Na Po No More

I'm suspending the NaPoWriMo marathon. I have no problem starting new work, and very little trouble coming up with new drafts, so what this exercise is encouraging in ME is rushed, poorly considered work, when it's really those tenth to one hundredth revisions I need to be pushing. This work is both too hard and too easy... it's hard to get going but it doesn't demand enough.

I am thinking of turning this site over to some exercises and essays on the writing process and the writing life. Posting may be infrequent, unless I really get a buzz going. I have a million ideas--but ideas are cheap. We'll see what pans out.

CLOSED FOR BUSINESS

Nothing Today

All day I searched for a way in, a beginning. or a middle, a loose end... I could not find the shred of a poem in me today. Not a line, not an image. And now I am going to sleep because I have to be up very early in the morning.

Didn't want you to think I forgot. I just came up empty.

Fragment

Walking loose today, I am
lacking in discipline.

I take the momentary effect over the whole--
sloppy, extravagant, yes

the light is too strong
unruly through the bare trees.

Spring I return to you. I am lame.
I am also mentally ill. Someday I will cry

out I cannot bear
this loneliness. Stubborn, stubborn,

I said not him, not you, not this one, not that.I am waiting only for you.

For My Lovers

Rosemary in my hair
whispered me spring, green spice, how I ache
for early green, bolt of flower upstart
and repose of sun. See, I have

undressed myself of layers, shined my nails,
rouged my lips, remembering
our secret lives, our rendevous in rooms
hidden and quiet, though everyone saw.

I swear, goddess love me, I've never forgotten you.
This is not frivolous, how life quickens life.
My flesh reveals you to yourself, your soul
and we have met beyond and come again, my love
my loves, my love.

"And Here Face Down Beneath the Sun..."

The light is coming up over you
as you sleep, worn out from travel,
the day's work still ahead.
Always something carried
over, it seems, always yesterday's
work unfinished, weighing on
the day to come,
where now you sleep,
the light coming up
around you, deep blue
of heaven cracking
on dresser, mirror.
The ocean is cold here
and vast, it suits you
and because it opens it is enough
for you,
the great wildness of it without feature,
raw with light,
white clouds and the boats on the water,
light floating on sky that is water
and you sleep as it gathers around you
great and calm;
the day isn't making any deals
and as it opens the sky
seems to grow hazy, light spread behind
and around the clouds, marine layer with greys
and grey-blues, and spots of white and all still so quiet
though inside your mind the silence has grown dull
with dread for the work to be done
and for the work still left undone,
the body's tired cells churning
out of duty, though once love burned there
and smoulders still,
smoky, with taste of charcoal on the
lips. Sunk in sleep, still the day
holds a tenderness
out to you and you don't quite refuse it, you
want to go out of yourself and meet it,
as you will meet it soon,
the gulls crying out and the taste of salt
and seaweed on the air heavy with dawn
and the damp boards on the sides of the
houses just off the boulevard, grainy, and the traffic
that never stops, louder, heavier now, the light on the wall
and around your shoulders, a few
more minutes
until night turns away completely and you wake to
coffee
and accept the yoke, said to be easy, and bear
the light burden; with compassion morning bends
over you though you do not see, the kiss
of cloud, first sun, kiss of salt air, what
spirit flees now, shy to be seen, bestowing,
claiming nothing. It is the secret heart at the center
that keeps you, though you do not know, that carries you
where you can not go.

April Ides

this is yesterday's poem.... I didn't get it posted last night...


April Ides


Bright blue cold and men out working on the lines
in such weather, twenty degree April morning!
The lines strung through the forest, invisible
forces, touch them and connect. They sing
to us: This is the day

that the Lord has made. I am the Lord,
though sometimes you don't think so.
I think a poem should have trees in it
most of the time. I write my poems in a trance
because there's too much to think about.

Light in a window before dawn, and then dawn...

The mind wants to constantly explain these things,
discriminating. Touch the wires and your thoughts
leap out of your body, trembling like sun's light,
like music.