fifty frenchmen can't be wrong (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
some_stars) wrote2009-09-10 03:54 pm
some_stars) wrote2009-09-10 03:54 pm
Entry tags:
(no subject)
i am currently in the most adorable little study carrel that ever there was. it makes me wish i was a grad student.
sadly/luckily there is no wireless here, so who knows when this will be posted.
--now i'm back in the regular study area, which has wireless access but so much less coziness. also, i probably will not write another four poems now that i have internet. SPEAKING OF, here are a few, hot off the griddle and riddled with bad parts:
The cats in Buenos Aires
Are much like the cats
Of other cities. They reside
In the cemetery, in the grass,
In the sunlight, by the gates where tourists enter.
The tombs are bedecked with them like jewels,
And they give devotion to the dead.
The cats are the gods of the dead, mangy gods,
Gods who lick my fingertips,
Rub their cheeks against my camera.
Show off their tails in sunshine.
The air smells like caramel. The necropolis rests
In the afternoon light, and sends cats to welcome me.
Seven waterfalls
You left early in the morning,
Down the trail that yesterday was bursting.
Motel key in your pocket. In two years,
You'll tear through New York City like you owned the place,
Twenty-one and in love, the way you get. Today,
This morning, early, the birdcalls still threading through the damp,
You walk more slowly. But you walk.
The construction is a marvel,
Scaffolding that kisses the cliff wall,
But modestly, maternally. The design is that
You stand hips pressed against the railing
You turn your head and the boards on which you are standing
Disappear, it all disappears, the boards and the rails,
The boats and the bootprints. The waterfalls are just the way you left them.
(Do you remember, you did that in Ireland too,
Hands and knees at the edge, narrowing your eyes--
The world could have been a thousand years old. The world
Was the water, and in Galveston, at night, you put your hand
To the side of your face and there was no motel,
No traffic, no glass shards, the moon was moving
On the face of the waters, pulling the sand into its arms,
The ocean rocking the earth like an infant. What you wanted
Then and now, is to stand
In one place, and watch the water,
For millions of years.)
Do you remember what led you here?
Have you ever known what leads you,
Through rain and fog and harder rain,
To call a place home in your heart
And your stomach, and your knees, when you've only just arrived?
One city pushes away, another one catches.
Do you wonder why you think of every place as mother?
This water pulls, this water is still.
What you remember and love is the water,
The movement of the water.
It was so early, the Indian women
Hadn't laid out their blankets.
It was so early in that morning
You began to sing.
You walk
Down halls
Off white
Wood pulp
That smell like garbage
Pushing the dolly with the twisted wheel
Leaving a trail of metal squawks behind you
Alone for the first time in six hours,
You consider yourself.
Out by the dumpsters
Is dark, but open air
And cold. Some nights you linger.
A man walks by
Is the worst way
I could possibly begin a poem.
Nevertheless a man did walk by,
Hunched tight, his parka rubbing at his ears,
And he was limping, and crying out my name.
His left foot dragged behind him like a plank.
His pants were stained, corduroy. He knew my secrets.
His eyes gleamed in the dusk-dark, almost golden.
He was carrying a plastic bag.
Or it was carrying him,
And it was limping, and calling me closer,
Heavy with old clothes and musk.
And the pavement was carrying him,
And the earth under the pavement, and the grass
By the side of the road carried him, the dandelions,
The buttercups, the grasshopper whips carried him
On their shoulders like a king.
He tried to climb down,
But they kept on marching.
As they passed, the moon nodded to me,
Making its courtesy, and carried him.
sadly/luckily there is no wireless here, so who knows when this will be posted.
--now i'm back in the regular study area, which has wireless access but so much less coziness. also, i probably will not write another four poems now that i have internet. SPEAKING OF, here are a few, hot off the griddle and riddled with bad parts:
The cats in Buenos Aires
Are much like the cats
Of other cities. They reside
In the cemetery, in the grass,
In the sunlight, by the gates where tourists enter.
The tombs are bedecked with them like jewels,
And they give devotion to the dead.
The cats are the gods of the dead, mangy gods,
Gods who lick my fingertips,
Rub their cheeks against my camera.
Show off their tails in sunshine.
The air smells like caramel. The necropolis rests
In the afternoon light, and sends cats to welcome me.
Seven waterfalls
You left early in the morning,
Down the trail that yesterday was bursting.
Motel key in your pocket. In two years,
You'll tear through New York City like you owned the place,
Twenty-one and in love, the way you get. Today,
This morning, early, the birdcalls still threading through the damp,
You walk more slowly. But you walk.
The construction is a marvel,
Scaffolding that kisses the cliff wall,
But modestly, maternally. The design is that
You stand hips pressed against the railing
You turn your head and the boards on which you are standing
Disappear, it all disappears, the boards and the rails,
The boats and the bootprints. The waterfalls are just the way you left them.
(Do you remember, you did that in Ireland too,
Hands and knees at the edge, narrowing your eyes--
The world could have been a thousand years old. The world
Was the water, and in Galveston, at night, you put your hand
To the side of your face and there was no motel,
No traffic, no glass shards, the moon was moving
On the face of the waters, pulling the sand into its arms,
The ocean rocking the earth like an infant. What you wanted
Then and now, is to stand
In one place, and watch the water,
For millions of years.)
Do you remember what led you here?
Have you ever known what leads you,
Through rain and fog and harder rain,
To call a place home in your heart
And your stomach, and your knees, when you've only just arrived?
One city pushes away, another one catches.
Do you wonder why you think of every place as mother?
This water pulls, this water is still.
What you remember and love is the water,
The movement of the water.
It was so early, the Indian women
Hadn't laid out their blankets.
It was so early in that morning
You began to sing.
You walk
Down halls
Off white
Wood pulp
That smell like garbage
Pushing the dolly with the twisted wheel
Leaving a trail of metal squawks behind you
Alone for the first time in six hours,
You consider yourself.
Out by the dumpsters
Is dark, but open air
And cold. Some nights you linger.
A man walks by
Is the worst way
I could possibly begin a poem.
Nevertheless a man did walk by,
Hunched tight, his parka rubbing at his ears,
And he was limping, and crying out my name.
His left foot dragged behind him like a plank.
His pants were stained, corduroy. He knew my secrets.
His eyes gleamed in the dusk-dark, almost golden.
He was carrying a plastic bag.
Or it was carrying him,
And it was limping, and calling me closer,
Heavy with old clothes and musk.
And the pavement was carrying him,
And the earth under the pavement, and the grass
By the side of the road carried him, the dandelions,
The buttercups, the grasshopper whips carried him
On their shoulders like a king.
He tried to climb down,
But they kept on marching.
As they passed, the moon nodded to me,
Making its courtesy, and carried him.