Word Garden Word List--Paige Ackerson-Kiely

 

Hello friends, and welcome to this week's Word Garden Word List. Hey listen, do you ever just take a chance on something because it sounds like it might be interesting? I know I have. Sometimes it's a dumpster fire, sometimes just a dud that doesn't do anything for me at all, but sometimes I find a new favorite song, dish, friend or whatever it may be. This week's words are all taken from a volume of poetry I bought a year ago or so, just because I liked the title: My Love Is A Dead Arctic Explorer by Paige Ackerson-Kiely. I just wish the content had been as interesting as the title, but as an old supervisor of mine used to say, "Eat the meat, spit out the bones." Therefore, that's exactly what we're going to do.

While I wasn't that keen on the poems--she seems to be about to dig into something important, then continually gets lost in dense language; moreover, there is so much alcohol in these poems that I could practically hear the ice cubes hitting the sides of the glass--she does make some very interesting word choices, and that's right up our alley, yes? (And I do need to add that occasionally she does make her point simply and strongly.)

I hope you'll enjoy this List. Please use at least 3 of the 20 words provided in a new original poem, then link up and visit others. Nothing to it but to do it! 

And now, your List!

Canada

candor

chalk

chime

conflated

describe

explorers

flocked

garlands

gruel

hymns

induce

oxygen

panic

tampering

touchdown

trolley

vanilla

vapor

windsock

Canada Heart

The chime of your kiss

Made me forget the chalk 

that marked the stitch-line

where madness

met easy charm.

I don't wear vanilla scent

anymore--it reminds me of

your flocked, bread-crumb skin

the braille I

got lost in.

Toronto has Billy Bishop Airport--

you can fly in,

fill a bag at the duty-free

then cab it

to Yonge Street.

We made love at the Double Tree

with a balcony

to waver on the edge of, after.

Oh, Canada--

Canada heart

is the half sweet, half bitter

half bustling,

half empty landscape where

missionaries say,

"I knew her."

That is where I found this poem, north of Yellowknife,

and south of solace not looked for anymore. 

_______

For Word Garden Word List--Paige Ackerson-Kiely

Music: Gordon Lightfoot Affair On 8th Avenue

Self Portrait

 

There's someone in here,

inside my

skin,

someone Frankensteined

up from a girl

I used to be or

never was

or

someone on a greased slide

to the boneyard

(yep, that was

me)

but she got

off at

El Paso

sweet little woman get along.

See, I'm living for two 

now,

preggers with myself

and way

overdue

but we're cute af

in certain light

or in 

my imagination

or 

in the sight of God

with a 

heave

and a

ho

I just couldn't let her go.

_______

Stone House

 

There is a stone house

with a soft bed

on a metal frame.

The sheets are sky-stolen blue,

the blanket tartan.

I have the feeling I was

a child there, or died

or held someone with love

or was held.

The air is fragrant

like a meal just finished

or being prepared.

I feel sure that you are there

in the next room

or arriving or remembered.

I wrote this poem

yesterday or some other day

or will write it soon.

Now the door is open.

Come in.

_______

Music: Cat Stevens Into White

Nurse to the Water

photo by Jeanloup Seiff

 I am nurse to the Water,

Moon in a bowl at its bedside.

It looks back at me as if to say, "I am here,

deep and permanent; I will always stay,"

but its language is Leaving and every movement

is a perpetual going-away. 

I am bride to the Lake Grass

expending itself in a season's rising.

silent and thin, the Water its artist's garret.

It finds me neither interesting nor surprising

as I see to its unbordered house,

my face a familiar detail that passes. 

Are you dying, Water, a Gypsy in love with sand--

the sand in love with and holding the Cattails?

I make my rounds on the wooden walkway,

Child of trees the Lake Grass envies.

Death beneath my feet, mercy at my hand

I am the Double-Spirit who must be her own comfort

and work by Night, the sister-ghost of Day.

________

for The Sunday Muse #237. 

Music: Roseanne Cash Seven Year Ache 

My Question For The Unabomber

 I asked the Unabomber

if he had ever been in love.

You know--before Montana--

before wandering the howling tundra

holding a frozen tulip

and a folded poem

for Victor Frankenstein.

I wanted to know

if anyone had ever inhabited

the slow-cooking smoker

of his heart.

Was there ever the very emblem

of desirability

in the formula of anyone's eyes?

In your Harvard classes

full of second-week quitters

and callow

nattering plebes

was there never any elevated romantic

to solve for your

innocent, milky

need?

Oh Teddy, 

you were never meant

to be the broom-pushing custodian

of cowardly murder and printed echolalia.

If Victor appeared to you

in phantom form

or if Mary herself

cupped in cold hands your wobbling soul,

could you still be fixed

even now? 

like a stamp

on an envelope to carry your remainder

out of shame

or into Hell?

_______

for Word Garden Word List--Ghost Eaters.

Music: The Fleetwoods Mister Blue

Word Garden Word List--Ghost Eaters

 

Hello, my intrepid group, and welcome to another Word Garden Word List! Not long ago, I was on Goodreads and saw an ad for a new book called Ghost Eaters by Clay McLeod Chapman, an author I was not familiar with. The cover art was creepy and striking, plus it was Halloween time, so I investigated. 

The novel is about a girl named Erin, who has lost her friend Silas, whose lead she always has followed, for good or ill. She's pretty lost after his death, so when she hears about a drug called Ghost that lets you actually see the dead, she's game. What she doesn't count on is how it will take over her life. The hard part, it turns out, is to unsee. 

It's a great horror novel and also a terrifyingly accurate portrayal of addiction, whether to a person or a substance, how strong the allure can be, and how difficult to break free of. I absolutely recommend it. And so, our list this week is 20 words taken from the pages of Ghost Eaters. Enjoy, but use only as directed, and the directions are as follows: use at least 3 of the 20 words on the list in a new poem of your own, in any style, length or form. Then link up and visit others. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. Oh and... don't let it haunt you. ;-)

Your list:

bake

bomber

custodian

elevated

emblem

exposed

fever

fixed

inhabit

itch

makeshift

milky

nattering

phantom

quitters

romantic

smokers

sultry

tundra

wobbling

Rosey

 I'm not much for babies.

Oh, I dispense a few sweet noises on demand

like a reluctant gumball machine,

but as often as not, the nickel gets jammed and there I am,

stifling a yawn.

My own child was different of course, but he's grown and gone.

I look around, and it feels like my heart is bunged,

So today I'm on the sidewalk in front of a pet supply store,

navigating the cages, looking.

I'm drawn 

to the shy ones,

the small ones,

the hurt ones,

the lonely ones. 

C'mere baby, come to mama,

Come on-a my house, my house-a come on.

I will make you bold.

I will make you safe.

I will make you well.

I will make you loved. 

It's mother-magic, presto! and we'll make a ton of it

out of thin air.

_______

Bareback Rider

 

When I was a girl, I often dreamed

that I rode a haunted horse whose head was ether

and its steady breath was my own pulse

sounding through my ear pressed hard upon the pillow.

We rode in slow procession through 

the house gone unfamiliar in weird shadows

pulling a death-carriage behind us

and it seemed that I labored while the horse hovered

With lantern lights for eyes

on each side in concert with the slant moon

dim-blind through silver windows

but watching as the horse's flanks rose and fell.

A bareback rider, I hooked fingers

through streamers of jet mane like widow's weeds in a breeze,

hoping to hang on, to wake up

only to see Thanatos the ostler smiling and standing

At the stable door holding a gleaming dark apple for his charge.

_________

For Sunday Muse #236.

Music: Snakefarm "All The Pretty Little Horses"

The Hosting Tree

 

What idle devil limned your voice

with salt of falsity

and set such poison in the heart

that was so kind to me?

The thing that curled and grew there had

its own vitality

just as the lush green climbing vine

kills the hosting tree.

_________

I wrote this for Word Garden Word List--Stephen Crane, but only used three of the words and one of them got removed during editing. As a result, I haven't linked this to the prompt, but that was its origin, nevertheless. 

Word Garden Word List--Stephen Crane

 

Hello poets! This week I am pleased to feature one of my very favorite poets--a man well ahead of his time--Stephen Crane. He is most well-known for his Civil War novella The Red Badge of Courage. While spending time posing for a portrait, he had been reading dry accounts of battles and he observed that "they spout enough of what they did, but they're emotionless as rocks." Crane wanted to portray what battle felt like, and though he had never been in one, he succeeded beyond anything else he would ever write. 

Crane is also known for Maggie, A Girl of the Streets." One day he saw slum children playing king of the mountain, but using rocks instead of snowballs, and he got an idea. He took to task a society that encourages ignorance and self-destruction in its lower classes. Crane is also the author of The Bride Comes To Yellow Sky and the excellent and chilling short story The Open Boat. 

However, Crane said this in comparing his fiction with his poetry: "Personally, I like my little book of poems The Black Riders better than I do The Red Badge of Courage. The reason is, I suppose, that the former is a more serious effort. In it I aim to give my ideas of life as a whole, as far as I know it, and the latter is a mere episode--an amplification."

Crane's poems are spare, blunt, filled with raw religious and totemic imagery, and contain an unsparing view of the world. Like Emily Dickinson--whose work he had been shown and may have been influenced by--Crane was far ahead of his time in an era when flowery form was the norm. One reviewer sniffed that "there is not a line of poetry from the opening to the closing page. Poetic lunacy would be a better name for the book" Another called it "so much trash." Crane was reportedly pleased that his book was causing a stir. Time has vindicated him and his influence can be found in the writings of Hemingway, the Beats, and even last week's subject, Jim Morrison. 

Stephen Crane's life was brief. He died at just 28 years of age, after a days-long Christmas party. Like so many poets before and since, Crane never found financial security, was misunderstood and undervalued in his own time, and fell into destructive personal habits. However, the work he left behind is luminous, sometimes shocking, true, and timeless. 

What we do here is to use at least 3 of the 20 words taken from the poetry of Stephen Crane and use them in a new original poem of our own--any style, length, or form. 

And now, your word list:

assassin

bitter

blind/blindness

braggart

brave

child

coward

devils

fool

gardens

God/god

heart

melody/melodies

mountain

puzzled

riders

sin

thickets

toad

violets

Nursery Rhyme

 There were devils

present at my birth

and veiled angels

in smoky violet shirts

with handbells

they'd stolen out of Hell.

Who is the coward

that devils teach to curse

holding Hope out in a teacup

but overturn it first?

A fool's sun

wanes fast, warms none.

See the rose stem

my assassin's throat was vase for

so that every imprecation

that's spoken only makes more

melodies

across my garden's leaves.

Angels kept my heart

in a box with golden hinges

carried by a devil

on its back with burning cinches

in tandem served--

my hidden heart preserved. 

_______

for Word Garden Word List--Stephen Crane

Music: Beth Hart & Joe Bonamassa "I'll Take Care of You"

A Season In Hell

Summer that year came with black wings

rising over green suburban trees

and found my blood-beat

like a smiling intruder delivering a shiv.

There is a horror of violation,

a new vocabulary of panic spoken

in chambers where

lions and phantoms trespass the flesh.

It gets dusky inside the mind,

The hiss of a projector spinning out a movie 

made of gin and dope,

actors who live in graves offering their gray stars.

The god-surgeon, numb expert bastard

taught his flunkies torture

and gave me a new face.

I crawled through a radio for fifteen years to slash his memory.

When you always feel wrong, the world is a camera

and your crime is breathing.

There is an underworld with bootleg cures, so you go,

a parade of the altered, weird strangers, sudden sisters

Who come out blinking, holding high 

the severed heads of devils, and unafraid of anything.

__________

for Word Garden Word List--Jim Morrison. 

I had major surgery when I was 16.  That summer, "Love Her Madly" and "Riders On The Storm", both by the Doors, were getting heavy play on the radio I had at the hospital. Jim Morrison died right around that time. 

My title is, of course, taken from Rimbaud, a favorite of Morrison's and of mine.

Word Garden Word List--Jim Morrison

 

Hello all, and welcome to this week's Word List. This time our inspiration comes from the words of the late poet and rock singer Jim Morrison. This intro will be shorter than usual because yours truly is still under the weather, but I think most of you are already familiar with him, yes?

The List is taken from the poetry collection "The Lords & The New Creatures" and from his song lyrics.

What we do here is to use at least 3 of the 20 words provided in an original new poem of our own. Any style, any length, any structure. Then link up and visit others. So climb aboard the blue bus and show us where you're taking us. Enjoy.

Your list:

actor

cameras

chambers

dusky

eggshell

feast

flunkies

hiss

intrusion

lions

movie

panic

parade

phantoms

radio

soul

strangers

stuffed

vocabulary

windows