Sad Haiku

Okay, maybe more silly than sad, but it's been a long, tough day for us both, and we seem to be having little luck getting what should be easy comfort at the local cafe. I even had to turn to my writing prompt app to inspire me today.

Sad Haiku
Some things should never
disappoint at day's demise:
like bad diner pie.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

African Violets

Ironically, the orchid our friends Jeff and Ron gave us for our wedding last year has actually started to send out new shoots. It gives me hope, despite the tone and subject matter of today's poem.

African Violets
My mothers' windows bloomed
purple, pink, and white,
explosions of color nestled
in dense mats of soft, succulent
green leaves.

I try to do her proud,
time and again, hopeful and hapless
and never intending things to end
the way they inevitably do.

How long does the terra cotta
pot of dirt sit dormant
on the sill before I admit
the uncomfortable truth
about the color
of my thumbs?

Pushing It

My husband, Damon, and I went for a walk on the beach today down at Golden Gardens Park in Ballard. Despite the chill, dozens of hearty Seattlites were out enjoying a mostly dry day, walking dogs, flying kites, even grilling and picnicking at the beach. You might say we're hungry for spring.

Pushing It
Stumbling over tumbled
stones, gasping
into a chill wind,
we persevere, cheered
by the soft crush
of waves beating
rhythms on the shore,
whispering encouragement
and flimsy promises
of a spring that never comes
soon enough.

Discovering Florida

Ponce de Leon "discovered" Florida on April 2, 1513, looking for the fountain of youth. Florida's current population of people over 65 years of age is more than 4% higher than the national average.

Discovering Florida
He set foot on tropical sand,
so sure he'd find the fountain,
the elusive elixir of immortality.

Instead, he got a mortal wound,
a painful death in a place very far
from home.

Now his fountain feeds the Rat King's realm,
entices wrinkled, shivering refugees
who grow no closer to youth
than Botox® will allow.

Out of Practice

Kicking off National Poetry Month 2011 this morning with a new poem on an old theme. Ironically, I was just going to write one line, but once the image took me, I couldn't stop. Now, gotta get to work!

Out of Practice

The door creaks
on rusty hinges.
Flimsy webs flicker
at my cheek, ghost
kisses shivering me
in the cold
April half-light.
I reach for the cord,
and pull, illuminating
dust. (My lord, so much
of it. Where does it come from?)
Beneath the dull mantle
of disuse, I spy (perhaps)
a familiar tool
or two.
I clumsy up my fingers
in gloves stiffened with mud and time.
Grab a spade, a rake, a set of shears.
Knock it off.
Shake it out.
Shine it up.
It's time.
Things need to grow.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

A Nocturnal Upon St. Lucy's Day - My Annual Ritual

A long time ago in a place I used to call my home, I spent most of my time with other wonkish English major/writer types. We liked drinking beer, arguing about movies, listening to 80s New Wave music and reading or reciting poetry to the delight or horror of our assembled company.

I remember well the time my friend Alan Natali recited this one. It was December 13, a cold and dark day at the end of a particularly long semester. He gave it to me as a Christmas gift, a present to carry with me as I made my way away from that place and those people whom I still hold so dear.

Over the years, I've shared it with new friends. Tortured them with it, I should say, reading it aloud to anyone who would listen on December 13, the feast of Saint Lucy.

Now, through the wonders of the InterTubez, I can share it with you.

Please, forgive the occasional trip of the tongue; I wasn't nearly drunk enough when I recorded the voiceover. The images are mostly mine, but some I've stolen heartlessly from the Web. And you should know, if you don't already, that Lucy's name, ironically enough, means "light" and she is one of the so-called "plate saints" who met with a particularly grisly martyrdom. Enjoy!

National Poetry Month: Day #27

Few things in this world better represent mankind's tenacity than the subject of this poem:

The Tower

From the first ring of stones
set in the sand and shells
of the field of miracles,
the widow's tower, begun
by sixty coins in remembrance
of the Holy Virgin,
leaned,
its twin at flawed conception
a thousand years of engineering
hope.

From their first misguided corrections
men have struggled to put right
or to preserve,
to hold off, if only for the moment
of their lifetimes,
the inevitable surrender
to gravity.

©2001 L.A. Smith.

National Poetry Month: Day #26

Sometimes a clichè is just a clichè. Others, it's a metaphor that rings in your head, the best advice your mother ever gave you:

By the Horns

Is there a better way, I wonder,
grappling as I do with antique, agrarian clichés,
to take a bull?
They seem the obvious choice for reasons
of convenience, ergonomics, and optimism.
And it's better by far to face the thing
that frightens or threatens you
head on — snorting, struggling,
studying you with eyes full of blood —
than to meet your fate
at the other end
of the bull.

©2004 L.A. Smith.

National Poetry Month: Day #25

Yesterday afternoon, we went north to LaConner to look at tulips. It's an annual event, a pilgrimage of sorts that reminds us, when we are weariest of winter and gray walls of rain, that life is about change and color and sunlight and laughter. The year after my mother died, I wrote this poem on the day of that pilgrimage:

In Tulips

Today, beneath a plane
of sheer, unbroken blue,
while Baker's snowy shoulders shimmered
pink and gold in the distance, I caught
a glimpse of her
among the sun-drenched cups
of fairy porcelain
quivering in the breeze,
her cheeks as pale and soft as petals,
that wry smile and arched brow,
emerald eyes glistening
with a thousand hours
of laughter, dancing
with her sisters:
the flapper, the philosopher,
and the long-suffering saint.

Just then a giggling child,
his round face like an ochre moon,
set with eyes of glittering obsidian,
stumbled into me and gasped
surprised, I think, by my cool
touch on his chubby arm.
He turned and ran, clumsy as a puppy,
to grasp his mother's dangling hand.

I looked again into the endless
stripes of color, but they were gone.

Only tulips danced like swaying gypsies
on the wind.

©2004 L.A. Smith.

National Poetry Month: Day #24

A few years back, the trend in spam was strangely poetic word groupings. One such inspired this poem:

E-nigmas

The random text arrives:
"chemise similitude oligarchic meadow
suggestible bile wherewith clubroom frizzle."

The poet trapped
in some vile computer bug,
a victim, I'm certain,
of nefarious mathematicians,
sends me hidden messages, accidental
odes to unforeseen
circumstances and unwelcome
enticements, abstract pastiches,
beautiful, beguiling
in their incongruity.

©2004 L.A. Smith.

National Poetry Month: Day #23

It's William Shakespeare's birthday. It's also the 12th anniversary of my arrival in Seattle. Today, a bonus, two sonnets:

Days of Glory

"Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man."
—Wm. Shakespeare, King John (III, iv.)

This day's as good as any, I suppose,
to ponder loss and wonder what is left
when water comes only from a fire hose,
and he who thirsts is still as much bereft
as one who wanders in the desert sand
beneath the sun's most relentless gazes,
confounded by the emptiness of hand
after grasping for the sweet oasis.
What willow will not break if bent too low
by buckets, torrents of tenacious rain
and slide into the slurry, just let go,
dissolve to sticks with minimum of pain?

For us who are made of flexible stuff,
sometimes too much is worse than not enough.

©2004 L.A. Smith.

Will & Grace

"In all external grace you have some part..."
—Wm. Shakespeare, Sonnet 53

What elemental, eloquent design
lies underneath your public artifice,
that countenance so perfectly sublime
that jealous angels rival for your kiss
and hosts of lovers fawn to touch your skin?
What architect of heaven made your shell,
braving for glory's sake a deadly sin
that worldly thoughts of beauty would dispel
and leave instead an aching sense of loss,
a vacancy forever unfulfilled,
a palate bored by meat without the sauce,
an eye blind to the lily without gild.

Fair to wonder what good your maker meant
when the fruit of his work is discontent.

©2003 L.A. Smith.

National Poetry Month: Day #22

Another Neil Gaiman-inspired poem, this one tips its hat to Neverwhere:

My Life as a Door

Most days ajar, inviting
with a narrow glimpse
inside where sunlight diffuses
through soft, green curtains
and the crisp, dark perfume
of hot coffee lingers
on the still kitchen air,

others transparent, sliding
out of the way on instinct
triggered by proximity
and aggression

and sometimes locked,
no light on the porch
or welcome mat to lie
at my feet
about my inclinations.

©2000 L.A. Smith.

National Poetry Month: Day #21

Today's poem is for my friend Tea, who deserves all the bright blessings this world can offer:

The Secret of Flight

In darker times,
when science was magic
and the devil, not God, dwelled
in the details,
any woman ripe
for burning knew what to pick
from the hillside greens
to make herself
transcendent:
moonkshood, henbane, deadly
nightshade, mandrake, hemlock,
nothing safe or pretty
as the garden rose,
she picked and dried and ground
into oil and spread it thin
across her skin
and spread herself
across the sky, floating
like an angel
toward the moon.

©2004 L.A. Smith.

National Poetry Month: Day #20

Oh, how I wish I had another Sunday, a day of rest ...

This Longing

"Take this longing from my tongue..." — Leonard Cohen

No cup of coffee does
when sweet tea, blond with cream,
brews in the brain
as the cure
for the hollow,
the drop through the floor,
the feeling like someone pulled
the plugs and squeezed
to rush the soul right out of you
like stale air escaping, sending bubbles
to the surface like a letter
written in a language
the receiver cannot read.

©2004 L.A. Smith.

National Poetry Month: Day #19

For my love, who has spent an entire weekend doing yard work and household maintenance:

Giornata

Like a Florentine painter,
brown from the Tuscan sun,
I work in the wet, fingers
racing pigment into plaster,
capturing character in color
and line, catching gestures
subtle as shadows at noon
in quickening marble ash.

This day's work
is finally
done.

©2004 L.A. Smith.

National Poetry Month: Day #18

Twelve years ago this month, I pulled up stakes in Pennsylvania and set off across the country to Seattle. Many things have changed in my life since then, but one of the things that has remained constant and comforting is my friendship with the subject of this poem:

Clara

When my world reduced
itself to boxes traveling west,
decisions about the fates
of cats and roads to skirt
just south of flooding farms,
you were there.

You broke the bottle
across the bow
of my new life,
waving from the dock
as I embarked.

Now that anniversary approaches,
and you are still there,
between winter and better,
warming that mountain town
with your ready smile,

and still here
as blossoms flutter like confetti
through the twilight.

©2001 L.A. Smith.

National Poetry Month: Day #17

Like the title of this poem, today's offering is a little late arriving. It's been a brutally busy week. I'm glad it's over.

Spring Late Arriving

Why such reluctance
when every limb
bored with black angularity
strains to soften
in chartreuse the sight
of sky?

©2002 L.A. Smith.

National Poetry Month: Day #16

For friends going through much worse than they deserve:

In Such Times

(for Theodore Roethke)

When a cold wind comes over stones,
I pull my collar up and tuck
my fingers into pockets.

Glove-clumsy, I patch
the cracks in the foundation
and brew strong coffee
to drink while it dries.

When the wind of love's
worst ugly day plays the blues
down the chimney,
I whistle a counterpoint
in harmony.

When the garden looks more like a grave,
I sprinkle crumbs and seed
to keep small things
alive.

When the spirit moves not upward,
I stoop
to pick it up.

©2001 L.A. Smith.

National Poetry Month: Day #15

Go ahead. Close your eyes. Imagine something wonderful. Then make a wish.

Wishes

The first is lost to memory,
that earnest, eyes-closed whisper
chanted as my fist gave way
to fingers, flung the treasure
to the unseen, hungry sprites
of hope.

Other silent secrets, one
for every candled cake
and more for shimmering
cosmic cataclysms
I forgot almost as soon
as I didn't get them.

Still, somewhere between
a penny and a meteor must
be a price
for days of honey
yellow light and warm
breezes, soft edges
and softer centers,
no less than you deserve.

©2003 L.A. Smith.

National Poetry Month: Day #14

Sometimes, a cup of tea is all you need to make a poem:

Susceptible to Metaphor

"The whole world is less susceptible to metaphor than a teacup is." —Wallace Stevens

Van Morrison rails incantations,
valedictions to John Donne, while I step
into the kitchen to perform
the minor miracle
of turning water into
tea.

I reach into the cupboard, take
a cup and then a moment
to regard its mute companions inverted
like hollow men, their handle arms akimbo,
poised expectantly on their nonexistent
hips.

White as bones beyond
the supplications of flesh,
these shallow, patient bowls
unnerve me with their arrogance,
their assurance they will be
filled.

Such purpose disturbs me,
and I think of Pascal
railing against his mistress
of the world, imagination.
Then I remember they are just
cups.

I close the cupboard door, pour myself
some tea and go back
to Morrison's soul in wonder,
a pleasant irony to lull me
while I write this
poem.

©2000 L.A. Smith.