Don’t beat your head
against the dead tree:
the sun will not return
any faster; rather, mind
the insects spilling out—
proof that an empty purse
may yet have currency
left over in the lining.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Dear one, anxious again about arrival—
do not be disheartened by the appearance
of yet another detour: that there is road work
suggests this path has not been abandoned yet,
or that it is time to look more closely
at the establishments that line this section
of the map— Not everyone perhaps is an hija
de puta, a heartless bruja, a bitch only waiting
to trip you up or put you in what she assumes
is your place. So she was born with a silver
spoon in her mouth, a blingety-bling in her nose
ring, her father’s stocks to cover her precious
behind? Ya qué? Remember what your grand-
father used to say about their kind: just close
your eyes and think about all the ugly and unkind,
all the beautiful, snooty ones who live in their cold,
drafty mansions with no one to love, no one who loves
them back except for the miserly crumb of a saltine
cracker beside their bag of tea; and think about
how everyone on this earth is reduced to that common
denominator of skin beneath these artificial layers,
how the fat around the waist dimples then folds
as the body strains on the pot to expel its daily
load of crap— Take a look around and see who else
is on this pilgrimage: you’d be surprised at how many
are inching along, making clearings, hefting their dollar-
store supplies, their thrift store finds, their non-
designer bags filled with an assortment of viable dreams.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Sposalizio
In the night, yellow
bloom of a witch hazel
caught
in the architecture
of ice—
I can see you,
your furled banners,
your rings
of startling gold,
the city streets
swept clean
of the usual traffic;
the heart its own
edifice
thrust
into open space.
In response to Via Negativa: Learning from the Ice.
Breviary
I tried to teach the children
about prayer, that discourse
similar to poetry: except I too
find it often difficult to make
my way to that door cloaked
in the rotten hedges, its wood
smelling faintly of apples,
its many branching tunnels leading
back and back to the stumbling self—
In response to Via Negativa: Workshop.
With “Trauermantel,” Swoon completes Luisa Igloria videopoem triptych
Just up at Swoon’s website and Moving Poems: Trauermantel, the third of three videopoems Marc Neys (Swoon) has made with texts and readings by Via Negativa’s daily poetry blogger extraordinaire, Luisa A. Igloria. He writes:
People who have been following my works a bit, know I have a thing with artworks in a triptych.
When Luisa approached me to make a video for one of the poems in her book “The Saints of Streets“, I was not thinking triptych.
Yet Luisa sent me several recordings and as it happens I liked her poems (and her readings for that matter) a lot. So in the end I made three videopoems (Mortal Ghazal and Oir) and because of her voice and her style these do belong together. To me anyway.
The trauermantel is the same species of butterfly known as mourning cloak in North American and Camberwell beauty in Britain. Luisa’s poem originally appeared here on May 28, 2011, sparked by a post at The Morning Porch:
A mourning cloak butterfly circles the porch and yard three times, going behind my chair, including me in whatever it means to outline.
Marc goes on to say:
I wanted light, colours and an abstract spirit like feel for this one.
Only at the end of the video (after the poem) I come up with a concrete image.
These images are also my first attempt to create something of an animated sequence. The image of the butterfly was made by Katrijn Clemer using the outlines of a real Trauermantel and one of the faces of the video for Oir.
You can watch all the videopoems that have been made with Luisa’s poetry so far at her page on Moving Poems.
Dear spurred and caruncled one in the grass,
don’t stand uncertain in the cold dry field
looking up at gathering rainclouds where the wind
could untie your snood or ruffle your wattle. Don’t
open your mouth and drown in the rain. Don’t streak
the black, hairlike feathers on your breast with tears
or thickened gravy, don’t get so worked up to change
the colors on your head— Don’t worry about what
might be moving in the bushes, closing in from
a hundred yards away— You had ten million years
to get to this moment, you might as well go out
in a beaded flapper dress, doing the turkey trot.
Don’t watch anything except in high definition
color, because at night everything turns black.
And when you go to bed in the trees, don’t
startle at the first plaintive call, don’t
have a random heart attack; don’t let any
little thing keep you from clicking.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
We two who are ever wooing
spool the cool and hot
of our desire down through
the centuries, that sweet bed
of winding sheets where we
long to lay our heads—
In response to Via Negativa: Courtship.
Carpenter, make a door into my life:
make me a tunnel more ample than the width
of the one I’ve wormed through with nothing
more than my shoulders scraping against
sediment and shale. Make me a flying
buttress so the roof of the earth
holds up and my breaths
ricochet past their fear
of the unseen—
Make me a trowel light
enough for my hand: down here
nights are velvet or animal
fur, flecked with metal
or dormant fire. And if
I touched the flint
of its pewter
to the gallery’s edge,
I might find the chink
in stone, the spring
hidden in plain sight;
I might find the lever
and the toothed guardian
asleep on the landing, the gate
beyond open to the garden
where the moon hangs like a lost-
and-found earring, a sickle,
an ornament, a pear—
In response to Via Negativa: Commission.
Monsoon
Mist turns to rain, then windows
curtain with fog.
Months of watching doorways
grow ruffs of green, fronds
dimpling the wood. We unroll
parchment on the table, take out
our inks and instruments. One of us
climbs to the roof with a spyglass,
calls out the shapes of islands
emerging from the dark.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Common Lot
Shoes for the shoeless, clothes for the naked; sand for the floor, cloud for tarp. Sheathed in black latex, elbow to elbow, thigh to thigh. No room to swerve, no more emergency lanes. Turn off your blinkers, take down the signs. Say little, or say much: all of it will be appropriate. (Just not the politician’s face on stickers, adorning grocery bags.) Neat rows, stacked, like in a capsule hotel. But there are no room numbers, no keys; no luggage to stash behind the welcome counter, no one to answer to the dinner bell.
In response to Via Negativa: Geomancy.