Double dose of Poetry

Gossip

some words

some words you heard

some words you heard before

some words you heard before it made sense

some words you heard before it made sense to stop

some words you heard before it made sense to stop listening

some words you heard before it made sense to stop listening to others

some words you heard before it made sense to stop listening to others repeat it

Trinket

A warm naivety, it tickles your nose when you see it again,

a shape you once danced with, colors you flew alongside,

endlessly wandered, 

endlessly wondered, 

endlessly ended

It had moved away long ago, now only dust in your eyes

a suit on your bones, a day in your job

you forgot it was special to you

you forgot to remember

you forgot to forget

you forgot

you

Ghost in the Land of Skeletons, by Cristopher Kennedy

  I feel that this poem is a more recent one.  Some of the word choice feels more more contemporary to me.  It want to say that the poem is almost a stream of consciousness kind of poem.  He describes how he prefers ghosts to skeletons, and mentions that he is unhappy about mortality.  I get the inkling that there is a bit more to this poem that i'm not picking up on.  I could be wrong.  To me the poem is about how ghosts seem to be better off in that they are the people who were so steadfast that they end up haunting a place, instead of simply turning to bones.  

  I think it is implied that the narrator himself is a ghost because near the end of the poem he says that he likes how ghosts don't know their dead.  Then he says a man sakes him if HE feels like a ghost.  The Narrator replies "sure, every day."  The man laughs and then disappears.  In that bit i guess it can be interpreted that either then Narrator is a ghost who doesn't know it, or the that the man was a ghost poking fun at him.  

Grass Lunch

The right mouth dances with

splintered skin.  The wrong face leads

and night chilled faith

fractures the vision.

cold dance bathes in a bright droning

It rings silence upon dull thumbs

does it toy? 

close up 

filled with plastic heat

closed up 

never reaching the end of it's passions.

A soft engine scratches the curtain

beguiling veins of paradise

felt tipped exploration on vacant skin

with biting page and dampened bones

commiserate failure spills from his sorrow

present hips and folded lies hesitate

crackling words on

forgiving skin

a passive halo follows me

while the sun breathes on the walking green, and dines upon a grass lunch.

Poem response to American Gothic by John Stone

  The poem is based on the painting American gothic by Grant Wood.  Stone’s poem reflects on the things that are not in the actual painting.  He writes about the animals that are probably on that farm, and how the farmer’s triumph is immortalized.  I find the line “arrested in the name of art” to be a fun play on words and the general word choice to be a bit tongue in cheek.  It is implied that the farmer is impatient and wanting to tend to his crops and the lady is trying to remember if she left the stove on or not.  I thought those little elements help add some fun to the overall poem. 

  The lines of the poem are all a fairly terse 3-5 words long and I think that pacing helps move the reader briskly from each idea to the next.  Each grouping’s idea is broken up with a short aside in the middle that can be left out and still retain the meaning, but without them deflate the poem.

Complete

Windows without glass

Doors without hinges

Bulbs without lamps on a desk with no chair

A house I built myself but something seems wrong.

Nails without a hammer on a bench with no surface. 

I scrub a saw without teeth on wood with no idea

The work is hard, and there are many other things to do,

I move without delay, onto art with no brush

I stand back from my frame without canvas on a day with no sun

To me it seems good, but something is off

I sweat all day with little result, wash my face in a sink with no water.

Warm myself at night by a fire with no heat. 

I invite some photos in and we have dinner,

They seem pleasant enough, and we have a good time,

Later in the evening I tell them about this inkling I have

ask them if anything seems amiss

Friends without name on a face with no sorrow

they assure me with their frozen smiles that I’m imagining things.

If all you know is half,

If all you have is some,

If all you see is few,

If all you do is part,

Will you ever know incomplete?

I look at my work without ego, and fix it with no fuss

Try to focus without distraction, believe with no doubt

Maybe tomorrow without fear, I will go to a future with no limit. 

Response to "Winter Landscape" by John Berryman

The poem Winter landscape feels like it was specifically written as a response to the painting that accompanied it.  It specifically calls out portions of the painting and describes them.  The hunters coming down the hill, the people around the fire, the children on the ice; all are mentioned in the poem.  It goes a touch beyond that though.  The line “the long companions they can never reach” almost makes a reference to the fact that this is a painting, and that the figures can never reach their destination; almost as if the poet is lamenting the plight of the figures in the painting.  At he same time there is a hint of wistfulness about how this beautiful scene will last forever. 

This poem was read alongside another poem by William Carlos Williams titled “The Hunter in the Snow”.  I only mention it because they both seem to be written about the same painting, and I wanted to mention that “The Hunter in the Snow” strikes me as the less interesting of the two because of how much less imagery we get out of the poem.  It reads almost like the painting is being described to a blind person with no real depth given in the poem.

Attempts at symbolist poems led me to write this poem

Results

It is a vulgar, tasteless brute that read a book once.

It’s pungent aroma sticks to you like the mud it tracked onto your carpet

It tarnishes and scratches, rusts and molds.

It weasels its way in with some words that you thought made sense at the time, or resonated with the big hole in your life you’ve been covering up with shopping and movies.  

It leaves an off color stain on you that you desperately try to hide.  When someone asks you about it you try to choke down the embarrassment when you have to explain that it was all “something that happened by accident” or “well this rude person barged in here and…”

It’s the same insanity that makes you think if you keep doing it over and over again and expect different results. 

That’s what poetry is.