Greetings from Georgia

Hi everyone! I hope you have continued to poeticize in my absence. There have been far too few blog posts for your absentee members.

Since I am no longer an Altoid, I've started my own blog for my poetry and other writings. Currently I am finishing up posts of previously written poems, including those that debuted right here, but I plan to continue writing and posting poems or works in progress.

If you promise to post something here, I will let you read my blog.

-Chris

Snakes

Our most recent club night theme was snakes, and these were my contributions:

Hiss
Sibilance of slither:
Sunlight playing on his scales
Shining chords of light.

Dust

On thy belly, pressed as close to earth as skin can be,

a forced embrace of thy mortality

Licking dust until the day to dust thou shalt return,

Tasting ev'ry day the death that comes

And does the bitter venom of this fate

squeeze out the life still nascent in thy birth?

And as thy path twists serpentine away,

dost thou take warmth or coldness from the earth?

Wrath

There is a writhing in your eyes,

coiled deep inside those constricted pupils,

that no tail of snake can match,

and I freeze in fear for the strike.

Desert Snake

Shed this skin, so dry--you're itching to be free

and feel the green caress of grass.

Wind 'round rocks and sit, silent, scale on stone;

raise your head and taste the thirsty air.

Touch

without wings, free of fingers, snake senses all

Ripe

I do not like the way a metaphor smells

   when it has sat around on the counter

   so long that the meaning begins to puddle

   in the bottom of the bag, and the form of it

   begins to grow fuzzy with green

   or orange mildew.

But before that, when it has been around

   just long enough to go a bit sour

   and has the tang of grapes turning

   to wine on the stems; when the skin

   loosens and the juicy fruitness trickles easily

   down your throat, with only a little

   mushy bite —

those are the metaphors that speak

   of warm days in summer,

   and watermelon on the table

   and the phone sitting silent for hours or weeks

   when you wish it wouldn't.

Those are the metaphors that give you

   an uncomfortable feeling

   in your stomach, but only just enough

   that you notice

   and remember it afterwards.

Figments

This week our theme was based on the poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay First Fig and Second Fig. I hope everyone posts theirs! We got quite a variety. My contributions are below.

Next week come prepared with something related to The Love-Hat Relationship by Aaron Belz.

Third Fig

"Reap what you sow," it's said, and "Love

your neighbor as yourself."

Or you can reap his crop instead

for free food on your shelf.

Fourth Fig

From goals delayed anticipate

more joy eventually;

from chances taken now, instead,

you get great memories.

Zeroth Fig

A falling fig, obedient

to force Newtonian,

will travel down until it lands

and not go up again.

Lady Time

She is too grand, too swift to see
in honest gazing, Lady Time.
At her hand we rise, decline,
and the flowing instants flee.

We try our best to euphemize,
to call her by a host of names:
by years, by weeks, by hours, by days;
pretend to conquer a smaller size.

Sitting in her wrinkled presence
frightens me with thoughts of life
that fades into a dimming twilight--
senility in slow senescence.

But Lady Time has gentle hands,
though strong and forceful they may be.
She watches, listens patiently,
and hour by hour she understands.

Twenty-One Ways of Looking at an Eye

I.

II.

Bright light reflecting on retina

Dots dance before

And glaucoma waits

For another day

III.

A circle of black ink

In a field of white

Looks back at me

IV.

So close your eyelash catches mine

So close the veins wind like a maze

Surrounding your eyes

With fitting mystery

V.

The plate slides,

Revealing a hole

Through which photons pour

Like sand down an hourglass

And the silver halide crystals

Remember forever

VI.

Substitute eyes

He promised he’d bring us his eyes in a box.

All 30 of them rolling and clanking into each other as he walked around the classroom.

Worse than having eyes in the back of his head. I felt sorry for him.

VII.

Make up

Pulling, curling, darkening, lining,

Covering, sort-of lying eying

VIII.

Feet

Tired sunburned working man

Life as purposeful as a crow,

and traces of pain in his Eyes.

IX.

The optometrist lights up my eye

And I behold the network

Feeding my vision

My flowing blood

X.

His pupils narrowed in the light

And his ears laid back

As he saw the glassy cat's eyes

Shine to him

Calling him to fight

XI.

A man and a woman are one

A woman and a man with wandering eyes

Soon two

XII.

In my mind I wait for spinning thoughts

To alight on this paper

Each one a decision

And Megan in my peripheral vision.

XIII.

Little hearts of brown

Sprout green when it's time to plant

The potato's eyes.

XIV.

Green as summer,

Green as glass,

Your eyes warm my world

And tint everything I see

Into green

XV.

Glass marbles

Rolling in a glass of water

On top of the piano

Of a blind musician.

Her students grimace, but play on

XVI.

Something about gravity

Weighs down these eyes

And pulls them earthward.

Strain! Lift!

Look up and see the world

XVII.

Glinting in the night,

A predator looks back

From behind the eyes

Of every cat.

XVIII.

Cross my heart and hope to die,

Stick a finger in my eye;

Cross my eyes and poke my heart

I swear that we will never part.

XIX.

Darting back and forth

Twinkling

Unstable as an untrue heart

XX.

Open, close, open, close

I don't know which to prefer

XXI.

My eyes water

Not with feeling

Sad and happy emotions

Are nothing to the potency

Of an onion

The Nurse

Her scrubs are three shades lighter
    than inky midnight blue
prepared for an all-nighter
    in a bold and helpful hue.
This evening her breakfast was
    a cold-cut club on rye,
courage for the next lost cause,
    and a sip of questions "Why?"
And in the bleary weary noon
    she smiles and laughs and prays
before a shift that comes too soon
    where she will do the same.

Yellow Blossoms

Narcissus blooms bow to themselves,
  those beauties by the pond,
radiantly rippling
  a lovely watery song.

Daffodils in hosts and crowds
  all nod the elegance
of flowers smiling all around
  and all together dance.

The sunflower looks up instead,
  gazing at the sky
and following the glory of
  the sun as she glides by.

The Tale of Princess Dragonbreath

Young Princess D, a little waif,
wandered off where it's not safe.
She chased a kitten, with giggling laughter,
into a cellar where from the rafters
strings and strings of garlic hung.
She blinked at them, then tasted one.
Before you could have blinked once more
she'd eaten clove seventy-four.
Where e're she went the castle knew it
'cause she carried garlic with her--to chew it.
The smell knocked out the Queen's prize goat
and would not wash off in the moat.
The courtiers fainted, the knights were mad
and took her to the King (her dad)
with clothespins clamped about their noses.
The sentence, just as you suppose, is
Princess D must hitch a wagon
and drive to live out with the dragons.
Their breath is just as bad as hers,
or in some cases even worse.
This fate, a life of dread and horror,
had passed on garlic-eaters before her,
and was a law throughout the land
for any whose breath you couldn't stand.
But Princess D, whom I admire,
found that it was not her desire
to trundle off, like so much meat, and
find the dragons, then be eaten.
"I shall not be a meal," she reasoned,
"for dragons, though I am well-seasoned."
She ran away, and before they caught her
she'd found a stream of running water
with which she scrubbed and rinsed and wrung
the garlic smell from off her tongue.
Her sentence was commuted then,
and none were sent to the dragons again,
for the law was changed that very day.
The kingdom's favorite tale, they say,
is this of Princess Dragonbreath
who brushed her teeth and cheated death.

Subtitles

Why doesn't the world come with labels?

They would tell you in convenient closed caption:

"Here is a pinecone,"and

"This is your dog Charlie,"and

"North is that way."

Door hinges would <creak>,

hinting of [ominous music]

to warn of the unexplored, whispering,

"Here there be dragons."

Nursery Rap

I had help from my FHE sisters both in composing and performing this one

Yo! Didizzle, didizzle,

Da alley cat be jammin' on da fidizzle.

Da heifer she jumpin' so high, so high,

She jump right over da moon, da sky!

Snoop dog be laughin', say "gimme a what what"

He laughin' so hard he almost bust a gut.

Da dish be pickin' up what da spoon be layin' down,

So peace out wi' dis nursery rap P-town!

Blinking Together

The difference between a wink
and a blink
is a matter of arithmetic:
a single blink is a double wink,
or rather,
one wink is only half the other.

One eye alone can't blink, you see
but longs to.
So it winks away its halfway blinks
until eventually it spies
another eye
that winks back, and two become one.

after the valentines

Slightly wilted roses, thorns still on the stems,

in water colored like the midday fog above the Thames,

look out the kitchen window--where they can best be seen--

beside the spot she puts her ring when dishes must be cleaned.

Three chocolates are hidden on the upper pantry shelf

so the children will not find the few she saved out for herself.

It's two weeks since the holiday. He's mowing the front lawn;

she's driving from the dentist and knows that before long

they'll be reading bedtime stories, vacuuming the car,

paying bills and mopping spills before they drip too far.

The hearts and gifts of Valentines fade dully to the past,

reminders that this love and home are built of things that last.

Morning

The sky yawns wide in the bleary predawn grey,

and a wind tumbles out, showering the earth with scents and nonsense songs

and scattering the last few drops of dew.

Fingers of sunlight comb through the mountain pines

and brush out the trailing wisps of cloud,

while the emerging light dresses everything in confident colors.

Then the egg-yolk sun rises over cinnamon crumb peaks,

and it is time to step out into a brand new day.

Parted

I see you

across the room,

and your smile curls

purring

around my thoughts.

You are as beautiful

as trees and sky

on a warm morning in April.

The kind of morning you wake up to

before sunrise

just to be sure

you won't miss it.

The kind of morning that smiles

at the whole world

and glows

with the promise of summer.

I say nothing.

Because your glowing smile

is not for me.

And I close my eyes.

Because I miss you more

when we are together.

Sorry, but I won't be at many of the Thursday meetings for a while. I'll try to contribute to the blog, and hopefully some will be more upbeat than this breakup poem. Make sure you post your poems from the meetings so I can read them!

Friendly Mocking

This comic is dedicated to Josh.

Turning Point

This is the hour when seasons start to change.

The trees, until this moment bathed in summer light,

Were reaching to the sky, their leaves spread ever high

To catch the smiles of the sunfilled days.

They've shaken hands and waved to passers-by,

Strength pulsing out to liven leafy greenery,

Warm trunks unknotting cares and breathing friendship's sighs

Throughout the months of camaraderie.

Now with the frost encroaching with the dawn,

The wind begins to sap their strength,

And pulling inward color, life,

Their rasping leaves are shivered from their grasp.

And so ere long the cold will leave to us

Only these silent silhouettes,

Bare branches stark against the sky,

Reminding us by emptiness of Spring.

Leaves

Crunch, scrunch, scuff; scitter scatter skiff

Such rich crisp sounds as I walk through Autumn leaves,

Crinkling under foot and cracking on the ground.

I can almost smell the aural potpourri

Swish, huff, shuttle; flutter shake, swoosh

Above my head, shivering together in the wind.

Rasp, rattle, hush; whistle rake, whoosh

Each acoustic color knelling in my ear.

And falling through the air, a leaf

silent

Falling

When the ground crumbles beneath your feet

do you look down to catch your footing

as you scramble to place a toe, a knee, a finger,

anything,

beneath you to stop your fall?

Or do you look up to grasp at wisps of root

or cloud or star, to hold you up?

Do you pray to be supported or lifted?

And when the foot that stumbles,

the eye that searches, and the hand that grasps

are not your own,

then, with one hand stretched to heaven and one to help,

where do you look?

Columns

A ruin is always cracked, fallen pillars, their capitals crushed,

with great jagged breaks where some force

of time or might severed strength from stone and toppled

the stolid column.

A broken pillar, image of loss, is always carved, adorned,

and placed alone with its own rubble.

In this room, the walls are painted, decorated,

with a clock hung to mark the time,

like a water wheels spinning as the river flows past

to the sea.

But there is also a pillar, tall and white,

thin,

ugly,

plain,

taking up space just where you'd like to walk,

blocking your view of the woodwork and your friend

on the other side of the room,

and holding up the roof.