by the dawn’s early light (4/30)

four am thunder
and thoughts:
fear.
strong glass/soft water.
electronic impasse.
no memorializing
mother nature’s fury
while early morning media
tows the line.

five am thoughts
of thunder
and the battle that has come.
scrimmages between
mohawk boy and me
about the mohawk

dropping seeds:
isn’t it interesting?
everyday i direct you
to comb your mohawk
but it isn’t until
impending visit
of masculine parent
that you get upset
with my threat
to cut it off
if you don’t take care
of it

Street Watching Cornucopia (3/30)

I am way behind with Napowrimo but here I go, attempting to catch up!

 

An Indian man and woman

who I think are a couple
until the distance between
extends beyond what is proper
for a woman must walk five steps
behind her man scenario.

Moving in the opposite direction
is a well-hipped white woman
pushing an empty pram
and a young black woman
whose hair runs the rainbow
between yellow and pink.
I stare until she stares me
back into recognizing my rudeness
and my past
where my blues were the turquoise

of my hair.

Verse Novel Reflection #1

Some time in the last two years, I decided to undertake a reading of epics (The Odyssey), verse novels (Omeros and Prophets, by Derek Walcott and Kwame Dawes, respectively). I called myself doing research for my own verse novel. Well. I got about more than half way through The Odyssey before I gave up the ghost. I barely made it past the first chapter of Omeros, although, truth be told, that was due to me being so enraptured by the language of that first chapter, that I just stopped in awe. And that is where I am at with that book. Transfixed. Earlier this month, I picked up Prophets and started reading it again. I admit to being fascinated…by the story, by the language AND by the three-line format.

Here is the back blurb:

From the winner of the 1994 Forward Poetry Prize for the best first collection comes this major new narrative poem.

Drawing on inspirations as diverse as Derek Walcott, the Bible and Peter Tosh, Dawes brings a live a world where 24-hour satellite television, belching out the swaggering voices of American hellfire preachers, competes with dance hall, ‘slackness’ and ganja for the Jamaican mind. Against this background, Clarice and Talbot preach their own conflicting visions.

Clarice has used her gifts of prophecy to raise herself from the ghetto. Thalbot has fallen from relative security onto the streets. Whilst Clarice has her blue-eyed Jesus, Thalbot brandishes his blackness in the face of every passer-by. Clarice’s visions give her power. Thalbot is at the mercy of possession by every wandering spirit. But when, under the cover of darkness, Clarice ‘sins’ with one of her followers, Thalbot alone knows of her fall. From the heart of the Jamaican countryside he sets  out to denounce the prophetess and, like Jonah, to warn the Ninevite city of its coming doom. An epic struggle begins.

Now. Narrative poem. That may be a better, more poetic term than verse novel. Verse novel sounds so plain and well, teenage-ish; at least to my ears. So the next conceptual step on my journey to completing my own narrative poem is to call it that. As I tell my son, words have power/words matter.

The three-line format of both Omeros and Prophets is fascinating. It is a definite plus in reading poems which possess an extended narrative nature. Why that is the case, I haven’t yet figured out.  I started out trying to mimic that format for my own work. However, the characters rebelled. They didn’t want line cohesion. They just wanted to tell their stories in their own ragged and mismatched lines (aka free verse). Even though I am the author, I got out of their way.  After all, I want the narrative written,  not blocked because of an allegiance to a format that, however fascinating, doesn’t work for this particular narrative.

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Exit Crimée and walk along Avenue de Flandre

I read this poem a couple of days ago and keep coming back to it because Alicia Khoo can WRITE! Check out this piece of poetry and if you agree with me, stop by her blog…

allykhoo's avatarFully Awake and Alive

Coffee, cigarettes and croissants, Parisian petit-dejeuner. Pickpockets not
optional but complimentary. You won’t see them coming until you get home

and realize your underwear is missing. I meet a curator from a museum in
Venezuela, she is here for a world conference on what to do with the

evolution and possible demise of a certain art form. I meet a young Dutch
girl and we spend many nights sipping licorice tea all
bundled up in H&M sweaters ranting about politics, sparkling by sunsets in

Chinese traiteurs moaning and grieving about lost love and how much we
adore an English chef who keeps serving us dessert and croutons he made

from pain tradition on top of Caesar salads drowned in melted grilled goat’s cheese;
a boy from Brazil who came here for two days from Barcelona and ended up

staying for three years sitting with me at night in front of the Eiffel Tower watching
it glitter and talking…

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Reflections on the Boston Marathon Bombing

I am against terror in any of its manifestations. Any of its manifestations? How many manifestations can terror have? Isn’t it strictly Islamic fundamentalist? Growing up as a black immigrant girl child in Boston during the late 70’s and 80’s, I have to say no. In fact, I have to say more than no. I have to say this.

This is how dichotomy works in the US:  there is the legal economy of drugs (pharmaceuticals) and the illegal economy of drugs (meth – or whatever its street name is currently; crack/cocaine, etc). There is legal terror (the pigs) and illegal terror (Boston marathon bombing). The legal is sanctioned. The illegal is not. Everything inhumanely possible is being done to coerce our support for the reasoning behind the legal economy and the legal terror while corresponding attempts are made to coerce us into closing our minds and hearts to the correlation between the two.

If you need it said poetically to get what I’m saying: here it is.

Twin Towers

We are reflections of each other
except I’m on the top
and refuse to look down.

We are reflections
except I’m on the bottom
constantly looking up.

We are reflections
but I stand in the sun
which lights the way.

We are reflections of each other
but I stand under the moon
which lights the night.

We are twins
yet I stand tall.
We are twins
yet I crawl.

We are the twins towers
of poverty and privilege
connected
by an umbilical cord
which pumps
only bad blood.

Oh look!

A plane is coming our way.
Come, plane, come!

We are the twin towers
of poverty and privilege
and there is nothing
permanent
that one plane or two
can do to us.

We can be tortured.
The steel that structures us
can be made to scream.
Cities can be blanketed
in the ash
of our destruction.
Thousands upon thousands
can die.

What is that to us?

Once the wind clears
and time has silenced the cries;
once we have sent our own
to kill and be killed
we will be rebuilt
even higher

as a single monument
to the twin towers
of poverty and privilege.

God in Her Infinite Wisdom Sends Crows by Christina Pacosz

National Poetry Month, Day 5. It fits into the poetry/nature motif that is the theme of my postings for this month.

donnafleischer's avatarword pond

God in Her Infinite Wisdom Sends Crows
by Christina Pacosz

For weeks now God has been trying
to send messages with what is available.
Leaves, a thousand eyelids opening,
the iridescent scrawl of slugs,
mundane waterfalls dripping off eaves,
the rare sunlight
and daily gift of mud.

And God has been especially
persistent about sending crows.
Suddenly black feathers
appear at my feet.
Cr aa a k  audible above the thunk of my axe,
the ringing phones at the office.
The visibility of crows

Sunday strutting on the fence,
their middle of the week, middle class
plump edge, dark before the salt
and foam of waves.
The self satisfaction of crows
in the wind and on mowed lawns.
God guarantees crow call on waking,

the only sure thing all day.
I see wings, dark, indecipherable
statements in a gray sky.
When I am certain no one is about
I strike…

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