poems and squirrels

poems and squirrels

  

I’d rather be mapping the behavior of squirrels
than write a poem.

I’d rather eat breakfast out than write a poem.

ok, some oatmeal at home is about the same,
a poem equality.

I’d rather watch the waves, counting sevens,
than write a poem.  easy choice.

I’d rather ride the ferry boat wherever it wants
to go than write a poem.

I’d rather go out for dawn coffee, although yea,
writing makes something to do with my hands.

I’d rather have a bushy tail than write a poem.

I’d rather hide my shadow in the rocks, only
be brave if I see something in a hand to eat.

squirrels see poems between your fingertips,
but I think we call that a noon sandwich.

watching squirrels clamber in shoreline rocks
is far more amusing than watching a poem.

try it.  you’ll see.  so then what’s my excuse,
making this pen run dry?  none to confess.

maybe this is all pouring soup into a poem
bowl.  maybe, maybe not.  hungry yet?

nothing more to confess that idyl fingers
won’t betray.  just another poem bum.

a squirrel told me so!

 

neil reid © april 2012

 

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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.

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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!

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the boy who only spoke poems

the boy who only spoke poems

raised by decent farm folk but who spoke
in dirt & trees & hammers & nails.  orchard talk.
he didn’t have much to say.

he played with sticks and cats and things that
made sense to him.

neither rakes nor hoes nor brooms, nor even
a mother’s typewriter tongue engaged his ears.
only an old green yellow glowing radio
as tall as the floor was not and sprouted,
reached to the limb where he perched.

mystery, a faceless voice made right sense to him.

as years grew a few inches more he tried and tried
to speak, but it came out like dislocation and sorrowful,
none of that true, all of that lies.  but worst part was,
he began to believe the made-up part.

he spoke in masks.  painted bright, reds & yellows
& sea-green blues, but all of that remained steadfast,
a lie.  the way clouds lie about stars.

then he thought language must be about the box,
about fingers & toes & arms & feet, although legs
almost made a bicycle leap
over moon-eyed restlessness.

then studied, like the king’s english said he should.
but couldn’t stand poems till that day, discovered,
it wasn’t poems, it was what they didn’t say.

so he wrote bad poems all day long.  changed his ways.

even wrote this poem you’re reading right now.

neil reid @ june 2011

poem for We Write Poems, prompt (#57)
Sometimes something surprising!

commentary:
Not directly intended for this prompt, but participation is desirable anyway and it some applies. It has been days and days since I’ve written anything. Could say “busy”, but that’s too shallow I think (even if true enough). Seems a personal thing that I don’t write much without a certain measure of calm in my environment, and that’s been a more distant neighbor of late. (Someday think it would be good to feel able to write no-matter-what. But not yet.)

So, some ease restored, and this poem is one that raised its head. You’ll pardon if it is a little head-strong, but so be it. I like the core idea. Suppose might be a good poem to revisit someday, let it play a bit more than it does.

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don’t call me poet

don’t call me poet

me, is not poet.  me is something other.
me is some one one other than name.
me is not even not.  spiral tongue.
words I use.  you taught me that.
these are lingual furnishings.
my face not paper.
my fingers not ink.

shave away whisker history.
there me goes down the drain.
flows right to the bay they say.
see how your gravity sorts things out.

mooning fish, the casual catch.
tie on new bright bait this day.
wiggle a finger like this, like that.
dare you observe, say how a miracle is?
are you the one beneath the pulse?

just to see you swim, my better eye.
my breath my life, melting snow.

me, a bowl of sugar.  no spoon.
pour some in.  dish some out.
use your hands.

poem draws the map.  not me not you.
should that be disdain’s circumference?
does poem owe me any ascent?
found in pocket, some foreign coin.

poem sits some while inside the bones.
but don’t call that home.  just vagrant romance.
allow that dance had the idea long before
there was even an us to observe.
we just conjugate.  we touch we fall.

don’t call me poet.  words just fall.

neil reid © april 2011

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the gentle art of making fire

poem for We Write Poems, prompt #48, the art of making fire

the gentle art of making fire

rub any two words together.
add salts, same as soil does.
imagine dance.
imagine molecules.
imagine no choice.  falling free.
whisper desire into ears of wheat.
be father like stone.  a seed.
be mother like rain.  illuminate.
imagine breathing sky.
imagine flood.
imagine tongue touching flint.
swim canyon like silt, chasing gravity.
sing fingers on butter face.
imagine children in pockets asleep.
imagine dreams like fruit then ripe.
imagine bare feet on a gravel bed.
milking sparks from summer soles.
flames were shadows first.
imagine the mouth of time.
the rakish nature of prayer.
splashing bright.  don’t explain.
say little.  ignite.
the way poems are coincident,
related to smoke.

neil reid © march 2011

6 April 2011 commentary:
I love to nibble at the edges of the real world dance of physics and chemistry (some say the natural laws of this reality we inhabit). Even to prepare for a poem by making sincere study of those “laws”; what do we know about the process involved. Maybe some of that will becomes bones within the poem, or maybe instead the first footfalls before imagination takes the helm, goes its’ own way down the road. Either way is fine by me.

I know (maybe it’s more belief) we are all deeply inside the process, like “fire” here for this poem and prompt. But I also want to feel at a visceral level the truth of such understandings, to know in my blood that it is so. That’s the connectedness I look for anyway. And I think there’s more to learn than only the physics of process, more than just the mechanical, but rather, how all that intimately relates to how we see and feel, how we participate in life.

I think science at root is poetic. I think truth at root is poetic.

All reasons enough to look and play this way.

As you might notice, the poem for me came first, and then by desire to see what else might come, the prompt for We Write Poems, so as to share this idea and prompt. We are all here, burning every day, consuming the very fabric of our world. I’ll hope what writers joined in this prompt find something interesting for themselves, maybe images seen now just for the very first time! ~neil

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Poems on purpose

February 14 prompt, What’s in a name?
by jill crammond-wickham

Read the full prompt and poem responses by other participants.

What title might we give to a yet-to-be-manuscript of our poems. Make that title into a poem now. (Well this is the actual title of this blog, and of the website that proceeded it.) (And no accident.)

Poems on purpose

An accidental collision of desires.

Home from a war. Escaping uncertain youth.
Certainly, a ring, a child, will resolve all that.

Life in disguise.

A pinch of tadpole, sea-salt brine, and a five & dime.
Add a dolop more dire, and a storm flees from home.

They say there was a magic boy, even one for real.
His every choice right-sided, every fork become a spoon.

It wasn’t me.

Strictly less than the sum of flotsam parts.

Years before discovering butterfly’s nature revealed.
Flying against the wind. Choice matters more.
Me, I fell into every hole I dug.

Then Copernicus, Galileo too, and the heavens moved.

They say, inhabit your choice, fear or love.
One certain fate, one could be anything.

Dare lets planets circumnavigate, seeds make root
and expression be unbowed like the planters hand.

It’s about due, poems on purpose, poised!

A chance embrace of desires
rightly, arms open wide.

neil reid © february 2011

neil reid © february 2011

So, here’s roughly half a century, from not-me to me to a better-way-being-me (or not). Foggy headed, away from home, how attached to all the smallest bricks and bats, but this will have to do. Just coming out to play even if the day is a little grey.

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Hieroglyphs

prompt # 037
Conversational
by staff@wwp

The idea for this prompt is to write a poem that is a conversation between two people. It can be imaginary… even a one-sided conversation.

H i e r o g l y p h s

To become a saint you must have performed
at least three miracles! Best foot forward first.

Saving the best for last, disqualifies.

Faith don’t risk. It’s just generous.

Scribbles:

Hieroglyphic certainly. Remains the impulse
that poems might cast some difference into life.
Hammer on nail or driving some wedge into wood.
Kindling for fire, portage in mornings first glance.

I’m yet that much inclined, leaning into breeze.
Fools pass easily but love last words!

None need pamper me to align themselves to
this prospector’s plate, not either way.

(Well perhaps, just a comforting few.)

But know the truth of truth like a hot spoon to tongue.
What syllabus of poem’s phrase has ever changed a life?
None so much as a sleepers morning glance gives grace
or wet nose or eager raking paw?

What changes made were already done inside a rock.
Thus those poems, well germinated, taking into light.
Plainly said, plainly writ, plainly skin to skin.

So maybe what’s there to do, be one single phrase,
be your excuse!

Pray:

Pray to the god of five fingers and five toes.
Pray to the god that moves, that stumbles your feet.
Pray to the god of your breakfast plate.
Pray to the god with small sharp teeth.
Pray to the god of crows on the long long wire.
Nimble fingers. Each glance another bead.
Pray to the god who cradles mountains and rocks.
Pray to the god of gravity, love’s certain touch.
Pray to the god of fingertips.

Pray thanks for the commonplace.

Abiding thanks for impossible reality.

Rooted:

Soil has clay. Clay make brick.
Soil has seed. Seed make wood.

Burn the earth. Make nails to bind.
Bundle the trees. Make rope connect.

There’s a door and window.
The edges of a home we say.

Rooted like a tree in sleep.
Feet make a trail away and back.

Groceries grow on shelves.
Meals found under leaves.

Close as a spoon would speak.
Carve a door beneath your dream.

There is no distance to relationship.
Tumbling, tumbling at your feet.

Onions for spirit wine and your lips.
Pray each day a simple grace.

neil reid © january 2011

Process notes:
Soon I think I need get back to more simplicity (but not this time, certainly). Perhaps this is mountain building, or less presumptuous, walking up a long far trail. It remains this time a quiet conversation internally, maybe a conversation with spirit inside. A gathering actually, of several statements wanting to be a single voice. Maybe it is a dream wide awake? A conversation of whispering.

Where is the line of reality? When does soil become a brick, a mask, a face? Easy to say this is a work in progress. But no. This is just as far as these words cared to walk. (They’ll probably come back again someday. They usually do.) I keep thinking there’s both more and less I wanted to say. Baby talk? Like what you do before meanings get mean or set in their ways. Any patience given is appreciated.

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Pony tales

Pony tales

Would you love me if I was Chinese?
Or one of the Mongol horde fresh from the Steps?
Would you love me if I was a November bird
plump and ripe? Cranberries, gravy, right?
Would you love me if I was a humble-bee
trying to land atop your nose?

Would you love me if I wore a monkey sock
on my head? Or maybe the monkey itself?
Would you give me bananas through the bars?
Would you love me if my hair was long and
grey and tied in a pony’s tale? Or if I had
not one bare shiny posy to my name?

Would you love me if societal rules said
walk ten steps behind or before depending
on geography? Could I carry you?
Would you love me if I washed your feet
in oils and bitter herbs? Or if I was the
raging passionate island volcano god?

Would you love me if there was only one cup
of coffee left in the world? Or no chocolate?
Would you think me sweet on your tongue?
Would you love me if the price was to write
me inside your poems, one each and every
solemn day? Dress me in your vowels?

Tell me, do I get the pony ride?
My smile is written in your hands.

neil reid © november 2010

Don’t blame me. When that girl wore that monkey sock wool hat on her head, that simply took over my day, set the mood to wandering near and far. Is it my fault that made me smile?

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Do poems burn?

Do poems burn ?

Words like to keep me awake.
They are not really so polite.

They land from the sky the same way
bison do. Not wise to divert your gaze.

Sometimes they laugh, maybe smirk,
sometimes jump right into the pan,
bringing their own kindling along.

Yet oft only a spoon’s full falls
no matter how much salt I shake.

Sometimes it rains whole words,
but that’s only seasonal whim.

Or campfire days in the wilding woods,
and surely bubbling phrases will arise
if only there’s some birds for broth.

So, do poems burn?
It’s cold this morning. I hope they do.

neil reid © november 2010

Making empty my pockets here. Back from two weeks apart from this one home (a moreover better home away, but not yet to keep). Some say there’s no “excuse for vacationing”, that it’s just another place, not another life. Suppose I agree. But writing is a little fussy for me I have learned; I like my usual chair, my usual routine. Till that arrives new found, here are some few that came along for the ride back with me.

And all mere things here do also sit aside a dear companion in some considered pain yet unresolved. I’ll write, because that’s what I do. It is largely what I have to offer you. Although honestly I’d be as happy or more just to go fetch some milk from the grocery store. Honestly.

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Every War Has Two Losers

        in review

        A Poet’s Meditation on Peace

A film by Haydn Reiss based upon the life, journals and poems of World War II conscientious objector and poet William Stafford (1914-1993). Stafford wrote in his journal, “The question, ‘Wouldn’t you fight for your country?’ begs the real question which is, ‘What is the best way to behave here and now to serve your country?’ So the real answer would be, ‘If it was the right thing to do, I would fight for my country. Now let’s talk about, what is the right thing to do?’”

Reiss states, “… I think this is what Stafford is saying, ‘Yes, we do and can make war. But what else can we do?’ The undiscovered possibilities in human behavior are what we should pursue. The die is not cast; imagination and creativity are not in short supply.”

This beautifully crafted film documents Stafford’s stance on culture and humanity through both poems and journals (named as is this film, “Every War Has Two Losers”) and as expressed by fellow writers who knew or admired him, such as Robert Bly, Maxine Hong Kingston, Naomi Shihab Nye, Alice Walker, and including his son Kim Stafford, an adept poet himself.

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No poet here

No poet here

I am a man who writes poems.
That’s fair to say, but not much more.
I am a man who wakes, goes to work
four or five days a week. Usually.
Usually Sunday to church. I do chairs.
I eat my dinner at my desk. I like
eating but it don’t much come first.
I sleep Japanese on the floor most
of the time. Nothing political or otherwise,
just a little long habit of choice.
Mostly a good back. You could say that.
I don’t keep house so good alone.
I do everything better when you’re around.
That explains a lot.

Do you know what I did in “the war”?
The one that was mine to do or not.
Or how awkward was that first late kiss,
then everything, then everything lost.
I might say sometime. If you ask.
Or the girl with a grafted patch on her thigh?
I danced brief with Buddha because of her
although she didn’t care. How many
pebbles on the beach? About that much
narrative along the way, and matters
about that much and little,
as they do and don’t say.

Did you know I spent days on skid road
or counted a sea lions whiskers or failed
to see the omens about my marriage?
More often wrong that right side up.
Guessed homeplate by a dancers thighs.
Only fully figured love when the bacon
was long past crisp. Gave it up.
Like one good book says, those who surrender
love will find it again, and finally ripe.

I scribble, I scrawl, write poems maybe
five minutes or two hours a day, maybe
in my car at lunch. Like calm to write
but sometimes no choice. They all see
the light of day but only your eyes once
in a while. Always best when thoughtlessly,
but I do that too anyway. Like foolhardy
companions try vainly to remain.
Sometimes I’m honest enough.

So don’t call me poet please. Too grand for
my shoes, uncomfortable on the tongue and
seems a pretense to suggest that poet is
what I am.

I’m just a man who was asked to write.
And I do. Just a whisper on the lips.

neil reid © july 2010

neil reid © july 2010

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in the beginning there was the word

in the beginning there was the word

a man sleeps

the man dreams pictures

the pictures are people

and people are mountains

and people who are rivers

one who is the sky

the man wakes

the man writes words

the words are poems

the poems used to be words used to be dreams

pretty sappy, the man thinks to himself

but he knows it is true all the same

the man smiles

the man writes a poem

then another

sometimes he smiles again

pretty funny, he thinks of dreams and himself

then he writes again

then he awakes from waking

and he understands dreams

understands life, because it makes him laugh

the man becomes a poem

and the man loves

love was the poem all along

the beginning

neil reid © may 2010

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@April turns to May

Well, April did step outside the conventional sense of time! Saying farewell to the brilliant community site, Read Write Poems, after an all too brief journey with them. Yet going out in a blaze, as they sponsored their own site group participation for the National Poetry Writing Month (napowrimo). I’d never written with that sustained a level of frequency before – one poem a day throughout the month. (No pretense for the quality of those “30″, but a few seemed fair of face.) Then add to the mix, sticking out my toe into the muddy, and co-founding one of a few poetry sites that emerged from the ending of RWP, We Write Poems. Unexpectedly, writing even taking a backseat for near half a month!

Short-fallen in several ways. Didn’t have time or energy to read and comment on other people’s poems near at all so much as I’d thought to do (or should have). The daily chore of work, then site development, and oh yea, a touch of food and sleep, left me with sometimes only a few minutes to write – poems that is. So the commitment became more prime than considered labor toward any hoped for quality. (Learned to accept “lesser” poems of necessity. Is that good?) Banged my head into bricks for a while along the way. Yet April’s gone, and I remain.

So be it, is about the best I can say. It near feels like a new year beginning here. And much remains to discover, learn, appreciate.

Thank you to the many who joined with April’s labor in good care. As well, you all who’ve also remained in this greater community of us. ~Neil

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Some hints toward happiness

Some hints toward happiness

Open your arms to a dawn

Cast your heart into a night

See what grows

See what follows

Spread a few wild seeds

Wild knows what to do, You observe

Take a breath

Now let go, everything dances on fingertips

Eat some cake

Pleasure is good for you

Butter too, cook some fish

Lick your fingers during meals

Go fishing with your heart

Harvest what is bright

Beauty is inside every shell

Also outside, right to horizon’s bow

Dare to see with generous eyes

Gently stir the soup

Appreciate every bowl you meet

Allow friends beneath what you fear

Be of good heart and understand

Who you will become, is enough

Eat dark like chocolate

Understand matter is a choice of life

When you’re in bed in night and

her breath is just that close beside and

you’re feeling all is lost from you and

no matter what you wish you seem to be

getting less and less of what you thought

was right to you, now instead awake

Awake from what you thought was awake

Remember that very first best desire

why you held her hand (or held his)

You listening, listen now to a rhythm’d heart

that is kin to the pulse of unlabored wind

It has never been about you

It is about what you’re beside

It’s about what love says it is, allow and

Open your arms to a dawn

Cast your heart into a night

Love reaches meaning only outside a box

And heals everything broken, even

what was never broken at all

Eat your vegetables and some fruit

Share a spoon and some soup

Break bread because it’s meant to be

Recognize a hand that speaks in light

Meditate   then   act

Move in right directions you see

Use fewer periods when you write and

breath, and oh yea,

Dare to write bad poems too

Maybe a friend is looking for you

Neil Reid © March 2010

with thanks to Sean for the idea and being a friend

Sean Fraser’s blog, The Dolls Point Blogger

and posting: Time Always Runs Out

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Writing you

read write prompt #113, the therapeutic cleanse – a spa for your writerly being
by mary biddinger

Getting stuck in a poetic writing rut? That’s the question, then response for this week’s prompt.

(Read the RWP prompt for full descriptive details.)
(Read other participants responses to this prompt.)

Read my second poem prompt response here.

Writing you

Maybe if I write one good poem

that will satisfy my life!

Maybe life don’t care about poetry.

Maybe, just me.

Maybe that’s what’s meant to be.

Here, take this spoon. Tell me.

Tell me when you think it’s full.

Take salt & pepper from the table.

Bare plate. Two chairs.

Your choice. Throw something over

your shoulder. Salt? Pepper? Me?

Keep the others for your pocket.

I’ll try to fit. Am I in your palm?

But it’s all up to you.

And all down to me.

Maybe if I love one woman, one friend,

with all heart unbleached, that will be

a life!

Maybe that’s what poem means?

Neil Reid © February 2010

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Poem tales

Poem tales

Getting dressed in the morning

I put poems on my feet. Poem-pants

and poem-shirt. (Then off I go to the

word-monger’s shop dressed in white.)

(But that’s a poem-lie.)

(I wear jet-poem-black.)

I wrote a poem and it turned into

a daughter-phrase. Good thing there

was a spare poem-dress in the drawer.

(Whatever to wear to the poem-prom?)

Parenthood, there’s so many words!

When my son grows up someday

I’ll hope he turns into a poem too.

(Another poem-lie.) (I don’t have a son.)

But I do have a poem-wishing-bone.

Launching into my life of poem-crime,

I broke into a poem-bank, stole every

word, every syllable in their poem-vault.

(Just kidding.) (Honestly Your Honor,

not for greed, for poetry!)

As a child, learned my P’s & O’s & EM’s.

But too many EM’s and I had to have

triple-poem-bypass surgery. I’m fine now,

but was told to give up doggerel rhyme.

I refuse!

Things todos poem-list:

Poems to clear the drain, poem-brooms,

grasshopper-poems for nature’s sake,

instant buckwheat-poems-&-grits (not haiku

but they’re quick), venison-poem-sausage

(remember the old poem-food pyramid?),

viral poems (although I can’t decide yet,

how’s the vote? For or Against!)

(stealth poems) too (those you can’t see

approaching your pen or ear).

Poems-for-President!

Poems to get laid (like that’ll work!),

poems to be left alone (think I got

that one down!!).

I drew a poem-circle, perfection round,

included each of us, but a poem-mouth

ate us all up. It mumbled away

speaking Japanese.

Can’t I please now put my poem-pen

down? No! Poem-bellows-and-howls!

Wrote another poem, nearly swooned!

Afterward(s) I wanted a

puff of a poem-cigarette.

Was it good for you?

And yes, poems do have tails.

See them wag! Good poem,

good boy. Fetch!

Neil Reid © February 2010

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When desire lands

When desire lands

A bowl. An apple I’ll probably not eat.

One more thing seeming likely more

at first.

Two flutes without any wind. Resolved,

the finer one given away to better lips.

A garden mostly growing well without my

hand. Bless the poppies and manzanita.

The grape arbor sags beneath its load.

Third season is not sweet, not yet.

But my oh my a stray cat in the yard

blooms my willing hand, my eager bowl.

As will you with but a few well chosen

words, like milk. Just try stopping me!

This is where a poem will rise up

off its page. Leap right up,

land into your willing lap.

Neil Reid © November 2009

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Interview with a poet

A little play to do, even if I drop the bowl. A small step away from usual. Disclaimer. Any similarity between this poem and anyone real much less a poet is purely coincidentally amusing. Life is nothing if not associative.

Interview with a poet

Poets mend some words, but only fair
because others they’ve broken apart.

To begin an evening, my feet hurt.
In or out of shoes. Standing for eight
hours a day isn’t very kind.

Labor is not for the timid of feet.

Poets stare sideways. Unnerving,
some have said of them.

It’s like a bowl of fruit after
it’s eaten. Second meanings have
already escaped first glance.

Like socks you wear until
your toe becomes visible.

Like the pear you peal, maybe
that only happens once in a life.
Perfect I mean, till a peach arrives.

All of this is underneath the words.
Like fish contain the lubricant
that makes water flow.

Seven bucks to cross on the ferry.
Nothing to come back except
your shoes. That part you’re
responsible for yourself.

Dad, he gambled away what he
won from the war. Including me.
But what really irked, was
the sister lost.

Just when she might have saved
a life. She had copper skin.

Mom, she just wanted what she
wouldn’t say. Not till two days before
she passed away. That’s why.

Two in the afternoon and all
I have are crumbs. Shouldn’t
I be confident yet? Shouldn’t
love be shouting loud?

Toast with butter would be better.

A bicycle is probably a better
way to write poems that don’t
stand still.

Expression does trust to score
away the stone of life less lived.
And a last breath is only a comma
we seldom perceive.

Holding hands is essential
for getting it right.

That big yellow school bus
and all the kids singing, smiling,
where have all the flowers gone.
I wasn’t pleased.

Not that I wanna be sad.
It was years before I found what
roots have been saying all along.

Faultless is more than starch.

Foreign soils are only an inch
away. Depends where or when
you wanna go. Like when
mother was young.

Would my life have been greener
if the fence was over there instead?
Mother said my diapers froze solid
on the laundry line. Polynesian
tattoos would have been nice.

So poems are like archaeology,
like the best peach, like colors,
like ants in the soil. Just when
a mole comes along.

Everything is more and less
than it has always been.

And broken things are just the
first step toward a mosaic bowl.

Neil Reid © December 2009

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What a window does

read write prompt #107, lighting the way
by Andre Tan

Write a poem based upon your own response to a photograph.

(Read the prompt for full details and the complete photograph.)
(Read other participants responses to this prompt.)

Shotgun Blast by Shane Gorski (here, reduced and cropped)

What a window does

Light makes no sense looking

like yellow now. Maybe because

it’s crashing on the shore, turbulent

because it matters here.

Five-fingered. How primal, how

human I suppose, but believing is

akin to a hot frying pan. Just right

is rather brief.

Disrobed of neglect brilliant

waves confirm a pulse submerged,

someone’s slumber interrupted

with uncertainty. A rose withered

is, yes, still a rose.

Inside this shell they rested,

wrestled remembering by chalk

outlines. Painted dust onto brick.

Stood on limbs once coniferous.

How many destinations here

contained, fallow now?

Let lightning plow, none shy

of sun. Fertile as a river is.

As it is here in a single breath.

Hand me some chalk.

Here’s my life and bright.

Neil Reid © December 2009

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I am here

read write prompt #106, repeat after me
by community member Rethabile Masilo

Write a poem using repetition for poetic effect is the prompt for this week.

(Read the prompt for full details and examples.)
(Read other participants responses to this prompt.)

I am here

I am here.

Ferry boat moves, water slides away.

Ocean current moves, boat goes too.

What rock holds this space?

A salad map, round red dots.

Pointing me. I am here. Here.

Nor will hands on the clock

stay this place. I am here. Here.

Time changes nothing, but nothing

changes everything.

Lest one hand be lost. Follow then.

Given chance, a rock will move.

Obviously or mysteriously, it will move.

At the end of this unbreaking chain,

here reposed. I am here.

So far as my stride will bend. Daily mend

where sheets may tack, wind received.

Follow your gaze to horizon’s brim.

The edge of a world approaches close.

Trace my course upon your open palm.

Where a wave becomes a rock.

A steadfast wind upon your sea-salt lips.

And I am here. I am.

Neil Reid © December 2009

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When you love me like rain

When you love me like rain

When you love me like rain,

winter comes. Running before

the wind is an easy stance.

That shadow cast turns warm

beneath the sheets.

Then turn on an old elbow,

an aching arm, rotate that

slumbered breath clear around,

full face into unspoken storm.

How far will this gale score

its trace across a linen sea?

I can but say, I am this needle

and thread by thread.

Splintered rain says most

to me, where I roost.

Walk with me.

Neil Reid © December 2009

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Winter pebbles

read write prompt #105, borrowed words
by Deb Scott

Says Deb, This week brings a different kind of Read Write (Word) Prompt. These words are from the first stanza of one of my favorite poet’s work. I’ll tell you who it is, and give you a link to the poem these words are derived from next week, in the Get Your Poem On post. (I know. I’m a tease. It’s from writing sexy poems this week, so don’t blame me. OK?)

To write to this prompt, pick as many (or few) of these words as you want and write a poem using them. (Here’s the some I selected to use.)
(Read the prompt and see the list of words here.)
(Read other participants response to this prompt.)

Winter pebbles

Moon might not see me

rise this morn. Clouds

are a shell in between.

Stars blush a tempest cloak.

Trees undress the lowland fog.

Take this broth and bright.

Curled upon my lap

a homeless wind, abiding

curves no night will keep.

It wasn’t a poem then.

It isn’t one now.

It was just a road

that moved inside of me.

Away from you.

Meteors that will not land

till pierced, reflect in you.

Precious moon.

Neil Reid © December 2009

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Dance hall dimes

I think this is a poem that wants to be something more. But I don’t have the words as yet to allow itself to be revealed. Maybe I’ll come back this way again, however for now, it doesn’t want to wait.

Dance hall dimes.
Where tarnished thoughts
are best left inside pockets.
Let them sleep.

Dare some words. Leave
free to swim. Even rhymes
borne of your own lips,
listen first.

Language has its own desire.
Leave yourself uncrowned,
hear layered voice, lest fall
from improbable and
dear chance.

So would you like this dance?
They do invite, invoke, bestow.
Brave by shadows, by
necessity.

Prayer, a word
few might employ.
A willing heart
will suffice.

There is a tree, arms unfurled.
Like any of us. They want
this dance. What secret
is that?

As easy as the leaves
will fall. Answer as might
a spoon.

Her arms, open wide.

Neil Reid © December 2009

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Simple fruit

 

read write prompt #104, The Sex Poem
by Nick Carbo

Well, you can read for yourself, the intent or desire of this prompt. Try not to be too mundane or too obvious, is part my take on the challenge here (right or wrong). So this response – an old old poem, here rewritten to a major extent. Perhaps more what might be “foreplay” than literal sex in that literal way, and taken as but in a moment or two, a particular sort of “greeting”, if you will (or won’t).  But, so be it, as it is.

Read the responses of others here. Enjoy!

Simple fruit

Simple fruit hangs from the tree, yearning
along with gravity toward surrender’s palm.

In the kitchen warm summer dims
as evening chimes the day; I come
barefoot behind you there.

Last heat softens, glistens on your bare arms,
pale brown as you lean into shaping the meal.
Shallow lime scent arrives sweet, mixes
with the flavor your hands caress.

Cheek then lips find the moist back of your
neck, gossamer hairs receive the breeze,
your barest breath receives an autumn blush.

That aroma, yours alone, climbs on cat paw
feet above lime and orange, lingers to be found
among the leaves. Waits for a basket
in which to slowly fall.

Symmetry takes my shape as I fall into yours.
The bowl on the counter fills wordlessly.
Wet fruit skins lay drying on the counter top.
A cup with sugar and a spoon rests nearby.

Our curve becomes a single weight.
You move hands diligent to your task,
yet move where movement cannot be,
closer by mutual intent.

My hands find the fabric weave of cloth,
reach forward into limbs. More fruit yet
remains to pluck, to fall, to ripen in one
simple touch.

You turn, arms swaying within this current,
making lips cousin close. Breath passes by.
I whisper your name, beneath that breath.

Neil Reid © (December 2009)

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