Two types of birds

"Do you think I'm beautiful?"
the sparrow asked the crow.
"If I thought of you at all
I'm sure that I'd think so.

And do you think of me all day?"
the crow inquired back
as if she cared. "I'm overcome
by everything I lack,"

the little bird responded,
"every feather that you see,
I gathered fallen from another
bird, I'm barely me."

Haiku for Beth

The buddha is smiling in the temple. No visitors today, no alms.

Impression, Sunset

If you stare long enough at leaden
branches overhead fretting dusk
into drab periwinkle fractals, and pigeons
superimposed drowsily on the gray,
     one twitch
of a retina can rattle the world
out of its habit, sudden as a cuttlefish
rearranging its colors, into pink
paroxysms. For such austerity to flare
  fuschia shocktart--
the essence of flamingo deconstructed--
for such insipid pigeons, leafless angles
and cement to embrighten with a blink
their only catalyst for fission--
I think
must mean there’s value in looking away
after a long time looking at-- in breaking
concentration, but in concentration,
and then saccades both of the eyes
  and the imagination.

Before the Chickens

I am ashamed to have woken
before the chickens, and the now
useless rooster. Uncomposed,
the burbling of their morning
salutations, and formless,
the silhouettes of sound
they will cast on my fence
from the neighbor’s side.
I have no chickens of my own,
so I must wait to delight
in the chickens of others.

People say ungodly
to mean very early or late--
a heresy ironically arisen
from our dismay at impenetrable
umbras, which are a kind
of halo. No, this hour
is merely unchickenly,
hearts like rosebuds gently,
gently pulsing. Life elusive
in alabaster chambers

within chambers. I must wait
to delight in the chickens,
to obtain that buoyancy
of spirit only gleaned
from the babble of things
with feathers. Bathed
in crepuscular blue, like
everything at this hour,
I pace the fence, untimely
and impotently woken,
some Hamlet’s ghost.

In Amherst

We live in a town of larval poets
new-sprung from their collegiate cocoons
weakly wriggling, shedding chapbooks
in messy fascicles, their fingers
impotently poised on black tiles
before the menacing rectangle
of white light. Every coffee shop
in town is infested with these poets
on both sides of the counter. A sad
primordial ooze of the unpublished,
giving sparsely attended readings
at out-of-the-way bookstores. Setting
the bar lower does not interfere
with drinking at it. I’m content. Really.
I’m doing remarkably okay.

Quick attempt at a dance poem

Wretch
that you are
watchman
of botched steps,
the dogged eyes-
down dancer: Where

is your con-
nection? Insecure,
your graces
effloresce
like gypsum.
Transgress

your trellis,
my delicate, with no
apologies. Palm
to palm, confess
our perigee
palpable. Let’s

be like straw-
berry plants: Arms
a stolon between us.
Once aerial, now
sink into this
ground, into
this beat.

Someday
wallflowers
may fall
at your feet.

Transcribing Equations from Non-Poetry Sources

In my last post, I discussed finding equations in poems. Here’s a fun way to construct equations for a poem: take a nonwriting discipline, preferably a physical activity, or a kind of animal, or art form, and adapt its principles to a poem form.

For example, I really want to develop (and have tried so far unsuccessfully) a sonnet variation called “the Arctic Tern.” Mainly because I think it would be hilarious to make the sonnet’s “turn” (also called a “volta”) into the world’s farthest traveling bird. As I mentioned before, a good rule of thumb for poetry is that form should follow subject matter. The sonnet/tern combination would work well here because both the form and the bird wander a long way down one path, mental for the poem, physical for the bird, and then make a turn. The Arctic Tern equation would then also involve other aspects of tern life. Some possible rules in the equation:

                                                                The Arctic Tern Sonnet
1. The poem must be about the Arctic Tern
2. The poem must start in a cold place, pass through a warm place, and return to a cold place (up to your interpretation what that means)
3. Midway through the poem should be a place of feasting
4. The poem must proceed incredibly far in one direction, and then somehow return right back to where it came from.
5. As the bird returns from feeding to procreate, the poem should end in a generative act or statement, with the couplet functioning as the coupling of the two birds
Another area of the world once can raid for equations is dance and music. Music is obvious, and for a lot of history music has gone hand in hand with poetry. So take a dance form. I’ve been learning to dance West Coast Swing over the summer, a dance whose execution depends on a unique tension between two partners who stretch and compress. Poetry also depends on the use of tension, so I think West Coast could provide both apt subject matter and a relevant equation. Here’s how I might transcribe the equation:

                                                                  The West Coast Swing Poem

1. WCS: Has (normally) two dancers, a lead and a follow
    Poem: In couplets, or two subjects of the poem, or an aspect of the poem that leads and an aspect that follows, like one image following another in the train of thought.

2.  WCS: Dancers walk One, Two, Tri-Ple-Step, Tri-Ple-Step-- or “One, Two, Three And Four, Five And Six,”
     Poem: Perhaps make lines/words (long, long, short short short, short short short) or each stanza has ratio of 3(pause)/3(pause)/1/1/1(pause) /1/1/1(pause)

3. WCS: On the fourth beat, dancers “post,” or pull back slightly to half of full stretch, which is the leader signaling to the follower to stop traveling.
   Poem: A shorter fourth line, or a fourth line where tension is introduced

4. WCS: On the 6th beat, dancers reach full tension/stretch.
    Poem: Make the sixth line very tense, or bring one thing farthest away from another thing, like if you’ve made the poem about two subjects, show them at their farthest apart in stanza six, and then pull them back close together by stanza nine (that is, the third beat of a new sequence)

5. WCS: Dancers dance up and down a “slot,” with the follower going straight one way and then back the other way, and the leader stepping in and out of the slot to make way for them.
   Poem: Make the poem linear, but have it reverse directions now and then (when there is tension, which pulls it in the other direction!), have an aspect of the poem that steps out of the way for another aspect of the poem to pass.

6. WCS: Dancers roll their feet into the floor as they walk so they glide smoothly instead of flat footed
   Poem: Create a rolling meter, sounds that glide down the line and enjamb over, rather than full stops or hard consonants.

7. Ideal form: join the above form-based-on-WCS with a subject matter that IS about WCS dancing.

Now go out there and pick another hobby you love or a critter you think is cool and apply it to a poem equation!