I?
I
do
not
think
that form
poetry is a less
valid expression of true
emotion or insight than vers libre poems,
do you? There is a symmetry
to it. Fibonacci
makes our
poems
fit
to
a
t
#89
Fibonacci – the sum of the number of letters in the last two lines equals the number of letters in the next line (I also reversed this). So start with 0 and 1, 0+1=1, 1+1=2, 2+1=3, 3+2=5 etc….(1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21…)
I know why the snake sheds her skin.
Self-reinvention being a hobby of mine, I envy
her ability to slide out of her personal slip cover,
her new skin gleaming and fresh,
A personal do-over.
I know why the caterpillar cocoons.
I, who often dream of flying, sometimes curl
up in my duvet and wonder how long
I’d have to sleep before
the wings grew.
And in that sleep I’d dream the answer
to every question, the key for every lock,
the solution to every problem.
I’d rise into the air, free from pain, doubt, and fear.
I know why the chameleon blends.
How many times have I wished my skin
would take on the pattern of the couch covers?
“She was here a minute ago” they’d say
“Where did she go?”
#4
My grandmother was born a hundred and twenty four years ago yesterday to a world where the light bulb was still a new invention.
A child of the industrial revolution, she unwittingly rode a wave of technology all her life.
From a horse drawn world where steam engines
puffed and clanked, revolutionizing industry and transportation,
to the slow motion moon walk on our black and white TV.
Technology walked along side of her.
She never learned to drive.
She was born the same year barbed wire was invented.
She was born before the gramophone, zippers, and the internal combustion diesel engine.
She was born before teabags, the theory of relativity, and airplanes.
Before cornflakes, cellophane, sonar, automobiles, tanks, Lifesavers, crossword puzzles, radio, stainless steel, fortune cookies and pop up toasters.
She was born before bubble gum and penicillin, before canned beer and the Colt revolver, before ball point pens and computers, before Silly putty, the Slinky, and the atomic bomb.
She was born before jukeboxes, drive in theatres, and the pill; before Superglue, Teflon, and credit cards.
She died around the same time Ethernet, Bic lighters, and gene splicing were invented.
And I wonder if any single life will ever span such an era of change again?
Happy birthday Nanny.
#3
And when I flip this switch the night outside will be gone
and all the windows will gleam with our reflections.
Reflections of you and me and the couch and chair
Reflections of the inner world we create and inhabit.
Like a wall of mirrors, the dark reflections on windows and
patio doors infer that what transpires without
is not as important as what transpires within
I close my eyes and wonder
if the inside of my lids are like the mirror windows.
If I could turn on a light in my head
would everything outside of it disappear?
Would my mind be inundated with dark reflections
Of you and me and thoughts and dreams
As though the perceptions and memories of love
Were more important than the fact
I open my eyes in wonder and see as I’ve never seen before.
Hold me.
#2
You will see a lot more activity on this blog in the coming year. I will be posting a new poem here every morning.
I hope you will join me on this quest to free the creative muse and cage the internal critic.
Every morning he brings me tea
His morning ritual merging into mine.
He smiles and places the genesis of my day
on the cluttered table beside me
where it steams in a special mug – how many have there been?
The white bone china with the golden ring around the top,
The violet sprinkled, footed mug,
The greedy cup…
All eventually fallen from grace or a clumsy hand.
For now it is a handmade, sea green mug, deep and dark
With a small chip that I overlook
Because I love it.
Like the chips he overlooks in me because he loves me.
And the tea, the tea
Hot water, teabag, sugar, milk
So simple yet somehow I cannot reproduce the exact same flavour
Life goes on through thousands of mornings
and only my tea remains the same.
He drinks coffee.
#1
Fishbone Melody
Like small plastic fishbone tag tethers
That lurk in the necks of new sweaters
Melodies wait to surface and nag
Till both of my hands hold grocery bags.
When both my hands clutch the truck steering wheel
Melody fishbones begin to reveal
Snippets of songs with potential to be
The number one hit that’s the making of me.
But when the truck stops and my sweater’s removed
And the grocery bags are all emptied of food
And I eagerly reach for my pen to write down
The tune that followed me home from downtown
Like the empty bag that lies on the floor
Of the truck and waits till I open the door
It leaps and it stumbles as if it’s possessed
By a drunken magpie in search of its nest
And my number one hit floats away on a breeze.
I guess some songs aren’t meant to be written by me.
Entropy’s Call
You are the day, I am the dawn
who lays her light across your lawn.
The gilding touch you cannot feel.
Ether’s fleeting ghost revealed.
You are the night I am star beams
caught in branches of your dreams.
Struggling for freedom, yet
returning nightly to your net.
You are the forest, I the river
Who murmurs deep and makes you shiver,
Till your darkness echoes long
within the passion of my song.
You are the sea, I the track
of Moon and Sun upon your back.
A crooked, coruscated skein
that leads you home and back again.
You are the mountain, I the crown,
of ice and snow that cool your brow.
Frozen symbiotic rime;
Your diamond till the end of time.
You are, I am, we are as two
until the world is made anew.
Till rivers turn and run uphill
And dreams of valour and free will
leach into cracked and rusted soil.
Till mountains melt and oceans boil.
Till sun is ice and moon enkindled.
Till all that was divine has dwindled.
Till Aurora snuffs her fire.
Till snow burns and all desire
descends to ash; entropy’s call.
I am, you are, my end, my all.
Many thanks yet again to my writing group for the input that helped me revise and polish this poem, and to my partner for inspiring it.
I recently came across a challenge in the latest Writer’s Digest magazine to write a poem with ten lines, with each line having ten syllables; rhyme scheme optional. So I gave it a try and used an ab ba rhyme scheme with an aa scheme for the middle stanza. I happened to be looking out my bedroom window at the time and saw a hodag. A hodag, for the uninitiated, is when a stump or branch or any formation looks like something else, usually an animal. I don’t know how localized this word is. Possibly it’s a northern BC thing. Anyway, there I was looking at a branch stub that looked like a little cat and I started writing.
Hodags
The broken branch resembles a grey cat
Perched, waiting, twig tail twitching in the breeze.
“Hodags” he calls them. Lurking in the trees
And at the corner of your eyes. Leaf bat,
Bear stump, moss toad; visual delusions
Bark owl, shade wolf; optical illusions.
Hodags. He calls them when we go walking.
Turn again to leaf and moss, shade and bark.
To stump and branch, silent now, but after dark
Hodags wake, smell my scent, and go stalking.
Occasionally I will write an anagrammatic poem; one where each line is an anagram of the first one. It’s a strange little form that I believe I have invented because I certainly have never heard of anyone else subjecting themselves to this form of literary masochism.
There are plenty of poetic forms out there that dictate rhyme schemes, meter, how many syllables per line, repeating lines etc… but so far I’ve never bumped into anyone doing the anagram poem.
Granted, the computer is a great boon to the anagrammer (no, I don’t use any ‘software’ to generate words! That’s cheating).
I come up with a first line, fairly long (more potential), and hopefully with a good variety of letters (‘e’ is the most commonly used letter in the English language – anyone who’s ever watched Jeopardy knows that!). Then I copy and paste it below and reduce it to a list of letters. Example. “I never thought of myself as a masochist” would look like this:
aaa eee ii ooo u c ff g hhh l mm n r ssss ttt v y
Then you start pulling the letters down and making words and creating, hopefully, intelligent lines that make some sort of sense on some plain of existence! Sometimes the original line doesn’t even make the final poem and although the result may not be earthshattering poetry, it uncovers some rich words and word combinations that you may want to use in another poem.
O Child, O Sing
I desire no long, soft moan; no witch charmed fever.
Romance carved words of this feeling in the moon.
She looms, dreaming forever, not confined. I watch
conditional freedoms grow, even from the chains
of failing memories, coveted crowns, and the horn
on the moon, sin scarred, formed of light. We cave in.
I have fed the incandescent mirrors of moon glow
I never dance far from the two omens. o child, o sing.
Linda Studley 