ELECTION YEAR

A jet of mere phantom
Is a brook, as the land around
Turns rocky and hollow.
Those airplane sounds
Are the drowning of bicyclists.
Leaping, a bridesmaid leaps.
You asked for my autobiography.
Imagine the greeny clicking sound
Of hummingbirds in a dry wood,
And there you’d have it. Other birds
Pour over the walls now.
I’d never suspected: every day,
Although the nation is done for,
I find new flowers.

  — Donald Revell (b. 1954), Director of Creative Writing at the University of Utah

NEW PORNOGRAPHERS - MYRIAD HARBOUR

I took a plane, I took a train.
Ah! Who cares? You always end up in the city.
I said to Carl: “look up for once,
See just how the sun sets in the sky.”
I said to John: “do you think the girls here
Ever wonder how they got so pretty?”
- Well, I do. -

Look out upon the Myriad Harbour
Look out upon the Myriad Harbour
Look out upon the Myriad Harbour

All the boys with their homemade microphones
Have very interesting sounds.
All the girls fall into ruin
Droppin’ out of school, breakin’ Daddies’ hearts
Just to hang around.

I walked into the local record store
And asked for an American music anthology
It sounds fun.
They tore at my skirt and stuck it on the walls at PS1.

I took a plane, I took a train.
Ah! Who cares? You always end up in the city.
Stranded at Bleecker and Broadway
And looking for something to do.
Someone somewhere asked me: “is there anything in
particular I can help you with?”
All I ever wanted help with was you.

Look out upon the Myriad Harbour
Look out upon the Myriad Harbour
Look out upon the Myriad Harbour
Look out upon the Myriad Harbour

Thursday’s early morning storm provides the inspiration for this week’s edition of Poetry Friday.

Spring Snow  

A spring snow coincides with plum blossoms.
In a month, you will forget, then remember
when nine ravens perched in the elm sway in wind.

I will remember when I brake to a stop,
and a hubcap rolls through the intersection.
An angry man grinds pepper onto his salad;

it is how you nail a tin amulet ear
into the lintel. If, in deep emotion, we are
possessed by the idea of possession,

we can never lose to recover what is ours.
Sounds of an abacus are amplified and condensed
to resemble sounds of hail on a tin roof,

but mind opens to the smell of lightning.
Bodies were vaporized to shadows by intense heat;
in memory people outline bodies on walls.

  — Arthur Sze (b. 1950)

From The Redshifting Web: Poems 1970-1998, published by Copper Canyon Press, 1998. Copyright © 1998.

NEW PORNOGRAPHERS - CHALLENGERS

Yes I know it was late
We were greeting the sun
Before long

And you live with someone
I live with somebody too
Leave it there

For safe keeping
One of the west village in plains
That was the custom
Come dawn

On the walls of the day
In the shade of the sun
We wrote down

Another vision of us
We were the challengers of
The unknown

“Be safe” you say
Whatever the mess you are, you’re mine, okay
If that is the custom
I’m down

Na-na na-na na-na na-na na-na
Na-na na-na na-na na-na na-na…

Until I see you around
Until we clear the accounts
Leave it there

Leave it to us
We are the challengers of
The unknown

Oh-la, oh-la, oh-la, oh-la
Oh-la, oh-la, oh-la, oh-la

Easter Morning

a stone at dawn
cold water in the basin
these walls’ rough plaster
imageless
after the hammering
of so much insistence
on the need for naming
after the travesties
that passed as faces,
grace: the unction
of sheer nonexistence
upwelling in this
hyacinthine freshet
of the unnamed
the faceless

  — Amy Clampitt (1920 - 1974), American poet. From The Collected Poems of Amy Clampitt.

Had an appointment with the crazy doctor tonight … and I’ve got a lot of thinking to do about some of the things that have been going through my head the past week or so.

Things like:

1. Beating myself up for stepping out of my comfort zone, and failing. Rather than beating myself up, I should be proud that I allowed myself to go into a situation where I might fail.
2. Trying to figure out what it will take to stop falling for people who are not available. I know why I do; as long as the people I’m attracted to are not available, either because they’re already in a relationship, because they live far away from me, or because it’s just not a good match due to lifestyle differences, then I don’t have to worry about opening myself up … I can just keep my walls where they are, and let them get higher and thicker and more impenetrable.
3. Figuring out what I’m going to do with my career.

In reality, it’s all about dealing with my anxiety, learning how to control it, without letting it control me. It’s about continuing to put myself out there with my friends, continuing to risk, and continuing to live life.

DOA - THE PRISONER

Apartment walls, halls are small
Government building
site much too small
These tiny boxes won’t let me out
These tiny boxes are too remote
It’s a screaming mess
Television city dream
Your robot’s eyes gleam
In my future dream
Yeah hey!

It’s not fate or chance
It’s the money in the bank
Burn their timber and
gather their bricks
Drive’em into the fire,
the bloody dicks
It’s a screaming mess
And I am the prisoner
The prisoner, the prisoner
Go!

It’s not fate or chance
Kick somebody in the face
Burn their timber and
gather their bricks
Drive’em into the fire,
the bloody dicks
It’s a screaming mess
Television city dream
Your robot’s eyes gleam
In my future dream
And I am the prisoner
The prisoner, the prisoner
Well I am the prisoner
The prisoner, the prisoner
The prisoner!