poetry project

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Wed 18 Apr 2018

The Something project

Posted by PJ under novels, poetry project, stories, writing
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After hitting the five week mark on the poetry project I think I’m going to stop–because I’ve started working on a story. I’m not going to discuss that because it’s early days yet and in my experience if I talk too much about a story before it’s well-launched it dissipates the energy and I don’t finish it. And by story, I probably mean novel. I can’t seem to conceptualize and stay true to anything less complex.

So the poetry project did what I hoped it would do, got me back to a regular writing practice. It’s still early days on that, too, but I’m hopeful. I also hope to put something up on this blog at least once a week. I have found that all writing, no matter what, begets more writing. The important part is to start (or restart) the regular practice of writing.

So wish me luck. But, of course, what I really need is to just keep doing it, whatever it is.

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Mon 16 Apr 2018

Poetry project, phase two, week five: spring

Posted by PJ under poetry, poetry project, spring
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Poetry is not personal.

And so, the spring!
Green grass, fog, blossoms,
the daffodils headless
after the gardener passed through.

Birdsong, God yes, birdsong,
morning, noon, twilight,
even a damned nightingale
passing through on its way
from point A to points farther north.

The crack of the bat,
the smell of the crowd,
young bodies turning to fancy,
fancy bodies turning to fever.

Bleating lambs with gay
red X’s spray painted on their coats,
and orange tags stapled to their ears,
frolicking and jumping while
they still have a chance
to be something more than chops.

And so, the spring!
(Nothing personal.)

 

*For the poetry project, phase one go here.

*For a definition of Phase 2, go here.

*To see all the poems in one place go here.

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Mon 9 Apr 2018

Poetry project, phase 2, week four: Boot straps

Posted by PJ under necessity, poetry, poetry project, the path, walking, witches
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Boot straps

Sometimes the wild creatures in your heart
get too scared, remain restless, hide away.
My mother the horse-whisperer would have
spoken gently, stroking calmness back into
those creatures, and walked them through
the fear.

Sometimes you don’t have to put the bucket
far down the well before it fills.
Other times you hit the rocky bottom.
My grandfather, the water witch, would have
gotten out the willow rod and paced the land
to find a new well.

Sometimes you need to heal but it takes so long
and the medicine you need is so hard to find.
My great-grandmother the herb witch
would have walked the hills until she found
what she needed.

Sometimes you just have to pick yourself up
and do what needs doing.
Only you can find what you need,
only you can recognize the magic
when you see it.

Generations behind point me to the path.
But only I will recognize the magic when I see it.
And I must walk the walk.

 

*For the poetry project, phase one go here.

*For a definition of Phase 2, go here.

*To see all the poems in one place go here.

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Mon 2 Apr 2018

Poetry project, phase two, week three – Lagers and cigars

Posted by PJ under dreams and dreamtime, otherworld, poetry, poetry project, writing
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“It’s all lagers and cigars here”
says the ancient postcard,
remembering a time when,
a long-gone long ago.

Lately, the Crone has slipped
me cryptic messages, all lagers
and cigars, remembering when,
whens that never were except in dreams.
I accept them all, those never-whens,
as absolute fact, an internal terrain
as real as terra firma.

Those dreams once meant something
more than fantasy, something realer
than real, a world burgeoning
in silence and sighs, forming on paper
and on screens, going forth into that
other world, the one most folks
mistake for real.

“When shall we two meet again,” she asks,
“over lagers and cigars?”

I have no answer except “soon”
and “someday.”

She laughs at that.
She recognizes the sound of dreams
disappearing into the mist,
like gorillas on the brink of
extinction.

*For the poetry project, phase one go here.

*For a definition of Phase 2, go here.

*To see all the poems in one place go here.

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Mon 26 Mar 2018

Poetry project, phase 2, week 2: Full Metal Poet

Posted by PJ under anger, poetry, poetry project
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Sometimes my anger is an ice scalpel
cutting with pleasure, glorying
in slicing, hungering for deeper cuts.

Sometimes my anger is a bludgeon,
turned outward to smash and bully,
to get my way, to assuage my ego.
This anger never holds sway:
guilt beats me back as hard as I hit.

Sometimes my anger is a snake
devouring its own tail. But this
Ouroboros, instead of infinite wholeness,
destroys, particularizes, breaks apart.
It consumes me, digesting my own bloated
corpse, dissolving me to nothingness.

Sometimes my anger is a vision,
sweeping away denials and delusions,
forcing me to see things as they
truly stand: in dreamless clarity.

Sometimes my anger is a fire god,
burning me clean and truly righteous,
pulling me up from the pyre to stand
and speak, to do those needful things.
To change myself, and thus the world.

 

My friend Kevin, after reading in last week’s poem about rivers devouring children, said I was a real Metal poet. I agreed that sometimes I was a #FullMetalPoet. This week’s entry does nothing to dispel that notion, I suppose, but that’s why I love poetry. Like all the best things in the world, it doesn’t always have to be pretty.

 

 

*For the poetry project, phase one go here.

*For a definition of Phase 2, go here.

*To see all the poems in one place go here.

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Mon 19 Mar 2018

Poetry project, Phase 2*

Posted by PJ under poetry, poetry project, rivers, sea, writing
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If you’ve been following this project at all, you may remember that it started as a recreation of a classroom experience. After five weeks of only allowing us to do shorter form poetry like haiku and tanka, the teacher allowed us to move on to longer poems: one poem a week, at least 20 lines, any form. So I think I’m going to try that for the next five weeks.

Now, these will be little more than working poems, nothing to set the world afire, and the only reason I am doing this exercise publicly is to force my own hand. The object is to produce something, anything on a regular basis. I have seen some positive things coming from the short poem exercise, so I’m hoping that trend continues.

Since it’s Monday, my week for this phase of the project will go from Monday to Monday. So here’s number one, actually inspired by one of the shorter poems:

***

Who can know the soul of rivers?
I don’t. They turned our rivers to concrete
long before I was born, choking them
and channeling them on their journey
homeward to the sea, floodtide or flow.
We think they are tame, yet they fool us,
routinely eating children and the unwary.

Oceans I have seen and lived beside,
and no one would mistake them for tame.
Yet who can know the soul of such a vast,
primordial giant, changing with every glance,
moving moment by moment, hour by hour,
the protean mother surrounding the world?

Who can know the soul of rivers?
Wild or contained, channeled or flooding,
they flow through us but are hidden,
on their way home to the mother of us all.

***

ETA: Oops. I just realized I only made it to 17 lines above.
ETA #2: I remembered that the teacher was asking for poems to be at least as long as a sonnet and assumed that was 20 lines, but it’s actually 16. So I’m good!

And just for the hell of it, here’s a random box from my found paper one-a-day box folding project:

*For the poetry project, phase one go here.

*To see all the poems in one place go here.

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Wed 14 Mar 2018

Day three, week five – tanka*

Posted by PJ under poetry, poetry project, tanka, weather
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The windows are too
high to see the rain but I
hear its staccato
splatter notes and the subtle
music of splash on wind chimes.

 

 

 

*For a definition of what constitutes haiku, tanka, and cinquains, and for an explanation of this poetry project, go here.

*To see all the poems in one place go here.

 

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Tue 13 Mar 2018

Day two, week five – haiku*

Posted by PJ under poetry, poetry project, squirrels
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The squirrel maintains a
bold eye. Seeing a girl with
peanuts, he’s all in.

 

 

*For a definition of what constitutes haiku, tanka, and cinquains, and for an explanation of this poetry project, go here.

*To see all the poems in one place go here.

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Mon 12 Mar 2018

Day one, week five – tanka*

Posted by PJ under poetry, poetry project, sea, tanka
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The ocean never
rests, moment by moment it
changes and renews,
unknowable in its vast
primordial majesty.

 

 

 

*For a definition of what constitutes haiku, tanka, and cinquains, and for an explanation of this poetry project, go here.

*To see all the poems in one place go here.

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Tue 6 Mar 2018

Day three, week four – tanka*

Posted by PJ under crows, poetry, poetry project, tanka
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The crow maintains a
wary eye. After years of
feeding him he still
keeps distant, unbelieving
in the kindness of mankind.

 

 

 

*For a definition of what constitutes haiku, tanka, and cinquains, and for an explanation of this poetry project, go here.

*To see all the poems in one place go here.

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