Day 06 — been a weird couple of months 

A list poem, that in turn, contains several ideas/lines that might themselves become their own poems this month.

the weird love, 

the tyrannical distance,
the disparate time zones,
the clashing schedules,
the near twenty years,
the roller coaster that never coasts,
the bicoastal bipolar,
the unromantic romance,
the life-is-not-a-fairytale,
the beautiful beast,
the beastly beauty,
the attractive repulsion,
the anxious agony,
the unmated souls,
the singing universe,
the sparkling shiver, 
the cold silence,
the nagging thorn,
the out-of-sync hearts,
the half-made promise,
the broken chain,
the joke that bombed,
the unequal exchange,
the one word reply,
the stranger in the bed,
the intimate inmate inside the head,
the reluctant endearments,
the belligerent confessions,
the definitions of love,
the expectations on love,
the ramifications if it is love,

the very real ghost of another …

Day 07 – ordinary days (& extraordinary nights)

Open doorway

A fun little exercise whereby I describe the things I’ve done today in more abstract ways via unordinary day alchemy; ie, went to the shops & bought vegies might be unordinary day alchemised to hunted in the long cool aisles for prey that cannot outrun me. Fear not, the examples in the poems are better (I hope 😂)

on an unordinary day 

i now have

half a dozen doorways
to new nowhere rooms
if only i can get them home

two notebooks which float

more stories i own
but likely never know

two big volumes of all
the old words of once were

somewhere silky
to rest my migraine
& learn new dreams

plus a full tank to take me there

 


 

BONUS POEM: April 7, 2018

A poetic love fable. Inspired, this may come as no surprise, by the fact that Venezia has somewhat scrambled my otherwise fairly reasonable compass. Conceived on one bewildered journey; completed on several others when I set out to deliberately wander writing lines in my head as I went …

The poem so far I’m most pleased with 😁
[2019 edit: even more pleased with it following a few tweaks 😁😁]

*****

The 1000 Ways to San Marco Piazza

my love lives in Dorsoduro ; I, in Castello ; & every morning ; she promises to meet me ; in San Marco’s Piazza at sunset ; she says if we find each other there ; our love will last

if I had the talent ; I’d pen a postmodern novel ; telling of the thousand ways ; we never meet ; a short chapter ; a paragraph; even just a line, a single word ; about how my unerring ability ; to lose my way ; dooms me ; where every route I choose ; is wrong

the one where I see her on another Ponte, chase her, see her on other Pontes, but I never get closer ; the one where every Calle is a dead end ; the where I find a letter on the cobblestones from her to another ; the one where I fall in ; the one with a Calle so narrow my shoulders touch each wall, closer, closer, till I am wedged tight; the one where I meet another who might in fact be : the one true one

nights thick with the stink of summer tourists ; nights where the waters are still obsidian; nights when I don’t want to leave the house ; nights when I am dying to ; muggy shirts sticky nights ; wet winter nights ; nights where la Serenissima is a dream ; nights where only it is

& maybe ; one night ; when I least expect ; I will arrive ; & so will she ; & we ; will meet 

07b Calle

Day 16 – poem about serenity

Paro Taktsang – Paro Valley, Bhutan

Been partaking in much thought (as I do this time every year); as well as a Firefly marathon, so themes of home & family have been percolating round for days. (The pome itself took about an hour; finding the right picture, close to five.)

Somewhere there is a house

whether facing a storm on a cliff ;
lost in a forest ; birdhigh in a tree ;
or underground browntangled among
ancient roots ; atop an old stone tower ;
even above an ocean where mountains
once used to be, before being washed away

But somewhere there is a house ;
where when i walk in, i have always been
where i know and am known ;
where there is no need to play roles ;
no need to keep pretending all is well ;
where those long lost are as they were

i know there is a such a house, somewhere