Stories and poems

"The metaphoric image of 'orphan lines' is a contrivance of the detached onlooker to whom the verbal art of continuous correspondences remains aesthetically alien. Orphan lines in poetry of pervasive parallels are a contradiction in terms, since whatever the status of a line, all its structure and functions are indissolubly interlaced with the near and distant verbal environment, and the task of linguistic analysis is to disclose the levels of this coaction. When seen from the inside of the parallelistic system, the supposed orphanhood, like any other componential status, turns into a network of multifarious compelling affinities.'
Roman JAKOBSON, "Grammatical Parallelism and its Russian Facet", Language, 42/2, 1966, pp. 399-429, p. 428-429

Monday, November 30, 2015

Finishing the document

So about a month and a half ago I turned in my dissertation.

I realized today that, as I have been writing that book for so long, another one was being written, in the shadows, so to speak, and that I also have ten years of poems, at least, written on paper bags, the backs of envelopes, the bits and scraps of other projects, in journals, each one unfinished. There are in fact so many that I could beat my record and certainly post more than just a few year on here while I think of what to do with them.

And now I have the head space to do so.

And the Moon is in Leo, which makes one, usually so private, with my Black Moon Lilith in the eighth house, audacious, wanting to put oneself out there, here we go. For, in spite of the lover who thought himself clever to call me so, I am no Emily Dickinson. I will not keep all these poems in drawers. Every few days or so, I will pick one out of the piles on my desk, and if I like it I will post it and I will throw away the ones I don't. And who cares if there isn't any reason anymore to write poetry and if I'm all out of sync with the times.

They were meant to be read by someone, by you, though I didn't always think so, though it isn't always true.

This one I wrote during the last few weeks of writing. It's called 

Finishing the document 

My small heart a rabbit
I leap and thump
I don't know why
a basket that didn't burn
a relic untouched
a body that rose from the dead
a dream she lost an eye
they retreated to their rooms.

I've loved before now,
I have, what hurt
to let go of, to
love again, what prayer,
what bell,
I rang the one
in my heart
it was in tune with yours.

What's inside
so strong one moment
so fleeting then. 

I think, perhaps, it captures some of the frenzy of that last month of writing, of what I was reading and feeling, of what it's like to finish a long project.

Friday, April 10, 2015

The Green Bench

It is spring, so I must write this thing, and it must go out, like so many other things.

Sometimes all there is to do is to make space in your body for it to feel a thing, feelings which must come, and then go. We are usually happier with the letting go.

I had a dream I was sitting with my love on a stone moss-covered bench.

Mostly I sit inside, these days, looking out. There is a tree growing out of a hole in the stone wall I can see from my basement library window spot. There are people outside on benches I can see from the upstairs window spot near the books on red attic vases. I wrote this poem the other day while observing two of them.

The green green grass

Two lovers on a bench
were men supporting 
each other were not
fearful in the spring
the new leaves like 
perfect capes just opening
another green, bright
against the grey
were leaning against
each other supporting
this spring were you
and I the same like
lovers we would sit.
Here, stay, I'd say.
You're far away another
green has come to sprout
each bud-miracle a gift
of life, we're the same,
I'd say. 

With my dissertation, I'm doing a strange kind of writing. I have old paragraphs, pages, no structure to rework, but my own mental work, eight years of it or so, to add, as a layer, to the already existing text. It is interesting work, sometimes frustrating, but sometimes strangely satisfying. I wonder if my readers will be able to perceive the layers. 

Maybe that is why this poem is rather strange. I don't want syntax, I don't even want form, I want a few commas, and some images, some green. These days that's all I really want, some green.


Saturday, February 21, 2015

A Tribute to the God of Thought

A Tribute to the God of Thought

Please, look at both sides of things.
Do not fear your own inhibitions.

Take out your mind one more time
and dissect it, the ripples are there for a reason.

Don't balk at your own contradictions.
Don't strive for a dead unity that isn't one,
similarity that is not fecund,
the grey matter of impossibility.

Let your process grow beyond recognition.
It will find a way.

Take it upon yourself to keep growing,
despite this dead way,
make a tribute to the God of thought.


I wrote this poem the day I left Geneva in January for travels up north. I am back now, and the the new lunar year has begun, and I need to get back to work. I'm wanting and expecting things to be different. A change will come. 

I'm unsure of where this poem came from. Maybe I just needed a break in thinking. Maybe I was tired of the God of thought.

Who is the God of thought? My first thought was that it was Mercury, or Hermes, and it is. The internet first points me to Odin, who has two black crows who tell him things (two black crows tell me things too these days - I'm not sure what). Then someone in a comment on a strange page (one wonders where they all came from) said it was Hades, and thanked me for reading him, but I'm not sure about that, though it is in my poem, the dead way. Then there is Thoth, Egyptian God I don't know very much about but who surely is at the root of things, the root of thought. According to this website, he was the God of the moon. A scribe, he invented writing.

In any case, the God of thought is good at duality. Which makes me think, there is no good reason to think. We are better off without thinking, or, joy is a function of thoughtlessness, though reading messages from the world is a full time job. And Mercury married, guess who, Philology, and that brings me back to the reading and writing I have to get back to.


Saturday, February 7, 2015

Ten of Wands

I'm going with the idea of tarot card inspired poems, and since I drew this card today, I'm posting this old poem about the ten of wands.

Ten of Wands

Gathering, gathering reeds to myself.
The devil lies at best,
to transform my passion is the test,
to meet at both ends,
to catch and survive
these deep desires
that spring from long lost faults
in earth and founts of fire,
here, back to the ground, cool down.

Form, gathering reeds to myself,
make a balance between us,
your need and mine,
healing, breaking or broken, fine.
I'm working, I'm thinking,
I'm pouring my love into cups,
back out, then in,
sorting and shifting,
gathering reeds to myself.


I realize I often carry burdens that are not my own.

Putting the burden down can be trying, or at least difficult, though this seems strange. It ought to be easy to put something heavy down, but sometimes it isn't. Sometimes I want to lug this thing around, this heavy thing that isn't mine.

If I open my arms, the reeds fall, and I am empty handed again. Everything seems quite simple and I can use my hands to do the important things in my life that need doing.