Promise Us, Moon Cat

Here we are, under the pink-flower moon
The azaleas your mother planted are beautiful
They are in full Easter bloom

Even though we forgot to buy a pot of
Lilies in white tin foil
Last year's bulbs have found a new

home in the fragile, soft light under
the tree with warm brick roots
They will open up, they will greet you
at the gate and thank you for an early spring.

And we can remember the risen moon
where we found a sad, quiet bed
empty of the purr and cry of ours

He will come home. He will trail in
with the swooping June bugs
He will bring us the summer in his paws
I love you.

Poem BOMB!

Tonight, while I was at The Center Project, where I volunteer, it was movie night. During a compelling episode, my friend Dani and I decided to go outside and poem-bomb the parking lot.

We did Elizabeth Bishop's One Art.

The art of losing isn't hard to master;

so many things seem filled with the intent

to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.

The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:

places, and names, and where it was you meant 

to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or

next-to-last, of three loved houses went.

The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,

some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.

I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan't have lied.  It's evident

the art of losing's not too hard to master

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

My friend, Dani, writing some stanzas

Dani, almost done with her stanzas

Lost cat

Aw, you all, Tiberius went missing the day after I wrote that poem.

Tiberius is asleep in the crook of my arm

Make yourself small.
Curl into the moon-
a cat-tight ball.

Look! It's early
No city-bred cocks
crow for an opening sun.

We are alone with
solar flare March-
made June bugs.

vwxyz

We meet at the end of the alphabet
Toes tilted East and West

Then heads thrusts North, compass
arms turning to the magnetic poles

In this adventure, we sight land.

and fall together, now spoons, bent
into each other, your breath to polish
the silver, cunning linguists*.

*Giggle and sigh and look out for rough waters.

A Disappointing Winter *edits

The climber blushes against the chain link fence.
A gift of rosemary and sage sing from their stalks,
root-wet and room warm, under the trash tree's arms.

So alive, with a moss underbelly electric in the
middle of February- but bloated, too. The turgid
straight-backed Russian tulip shoots will die
before May, despite their present determination.

An-tici-pay-tion

Strike me down dead, I'm not a Rocky Horror fan. *GASP* *SHOCK* *HORROR* But this fit the moment.

It's April and 80F in the house. It's stifling. I'm suffering from some serious insomnia. I'm disgustingly excited about April starting. Honestly, it's just weird.

I can thank that bout of insomnia and excitement for the fact that I am awake to herald in National Poetry Month. Happy National Poetry Month, friends!

It still feels a little awkward. We have lost amazing poets in the last 12 months, the most recent being Adrienne Rich. I can tell you the moment I discovered AR. I was at the public library and I decided to sit down and check out the magazine section. I stumbled upon what I can only guess was some sort of feminist lit mag- don't ask me the name. It had names that I now recognize as strong feminist writers. I was flipping through the pages, and fell on a poem that I think had something to do with grapefruits.

Okay, so it's a vague memory, Okay, Okay. Either way, I read it over and tried to memorize it, but I didn't have a dime to make a copy and I couldn't check out the magazine. I loved it.

I won't go into AR's dubious theory about gender and relationships. As a poet, she was stunning. I found an article in The Nation, quoting Cheryl Walker, that described her body of work as follows:

This poetry is deadly serious, but it is not, like so much of women’s poetry in the past, death-enamored. For it is the poet’s appetite, her undeniable life force, which sustains these operations.

and it's really hit a chord with me. What a powerful thing to be able to communicate... what strength in that evocation.

Anyway.

I was also skimming through the poetry section of decomP magazine and found a poem that I wanted to share:

77   

Rusty William Porter

For too long/ I have looked up/ and into the sun

Searching for something/ that I can carry back.

But as the gods/ never are kind/ to those who steal their light

My eyes are now mute/ speaking no truth/ and telling no lies.

Hope you all have a lovely Monday.