Newer words, newer dreams

A covid poem

Waking the days

of the months

lining our lives,

counting rhythms

of lungs and of heart,

suddenly glimpsing

the count gone awry,

the code gone astray,

the message amuck.

 

In the beginning of all this

Perry had died,

and his dying

meant changes

to the meaning of living

and the practice of mourning

in part of this world.

I attributed hot feelings

to you, I had said,

before one of us

suddenly flamed and unloosed

from the margins

that were formerly home

and always before 

to where we returned.

 

But it was me, alone,

walking face first

into challenging sleet wind,

overhearing the words

of lovers making light

for folks whom they love.

Some stranger above

throwing stones in our way,

he observed in comic lament,

adding a theatrical shrug,

and she laughed,

a sweet sound

fading to echoes

overtaken by oracular

proclamations

of the stinging wild wind,

sardonically offering

to set us all free

in a world of neglect

that mocks

the speakers of dreams,

and puts us to work

pounding on rocks.

 

Yes, confronting the winds

that do not forgive

requires moving ahead,

because going can get

to the peace we will build

with new song

and new dance.

 

Accepting the threats

that plague all the paths

revealed ahead,

I take the longish stride

and stride again,

and stride again,

toward the route

on which peace

is path and peace

is way

and not the goal I cannot reach.

 

***

If we were still

talk to ear to lips to talk,

then you would share,

maps and mantras—

the ones that moved you so far—

but you, arrived so long ago,

are gone away again,

leaving only remnants

and clues to joint discoveries

about the pain

that spots all paths,

and all the peace

that grows from pain

and grows from prayer

and grows from

never giving in.

 

So, yes, a reverent thanks

before a sweet whisper rises

above the bellowing wind

asking, in the brief and quiet,

on which iteration

of all our plans

are we working now?

And what in between

might we find there?

Inventing the many answers 

we will need

falls to each of us.

 

The outcome

may be better,

but maybe not,

said still another voice,

escaping the wind into which

we have been walking

all this while.

The voice came not

to tell a joke,

not to leave a laugh

or two behind, it said,

confidentially adding,

up to you, entirely,

to rise again

or fall at last

when and as you will.

 

And in that brief

and in that quiet

I did briefly, barely cry

for all the everyones

counting all the losses,

and all the everyones

not bothering to count,

and all the losses

left to lose.

And in that grief

and in that quiet,

it was resolved

to spread the news

of songs and glories

anyway,

and when the store of all

is lost and empty,

and entropy threatens

a joyless reign,

it remains forever resolved

to reach beyond

the end of now.

 

***

Courage is not

the word to use to say

that you did what you had

no choice about the doing.

And though I do not say

or write what that word

might be, it spells itself

obstinance-rebellion-

distraction-trembling-

grace-accidental-

if-at-all.

 

But whatever that loaded word

or words may be,

it takes great gangs

of fevered poets

grinding at the front

and grinding at the rear,

reloading words

to fire anew,

to set our hearts

our lungs our upraised fists

to rhythm

roaring fast and fresh.

 

So, summon all poets

with shouting and welcome.

Call them to council.

Write urgent letters

to gather the pack,

speaking the sharps

and speaking the blunts,

singing the streets,

soaring the skies,

scratching for pennies,

escaping the jails,

emphatically signifying

here on the way,

sketching and spelling

time after time,

always forever,

upright and hopeful,

here at the ready.

 

The hall of poets full,

the graveyard fuller still,

we linger to read the stone

marking William A. Thigpen Jr.

born 1948

died Detroit streets 1971,

upright and ready

and full of unspent hope.

Further along,

a restorative visit

to write-it-well John,

urging the poets

to wing on the breath,

to roll off the tongue

to land here,

in the ear.

 

So, yeah, the breaktime

namechecking done,

there is sometimes

giving of ground

that belongs to the earth,

sometimes ground

firming up

under feet

launching for stars,

claiming, reclaiming, declaiming

the dreams of forever

and all the beloved.

 

Send me only replies

conceding no ground,

but affirming the prayer

that floats in the air

and remains to be written.

Hear every voice,

every sobbing and wild,

every cringing and proud,

every full in the mouth,

rich on the tongue,

roaring and grieving,

weaving and soaring,

pleading and cursing,

voice after voice

landing here in the ear.

Count all the lives

we ought to have loved;

make infinitely more

of the lives

we have wasted.

Open doorways

for leaders 

grown tired of waiting;

expect and applaud

new words,

and new dreams,

ahead of the launch

of the last of our poems

shouting blessings and praises

to you, to sky,

and beyond.

Three poems from Wild Once and Captured

These three poems can be found in my book, Wild Once and Captured, which is available on-line at the Teaching for Change webstore.

Depends on who you ask

Of course,

we still believe in magic,

a science of a different sort.

And our science tells us

what we have been feeling

for longer than we care to say.

Our time,

the way we used to be,

is up.

We were the light-footed imps

who danced away from the fate

that fell on dinosaurs.

But the time of our agility,

our reverently imagined beauty,

is over. Ended.

We are the ponderous

of our end of days,

industrialized humans,

lethal consumers

at the top of the chain

as we know it.

But before we ask ourselves

how to recover our dancing feet

with dancing shoes,

we have a duty

to ask

on behalf of all our victims

if they wish for more from us,

if their dreams of us

are nightmares.

Never Can Tell

She wakes and feels this past

lurking beside her,

the ghost that will not fall behind,

pummeling, insistent.

She wakes and prays,

whoever is there to hear,

get me through this day.

I’ll not ask for more.

She wakes and dresses

her bits of scattered self,

hauling scarred pieces

to proper places, endlessly preparing.

At the door, she checks for menace

in hallways, scanning streets

for fleshy threats and phantoms,

seeking her whom she always meant to be.

Out the door,

she strides ahead

as if fearless,

limitless and ready.

She arrives feeling

unreckoned power, feeling this day

pregnant with difference, this day

ready, perhaps, for what yesterday was not.

Wild Dogs of Poets

The wild dogs of poets

speak sharps and blunts,

wish the streets

to the back alleys

of emerald cities;

some singing separately

and, alive for now,

glow in the dusky,

dreaming sky,

some scratch for pennies

where there are no such

generosities. Some kill time

as though they are flush,

and some few, the chosen, die

on the barricades, hopeful and ready.

Between paradise and fear

...and further on.

I posted this a while ago on In and Out, but it's about poetry--other people's poetry, by and large--and ought to be here on Outdoor Poetry Season.

I noticed it got a fair number of views recently and in trying unsuccessfully to puzzle out why, I found out that Kim-An Lieberman, who wrote one of the poems featured in this piece, died last year. She was only 37.

Kim-An was a mother of three, a wife and an already accomplished poet. My heart sinks at the thought of her death, but I know she will continue to live in the vivid memory of others. I believe that is no small thing and recently wrote about how life and memory sometimes seem to be nearly the same thing.


I don't love all of "The Creation Story" by Joy Harjo, but I really do love these three stanzas:

"It's not easy to say this
or anything when my entrails
dangle between paradise
and fear.

"I am ashamed
I never had the words
to carry a friend from her death
to the stars
correctly.

"Or the words to keep
my people safe
from drought
or gunshot."

Like Harjo, I've discovered I didn't (and don't and won't) "have the words" countless times, including the words to carry a friend to the stars, but here Harjo finds the words to name the shortfall. And when she rues her inability to keep her "people safe from drought or gunshot," she has named both herself and her people. Good words.

In his poem "Three Women," Donald Hall has come into possession of a few words that do get the job done. They will not carry him or anyone else to the stars, but they work for capturing the richness of some experiences and the loss that sometimes follows. In fact, they work so well that Hall uses the same words exactly in three consecutive stanzas, making up the whole of his poem:

"When you like a woman,
you talk and talk.
One night you kiss.
Another night you fuck.
You're both content,
maybe more than content.
Then she goes away."

The poem is included in Hall's last book of poetry, The Back Chamber, described on the book jacket as "full of the life-affirming energy" of the poet. But I see it full of a rich, inescapable melancholy.

Kim-An Lieberman won a poetry prize from the Dayton Voice in 1995 or '96 (I suppose I could look it up, sort through the bound copies of the paper we have in our possession, but one thing at a time here). A decade later, her book, Breaking the Map, was published and she sent an autographed copy to Marrianne and I. Her book ended up being part of the motivation for publishing Wild, Once and Captured, a book of my own poetry. Sampling Kim-An's poetry I come to "Grandmother Song," and am struck by the fact that she has found a way to lift her grandmother to the stars.

"...Underneath is a ruby of blood.
The needles and tubes are webbed like milliner's lace.
Last the jade necklace, leaking the milk of her heart."

Perhaps, the words come to Lieberman because she so clearly hears and sees and feels her grandmother at the end of her life.

"...She gestures
faintly upward from the bed; I bring my ear
to the rasp of her laboring breath. I watch her draw
pin by pin from the loose chignon
...I roll the soiled gown..."

Hunting more details, I found an interview with Kim-An where she observes that "journalism and poetry, in particular, both share a language of ear-catching 'sound bites' as well as an urge to make a permanent record of fleeting events and observations." This seems an apt description of how Ernesto Cardenal goes about writing a poetry that finds the words to make permanent a record of "fleeting events." His book, Zero Hour, is a collection of what Cardenal calls "documentary poems."

"In Mr. Spencer's gold mines they X-ray
each miner twice a year
to see if he shows symptoms of TB.
If there's a shadow, he's paid off
at once. In due course he spits blood, and tries
to claim: ...
... and so he dies on a Managua sidewalk."

Cardenal, is a poet and a Catholic priest and the Nicaraguan Minister of Culture after the overthrow of Somoza. His poetry is the work of a man who hears music in his head, but feels the urgent need to change the acoustics of the world around him so that others may hear their own music. Cardenal makes poetry relevant as Lawrence Ferlinghetti insisted it should be when he wrote:

“I am signaling you through the flames.
The North Pole is not where it used to be.
Manifest Destiny is no longer manifest.
Civilization self-destructs. Nemesis is knocking at the door.
What are poets for in such an age?
What is the use of poetry?”

And Cardenal is one of the poets I was thinking about when I wrote "Wild Dogs of Poets:" 

The wild dogs of poets

speak sharps and blunts,

wish the streets

to the back alleys

of emerald cities;

some singing separately

and, alive for now,

glow in the dusky, dreaming sky.

Some scratch for pennies

wherever there are no such

generosities. Some kill time

as though they are flush,

And some few,

the chosen,

die on the barricades,

hopeful and ready.