Blackfoot daisies, corydalis grace green pastures
springtime wonders
tiny blossoms of joy winking at an azure sky.
poetry
Blank, white paper
Blank, white paper
stares at me,
sitting here eating a
left over Subway sandwich,
reading Sky Bridge by
Laura Pritchett,
avoiding my writing commitment.
This book surprises me,
makes me think of my students,
some poor, trailer housed,
gun toting, hard scrabble,
simultaneously smart and ignorant.
Their idea of rich includes
any house over 2000 square feet,
stylish, elegant clothes, land.
My brain swirls thoughts, images:
What can it all mean, this life?
Joy, a hurting beauty?
Looking out the windows,
listening to the West Texas wind,
I ask myself again:
What can it all mean?
Teaching
Three students mad at other students:
in stream-of-conscious essay one
tells me,
“I want to punch ___T____ and ___J_____ in the face.”
Two others allude, avoid the overt.
I must “fix” this for them.
Senioritis.
Change
“If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past.” Spinoza
Christians went to the Holy Land
to claim it back. Crusades.
Moslems fought Moslems
Sunni against Shia
Sufis outcast or revered
Hafiz, Rumi
No middle ground
No compromise
Centuries gone
New technology
the only change.
No one learned
listened to the past
to the humane
voices in the wind.
Pain
She remembers nothing.
Head vibrates,
fingers tremble
heart thumps.
Her brain hangs on
one big thorn on a
mesquite tree.
She cannot cry,
looks at pestules on
dry, blotchy skin.
Her brain hangs on
one big thorn on a
mesquite tree.
She tries to remember.
Feet walk on
broken shards
eyes crimson,
silently cries.
Her brain hangs on
one big thorn on a
mesquite tree.
Sunday Haiku
Sun filters through junipers
wind whispers
mockingbirds sing mating songs.
Listening to a Band
Yesterday my second daughter arrived from Thailand. Biologically she is not my daughter, but rather my first exchange student six years ago. We have kept in touch over the years and she is now here with me for a month. Her best friend from high school here is also with us. Tonight we went to the Palace Coffee in Canyon, Texas, to listen to a trio because the band leader is a friend of the friend. This poem attempts to describe the music.
Long hair flying
except the drummer
Wild strumming
No picking
Guitar and bass
percussion not strings
Three percussion instruments
vibrating sound
until
suddenly
guitar becomes synthesizer
haunting, electronic
other dimensional.
Then
back to
three percussion instruments
vibrating sound
voices lost
Aging
Today’s contribution to the Tupelo Press 30/30 commitment:
Face can be lifted
Arms covered with long sleeves
Hands plumped with injections
Eyebrow and head hair dyed
You really know you are old
when your pubic hair turns grey.
Sunday Haiku
Mourning doves call at dawn
haunting echoes
I turn, drifting back to dreams.
Note: today is my birthday. Spent the day at a soccer tournament in Midland/Odessa watching my grandson play club soccer. Returned home to find, at last count, 82 birthday wishes on Facebook, greetings from all but two continents. Feeling grateful.
Hey poets, be good literary citizens. No more excuses.
This post reiterates advice I would give myself. Additionally, I would add something I wish I had known a year ago before my book of poetry was published. No one told me that most writing contests require unpublished work. If you want to enter poetry contests, enter before you publish. Many contests even include work published in blogs as previously published. I continue to hunt for contests that allow previously published work. It seems few exist. If any of you writers out there know about such a contest, please let me know.
With AWP (Association of Writers & Writing Programs) and National Poetry Month just around the corner, I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be a working poet. I’ve got a couple of projects in the works for the month of April (updates to come soon) but I keep coming back to a piece of advice I’m always giving my students, which is that poetry doesn’t occur in a vacuum. Poetry is about the poet but it’s also about the community where the poet lives and works.
Admittedly, the idea of community is constantly evolving. Your community can be your workplace, the local bookstore or coffee shop you frequent or your local library. However, community can also mean something much bigger, especially in the wake Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. I’ve blogged about my love affair with social media and the poetry world. This love centers around the fact that Facebook…
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