Travel Advisory

 

In Denver, poems stay up in the Rockies at night

only rolling down Colfax Avenue in bright afternoon,

hanging out in the vanished record store with

Allen Ginsburg, waiting for night to howl at the moon.

In Toronto, you can catch a touristy rickshaw

or hustle some change at night on Yonge street

depending where on the grayscale you fall,

and the poems there wear boots and are desperate/sweet.

In Manila you can take your poem to a fine hotel

or share Italian in a restaurant where they let you write on the wall,

then get starry/holy at one of the cathedrals

and set out before dawn to hunt up some warm pan de sal.

But in London there are no poems, they've all

fallen into the gap, been run over by trains,

gotten rat-tired of curry and black-coat robots.

Nerves fried, orphan-empty, they sick in the streets, 

cut out their tongues, and die whenever it rains.

______________

for Word Garden Word List--Iron Horse

Music: Leo Kottke Eight Miles High

Word Garden Word List--Iron Horse

 

Hello my little travelers across space and reality, and welcome to this week's Word Garden Word List. This time our source is Allen Ginsberg's Iron Horse. The poem is part of his The Fall of America: Poems of These States sequence of poems, and uses the locomotive as a symbol for the destructive nature of modern society and the loss of individuality.

Allen Ginsberg

My copy was published in 1973 by Coach House Press of Toronto, Canada, but I bought it on a swing through California at about that time. In 1992 I met the author and he signed my copies of Howl  and Iron Horse. He asked me where I had gotten the latter and then went through it and corrected three mistakes with the same pen he had used to sign my book. He knew exactly where they were. I still have both of the collections he signed.  In fat, I still have every poetry collection I ever bought, that meant something to me, and I bought a lot of them when I was young. Not much has survived with me through all the years, but my poetry books have. 

What we do here is to use at least 3 of the 20 words provided in a new, original poem of our own. Then simply link up, visit others as you are able, and then travel by train across America. 

And now, your List:

actors

baton

bulletins

busted

electronic

empty

hamburgers

leafy

nap

nerves

orphan

phantom

poem

public

robots

slag

stale

starry

train

voice

Winter & Wanting

 

You wanted

To break my cold reserve

To be a flame on the frozen stream

I wanted

To protect my stillness

To be snow in the presence of May

Charming one

You remind me of me

When I was hopeful and still believed

I thank you

For the moment's respite

When you touched my sleep with honeyed light.

______

For Dverse MTB "A Lover as Second Nature" hosted by Laura B.

Music: Jai Jagdeesh In Dreams

Ice

 

Winter went too far that year

like a friend who shows her ugly side,

as heedless as some smartphone fuck in a bookstore

as numb and hard as a cop's baton.

Southern beauty, transplanted lady

brought here as a baby, 

my English walnut tree was shivered--shocked--

a dazed involuntary wandering the halls of summer for years after.

This year, unfed, the bandit squirrels stopped knocking down 

her new growth bouquets.

This year her gown is lush, her branches heavy with baubles,

the first walnuts in five years.

I love to sit beneath her, bathed in green

and the susurration of her clustered feathers.

No silent era star wearing ostrich plumes

could compete with her now--she preens in the pleasant weather.

This spring, she is an Impressionist lady 

holding a parasol over me as I am shivered--shocked--

by my country showing her ugly side

my sanctuary soft and sweet, the future hard as a cop's baton.

________

for Dverse--"A View of One's Own" hosted by Dora. 

The images are taken by me, of the walnut tree in my yard. 

Music: Glee cast Don't Make Me Over

Word Garden Word List--Anne Sexton

 

Hello everyone and welcome to this week's Word Garden Word List poetry prompt. I'm a day early with it since I didn't post one last week. Our source this time is Anne Sexton's collection entitled To Bedlam and Part Way Back. 

Anne Sexton

What we do here is to use at least 3 of the 20 words provided in a new, original poem of our own. Then simply link up, visit others as you are able, and enjoy the rest of your weekend. This prompt remains active through next Saturday. 

Your List:

animals

begat

calling

carvings

cures

elephants

erasers

hotel

jackpot

madness

mine

noon

poets

postmarks

radio

roller coaster

rowboat

silk

spoons

wooden

My Child

 

My child was born over the radio at noon

calling, crying, appearing--clearly mine.

She displayed an instant madness, an affinity for the moon

accepting only pomegranate and warm plum wine

as Nurse counted up the medications and the spoons.

We communicate by carvings, deep and raw

and love words mercurial and gritty as a dune,

that respect no wound, no custom, no law.

My elephant child, heavy, hunted, wise

eludes rubber-handed teachers of the exhausted strike

arriving in little rowboats in full courtly disguise

to mine my little darling as she rides her phantasmal bike

down to the grave of stars to kiss the thing that dies

in a tiny wooden cradle beneath a concrete sun

to bring it back, to make it rise

and then her work is done.

Come, child of animals, black earth and fire

to the shelter I have cobbled from discarded turtle shells

where poets burn on pages, porches, pyres

and all variety of heavens, limbos, hells

to arrange your dolls named Judgement and Desire

who sit on silken pillows or in coffins fit with bells

to call their mothers, those beauties, belles and hags

combined into an advocate for my child with tongue flat-felled

by a celebrated seamstress, dumbly mute and dressed in rags.

_____

for Word Garden Word List--Anne Sexton

Music:

Sin City 

Cowgirl's Lament

 

Yippee yi o

and ki yi yay

I've got just one 

more thing to say--

Please don't let me

die here all alone.

Across the mesa  

and through the pass

Old Scratch has gone and 

nailed my ass--

Please don't let me

die here all alone.

Around the campfire

with beer and beans

Who knows what the

hell it means--

Please don't let me

die here all alone.

Kiss me, cowboy

and trim the wick

Had no notion

I was even sick

Please don't let me

die here all alone.

Here's a letter

here's my will

The night is silent

sweet and still--

Please don't let me

die here all alone.

_______

No List today--under the weather. Back next week.