poetry #7 - when it counts (for Kate and Trav)

(one of the joys of being a poor (but not starving) wannabe artist is that you never have to shop for gifts. instead, one makes one's gifts (mostly). for Kate and Trav I had some prints made of pictures I took and bought a couple sale frames. and wrote a poem...)

did it hurt

that first time in the moment after the pregnant silence     somewhere      paused

in time

was there a sharp pain     did it feel like losing something precious

letting go in an irreversible way that meant one thing would never come back

and another would never leave

was there a moment of acute precise

agony

like losing a tooth 
or autonomy        

or yourself

like you were splitting open in the most complete and wonderful ways

was it a surrender to you

a loss     of     you

or was it     like me     
painless     
effortless

for me     to be clear     it didn’t hurt at all

it was dawn over the ocean the universe giving birth to a star an eagle falling out of the nest into 
     flight

that first time

     under     
a warm summer moon or the harsh cold light of a winter sun or a blanket of watching stars

or the covers     maybe     in the hush     after

it was a perfect nova a kissed orchid opening the first smile of the child   

we’ll have one day

it was that easy that free that sharp that utterly complete     
that perfect

and there was no pain no matter how completely i was torn apart

and remade

there have been times     of course     since

when it hurt     
there always are 
to say it to feel it to fear that it might

     …disappear

just as there will be again

when life pins us down shoves us against the wall kneels on our heads pressing us into the hard 
     concrete of reality

and then     in those moments     
saying it feeling it meaning it

has/will hurt has/will come with a cost has/will bleed has/will weep tears that burn

that’s life     we know this     that’s the way it is must cant not be

but when those times

knock down our door invade through the patio window crash in like a thief

i’ll remember     
as you have and will

there will be reminders remembrances tattoos carved deeper than skin into our hearts of that first 
     time

and all the others since

when it didn’t hurt at all when we didn’t even notice when it was

running into the surf escaping the confines of walls and ceilings to dance on rooftops in the summer 
     rain

when it was these things because

it was/is real was/is pure was/is hot as a newborn star and cool as a perfect breeze

as forever as the universe and its birthing and killing of suns

as clean as our future child’s first word first step first smile first hug first love

that’s the promise

no matter the cost the hurt the fear the hate the shock

the weighty enormity of what it all might mean

when it counts most

i’ll/you’ll say and mean and feel and know and own the words

poetry #6 - the sum of leafs

history is a word we use

to describe

an accumulation of moments

each one a mote

drawn out of time

separate and yet part of the whole

one leaf that grows and leans

into the light

and then falls and gyres down upon the green

time is a word we use to describe

the order and flow

of moments

to differentiate between the leaf that grows

and the leaf that stretches

and the leaf that flares into color

before fluttering to the green

arbitrary words, time and history

we use them to denote

to scribe an arch of progression

but really, they do not care

the moments

the leafs

they do not care what definitions we assign

they are just motes, just leafs

perched in the tree, fallen to the green

perhaps raked and piled

sorted into bags

for collection

without our imposition

of order

would they not still remain

stretched on the green?

blown across the waters?

and still

we are these moments

the sum of leafs raked into piles

verdant, flaming, stretching and conjoined

piles of the detritus of life

mulled together in an attempt

to define ourselves

moments that have been pregnant

and grown

and fallen

is a leafy mound of gold and umber

more beautiful

than any one

that remains, still verdant

upon the tree?

a perfect present moment 

yet leaning 

into the light?

smoke and mirrors

I had a strange week last week, full of flatness and a decided lack of inspiration. It wasn’t writer’s block (whatever that is) – you have to be trying to move forward to encounter a blockage. Instead, I was vaguely unhappy about having no desire to move forward. It was like being in fog, or thick smoke. Like I couldn't see farther than my hand, so it was most prudent to stand still.

I listened to an interview with Iain Banks (or Iain M Banks). He writes under both names, publishing high-end sci-fi and critically-acclaimed non-genre. He said that he had no clue what writer’s block was and apologized for being flippant about it. I want to identify with that perspective one day. So far, so good, but it’s early. It’s the lack of motivation that gets me sometimes.

So I posted old stuff, a story and a poem. Bloggers love comments, we do, but stories and (especially) poetry don’t encourage them the way current events and navel-gazing does.

A friend and I agreed that commenting on poetry is intimidating. There’s this sort of expectation to “get” what the writer was saying, even when it’s (unavoidably) so ambiguous with poetry. Poetry is meant to be full of the unobvious, sometimes only meant to be pretty, but always brimming over with implied metaphors.

Commenting on poetry is like describing a ship that passes in the fog.

…

If we’ve been to school, studied poetry (for example), there’s this ingrained reaction to critique according the metrics we were taught – the metrics of criticism. Often, we were told to avoid trying to read it as auto-biography, but there’s always the temptation to do just that – to try to see into the artist’s mind and learn about them. That temptation is naturally stronger when we’re viewing famous works by famous artists, but I think the professors are right no matter what. We should avoid it.

If we get caught up with studying craft too much, or looking for biographical clues, or practicing pseudo-forensic psychiatry, then we miss the beauty of art; the chance to let is wash over us and teach us about ourselves the way a fortune teller reads tea leaves. We need to steep ourselves in art and then, during and much later, read the detritus it washes up onto the sides of the cup.

I agree with the thought that art is a mirror. Of society? Yes, but I think the most prevalent value of art is as a mirror we use to see our selves in.

Even when we just want to make something pretty, with no meaning at all beyond the beauty of creating, if we share it, there’s the mirror. Somebody sees it and they see… what? Something of themselves. Has to happen. We look and see that post, picture, story, poem through our own lens. And we see our selves in our reaction to it. If we’re looking for it. The better the art, often the more profound the reaction. But not always.

Sometimes it’s just serendipitous timing and the mundane provokes violent upheavals. Other times, the most amazing art barely makes a ripple. But there’s always the mirror, telling us about ourselves if we are willing to listen. It’s a mystery. I love that, the use of art to help solve ourselves.

…

I read this a couple weeks ago and it has stuck with me like a virus.

"It has always seemed strange to me... the things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest, are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second." ~ John Steinbeck

It’s a blatant societal mirror, but it works on a personal level too. What do we value?

…

ALSO: If you haven’t already, you should go check out Judy Clement Wall’s Love Project. I think it’s kind of beautiful; a grass rootsy kind of thing that could turn into a tsunami. I hope it does. A love tsunami – it’s a nice thought.

ALSO AGAIN: Annie Syed talks about art and originality in her Still Sundays post this week. She’s always worth reading, but if you’re an artist, it’s especially pertinent.

poetry #5 - ...does it make a sound?

© mdlockhart 2009

charcoal cold, she spreads herself above him
  noble, wanton, she hides, she hides behind
  the petty coats of the azure-breathing forest
tense and groaning, they sway beneath her,
  kaleidoscopic dancers, verdant in the planet's breath

i also sway, lost in the darkening
  in the spider-spinning cacophony of this aging warrior
  he is oblivious, lost in his own fuming worship
arms spread wide and full of shadow lines
  twisted, scar-knurled and full of fate

he is the former opulence
  brittle trailing of the ether's bridal gown
  now yellowed and ashed, he is alone

an anachronism
  hidden in among the lush present

besieged by a green youth, callous, callow
  not imbued with a proper

  respect, but in him there is a refusal
  arthritic and T-boned, his crooked palms raise
eternally to the stinging rain

---
he shakes and cracks within her dispassionate embrace

  straining towards the deluge, skeletal

  it spills, her showers

like sand between bony fingers

  and rigid, impotent, he rattles and rails

the mistress, un-aged, dances

  rushing between her younger lovers’ groaning limbs

  her laughter and disdain rolling

deeply, booming in the shadow

  through cloud and over root

he strains, zealot rigid

  unbending, spine fused by age and frustration

  no possible supplication

is left to him

  proud, but diminished

he stands as mute witness to

  the absolute constant of mutability

  the virginal truth of change

  the glare of what may be

to a dodgy and skittish present

---

tall, he prophesies

  a blood-full, onyx sky swollen above

  gyres about him with her younger lovers

slashes him with tears, explodes in ecstasy

  amplified echoes of his angst

desperate, he barks splinters

  against the sky that cuckolds him

  summons his own thunder and,

one last time, without resignation

  bends back to stare into her weeping mien

i hear his cracking sigh, 

  see him kneel and fall

  warmly, the scent of her full and sweet

he crashes to the forest floor

  and returns, returns to the earth

the young dance, oblivious above him, but i see

  as i see her, shuddering as she nods

  a final thunder head bowing to earth

  as with a flourish, a final tear she

mourns into the spreading darkness

© mdlockhart 2007

(Up the mountain in the first months after the inversion started, I found one deciduous tree at over 7000 ft, 600 or 700 feet above any other deciduous. It was dead, but beautiful, held up by the pines around it. The poem isn't about that tree, one I saw fall in a wind storm in Alberta, but it could be. Will be. One day.)

poetry #4 - love at altitude

© mdlockhart 2009

it is not wisps of peony light filtered through

amber-hazed breezes of spring pollen

singing the night into being

nor the swollen burning glow of sun being drowned

in the hissing embrace of a tropical sea

the gasps and shudders

of requited passion

or the sigh of virginal stars

chasing the red, failing light into the west

beneath clouds cavorting in the jet stream

not wind through the pregnant sails of the forest

gloaming’s shadow over the verdant pulp of the earth’s womb

all to a percussion of crickets

and a chorus of flying hums

it is mine though

hard and glaring

cold as the heavy sky

looming and foreboding as granite walls

forced into contrasts of bawdy white and grey

weighty with ice and fertile snow

frigid, insistent

endless crease and frozen undulation

the stare of somnolent silver eyes

a forever-white, ocean deep and unforgiving                        

cracked and wrinkled, dry and glazed over

yes, mine, and beautiful to me

© mdlockhart 2009

poetry #3 - portable wealth

(Because I mentioned it Monday)

portable wealth

pain, now

tends to make me smile 

more than not
i wear my scars with pride
i paid for them 

(as i love them)
dearly

each puckered pearl,
a lesson i am learning well
they are jewels of time
coarse reminders too often wished
forgotten
buried 

(but better polished)
they shape us
like it or no
crystals taking on earthly hues
water stains angry on heavy paper 

covered with mad ramblings

and if they leak out
from time to time
rest and sparkle on a cheek
drip from a chin 

(honesty)

if there is an occasional blush
(a learned behavior, expected)
over simple things
(a thought, tree, injustice)
there is no shame, no regret

these are my riches 

carved into skin and heart
(bone and blood)
my portable wealth

copyright michael david lockhart 1997

Poetry #2 - wine and mosquitoes

wine and mosquitoes

in and amidst the slow, stuttering detritus of falling apart
i think of you
of summer days spent waving away mosquitoes
bottles of Syrah mourned joyously and resting in peace
and laughing until our faces ached

or the ephemeral elation of coaxing dissimilar butterflies
from the whispering cocoons of world-weary hearts

this crumbling mind wanders in raving gusts
to you
stumbles palsy-drunk into miasmic fantasies
of my hand brushing burnt-offering stone dust from your cheek
your lips chasing confusion from my temple in green whispering drafts

and of a path through tangled leaves
to a finite patio overlooking pregnant vineyards
a small, rusting table, two chairs, two glasses
the syncopated harmonies of laughter
and a lilac sunset among mosquitoes

c mdlockhart 2008

Poetry #1 - and now for something completely different

(There was a promise, and I'm still stupid busy, and it's a thing, so here: It's a poem I wrote about seven years ago at right around this time of year. Sharing my poetry isn't something I do much. Yes, I'm that lazy...)

aching to be born also

i watched an umber leaf
fall
tumble and spin
cradling the newborn mewling breath
of a wind, air
born of a planetary dance
in golden faltering light
amongst elephantine stalks
of a slower life
measured by the lurch and sway
of a slouching, stalking history

beneath a ceiling of exquisite
cerulean pain
leaf danced and played coy with the mottled light
and your hand
all to the chiming innuendo of your voice

dancing ended, bows were made
the cradling of the wind
died
as leaf and hand
embraced

then you were the leaf
cradling a fragrant breath
that air born of the planet's waltz
had gifted you

and your smile burnt all my world away

in that vanishing moment
i remember
i remember
aching to be born also
to dance against the end worm gyration of the world
and be the leaf within your grasp

c mdlockhart 2003

(Happy weekend, fellow travelers. Go play in some leaves...)