Fringe
So this one isn’t a place, per se, as it is a collection of places that come together. I’ve had many friends in the New York Fringe Festival, and it’s always marvelous to see the shows that appear… somewhere along the line, I suppose I decided this little group that I’m tracing through the Village and environs are actors of a sort. But really, it’s about being undefined: self-expression of all kinds, blending from one thing into the next, unwilling to be defined. It’s outsiders that have defined “avant-garde”; the avant-garde types just do what they feel they ought to. Even the name “Fringe” casts a label that might not be the best.
Fringe
who they are who they might become
is entirely up to you, you who are armed with the latest Voice
and the feline strut of fashion
you who are transient among the transients,
with twenties in your pocket that will be the lifeblood
of the box office and the gallery, the hole in the wall
where they exchange carnival masks for a bit of expression:
you will see them on the stage, or before the canvas,
perhaps on a twilit fire escape, trysts unsullied
by lamplight
you who have sauntered into their lives from SoHo boutiques,
you who are still weighed down by trinkets from Pearl River
and late dinners off the Bowery, you who spend your weekends
veiled by the sterile beauty of the Met and pretending
the Park is an untamed wilderness, you come to their homeland
demanding a bit of shock culture, some Day-Glo and industrial
design, shrieked verse with an epileptic refrain,
a theatre that is unashamed to strip down, to fuck for
your pleasure, performances of raw meat and bruises:
you define yourself by contrasting yourself to their frenzy
but the Maenads tire of the zoo, pet dervishes
longing to be understood not regarded, and after curtain call
they sit backstage of backstage, opiating,
murmuring in their jackets still wet from a day of pleasure,
meandering towards the north and discussing
why even bother with this futile ecstasy
The Square
Finished with work again for the week… looking forward to a hopefully lazy weekend of writing and scribbling and erasing and re-writing. This one is the third section of the New York poem for the RWP challenge, dedicated to that famous Square in Greenwich Village, one of the most beautiful little bits of the city. Sometimes I think I should just quit school, quit work, move to Manhattan, and be an indigent in the Square. It might very well be worth it.
The Square
what makes life really all worth it is this
the shadow of the arch bowing over the trees
doing battle with the iridescent surface of the fountain,
smoking pot by the trunk of the Hangman’s Elm,
trading stories with the old muttering men at the tables
who stare at them sidelong
gazes tracing the path of a bishop to where they sit:
they could be outcasts from the university
who dream of Ginsberg’s glory days, who worship Snyder
and Kerouac in walking meditations that are bare feet,
cold cement, scribbling haiku in Moleskines
itinerant dreamers with mismatched eyes and spiked collars:
angular and aquiline as exotic fauna on the jungle floor
doing handsprings and backflips while the taxicabs pass
and they have no obligations beyond the moment,
the four elements and the passage of time,
no desires save those that rustle through the branches
descending lazily as mapleseeds upon their brains:
there is amnesia in the afternoon air, and meditation
spirals outward, the Age of Discovery, the questioning of
who they are and who they might become
Magnolia
Posting twice in twelve hours… whaaat? But after doing that little hymn to Avalon last night, I wanted to follow up with another of my favorite Manhattan places. I think this might actually turn into a pathway that loops around Chelsea and the Village or something, since there’s only five places to localize. Anyway, if you’ve never been to Magnolia (it’s a bakery), you should, next time you get to New York. It’s small and simple, and there is nothing taste-wise like it in the world. Apparently they’ve released a cookbook, which ruins the mystery: it’s like Cliff’s Notes to scriptures.
Magnolia
when they stumble into the street, blinded by sunrise
they turn to the southwest, to the Village
where there is shade and the humming city
paths go crooked when the street breaks in two,
borders of fabulous kingdoms traversed by these:
avatars of Adonis, amorous archangels,
guided by the ley lines of cracked sidewalks,
used condom wrappers in the flowerbeds
empty dime bags decorating the roots of sycamores,
they come at last to a corner of reality:
sucking on water bottles with the E still highlighting
their brains, they stare into the windows of the shop,
moist multicolored snowscape gazing back
and tempting them with less guilty pleasures
than the night before: buttercream sins and
confectioners’ seductions,
a fairy cake for each, dissolving on their tongues
as they dissolve in each other’s arms complacent,
beautiful and content: having sweetly soothed
savage beasts and having thought that
what makes life really all worth it is this
Avalon
It’s been a late day, and around class/errands/homework, there were three poems to write. This one is for the mini-challenge at RWP, five poems tied around a common theme (which for me is Manhattan, or at least five places in Manhattan that have been significant to me)… between these challenges, the Poem-a-Day challenge, the regular prompts, and any other ideas that pop up… well, it’s going to be a busy November. :)
Avalon
where they are going, they don’t know:
she rises out of the littoral plain, neo-Gothic, welcoming,
semi-consecrated whore of Babylon and Mary at once,
her doors open like a mouth, like a chasm
and they glide in, enchanted, still lost in the dream
that gripped them as soon as they clambered from the subway,
they follow the beacon of her barbed wire, her stained glass
and her drumbeat circulation:
shirts stripped and buttons undone,
they are moving in time with emanations of wisdom
vibrating through the dancefloor: she has blessed them,
this place they named for the Island of Apples,
the place of forbidden fruit, the knowledge of
what boys do in shadowy corners, of waistband etiquette,
of genuflecting in alleyways and morning after rituals,
when they stumble into the street, blinded by sunrise
The Twin Paradox
I’ve always been jealous of Samuel Taylor Coleridge for his “Kubla Khan” coming to him in a dream; it hardly seems fair. But I had a similar experience with (if you can believe it) the One Single Impression prompt, “shift in time”, last night… I went to bed thinking about it, having no idea what I wanted to write, and woke up with this concept. Hopefully no one will call me out on the concept of the Twin Paradox, because I don’t know if the initial concept I warped was exactly right. Dammit, Jim, I’m a poet, not a physicist!
The Twin Paradox
the Relativity says
that if I should brave the acceleration
of jets and rockets while you’re standing still
you will age faster than me
in seconds that are somehow longer
(maybe they just seem that way
from the waiting)
so tell me why
when I’ve circled the world like a panther
and come back to where I’ve started
I feel so much older than you
is it because
our time isn’t measured in mathematics
but in how well we’ve used it
or could it be that by planting your taproot
you’ve discovered an aquifer of youth
that keeps you wide-eyed and innocent
staring upward
at my frantic motion and wild abandon
while I shed the weight of our similarity
in plumes of atmospheric flame
Graffiti (Samhain III)
The Read Write Poem prompt was to create a scene that tells a story without actually telling the story: a collection of images and information that is to some degree blurry, I suppose. I kept thinking of Impressionism, how when you squint and cock your head and sort of stand at an angle, the picture always makes more sense. So this little anachronistic thing came out of it… I tried to cut out the context, and the people, and the deep thought of everything, and just make it very image-y and reaction-y. But what I will suggest to you is that I (um, used to) tag railroads a lot, and a lot of people have passed away recently, and it is a very overcast day here for Halloween. Tonight I’m going to cut loose and enjoy myself, but that’s the headspace I’m in right now. (And it’s curious how easily all spaces, including headspaces, change.)
Tomorrow the Poem-A-Day challenge starts. I am ready to get back into the poetry swing of things! Now I must catch up on comments and blogs and stuff… apologies for being neglectful!
Graffiti (Samhain III)
The 5:14 mourns in the distance,
track shivering at its approach. Here on the
rain-slick rust-red straight-line-parallel.
Here fifty feet above the thicket drowning in its own sweat,
five hundred below a tearful sky, here with
the iron road and the empty air and the dusk.
This is a matter of transformation
and changing space. There are places
where the 5:14 exists for moments only, and then
they fall silent. They are ever ephemeral
and between, until some daring soul
will ascend the skeletal trestle,
hand over hand up metallic
tibias and femurs to
the top.
A passage becomes a gallery stroke by stroke.
Aerosol becomes the heir of the paintbrush,
girders the scions of canvas for young Monets.
In a grey time such as this.
Breaking out of the shell and living. Climbing.
Shaping the patterns of color that only make sense
from the coach car of the 5:14, going seventy,
to the unknown west. Paint and mist replacing
flakes of crumbling steel to scrawl names,
hydroglyphs across the face of the railway.
Memorials. Epitaphs.
The sobriquets that only the authors and their memories
now understand.
The mourners are drawing closer in their carriage,
staring blankly out at the landscape, waiting
for the path to change.
The 5:14 is a ferrous and feral beast with a taste
for the blood of Monets.
This is a prayer for suicides and lost souls,
for the evacuation of fear.
The sky grumbles its approval for signatures,
for this vena cava, for toasts and tags and aphorisms,
for most sacred disrespect.
Staring up at the 5:14 overhead, winking through the ties,
and surely they will see it from their water-bead windows,
and though the violet and grey are fresh and running,
and if they would only begin to see to know to care
This Poem Is Best Enjoyed By:
The Poetic Asides prompt today (and last one until December, as the challenge is starting up on Sunday) was to write a “bad poem”… rather than actively try to write crap, I decided instead to do this one about poems going bad. And it ended up a bit crappy anyway. But I still like it. Tomorrow is my last midterm project (a presentation!), so after that I will be ready for some more frequent poetizing. I promise to get back on my obsessive blog visits soon!
This Poem Is Best Enjoyed By:
I had a craving for form after a diet of free verse
so I opened up the rough drafts and saw
pestilence and disaster
behind the icebox doors:
the haiku wilted
like scraps of Romaine lettuce,
now tattered and black;
the sonnets hard as rocks, and freezer-burned,
all gelid with a film of frosty rhyme,
the iambs crystallized, the meter turned,
disjointed rhythm faulty, poorly timed;
cinquains
furry with mold
crumbled in my fingers,
and i wept, for they had been shipped
from France.
The only thing that I could find:
some pairs of couplets, packed and brined.
(Though opening the can, I thought,
I almost wish that I had not.)
The Pursuit of Happiness
I needed a weekend off, and although I think my muse is going to spend a few more days on vacation (at least, I hope it’s only a few more days), here’s what I managed to cobble together for the OSI prompt today, “elusive.” Dreams and futures and happinesses are all particularly tough things to grasp, though I don’t often like writing this abstractly. Anyway, November is coming… poem a day, plus a novel to scribble at, so I’ll be tapping into whatever reserves I can, like stealing sap from a maple tree.
The Pursuit of Happiness
we chased our dreams
they had ragged iridescent wings
and they led us up to mountaintops
where our screams cut holes
in thin air
no snares or traps would function
save to lay hold of them with both hands
we put them in carved cedarwood boxes
but they wilted like old lettuce
rummage through the aftermath of sleep
and they will scatter outward and upward
follow them into the late autumn sky
and they blend in with the dying leaves
we chased our dreams
but we didn’t know what they looked like
and changed when we arrived
Come One, Come All (Samhain II)
Today’s Read Write Poem prompt (#98, by the way… only two more until the big 100!) is to key off the photo below. It ended up being (to me, at least) a story about ghosts and loneliness and the magic of carnivals, of sensory overload from sound and light and wonder. No real explanations beyond that, it just kind of happened. I think there are a lot of elements here to be spoken for: the moon, the people standing outside the gate, the darkness vs. those very specific patterns of light and color, the fireworks, etc. There’s more of a story waiting to be exhumed, but then, there usually is.
Fair Fireworks, by auburnnewyork
Come One, Come All (Samhain II)
Hot enough to move a body to distraction.
Maybe it was you rapping at the window,
flickering the porchlight.
Maybe the wind chasing me down the path
along the edge of the bayou was your
heavy breath.
Got no explanations. Must be like
the magnetic mountain, where they pitched their tents
against the serpent of the river. Must be like
gravity, the Lord dragging my feet like I’m Balthasar,
following the hunter’s moon.
I’ve been hunting your ghost for so long,
eyes weighed down by the myrrh for your graveclothes.
He knows.
This place is a jungle inside a jungle,
flashbulb light prostituted up against the darkness.
This place has no time or location,
only that bad moon up above.
Fortune-teller says to me, tonight is when the dead
come creeping back. And I thought I saw you in a
house of mirrors,
winking just out of sight. There’s no reason
in the edges of places; the edges of places is
reason enough.
She guides me up the way to my chariot,
tracing white-gold-white in circles against the sky.
They say tonight the wall between where I am
and where you are
comes tumbling down. You see everything
under a hunter’s moon. And maybe if I move
fast enough and blind enough and let it all wash me
like the river water, maybe if I stretch out my hand,
I’ll feel your cold clay fingers in mine.
They’re shooting off the stars.
I’m a victim of relativity, moving too fast to be seen,
and a second is a lifetime long. Catch me.
I’m going to let go.
Philanthropy
I don’t know what to think of this one… I think I had no right to say it. The prompt for Poetic Asides was for something stretched thin, and I was thinking of how goofy it is that people talk about how overextended they are with life when there are other people, entire countries, even the planet as a whole, that have so much more cause to say it. The interplay between the two never ceases to depress me a bit. I dedicate this to Sally Struthers.
Philanthropy
We have made ledgers of expenses:
Japanese cars and Caribbean cruises,
Christmas gifts and wedding presents,
medicines and desserts and DVDs,
bus fare and new shoes.
We chose to drop our leftover pennies
in the donation jar.
We are paying the tollbooth to heaven
in copper and superego,
earning the right to call ourselves human
for the price of a cup of coffee a day,
though we fear the idea of photography
and its power to turn a child
into this one or that.
We fear their sunken eyes, needle fingers, sagging bellies.
We should be praised for our efforts,
scraping together enough to give what we can,
when we have ever so much to worry about
(cancer and heart attack, bankruptcy, divorce),
and after all, a penny goes a long way,
crossing an ocean and changing hands,
teased apart into wire for this one’s breakfast,
that one’s dinner.
We see them on commercials,
with five loaves and two fishes, wishing
they knew the trick,
until we change the channel.
