers wave and sail the setting
Sun's big eyes. Darn that dream
but love you love your eyes.
~

And now
lets face the music and dance
having swung past a war
blowed and gone like a leaf
in a breeze progression erosion
eternal returning the breath
the wind the voice these
the giant steps where now
former giants recede and the wind
blows and changes. Prez and Bean
recede and the wind blows
steady on.

~

America
in 1964 the door opens
to white and square and God
help those who don't fit there
God help the man with a horn
and a dream turned to night
spiked in the arm blue in the
soul the vein gut weary blue
of bars and jails the world
of lamentation in measured
bleat the swoop the timbre
like singing loss is everywhere
longing for a night in Tunisia
in Paris, Copenhagen a man
can be a man a song
can have a voice.

~

If eyes could see
beyond the skin beyond the tall
cloak of difference the strangeness
not in the bones or the sound
but only in perception what
you see is only your reality what
you think you see isn't real
but listen to the song
and feel the way you're spun
along a rapid little beat suspended
on a slow reeling ballad and the man
behind the horn is a man
not a cipher bent to a sound a man
real in the skin real in the truth.