Day To Play Hooky: a poem
This is the day to play hooky:
clear Indian summer sky
clear to the Islands’ canyons and coves
clear for the dad longboarders waiting for waves.
Moms march by–2×2, 3×3
stroller by stroller, babe by babe.
A dad in straw hat does business by phone, his
quiet daughter watches wheels roll.
Stench of stale cheap beer and cigarettes flows
from a van housing a happy drunken couple.
The bar opens at 10am when it’s BYOB.
The self employed employ themselves surfside.
A woman in a muumuu and her dog wade the river
recline by its side watch
avocets gulls cranes herons
small birds dip curved bills, bathe.
An altar lies on the round iron
sewer grate, its surrounding pavement
long removed by surf and sea.
Small objects: shells stones driftwood: rest there.
You yourself played in the Pacific this sunny morning.
I saw you after you got out of the water
towel wrapped round your waist, you read a fat book.
Your surfboard rests on your oldschool vw bus, a red westy.
I am tempted to talk to you
(to seduce you)
but continue my ride to the river to sit,
eat my apple, write about you.
You are still there when I bike back.
I waver–your coffee pot calls me
your belongings (your open bed) tempt me,
your shiny cherry bus.
You sit now on the bumper out front in the sun
all long baggy shorts and no shirt
all sandy and brown curls tasting of salt
still reading your book.
I look back, me in my sunglasses, you in yours.
It has been a long time
since I slept with surfer sand and salt.
As much as I want to, I don’t go back.
As much as I want a smile, I don’t give much of one
to you, only a small one I feel inside of me.
I don’t turn round.
I steer my bike straight ahead.
I know where that story goes
and I can’t go there today.
I have work to do. Two boys
who love me. No hooky for me.
(Shishilop Project 10/7/08: Surfers Point Loop)
c. by Gwendolyn Alley aka Art Predator
(The next day I made a video of this poem. To see it, go here).
This poem is part of Read Write Poem.
The Lot: a poem
Blessed by abundance of sunshine, butterflies
framed by eucalyptus trees,
a barranca, ravens scavenging from electric lines–
1.
A van pulls up Mondays, Wednesdays.
Windows down, men eat lunch in shade.
The clinic’s security guard takes a breather
from anti-abortion animosity.
Others cool off, sleep in cars,
nap in leaves or face the trunk
with that particular attentive hunch men get.
In the barranca, workers in orange shirts
move earth with yellow caterpillars
preparing for winter.
2.
A fair man with cloudy face
shirtless muscled black shorts ballcap
sits on abandoned concrete blocks
picks at pieces, uncovers nothing
tosses rubble like another
would stones into streams.
She joins him, they smoke:
silent mouths move.
Knives glint in sun.
She wears black jeans crop top sunglasses
walks away and comes back
like she does on the street.
3.
He lives here, neighbor, drinks water
from my faucet through a hose to his camper,
eats pizza and drinks cokes at the corner.
His name is Ken and he doesn’t want an address,
doesn’t need an address.
He throws knives into a tree trunk
one after another after another.
They land in me. I am
powerless to do anything but watch.
4.
Helicopter hovers, buzzes the barranca.
Butterflies, kittens scatter. Windows, nerves
rattle. Fugitive out there, the policewoman says.
Later, my neighbor, his camper
various derelict vehicles gone.
Hose, cushions, odd socks remain.
Sun will rise on the lot tomorrow,
wake butterflies from homes in trees.
Earth waits for what washes up.
c. by Gwendolyn Alley aka Art Predator
Background: I wrote this poem not long after I moved into this house about the lot between my house and an abortion clinic. Activity in this lot and area at the time included prostitution, drug dealing, and illegal dumping.
I read this poem to the newly formed Midtown Community Council and got their support to clean up the lot. I wrote and received a grant to turn the vacant lot into a wildlife demonstration garden, and the community helped make it so. A Scout troup worked on hooking up my water to a drip irrigation system to get the plants going.
Ten years later, the two sycamores are large and beautiful, the shrubs have filled in, the wildflowers have naturalized, and the avian diversity has increased significantly. The abortion clinic has been torn down, and while there are plans afoot to develop the area into homes and they leveled the trees, they also intend to landscape with butterfly friendly plants, call it Paseo de Mariposa, and the city is turning their part of the adjoining land from a dump into a city park–all because of my visioning and advocacy. This poem and other writings I have done and shared in City Council and local media have changed the land here for the better.
This poem was published in ARTLIFE Limited Editions November 1998.
i dreamt a poem for you
I dreamt a poem for you.
The lines were meticulously rhythmical and fluffy.
I explained to you I used a comb to make them line up like so–
If you brush them the words get too riled up and unruly.
I showed this to you at my junior high where
my son was going to join the class of a teacher who
in real life was a bitch
her tests destroyed joy
she looked old when she was young
died of cancer before she got old.
In the dream she was youngest than me
miraculously beautiful and nice
advisor to the school blogging club.
I cannot remember the name of the brown boy
I met who was blogging there after school
who showed me his blog, so peaceful and blue.
Children outside line up for a Halloween parade and open mic.
The parade and open mic are one in the same.
Colorful painted costume boxes they wear serve as stages,
boxes which once housed couches, refrigerators, washer/dryers.
now hold children standing in their boxes, waiting.
Some hold their boxes up around their waists
their fingers lifting them up from underneath.
Some children leave their boxes resting on the ground
surrounding each in a colorful square.
All of the boxes are wildly painted, the children too
in loud colors which some might call garish, clashing.
The children chatter excitedly from their boxes:
moving and whirling they practice their poems.
These boxes do not contain or restrict the children,
but give a framework, a foundation
which they make their own.
The band starts up: tuba, drum, horns.
The parade moves forward.
The blogger boy and I follow along
our open laptops fold on our arms rest around our hips.
c. by Gwendolyn Alley aka Art Predator
Hayden Carruth 1921-2008
The Impossible Indispensibility of the Ars Poetica
by Hayden Carruth
But of course the poem is not an assertion. Do you see? When I wrote
That all my poems over the long years before I met you made you come true,
And that the poems for you since then have made you in yourself become more true,
I did not mean that the poems created or invented you. How many have foundered
In that sargasso! No, what I have been trying to say
Is that neither of the quaint immemorial views of poetry is adequate for us.
A poem is not an expression, nor is it an object. Yet it somewhat partakes of both. What a poem is
Is never to be known, for which I have learned to be grateful. But the aspect in which I see my own
Is as the act of love. The poem is a gift, a bestowal.
The poem is for us what instinct is for animals, a continuing and chiefly unthought corroboration of essence
(Thought thought, ours and the animals’, is still useful).
Why otherwise is the earliest always the most important, the formative? The Iliad, the Odyssey, the book of Genesis,
These were acts of Love, I mean deeply felt gestures, which continuously bestow upon us
What we are. And if I do not know which poem of mine
Was my earliest gift to you,
Except that it had to have been written about someone else,
Nevertheless it was the gesture accruing value to you, your essence, while you were still a child, and thereafter
Across all these years. And see how much
Has come from that first sonnet after our loving began, the one
That was a kiss, a gift, a bestowal. This is the paradigm of fecundity. I think the poem is not
Transparent, as some have said, nor a looking glass, as some have also said,
Yet it has a quality of disappearance
In its cage of visibility. It disperses among the words. It is a fluidity, a vapor, of love.
This, the instinctual, is what caused me to write, “Do you see?” instead of “Don’t you see?” in the first line
Of this poem, this loving treatise, which is what gives away the poem
And gives it all to you.
BIO: Hayden Carruth according to Poets.org
The Impossible Indispensibility of the Ars Poetica
by Hayden Carruth
Collected Shorter Poems 1946-1991 page 352
Copper Canyon Press 1992
winner of the National Book Crtiics Circle Award
His lines are so long, so voluptuous–I wonder if he wrote on legal pads sideways. I’ve tried to transcribe the lines accurately but when in doubt, he capitalized each new line.
August 3, 1921-September 29, 2008.
Among the 10 poets and writers he named in 1991 as having influenced his work and were his close friends, he named Raymond Carver, Wendell Berry, Galway Kinnell, Denise Levertov, Henry Rago, JV Cunningham, George Dennison, David Budbill, Adrienne Rich and Carolyn Kizer. A few of my favorite poems by Ray Carver and by Wendell Berry can be found on this blog.
Here’s a poem about Ray Carver by Hayden Carruth read by him in May 2008:
Here he reads one of his most well-known poems, “Emergency Haying” :
He described himself as “A duck blown out to sea and still squawking.” Fortunately, we can still hear him even when he’s flown farther than we can see him.
organic vs commercial produce: pay the price?
I buy organic as often as possible because produce grown organically is much easier on the earth. However, I often wonder whether it’s worth the extra money to get organic with regards to pesticide residue and for my family’s health, not just the Earth’s health.
One source for this kind of evaluative information is the Environmental Working Group. Its Web site lists 44 fruits and vegetables ranked by the amount of pesticide residue each contains and they offer a small wallet guide with the rankings. Knowing which fruits and vegetables have the most pesticides and which are cleanest can help you decide when to buy organic.
The EWG’s “dirty dozen” are peaches, apples, sweet bell peppers, celery, nectarines, strawberries, cherries, lettuce, grapes (imported), pears, spinach, and potatoes. The “cleanest 12″ are onions, avocados, sweet corn (frozen), pineapples, mangos, sweet peas (frozen), asparagus, kiwis, bananas, cabbage, broccoli, and eggplants.
Food for thought: The best choice for the health of your family and the planet may not be between organic and commercial, but local and exotic. The best choice is to purchase food produced locally by frequenting local farmers markets; even better to choose locally produced organic goods. We’re lucky here in Ventucky to live where the soil is some of the best in the world–the flood plain here is several miles deep–and to have generous weather with lots of sun, temperate days and the rare night of freezing weather. (Of course the region is essentially a desert with under 15” of annual rainfall a year!)
And a question for you: which presidential choice is going to support the health of the planet and your family?
And a few questions for me: how green is wine? which wines, red or white, are greener? does organic make that much of a difference–either for my health or the planet’s? which winery businesses and agricultural practices should I support with my purchases? how much does it really cost the planet to drink wines produced on another continent? what does it mean that imported grapes on the the dirty dozen list?
your address should be a time–3:15 Experiment Poem
08—06—08 315 am
your address should
always be a time
my house growing up
was 318
the longest address
would be 1259
any longer than this
your address would be too late
any higher
boggles the brain
it is unnecessary
for us to go on & on
distance is not timeless
distance could be measured
by minutes
if you needed more
numbers you could
go into seconds
1259:22 for
example or 1259:59
not sure how many
addresses would be
impacted for this
greater good
Malibu for example
or Mulholland
the numbers on the
addresses are just
too long.
We don’t need to be
taxing people in this
way with long addresses
when they could use
their time and brain power
on other more
important
details
like sleep &
dreaming
I have been transcribing my 3:15am poems from August 2008 to finish getting them up on the site. This is one of the stranger ones from this year.
2 More Kids Halloween Poems
My featured poets again this week are kids from my son’s class; last week, as you may recall, I posted “I Am A Scary Skeleton Pirate” and “I Am A Wicked Evil Gruesome Witch.” Then my son and I produced a video for “Skeleton Pirate” (here).
So today I offer, from a group of kindergarten and first grade girls, “I am a Vampire Candy Monster” and from a group of boys, “I am a Dark Black Werewolf with Piercing White Eyes” as well as drawings by two girls, “Halloween Picture” (above) and “Witches Writing in Witch Language” (below). Read more…
The Tattooed Lady
Tattooed Lady Broadside by Art Predator
Looking into my computer,
my face reflects back, screened.
Lines hint of past, future.
Questions cloud my vision–
where am I going?
can I write my way out?
It blankly answers me–
Not good. Not bad. Just is.
I hear the train but sit here still.
Gathering monarchs hang
cloaking green with gold.
Adorned like Lydia
The Tattooed Lady,
I grab Groucho and dance.
Let the birds catch the flies–
I’ll stay open for you.
I wrote this poem soon after moving in to this house as a renter; I subsequently bought it. Every fall monarch butterflies gather here, and stay until spring, at times filling the air of the barranca with orange and black dancers. Read more…
I AM A SCARY SMELLY SKELETON PIRATE: a new video!
The small boy and I put this video together over the weekend. We used the poem we’d written Thursday in his K-1 class with some of his pirate buddies, combined our call and response reading with audio sounds he liked, an image of Leo Carrillo State Beach near Mailbu by Jason Ward to set the scene, then added relevant images off the net to produce this project together.
If you share our video with your small pirates, please leave us a note in the comments box!
I am a scary smelly skeleton pirate: Halloween poems
I am a scary smelly skeleton pirate!
I wonder where the treasure is
I hear black rusty shooting fire cannonballs
and swords slapping
I see other English ships to get their treasure
I want treasure, a golden compass, and a gold ring
I am a scary smelly skeleton pirate!
I pretend to play swords with you
I feel my bones cracking
I touch the shark’s teeth
I worry about my pirate ship
and how it will disappear one day
I cry when my boat tips upside down
I am a scary smelly skeleton pirate!
I understand that I know that you can be killed
I say aye aye matey, I believe in ghosts
I never dream about black treasure
I try not to kill my pet octopus
I hope to be free
I am a scary smelly skeleton pirate
(NOTE: The small boy and I made a video of this poem and it’s up on youtube now!)
This morning I had a blast brainstorming four Halloween themed “I am” poems in small groups with my son’s K-1 class.
If you decide to share this or the poem which follows, please leave us a note telling us with whom and where!
The poem above was composed by four boys: Read more…
art predator 