Elegy
SUNDAY POEM
ELEGY
When I bend and bind
squeeze my soul into narrow shoes,
deck it out in gaudy hues
of other people’s clothing;
when I alter my inherent shape, strut
through attenuated alleyways of dialectic,
I lose you, crumble. I know
you are in me but I cannot reach you
in the rubble of my ignorance.
Such loneliness engulfs me
then, not all the soft-voiced friends, sultry
gongs of lust and wine assuage.
I am orphaned,
a lover bereft, a leather-shod beast without
breath, a vast homesick wail
in the wilderness.
I am homesick.
…………………………………………………………………..
As always, I’d love to hear your poems in Comments. Let’s celebrate the poetry of our hearts together.
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Hiro, your poem spoke to my heart, I read it over a few times so it could roll over me. I want to remind myself about NOT bending and binding.
I recently wrote a poem about poetry in a Julie Jordan Scott teleclass – which I’ll share here. Thanks for this opportunity to share our words!!
Poetry is…
Poetry is?
the quiet inside?
mindfulness.
Awareness as line-drawing.
Emotion turned over, lifted – examined?
like carved crystal.
Sit-down, heart-felt, kitchen-table,?
hand-holding, heart-pouring
Community
Communication
Connection.
Oh, Karen, thank you for sharing your poem. Connection, communication, community…I wish you all three.
How I adore coming here (I look forward to your poetry Sundays, Hiro) to find Karen posting something from our recent Writer’s Playdate! How perfect!
The poem I will share not necessarily for the faint of heart. It is my most recent, just being born last night.
It is called Unbirth and feels a match for Elegy.
I have given birth five times or rather
Given birth to life three times
Passed objects of conception once
And given birth-death on a cold
February night when the car was an
hour from the hospital once
I held her, Birth-Death, in the sacred space
between my legs,
She rested there as I held her rubber like body
It felt like she fought it, once more, briefly
Her life force trying to spring back into my womb,
The safe place she practiced living until
the coiled cord, the coiled death device
Yanked her still warm yet oddly freezing
little self towards my cavern womb cradle
Why do I still need to write this twenty years later?
Do I somehow feel it justifies my failings now?
Do I somehow think I can hide behind what
I haven’t been able to do now with what I wasn’t
able to do then?
Must I relive those moments that I fell, tumbling,
somersaulting, arms flailing, mouth silently screaming
into that morbid Mother-without-a-child place
that still born place I share with her and him and them
and you and her, too – of beautiful voluptuary poetry, too?
She has toured that vile, revisited far too often place
and no, I will not turn to my phone and
no, I will not answer your text and
no, I will not go anywhere I don’t want to go
or do anything I don’t want to do while
my heart sits, aching, in my chest-platter
longing for a soul-holder to cradle me
and let my tears fall where they may
without it becoming a battle for
“my shit is bigger and badder and
more painful than your shit” because
you know what? I hate that shit or
worse and brimming over with truth yet,
I am bored to tears of that shit -
I feel the need to give birth to
whatever this gelatinous blob
feeling that pulses in the center
of my gut is – and burst
it out of me so I can
get on with my life.
Ah, Julie, thank you for this raw, aching, wonderful poem.
Peace.
I’ve been itching to steal some time for something longer than haiku. Your poem spoke of some things I needed to dwell upon (pun intended); thank you for the invitation to share.
(The “you” below is not specific to you, although your poem helped make clear to me what I wanted to say to her/him. And the ending isn’t where I expected to go – I may well revisit and reframe it later – but it’s the best I can do tonight.)
FOUNTAIN
By my side, a sailor spits
because I cannot offer wine instead of water.
A few feet away, a pastor casts
a penny upon me, praying for
a return of loaves and fishes.
A bartender sits on my rim and sighs
because it is not a chair on a beach.
A farmer frowns at my pointlessness,
her crops thirstily thin and sad
while I merrily water stone.
No matter how fiercely
your palms push at my arcs,
I cannot undo the walls that define me,
or hold back the outpour
that forms my very shape and song.
No matter which deserts
have seared and scoured you,
I cannot turn myself
into the whispers of rain
or the sweet heat of ripening grapes
but oh, to give you what I can –
splashings of light,
a rinse of chimes,
a thousand mirrors within the kiss
of water to steel and stone —
I cannot bestow upon you
more than what I am
yet for a non-elusive grace — a ready
witness to mundane joys, a murmured
echoing of tears — for even that,
some would sell their souls to touch:
I offer you that little and that much.
~ m.
Mechaieh, wow. There’s so much rich gorgeousness in this poem…I’ll drink from it for a long, long while.
Julie, love “seeing” you here! And (as I more crudely noted before – grin) your poem touches me!
Mechaieh, Fountain blew me away! I started to copy and paste the lines that struck me most, to thank you for them and tell you what/why/how they grabbed me — the first one is: “I offer you that little and that much.”
But there’s no point – I’d be copying and pasting the entire poem! I’ve copied Fountain to my desktop to read and reread and reread. Thank you for this!!
And Hiro, thank you so much for Sunday Poem!!!
Hi Karen –
The “NOT a self-portrait” subject line was a pre-emptive barrier against shoes, to be honest. I’d like to think of myself as a fountain, but I’ve failed people by being unavailable or self-absorbed — to push the metaphor, by being more akin to one of those water-fountains where the water dribbles out too close to the spout to provide relief to anyone.
And some of those people read the blog, so the subject line was a nod to them: Yes, it’s a huge claim. Yes, I’m aware I’m not there yet. (I struggled a lot with the last five lines; it was only after I mentally drafted the disclaimer that I could coax the “hubris, much?” monster off my shoulder and into its hammock. *rueful smile*)
Having said all that — thank you so much for your generous response both there and here to my words. I’m very, very pleased they connected with you. Take care.
Yay! Lovely to share the communion of poetry with all of you. Thanks so much for posting.