After Cedra Flipped her Focus

We slow to see pools
of blood or splotches of
brain—a tossed salad of glass
and flesh.

Now we see
as in a sideview mirror—
stilled tongues are closer than they appear.

Two Ways to Write Poems

"I am who I am." I wonder what one has to pay
To say that. I couldn't do it. For years
I thought, "You are who you are." But maybe
You weren't. Maybe you were someone else.

Sam's friend, who loved poetry, played football
In school even though he didn't want to.
He got hit. Later he said to me, "I write poems.
I am who I am...but my neck hurts."

How many times I have begun a poem
Before I knew what the main sounds
Would be. We find out. Toward the end
The poem is just beginning to be who it is.

That's all right, but there's another was as well.
One picks the rhyme words, and so the main
Sounds, before one begins. I wonder what
Yeats had to pay in order to do that.

--Robert Bly

Let your conversation be full of salt

Not for the youngins

Saturday: T. Reverend Bridgewater takes a stab at Hedonism

He woke Sunday afternoon
reeking of semen in a tangle
of sleeping bodies, his hand clutching
a damp breast. He unburied
himself, gathered his clothes and stumbled home,

where he stood in the tub and vomited, wishing
to drown in holy water.

For the giraffe this poem was supposed to be about

A flat in Cadillac
reminded us of our own lives

and deaths. Deflation holds
such power when it comes
with noise—POP!
The end.

Brilliant

The poem is by Kristi Orange. The picture is Concetto Spaziale (Spatial Concept) by Lucio Fontana, 1957 at the Museum of Modern Art in Vienna, Austria.

December

Snow clings to eaves. Our breath,
in the air, drifts and stalls
in a fishtail night.

And here he lived also
T.R. Bridgewater Walking Tour, site 6

Here he spent his Gray Period
drinking vodka and orange juice
stirred with a blue screwdriver.
In apartment B he wrote "the Red Canoe,"
spat green, ate bananas.

speechless

from Across the Pond

Part I

Part II

--Katie Huston

P.S. In case any one had any doubts, that first card is Old Town Square Prague.

hard times at the Brokeneye Jazz Society and Jogging Club

Sines and cosines, light and sound, tides,
grains, goodbyes," she said, "are the kinds of waves
that roll through our lives like tour buses packed
with gawkers and fat-assed binoculars..." She slung
a bag over her shoulder. "You've sucked me dry.

"I'm a dried-out paintbrush. And an out of tune piano."
The car door clicked shut. She rolled the window down.
"And please don't call

Sorry, a little self-indulgence.

A Trois

When we sing, we sing left
and pull right. This isosceles love
swings its legs like hands
on a clock, snaps like a gator jaw,
acutely hinged on the greater than & the equal two.

When we love, you love, you love,
you love. When we sing
and are silent; burn; turn your back and hide your eyes.
Exuent

Big Chicks

Happy Earth Day! Take a walk!

you know it is spring when
the thunder is your lullaby
and the birds are your alarm clock
and math is left undone




--------

This is a true story: I wrote this poem during a quiz, which I left 90% blank, in Mr. Lynch's pre-calculus class, sometime around April my junior year of high school. The next year I took statistics.


As an added Earth Day Celebration, comment to this post with your favorite poems about nature, the earth, environmentalism, bears, little streams, the polar ice caps, Thoerau, or garbage day.

A Little Boy’s Lost Balloons: an Ode

He screams
as you drift away.
His arms reach to grab your strings,
but you are free,
floating across Holland.

Goodbye.

The Best of Times

Through transcription, much of history has arrived to us in error. Take Marie, who is widely reported to have said, "Let them eat cake." It was actually, "Let the meat cake." She was talking about a meatloaf—which, oddly enough, was burning.

Variance on a Theme (a Twofer)

We threw it all in the trunk, took our time with it, let
it rot a little, pale in the sunlight.

At your funeral they served
leftover pizza in the
old preschool room.
Nobody had planned.

We sat at tiny chairs
at tiny tables, kept our jackets on.

Final Hours of Contest!

Write your haikus*, sand down those sestinas, rush to finish your epic: the deadline for entries to the contest slouches toward us to be born. Gotta say, the chances for you are looking pretty good; 100% if you enter right now. You've got nothing to lose except the contest and your dignity!

-AP









*I use the term loosely, though you might be docked one (1) mad prop for each extra syllable. You have been warned.

"You're not getting any funny ideas, are you? just because I knocked on your door."
-The Trial, Franz Kafka, writer; Orson Welles, director

That night I bought my first prostitute. She was long and skinny, a flat-chested brunette who never got along with her stepdad. I was 19, drunk, bourgeois and ordering Chinese when she rang the bell.
I muted the discovery channel, opened the door to her, her body, my bedroom.

"The Answer, My Friend..."

Among the odors of Highway 1
—exhaust, sweat, black licorice—
death trumps all: a fawn,
still, stinking—its pink chest
exposed to those who see,
pause, breathe.

Also: Happy National Grilled Cheese Month

--from Kristi in Chicago

Poetry tastes great with Cheesesteak

Rub-a-dub-dub, our souls in a tub

I dreamed your body a river, warm,
woke to find my fleet washed away.
Expansion and contraction, my heart a brittle pan.
Foul lonely creatures of fate!

The Poet Announces his Retirement from Professional Wrestling
Press conference—San Francisco, 1965-2009

I fall into black holes all the time. It's no big deal, just a matter of sorting through antimatter for what really matters. An answer to your question: a watch in orbit above the earth moves slower than a clock on the surface; in a black hole a watch has three sets of hands, each hand moving independently from the others. You are here and there and then—everywhere is now.
On paper, Einstein could only manipulate space and time. Black holes are more emotional and psychic than an operation of physics, quantum or otherwise.
It's a simple mistake, many have made it. I won't hold it against him.

My Teeth Hurt

I was brushing my teeth tonight.
I pulled the brush out, and it was red.
I spit, and it was red.
I brushed again.
I pulled the brush out again, and it was red.
I spit again, and it was red.
I found my mouth was bleeding.
I bled from my mouth more than ever before.

like a camel misses water

tonight i feel like sitting quiet.
this is what thursdays do. stretch.

stretch across the continent, babe,
blanket my mattress.

My love for you is an unfinished letter.

Yes, I have loved you. Nights
I kept the stoop lit, a stop
in the door. Now the wind knocks,
and your door answers in squeaks
and slams.

When the phone lines lie
still and tangled, I'll cast
a tin can to your window.

Participate in the Aloha Project!

Many of you have wondered how you can participate in the Aloha Project's celebration of National Poetry Month. Here are some ideas:

--Read a poem. To yourself, to the commuters on the subway, to the eaters at Subway, to birds in the park. For sources of poetry, see your local library, bookstore, the results for "poetry" from your favorite search engine, or bathroom wall graffiti.

--Write a poem. It doesn't have to be short or long or good; you don't even have to show it to anybody. You could even collaborate with a comrade. Or friend.

--Send a postcard. The standards are pretty low: a postcard with a poem. I've been drawing or painting or gluing my postcards and writing my own poems, but you can even use a postcard from your favorite destination and pair it up with a poem from your favorite poet--just make sure you credit any writers.
You can send it to the Aloha Project (the address: 3550 N River Rd, Freeland, MI 48623) and we'll post it on the blog, or you can send it to a friend.

--Invite friends to visit the Aloha Project blog. Invite artists, nose-pickers, poets, people you meet in bars, and anyone who has ever laughed at a funeral or cried at Chuck E. Cheese--especially if both were done in the same three minutes.

--Bake a cake. Yum.

--Enter the Aloha Project contest. Still accepting entries! And competition is fierce like Daniel's lions' den. See previous entries for details.

--Attend an open mic or public reading. A lot of colleges are hosting their own Poetry Month festivities, so keep your ears open. Also, watch for libraries, bookstores, and cafes that have open mic nights or guest readers. It might be fun to go to an open mic night for sixth to eighth graders, and snap your fingers after each poem.

--Suggest other ways to participate. I probably forgot many ways. So comment and share how you celebrate National Poetry Month.

These sorts of things occur

Ants never plan on hard
candy in the yard or above,
a magnifying glass

Good Friday Bonus Poems!

from Czeslaw Milosz in Second Space (Harper Collins, 2004, New York; trans. by Milosz and Robert Hass)

If There is No God

If there is no God,
Not everything is permitted by man.
He is still his brother's keeper
And he is not permitted to sadden his brother,
By saying that there is no God.

...and from Robert Bly's collection, Eating the Honey of Words

When Threshing Time Ends

There is a time. Things end.
All the fields are clean.
Belts are put away.
And the horses go home.

What is left endures
In the minds of boys
Who wanted this joy
Never to end.

The splashing of hands,
Jokes and oats:
It was a music
Touching and fervent.

The Bible was right.
Presences come and go.
Wash in cold water.
The fire has moved.

Fly Paper

Born in a barn or something, that's right,
I was, so walk on through that wide open
sky, come and go like a high
August breeze over the stink of the stalls. You know
I've always been open like a 24-hour
one-night stand on a Wednesday afternoon,
like a pupil at midnight,
always closed like an empty flask.

The pancakes stick on the wall, the stains
of ketchup, along in the living room carpet.

I'll find you again on a seaboat over an ocean,
somewhere, I tell you, sometime. This is how
the wind blows us, these tiny sails, around the globe,
like a bumper-car sea, all whiplash and laughter.

Twofer

"Play it like notes on a scantron," said the hipcat motor bass to the nervous kid with the firecracker mouth, "Like freeze-dried sugar cane, green bananas in your lunch box. Got it?"

Oh he got it. Got it like scrappy beans stuck between couch cushions. He played that drum til the walls shook and the women trembled. He played it like Mount Carmel visitations, parrot-talk.

Aloha from the Golden State

-Chelsea Adams

BONUS Radio Poetry!

Listen to last week's episode of Hearing Voices, "Wordshakers," here. It's hosted by Adrei Codrescu and features:

--Lord Alfred Tennyson
--Walt Whitman
--Carl Sandburg
--stories by Scott Carrier (a great storyteller and freelance radio producer)
--Alex Caldiero
--Jack Kerouac
--Allen Ginsberg
--"found" poetry

...and many others.

It's also worth it to listen to any of the stories or episodes posted on Hearingvoices.com. Each is a stack of poems.

My ears helicopter, she buttons her blouse.

My body, uncovered now
by her mountain stream—
we are the babbling brook
of this twin riverbed.

Jazz in a Bluegold Night

I was never in love with you.
I liked the taste of your
cigarettes. Which do you like better:
the Beatles or my touch to your elbow,
the Kinks or finding each other on the streets?
I'll bum a smoke, music, yogurt, whatever
you offer; I'll buy you an eggroll in return.

Their grandmother told me, take my keys, why don't you drive her out to the back road?

A little known fact: It isn't all dry and hot. It snows, too, but when the snow melts the Colorado doesn't flood. Not like Pennsylvania, the Susquehanna. In Phoenix your tears dry up before anyone can notice.
I'd tell my younger self: buy a Harley, pull into Yuma before sunrise, let this divorce be your last. If I knew then the things I know now: Flagstaff is a dry chill, I've been told, and only jackasses climb down the canyon with no water.