If you don’t get Poets.org’s Poem a Day, I suggest you check it out. Here’s a snippet from a new fave.
garden gate, NE portland
little moth
I do not think you’ll escape
this nightI do not think
you’ll escape this night
little moth*
bees in clover
summer half over
friends without lovers*
I bite a carrot
horsefly bites meview from my bedroom window
*
I thought it was you
moving through the treesbut it was the trees
I thought it was your finger
grazing my kneeit was the breeze
Ancient Theories
by Nick Lantz
A horse hair falls into the water and grows into an eel.Even Aristotle believed that frogs formed from mud, that mice sprouted like seedlings in the damp hay. I used to believe the world spoke in code. I lay awake and tried to parse the flashes of the streetlight— obscured, revealed, obscured by the wind-sprung tree.
Stranded with you at the Ferris wheel's apogee I learned the physics of desire—fixed at the center, it spins and goes nowhere. Pliny described eight-foot lobsters sunning themselves on the banks of the Ganges. The cuckoo devouring its foster mother. Bees alighting on Plato's young lips.
In the Andes, a lake disappears overnight, sucked through cracks in the earth. How can I explain the sunlight stippling your face in the early morning? Why not believe that the eye throws its own light, that seeing illuminates the world? On the moon, astronaut David Scott drops a hammer and a falcon feather, and we learn nothing we didn't already know.
Not sure how to spell “cat-a-corner” or knowing if it should be “kitty-corner” I embarked on a brief little journey into the history of how words change as roots disappear and become obsolete as pop culture takes over.
Did you know, for instance, that kitty-corner evolved from catty-corner, which evolved from catercorner? Catercorner was a compound word from the now outdated cater, which meant four. Four corners- get it? (I tried looking up the etymology of cater to no avail, though found a separate obsolete meaning, matching cater with the purveyor of foods.) The word finally makes sense to me, as I rarely see cats scuttling across streets, corner to corner. (They tend to prefer the safety of curbs.)
As it turns out, when the root of a word dies and loses it’s contemporary meaning, people often mistake that root for a different synonym. As such, asparagus became sparrow-grass in Europe. (Who knew that originally took its name from the Person asparag, meaning “sprout” or “shoot”? Fun little run-down on wikipedia.)
After digging around on some folk etymology history, here’s a few of my light favorites:
I’ve been alot of people already and found out I don’t know who I am. Can you tell me.
you’re a skater who loved to be hated, wanted to be a lover
and lusted after life. you’d nollie so high, you’d clear three moons
in one night. shit, you ate three pies to prove your eyes don’t shine
brighter than your belly- like the the world.
your eyes used to shine.
wanderlust
turned you into vagabond. fear
into vagrant. a vacant
soul your parking lot
you ride
concrete
til heat is eaten by night.
saturn gonna bring
you back.
from vacant.
vagrant.
vagabond. wanderlust.
wunderkind
lover.
ain’t no one going to tell you anything you don’t already know.
Tomorrow marks the start of National Poetry Writing Month, when folks gear up to write a poem a day for 30 days- 30/30. In preparation, I’ve stumbled upon and want to share an oldie and a goodie. By Richard Brautigan.
DECEMBER 30
At 1:03 in the morning a fart
smells like a marriage between
an avocado and a fish head.
I have to get out of bed
to write this down without
My glasses on.
Another one from the archives. 3.26.08. Funny how fast we grow and life changes in a year. Would be embarrassing if it weren’t honesty.
when i was 8 i wanted braces – i’d make my own with paper clips.
when i was 10 i wanted contacts – i’d suck on ice and put it in my eyes.
when i was 12 i wanted to be an alcoholic – and get caught, and have someone to fight with me, for me, love me, save me, hold me. instead i hid a bottle of whisky in the basement and counted bug bites and scars with my sister – we each wanted to have it worse off than the other.
at 12 i started smoking – under the bridge under a church, and cried when we got caught and lost our limousine ride.
at 12 i wanted, finally, boys instead of to be one, a boy – i wore showy clothes until a sketchy man followed us on a bus for days: she has a sweet ass. until we rode with mom who talked of target practice and our black belt tests and he never followed us again.
when i was 14 i wanted something to stand for: no war – beads in my hair, hacky sack circles, pot, green beret, red and blue lennon glasses. i’d smoke on the roof of the school and write my own basketball diaries.
when i was 16 i wanted to die, i lied. i wanted someone to discover me and find me worth loving, saving, holding, helping and tell me life would be ok. instead i found my sister and fought for my brothers.
at 28 i’m a perfectionist at 12 times 4 and want time to fu¢k up, with someone, a safety net, to catch me.
From the archives. 2.3.08
if i’d have known you as a Saguero, i’d have hunted for your flowers at night: suckled stamina, swam in scents, and kissed each sweetly good night – before they close in morning (for eternity?)
if i’d have known you as a Vampire, i’d have been seduced into the quagmire of dead love – dived from the tallest sky ledge: a gyring peregrine to battle blind bat – no blood required for a beatless heart.
if i’d known you as a Gladiator, i’d have given you an iron mask to bask in the crowd’s glory before watching you die.
if i’d known you as a Man, i’d have held your hand, your body and your mind: loved you in every particle and antiparticle, vast as sand and rings of saturn – and let go.
by Paul Otremba
I’ve tried to sift a truth finer than salt
from my mouth. It matters: I get upor I do not. The books can wait, leaves
burn themselves these days, and the daybegins or it does not. Now wingless,
a wasp masquerading as the sun crawls—
In my pursuit to revisit an anthology of poetry in the mornings, I read some scribbles that made me laugh. “- confessional poet – drown in abyss of self-pity”
And so I went on to read an excert from John Berryman’s The Dream Songs. It’s a good picker-upper for the start of any Portland day.
Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.
After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,
we ourselves flash and yearn,
and moreover y mther told me as a boy
(repeatingly) ‘Ever to confess you’re bored
means you have noInner Resources.’ I conclude now I have no
inner resources, because I am heavy bored.
Peoples bore me,
literature bores me, especially great literature,
Henry bores me, with his plights & gripes
as bad as achilles,who loves people and valiant art, which bores me.
And the tranquil hills, & gin, look like a drag
and somehow a dog
has taken itself & its tail considerably away
into mountains or sea or sky, leaving
behind: me, wag
Excerpt from The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry. After a quick search, I see they have another, newer, anthology with contemporary artists as well. And we all know my birthday is creeping up…
