dance me past the words

your mouth is an arc over the story you say

your mouth suckles a flood of poem milk

your mouth leaves town when lights go out

your mouth sleeps, near me now.

your mouth sings not knowing faces you describe

your mouth imparts rhymes to smooth round stones

your mouth drinks rain like a river does, falling

your mouth awakes, saying me.

your mouth puts tea in honey, drinks drinks

your mouth guards the voice painted inside

your mouth stumbles words like trees

your mouth is water, washing me.

your mouth is like fingerprints beside the well

your mouth dances when you read the threads

your mouth carves round round words, and

your mouth is a silhouette.

 

neil reid © june 2012

 
comments:
what to say?

falls like rain, the meanings I mean.

do you say draft when the chance of being revised or rewritten is slim?

having written so infrequently of late, this is uncharacteristic of me.

an exercise in simply writing words.  almost no editing past becoming ink.  but what’s exercise mean?  practice for what?

bees make honey, I do this.  which is the better crop?

summer gets nearer north.  only I know what that means.

I’ll give you this poem instead.

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calculus

c a l c u l u s

we scrape we calculate
we reason, wrestle with memory.
we copy we emulate, translate recklessly.
we dictate we enumerate
we carve in stone, we draw in sand.
 
we say there’s meaning, here & there
truffles we nose beneath hungry pens.
even attempt to diagram, yet it’s the details
we adopt then leap-frog phonetic math.
 
we kiss we nibble, we defray our doubts
we drink the temper of tales. we conjugate.
we blend, we mix the match, we satirize.
we queue our words, we hypothesize,
thirst for quantum truth.
 
we use pencils with eraser hands.
used oft to cajole dead reckoning,
approaching harbor round-about.
we commune by derivative script.
 
we reflect we are the left-hand mirror
of that which birthed what meanings mean.
 
such then is our fine calculus,
we rise we fall, children like rain.
 
we splash in the gutters
all the way home from school.

neil reid © july 2011

commentary:
Being the lesser of three monsters (let’s say bears, to be polite) that landed on my plate. Have you looked up and read the definition of “calculus” in the dictionary? Interesting. We make much of little perhaps (but what choice?) (and maybe that’s the poem’s home field of play) (and don’t we feel, don’t we care about all the many infinitesimal bits that construct our selves, our lives, our days?). So here, given some brief honor, and brought home close to play.

And, I love to play on the edges of what I poorly understand, yes, like calculus. Therein being one joke. I did pass a college course, basic stuff, called Analytic Geometry and Calculus, but of that class all I remember is the title now. Tarnished, I suppose!

And, isn’t it wonderful, the things we don’t yet understand? Like quantum theory! Which even the science folk say no one really understands as yet. Really, isn’t that wonderful, that mystery yet remains! So we here do some make this play for you. Enjoy if you might! My happy foolishness!

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far sighted

prompt # 033
Say what you want…
by staff@wwp

Write a poem about what you want.

far sighted

see with the eyes of a dog.

take that walk across the street.

broken doubts can wait by the curb.

I want a boat and tree, escaping town.

I want to fall under the wheels of your fuzzy face.

I want to scratch eager chins.

my willing belly awaits rolling affection.

I want every dog and cat on the street,

running water under the road.

I want you to lick my face.

no, I don’t mean dogs and cats.

I mean raining you.

I mean without a hat.

I mean winter skies exposed.

I mean every touch, every drop.

I mean everything counts.

some waves look like birds like clouds.

unabridged beneath the pier.

unconditional.

notice how our language leans.

meaning with all your words.

meaning with all your blood.

meaning with all your breath.

graze the field full of moons.

fill the bowl, bring your spoon.

the delight of homeless dreams.

meaning nothing much.

meaning every glance.

each brow the roof of truth.

drink.

I want your poems.

tuck them inside pillow seams,

where gulls proceed a storm.

I want wet kisses.

meaning you.

I want your smile close.

fly where eyes go underneath.

I want the sky like breath becomes.

that’s not a lot to ask.

see with the eyes of god.

neil reid © december 2010

Want? So easy to think, less so to say. Another poem that feels somewhat drafty, this one. Not trying to answer any great scheme. Merely one moment that came into view and grew from there. I’ve got boxes of stuff; I’m not impressed. One simple face more fills my sky. But how do “we” relate? What lines emboldened by language keep some distance close? (Ha! Even this comment could be better writ! It’s been a too long stretched out week.)

Of poetic form, I wanted to keep a simple map. Thanks Elizabeth for a poem of yours that sent me this way, although this is still more verbose as yet. Smaller can be bigger too.

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Road to Wigan Pier (napowrimo #02)

read write poem   napowrimo #02

prompt by Therese Broderick the ol’ acronym switcheroo

Today’s writing prompt is to type the letters RWP into the abbreviation search field at Acronym Attic and write a poem inspired in any way by one or more of the resulting phrases.

Maybe because it’s cold today. This was like Vermont syrup in winter, slow to drip.

Road to Wigan Pier

A blistered wind came round the road

visiting, like do black crows, what omens

do and don’t mean, I mean.

A jacket pulled like a beard, very close.

Plenty of common phrases, like leaves

like to imprint.

But rain made it stick where pavement

grey and black and dull-some sheened

held out its hand, received.

Folded twice, like from a pocket roost,

so I obeyed, did bend, did reach,

retrieve and let bloom, carefully.

Already the ink blurred, mostly readable,

some lost like that first hand now,

and it said,

the road to Wigan Pier

come fast, come now and

Two inks, one printed, one scrawled.

Inside the yellow beaconed English pub

close by, someone laughed loud, like

there was a joke, the part I didn’t hear.

Only what was left and lost or dropped

or taken away, folded and washed

and just like this. Like poems are.

Too many meanings, meant

for someone else, probably even

some other road.

Neil Reid © April 2010

with apologies to Mr. Orwell

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Like rain

Like rain

About some light

poem group index

Remove what’s light.

What is left? Nothing even right.

No turn will face you anywhere

except into yourself.

Not that you are the center of

anything, but instead, one in glory,

point of view.

Like each drop, like rain becomes,

messenger.

As stone along the valley floor,

shy at first, becomes to granite,

then glistening.

So by an open eye we receive.

Become all that light was ever told,

into eager flesh.

Abundantly. How else do

we shine?

Neil Reid © January 2010

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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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In a New York Minute

A New York minute.  She knows who she is, and with my thanks.

 

 

In A New York Minute

 

 

There is brilliant green in the rain!

Oranges and reds.  Blues and amber eyes.

I walk beside her now.  We are getting wet.

Soaked!

 

Yet I’ve hardly yet even looked up from

the rings of one puddle at my feet.

It is still like a distant dream.  Am I awake?

More than only drenched?

 

So, it must be real.  You don’t get wet in dreams,

do you now?  Bags to carry and the river is

more people than it is falling rain.

 

And still, I don’t even know her name,

not from her lips anyway.  Maybe I don’t care.

Maybe we won’t even stop to eat!

 

It is a New Town, you see, one I’ve never

seen painted before.  And in all the sights,

in all the hundred hundred drops that fall, one

thing I clearly see, abundantly.

 

Her eyes, all about.

 

 

Neil Reid © September 2009

 

It’s Raining in Midtown  Look see the beautiful rain in NYC.

And PS.  This poem was real FUN to write!

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