Category: My poems

Listen to this poem using the player above.

I wrote this today in my favorite coffee shop while reading Cavafy’s Collected Poems. The italicized lines in the poem are from Cavafy’s poem “Before Time Altered Them.”

After a poem by C.P. Cavafy

They were full of sadness at their parting.

A fleeting kiss, meant to play the role
of so much unexplored country.

Tin-voiced airline announcements listing
destinations — a word meaning, originally,
“to stand.”

So he did, looking out the terminal window,
watching her walk away.

That wasn’t what they themselves wanted.
It was circumstances.

So easy to place the blame on fate.
Throw the stick in the stream,
watch it float toward the sea.

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This is poem #26 for the November Poem-A-Day challenge. Today’s prompt was to write an “on the run” poem.

the salmon come back every year

looking for love — or at least life —
in the same place they found it last year

I always thought I was a human
and I’m not all that strong a swimmer

but apparently these are scales
and I am traveling upriver

Listen to this poem using the player above.

A bit of prose poetry, written in the wee hours.

Atop the midnight mountain

Is there a point at which you can’t lose someone? When they are as lost as they can be? I just wrote a poem — you remember, don’t you? — about the second time I lost you. And here we are, already at the third time. Maybe I imagined all this. Perhaps we never even met that night. I can’t really remember it. I just know the story. Like I know so many stories. We could sit around a campfire, telling tall tales about the ways we met and parted and met and parted again. Accompanied by an acoustic guitar — you could play it — and the soft sigh of the desert wind. Of course, the wind doesn’t really sigh or wail or moan — we do, and the wind carries the news across the flatland to our waiting tribesmen. When the sigh reaches them, one young warrior will stand, look toward the horizon, and step into the night, lost beyond the light of the fire. If he keeps walking, beyond thirst and hunger and doubt, he may arrive at the base of the midnight mountain. And if he can will his legs to take him to the summit, he may find me there. And if he sees me, silhouetted against the rocky ground by a full harvest moon, he may ask me one question. And I will tell him I am waiting for you.

Listen to this poem using the player above.

This is poem #24 for the November Poem-A-Day challenge. Today’s prompt was to write a “spaces” poem.

It’s not me, it’s you

You stay there.
I wish you were here, you said,
but it’s best for all concerned
if you stay where you are
and come no closer.

I have since turned off my phone
because the ringing
sounds like distance.

I bought a special scale
from an old man in Chinatown.
He said it measured regret.
At first I didn’t believe him.
Then he reached into my chest
and pulled out my heart.
Placed it on one side of the scale.
Told me exactly,
to the day,
how long it had been.

My new toy is here, in the kitchen.
I am sitting at the table right now
looking at it.
Next to it, in a small velvet-
covered box,
is my heart. As it turned out,
the man was better at removing
and weighing
than he was at restoration.

It’s OK, I tell myself.
I wasn’t using it anyway.
It’s not me, it’s you, you said.

Before I turned off my phone.

So I am sitting here at the
kitchen table, deciding what to put
in the space where my heart
used to be.

Listen to this poem using the player above.

First and foremost (and totally unrelated to this poem) — Happy Birthday to my wonderful sister, Gretchen!

This is poem #23 for the November Poem-A-Day challenge. Today’s prompt was to write a poem using a specific poetic form. I’ve done that, and I’ll leave it to you to figure out the form I used. Good luck!

Can this be how life unfolds?

Am I to travel down this
road alone, suitcase in hand?
Or is there some other way? Will
love soften my path,
even as I hang my head and
expect the worst?

Daughters of Odysseus crowd
around me, pulling at my clothes.
Whence come their songs in this
night of all nights?

Seven times seven stars hang above my
head, a crown fit for a king,
even one with no subjects.
Rarely do I consider the alternative,
wish upon one of those distant jewels.
Only you can understand my song,
only you can make sense of the story I have set
down on this tattered, tear-stained parchment.

Listen to this poem using the player above.

I’m losing my voice today, which has the positive side effect of lowering it by about an octave. This is how I wish my voice always sounded. So I took advantage of this illness to record an audio version of this poem. The music is “The Lady of Khartoum” from the album The Lady of Khartoum (Creative Nation Music, 2008). Thanks to Eric Hofbauer and Garrison Fewell for allowing me to use the music. Buy their album, OK? It’s brilliant.

Always

Who is anyone to say always?
Always is a lie. Perhaps
a white lie, told to stave off
loneliness, to salve the bite
of the onrushing winter
and its gray mornings.
Always is a road with a sharp bend
around which can be seen … nothing.
Nothing at all. And the future rushes
toward us around the corner and we,
for all our best intentions,
are forever unprepared.

Listen to this poem using the player above.

This is poem #21 for the November Poem-A-Day challenge. My poetry tractor has apparently driven into a ditch and I am therefore confined to writing on one topic and one topic only. Ah, well.

permission slip

here is your hall pass
my room is at the end of the hall

you’ll recognize the painting
you were there when I got it

please don’t linger in the hall
just come straight to my room

I’ll be sitting in bed, reading
but as is my habit these days

I’ll be reading only so my mind
has some words to swim in

while I think about you
my delicious affliction

I’ll put the book down
when I hear your footsteps

and if the light is just right
you’ll see me smile as you enter

and if the light is just right
you may notice my cheeks are wet

and if the light is just right
that won’t matter

Listen to this poem using the player above.

Poem #20 for the November Poem-A-Day challenge. The prompt was to write a poem about what’s wrong or what’s right. I’m not thrilled with this one — it feels trite.

The philosopher sits on the mountain top and argues with an echo

this is wrong
        this is right
this is a mistake
        this is long overdue
this is not how I planned it
        these are choices beyond strategy
this is a turn in the road
        the road is a circle
this is not me
        this is exactly you
this is too painful
        the pain means it’s working
this is a sign of weakness
        this is a sign of recognition
this is the end
        this is the beginning

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She leaves, and takes everything with her

So this is what she had felt,
all those years ago.
He hadn’t realized,
hadn’t been able to accept how it hurt
to lose the center of the world.
Now he stood on the pier,
watched her sail away,
felt his soul sink beneath the waves,
to drown in an ocean of tears,
like the poets write about.

Listen to this poem using the player above.

This is poem #19 for the November Poem-A-Day challenge. Today’s prompt was to write a poem “with a hole in it.”

A poem with a hole in it

Me.