Burden remembrance

NaPoWriMo day 3 - writing a "glosa," a poem that explains or responds to another poem. It takes one section of and responds line by line, often including that line in what is newly written. Sounds complicated...let's see how this goes. 

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"Two feet of snow at my parents' place, in another season.

Here, the cicadas sing like Christian women's choirs

in a disused cotton mill. Belief is a kind of weather.

I haven't seen proper snow for three years."

 - Erik Kennedy, Letters From the Estuary

The mind wanders freely, to a time when it couldn't. 

When it was tethered to tired, creaky, cement-covered hands.

Sealing up cracks in the foundation, doors slammed shut by

two feet of snow at my parent's place, in another season.

Now it sees more, processes at a constructive pace.

Beams come in and filter out - an awoken landscape

where all life is an ocean's surface, trapped in wet heat.

Here, the cicadas sing like Christian women's choirs.

But still the evenings buzz, far too fast to understand.

A thought and a wish and a hope, flung high and low,

eyes cast about like the dizzying spell of a hurricane

in a disused cotton mill. Belief is a kind of weather. 

Morning draws it to the umbrellas drying at the door,

the first warning of weight left ahead and behind.

Then, in a late afternoon's dream, it comes to me:

I haven't seen proper snow in three years.

Inenodable

National Poetry Writing Month, day 2. A poem based on a word from this Twitter account, devoted to "obscure and interesting English words." I scrolled for a while and then found "inenodable," which refers to something that cannot be untied.

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Remove the heart.

Let it live on it's own

for a short while.

Become invulnerable.

Let it pay rent

and shop at the market

and talk about the weather.

Let it exist apart 

from a binding cage.

Sustain irreverance.

Meet it for coffee

on Saturday mornings

and gobble up

the ghosts of your past

between sips of 

vanilla latte.

Musn't weaken.

Drive together to

a snowy mountain

and remark on scenery - 

there must be meaning

in an avalanche.

Withering still.

Open wide now,

it craves a safe return,

it craves a cage.

The cage is empty 

without it. 

An afternoon's adjournment

Mark this as my latest attempt to reactivate the creative parts of my brain. Will try to stay with the NaPoWriMo schedule of one poem per day for the month of April. This is for Day 1, writing a prose poem that is a story about the body. 

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Her mind drifts in uncatchable threads, each cast to a flowing

river of thought and drowned in rapids some moments later. 

But this gives her no pause - it feels mostly necessary at the 

end of a day like this one. Meetings, and meetings, and also

meetings, until a red, blinking laptop battery reflected her own.

It blinks ever onward now, peering from her bag in the seat

beside her. There is no solace in the cold glass of the train car - 

it bounces her head back and forth until she comes away with

an embarrassing red mark. She rubs it gently, hoping her stop

comes before the ticket taker. She rests her elbow on the ledge,

and her cheek in her hand - perhaps finally, the familiarity

of her own skin can calm this torrent of actions and ideas that

threatens to leak out her eardrums. Now the vibrations are cast

between wheels and track, between train car and humerus, 

and up her arm until they seem to counteract the frenzy in 

her brain. "Ma'am, I'm sorry but we've reached the end of the line."

She'd forgotten where she was. "What?" An uninterested face

stares at her from the front of the car. "You need to get off now,

this train's going back to the yard." The fog stays with her as

she gathers her things and disembarks. She finds the nearest

bench and sits. Her laptop blinks at her. It's too quiet here. 

Cancellation of a fever dream

a slow rhythmic drone

fleshes out a technicolor ribcage

until trapped lungs bleat for freedom

and the nerves drift from the body

a forest learning to flee

from a quietly pixilating soul

that spent too long throwing spaghetti

and forgot it needed to feed

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Playing on YouTube at this very moment:

Sun Ra Arkestra, Seductive Fantasty (the inspiration for this poem)