On the View of Le Havre

The river, with its brushstroke foam
and deeper blues that hint
at tentacular monstrosity,
flagellates the golds and greens
of sailboat hulls that line
the port like crayons spilled
and put back in the wrong order

in front of the ships there ekes
blotted shapes (maybe canoes?)
and behind the soaring golden
Musee de Beaux-Arts
a gray obscured sky breathes
onto a faint outline of a city
seen from a wall of the inner harbor

for all the intricacies we cannot glimpse
in this impressionistic gaze
we substitute imagination.

View of Le Havre by Claude Monet

Brighton Beach in August

The sand doesn't get hot until noon.
We spread our sheet in a spot still
untouched by human bodies.

I don't want sunblock; you don't
want sunburn, but it's still too early
for even the brightest star to be fully awake.

We swim like tangled jellyfish. We try
to propel ourselves forward as one
entity, drifting farther toward the deep.

I can't stand out there; don't carry me,
don't carry me out, I beg and plead
so you go it alone and I watch.

But now I feel like a starfish
waiting to grow back an arm.

out of hibernation

when the day was warm we went out from the office and squinted in the sun
and we all sat on benches to eat deli sandwiches that we had purchased with 
what little cash we didn't put into the bank, what we allowed ourselves to spend,
what we weren't stashing away in hopes of saving up for vacations or books 
or going back to school or to someday have just enough to purchase a plot of land
and some seeds to grow a garden and build a hut with sturdy wooden planks
and then we could live forever as a community of clasped hands out in the sun.

Oh, if life were that simple, what dreamers and poets we all would be.

Video Poetry

Here are some videos from poetry open mic night last Friday. They're sideways, but I decided to put them up anyway. Apparently I still haven't figured out the video function on my digital camera.

The first is me, doing a short piece.

The next is a clip from my friend Sean's song:

And this last one is one of the poetry open mic regulars... "Satan"... singing his amusing and political Christmas carols:

Growing Up

Adventure is waiting
For the birds to announce
The first day of spring
And then waking up early
To jump in the watering hole
Or shitty plastic baby pool
That killed the grass in the yard

You watch the ants hoof it
Along the gum-strewn pavement
Nature hides its fragility behind force
But death always finds a way
To take us up to heaven
Or into the black nothingness
That fills a hole in the ground

In the morning Mom hears you leaving
She climbs out of bed to kiss you off
Some days she's stuck in dreams
And you open the bedroom door
Softly, with a niggling fear
Or actually a stab of panic
That she might not move at the sound

holiday

glass loses reflection in the predawn

morning fog veils building peaks

and we cross the street despite

the taxis

working from darkness to darkness

venturing out into afternoon sunlight

feels like the state between dreaming

and awake

tourists impede pedestrian traffic

we twist one scarf around our necks

with hands clasped we're like two gifts

in ribbon

too quickly the lunch hour passes

there are no windows in our office

look around-- it's a solemn masoleum

of goals

bags get heavier the longer they're held

to our myopic eyes the lamplight slurs

we miss the details for shiny circles with

hazy edges

but we can see the essence of everything

back into ground

they say the city is a jungle. do they mean arms and ankles and eyebrows and teeth? the colossal steel hands lift the limbs up behind the neck, up into reflections of the waves above our heads. we're all animals at the core. with the deepening of our days, we will all start to feel fur or feathers, scales or sandpaper skin. we'll grab each other and run toward the forest. little monsters trying to find our way out of a world of distorted reflections in glass. let's build our homes in the trunks of the giant redwoods. we will morph into the xylem and phloem. the up and down processes will slosh our blood around in our mouths and we'll swallow each other down for nutrients. where are the rings of age on skyscrapers? what will become of the arms and ankles and eyebrows and teeth?

bluejay in winter

the sky looks like a polluted ocean outside the window and the writer sighs at overused metaphors. 

sheets of paper pour from the printer and the daughter can smell the ink all the way in the kitchen.

the pie on the oven has a crack down the center; she can never bake the way her mother did. 

she rests her head in an oven mitt hand and listens to the windows rattle behind their screens.

the mother's cross hangs around the writer's neck and he rubs his thumb against the golden christ.

in march the ground is snow and what isn't slush has been coated with dirt and homeless man's pee. 

the printer runs out of paper and the writer tries to recall whether he has another ream in the closet.

the daughter notices the hum has stopped and decides to help the writer find some more paper. 

but the writer has lost interest in the novel and is staring outside of the window at a bluejay.

the daughter walks to his side and tries to read over his shoulder; last time she asked, he refused.

the bluejay weaves through the air like confetti and spirals down toward a berry bush in the yard.

both writer and  daughter try not to think about the day its roots took to soil but they do anyway.

the bluejay's wings knocks against the branches that the mother pruned with scissors from the shed.

the daughter reads about a young woman with sunglasses; she guesses that it's supposed to be her.

the young woman with sunglasses is trying to escape from a block of ice but she can't get out.

the branches shake as the bluejay struggles against the gust to get back to his mate in the tall oak.

the mother's cross sways as the writer leans forward to watch the scene in the noxious sky.

the young woman with sunglasses closes her eyes and awakes twenty years later in an inferno.

landing on a tree limb the bluejay offers his mate a berry that he's caught on a twig in his beak.

the daughter coughs and puts a hand to her chest; she worries about asthma and heart attacks.

the writer knows that if he were a bluejay 

eating berries with his wife in a tree 

then he would never need words again.

a reaction to communism or possibly to sorrow

"Take a body to water, take a body to tundra

just take me with you as well." 

                                               - Los Campesinos, 'To Tundra'

the highways intersect just outside of Kópháza
and the cars zoom around a round-about
just about a mile from the house where she grew up

with chickens in the yard 

she walked a mile across town to get to school

and from school to the factory where she learned to sew

cross stitches and lace doilies

she continued making them into old age

she never told anyone about her daddy's sickness

about the lone orange she received for christmas

about the mother in law who called her princess

and spat in her face

in Kópháza, the summer sun burned hottest at noon

but it was night when she crept from her house

before the highways were ever built

and snuck across the border and escaped

The Early Morning Starbucks Writer

that guy in the brown
cap and plaid shirt?
with the beeper
on his belt and going grey?
yeah, he's a writer.

i know because
i see a word document open on his laptop and what looks
like the structure of a poem, and he's staring out of the window
but not really seeing anything, and occassionally he stops to tap
his fingers on his leg, as though trying to decide what witty metaphor
to construct next, and then he'll type a word or two, and then highlight
what he's just written and read it over -- once for typos, twice to decide
whether it makes sense, and a third to realize he doesn't like it, and then
he deletes it and tries again and that's the process of writing: staring, tapping
writing and reading and deleting until finally, either out of defeat or satisfaction,
something
sticks.

Weather Forecast

i watch businessmen with starbucks lattes and women in tight spandex hurrying to the gym and a police car crusing lights off - safe for now - and someone who stops in the middle of the sidewalk to sneeze and then looks up eyes catching mine as if to say how could you and i am ashamed at watching the world through windows instead of venturing outside so maybe maybe maybe tomorrow

but only if there's no more rain

a simile for the latest heartbreak

i woke up and the snow outside had piled past the porch. i wrapped myself in one blanket, and then another, and then three more. i lay in bed and walked through mental deserts. the heat and the electricity had both failed some time during the night. dad's fish all floated face up in their tanks. we lit candles and turned on the gas stove, which we knew could burn down the house. but maybe burning fast would hurt less than freezing slow. we hadn't noticed the sudden outage around midnight, but now we all shivered and curled up and wished we could go back to sleep and pretend that everything was still okay.

it was like that.

x-ray of first heartbreak

at midnight under a streetlamp i first saw your shadow

you had furry fruit bat wings and your eyes burned
like grains of salt on our tongues
i’m scraping it now just to keep it clean
i couldn’t see your arrogance, just your innocence


walked into a room and saw an aging dentist
with his hand up his patient’s skirt
our love hung upside down with its eyes closed
balancing by its very tiny feet
and we bit the insides of each other’s cheeks
so we could taste them bleed
i said, wrap around me with those wings
the wind is way too cold

at midnight under a streetlamp your heart hid
a wisdom tooth that hadn’t broken skin
we talked about bobsledding and hotel pools
i didn’t realize you knew the grammar of deceiti couldn’t see your pessimism, just your body
swathed in tight black jeans, i can see your ribcage
heave with every thrust or laugh or sob

walked into a room with my mother and father and brother
praying and wearing pink headdresses like displaced aboriginals
from outer space i moved to kiss you but you disappeared
and left me with this ache this cavity
filled with the bones of fledgling dinosaurs

i took refusge in a room

that made me seem good and brave

When We Were Mountain Slopes

Yesterday I introduced you to Anne Waldman. Today, I've tried my hand at a similar style, relying on language to move the poem along and take it to its conclusion:

When We Were Mountain Slopes

I am

I amuse

I assume

I amass vast

            Collections of stuff

            Stuffed animals (blue bear, polar bear, puppet dragon, dragon that belonged to brother, TAC which is not a cat, Wollip which is a pillow…pet. Penguin, 10stitchesandthelistgoeson)

I go on

I go on to bigger things

I go on to smaller things

I go on top of you

Some of the time

We go on top of each other

            Through each other between each other inside each other

On the subways or

Times Square or rubble heap of World Trade Center

It will go on, on and up

We hold each other up

We prop each other up

We whisper each other up

In the waning night

I wean

I war

Whittle words

            Down to bare bones meanings

            Mean is average (if I am the mean then you are the mode, and our happiness is the median our lives are an exponential line rise, the sudden influx in shoppers at Christmas)

I live for Christmas

I live for Christ

I am Christina and I contain Christ

We contain Christ together

We bleed and ache together

I ache alone

Some of the time

We breathe on each other

            Through each other between each other inside each other

In Starbucks or through pixel

webcam screens or blackness or whiteness or multi-color

I multi-color

I color code

We color each other

Each other’s lives just by existing

I am we are I am we are I am we are

I am we are going up and up and on and on and up and on but what about

What about falling?

Song of the Day

Instead of posting an actual song today, I'm going to post a link to the poetic chant "Fast Speaking Woman" by Anne Waldman. This is only an excerpt. When I read the long-form of the poem, I enjoyed the way she took a concept and continually built on it by deviating from it and then returning to it in a cyclical path. I also really admired how she went from one sentence to another by building on word sounds, using language as a means of progression and discovery. 



There are two other poems by Anne Waldman that I really like, but I can't find them on Youtube so I'm just going to type up the text here. The first is actually part two of a three-piece poem, "A Book of Events": 
 
In Her Lament 
spin
spin
the saint is a woman scorned
wash your hair
your skirts
scent your hands with myrrh 
say you will never die of love
spin
spin


-----

The second is a little bit longer, but has such a great rhythm:

GYPSY NUN
after Lorca

She wants to be weaving
imaginary flores: 
magnolia
sunflower
saffron
moonflower
all these for
the end of time
In a nearby kitchen
5 yellow grapefruit 
ripen
5 wounds of Christ
She doesn't cackle
she gives up her pain
- something outside -
distant - ho -
where did her youth
her sex go?
What reminds her of what?
A white dress loosens
Her heart of herbs, sugar,
of spice
isn't broken
Longitudinal pain recedes
further back
20 suns above blink on, off
on, off


She reverts tension to 
flowers, horizontal
light playing 
a game over her window
blind


magnolia
sunflower
saffron
moonflower
on, off
on
on
 

On Making Choices

balancing on the cusp of a revelation

a fly hovering just above a Venus trap

scared and too cautious, i will never know

about life after death

up close, the magnitude of action becomes realized

hanging between doorframe

and curtain rod, spider snaps

at looming hands and weaves

silk threads into snowflake

Commu(nica)ting

Twenty minutes. Still no train.
Brother walks into the station.
Begins a book he's read five times.

Finally a whoosh and a whir. 
Train pulls up. We step in.
He lets me go first to grab a seat. 

Express and we skip stops. 
He doesn't acknowledge me.
But lets me lean on his shoulder.

And I guess that's more than enough.

ART

When I was younger, about 8 or 9 maybe, my dad and I were playing around with some foam-like clay. While I can't remember what I tried to create with the substance, I can still look to the shelf above my desk to see the miniature Christmas tree that he made for me, complete with tiny round ornaments and tinsel wrapping round its branchless trunk. And although sometimes the ornaments fall off or the tinsel starts unwinding, I always try to glue it back together because, for me, it's a symbol of all the time and energy my dad devoted to giving me a good childhood.

Click here to read my poem, "Art," about the Christmas tree on the Green Spot Blue website, where it was published today. 

A Date With Creativity

Let's spend a midnight in Paris
walking all the same streets
as the classic literary greats --
     On this side of paradise, we hold hands.
     We watch the tender night give way.
     As the sun rises we kiss and part.
     We bid a farewell to arms that kept us warm.