Poetry

Ode to Clumsiness

2008-08-13T08:14:00.000-07:00

Like emotion expressed in unwanted motion
Putting your money where your mouth is
but instead of delicately swallowing
a dark stain on your white blouse
and your boobs have increased their noticeability but not in a good way
Like when you are in love but you refuse to admit it
so your whole body shakes and even though
you are wearing comfortable jeans, t-shirt and
versatile footwear
It's like you are a toddler chasing the impossible task of hitting a baseball
or riding a bike
Like being a waitress in a wine bar
with the best of intentions and a big smile
but with no sense of where her
attached limbs act
at any given moment
Crash!
There goes another...

"Carmel Point" by Robinson Jeffers,

2008-03-19T06:35:00.000-07:00

Poems: "Carmel Point" by Robinson Jeffers, from The Collected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers. © Stanford University Press, 1989. Reprinted with permission.(buy now)

Carmel Point

The extraordinary patience of things!
This beautiful place defaced with a crop of suburban houses—
How beautiful when we first beheld it,
Unbroken field of poppy and lupin walled with clean cliffs;
No intrusion but two or three horses pasturing,
Or a few milch cows rubbing their flanks on the outcrop
rockheads—
Now the spoiler has come: does it care?
Not faintly. It has all time. It knows the people are a tide
That swells and in time will ebb, and all
Their works dissolve. Meanwhile the image of the pristine
beauty Lives in the very grain of the granite,
Safe as the endless ocean that climbs our cliff. —As for us:
We must uncenter our minds from ourselves;
We must unhumanize our views a little, and become confident
As the rock and ocean that we were made from.

Opinion

2008-01-29T15:38:00.001-08:00

TUESDAY, 29 JANUARY, 2008
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Poem: "Opinion" by Baron Wormser, Subject Matter: Poems. © Sarabande Books, 2004. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

Opinion

Halfway to work and Merriman already has told me
What he thinks about the balanced budget, the Mets'
Lack of starting pitching, the dangers of displaced
Soviet nuclear engineers, soy products, and diesel cars.

I look out the window and hope I'll see a swan.
I hear they're bad-tempered but I love their necks
And how they glide along so sovereignly.
I never take the time to drive to a pond

And spend an hour watching swans. What
Would happen if I heeded the admonitions of beauty?
When I look over at Merriman, he's telling Driscoll
That the President doesn't know what he's doing
With China. "China," I say out loud but softly.
I go back to the window. It's started snowing.

Ode to Sunday Nights--by Sophie Mootz

2008-01-27T21:10:00.000-08:00

Like the anticipation
of a tetnus shot
or a dentist appointment
never knowing
which way to turn
but always
stuck

Ode to Clinginess

2008-01-27T21:08:00.000-08:00

Ode to Clinginess

by Sophie Mootz

Like electrons and protons

And girls with long clean hair at birthday parties filled with balloons

And goat-heads hidden throughout hikes in the southwest

Impossible to separate from Cocker Spaniel coats

And Velcro on shoes

And clothing and other

Functional purposes

And cat hair on velvet

And lint on flannel

And boys overthrown

By emotional insecurity

Stuck in a clashing culture of crevices

Where age-old paradigms

Are passed down

In the mismatch of

An ever-changing society

A Color ofSKy Tony Hoagland

2008-01-16T06:27:00.000-08:00

Poem: "A Color of the Sky" by Tony Hoagland, from What Narcissism Means To Me. © Graywolf Press, 2003. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

A Color of the Sky

Windy today and I feel less than brilliant,
driving over the hills from work.
There are the dark parts on the road
when you pass through clumps of wood
and the bright spots where you have a view of the ocean,
but that doesn't make the road an allegory.

I should call Marie and apologize
for being so boring at dinner last night,
but can I really promise not to be that way again?
And anyway, I'd rather watch the trees, tossing
in what certainly looks like sexual arousal.

Otherwise it's spring, and everything looks frail;
the sky is baby blue, and the just-unfurling leaves
are full of infant chlorophyll,
the very tint of inexperience.

Last summer's song is making a comeback on the radio,
and on the highway overpass,
the only metaphysical vandal in America has written
MEMORY LOVES TIME
in big black spraypaint letters,

which makes us wonder if Time loves Memory back.

Last night I dreamed of X again.
She's like a stain on my subconscious sheets.
Years ago she penetrated me
but though I scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed,
I never got her out,
but now I'm glad.

What I thought was an end turned out to be a middle.
What I thought was a brick wall turned out to be a tunnel.
What I thought was an injustice
turned out to be a color of the sky.

Outside the youth center, between the liquor store
and the police station,
a little dogwood tree is losing its mind;

overflowing with blossomfoam,
like a sudsy mug of beer;
like a bride ripping off her clothes,
dropping snow white petals to the ground in clouds,

so Nature's wastefulness seems quietly obscene.
It's been doing that all week:
making beauty,
and throwing it away,
and making more.

Desert Places

2008-01-07T06:36:00.001-08:00

MONDAY, 7 JANUARY, 2008
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Poem: "Desert Places" by Robert Frost, from The Poetry of Robert Frost. © Henry Holt and co. Reprinted with permission.(buy now)

Desert Places

Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast
In a field I looked into going past,
And the ground almost covered smooth in snow,
But a few weeds and stubble showing last.

The woods around it have it—it is theirs.
All animals are smothered in their lairs,
I am too absent-spirited to count;
The loneliness includes me unawares.

And lonely as it is, that loneliness
Will be more lonely ere it will be less—
A blanker whiteness of benighted snow
With no expression, nothing to express.

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars—on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.

Napolean's Hat

2008-01-05T16:04:00.001-08:00

Napolean’s Hat

Although the New Year had barely been baptized, I had already broken my superficial resolution with a chocolate chip banana cookie as well as my meaningful one with a flood of fearful thoughts anxiously anticipating Monday morning, and the beginning of Winter term. After a month without mandated schedules, a simple weekend threatened me with how much time I didn’t have under a daunting rainstorm shoulding on my insecurities. Rather than torturing myself with my own thoughts, I set out into the gloomy wet Saturday. It was the proper tone for the dictated many rainy days soon to follow setting seasonal affective disorder into full swing. Regardless, graduate school was to resume whether I was ready for it or not. I was not only afraid of my own incompetence as a teacher, but also dreading the tedious paper work and many hoops I was going to have to jump through in order to follow my passion or at least what I recently chosen to represent it. But the theme of the next term wasn’t creativity or revolution, it was obedience and basic skills: two essential tools often overlooked on the path to reaching one’s dreams.

I had just finished ordering one hour digital prints to send off in my late responses of holiday thank-yous and was about to work my way toward the Eugene Public Library to return a much overdue DVD, when a startling shout came from next door, “ WHY AREN’T YOU OPEN BIKE SHOP!!!” The man shouting was a bald elder dressed fairly warm in an old coat beside a tattered bicycle. Again, “OPEN BIKE SHOP,” the sound was scary and angry and I could see people shooting glances and crossing to the other side of the street. As I gathered my things and prepared my umbrella, I hesitated about my next course of action. I wished that I had the confidence and fearlessness to approach the bike shop sergeant and attempt to calm him down. Rather I fell into my usual pattern of fearfulness, plugged myself into my mp3 player, crossed the street, and headed toward the library. A block later, my cold hands made me turn around assuming that I had forgotten my gloves at the UO bookstore. The man was still there and inside the store I could overhear the desk clerk, a young college student, similar to me in appearance and probably in situation, call what seemed to be campus security. “Hi this is Lindsay, from the Digital Duck….Yeah there is some guy outside yelling really loudly…..okay…..Thank You.”

I left the store again, after realizing that no, I hadn’t forgotten my gloves they were in my backpack the whole time…typical. As I was gathering my things under the awning, a middle aged man walked up to me, “Excuse me miss…could you spare 50 cents… it’s pretty important.” I fished 75 cents out of my wallet and handed it over. He thanked me and walked up to a young man, typical in appearance an mannerisms of a college student, and asked him the same thing. I waited around to see how he would respond. The invisible line of “normalcy” between the middle class and the homeless or mentally impaired fascinates me, and I didn’t want to miss an opportunity to observe an interaction crossing it. The college kid said he didn’t have any change, and the middle aged man walked on. Then the college student waited around looking at the yelling older man near the bike shop. The sergeant continued to threaten the closed bike shop door. Finally, the college student walked up to him and with the most peaceful voice I had ever heard from a member of the male sex in my age group, spoke to him. The conversation presented itself in mumbles and resonances, but it ended with the two peacefully parting. There I stood, in awe. I wanted so badly to have the confidence then to at least talk to the college student who had chosen such a peacefully resolving course of action. But, instead a comforted myself by promising to write a short story as soon as I returned the DVD and made it home.

As if the Universe was concerned her message was too subtle for a simple college student who had been numbing her brain for a month with television, wine, and hedonistic living, another happenstance followed enriching my story. A few blocks away from the book store, I met a woman at a stop light with a bright yellow duck shaped umbrella. She mumbled something as we crossed the street, so I smiled at her in case she was talking to me. Then, I decided to ask her what she had said.

“Oh, Happy New Year!”

“Oh Thank You! I keep forgetting. Happy New Year!” I started to move faster ahead on the sidewalk, when she began to offer more small talk. So, I responded with, “I like your umbrella.” We then closed our conversation, or so I thought.

A little while later, “What about my hat?” I turned. “Napolean Bonaparte!” I looked at the hat. It was big, black and floppy, pinned in the front with a gold colored broche. “You see, the front is supposed to be the back, but I like it better this way. It keeps the rain off my head.”

“Very nice,” I said. “Did you pin the front on your own?”

“Yep, and once, I went into a store and said ‘I am Napolean and I demand service,’” She replayed her story with an air of confidence and charisma sprinkled with spirited laughter.

“Did it work?” I said in a giggly voice.

“I can’t remember.” She tilted her head a bit, smiled and asked me the usual questions one might ask on first encounter if their intention was to pass time or get to know someone.

“Education! Are you serious? So you get to play with the kids all day. That’s great. I could tell. You have a child-like spirit about you.”

“Well, I guess so. It’s harder than I thought it would be though.”

“Well, you know what it doesn’t matter. You get through those hurdles. Everything is hard you know? You do your passion anyway.”

What? Do your passion. Had I just landed in a Dan Millman novel or a Linkletter film? This is the kind of thing that writers dream about happening so that they can surely get it published only to be rejected for its lack of authenticity.

We were interrupted by the oncoming arrival of a woman over the age of 60 in a motorized wheelchair. The female Socrates with the ducky umbrella, greeted the woman excitedly “ Happy New Year!” I assumed that the two had known each other. A conversation between the two women developed about free events offered throughout the city of Eugene. The woman then began to artfully describe a concert in which the baritone player was beautiful in every sense, “handsome on the inside and out,” she said. “He had this sparkle in his eye and a beautiful soul.”

Socrates turned to me and exclaimed, “See! That’s you! You can find the Zest for life too. That’s passion. He was doing what he loved to do. That’s what’s it about.” She pulled out a green index card with a quote on it by Dan Miller (not to be confused with Dan Millman, although the similarity did tickle my love for synchronicities). The card read:

“ANYTHING IS WORTH TRYING EVEN IF DONE POORLY THE FIRST TIME.” Wow, I thought, how fitting for my mood right now embarking on my next adventure in practicum.

Just then, another pedestrian approached, accompanied by an old bicycle. It was the bike shop sergeant. “LOOK OUT!” he yelled at the woman in the motorized wheel chair, who was already in the middle of figuring out how to orient herself in order to make space on the sidewalk.

“Look out?” she replied, more to us rather than the fast paced man already down the block. “But, I don’t want to look out. I want to look in.” And my fear was easily comforted in a new peaceful energy. It was if my newly acquired company had the power to affect the overturning of my feelings. As the conversation progressed and we parted ways, I made an appointment to meet my female befriended Socrates for next Sunday at 1:00pm. Perhaps, winter term wouldn’t be so bad after all.

Warning to Children

2008-01-05T10:13:00.001-08:00

Poem: "Warning to Children" by Robert Graves, from The Complete Poems. © Penguin Books Ltd., 2003. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

Warning to Children

Children, if you dare to think
Of the greatness, rareness, muchness
Fewness of this precious only
Endless world in which you say
You live, you think of things like this:
Blocks of slate enclosing dappled
Red and green, enclosing tawny
Yellow nets, enclosing white
And black acres of dominoes,
Where a neat brown paper parcel
Tempts you to untie the string.
In the parcel a small island,
On the island a large tree,
On the tree a husky fruit.
Strip the husk and pare the rind off:
In the kernel you will see
Blocks of slate enclosed by dappled
Red and green, enclosed by tawny
Yellow nets, enclosed by white
And black acres of dominoes,
Where the same brown paper parcel —
Children, leave the string alone!
For who dares undo the parcel
Finds himself at once inside it,
On the island, in the fruit,
Blocks of slate about his head,
Finds himself enclosed by dappled
Green and red, enclosed by yellow
Tawny nets, enclosed by black
And white acres of dominoes,
With the same brown paper parcel
Still untied upon his knee.
And, if he then should dare to think
Of the fewness, muchness, rareness,
Greatness of this endless only
Precious world in which he says
he lives — he then unties the string.

4 my daughter

2007-12-18T19:32:00.001-08:00

Poem: "For My Daughter" by Grace Paley, from Begin Again: Collected Poems . © Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000. Reprinted with permission. ( buy now )

For My Daughter

I wanted to bring her a chalice
or maybe a cup of love
or cool water I wanted to sit
beside her as she rested
after the long day I wanted to adjure
commend admonish saying don't
do that of course wonderful try
I wanted to help her grow old I wanted
to say last words the words famous
for final enlightenment I wanted
to say them now in case I am in
calm sleep when the last sleep strikes
or aged into disorder I wanted to
bring her a cup of cool water

I wanted to explain tiredness is
expected it is even appropriate
at the end of the day

upon seeing an ultrasound

2007-12-18T18:43:00.001-08:00

Poem: "Upon Seeing an Ultrasound Photo of an Unborn Child" by Thomas Lux, from The Drowned River . © Houghton Mifflin Company, 1990. Reprinted with permission.( buy now )

Upon Seeing an Ultrasound Photo of an Unborn Child

Tadpole, it's not time yet to nag you
about college (though I have some thoughts
on that), baseball (ditto), or abstract
principles. Enjoy your delicious,
soupy womb-warmth, do some rolls and saults
(it'll be too crowded soon), delight in your early
dreams - which no one will attempt to analyze.
For now: may your toes blossom, your fingers
lengthen, your sexual organs grow (too soon
to tell which yet) sensitive, your teeth
form their buds in their forming jawbone, your already
booming heart expand (literally
now, metaphorically later); O your spine,
eyebrows, nape, knees, fibulae,
lungs, lips... But your soul,
dear child: I don't see it here, when
does that come in, whence? Perhaps God,
and your mother, and even I - we'll all contribute
and you'll learn yourself to coax it
from wherever: your soul, which holds your bones
together and lets you live
on earth. - Fingerling, sidecar, nubbin,
I'm waiting, it's me, Dad,
I'm out here. You already know
where Mom is. I'll see you more directly
upon arrival. You'll recognize
me - I'll be the tall-seeming, delighted
blond guy, and I'll have
your nose.

Thanksgiving in Rogue River

2007-11-24T10:18:00.000-08:00

Although a sleep deprived over caffeinated aching head needs a bit ore sleep than allowed
by the slobbering clicky-toed
furry electrons

the continuity of its healthy preciousness
seems impossible on a day like
this

Where I am joyous in the comforting
familiarity of a pot and steamer in the sink
crossword puzzles on the table
and a handwritten note

by the cofee pot

The Myth: Raison d'Etre

2007-11-20T06:37:00.000-08:00

by Pattiann Rogers

Some say there are wild white ponies

Being washed clean in a clear pool

Beneath a narrow falls in the middle

Of the deciduous forest existing

At the center of the sun

Some say the thrashing of those ponies

Straining against their bridles, the water flying

From their stamping hooves in fiery pieces

And streaks rising higher than the sandbar willows

Along the bank, drops whirling like sparks

From the manes of their shaking heads,

And the shouting and splashing of the boys

Yanked off their feet by the ponies

As they attempt to wash the great shoulders

And rumps of those rearing beasts, as they lather

Their necks and breasts, stoking them,

Soothing them-all this is the source

Of the fierce binding and releasing energy

Existing at the core of the sun.

The purple jays, mad with the chaos,

Shrieking in the tips of the planetrees,

The rough-winged swallows swerving back

And forth in distress, the struggle of the boys

To soap the inner haunch, to reach

Beneath the belly, to dodge the sharp

Pawing hooves, the wide-eyed screaming

Of the slipping ponies being maneuvered

For the final rinse under the splattering falls-

All the fury of this frightening drama,

Some believe, is contained and borne steadily

Across the blue sky strictly by the startling

Light and combustion of its own commotion.

But when those ponies stand, finally quiet,

Their pure white manes and tails braided

With lilac and rock rose, the boys asleep

On their backs, when they stand,

Fragrant and shimmering, their forelocks

Damp with sweet oil, serene and silent

In the motionless dark of the deep

Riverside forest, then everyone can

Easily see and understand the magnificent

Silhouette, the restrained power, the adorned,

Unblemished and abiding beauty

That is the night.

Ode to the Nutria

2007-11-20T06:32:00.000-08:00

Oh unwanted creature
with a flaky pelt
an invasive species from the South
a disruption of ecosystems
like a missed stitch in a scarf
a random wordy superfluous line in a poem
plaid and stripes worn together on a business day
or the perfect white fish meal under candlelight
and music and laughter
and an ignorant guest brings a cheap
box of wine

Ode to the Nutria
whose innocence
can't be denied a
captive of movement
a motive of human greed
Simply trying to make a life for itself
amongst the responses of the Pacific Northwest
without harmful enemies
except for Frat boys with baseball bats

Ode to Crappy Internet Connections

2007-11-20T06:30:00.000-08:00

Like an insult
invading a meaningful conversation
or the inconvenience
of a ill-mannered dark spot of coffee
when you are wearing light clothing
right in the embarrassment
atop the cloth
above your left
breast

Ode to Insecurity

2007-11-20T06:29:00.000-08:00

Corroding walls holding in a flood
you fain your image to be strong
The cams of an anchor which walk
the branch that cracks when under the weight of a kitten
picked locks and cut bicycle chains
a shared hidden feeling of vulnerability
looking for authentic confidence or a connection
to share its wallows

Ode to Incompetence

2007-11-20T06:26:00.000-08:00

A collection of tireless failures redundant and outspoken
stuffed inside something rotten
and simmering in their own sweat
Nights of sticky tears and mucous
Hidden for the fear of protecting one's future
Blurry lines that reap with relativity
and yet...
at the same time
constantly compare themselves
to the parallels and perpendiculars
drawn with utter accuracy.

Battery Life

2007-11-07T08:32:00.000-08:00

Sometimes morning walks through the fog are simply the close collections of
billions and billions of pixels
waiting to be taken captive

An odd display of footwear strangled on telephone wire
Punitive pumpkins methodically placed on the steps
Photogenic fungi dressed in the rouge of fall
An invasive squirrel jealously eying the fancy house cat
enjoying a queen's breakfast.

These moments of breathtaking brilliance!
And then...

Like the malfunctioning of a diver's oxygen tank

The flashing warning signs
The curse of technology
The catalyst of "I should have" thoughts
The realization that luck is simply preparation meets opportunity
and your artistic soul's dependence on electrons
and positive and negative energy
in its most literal sense