A Review (Kinda) of David Bowie's Blackstar (Who Am I Kidding? It's a Poem)

My great friend Nick Zaino has a cool website called The Department of Tangents wherein he writes music and horror film reviews and publishes comedy interviews.

Nick put out a call for friends and colleagues to write music reviews of records he missed in 2016. I said oh! I could write a review of David Bowie’s Blackstar! As I have been listening to it on a continuous loop for the entire year! And Nick responded great, yes!

I sat down to pen my review and realized I had no idea what to write. What was I thinking? So I wrote a poem instead. And Nick, lovely soul that he is, indulged me and published my poem right alongside the words of folks who obviously know how to write a record review.

Take a peek for my original poem. And explore The Department of Tangents, which is chock full of fascinating items (including interviews with literally every comedian you can name, for real). Happy New Year!

What Nick Missed in 2016, including a poem about Blackstar by Marian

What I Learned in the Orchard

I watched an old man

pruning apple trees in December

laddered during snowfall

straining for the farthest branch

and realized I had not considered

that quickening is a year-round

lifelong commitment to growth

through paring back

So you

bygone year of want

you my bygone sister

buried expectations

in awful post-truth

It’s snowing

Still I ascend the highest rung

and start cutting

limbs leggily reaching for sun

because flowering requires tending

brings fruit for sustenance

and only now have I learned

what fruit from labor really means

That man has taught me a few things

For Mama Zen’s Words Count in the Imaginary Garden. My poem went long but I beg forgiveness as frankly that never happens! :)

Rattled

So the longest darkest night

already came and went

the lowest Fahrenheit mark

accomplished last year

sooty depths of insecurity

experienced under a waxing moon

in a long-ago bone season

so we don’t have to worry anymore

File them all away

alongside the giddiest infatuation

scatterings of September chicory

sweet balsamic on the tongue

baby-milk breath

dust suspended in long sienna rays

all just under the surface

for retrieving in discomfiting times

Sharing with the Real Toads on the Tuesday Platform, typically late but at least I wrote something! *cheer*

Unpresidented

Verily

He proclaims

Unprecedented

Is this time

Great again

Soulless prevarication

From he who cries Wolf

Micro-poetry in the Imaginary Garden

Fugitive Justice

Preturnaturally

weepy eyes cloud glass

blurring troth for triumph

nothing to be realized

at half-light

Minor-chord score

obscures understanding

in endless gloaming

all the sad songs are so sad

the dark places pitch-dark

Books, Books, Books

Poetry books make beautiful gifts. Get them from me directly for holiday discount: $10 for one, $15 for two, or $20 (plus shipping) for all three. Signed with hearts and flowers by yours truly, and each includes a very cool bookmark. Hit me up in the comments or email me at runawaysentence@gmail.com. Superheroic verse is always in season!

Eating Crow

A protest of crows

met at the Sunoco

sending contingents

across Armory Street

American crows

in a tumult

cawing news

of fumbled rebellion

more ignominy than murder

more sorrow than resistance

Sharing at The Tuesday Platform in the Imaginary Garden.

Ukiyo-e

by Siv Cedering

What explanation is given for the phosphorus light
That you, as boy, went out to catch
When summer dusk turned to night?
You caught the fireflies, put them in a jar,
Careful to let in some air,
Then you fed them dandelions, unsure
Of what such small and fleeting things
Need, and when
Their light grew dim, you
    Let them go.

There is no explanation for the fire
That burns in our bodies
Or the desire the grows, again and again,
So that we must move toward each other 
In the dark.
We have no wings.
We are ordinary people, doing ordinary things.
The story can be told on rice paper.
There is a lantern, a mountain, whatever
    We can remember.

Hiroshige's landscape is so soft.
What child, woman, would not want to go out
Into that dark, and be caught,
And caught again, by you?
I want these pictures of the floating world
To go on, but when
The light begins to dim, catch me.
Give me whatever a child imagines
To keep me aglow, then
    Let me go.

Siv Cedering, from Letters from the Floating World: New and Selected Poems (1984: University of Pittsburgh Press). 

Sharing in the Imaginary Garden today for Brendan's prompt: STILL POINTS. Was reading and came across this, one of my favorite poems, and thought to share as I found it comforting.

Siv Cedering was a visiting poet when I was in college. I enrolled in every poetry writing seminar she offered. Siv was brilliant, feisty, beautiful, passionate. I can still hear her voice reading her poems, I can see her throw her head back, that mane of hair, her laugh. She influenced me enormously. She helped me learn and use my words, really to come into myself.

Important to Read and Be Vigilant

Friends. I am not okay, we are not okay, this is not okay. Our nation and our globe are in trouble.

Our mountain was defiled with horrendous racist, anti-Semitic, pro-Trump graffiti. Here in wacky hyper-liberal western Massachusetts, one of the blue-est states. People of color, Blacks, Muslims, women, gay people, people in the sights of Trump and his followers have been harassed, yelled at, grabbed, assaulted, wronged in every way this week all over the USA.

Am sorting through thoughts and feelings. I've been thinking about the vast human capacity to normalize and incorporate pain and trauma, and how that is playing out in our nation, our world, and in my own brain and heart.

This article is really important and I hope everyone will read it and be vigilant:

Autocracy: Rules for Survival by Masha Gessen, New York Review of Books

Save it and read again when you find yourselves (as I do and will) going on as usual with a new normal. "Whenever you find yourself thinking, or hear others claiming, that he is exaggerating, that is our innate tendency to reach for a rationalization. This will happen often: humans seem to have evolved to practice denial when confronted publicly with the unacceptable."

Love, M.

In These Times

Hindsight

is really something

with its unerring wisdom

forever on the hips

hauled around

like so much lading

though happier tossed off

without settling the bill.

You carry yours on a chain

in a back-pocket wallet,

mine’s stowed

behind a gold crown,

left mandibular rear molar,

which is how my family

will know me when I’m gone.

We did not anticipate

the cutting

cunning of enemies,

the force of greed.

Our money’s no good now,

our children dispossessed:

We did not account for this.

For Grapeling’s prompt to the Real Toads: What Fresh Hell Is This?

Trick or Treat

At Halloween, you wax poetic

on roaming packs of kids frenetic

trick or treating, gorging chocolate,

razor blades be damned. You'd walk

and run and roam the streets,

bands of ghouls on tireless feet,

laughing, shrieking, no cell phone

so no one told you to come home.

Now you watch your kids. No daring,

urging them to please be caring.

Don’t slip & fall! Please & thank-you

no matter what those people gave you,

thanks for pencils, teensy toys--

act like you are overjoyed.

Be polite, please, and be safe.

On sidewalks, parents congregate

Hovering over progeny,

protecting them from everything.

Meet your neighbors on Halloween!

Friendly chatter, then never seen

again until this time next year.

You’ll re-introduce then, never fear.

Retreat into your house again,

reflect on childhood now, and then.

Re-sharing this truthy poem from a couple years back. Happy Halloween!

Spock Just Read Your Work

Forgive Me

But I am not finished thanking Anita Hill.

I remember standing in the student lounge

in a crowd

my first year of law school.

I remember her suit,

her posture,

her clear voice,

the wave of heat flooding my face

as I thought that's what it’s called?

I remember the wave of shame,

trembling,

and righteous indignation.

I remember my senator,

Arlen Specter,

who interrogated her and mocked her.

They confirmed him anyway,

threw her away.

She was disposable,

as I had been.

I remember being young and bright,

just out of college,

but I was disposable,

used and thrown away for another's pleasure.

Oh, Thurgood Marshall,

that was the year of my going crazy.

Re-worked and reprised older poem that seems topical. I think it’s new and improved! Am sharing with the Real Toads on the Tuesday Platform... on Wednesday, naturally.

GAWF 2016!

Last night at the Greenfield Annual Word Festival: 6 stages of spoken word wonderfulness, presented by Paul Richmond of Human Error Publishing. The goodness!

A Girl's Life

A girl’s life

     is lived

        in clouds

           like mountains

         behind mountains

  in browns

         behind reds

                used to be

                greens

  on rungs

atop stairs

  to catwalks

      run by dogs

             wolf-whistling

      hands up

                  her skirts

            upside

                      her mouth

Reading in Emily's House

I was privileged to read my poems for an audience in Emily Dickinson’s house last night.

Yes, that Emily Dickinson.

Still pinching myself this morning. Which resulted in this:

And this:

So much love for my Florence Poets Society comrades.

Thank you to the Emily Dickinson Museum for the opportunity to read.

And much love to wonderful poet and friend Maggie Butler, from whom I received quite a shock (as I thought she was across the ocean from Amherst, at home in Dublin) and several hugs.

Hot Water

Throw

that poem in the trash

the one that makes your lip curl

like it actually stinks

rancid words radiating

off you so intensely

just from spending a little time

with that damn poem

that you’re compelled to strip down

and launder its words

in hot water

which is where that poem came from

anyway

Flash 55 Plus for Real Toads!

Rocket Ships

Rocket ships

are exciting

but so are roses

on a birthday.

      -- Leonard Nimoy

Roses deliver

but so does a chicory spray

sweaty-gripped

by a toddler

Diamonds excite

but so do love songs

scrawled in chalk

across blackboard sky

Love's lyric

needs no byline

when adorned with adjectives

tattooed above the heart

The etymology

of our love affair

can be traced from the air

like cropmarks

Today is the 50th anniversary of the Star Trek original series! This is cause for celebration at my house. I wrote this poem a couple years ago, I think before Leonard Nimoy passed away. It is published in my most recent book, Heart Container. Live long and prosper!

Pass

Shriek of blue jays

and a good ole American crow

woke me on Labor Day

dropping the flag on next season.

I could cry.

It’s just too fast,

the passing of plays. Just unfair,

half-time of my half-century

arriving as I still resist adjusting.

Not ready yet for cheerleaders,

courting by a chorus of crows.

Flash 55 in the Imaginary Garden!