Word Garden Word List--Mark Strand

 

Hello from rainy Michigan, my little year-end sales! This week our source is Blizzard of One,  a 1998 collection by Mark Strand. This book introduced me to the de Chirico form, which is just a pantoum using tercets instead of quatrains. They're difficult but can produce a very lovely poem. 

Mark Strand was a former U.S. Poet Laureate. This collection won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Along with the de Chiricos, I particularly liked the long poem Delirium Waltz. Find more of his poetry and information about him HERE. It should open in a new window. 

What we do here is to use at least 3 of the 20 words from the List provided in a new, original poem of our own. Then simply link up, visit others, and then waltz into 2025 secure in the knowledge that you have created something--that's rarer than you might imagine. Give yourself some kudos!

And now, your List!

crystals

dancing

deposits

disguise

empire

flakes

flowerless

goodbye

limit

masterpiece

moonlight

motels

panic

phrases

shines

silence

starfields

tremendous

unbearable

visitor

Terms of Service

 

When devils visit my area, they stay in motels.

They are vile deposits of hideous evil, but this does not mean

that they cannot be frugal. 

Sure, they steal the little soaps or use them 

to deface the insides of the windows, but

this is mere mischief--

Their real purpose lies beyond Ramada's flimsy walls.

Perhaps you've written a masterpiece

through diligence and elbow grease.

Beware the visitor wearing the disguise

of a maid or desk clerk--be on guard and be wise

To such limited shenanigans. Devils want one thing--

to clop across the starfields of your creation

in their dung-filthy cleated boots using

every method at their disposal to bring ruination

To the written child of your soul.

Hold up your little cross, they will snap it.

Confront them with crystals, they will pop them like mints.

Appeal to their better nature, those tiny flakes amid the panic,

tilt at their empire with toothpicks and see where it gets 

You. Listen to me, little scribbler, I have the way!

Read them home-made haiku by the worst hack that you can find.

You'll see how devils decompensate, fauxku like weevils in their brain!

They'll beg, seize, do St. Vitus' Dance, go goofy, helpless, blind!

De nada, mi amiga. $$$ by Venmo will be fine. 

___________

for Word Garden Word List--Mark Strand.

Music: Jimmy Jones Handy Man

The Wedding of the Mourning Dove (a de Chirico)

 

A crippled dove is dying; her wound a dusky red

in the maple's crook she's hiding.

Her heart her wedding song; herself the newlywed.

A carmine blaze upon her breast to mark the place she's bled

like a penitent confiding

A crippled dove is dying; her wound a dusky red

The purple splay of sunset now reveals a fraying thread

in her tiny breast subsiding--

her heart her wedding song; herself the newlywed.

Beneath her injured wing, she hides her tawny head

as the sun is lower gliding

a crippled dove is dying; her wound a dusky red. 

The summer grass, soon bereft, would take her place instead

except for circumstance dividing--

her heart her wedding song; herself the newlywed.

The presiding night has finished; the ceremony said--

her new master toward the threshold swiftly striding.

A crippled dove is dying; her wound a dusky red--

her heart her wedding song; herself the newlywed. 

_______

the de Chirico is similar to a pantoum, except that tercets replace quatrains. 

Word Garden Word List--Warren Zevon

 

Hello, my excitable ones! If you happened to read my recent poem Famous Contemporary Poet, or are close to me and have had to listen to me ranting about it, then you know that I've been reading a lot of poets laureate and prize-winning "accessible" collections and it has made me want to get a good running start and hurl myself against the wall. There's hardly any true poetry in any of them. (Ishmael Reed and A.E. Stallings, thank heaven for you two!) I've become quite excited about the whole business. Which brings us to today's source--the lyrics of madman songster and notable excitable boy, Warren Zevon.

Here is Warren singing Ain't That Pretty At All: 

From the Werewolves of London (from which the execrable Kid Rock flat out stole the music for his infantile song All Summer Long) to Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner and Detox Mansion, the late Mr. Zevon took us through a whole fun (and sometimes not-so-fun)house of wild characters, crazy situations and even reflections on mortality. 

If you're not familiar with Warren Zevon, here is a link to one site's list of the top 10 Zevon songs. They're all fantastic. His unexpected subjects and his wry sense of humor were uniquely his own. 

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, and then go get a big dish of beef chow mein from the place called Lee Ho Fooks!

And now, your List:

accidentally

bad example

burst

desperados

diamond

envoy

excitable

guess what?

hurry

jubilation

lungs

next

pitiful

reconsider

rehab

sentimental

sleep

soulful

volunteer

waitress

Chronics

 

In the rehab place where wasted hearts

sleep too much like buried creatures

the nurse dispenses dreams from a cart

and the worst of us become the teachers

If you're feeling sentimental

aversion therapy works the best

and for something supplemental

try stuffing newspaper in your chest

We the burned, we the bruised

nod in our not-quite present way

shock-shelved inventory seldom used

but trotted out on holidays

A waitress serves the plates--we break them

to wake ourselves like catatonics;

we choose a new mistake at random

we the dazed romantic chronics.

_____________

for Word Garden Word List--Warren Zevon

Music: Damien Jurado Kansas City

Bachelor Rat

 

There is a bachelor rat

living alone in my neighbor's garage

as I also live alone,

a single dog lady in my lighted box. 

I have begun to feed him

leaving a Tupperware of dog kibble,

french fries, a leaf of lettuce

or whatever, out for him last thing each night.

Watching from the window

I see him, five minutes later, skittering

across the yard like a pleasure

boat on choppy seas, to claim his plunder. 

I eat in the evenings

in front of tv, solving mysteries

as the bachelor rat

also does, always alert for killers.

Predators concern us both

(mine call me up, his lay low in the ground ivy.)

The neighbor behind tries

to poison him, as social media tries to poison me.

We just woke up in these skins,

he in his, me in mine, flesh costumes of the moment,

costumes that get hungry, cold,

ill, old, and any number of other similarities.

Why feed that bachelor rat?

some may ask, aghast. He's nothing but vermin.

I just feel like there are so many cats

set on doing harm to one little rat, or one old woman,

and so I set out his Tupperware

meal last thing while letting my dog out each night.

I wish him good fortune, my simpatico

bachelor rat, to make it through the winter all right.

_______________

Famous Contemporary Poet

 

I'm trying to finish this famous contemporary poet's

fourth collection, which groans under the weight of

all the glowing blurbs on the back cover.

The famous contemporary poet avoids rhyme as if

it was a downed wire--half grand mal seizure, half

pit bull off the chain and charging.

The famous contemporary poet writes a few poems,

carefully packed in vignettes, snapshots, and musings,

all the excelsior found in any packing crate.

In high school I had an acquaintance, this guy.

He'd toss out something cryptic and then wait

like he'd flipped you a Rubik's Cube.

Everything out of his mouth was a test and he'd give

you this bright smirk, like can you figure it out and

get to where I am, up here?

I would like to meet the famous contemporary poet

and show her one of mine, plain as the flat of my hand

when it breaks her nose and the blood comes.

I am trying to finish the famous contemporary poet's 

fourth collection even though it's like watching a movie 

with muddy sound, in dialect, no captions.

______________