the language of flowers

 

the language of

flowers

  
it’s the language of attractiveness
like gravity like red cells swimming
inside arteries like summer nights
like jasmine says to a nose

and steady stance won’t you come
listening like a bee surely does
fluttering wings and molecules

a hunger for something sweet
like unreasonable beauty does
like honey on your tongue

all that’s wanting waiting to be
already is, like frosty breath like
hands in pockets huddled twice

till dancing toes draw the map
like does the sea like does the sky
and the moon and shadows too

and I wouldn’t speak your name
except I got nothing more to say
of matter much, besides

the flowers are shouting now
 
 

neil reid © january 2012

 

late autumn phrase

 

late autumn phrase

  
what language a winter tree bereft
of leaves save some scattered folk?

is it a curtain furrowed clean to reveal
seeds? or breath amidst bleating oars?

a chance for splayed phrases to
gather round a swaying sketch.

birds grey on a wire high like some
sentence gone silent in

flightless hieroglyph.

yet when my sight departs
what thought remains of early
morning frosted breath?

bare, but for some few whited
wings.
 
 

neil reid © january 2012

 

mosaic incantations

 

m o s a i c   i n c a n t a t i o n s

  
what are the hundred words I haven’t said to you?

milkshake raspberry diphthong happenstance somnolent

what face without vocabulary is there to embrace?

cracked splintered fractured broken flummoxed

what whispers, where? touching your ear, and

entwine embracements constituent double-stitched

what spoon in your fingers do you choose?

celebrant candled illuminance embellish adorn

what truth is like a broken bowl?

what the milkman says to the porch
what the stranger said about the calendar
what grandmother laid upon the table as feast
what salt bestowed to tongue with a single touch
what wheat-spun hair draped itself like snow

you knew all along, didn’t you?
 
 

neil reid © january 2012

 

Commentary
There’s more water than land that makes up this place we call home. So how’s this poem address the prompt (I’ll let you read that for yourself as linked below)? Like an ink blot response would be one answer (although a boring one). Yet I’ve become some becalmed by much I write, looking for new understanding of the landscape, and while this may not be all so realized – it is closer. There is so much we yet do not understand about so elemental a thing as waves, how much less then what language might be able to say. Said years ago in another lifetime, this may not be the perfect answer, this may be rather unorthodox, but I feel more happy. So be it.

Written for the We Write Poems, prompt #89, Respond to this.
Please find the prompt responses of other writers here.

here

h e r e

  
here’s the poem that’s in my fingertips.

here’s the poem that does it right, regardless
of any self doubts, in fact, allows your very own
experience to bloom in a way you’d thought
before impossible.

notice your part, the lines you write.

here’s the dog that greeted you today, that
unabashedly leaned into your hands, that
poured life into you from its’ own willing wet
snout.

here’s the poem you didn’t expect to read.
yet you did.

here’s the meal you thought was lost.

here’s the kernel, the seed of corn.

here’s the coat when cold, the hat when
it rains.  here’s the shoes, here your feet.

then somebody says, here, I gotta show you this.
and it’s like rain, the same everywhere everywhen,
but it’s not.  the face is different now.

it looks like you looking me.

here’s the weeds you forgot to pull.
we are not a matter of beliefs.

even when we turn our backs
here remains.
 
 

neil reid © december 2011

 
 
And here, a poem I won’t explain.

a natural history of my kitchen

 

a natural history of my kitchen

  
this is mother’s kitchen.
it was someone else’s before she bought
this place on wheels, moved, left the cat behind,
just what old farm people do,
made it hers.

it was someone else’s good idea, but then
she filled it with high stacked canned goods and
just around the corner two books of black and white,
photographs, people, mostly nameless to me.

when her memory began to go, so went the captions
to all those decades long since floating by.

there’s mom there’s dad (only a few), grandmother
janet too, a great uncle named lew, and the rest,
just ghosts that lay down flat between the pages
falling loose, there, right beside the kitchen now.

glue don’t last forever, that’s clear.

then somebody says, here, I gotta show you this.

and here’s the table where we sat, where she sat,
a formica thing, shiny, window-like, made to look like
wood which it wasn’t, pride of 1950’s practicality.
that’s where I took the photograph, mom and her ghost
on the tabletop.  now there’s two, the both of them.

and here’s the cooking trick when she lost the words
to say what she really liked, and she was always
polite.

      do you like that mom, what I cooked?
her response was always yes, but I learned, when
she asked for seconds, yes please, another plate,
that’s how we discovered truth.

and when I broke my wrist, came to stay with you
because I couldn’t open a can, couldn’t feed the cat,
so you did, just that, and I cooked the rest while
the cat hid behind the stranger’s couch.

the window facing east above the sink, ate the dawns,
right beside where the toast was made, the spinach
deveined, the drawer that wouldn’t close all the way,
big knives in another that stuck.

dishes in cabinets older than me,
back when plum blossoms carpeted the valley
in their own spring snow.

the doors beneath the sink held closed by
a rubber band.  time has a way with place.

magnetic cat on the refrigerator, another with
the doctor’s phone. years later a page from me
with a photograph, less dimmed than memory.

saying, this is your home, I come visit, go to the
grocery, cook dinner with you, and here, here’s
my phone number when you forget.

still there to this day even if she’s not.
 
 

neil reid © december 2011

 

Commentary
Overly sentimental perhaps? Yet maybe because so much clear definition of my family history is rather dim, I keep looking what remnants I do have at hand. What was the story of mother and father? Mostly I don’t know and never will, so it is a history of crumbs left behind. Such is my small illumination, the captions to images of memory. Prompt answered – so be it.

Written for the We Write Poems, prompt #86, A Natural History of My (room).
Please find the prompt responses of other writers here.

dead reckoning

click to see this image in full size resolution

 

dead reckoning

 
windows don’t fuss about truth.  neither
shy amending what’s swallowed and given
up to waiting sight.  transparency isn’t that
truancy of breath as often thought.

my heart could break.  says mosaic truth
mended by winter weeds, sand on gathered
stone.  seeing you as I do.

reflection is the expected refrain.
refraction fingertips illuminate a language
native to wonderment, just so many waterfalls
rising out of rocks.  faces falling, assuming
the shape of rain.

here, here’s my single edge, moments
I can’t stand seeing anything not your face.

your body is the meal consumed.
no ill intent.  passion, simply vision insists.
just what translucency must need do.

window pronounces blue sky defines white
water clouds shimmers falls dew infused on
pearlescent lips.  what story heard depends
upon where you stand.

that’s why cats tilt their sight between autumn
leaves.  ready for the brightest slightest face
suddenly revealed.

each face so much water rolling over
rounded rocks.  turn up your pants, bare
feet splashing ahead.

coyote says, throw yourself, not knowing who
you’ll be on the other side.  maybe wilderness.

one kiss.  one face swimming bright.
landing here in my hands.

the one path of many set loose.
I call your name and the river comes.
you hear it too, and repeat.

I am here.
 
 

neil reid © december 2011

 

Commentary
This image as a source for a poem prompt was near too rich, so many voices wanting to speak themselves. Of course I would make my choices, yet I wanted to share that process – not be neat, concise, just for that sake alone. In result there are actually several threads twisting themselves throughout this poem – what I hope (and realized) is exactly how the image appears to me, no one single understanding alone. I think that’s a kindness to the environment given here.

As well, and as previously posted, I’m wanting to allow a new poetry to be for me. Less clever, more honest (much as that seems too grand to portend). I suspect at best my writing must stumble even more than before.
Meaning I’ve not much clue what to do!

So the choices here are more raw. Not one thread, but many. What the window says and is, and something more intimate too, because that’s really how we respond – isn’t it?

Written for the We Write Poems, prompt #84, Window faces.
Please find the prompt responses of other writers here.

I am not the words

I am not the words

 
I am not the words.  I am the sleeve.

I am run out of cleverness.  I have run

my mile and here, my shoes are spent.

There is nothing lost to claim, nothing

with a name attached, neither any

ribbon to undo.  Neither are we

emptiness.  Rather, simply, we thirst.

Vanity has tendered its’ best, failed

twice, tried to live on seemly crumbs.

We move from light to light.  I forget.

Release my name with your breath.

That will be the better truth of me.

Old comforts are forsaken now.

Poems are bones, shells on the shore.

One comfort alone endures,

I am not the words.  I am the sleeve.
 
 

neil reid © december 2011

 

I pray, nay, I beseech you to see
that you are but a whisper
on the lips of God.

I beseech you to see
that as a whisper, you pass on ever so soon,
like a line of poetry
written on the waters of creation.

But yet the greatness of a whisper
is that it is passed on…

     C.P. Thorp.

7-December-2011 post-Commentary

This poem was written before the WWP prompt was even selected. The poem and prompt were tangentially coincident. However I do think the poem applies, well enough at any rate to share as responsive to the prompt. (All Good Things, write about an ending while also looking forward toward what might be the next relevant beginning.) Thanks Nicole.

Regards the prompt I wrote a list of “endings” I might write about. However I knew I’d really already written the poem, this one right here – that it was and is about an ending to my poem writing (and no, I don’t mean I’ll stop writing poems). Yet I clearly feel some ending (but don’t ask me what that means), and what that means in terms of change (can’t answer that either yet). Maybe the change won’t even be obvious (being just how ignorant I am at this point).

There are significant changes (endings) in my life currently, however where I personally sense it the most is in poem sensibility. I feel both “done” with something and waiting for “next” to arrive.

Neither feel quite done with waving goodbye yet. My only clarity is my lack of clarity. I wonder what the good poets are doing tonight?

You may read other’s We Write Poems prompt responses here.

seven impossibilities

s e v e n   i m p o s s i b i l i t i e s

 
that gossamer leaves of butterflies
can move against the wind.  they do.

that people will see their lives like stars.
light is just this genuine.

that fish will fly and birds will swim.
see how easy it already is!

that loneliness is just a meditation
we forgot about.  take heart.
 

that moon and sea rejoice their marriage
tides.  in like kind, cleopatra’s embrace.

 
that poems are more than the script
they seem to speak.  you tell me.

that we will pass through the eye
of a needle.  we may.  we may.
 
 
 

neil reid © november 2011

 
in respect,
what did this poem teach me?, that’s the question I’ll address.  to begin, a simple theme, then came the seventh to write (as here, the stanza that stands by itself from the rest).  as I first thought of it (some different from here) it was not the same as the rest, being more the obvious statment of actual relationship, moon to seas.  I thought, I twisted the words, but it still came out the same that way.  too many thoughts (eventually also obvious).  then realized a better obvious – stop writing the poem and let the words, the language, determine their right place.  and if that place was indeed some different, then let it be, yet as here acknowledged, set the stanza slightly aside physically.  (writing not being so much about “making” as “allowing” from my point of view.)  writers I think need respect their language and that it has as much or more ability than the writer does.  although oddly found, once I’d let go of having it be right, meaning the same as the rest, it became more that way of itself.  funny how that works.

old axiom: writing is more about learning than the other way around.

letter to William Stafford

letter to William Stafford

 
Dear Bill,

How long’s it been?  Sorry I missed you last time around.  Suppose you’re still writing there, just like you always do, granddaughter or not nibbling at your toes, adoring you, eating your attention just like pie.  Funny how she stole herself into the early dawn, you in your writing time, suddenly then less alone.  But you never said stop, dissuading her bloom, but just awoke some earlier yourself to keep coin with your words.  Poetic, one might say, how you hold a hand.  Yea, just like you.

There was this dream, did I tell you Bill, and I was that grandchild you see.  And I drank up every word you ever said to me.  And your hands, your hands, oh I remember them, how they held the very air itself.  Then clear as a feather rings in flight, there you were, shovel in hand and standing right beside where a ditch was waiting to be dug and I knew, no matter at all, if that’s what you did, how you lived your life, that’s the book I wanted to know.  And now everything I read of yours takes its’ sound, reads from that first pantomime.

Quietly, in the middle of dark, things can recognize themselves, can’t they Bill?
Like a sunlit day would never expect.  That night shrouded light in a barn visible by only a solitary traveler, bright inside.  And you’re right, if we’re not listening we can lose our feet, like it was another randomized flock of sheep.  Yet one moment can fill everything without needing to change a thing.

It’s just like you said.

Yours sincerely, my blue pen

PS. You saved someone once.  Maybe me.  But you didn’t know, so it’s not your fault.  Neither the poems now.  Not your fault, no more than the man left standing who missed his train.

Then sometimes seems we’ve missed a life – when it’s only about to arrive.  We’ll call it a nudge rightly imbued.  See, new shoes!  And thanks.

 

neil reid © november 2011

Written for We Write Poems prompt #81  Dear (poem)
Write a letter. Write a poem-letter to be specific. Address it to some historic figure you’d like to send a letter. Formal or personal, that’s your choice; you can be “the best of friends” or “respectful strangers”, howsoever you desire. Read the poem responses of others here.

William Stafford was an American poet (1914-1993). While his poems were not the first I ever read, they were the first I ever cared about, and came into sight just when I first seriously took upon myself this craft of language and expression. And to this day there is no poet whose words so well fit my ear.

bread crumbs

b r e a d   c r u m b s

 
goodness!, the minister said
but that’s what most of them say

when we haven’t been afraid
we’ve been someone we hardly recognize

when you’re standing upon a rock
there’s one way the wind don’t blow – down

all things with wings know this truth,
bend, gets you where you wanna go

truth be told, if you wanna tell the truth
be no more of importance than is the wind

summer that’s when we found ripe corn
but spring, fall, no fruit without their hands

horses don’t eat bricks, and neither
should we swallow convincing lies

shaking brings wheat to the roots
much as how grandfather said to listen

stumbling is said to be expected, some even
say, when done well, it becomes a dance

it’s often hard to believe your life is a candle
but you gotta see, light never lies

beneath your layered clothes
life gets really close

cover your voice with an open door
to reveal what you thought was lost

 

neil reid © november 2011

Written for We Write Poems prompt #80 by Pamela Sayers.
Bread Crumbs do a poem make
Accumulate a minimum of twelve words, and write little snapshots of time, memory etc… two line “poemlets”. These poemlets could stand alone or relate to some degree. Read the poem responses of others here.

my twelve words were selected from a poem,
Our Cave, by William Stafford

good afraid
down bend
tell summer
horses shaking
stumbling candle
close covered
(OK, so I see words in pairs, although they may or may not relate that way in the poem here.)

 
comments:
Thank you Pamela. This was good for me, still some lingering myself in I don’t wanna write. So brief fits the bill just right for me.

nickels and dimes

        nickels and dimes

 
when I didn’t rightly count the fleas.  who’d guess the sorrow that would make.  when the salad went into the freezer to crisp it up.  how well that went you can guess.  when the choice seemed make rockets or radios, yet choosing either was as far off course as off could be.  when a kiss took hours to arrive, although truth is, it was years.  when driving forty miles and forgetting the marriage rings seemed obstacle rather than omen.  dumb.  and yea, after-the-fact, that marriage wasn’t worth much even melted down.  (insult to injury) saying yes to one because I said no to another, when I should’a said nothing to anyone, (or everything)  too much pizza, yea, it really is a sin, although a small one, unless it’s large.  telling stories inside my head when the world is outside, like it always is.  crashing can get to be a habit. cars shouldn’t assume some shapes.  giving the baby freedom to roll is not always the best idea.  reality is bigger than we (me) sometimes (always) imagine it.  there, that’s a better reveal of truth than I usually suggest.  countless important pieces of paper I’ve lost.  taking a back seat to riotous desire, because like they say, hands on the wheel, ten and two o’clock.  please.  but no blaming me alone because we all do it too.  maybe you’re doing it right now.  it’s like dodgeball without the ball.  creaking bones say childish choices are in the jeans.  say fences are just pockets turned inside out.
forgive what the river does.

there, that’s important too, but pointless saying why.

 

neil reid © november 2011

 
comments:
minor confessions. nothing much more than autumn leaves. and while seeming long long since a last poem, (mostly) true to my word, write when you wanna and don’t when you don’t. no fair beating yourself up for the truth. yet writing is how I measure time (little as I do recall) so not writing gets rather odd (fish out of water like they say). and confessions, yea, don’t count for much but sometimes stirring the mud is what you do, stick in hand. it’s just something to write till better words come along.

untitled dream number one

untitled dream number one

 

this is it.  this is drowning.
the pastel movie beneath the marque.

there was uncle bob who survives adventures,
then one day just died anyway.  there was crazycat
who ate chocolate and lived.  there were swimming
lessons and a first kiss, both late by the calendar.
there were silent mean streets that did no harm, and
a bee wearing a flower stinging grandma janet’s nose.

it’s a matter of how much water you can breath.
whether or not this summer heat will make tomatoes
blush.  then again there was the late autumn when
a boy’s steadfast care salvaged the life of a cat
like no adult could muster to do.

a matter of surrendering.

and how do we know when a poem ends?

 

neil reid © october 2011

 
comments:
Nothing serious. Some color. Some this, some that. Cleansing thoughts of words with words (crazy huh!). Also sort of like notes done out loud, and you’ll carry them now for a while won’t you please, and so I don’t have to for a while. Nothing serious, like I said.

Do we trust the barebones truth of meditations?

counting pebble skies

counting pebble skies

 

thirty-eight birds on a wire.
clear bright spotless blue otherwise.
shadow limb roosted leaves unmoved
in summer middle-day heat.  silent green.
becalmed.

slumbered earthen white truck beneath
claws itself awake, clears its’ throat.
unexpected growl.  startled all
into flight.

feathers leap into elliptic waves all
in less space than one random thought.
become a broken road round river
overhead.

      ***

oddly enough, fifty-three return.
one is white.

 

neil reid © october 2011

written for We Write Poems prompt #77 instant poetry!
by Joseph Harker, write a poem about something that takes place in an instant (say five seconds or less), and keep the observations attentively direct without consideration toward meanings. Please read community responses here.

 
   comments:
Interesting to take a moment, only one moment, almost a still life in time, and attend only that. Here the movement is slight, is brief, from still to motion to still again. The “observation” of counting sets that beginning and ending here. And yes, I cheated a little, took two moments instead of only one, as that most brief motionless second moment created a wonder almost without wondering (yet still, without actually “doing” anything). However the poem remains true with the prompint’s notion of avoiding reflection for meaning, and simply makes a second observation, which yet changes the energy of the whole, (fair I think) and (even if I’m being bad).

Thanks to Joseph for this one (as I had nothing till lunch and thirty minutes to see and write this poem) and his new poetry journal Curio Poetry for which this prompt is their site theme. Interesting too, what takes a literal few seconds, then takes thirty minutes or more to (barely) describe.

blind haibun joe, number one

blind haibun joe, number one

being what we call “practice” here
 

the fox came upon the small woodland house quite unplanned.  the half-flaked paint, broken window panes, both framed the open door not in welcome, but in challenge to curiosity.  disheveled contents of the bedroom suggested some scuffle there, yet dust clung to everything.  fox had no clue of this as the threshold drew near, then one paw reached into shadow through the open door.

undisturbed dust in
late day rays of light
leaving old secrets intact

 

neil reid © october 2011

 
comments:    Is ignorance bliss?

And what exactly is a “haibun” poem?  Well not exactly, it is a joining by tangential or oblique relationship, both a short segment of prose with a haiku poem.  Nan suggested this recently in a post of hers, while coincident (charming accident!) so did Margo Roby in her Tuesday Tryouts.  All too much for me to resist!  And actually I wrote this “exercise” before reading Margo’s post, so I make no claim to doing this precisely “right” (but when has that bothered me?).

Many a poet I suspect is just itching to also write some prose, so here’s a perfect opportunity.  (And just enough.  Novels don’t interest my pen.)  Meanwhile reading Stanley Fish‘s informative book, How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One, has peaked my desire in that direction too, looking for that “perfect sentence”.  So it is the prose aspect of a haibun that most interests me in the moment.  As well the rightness of the associated haiku I make no pretense about at all.

The first desire in the prose here was simply to create a certain mood without causing physical movement, and actually there is no real movement within the body of text aside from that final one paw reaching into shadow.  Yet the reader’s eye does get to move, and wonder some, but all overlain on the most quiet of a scene.  (Yep, some fun doing this exercise.)

Thank you Nan and Margo too.

Read Simon Blackburn’s review of Stanley Fish’s “How to Write a Sentence”.

grounding

g r o u n d i n g

 
what if you awoke in the middle
of a river, neither source nor conclusion
within your sight.

would you swim?

what if you reached a shore and
it was the middle of middles between
waters and land.

would you climb?

what if you reached a summit,
understanding earth and sky, then to see
it was only the middle of existence.

would you fly?

what if you married, children bloomed
and yet that was simply the middle of
one life.

would you embrace?

what if your death was the middle
and

 

neil reid © october 2011

 
comments:
(refrain: Someone asked me how I’m doing. This is how I’m doing.)

What to say? This poem arrived as a single drink. Yes, it did get some review and some refinement – mostly, really, just to get myself out of the way.

I know exactly the wonder this poem means to me. However I’d rather now keep my voice quiet, allow you to take what measure you will of the poem from and of yourself.

My appreciation for Margo Roby who allowed me to see this poem more clearly and write it the way it most wanted to be.

neil

lefty-handy, it’s really true

lefty-handy, it’s really true

please click image for larger version

Being one segment of my left-hand written poem as published earlier.

Just as evidence, it is really true.  Not pretty, as I said, but legible and yes, there is something about penmanship that interests me (by either hand).  And posted here mostly for my own amusement, and to demonstrate, hectic as I am, that I still have too much time on my hands as so demonstrated to colorize!  (merging a little poetry with a little art, and that makes me smile)

Actually I’d like to post some (shorter) poems in actual hand written form. (Is that a silly desire?) And equally would be interested to see some others do the same. I don’t know what the pen shows but I think it shows something, no matter any meanings in that way. There’s a flavor – something like that.

Oh, and does this append the “rules of poems”? To colorize or not to colorize? Bring out your crayons please!

neil

the rules of poems

the rules of poems

try to write in english, if that’s who you are.
keep in mind the two ends of this thread.
count one two three, yet three one two still amuses me.
try to be understood even if it means wagging your tale.

eat, sleep, feel cold feel heat, wear two shoes because
you have two feet, likewise comb your hair (free spirits
are allowed to give that one a pass).  drive on the
right side of the road, please.  all this counts.

swim like molecules like fish fly.
like sugar dissolves in a coffee cup.

in the beginning god whispered into matter’s ear,
said, please dance like this, and matter did and does
because of love.  everything since, follows that.

find something to beat like a drum.
words will do because they’re hollow inside.
understand, truth resists casual conversion.

be passionate.  allow that the color red is genuine.

be kind.  plow indifference into fallow ground.

granted, we didn’t make the air nor grace nor
footsteps falling in line, likewise poems too, yet
good fellowship suggests

adopt what is given you.

 

neil reid © october 2011

 
Posted for We Write Poems prompt (75) Poems and Prompts!
Please read other poets poems in response as well.
Write a poem prompt to share, and one poem to go with it.

comments:
Hardly the first, nor will this be the last.  The “rules of poems” have been in mind for weeks, well months actually, have raised their heads here and there, gathered like a storm, then here’s this – this laughter like a bird.  Not that it’s anything less than sincere.  (More much discussion yet to come!)

Here’s the Prompt:
Write a poem that examines the theme, “what are the rules of poems?”  Precisely how you approach this question is all up to you, be it serious, studied, reasonable, or unleash your muse, let fly and make the world as you will.  There are no rules about rules except what you say!  Isn’t that the writer’s craft and passion both? Do you find anything universal by nature or is the nature at source inside your own personal imagination.  For this poem you get to say.  Maybe you’ll get to inform our understanding here!

Sister

S i s t e r

She remembers when milk stars were on
fingertips.  when warm bread came ringing
at the door.  when She was the taller of two.

She said, here in my arms your weight will fit.
your limbs in mine become olive trusses, said
these are braided bridge

these are rings on the cat
these are bare knees on the front steps.

said, her nose in the bloom, never
seeing the bee that never stung,

like it was ripe no matter how much
we ever forgot or would.

just the way She spoke to me
in a photograph.

 

neil reid © october 2011

 
comments:
Someone asked me how I’m doing. This is how I’m doing.

It would be an easy temptation to say that writing is hard for me to do right now. But not true; the writing itself is easy enough. However getting to that place (sort of like peaceful or maybe focused inside), that’s what’s elusive at this time.

This poem landed with one simple line: the first one. The rest just fell into place. That writing process was rather meaningful for me; don’t know if the result will be for anyone else. So be it.

My sister is real, but also a myth. Thus capitalized “She’s” used for the poem. And localized repetitions (for which there’s probably some name I don’t know) which are easy enough to see cascading through the poem. My play with form to create small rhythms that seemed appropriate within the lyric whole (maybe a love note to someone I only know just this much and no more).

And the form becomes rule. But just within the breath of this one poem. (and MR you know, for a time I wanted to resist common rule, but don’t feel that way any more. now I want to honor them, but the ones I choose to want and make. although me, fair in general to say, I’m not outside the lines even if they’re mostly chalk.)

left hand draft

left hand draft

learning to write with my left hand

 
i.

does my left hand know what to say
if given pen?

are there voices in fingers otherwise
invisible?

but this still feels like right side
talking me.

don’t quite want letting
go.

right right right.  insistent it is.  habit or
toes like tide?

left shy?  no.

some afeared maybe you’ll see another me
before I do.

right knows all the
tricks.

left has none.

ii.

you see, resistance can be not only illegible
but plain invisible!

like there was no ocean
suddenly.

yet usher in this hieroglyphic of bipedal
language.  trace left-handed grace within
ability.

shall we write close and enigmatic, dare
any others than our own eyes to rightly read?
or share as devoted apostles with our kin

say here, this is possible?

make even our criss-crossing collisions into
sacred text?

patience is due bringing this child into
first light.  embrace as you would an infant in
your muscled arms.

tender unpredictability.

iii.

symmetry is illusion if measured
in grams.

two pair of radial motion
perspectives, eye and ear but none
identical.

right sees some better.  right ear too.
right is jealously convenient it seems.
but break a few bones then
observe.

left had to learn new skills and some
it never gave back.  right acting at times now
completely dumb.

right stronger but less confident.
left more able but more prone to being
dismissive.

left built the pyramids but right
lays in them.

iv.

here, we’ll call this seed
knowing up knowing down, right-sided dirt
thirsty for bright.

tamp with your foot
set my thoughts in proper place.

random feather landed shadows can
scratch, peck away doubts.

already there are rumors
are stories are suggestive traces of
coming rain.

already parched top-soil words
are feeling new faced kin with the
hoe.

go ahead, breathe into me.

v.

are left-hand thoughts more an invisible
giant?  like a horizon we seldom discern.

often don’t we think this, this
is our life?  while
sleeping through the middles of wheat.

left says, yes
like wind with you.

I looked to see, is there a left-hand-pocket
name for me.  like some say there is.

I looked. my name was still the same.
because mine’s same as my father’s was.
stranger under-skin from the first.

that other face.  I already am.

 

neil reid © october 2011

 
Written for We Write Poems prompt (74) Left-hand first!
Please read other poets poems in response as well.

rambling comments:
Just a kid with a box of candy words. Do we need to take this seriously? As serious as fresh baked yams I think! (And confessing this prompt was my idea, so I’ll take the blame if you wish.) It is some measure odd and unexpectedly challenging I know.

I meant and take this prompt as literal – write with a poem, pen to paper, with your left hand (assuming you’re right-handed). Why? Because I take interest in the physical act of writing itself, and because something else just might get stirred up along the way. Some say right-brain, left-brain and that there is some difference there. But I don’t know directly for myself.

If you tried this prompt, it’s awkward isn’t it? Uncomfortable.
(But really, so what?)

Interesting how my “editor” and “self” raised their hands, daring to be plainly visible. Right-hand was clearly not so pleased. Not guessing what to expect this poem as a whole was written over several days (each day becoming a section here, although that wasn’t a plan, just the result). How I felt was a little different each day. Wouldn’t say there was a beacon burning bright, but yes, some difference in the light, something to explore again I think. (Do we learn to write, or walk, in just one day or even five?)

Although I do most of my writing, and all my editing, by keyboard, I do however often write first drafts with pen and ink. Self-serving vanity aside, I find something of pleasurable art about penmanship itself (and left-handed only expanded that abstraction of language and pen).

In the interest of full disclosure, and obvious, keyboard needed be the last port before publishing here, and yes, both right-hand and editor got to have something to say, but that’s alright as well, not meaning to exclude them some play (like I could anyway). Of note I did find by the end of this process less jealousy of right to left, less perceived need to hold them apart.

neil

PS. And boy, is this poem ever too long? Where’s that red pen?

left one

left one

 
does my left hand know what to say
if given pen?

are there voices in hands otherwise
invisible?

but this still feels like right
talking me.

it don’t quite want letting
go.

am I we really twin?

right right right.  insistent it is.  habit or
tide?

left shy?  no.

some afeared maybe you’ll see other me
before I do.

right knows all the
tricks.

left has none.

 

neil reid © september 2011

 
comments:
So for real, you gotta write this one with your left hand alone. Pen and paper, no keyboard to start. That’s what makes the question here. Will something else be revealed and said? This poem is only a first shot across the bow, a warning expectation for the unexpected, yet to be found. (Right hand, left hand, and the sides of the brain, like they say.) So if we allow our uncommon hand to physically write, does something new of self come out to play?

That’s a question, not answer yet. Mostly I just observed that right isn’t so eager to really let go.

Thanks to a right-hand broken wrist some years ago, I did of necessity need to learn to write left-handed then. There’s banks to visit or even simple notes to take, so writing that way I did learn to do but that was all with pure functional practical need to then be addressed. This is something more.

And the only way you’ll discover for yourself, is to do the same. Write and keep listening for what the process reveals into light. I think I suspect the real opportunities to see will only arise by doing a series of poems this way; there’s dust to shake loose both physically and mentally.

Maybe later I’ll include a photograph, because “seeing” that’s part of the process too I think.

(post-script):
So, does right-handedness resist? Is this more than passive response, as I just clicked “post” while meaning only to “preview” the post. Meaningless? But I seldom make that mistake these days. (do it and forget it; move on; is that a message now?) Poem is alright with me, but I was gonna sit on it a while more; that was the plan diverted here.

(silly things I like to investigate?)

defining real

defining real

 
was it always me or never me?  meaning what
I see through windowed eyes.

(t e e t e r)
I remember seeing-sighted one day, and it looked
to be as real as a cardboard puppet stage.  all of it.
like paint on the inside lens of my made-up eye.

(t o t t e r)
then again when each single breath inhaled
bloomed radiant trees and sky and sun right-handed
right inside of me.  how blindly insensitive I realized
not to have noticed before!

somedays don’t you just wish someone would
read their story to you?  every page out loud.

does mass absorb meaning same same as it does
light?  making shadows in its’ shallow wake.

so maybe meaning changes like changing clothes
like dawn and dusk like spaces between falling rain.
maybe it is knowable and unknowable both.

maybe these words too.  changing.
maybe even me.

can poem aspire to be just as Pinocchio did,
to be a real live boy?
 

neil reid © september 2011

 
comments:
Balance is a lop-sided thing. Have you noticed that? And of this poem, I mean light-hearted, not like insincere, but not serious (even if I mean it all for real)! Impressions are not spurious, yet neither are they balanced in a two plus two sort of way, so simple math needs step aside.

What’s that mean? Well, some parts of what’s written here, seemed random, hardly even coincident with the lines I formally thought to write. But then I thought, why am I editing these, like I knew better somehow? So given rein, then I could notice the relationships, and maybe rain is purposeful, every single drop of it – if we only pay attention, or even just allow.

(So this is also chapter in my odd quest about “breaking rules”, yet seems the rules to challenge are more those of that internal editor than much else.)

Robert

Robert

 
His name was Robert.  Family called him Bob.

He was the brother, the son, who couldn’t settle
for the farm.  There just weren’t enough flavors
that way, planted in the dirt.

No ill regard ever spoken of you.  But you
were just the one who couldn’t stay.

A fine turned storm was not just inconvenience
nor hazard to the crops.  It was the chance to
enjoin a greater dance of sky.

Like your feet upon a frozen tall masted deck.
You drew the line, a sixtieth latitude with native
handed ivory in your pocket.

I wonder if you traded craft for craft, those
watered colors of one small farming town,
exotic carved wood, or sister child Ione

all limbs and braids in ceramic night.

What would you of all my kin have taught
me Bob?  Only a child when your ship left
a westerly port, yet perhaps I did

without a single word.

But then you died, young man in full bloom.
I suppose even then, you were just the one
who couldn’t stay.
 

neil reid © september 2011

 
for my young uncle, Robert Coates
 
comments:
Wish I could remember now what provoked this poem. Something about names or kin or speaking to the past? Could be, but I don’t think it was that. In any case I’m glad for the result, written most on my lunch hour at work. Perhaps it could be called, “conversations never had”, although it only slightly touches that. Can we voice what others might say? Well poetically, yes. And I think I’m still finding family.

(And look Margo,
it’s all in normal English talk and write, punctuation and everything! Hope you’re mollified. But really, it just felt right this time, so I let it be.)

coyote way (love poem number two)

c o y o t e   w a y

(love poem number two)

 
I am coyote who runs at the side.
 
I come back to report anything eager for finding or
when something unhappy is closing onto our track.
 
I do this because it is what four paws tell me to do.
 
I do this for love of tribe, for wild breath.
 
I do this for love of deep hills, all and me alone.
 

craving is the slope of long grass looking
like wind, the castle trees, the forest and far
a soft black raining moon

 
I go best when I go same way as go my feet.
 

fathoms down where tongues go to drink,
swallowing dawn into a belly that’s ripe

 
you won’t see me no matter how near.
you won’t hear me.  I’m the sound rabbits make.
 
when sun makes shadows sleep I’ll draw
your curves into me.  close as is your breath.
 
this is coyote way.
 

neil reid © september 2011

commentary:
This is a very very loose response to the We Write Poems, prompt #71, B1 by Barbara (Briarcat) suggesting we re-invent ourselves. So I set free an alternate understanding of me, more furry, more wild than me. (Although not without some threads between the here and there.) Coyote is a provocative other self, and maybe I should listen (write) more.

A Statement in Remembering

A Statement in Remembering
September 11, 2011

Many have had something to say marking this day in our nation’s history.

September 11th some years now past was indeed a day of worthy notice for us here.

I have then and now seen and listened, considered how this meaning has arrived.  I feel, I understand, the startled pain enclosed in that day.  I have no lack of care, of regard for those many lost, lives now spent, and those many of us by common relation, also touched.

Yet I felt something more, both then and now.  And at neither date have I heard the situation so attuned nor questioned for us to understand in most meaning all equal to the challenge given here.

This remembering is here framed in acknowledged spiritual regard – and so said, stay or leave as you desire.  (This is not bound to any single religious creed but rather some elemental notions of understanding our existence here.)  But this is how it begins for me.  There is this classic statement once given into childhood ears that, “god is everything”.  I took that to mean, as it says, literal.  And nothing of many years since has bespoken that spirit as instead something, anything, less.

That said, then we are in essence a unity even if under the illusion of our perceptions and material sight.  So then one question arises first – who of us can possibly be outside of us?  Including even those we might be tempted to otherwise despise.  Now, isn’t the issue of our mutual agony moved in-house?

That being considered so, and if you accept, then here we are, the one receiving the blow and the one from whose hand it comes.  Might we not also append, is there any living creature, any being who desires good life, who would deliberately wish for a life in a state of pain?

So now the question fostered becomes, for whom and how did the notion of crashing their body and others out-of-the-sky, how even remotely did this come to seem like a good idea?  What tortured bowl of labored pain did this spirit reside within to cast it in so shallow worth?  Consider being prisoner within such dire thought.

How do the best and brightest of us feel when we might harbor pain or anger or hate?  Does it not put teeth into the life of us, dim and darken the experience of the very air we inhale?  How else would or could it be, for any of us!

This is neither to welcome nor justify an action that resulted in such dire harm.  But it does inquire, do we say anyone is stranger, is “other” to us, or merely reflecting back or passing dark on an older pain done, or so perceived, to them?  And whether we, us here, are directly or indirectly, consciously or casually, responsible in common share for some history of harm.  Why in some other mind did we seem, true of not, to merit this ill regard?  There are more than ample dark national histories enough to have reasonable suggestion for some introspection in this regard.

Can we even declare innocence if some sister, some brother, some neighbor lives in pain or need and we disavow, turn our heads, walk away?  Even in distant ignorance, what excuse?  Where then will we say, draw the line, these lives count and these others don’t?  This is not to make villains of any one, yet to allow that if a bear in pained hunger takes some bite of us, should we be all surprised?  Not an issue of fault nor blame, but simply responsibility – the ability to respond to what is so in this life.

I have neither ability or desire to paint my own notions onto yours.  Yet I would treasure our willingness to allow some questions, some healthy doubts, so to breath right out in the public air.  Then you look, you examine your sense of experience, and you decide how to be who you most genuinely are and want to be.  That’s for you to say.

Love should be this big.  Love is this big.

This is what I’ll call remembering.

neil reid

postcards home

postcards home

 
          three feet

where my mother slept.  tissues stuffed into
night-time drawer (not being wasteful I suppose).
where the bed is no more.  where I sit, writing this.
where I sleep on the floor, right beside (despite
not being japanese).

this is my everything place.  eat sleep write.

          fourteen feet

where senna slept.  gathered inside faint scraps
of personal life, given to another day by day.
(no saint) but better, (devoted to another’s care)
what I couldn’t, she could.

where cat-sleep ears heard one night when
mother footsteps went toward kitchen.  no return.
mom’s first cold dark walk into night.  (but found)

          forty feet

a home with rubber wheels.  yet landed fast.
the last stand, last reward of frugal life.  when
she moved in the earth shook restlessly.

I learned to be the better son.

twenty feet by forty-five.

where she labored her last breath.
where I held her hand.  (one might think
it would be hard to do, but harder if not)

          one mile

east third street.  the numbers wouldn’t use
two hands.  where I was a child and mother
was young.  small towns remember too much.

mother makes ham, never turkey.  grandmother
and great uncle lou I escort from across town.
we walk so slowly!  christmas dawn.

greyhound bus at the corner.  driver punches
shapes into tickets.  that was the job I wanted
to do.  mushroom boxes bound for the big city.
groceries two blocks away in those days.

we walk everywhere.

          two miles

she left early, walking up the hill.  me later.
secretary of the new peak roof school, seemed
like the real boss to me.  she knew it all.
sun poured in through the roofs.

tarantulas walked in too.  vacant grass fields
all around and an open door.  gently sent home.

slowly a town settles into itself, into bigger.

but it still seems wrong she’s not in that office
when I drive by now.  epitaph.

          seventy-five miles

pacific grove.  because it is.  the inside breath
of monterey bay.  dead-end by best choice.  no
place else to go, going there.

getting there was once a two lane two hour
greyhound bus ride.  long stop-over at fort ord
boot camp when the ocean was right over there!
impatient feet soon found teetering rocks and sand
and mystery.  mother struggled not far behind.

mother now gone.  boot camp tucked away.
but town and ocean and sand much the same.
I sit more now.  but inside, and yes, the sand
still gets in my shoes, and it’s still me inside.

yea, changes like clothes like thoughts
like poems do, but under, it’s me
the way I was given me.
 
 

neil reid © september 2011

written for We Write Poems, prompt #70 taking snapshots of place
Read the poem responses of other WWP prompt participants.

comments:
Take some snapshots of place centered from your home. Use some rule of measure, as you wish. That was the prompt here addressed. And the result… not exactly what I’d expected for myself. But the poem, it turned to be, had ideas of its’ own, what to do. Became much about mother too. But then, small truth is, that’s the history of right where I sit, right here and writing now. One part of life that she built, and now carried forward by my own, even if the pieces are moved around. So yes, place is also about what, or who, place contains – like you and me.

I rather like the idea, creating some structure for a poem by using some consistent scalar measure (as distance here). I recall one of the ways to see how a young child “sees” the world is to ask them to draw a physical map of all that feels real for them – their house, blocks to school or the grocery, threads out to relatives homes, then what else? So for this poem here, sort of the same, but more condensed, focused in one manner.

One could do this sort of poem threaded by time (or what? as you might desire). Room to grow more again.

And still surprised that mother showed up like this, but I’ll kindly welcome, acknowledge. So be it.