Category: poems

I found this haiku from…February? March? on a post-it while I was cleaning.

vista through
tattered blackberry bramble
green and sandtrap

smell of Christmas in March
the fir boughs cut and gathered
by orange dozers

(they’re cutting down one of the micro-forests near my office to build a shopping complex to include a Lowes, a gym, and a branch of my employer.)

I feel like the last line doesn’t quite work, but nothing I try seems any better….

lost domain
forgetful blogger
boon to spammers

just something that C & I were joking about earlier.

sun among thin cloud
onto my jacket sleeve
drift tiny ice flakes

(also: snow? WTF?)

full moon
ice in the ditch
pedal faster

all this prairie
multitude shades of drab
subdivisions to be

beyond the fog
over the thawing lake
birds cry: “spring!”

(why yes, I do write haiku in my head on my bike rides.)

Something C said today, while playing with Pico, as an idea for a title of something about cats.  I think it would make a great title for a poem, but I can’t seem to get started on the poem that would go with it.

So I’m just going to toss this out into the universe.  Have fun. 😉

I may come back to the idea later, though.

O stupid queen!
For thinking of the past
as anything other
than a trap
for women,
a time that calls you
a disease.
I drop my head
into a bath
heated most modernly.
My chin-length hair
floats away.
Your voice does too.

breathing in and out of seared lungs
air rushing over pink-cold hands

and pushing
floating past

the red-gold tree blazing
before the late afternoon sun

breathing pushing

and the black dog hasn’t yet
carried off my soul

so long as I can

dance around the corner
and bolt across the street
thru traffic
on two slim curls
of rubber & aluminum

This week’s poetry Thursday prompt is “what we avoid” and in being true to the spirit of the idea, I’m revisiting the one poet for whom I have a serious and active loathing:

Ezra Pound.

The last semester of my senior year of college, I took an advanced poetry writing course, in which we were inflicted with a variety of unpalatable modern poets. (Why, no, I didn’t much care for the class.) Most of them were forgettable, or at least I have forgotten them, but my knee-jerk dislike for Pound has lingered on.

So I’m going to give him another shot and see if — 10 years later — I can get something out of the experience. If any of y’all like his poetry, I’d sure appreciate a pointer to what and a bit of why, too.

Update, Oct. 20: I poked around the internets looking for various things by Pound; some of the notable bits are now in my ezrapound tag in deli.icio.us. I think I’m going to stick by my judgement of 10 years ago: mostly pretentious, snobby, self-referential crap. But there are a few gems, when he gets out of his own way. But I’m not finding that I’m inspired to write anything of my own, either way.

I’m glad
(again)
(still)
that we don’t have television

early morning
in the dark
radio on the counter
while I wash dishes

and that’s bad enough
thank you