Okir

“Ink in Middle Age”

Pym — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 23:29:12 +0000

Thanks to Richard Lopez for this poem, “Ink in Middle Age,” which he wrote in 2010

for jean vengua

drift thru the swift current like an anomaly of spirit

thinking yr tough begets the rough like watching enter the dragon

for the 15th time and just try to do a dropkick that pulls

you by the balls oh the comedy of age

tethered to an ipod the strut inspired by the cure’s ‘just like heaven’

—Richard Lopez

Filed under: Uncategorized

The State of Narrative

Pym — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 17:06:56 +0000

humans
blooming
pretexts

Filed under: Dashboard poems

Saturday

Pym — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 22:51:21 +0000



John Sayles "intimate" interview

the staying power

    of intimate things; a deer I thought

of miniature adult size

                          appears like a small

fox bounding;

but foxes don't bound,

they pad silently across the field
videos

          awake in the morning,

eyes open

             first thing, the mind reviews

the peer editing process

what is that...?     
       details are not just

    text but echoed in the leaves
outside, yesterday's rosebush
ferocious living things, liveliness while

throws of death

     thorns of fletching green

     ripen then pruned down

                                but always

in the middle of it

look around and the very dirt...

sweep it up, the cut branches

lest we hurt

                       bare feet
on the living, dying points

wound down to roots;

         things grow on me

anyway

        while the collapsible

rides the collective;

     flicker in

cartoons: Nast, McKinley's

squalling black babe

   "I walked the White House floor"

night after night," alright

              and the voice of God

LORD

       lord lord lord.
"and it came to me this way"
(oh GOD the dream's voice--

Jane Wyman's,

         mimicking the first

hard phrase heard from an adult

mouth,

        as if from a great distance--

                      as a child)
but now

cranking out

                    mornings

mind goes forth

Filed under: Dashboard poems, Diaryo (poems)

Messenger

Pym — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 09:32:25 +0000

I don’t have to
explain and won’t.
Blur of worlds
or words or trees
flashing in the eye
light. The cactus

moving a slender
mouse ear during
earthquake weather.
Idioms are hard-won
language, better to
speak you with, you

in your hoodie and
your messenger
complex. This is
going nowhere, and
must (will) stop here.

Filed under: Dashboard poems

Break

Pym — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 06:46:45 +0000

Some outcome. In
the middle
of my second
(third?) part-time
gig, I break
for a poem

and shuffle
internally to
dance of the
yoyos, blear-
eyed and yet
still affixed
to this damned
screen

Filed under: Dashboard poems

Back from Vertigo

Pym — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 01:59:11 +0000

We’re back from Vertigo
What a dank day, and the coffee
grinder was loud; but I’m not
unhappy. There are poems,

for example. And Hitchcock’s
black birds score the wires
above Vertigo and dot
the naked pepper trees.

Plucking dry, pink pepper
berries off the trees
in summer–remember that?

biting them.

Filed under: Dashboard poems

The Outcomes

Pym — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 12:37:43 +0000

Working on the outcomes
is like cheating on a life,
making the cells align
text left-to-right. But
then, there are frogs
and weather. Tornadoes.
Cakes that fail.

I was searching for
a door in the hedge.
You came out of a tree
on your way to a cul-
de-sac. I asked you
a question; you answered.

Filed under: Dashboard poems

Chocolate Ganache

Pym — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 06:23:06 +0000

Quiet air, hard frost.
A ganache is forever,
Silly thing. Soft corners,
drizzle, and cordite. Two
glasses. Three words. Ships
on fire. The end of a storm.
Self (ho hum) importance
floating on a sea
of cream.

Filed under: Dashboard poems

Eclipse

Pym — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 06:19:02 +0000

Cold grass the kissing session infirmities;

the dog’s drug-induced thirst. Moon struck

yogurt halo. Sour puss. “L St. Laundry.

“Nosotros Repasamas La Ropa Gratis.”

Shadow of my inhaler darkens the last

paragraph of a column. Wait for death

(own it) someday. And occasionally hate

myself. Love waxes wanes always returns.

Filed under: Dashboard poems

More APIA Presentation Notes

Pym — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 08:48:03 +0000

Reading Eileen’s presentation notes for the Bay Area APIA Poetics and the Avant Garde. As is often the case, results of participating in a panel like this–involving a handful of other poets and artists–slowly percolate out in the days, weeks, and months following. I could summarize, but I know that my thoughts will focus on one thing, and then later another. My own presentation felt like a mish-mash of thoughts, manuscript notes, and poem excerpts pulled together out of the blue.

But I know that certain words, fragments of phrases, images, stood out as moments and ideas I’d like to remember. Eileen’s emphasis on a poetics of listening [to others--connecting with loob, I'm thinking], for example, over even the idea that experimentalism in poetry should be introduced in classes. Truong Tran’s mention of his mother’s ability to translate a dress found in a store to an exact pattern, to her own creation of the dress; the physicality of both Truong Tran’s neural memories of folding patterns for his boxes, and Jai Arun Ravine’s poetry of movement and satire, Margaret Rhee’s complex thinking, exploring through the terms and the rifts, her sense of finding community among artists. And Barbara Jane’s questioning mode, which seems at times to be her poetics, even beyond the panel setting.

As for myself–if I stop to listen to myself once in awhile…I realize that my brief mention in my talk of being “older” was something said not just in passing–but something I want to think about more–”older” as a state of thinking/feeling as well as being, questioning, exploring–”queering” even–the term Rhee brought up. The juxtaposition of “older” to “avant garde” sounds ironic. Maybe it’s my response to the ideas (Burger, Greenberg, the Frankfurt School) that the latter movement was adopted by the modernists as a manifestation of the obsession with youth, newness, novel commodities. What voice am I listening to that tells me that as one gets older, one can claim only a “past” and not a future? Aren’t “history” and “future” products of the imagination, as well as, acts that produce real effects?

Beginning, middle, and completion. When has anything in my life ever felt completed? Not even sex completes us. Not even death completes us. Each life and death is an opening–a wound and a portal. We all leave with many questions unanswered.

Still, as a poet, I have to claim it all–”past, present, and future;” the self, and selves that the term,loob, seems to encompass so well. Otherwise, I will have thrown away the key.

P.S. And I had my chocolate ganache, too.

Filed under: Poetry News