Calliope Sounds

What a funhouse mirror is love
Our carnival act closed on a
Two bit train to another town
You the tattooed strong man mustachioed and bald
Vulnerable flesh concealed by
Sleeves of translucent dyes
Patterned scales and tribal offerings.

What was I but your Pagliacci
Sad clown to make you smile
Our tragedy a comic affair
Now that years have swept the last of
Cotton candied sweetness
From our sudden summer spectacle.

I look for you among lion tamers
And stilt-toting tall men
You the organ grinder
With your dance monkey dance
Who will play for me
When the train moves on?

More recent poems

Bibliophile

This one was put in a jacket
Binding cracked, chapter three now removable
As if its words, quite unnecessary
Could be dispensed of entirely
Dependent on the reader’s mood

These time-yellowed pages, a second skin
I admit much smoother than my own
She carries her own set of scars
A coffee stain on page seventy-three I could
Attribute to the dog but I’d be lying

Lines on margin notes
Small doodled stars and open
Circles perhaps she is
More pocked than I
The years I have studied her

Her form now safely shelved
This simple covering
Betrays not her condition
Both well worn
And well loved

------------------------------------------------

For L., now five years mine

Recumbent Anubis
Ears piqued to grasp the breath of a dying dream
Creases of skin and hair black as the dead of night
Black as the Nile soil from which you came
Jackal Terror Guardian at the Gate

Take this heart to the scales of Ma'at and weigh it
Is there truth enough in me
Love enough in these deeds

Mercy me Anubis
As I follow you through the dark
To the tombs of my Fathers
My Kings and my priests

Scavenge this remnant to the Kingdom of Osiris
Smile on me with feral eye
Something so familiar
My companion in this world
Guide in the next

------------------------

Creating Poetry - FNAR 6394

Last night our prompt was "today, I started..."

today I started shifting
like the sky in a storm
blue to gray and green even
darkening and darkening

did you see it when the light flashed?
my face a fury, the dream and its awakening
the bliss and the afterglow
the summit and the space from which once crested the summit can be seen

today I am a changeling
both a part of you and yet my own
I am a weed, a wild thing, dandelion
weave me in bracelets and bangles, tether me as you will
but I will not be beholding

-----------

What I'm reading:

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

by Seth Grahame-Smith










How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry

by Edward Hirsch

As Requested by Amo... or, how I found out I'm stronger than I ever knew

It's been a long time since I posted, cause you know... sometimes things get ROUGH. And when you're in the middle, you know nobody wants to hear the story yet. It's hard to even tell it because it's unfinished. You're in the bleak and you haven't yet learned the blessed lessons of the dark. But now, now I can see my way into the light. I'm not quite there but man, there's gonna be a brighter day (about this time next week, give or take a couple of days).

I'm moving. I know, I know... the last post was all about how I loved my neighborhood. And I still love this neighborhood. It's just the neighbors I'm not crazy about... specifically, the six-legged neighbors. About two months ago, the roaches started. I've got a mixture of German and Brown Banded cockroaches that have taken up residence in my apartment walls. No matter how many times I have tried to evict them, they still refuse to leave. I have resulted to open murder, hired professionals and in some cases, genocide-like warfare. Still they hang on.

So, I got out of my lease. I'm tucking my tail, packing my things - and only my things - and leaving. I'm heading about 3 miles North, so technically, still East Dallas. But, a better leasing company with a great reputation. I'm super excited, as you can imagine.

But I learned some things about myself in the midst of trial by roaches:

1. I can totally survive on the one meal a day I microwave at my office. The apartment has become a food-free zone. I'm sure this will change when I have a functional kitchen again, but it's a good exercise to live on less.
2. I have too many things. Too many things for roaches to crawl upon. So, in the process of packing, I have gotten rid of probably a third of my belongings. Thank you Goodwill and East Dallas Freecycling.
   
3. ...and probably most stunningly, I've had to take a hard look at my sense of entitlement... how many times I have cried out that I don't deserve to live like this. But - why not? What makes me better or more deserving of living without calamity?
   

Certainly, I don't want to, nor do I feel convicted to stay in the apartment with all of its excess tenants. That's not the point. But, maybe I can take with me this bit of humility. Surely, the three or four cockroaches I kill nearly everyday are not the worst thing I could experience. It's bad. And I won't soon forget these past two months... but ultimately, this is something I can and will live through, and something that will not alter the path of my life.

and further... I get to see most wonderful friends this weekend.
I get to hug necks and take zany pictures and love on friends I haven't seen in far too long.
does anything else really matter?

Brighter days are ahead, my friends.

I live in East Dallas.

Everyday I walk down streets that take me back in time.

tree-lined lanes that look like this:


it's like something caught up out of a dream
a movie set from a place that only exists in memory

Libby and I stroll down these streets near dawn each day and it's a blessing. It's nostalgia and hot cocoa and apple pies cooling on the windowsill. It's a dream and a wish held together and these kinds of neighborhoods aren't being built anymore. It's more than the clapboard and columns, the sidewalks set in off the road. It's wholesome and it makes me feel safe. I imagine the tenants feel safe, too. safe, and proud.

I live in a two bedroom apartment in a building out on Gaston and it's nothing like these - but I get to share in all this neighborhood offers because it's mine too.

This past week there was a murder in my neighborhood.
And I guess I share in that, too.
I share in the grief and the shock and the feelings of violation.
Aghast that someone could take the life of a harmless eccentric old man.

I understand maybe a little more why some of the homes are barred, though I'll always wish it didn't have to be that way. The truth is that simply because it's east doesn't make it any less dallas. and while one block looks as whimsical as Victor between Munger and Colette, the next block's homes have suffered unholy surgery; chopped into four and five unit apartments, unkempt and showing their age. and always the homeless are among us.

but it's such a great metaphor for all of us, I think - and that's maybe why I love it here so much. Parts of all of us are like a dream of something wholesome and sweet and homemade. and parts of all of us have been violated, or have aged without care. I'm in this neighborhood. I'm in the streets and the hillsides, in both the rotting clapboard and whitewashed window boxes full of pansies. I can see that even the most abandoned of homes was at once hope for the best life imaginable, a place where home and family and a piece of the american dream was all anybody ever really wanted anyway. It's caught up in the bones of these homes - good strong homes that will continue to line East Dallas long after I am gone. They whisper to me... that the dream is still alive.

...in which I am corny and talk about thankfulness and The Neverending Story

I suppose it's mostly during the rough times when I stop long enough to think about how good I've got it. Sure there have been a lot of tears and scary nights recently - but mostly it boils down to a lot of near misses and even though we've taken some hits, it seems most if not all of them will heal - given the right amount of time and treatment.

some things I'm thankful for, in no particular order (and by no means a complete list):

• I've got GREAT parents. Okay, okay - Dr. Spock or whatever parenting expert you want to poll might have frowned upon a few of their "unorthodox" methods and no they didn't always do everything right - but they're mine and I love them and I wouldn't trade a day I get to spend with them.
  
• my siblings are pretty keen, too. We don't hardly ever see each other and there are like a dozen or so years between me and them - but differences in time zones and age don't negate care. We've had more good phonecalls lately then I think we have in the last several years combined. ...and I like that. I think I'll try to be better about making regular calls to my brother and sister - 'cause I think they're pretty amazing individuals and I think maybe we're finally old enough to bridge some kind of substantial relationship.
• This day. Today, the people I love are still with me. I have wonderful and brilliant friends. I'm relatively healthy, as are those whom I love. and as long as these things remain true, each new day is a gift I want to hold out just for a moment and admire.

It makes me think of that scene near the end of The Neverending Story:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2noq4itRq3Y

...where the empress holds out the one remaining grain of sand, all that is left of Fantasia. Each day, each moment when all of our hopes and dreams are still alive - when the people we love are near - each moment is locked up in that glistening grain of sand and we hold it out and we build from there. If I have these things - I have all I need. I have all the world and all the vast possibilities in my open hand.

a poem

somewhere there is a poem
to inspire me
to breathe
this simple involuntary act that seems to require
so much effort
since the rains came

poem take my hand and teach me
the rhythms of getting through
the steps to cross over
a dance so holy as to rise above
take flight
take on
all the demons facing us
and fling them back to their
unearthly home

poem build in me a fire
whose embers will last
through this unyielding winter
flames to lick the sky and
laugh at its chill
enough smoke to signal some hope to those
who wait for our safe return

poem I know it's a lot to ask
but you have done it before
and I know
I know
together
we're gonna make it through


***

What I'm reading:

The Hunger Games
and
Catching Fire

by Suzanne Collins