April is National Poetry Month so this week I’m posting a couple I wrote.
I like poetry as a terse yet nebulous space in which to fling messy emotions. Basically, this means I write untidy poetry of the non-cuddly and free-form variety.
I enjoy reading all kinds of poetry but when I write it, I tend to want it to be like the reverse side of a cross stitch rather than the clear-cut, heart-warming front side. I want it to be a mess of threads reaching toward a message but somehow still tangled and wild and weird, a bit like that line from Hamlet: “Though this be madness, yet there is method in ‘t”.
If you write poetry, I’d love to read it! Feel free to leave a link as a comment.
Soul Lift
(this one’s about the intersection of scientific and spiritual progress)
Trivial as this bus is, I feel like it could become everything if it morphed into an invisible levitating ski lift system,
A Soul Lift complete with the creaking, swaying, sunny-sick sensation of a mammoth insect overhead–
Fate turned Mantis–swatting at the invisible cords that take us everywhere we need to be,
Like our legs never could.
Common as our legs are now, on the Soul Lift they would dangle out into the universe like dandelion gossamer
About to be whisked away for good, and as I bounce mine from the high seats at the double bus’ pivot points–
These benches packed with children squealing with delight and dismay,
As if legs should be wings,
Disappointed at how unamusementpark it has all turned out to be.
I realize that, exhausted as our legs are on a bus at 5:30 p.m. in the land of lithosphere gone to asphalt and concrete,
From our perch on the Soul Lift, legs would still be exhausted but like steam trains rusting down into the salt flats,
The saline yesteryear of it all would convince us to flaunt them like fashion accouterments
Like our legs always were.
But like rebellious vintage skateboards, the nostalgia of legs would be unreliable, skeetching out from under our torsos
When we demonstrated them as parlor tricks that would make us laugh, flounder, wince, and muse–
When it suited us. Because they would still somehow represent freedom more than
Our tangible increase of freedom.
Carrion
(this one’s about the battle to be a writer)
When I am again a full-fledged Predator,
my courage applied to things real and speculative and not the past’s nit-picked hunts,
I will no longer trip over carrion carcasses like potential or security.
For too long an interim I have chosen against effecting proof,
reserved possible disaster for a fiercer soul…
And once I’d have done the faster faiths and so differently.
I’d have had the onslaught.
I’d have caught day.
I’d have had the deep flesh.
I’d have used the gums I’ve lost
from meatless gnawing at the dreamt.
Happy writing this week!
