Category: Poems & poem-like things

Original poetry, translations and videopoems by the authors of this blog. (See Poets and poetry for criticism, etc.)

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Slug

Apotheosis of all that is low, vile, vagrant, whose taste for midnight gardens is notorious, hermaphrodite whose weakness for warm beer can lead to a fatal love-match with his own reflection: how to dress him up, this poor relation to that clan of seafaring and treeclimbing gastropods so tantalizing to the French palate? The stubborn pride with which the slug unrolls his tatterdemalion carpet is inexplicable. He lacks the most basic accoutrements of a decent mollusk lifestyle: no mother-of-pearl dressing room, no spiral staircase, no simple-yet-elegant home to inspire the likes of Le Corbusier. Nothing, in short, to bequeath to a museum bell jar.

Clearly, all attempts at rehabilitation fail to lift the slug above his freakish role as dead ringer for a hitchhiker’s thumb, and come up against the stubborn delusion that he was once the understudy to some obscure artist, measuring for a comprehensive sketch of the face of a salt-free earth.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Aedes vexans

*
Grace

On the last day of summer,
drifting slow as hope through
the thick air of evening

she chances into
the plume of CO2 from
my breath, follows it upstream

to my arm’s telltale heat.
She hovers, then slowly sinks
the last few inches straight

down into my pelt with all
her landing gear extended,
proboscis going into the skin even

as the slight craft of her body
still rides the hairs down,
her feet stretching one

by one down, down,
& I am here.
Lord, I am here.

She is beautiful & blameless
& I in a mood to share
the beer in my veins, watching

as her banded
abdomen turns dark, inflates.
A long minute later

she pulls out, rises unsteadily
& sails off singing
her single note.

Then comes a rapid patter across
the field, the yard, staccato
on the porch roof &

into the woods – suddenly
it’s pouring & the treetops
are bending, swaying under

the weight of it
before the first drops reach
the forest floor.

A wheal rises where
the mosquito took the only
blood supper of her

purposeful life. While I sit
waiting for God knows what
it has fallen to me,

what she no longer needs:
the goad of her saliva.
Her fierce itch.
__________

For a place-based essay on mosquitoes by another central Pennsylvania writer, see here.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Barley wine poems

Yesterday afternoon and early evening I permitted myself to get a little deep into my cups for the first time since July 2, and just as I did then, I took a notebook out on the porch with me. This time I was drinking a spiced barley wine that I bottled way back in December 2002, after a year and a half in the cask (actually a glass carboy). I hadn’t been too impressed with it on previous tastings, but perhaps it just hadn’t aged enough.

I found myself jotting down short poems, or the notes for poems, with the kind of fury I can otherwise only manage first thing in the morning. Some of them don’t seem too bad. With some, I’m not sure now exactly what I had in mind. But maybe that’s all right.

UPDATE: Still revising as of Friday morning. It IS all in the editing!

A gnat falls into my wine.
I sip around him.
After a while the pin-
prick flotsam washes
against the side
& sticks fast.
Revives.
Crawls all
the way up to
the rim. Inspired,
I down the rest of the wine
in two big gulps.
__________

That gnat must not have been
a poet, to survive such
a baptism in wine. I raise
the glass it escaped from
in solemn tribute,
resolve to keep drinking
until the moon comes up.
__________

Cicada drone. A flicker’s
namesake call. Carolina
wren’s insistent zipper.
Crickets, crickets, crickets.
The first desultory katydid.

It’s not just in my head,
this hum,
this buzz.
__________

Drinking on the porch with
my feet propped up,
I forget myself.
What beautiful arches
you have, I murmur.
And the toes – what fine
fat targets. Ten
bleary half-moons
glimmer back.
__________

Six o’clock, but
no chipmunks chipping
as they almost always do
this time of year, standing at
the mouths of their burrows.
I wonder what’s
in the news?
__________

A breeze: red
maple leaves turn
their backs.
Aspen goes wild.
White pine whistles
through its teeth.
__________

The bull thistle’s clock
has three faces:
stubbled green; florid
purple; white hair
falling out in clumps.
At the peak of flowering, half
of every bush is already dead.
My eye follows
a spicebush swallowtail
making its unrepeatable way
into the treetops.
__________

In the end, the light
goes mute, retreats
one cricket at a time.
Deep in the grass, the faint
spots where glowworms
fade in, fade out.
__________

What am I missing
by writing? What
would escape me if
I didn’t write? Wait
until it’s too dark
to write anything,
listen as the katydids
start up: first this side
then the other, night
after night.
__________

Another glass of wine,
another drowned gnat.
God or evolution,
it’s all in the editing.
__________

This whole
made world
is nothing but a conspiracy
between a rock and
a hard place, says
the all-night rain.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

The ineffable, with a sore bottom

For Beth, because she liked it

You sit, spine arrow-
straight, aiming at
the center of each
ripple: that spot where
a mayfly guttered,
where a thought-
fish rose. Unwatched,
your face begins to show
its phylogeny, relaxing
against the skull’s
inverted cup. You start
to glow, like any primate
being groomed – though
there’s no other.
The preceptor’s long-
ago story has set
root: how the only guard
on duty left her post
because she forgot the
watchword, bought
herself a bottle &
drank & drank until
she forgot her own
name. So the city
was overrun: that’s
how you’re sitting.
Through the open window
the sound of rain like
the body’s finest hairs
whispering with static.
You sit as if you were
no longer waiting
for anything, as if your
bones were tired of talking
among themselves,
as if they could climb
an upside-down tree
of lightning.
If only they weren’t
sewn up in a bag like
field mice in their
cave of grass: all flesh,
all blister. I mean
this grab bag,
this very poem
so far from where
you sit.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

The head cook’s instructions for Dogen

(Dogen’s Tenzo Kyokun, “Instructions for the Head Cook,” became a central text for the Soto school of Zen, which he founded in the 13th century. In a beautiful series of images, Dogen urges his monks to exercise the tender care of a parent or grandparent toward each other, toward themselves, toward all things, animate or otherwise. “Handle the grains of rice as if they were your own eyes,” Dogen preached. I started thinking, what a pain in the ass he must have been if they ever actually let him in the kitchen!)

Oh childless father,
let me tell you about
this Grandmother
Mind: she slices.
She minces.
She chops.
She makes short work
of fat monks.
Go to the Dojo.
If you want to eat
on time, let
me nap.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Both sides now

Away from home today. All I can come up with is a brief bit of moralizing poetry.

The view from
inside the glass
house distorts:
every darting
wren looks like
a stone. Only
the hummingbird seems
driven by harmless
desire. She
hovers, hangs
in place for
a long moment, bill
millimeters from
the pane, still –
apart from
the fury of
her wings. But
of all the ranked
blossoms, what
can she see?
At best, a faint wash
of exotic hues.
What’s drawn
her in is green,
hateful green –
guerrilla foe
who blocks her
every advance,
matches her
zig for
zag but will
not, will not
engage.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Colorless green ideas

*
Poem for a dawn I missed by rising late

Wren, when will
that cricket stop
its racket in
your throat?

Cricket, how could you
play second fiddle
all night to
the katydids?

And you lot, with
your gossip about
poor Kate, who did
both less & more
than you
can know –

be still now.
Turn into a leaf,
a sail, a rudder.
Sleep furiously
for every hour
without love.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Head

I can’t seem to figure out what to do with my head. It is too small to carry the right sort of luggage and dangerously prone to spills and injuries. I was thinking I might rent it out for microidea transmission, but I’m not sure how well I’d like sitting on top of a metal tower during thunderstorms. Then there’s the whole issue of bird droppings. Perhaps I could put it in a breadbox to keep it fresh. But lately it has this alarming tendency to weep, which could promote spoilage.

It is a jealous head with only a vestigial sense of humor at best. But it has eyes only for me. I rap on it with the knuckles of my right hand, never my left. I take it on road trips as well as for short walks around the farm. It never went to obedience school, but in its middle age I find it has developed very regular habits. Loyalty is the only coin it trades in.

My head has led a tragic existence – kind of like the Ugly Duckling in reverse, I sometimes say. Imagine growing up expecting to turn into a swan, only to discover that – alas – you’re really just another puddle duck.

I do keep it fairly well groomed now. Just the other day, it occurred to me that some of the people I used to be friends with back when I let my head grow dreadlocks probably wouldn’t want to hang out with me now. Some people I hang out with now definitely wouldn’t want to be seen with me if my head still wore dreads. Then I started thinking: all my friends are really my head’s friends. Could that be where this loneliness comes from?

I never went to a shrink, because I figured s/he would try to convince me it’s all in my head. I refuse to stoop to that kind of sophistry: it’s not just wrong, it’s idolatrous. For the Freudians, especially, one wonders if a head can ever be anything more than a misdirected phallus, the body’s grotesque bolete.

Right now my head is tired and a little overwhelmed. I am feeding it a rare, late-morning beer as I write. It has been short on sleep in recent days and rather short-tempered as a result. I’m thinking that a little alcohol might short a few, over-sensitive circuits. And though my forehead remains an open book for those with the proper training, a slight flush always helps to hide the marks of abuse from that beast, my body.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Eyepiece

This was prompted – I won’t say “inspired” – by the comments thread to yesterday’s post.

Two needles knitting and not an eye between them.
Click click, the path turns in upon itself,
a field of knots.
This is the sound an eyetooth makes
before it breaks.

Bodies aren’t as finished as we think.
A third eye can open anywhere.
Certain navels allure
with a permanent wink.

There’s hardly a part of the body
that can’t learn vision, clock stopped
at the center of a hurricane,
all-seeing shape that plays for keeps.
It shines.
It weeps.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

From a distance

This is a rough, first draft . . .

God knows how many times
I have stood frozen in the hot street
with rifles pointing at my crotch

& watched myself – small
& impossibly thin – in the oil-black
mirrors of their sunglasses.

They never take them off, not even
to enter a mosque. God knows
they are easy to hate.

But after the explosion when
I ran with the others to look, suddenly
I felt shame for all the things

I had thought. One howled, the other
bled in silence, eyes naked
to the sun. I bent down.

Above the smooth cheeks
such a clear, pale blue! I felt as if
I were looking down from heaven:

Here is our sky, soldier,
here is yours. Hold on.
Help will come.