[4/40] - Musings Before Winter

I fail at doing things every day. But I'm still going. Today's prompt is from Writers Digest.

Musings Before Winter

She’s been thinking about things that don’t need thinking
about -- like how sleep is a poor substitute for drinking,
how movies lie and love ceases to matter
when your ship is sinking, the water's rising--
no one survives, not the rat, not the adder,
not the bundled up or the gloveless
or the loveless. The weather's prising
everything out of your hands, your fingers clutching
numbly, sensation-less--the water's cold;
You've lost all feeling, you're growing old,
she misses you.
                          What's there to miss?
Your gasping throat, convulsing on a kiss.
Collarbones, fingers, the way you paused,
between 'my' and 'darling', as if considering
which word to use. The way your hands hooked into claws,
into her hair, into the sheets. The way you laughed
at others' scars, hiding your own. How jealously
we all protect our skin, how zealously
push others off the raft.
How desperately we all want to be seen
and loved and understood.
How she would like to do some good
before she dies. And how the sword is keen,
the word is sharp, and how the water's cold,
but battle's hot.
And how she'd love to fly south for the winter.  


 

[3/30] - Untruths

Playing catch-up. Today is day 3, so here is the third poem. Prompt taken once more from Creative Writing Now. This one requires me to "Write a poem about yourself in which nothing is true."

This should be fun.

 A False Autobiography

My mother was a traveler,
A fairytale unraveler,
That noblest of professionals:
An archaeologist by trade.

She bore me out in Timbuktu
Or in the mountains of Peru
Or some such distant area...
I don't know where I was made.

She nursed me for a month or three
And then longed to be rid of me
So she gave me to a maiden aunt
Who'd always craved a child

Well as a mother, Brigit ruled
She was always stern, but never cruel
She let me do just as I pleased
So long as I didn't run wild

Aunt Brigit told me of my Mam
Who visited now and again
I thought her fond but distant
But Brigit was my mum.

For though I called her by her name
In my heart I would always proclaim
That Brigit loved and raised me
More than that other one

Still, when I grew to be a youth
I had to recognise the truth:
From my mother I'd inherited
A blazing wanderlust

I still loved Brigit and my home
But my destiny it was to roam
To long-abandoned distant lands
With not a soul to trust.

I kissed my mother-aunt goodbye
(And I'll admit, we both did cry)
Then left the house where I was raised,
not for the final time.

I said I'd be back in a year
After I'd seen the Golden Tear
and other ancient mysteries
in distant lands and climes

I'd tell you more, but I must go
I've only got an hour or so
Until my bus leaves for Tomé,
a town I've never seen

If I run into you again
I promise you I'll shake your hand
And tell you more about my life
And the places I have been.

'Til then, farewell, bon soir, adieu!
I hope I will run into you.
And share a drink with you again
And call you, lovely stranger, friend.

[2/30] - Fairytale

Yeah, I know. I failed this game instantly. But I'm still trying.

Today's prompt is from Creative Writing Now. I'm to write a poem from the perspective of a character in a fairytale.

Vasilisa's Doll Speaks

To be the embodiment of pure motherlove
For a girl who receives no other love
Is a more difficult task than it seems.

To do her work so often
And make her pillow soften
And send her sweeter dreams

To help her when she's in need
Is simple indeed
And to cleave to her

But I must think: how much is too much?
Which things require my touch
And which should I leave for her?

Impossible tasks are my purview,
All the things Baba Yaga asked her to do
But what of the tasks her stepmother set for her?

Sure, it's cruel to work all alone
Wearing her fingers to the bone
But will she be spoiled if I do all that for her?

All these things I thought
While doing as I ought
And gave her no sign

It's not to my credit, nor to her dad's
That she didn't grow up hateful or bad
And was always kind

For I was too generous by far
But I love her as the Earth loves its star
And how could I do less than my all?

In some ways she's my own child
I raised her and soothed her until she smiled
Though I am but a magical doll.

And it's well that I did
For if I hadn't, she'd be dead
And that would be a loss for all of Russia.

[1/30] - Matches

So I've decided that I'm doing the 30 poems in 30 days challenge for November. I'm not doing NaNoWriMo because I don't currently have a novel inside me that wants to be written. I'm not sure I have thirty poems inside me either, but it's a poem a day, so why not.

I'll be getting prompts from the Internet by googling "poetry prompt". Today's prompt is from Writer's Digest, which tells me to write a "matches" poem. 

 Matches

 -one-
I bought a Bleeding Heart candle
to remind me of you
I've only lit it a few times
but it is pungent
It smells of geranium, blackcurrant, cedar
Not bleeding heart flowers at all
I lit it once in my dorm room,
the sudden flare of the match against the bare white wall
I breathed, silent, as the smoke curled upwards,
wary of the alarm.

-two-
My lighter has a camo design on it
I lit a twig with it
transferred the pale spark to some paper
watched it licking the bare dry wood
someone played a guitar
someone sang
I watched, absorbed in my creation
waiting for the pyramid to fall

-three-
Sometimes I smell campfires when I step out of my dorm room
It is only cold I smell
But my brain thinks the two go together
It's absurd
I've gone camping in the summer
But cold and fire go together
After the hurricane there was wood everywhere
I wanted to collect it, build it up into a bonfire
I wanted to steal the pine branches
Watch the needles become sparks and smoke and ash

-four-
I miss burning with desire sometimes,
watching my changeling heart writhe in the pit of my chest.
I miss being made reckless with longing
being changed by it
I don't think I'm done with changing
But maybe I'm done with burning
If I change again, it won't be on fire
Still
I think I'll keep my lighter
and the candle
and maybe a book of matches, just in case.

Post-for-post 4: Limerence

Fourth entry to my post-for-post with my friend Patrick. I'll link to his post-for-post when he sends me a link to it. This one is a rewrite of my previous limerence acrostic, this time with the word spelled correctly:

Limerence 
Lurking somewhere under the surface
Is my deep certainty that the
Myth of being lost is just that.
Everyone falls eventually, as I am falling, I
Reach out, grasping with weak fingers, for you, for
Everything I ever wanted – the hard landing, I
Need the broken bones that come of shattering myself, of
Crashing against you. Your love is cliffs, towering; I know now, certain as anything: 
Eventually, everything falls silent.

—Puck Malamud
31/3/2012 18:39

For the record: I give up on formatting this blog forever. Sorry.

Post-for-post: Scalpels and Sibilants

Entry three of my post-for-post with my friend Patrick (link to come when he gives me his). This one's a creepygory love poem. Been a while since I've written one of these. <3

--

Scalpels and Sibilants

When I slice you open,

I will do it with neat lines; I have the scalpel ready

to peel away the layers of tissue and skin,

slowly

revealing

muscle and bone.

When I have you alone,

I will open you wherever you feel you are poor or thin.

I want to catalogue your every part,

cover over your scars with other, better scars.

Your eyes are jellyfish; your pupils, distant stars;

I want to taste the raw flesh of your heart.

You devastate me, deadlier even

than arson or arsenic,

than atom bombs or time;

I want to know what makes you tick,

dissect the clockwork of your brain;

I want to forget my handkerchief inside your spleen,

monogrammed with my initials, so there is something in you

that is mine and only mine.

How could you ever think that you are plain

or ordinary, when you are

permanently perched somewhere between

mundanely mad or maddening, obscene?

It is obscene how I've fixated

on whatever is in you,

your capillaries, sinews,

and anything that is vaguely related

to the anatomy of my affection;

I cannot pass the cooking section

in the supermarket without staring at the knives,

deciding which one to buy for you, only for you;

it will never touch food, unless you are food,

unless we eat the fabric of our very lives,

raw, red, and dripping from lip and tongue and tooth:

your flesh and mine will be the only truth.

and that,

my love,

cannot be understood.

--Puck Malamud

Fri, 16 March 2012

Poem: Limerance

Entry 2 to my post for post with my friend, Patrick. His post can be found here. This one is a rough draft of a poem about limerance, which I actually am not feeling for anybody at the moment. Still it's a fun feeling, so I thought I'd write about it.

Limerance

Lancing myself through the heart
It’s a silly game, as if
My heart is a ring, dancing in the wind.
Enjoying the gallop, are you? It’s a
Risk, but you like risking everything on the
Approach, stabbing at my heart at the last minute, you
Never miss, though. I can feel each pass, each
Centimetre of the ground you churn beneath your feet:
Everything about it feels like falling.

Hope you're all doing well!

A Little Rain

This is a poem from a few months ago. Not the most, uh, cheerful of works, so perhaps not appropriate to a New Year, but I'm sure you will forgive me.

"A Little Rain"

She peeks through a chink in the stone wall—
The garden looks desiccated and dry.
Her handmaidens continually weep and sigh.
‘Perhaps tonight a little rain will fall,’

She says and glances at the sky.
It remains the same cloudless, oppressive blue.
The sun is warm; it bleaches every hue
and sucks the moisture out of passersby.

Thus, my life, robbed as it is of you:
Day after cheerful, endless, depressing day
My tongue is dry as cotton and cannot say—
—
I know not what. What words could end this drought?

Poem: Waking Up in St. Petersburg Dorms

Разбудил меня крик чаяк, и свет яркий сквозь гардини
"Пол шестого! Ну как так можно!"-- застонала моя голова.
Прошлась я по коридору; вид с балкона был как картина--
Свет солнце лиловой медью проливался сквозь облака.

Razbudil menja krik chajak, i svet jarkij skvoz' gardini
"Pol shestogo! Nu kak tak mozhno!"-- zastonala moja golova.
Proshlas' ja po koridoru; vid s balkona byl kak kartina--
Svet solntse lilovoj med'ju prolivalsja skvoz' oblaka.

The cries of gulls woke me, and the light through the drapes
"Half past five! Why me!" moaned my weary head.
I walked down the corridor; the view from the balcony was like a picture
The sunlight, like lavender bronze, was pouring through the clouds.



Comments, criticisms, etc. If you are a better translator than I, please contact me!

The Conspiracy of Claudius Civilis

inspired by this painting by Rembrandt van Rijn and the Histories of Tacitus detailing the Batavian Rebellion

Gaius Julius held up his strong hand, his sword hand
He looked out over the people with one eye,
Fearsome, sombre, and wroth.
What did he see as he spoke his great speech?
The bright rage, like a flame in his heart
As it caught on our faces and climbed?

We filled our mouths with rich red wine, hard bread,
Stuffing our faces with glory and courage.
Batavia was rising, throwing off its yoke--
No longer would our sons be conscripted
Into any army but our own.

My chief made sword-oath, the clash of metal
Was a din, hideous foreteller of the battles to come
Did Civilis see his death reflected in the steel?
He looked sad at the end, thoughtful,
But he knew what needed to be done.

I was there—old man, grey-beard, living
Perhaps beyond my time, veteran of many battles—
And even I was caught up in the fervor,
Vibrant again as a green lad before a king,
Shouting for blood with the rest.
Tremble before the empty names of legions?
Not likely! Not us!

We had brothers in that army,
Sons torn from mothers’ breasts, eager to return.
We knew the measure of those men.

And Claudius Civilis, king and hero,
Conspirator and traitor, told us all Gaul was rising.
He wrought us, sharp and eager swordsmen,
Or flat and determined as shields,
Into the army he wanted.
He had cunning and courage aplenty
And we followed him into death.

Poem12: To E--

Here's a poem I wrote for class, two years ago, as an exercise in emulating a famous New York poet. The poet I chose was Edgar Allan Poe.

TO E——
upon reading her obituary in the Herald

Thou wast a dream I had, love,
That faded ‘ere the morn.
And in it I was glad, love,
But now that dream is gone.
And thou art faded with the moon,
And I am quite forlorn.

Thou walked amid the flowers,
So thy fragrance was a spell,
And thou danced in silver showers
That watered all the vale.
But thou art gone forever,
And that is not so well.

Ah, weep, ye summer maidens!
Ah, cry ‘Alack!’ and weep!
The summer’s gone with her I loved
And God’s asleep!
And I am laden with remorse
That I must keep.

Thou wast a dream, a shadow,
A brief surprise.
Ephemeral, ethereal,
Thou faded, quick as sighs.
And I would see thee, dream thee still,
I close my eyes.

Be well, everyone.

New Poem! At last!

The writer's block is over! Boy does that feel good.

When Winter Came

I was a child when winter bowled me over
With freezing lips and fire-crystal eyes
I was a child still playing in the clover
When winter came, she found me paralyzed.

I was a youth when I first joined the dreaming,
With starlit eyes and magic in my hands,
I was a youth; my eyes were quick and gleaming,
I rode the ocean-waves, played in the sands.

I was a sage when winter crawled into me
With razor teeth and soft, translucent fur
I was a sage; I let each breath pass through me
When winter came, I knew and welcomed her.

I was a ghost who drowned in dreams of danger
With lidless eyes, and sulphur in my bones
I walked a ghost in dreams and planes still stranger
I was a dream, asleep among the stones.

~*~
Hope you're all doing super-well.

Love,
Penny

Poem10: Bedtime Story

Here's an old poem I wrote as a New Year's Present for a very close friend of mine. Here it is:

A Bedtime Story

I’ve got a story for you, darling, she says
I frown and answer, Darling?
The night is rain-filled and
our windows refract starlight
a million crystal lights dance on our walls.

The story is simple: a beginning, an end,
A middle tying the two together, smoothly
But it’s the darling she began it with that echoes
And I cannot fathom it.

In the starlit velvet night of our beginnings,
The story is just another story
But the epithet, so filled with sweetness and
rolling off the tongue like pearls or candy…
Well,
you know that voice as I do,
how in the turn of the phrase,
she can plait each word like hair
and spear it through unto perfection.

I do not know
if it’s the thread of story
or a whispered darling
or stars like diamonds in her hair
or rain on the window fracturing the stars
but life tastes sweeter, somehow,
in the darkness;
and somehow, life is better
in her arms.

Poem9:Take a Shot in the Night

Take a shot in the night,

and the tick-tock-ticking

Of the clock, all alight with flame,

Lights your way, can you see?

There's your mark--shoot straight!

The flickering of the fire,

like a candle, only brighter,

distorts vision, and the smoke...

Are your eyes watering, child?

Shoot straight!

Did you hear that hiss

of the arrow past your ear?

Or was the bowstring louder

so that you couldn't hear?

What a twang it gave! And the arrow whistled!

Did you shoot straight, child?

All the stars were alight,

but the flame of the clock,

obscured them, was too bright!

Is that time you're killing there, child?

Or were you just sick of the tick-tock-ticking?

And did you shoot straight?

Did you hit your mark

when you shot in the dark?

And when the clock is ashes and bits of metal

And the stars are clear and the sky is blue-black

Can you find your arrow where you shot it?

Or did you shoot straight and forget it?

Or was it off and the arrow flew on and on

'til it grounded itself by the wayside?

And did you find it, child?

Is the target clear?

Or did you fumble around in the blind dark?

Did you find your arrow where you shot it, child?

And did you shoot straight, child?

Did you hit it?

An Explanation Regarding the New Poem and an Older Poem (Poem 7?)

So those of you who read my blog (few of you as it is) will find that the poem I had just posted on it a few days ago vanished. I started editing it, realized I only liked three lines, and scrapped it entirely except for the aforementioned three lines and one more line that I added post-factum. When I fix it, it will be up here. Until then, I leave you with an older poem:

Dying
I die of carelessness; I die of caution;
I die of fear; I die too brave for my own good;
I die from too much sweet devotion;
I die from lack of drink, for want of food.

I die silently, or I die screaming;
I die in tears, in pain, or from disease;
I die awake, I die when I am dreaming;
I die upon my feet, my hands, my knees.

I die in happiness; I die in blank despair;
I die with love, or with my frail heart torn asunder;
I die with ugly wounds, or I die fair;
I die in fire, in water, night, and thunder.

I die too old; I die too young for dying;
I die too sure, uncertain of my soul;
I die in tears, with eyes too dry for crying;
I die too much, too often, on the whole.

Ciao, friends.
Hugs

Thanksgiving Poem

So NaNoWriMo is taking its toll on my entire life, but with only three days left I'm picking up momentum, stealing away from the Thanksgiving party in Baltimore, MD in order to write write write. I only have nine thousand words left to write to finish and it's looking better and better.

Still, I have found time to not only read dog communcation books for my new job, celebrate Thanksgiving with family and friends, and watch a film by Aleksander Gorodnitsky entitled "V Poiskakh Yidisha", "In Search of Yiddish", but also to write a Thanksgiving Poem which I will now share with you.

An Eighteen Year Old's Thanksgiving
11.27.2008

Those who celebrated Thanksgiving first
Were immigrants like us, newcomers here,
Grateful for the surcease from hunger, thirst,
From cold and death and danger, and from fear.

Now we bake turkey, cornbread, pumpkin pie,
And say our Russian thanks to this fair land
To which we were by fate compelled to fly,
Whose riches we dared grasp in our hands.

Raised by this land, divided into two,
What can four years hold against fourteen?
Only memories, far between and few,
And relics, beautiful, but few and far between.

Grew up with English, but sometimes I still stumble
And feel a stranger in this tongue I speak.
I wish I could write poetry in Russian,
But after all this time, my Russian's weak.

I'm grateful to this land with all its plenty
For all the freedom I have to explore,
To use this English tongue all too ungently
When all my parts seem constantly at war.

In this land I grew to be eighteen,
So I've English in me to my Russian core.
Four years can hold but little 'gainst fourteen,
But what can fourteen hold against those four?

Comments?

Poem 5: It Was Six In The Morning

It Was Six In The Morning

It was six in the morning and all was silent--
Night had just ended and summer was gone.
It was six in the morning, she hadn’t yet woken,
and I did not feel it was time to move on.

It was half after six and the morning still glistened.
My arm was quite numb from the weight of her bones.
I knew if I moved that she'd wake, so I didn't.
I was in no mood to spend this day alone.

It was ten after seven and light bored right through me.
The sheets were still twisted around as we lay.
She thought she would leave as soon as she wakened,
but I was still hoping for doubt and delay.

It was eight in the morning and she began stirring.
I was still silent, and still as the dead.
It was eight in the morning when her eyes first opened.
I pressed a small kiss on the top of her head.

It was eight and a quarter, and she took a shower.
Her steps were a mix of delay and of haste.
I lay there and listened, intent, to the water.
I hoped there was still some time to waste.

It's nine in the morning; she's out of the shower.
I beg with my eyes for her to remain.
She smiles a little and then acquiesces.
I think it will all turn out well, in the main.

~*~

Be well, my darlings!

Poems 3 and 4: "They Set Fires" and "chill"

So I lied about that blog post about Pride issues. I'm going to turn this into a poetry blog with deviations to stories or some nonfic stuff if I can think of any. Here's two spoken word poems I wrote recently.

They Set Fires

They were a couple, walking down East Broadway
And I couldn’t help but overhear:
“You don’t love me,” she says,
but there’s no heat in it.
“These people, they set fires!
Can you imagine if they got married?
The whole town would be burning.”

And that’s how I love you, sweetling:
Fire, burning, and a red hot torch
And our bodies scorched and twisting,
writhing in the flame.

When I say your name,
twin tongues of fire hiss it in my mouth.

I am a candle, burning at both ends
When you take my hands,
grasping at them, gasping in them
It’s a conflagration,
an exclamation point to end the story
Not a period, not a finale
cause even embers burn.

When we’ve had our turn,
why, we’ll just start again:
throw more wood on the fire,
let the flames leap to the sky
higher, higher than we can fly

I love my marshmallows
charcoal black, the skin
paper thin, and the insides
gooey, melting on my lips

I’m an incense stick,
on an altar, praying
with wisps of smoke,
rising from me, swaying
Until my head is wreathed in smoke
And my hair is sizzling
and burning to the roots,
simplifying to the scalp,
and when that happens, there’s no help
now is there?
cause ‘love’ isn’t a word, any longer
It’s been burnt away,
and all that’s left is the sting of lips
And the burst of flame
and the clash of hips, until the rain
comes down in torrents,
floods the fire,
and we’re steam and ash and we’re rising higher
And we vanish
and we’re scattered
and we stop.

chill

I love you well
I love you mad
I love you chill, like hoarfrost
I love you sweet
I love you mad
I love you blue, like drowning

In love,
We are lunatics
We are moonstruck
We drink love like chocolate martinis
And quench our fires in cool sheets
that might as well be silk

When I kiss you,
I taste ice in your saliva
Don’t tell me there’s no passion in coldness
Don’t tell me that ice cannot burn
’cause I know better.

I tear icicles off rooftops
suck them between my lips
burning cold melting warmly
into steel-tipped drops of snowmelt

I love you, I love you, I love you
I am a wellspring of words
I am an outpouring
There is no thirst in you I cannot quench

I can drink the pools
of your eyes
You are a fountain when I grasp you
slipping slick through my hands
Pouring through me
like dams breaking.

We wear love like a wet wind,
hanging heavy, hot on clotheslines
And pooling, salty sea-like
into sweat between shoulderblades, skin flushed

We tongue the first snowflake
taste its imprint of the heavens
I love you,
You are the deep black waters
and the ice, shattering
steel breaking when spring comes,
untouchable as rain.


~*~

Be well, darlings!

Short Update and Poem2: My Little Rhythm

So I'm in the process of writing up a sort of edit to my Pride Parade post where I actually address an issue that has been bothering me regarding the parade. This is taking me some time, so I shan't have the promised 2 a week up this week. This'll just be a journal kind of entry and a second poem.

I've been going to milongas for the past three days, which has been wonderful, but also painful. At La Luna on Monday, I accidentally kicked off part of the toenail on my big toe, which caused bleeding and much distress. On Tuesday at Rubyfruit I didn't injure myself, but I did dance only with women and get some good leading practice. On Wednesday at Corazon, I had a whole lot of fun (including getting some good footage for my film), but by midnight my feet were hurting so badly that I was almost in tears. On the bright side, I found out that the fellow who tends the bar at Corazon is named Nick and is fun to dance with. I rather like him.

I also, at one point, need to watch the DVD that my Video Production instructor gave me.

But for now, poetry!

~*~
My Little Rhythm

Somewhere deep inside me is a tick-tock clock
I can hear it ticking if I'm really quiet,
counting off the seconds of my long, short life,
keeping time for my moments -- it's my little rhythm

Somewhere deep inside me is a gong-gong clock
I can hear it tolling if the world stays quiet,
counting down the moments 'til it's all done, gone,
keeping time for my life -- if I take it slowly

Somewhere deep inside me is a thud-thump heart
I can hear it beating if I lay real still,
counting up my life, pulsing on on on,
keeping time for my seconds -- I know it keeps on going
~*~

Best to all,
TLP

Poem1: Banal Things

So much for the second order of business in my previous post. I'll be better about that starting next week. For now, a poem. The first poem of the blog, actually, so this'll set the tone, mayhap.

~*~
Banal Things

I like to write
about the most banal things.

My friend has a bottle
of Glade in her bathroom:
Lavender Meadow scent.
And every time I go, I like to
follow the instructions on the label:
shake well before using
spray toward the center of the room
And then stand under the spray
and feel each droplet
like a lavender-scented kiss.

I love split-toe socks because
I can pick up a dropped object
with the big toe, like a thumb.
Also, mine are purple,
like the physical manifestation
of a lavender-scented kiss.
~*~


My eldest sister's getting married on Saturday.

I'll see you all next week.

Best,
TLP