I walk, post-war,
with ignoble carriage
and this sheepish hunch
as if rucked-under
by flak-heavy packs
of hot laughing sands
that don’t have to
worry about missing
any of the coming fights
and drift to me like
a sarcastic care package
sent the wrong way
by the desert to say
what comfort is home
and here have these
grit-bloody cookies and
this hilarious picture
of me with three of your
buddies from when you
were still in. Remember them?
Guess which one is still alive.
But everything’s fine and
even when I really try
I sleep alright and
the nightmares don’t come.
But the packages do
with fresh loads of jokes
from a desert that mocks me
like people telling stories
about a party that I missed.
Category: Poetry
Tell it to the Sky
You can’t say “blah” in a poem.
It isn’t serious.
Tell it to the sky.
Have you known such a place?
Look at the sky.
Blah.
For nine more months.
Blah.
Still.
You can’t say “blah” in a poem.
Tell it to the sky.
Dinner Party
I am not more right.
I do not know better.
I just can’t run with the baton I’m handed
when my leg of the race comes up.
It is gross, the baton.
Slimy, and it smells of rot covered by perfume.
I cannot carry it.
I cannot wield it.
I cannot.
You can pass it between each other
because you carry it low
against your thighs
and don’t look at it
and instinct makes the transfer.
Instinct never smelled a corpse to know it.
It hasn’t the time.
Moon-Cooled
Here’s another for the Morocco collection (sum total now 2 complete pieces, but a few more in draft form). Allison wrote a beautiful poem about Morocco and published it yesterday. Something she rarely does. I say only this about that: the first time you click that “submit” button is the by far the hardest. After that it’s just another thing that you do. Much like reading poems to an audience. The first time was brutal. The next couple were easier, and now that I have a few more that I’m comfortable with, I’ll pop out sometime soon and use them in an open mic somewhere.
You’ll read in Allison’s poem the impact that Morocco made on her, emotionally and spiritually and personally. I cannot say otherwise for myself. Something about my time there went far deeper than research, than mere information and entertainment and box-checking. And while much of that can be attributed to the country, the people, and our hosts, certainly as much comes from the fact that I did not enter Morocco defensively or skeptically. As I do at home with my family, I gave myself to Morocco, accepted it and processed it, and did not begrudge it for its eccentricities or the many moments of hesitation it presented. HAd I done otherwise, I culd not have written this poem, my first ever villanelle:
But First
Love, lead me through Moroccan streets
where the city burns behind its walls
with a flame moon-cooled and honey-sweet
that gilds the dates on every tree
and lights my throat’s mosaic halls.
Love, lead me through Moroccan streets
to where my shadow squats beneath my feet
when the muezzin melts the merchants’ stalls
with a flame moon-cooled and honey-sweet
that clings to bees on lacquered sweets
whose nectar drips a torpid crawl.
Love, lead me through Moroccan streets
to where old men call through Berber teeth
while the Moorish sun burns over all
with a flame moon-cooled and honey-sweet.
I’ve come to meet the Amazigh!
I’ve come to climb the Atlas wall!
But first, love, lead me through Moroccan streets
with a flame moon-cooled and honey-sweet.
A Day for Paper
The Old Medina
Show me to the old Medina
before the sun can warm the stones.
The darkness scrubs the city bright
where the hamsas guard the homes.
Walk me through the old Medina
before the torpid cats arise.
Half their world is always dark
because they steal each other’s eyes.
Lose me in the old Medina
where the modern finger tries
to haggle there with history
but can never match its price.
Hide me in the old Medina
and I’ll give you half my dates.
And tender breads, and honeyed sweets!
Don’t let me go too near the gates!
World Poetry Day
It’s world poetry day, and I wanted to get something in. I wrote this one a while ago but didn’t publish it because it’s a little bit of a downer, and frankly I just don’t feel that down. Ever, really. Still, it came from somewhere, didn’t it? I’ll have poetry in mind today, and try to come up with something a little brighter.
It’s in a form called a triolet (introduced to me by Cubby) with a nod to Robert Frost. Title comes from Dad, who once said one of the more profound and practical things I’ve heard:
Absence Makes the Heart Grow Yonder
I’m sorry I’m so far away
but my God, this world’s a wedge.
I have to shout now just to say
I’m sorry I’m so far away.
I thought our gold alone could stay
but here it’s peeling from its edge.
I’m sorry I’m so far away,
but my God, this world’s a wedge.
We Were Subtext
We were a sentence written at night in the woods on some old road dug out for I can’t guess what and knee-deep with the damnedest sand. But there was only the walking never the starting. A tiny line just a few words long marching unprefaced and already three chapters deep in a forest that had a beginning somewhere but like all beginnings it came first so we forgot it as soon as we… Sometimes we walked for days but our martial moments were phraselong and fragmentary and I swear I can only ever remember a minute or sometimes even just the preparatory inhale – a memory with half a mind and here the breath catches on a movement through the falling action of a black February night when in an odd blank space erased from the forest’s page there was a slickblack scribble that was a snake. One of the words in my sentence raised a blade and I drew a slight hyphen but it was predicated on happy endings and nobody writes those anymore so he cut the head from the snake like pulling the dot out from under the exclamation point and it writhed and squirmed and semi-colon’d and parenthese’d and ran on and on and on and bled inkblack into the moonwhite sand and all I could say was that it wasn’t even poisonous but that doesn’t matter much because either am I but I know from the way we write stories now that mine’ll likely end in knives too because when all you are is words somewhere three chapters deep there’s no way for you to remember the beginning.
International Flavor
Two hours into the operation
time came to choose
twice sold books
over and over again.
But the last survivors of that era –
they are all gone away
to bring your children
An insect feast,
accessible game meats,
some bottles of water,
and unrelenting nerve pain in the face.
Are you done with these?
Are you still down there
with the flame proof wisdom
of a snow storm
fluent in English and Japanese?
How is the fairy tale?
Oh Don’t Go Cold
Oh don’t go cold, Heaven now. Don’t
shiver-shrug our dust from your shoulders
and ice shut each new tomb.
My grave awaits me yet
and whatever I am in death
will not lie down forever.
Andy Havens 