stonepicnicking_okapi

What I am appreciating most about the poem-a-day is the little blurb after the poem about the poem. The first poem was inspired by the second.

alameda point by David Maduli

—after lucille clifton

the estuary opens to the bay
and the bay stretches into the pacific and so on
therefore and such-and-such,
none of them empty or full
in the way no frame can minimize nor contain horizon—
yet the ocean can be it, even when sky
and sea are the same late summer gray
they blend together erasing, making
each other. the humpback whale
breaching the slate screen is the only
one who knows the tension between.
here arrive two children winding bikes
on the path to the point passing succulents
and ground squirrels, and three pelicans
follow in spinning dives to slash
down on this estuary guarded
by gurgling sea lions. the children
collecting rocks and examining mussel shells,
millennia in their hands, nod to each other and laugh
racing childhood to the pier’s edge.

the mississippi river empties into the gulf by Lucille Clifton

and the gulf enters the sea and so forth,
none of them emptying anything,
all of them carrying yesterday
forever on their white tipped backs,
all of them dragging forward tomorrow
. it is the great circulation
of the earth's body, like the blood
of the gods, this river in which the past
is always flowing. every water
is the same water coming round.
everyday someone is standing on the edge
of this river, staring into time,
whispering mistakenly:
only here. only now.

Sonnetto Rispetto in Praise of Literary Devices by okapi

the last carried away by ants, the power
of words at heartbeat until breath expires,
a pocket watch which tells more than the hour,
inflection, misdirection, wit which fires
wonder, a nemesis in pale pink wool,
descriptions which show-and-tell, prank-and-pull,
confirmed opinion of the Church of Rome,
and endings which stick, and clues which come home

for the breadth of an Ave Maria
a respite from the everyday, mundane
at play, anodyne and panacea
what’s gnawing inside is given a name
and maps and diagrams of Pangaea
and contranym, the same and never-same

Alma Perdida by Valéry Larbaud [trans. by Ron Padgett and Bill Zavatsky]

To you, vague aspirations, enthusiasms,
Thoughts after lunch, emotional impulses,
Feelings that follow the gratification
Of natural needs, flashes of genius, agitation
Of the digestive process, appeasement
Of good digestion, inexplicable joys,
Circulatory problems, memories of love,
Scent of benzoin in the morning tub, dreams of love,
My tremendous Castilian joking, my vast
Puritan sadness, my special tastes,
Chocolate, candies so sweet they almost burn, iced drinks,
Drowsy cigars, you, sleepy cigarettes,
Joys of speed, sweetness of being seated, excellence
Of sleeping in total darkness,
Great poetry of banal things: news items, trips,
Gypsies, sleigh rides, rain on the sea,
Delirium of feverish nights, alone with a few books,
Ups and downs of temperature and temperament,
Recurring moments from another life, memories, prophecies,
O splendors of the common life and the usual this and that,
To you this lost soul.


The Way We Live by Kathleen Jamie

Pass the tambourine, let me bash out praises
to the Lord God of movement, to Absolute
non-friction, flight, and the scarey side:
death by avalanche, birth by failed contraception.
Of chicken tandoori and reggae, loud, from tenements,
commitment, driving fast and unswerving
friendship. Of tee-shirts on pulleys, giros and Bombay,
barmen, dreaming waitresses with many fake-gold
bangles. Of airports, impulse, and waking to uncertainty,
to strip-lights, motorways, or that pantheon -
the mountains. To overdrafts and grafting

and the fit slow pulse of wipers as you're
creeping over Rannoch, while the God of moorland
walks abroad with his entourage of freezing fog,
his bodyguard of snow.
Of endless gloaming in the North, of Asiatic swelter,
to launderettes, anecdotes, passions and exhaustion,
Final Demands and dead men, the skeletal grip
of government. To misery and elation; mixed,
the sod and caprice of landlords.
To the way it fits, the way it is, the way it seems
to be: let me bash out praises - pass the tambourine.

Title: Altamont in Paris
Rating: Teen for dark themes (murder, serial murder, made-up corpses)
No of lines: 14
Poetic form: Bref double
Prompt:
Notes: Lines taken from "The Mirabeau Bridge" by Guillume Apollinaire [trans. by W.S. Merwin] I have included this poem (both the translation and the original French) below mine.
Summary: A spy comes across a crime scene and uses it to his advantage.

Altamont in Paris by okapi

Night comes the hour is rung for Mister Altamont
who is taking cover under Mirabeau Bridge.
Disturbing lies and spies, schemes and dreams, the Seine calls
an unforeseen dance, a chance rendezvous with fate.

Hand within hand, the lovers are blind to all, but death
has left a grotesque rouge on cheeks, a carmine haunt,
and stains of walnut leaves about unblinking lids
burnt cloves and troves of pearly sheen gild love’s last wait

And hope is so violent a thing. Altamont palls
before the scene, lined in fine soot, arranged in strange
folie à deux, but only for a breath, these deaths
absurd might serve to deconcoct affairs of state

The days pass the weeks pass and are gone. Murders taunt
multiply in disguise, distracting wicked dolls.

( The Mirabeau Bridge & Le pont Mirabeau )

Prose in a Small Space by Rita Dove

It’s supposed to be prose if it runs on and on, isn’t it? All those words, too many to fall into rank and file, stumbling bareassed drunk onto the field reporting for duty, yessir, spilling out as shamelessly as the glut from a megabillion dollar chemical facility, just the amount of glittering effluvium it takes to transport a little girl across a room, beige carpet thick under her oxfords, curtains blowzy with spring — is that the scent of daffodils drifting in?
( Read more... )

Piano by D. H. Lawrence

Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;
Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see
A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings
And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings.

In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song
Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong
To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outside
And hymns in the cosy parlour, the tinkling piano our guide.

So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamour
With the great black piano appassionato. The glamour
Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast
Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past.

The Windhover by Gerard Manley Hopkins

I caught this morning morning's minion, king-
dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.

The Singularity by Marie Howe

(after Stephen Hawking)

Do you sometimes want to wake up to the singularity
we once were?

so compact nobody
needed a bed, or food or money—

nobody hiding in the school bathroom
or home alone

pulling open the drawer
where the pills are kept.

For every atom belonging to me as good
Belongs to you. Remember?
There was no Nature. No
them. No tests
to determine if the elephant
grieves her calf or if

the coral reef feels pain. Trashed
oceans don’t speak English or Farsi or French;

would that we could wake up to what we were
—when we were ocean and before that
to when sky was earth, and animal was energy, and rock was
liquid and stars were space and space was not

at all—nothing

before we came to believe humans were so important
before this awful loneliness.

Can molecules recall it?
what once was? before anything happened?

No I, no We, no one. No was
No verb no noun
only a tiny tiny dot brimming with

is is is is is

All everything home

I am reading the poetry collection Versed by Rae Armantrout. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 2010. This is from that.

Address by Rae Armantrout

The way my interest
in their imaginary
kiss

is secretly addressed
to you.


*


Without intention

prongs of ivy
mount the posts
supporting the freeway.

It would be possible to say
each leaf

circumscribes hope

or that each leaf,
fastidiously coming
to one point,

suggests a fear
of the unknown.


*



These glossy,
laced-up, high-heel boots

(each leaf)

addressed to you

Snowy Night by Mary Oliver

Last night, an owl
in the blue dark
tossed an indeterminate number
of carefully shaped sounds into
the world, in which,
a quarter of a mile away, I happened
to be standing.
I couldn’t tell
which one it was –
the barred or the great-horned
ship of the air –
it was that distant. But, anyway,
aren’t there moments
that are better than knowing something,
and sweeter? Snow was falling,
so much like stars
filling the dark trees
that one could easily imagine
its reason for being was nothing more
than prettiness. I suppose
if this were someone else’s story
they would have insisted on knowing
whatever is knowable – would have hurried
over the fields
to name it – the owl, I mean.
But it’s mine, this poem of the night,
and I just stood there, listening and holding out
my hands to the soft glitter
falling through the air. I love this world,
but not for its answers.
And I wish good luck to the owl,
whatever its name –
and I wish great welcome to the snow,
whatever its severe and comfortless
and beautiful meaning.

I watched a video called Poetry in Motion (1982) which featured this, a tribute to Larry Neal and Bob Marley by Amiri Baraka