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Poetry Arrived In Search Of Me
Y fue a esa edad...Llego la poesia a buscarme. -Pablo Neruda

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Saturday, March 25, 2006
Reading

And there I was again,

Sound, soft,
Pressing with headlights into
A conversation with someone
With whom I did not want to have
A conversation.

“do you like to read?” she asked.

Before I answered, I tried
To imagine
What literary works had already
Polluted her pointed question,
And,
Before I answered, I imagined
Why she had read such garbage.

I imagined her self-help books
In a heap by her bed,
And wondered if she had taken the time
To actually finish one.

Namely, the one I imagined
sitting closest to her pillow,
entitled Your Attention Span and You.
Through which she’d only gotten
About halfway.

I tried to imagine if she read in
The bathroom,
As I did, and do,
Since it makes for such
Quiet concentration;

(I decided that no,
she didn’t. She thought it uncouth. )

She was still gazing,
Waiting
For an answer to her absurd inquiry,
But I was stuck on imagining
The bejeweled bookmarks
She would make for herself instead of reading
The books to put them in.



After I felt my silence had suitably tortured her, I
Cleared my throat and
Relayed her question,
And said, “no.”

As I had suspected,
She began to ramble
And recite a long list of
Names she had memorized,
None of whom I had heard before.
I was going to ask in what part of the
Self-help section I could find these masterpieces,
But instead, let her continue to talk.

She played with her pinky fingernail
As she spoke.

I lost track after the
Explanation of
The third author’s lifestory,
And began to envision her
Messy kitchen, that
Held a
very expensive food processing unit
that was sure to please
any company that would behold it.

Her final inquisition was
What had snapped me back
To attention.
She had written down one of the
Author’s names for
Me to research later.

I did, when I got home;
I looked him up
And browsed his published works,
One,
Eerily titled,
a deeper look into attention span.

I ordered a copy; it arrived
Last month. I have yet to start
Reading.

-

Just found this one again. I rememeber my delight when I first read it, and like the best poetry, I love it even more upon this second look.

4:23 PM :: 1 comments ::

Kasey :: permalink


It Takes a While to Disappear

Wednesday, March 22, 2006
You are the Place You Cannot Move

You wake up healthy

but you don't feel right. Now everything's
backwards and you're thinking of someone to blame.

And you do, you're lucky,
drinking coffee was easy, the traffic's
moving along, you're like
everyone else just trying to get through the day
and the place you're dreaming of seems possible—
somewhere to get to.

All you really know
is that it hurts here, the way feelings
are bigger than we are, and a woman's face
in a third-story window, her limp hair
and the pots of red geraniums luring you
into her suffering until you're walking on roads
inscribed in your own body. The maps
you never speak of. Intersections, train stations,
roadside benches, the names of places and
people you've known all bearing the weight
of cashing a check or your having to eat something,
of glimpsing the newspaper's ghoulish headlines.

Like everyone else, you think,
the struggle is toward a better time, though
no pressure surrounds the house you were born in.
Cool, quieter, a vast primitive light
where nothing happens but the sound
of your sole self breathing.
And you've decisions to make. Isn't that why
you've come? with a bald-headed man at the bar
and your friends all over the place, anxious,
tired, a little less sturdy than you'd hoped for
and needing someone to kick around, someone to love.

-Ralph Angel


Just found Mr. Angel recently, and I kinda want to be his someone to kick around. But I'll settle for just reading everything of his that I can my get my grubby little paws on. Yay, I say. Yayness squared.


4:27 PM :: 2 comments ::

Kasey :: permalink


Casida of the Reclining Woman

Ditty of First Desire


In the green morning
I wanted to be a heart.
A heart.

And in the ripe evening
I wanted to be a nightingale.
A nightingale.

(Soul,
turn orange-colored.
Soul,
turn the color of love.)

In the vivid morning
I wanted to be myself.
A heart.

And at the evening's end
I wanted to be my voice.
A nightingale.

Soul,
turn orange-colored.
Soul,
turn the color of love.

-Federico García Lorca

Around these parts I'm known as something of a female Don Juan. My stunning good looks and winning demeanor combine to create a force that no man can deny. That is, almost no man.

The chef where I work is improbably attractive, and I make it my job to tell him this everyday. I use such openings as, "She said her gnocchi wasn't hot...but you sure are," and "The consolidated system reports didn't get faxed last night....in other news, I want to touch your no-no spots." Do you see my clever wordplay? The undeniable brilliance that turns each come-on into beautiful soliloquies of desire?

Just last week, while battling a nasty cold, I took a moment between nose blows, looked at him, and said, "You know, we could go into the walk in and have snotty, phlegmy sex right now." And while taking inventory, I mentioned that we were short a bottle of Grey Goose, but "looking at your pants, I think you probably shoved it down there. I think we might have to strip search you." Reader, I know it's nearly impossible to comprehend, but to date he has not taken me up on ONE of my offers. I don't know if it's his super-hot, wonderful girlfriend or a hidden desire for penis, but I am simply baffled.

Any advice?

2:00 AM :: 0 comments ::

Kasey :: permalink


Beneath the Waves

Wednesday, March 08, 2006

She Considers the Dimensions of Her Soul

The shape of her soul is a square.
She knows this to be the case
because she often feels its corners
pressing sharp against the bone
just under her shoulder blades
and across the wings of her hips.
At one time, when she was younger,
she had hoped that it might be a cube,
but the years have worked to dispel
this illusion of space, so that now
she understands: it is a simple plane,
a shape with surface, but no volume--
a window without a building, an eye
without a mind.
Of course, this square
does not appear on x-rays, and often,
weeks may pass when she forgets
that it exists. When she does think
to consider its purpose in her life,
she can say only that it aches with
a single mystery, for whose answer
she has long ago given up the search--
since its question is a word whose name
can never quite be asked. This yearning,
she has concluded, is the only function
of the square, repeated again and again
in each of its four matching angles,
until, with time, she is persuaded
anew that what it frames has no
interest in ever making her happy.

-Young Smith


8:50 PM :: 1 comments ::

Kasey :: permalink


Song

Thursday, March 02, 2006
Suite (For Hoku)

A poem is a room that contains
the house it’s in, the way you
accommodate me when I lie
beside you, even if the address
is lost so many times and the names
of streets are strangers that pass
shuffling a card-deck of maps
whose rubber band has snapped:
still beyond all chance or choice
perhaps, your arms fold mine
to indicate location, the close
custom of place held together
or flung into the bedroom’s air
where your dress tries to come in
from the rain it has become:
the way shelter finds us one again,
and the opus of this nearness,
the poem on its own, wandering.


-Bill Knott

Is it too early to have spring fever? Because I'm afraid this malady has befallen me, and I don't see relief any time soon.
1:55 AM :: 0 comments ::

Kasey :: permalink