Shay's Word Garden List Prompt Returns! ---Yusef Komunyakka

 Hello friends, and welcome to the revival of the Word Garden Word List poetry prompt! February, as you know, is Black History Month, and so I thought we'd feature Yusef Komunyakka.

Born in Louisiana, a carpenter's son, the cadences of the black church and the bible were his first introduction to poetry, His poems weave together personal narrative, jazz rhythms, and vernacular language to create complex images of life in peace and war. 

THE DEVIL'S WORKSHOP (link to this poem will open in a new window.)

Komunyakka is a recipient of the Wallace Stevens Award, the Ruth Lilly Prize, the William Faulkner Prize, and numerous others. He currently serves as Distinguished Senior Poet in New York University's graduate creative writing program.

LUST (link will open in a new window,)

What we do here, my lambs, is to use at least three of the twenty words in the following list in a new poem of our own. Then simply link so we can visit, and visit others yourself. This prompt stays active through Sunday. That's it! Enjoy. 

art

blues

coyote

engines

experimenting

fox

lilies

lucky

oranges

pieties

poet

rhythms

scent

sober

soup

taboos

weeds

wildflowers

wish

zeroes

Three Views of a Singularity

 

There were

     a fox 

     in the wildflowers,

a coyote

     in the weeds,

and me

     lying in the lilies, waiting.

The fox offered

     certain pieties

that the red-necked chicken

     spoke tacitly against.

The coyote carried

     a lucky amulet

that the rabbit might be missing

     could she rise from his belly.

There was

      a soup

     strained from April,

a blues

     blown from 

     scents of oranges

and me

     lying in the lilies

     waiting.

_______

For Word Garden Word List--Yusef Komunyakka 

Music: Anouar Brahem The Astounding Eyes of Rita

1/31/24

 Some say this the two-hundredth of January,

and are as weary of it as if it were 

cold leftover meatloaf again

or their boss's face.

I shall miss it, though.

When I was 25, I saw Jim off at the train station,

his rucksack slung over a bony shoulder,

and I cried on the empty platform

not realizing until he was gone

that I loved him. 

January brought heavy wet snow that made me sore with shoveling,

then it turned to ice for a while, and now slush.

My heart is forever surprised and jumps when touched,

then sags as it dies like the snow, a stuttering death that repeats itself. 

I was wrecked as the melt set in,

the old familiar malaise in its favorite straight back chair.

Some say this is the two-hundredth of January,

and feel numb with it as if medicated. 

I hate to see it go, as I always do, my favorite season except for Fall.

Its sharp, unsentimental freeze breaks my ease,

and I know, even as it goes,

that I love it for how it hurts me

letting me know I still can care. 

_______

for What's Going On? "It's Wednesday" 

Music: Mazzy Star Fade Into You

Inner Thoughts & Feelings

 I keep a skull inside my head

like a gravy boat for holidays

stuffed inside a china hutch,

a child sent to its room.

I talk to people at parties,

on the job, riding the bus,

as if I were immortal, the

Eternal Co-Worker, the Passenger Outside of Time.

I act as if there were no skull inside my head.

Is my affectation of skulllessness hideous?

What if I could remove the hidden skull,

would my hideousness become unbearable?

Would this poem float right out of my head?

I keep a skull inside my head

and smile as if I were on stage.

The hidden skull defines my shape,

but will shed me like an old jacket in the end.

Am I unbearable?

Was I unbearable before I said all of this, 

or only after?

So now you know, and I know about you as well.

Let's kiss now, don't be bashful

and don't retch. 

_________

Bridge Over Water Lilies

 My heart rides in the petals of a water lily--

my coat a pebbled shore.

Here is the bridge of turquoise stones,

magpie calls, and bamboo bones

with the blind sky waiting, waiting, evermore. 

My heart rides in the blind sky waiting--

my love a wounded bird.

Here is the bridge of mica memories.

the lost valise, and aromas of home

with the blue water singing, singing, a flowing word. 

My days are blue water singing--

in a ewer made of hours.

Here is the bridge of goldfish scales,

old china dishes, and copper nails

all riding in the petals of a lily, a lily, my water bower. 

______

for What's Going On? "Bridges"

"Water Lily Pond" by Claude Monet

Music: Aisha Badru "Bridges" 

Two New Poems

 THE MERMAID'S CALLING CARD

The winter blinks its eyes coquettish

then faints as all dreams do at last--

I've saved you flower, fin, and fetish--

all you had to do was ask.

_______

PHINEAS, BACK FROM THE WAR

Phineas comes back from the war

carrying a blood-rain cloud in a folded handkerchief. 

The only things he will eat anymore

are fresh-caught birds and escargot--

one slows his speech,

the other is anesthetic. 

Phineas wears glasses with smoked lenses

and declares it dusk at all times of day.

I bring him his infant child--

he shakes its hand and turns away.

Later, his medals appear

in the crib, like ribboned toys.

AP Stray Cat Yawp

 

Think of a time when you embarrassed yourself

and the cold wet sand of your heart 

dropped in clumps down 

through your stomach.

Start there.

Fetch up a memory of raw-throated sobbing,

when you beat the sofa arm or the floor

as if it were responsible for the

wasp's nest in your heart. 

Open up, little glass, fill with it.

Leave pretty sunsets for painters or postcard publishers.

What we're after here is waking inside a coffin,

falling from height, the whole empty belly

lonesome lack of it all.

Don't shake your head like you don't know. 

The thing you cannot even think is the thing you have to tell.

Will they consider you crazy, the only one

who ever did/felt/wanted/made love to

that?

Behold the mute tongueless many saying you spoke for them.

The poet is the person who threads out their own veins,

stews their every experience, fears nothing,

stands on one leg on a high wire,

all because they can't not.

Otherwise, they would just be cross-eyed babies

waving bright toy telephones to nobody,

and calling it art.

_______

for Desperate Voicings

Music: DJ Dero The Horn