Date: 2008-10-06 01:12 Subject: On Reading Old Letters Security: Public

When I say I love you, or I miss you,
it is because I am safe in knowing
I can hear you again in minutes, hours—
or, if I am so compelled,
I can fly through the sky and see you.

Some sailor, his eyes on the endless seas,
writes letters he ties with bits of string.
To his lover, who waits for him at home,
he is a light that shines at the edge of this world.
For him, she is a dream whose songs
grow more like the waves each passing day.

Whose love is more real?
His voice, grown fainter by the years,
rebukes me when, during our fights,
I don't pick up the phone.


6 October 2008

Date: 2008-05-12 22:38 Subject: Picture of a Dragonfly and Lotus Security: Public

Look at the girl
in the red silk dress.

Pretend I am
a dragonfly.

She is
a lotus blossom,
closed demurely,

each petal
curving upward—
as if in prayer,

tips meeting,
lips paused in thought
or shut
against laughter.

I land on the flower a moment to rest.
Could I stay there a while—forever?

The sun glints gold and green
against my wings:
I want to wait
and see her slowly blossom.

12 May 2008

Date: 2008-05-11 20:40 Subject: Grace Security: Public

Let us talk of grace:
how sweet a sound.
In my mind I think of autumn,
the beauty of whose turning leaves
gives way to thoughts of fall.

If so, there must be a fall
or something approximating it. In life
certain things will do.

In the fall to earth he broke his neck
or almost did. A violent, mindless sort of end.
Violence gives rise to thoughts of war,
war to life and death.

In the balance between these,
then, there are battles of the flesh
and battles of the soul.
Usually in wars we think of winners
or at least the side that has lost less.
Which of the mourners around him were on which side?
Who could judge

in this quietest of sleeps, in that sterile room
filled with a soft white light, the curtains, the whirling
of ventilators like doves or snow.
All there could be, all there ever was, and will be
is grace.

11 May 2008

Date: 2008-01-04 22:42 Subject: Publication in Softblow! Security: Public

As an aspiring writer of poems, I am compelled from time to time to submit my work to magazines--both print and online.

I was fortunate enough to be published in the Berkeley Poetry Review for the past two years, and I'm happy to report that I've been published on an online literary magazine:

SOFTBLOW

Check it out!

Date: 2008-01-01 16:41 Subject: (no subject) Security: Public

Persimmons

Date: 2007-12-25 22:51 Subject: My New Wine Blog Security: Public

I've started a new wine blog:

http://vinicultured.wordpress.com

I will also continue to post on LiveJournal, but I'm going to focus on Vinicultured for a while.

Check it out and let me know what you think!

Date: 2007-11-24 23:50 Subject: Thoughts on Czesław Miłosz and the Maxim of "Show, Don't Tell" Security: Public

 I am taking a creative writing class at Pasadena City College, and while I have received some good feedback regarding my poems it is difficult to really grow when a majority of the students are prose writers.  Short stories, novels.  Even a book on copyrighting (which seems very useful).

Granted, they have provided me with the insights of years of experience--the average age seems to be above 30--and I'm pretty sure there's a poem out there about how youth and old age go great together.  (Maybe I'm thinking about cougars or silver foxes.)  But it's hard to sit through someone reading their short story for 40 minutes and have my reading and the resultant critique take up about 10 minutes.

Then there are differences in stylistic points of view--nay, views on the raison d'être for writing in general.  For instance, "show, don't tell" is a great maxim for short story writers or novelists, but it doesn't necessarily have to apply to EVERY SINGLE POEM EVER.  To take that further, that maxim doesn't have to apply to novels, either--read any of Milan Kundera's works or anything Victorian and jaunts down philosophical / autobiographical paths abound.

Then there's Czesław Miłosz, the Polish poet / Nobel Laureate.  Much of his work in Second Space (his last collection of poems) is reflective rather than descriptive, filled with the wisdom of decades of life and loss.

For instance, the first half of "To Spite Nature":

Many misfortunes resulted from my belief in God,

Which was a part of my notion of the splendor of man.

Man, not withstanding his animal nature,
should have had a spiritual life of great richness,

Should have been directed in his behavior
by motives considered noble and sublime.

He earned respect by becoming a near-angel.

Or a couplet from "I Should Now":

When I think of this, I need an immortal Witness
so that he alone knows and remembers.

And this incredibly powerful stanza from his long poem, "Apprentice":

Human beings should approach, trembling and with reverance,
That deepest arcanum, the union of a man and a woman.
It is an unveiling of the incomprehensible
Love of the Creator for creation.
And the loss of that memory by the twentieth century was unlucky.
They changed the Song of Songs into a sexual game. *

The chronology of sexuality and religion, and then the transformation (if any) from religion to the "sexual game" of the twentieth century is something I would like to study if I had the time.

But--that is getting away from the point of this entry, which is to say that poetry doesn't need to be descriptive to be reflective, nor does it have to be descriptive at all.  Though I should be well-advised to go the way of Miłosz and actually live a little first.

________________________________

* But the Song of Songs as a sexual game is better than Paul Celan's evocation of this book of the Bible in his terrifying work, "Death Fugue" (Todesfuge), where "the ashen hair" of the Shulamith (the female lover in the Song of Songs) is juxtaposed against the ashes of the concentration camps.  Love debased into a game of pleasure seems, to me, better than the impossibility of love at all.


 

Date: 2007-10-23 21:43 Subject: Prologue Security: Public

We are making dinner.  It is growing dark outside.
Autumn makes herself known on our countertops:
persimmons, quince, pomegranates.

There are 613 seeds in every pomegranate, you say,
which for the Jews represents righteousness.
All I can see are paper skins rouged with vermilion
and, beneath that, the red fruits heavy with juice.

If it is true that each fruit holds 613 seeds
and that this is, therefore, a symbol,
our act of cooking is full of meaning.

In Rome, I say, before selecting the site of a city
the priests would sacrifice a hare and a dove
and examine the entrails, to view their fortunes
and see if the area could sustain life.

You separate the chicken,
the knife flashing as thighs come apart
and breasts and legs fall into the pot.
The gizzard, liver, and heart
you set on the board smiling,
in light of what I had said.

The meal takes a long time to prepare.
It seems we are nowhere near done.
There is late corn, too. I strip off the tassels
and gaze into the patterns of silk
to try and discern the future.

--------

I am going to compile a collection of poems about... the events of this past year.  I expect that this task will take a very long time--maybe years.  I've entitled this poem "Prologue" for a number of reasons.  First, one of my earliest memories is cooking Valentine's Day dinner with her.  Second, there is always this human desire to know what will happen in the future.  It's probably for the best that we can't know.

Date: 2007-10-20 17:29 Subject: The Autumn Security: Public

 Autumn is one of my favorite seasons because it is the most refined.  There is a gentle quality to the autumn, how the heat fades as gradually as the colors on the leaves.  Death is beautiful, none as beautiful as that of the summer.

At this time I ask myself if I am happy.  I am not unhappy.  But there seems to be something more that could be happening, something that has always been missing from my life and something that remains missing despite moments of joy and the gray stretch of daily diversions.  What is it?  What is missing?

Maybe it is God.  When S was suffering I turned to her God for strength and solace.  As it says in the Bible, "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evident of things unseen."  But, to offer a crass counter (from one of our esteemed Founding Fathers, no less): "He who lives on hope dies farting."

(That's Ben Franklin, in case you were wondering.)

It's interesting, this notion of her God and my God and their God and our God.  This possessiveness towards God who, if He exists, owns us and is not, as it were, owned by us.  If there were a God, there would be no other Gods.  There would be no hers, nor his, nor theirs--our God would be the most appropriate phrase.

It is audacious to think that a human being could accept or deny God if there were God.  Believers say that the evidence is all around us--is self-evident--while non-believers look around them and see no proof of a divine presence.

In autumn, is there evidence of a higher being?  Can the turning of the leaves be part of His work, or are they just the sign of a slow and graceful aging?

Date: 2007-10-07 20:03 Subject: (Loss) Security: Public

you face me.
i face you.

my hand cups the mug of coffee.
you pause to look at the rain.

there are always words to exchange and,
when those run out, there is always silence.

beneath the silence are the looks,
this careful understanding.

one could fashion a relationship out of loss
out of this emptiness that aches to burst

into a yell, a song,
love, heaven,
hell.

you say: the poppies will be blooming soon.
i close my eyes and see the bursts of crimson
all across the pavement.

Date: 2007-09-25 21:48 Subject: ( ) Security: Public

There is the sound
of an ocean slowly
                          very slowly

being born.

And in the air,
fresh again,
               
a rosemary smell--
lemon eucalyptus smell

astringent sting of tea

the green smell of grass
black smell of soil

the scent
of pencil shavings
muddy asphalt and
                             metal slides

and kindergarten--

we sit impatiently
on the old brown carpet

like rubber balls
in neat little rows

waiting for the rain to pass.

~ 25 de septiembre

Date: 2007-09-22 10:01 Subject: The New Woman Security: Public

She had a tongue piercing. This he noticed 
instantly. There was a mutual need.

Like a stray

he followed her home.

Here is the bed. The novelty has worn off.

He kisses her bitterly

as if each kiss were a price to be paid.

He entered her like a knife.

And when what was to be done

was done—his life all over the place,

marks of her nails and teeth in scarlet

across his chest, back, shoulders

there was only the sound of her breathing.

Under that, ringing inside his head,

a slight shrillness like a kettle

the moment after boiling.

He listened as if it

were the most important thing.

It could have been.

He had no way of knowing.

Date: 2007-09-18 22:55 Subject: ( ) Security: Public

I want to take off your clothes
but go beyond just your clothing:

strip off your skin—
your beautiful, soft, skin—

shed slowly the satin layers
of viscera and muscle,
see your heart and liver quiver,

help you slip off your sinews,
unhinge your bones
to the tune of your moans

and get into you,
into that nothingness
that is the everything
of this world.

Date: 2007-09-08 22:21 Subject: Berkeley, 2007 Security: Public

The steam from this Americano
is like the fog over the bay
that figures so much
in this city
in which
I loved you.

You showed me the many different
forms of joy to be had in this world,
and as many of grief.

Of these, the greatest joy
was having you.

The greatest grief is being
here sitting
beneath these trees,
this table, the sun,
the bay,
this city
in which
I love you.

~ 9/8/07

Date: 2007-09-03 21:31 Subject: Revision Security: Public

If I am required to make life—
                if I am required for conception

my love will be able to save life as well.

My first time at a hospital,
               my dad—at county—the oldest
of three who survived the war—

what did he think about while lying in his bed.

I prayed then, as he lay wasting away,
and soon my prayers gave way to praise
                   as he stood, and smiled, and came home.

I was younger.  He was my father.
Things were simpler: I grew older.  I met a girl—

in a letter she wrote

Above my bed there was a piece of tape on the ceiling.
             I prayed "please don't let that be the last
                                                                         thing I see."

It wasn't—years later, she found me.  Prayer is a strange thing. 

When making love
                                we used the pill and condoms,
so many ways to keep from making life.

We were careful, mostly,
she more than I,

men seeing only the end,
                            she seeing some distant beginning.

Now, I stand in the shower and think of her,
in bed, again, between sterile white sheets—
                                  
                            my warmth rising,
                                                       her name at my lips

as if I could give myself to her—
            as if I could keep her from dying

Date: 2007-09-03 21:03 Subject: Revised 9/3/07 Security: Public

Soon it will be fall.  Already the trees have lost their green
and turned the color of patchwork quilts that have
seen years of use--faded blocks, not yet in their full
autumnal glory.  I drop the tea infuser into the metal pot

and imagine the dark, dried leaves the color of moss
meeting the hot water: a little burst of life, a wettening,
an opening up, a dance of utter and instant fragility.
Then they impart their essence to the water,
and to the steam as it circles and breaks into the air.

Where are you now--my imagination is limited
to thoughts on tea leaves and tree leaves
and the connection of things like water and autumn.
It is harder to see how a stone should take your place,
to be touched by rain and sun and the careful polishing strokes
that are as close to touching your face as possible.

Date: 2007-08-19 20:22 Subject: Peeled Like Apples Security: Public

Ilya Kaminsky wrote:

"Once or twice in his life,
a man is peeled like apples.

What's left is a voice
that splits his being

down to the center.
We see: obscenity, fright mud."

~ from "Musica Humana" (Dancing in Odessa)

After he is peeled he must take whatever skin that was pared off and put it back into place.  His skin will never quite feel the same way, nor will it fit as perfectly as it once did.  This must be done if a man is to experience tragedy and continue to live his life.

Date: 2007-08-05 12:46 Subject: ( ) Security: Public

Oh to be the destroyer of worlds!
would that I have such power—

or, if that not be possible
that would I be able to see the stars
explode in the night around me,

see something greater than me
act with undeniable agency—

and be hit with stardust
which is the clouds of memories
of things that,

like us,

rose from ash
and returned to ash

with only their souls left burning.

~ 8/5/07

Date: 2007-07-31 21:16 Subject: Between Myself and Death Security: Public

KENNETH REXROTH

A fervor parches you sometimes,
And you hunch over it, silent,
Cruel, and timid; and sometimes
You are frightened with wantonness,
And give me your desperation.
Mostly we lurk in our coverts,
Protecting our spleens, pretending
That our bandages are our wounds.
But sometimes the wheel of change stops;
Illusion vanishes in peace;
And suddenly pride lights your flesh-
Lucid as diamond, wise as pearl-
And your face, remote, absolute,
Perfect and final like a beast’s.
It is wonderful to watch you,
A living woman in a room
Full of frantic, sterile people,
And think of your arching buttocks
Under your velvet evening dress,
And the beautiful fire spreading
From your sex, burning flesh and bone,
The unbelievably complex
Tissues of your brain all alive
Under your coiling, splendid hair.

I like to think of you naked.
I put your naked body
Between myself alone and death.
If I go into my brain
And set fire to your sweet nipples,
To the tendons beneath your knees,
I can see far before me.
It is empty there where I look,
But at least it is lighted.

I know how your shoulders glisten,
How your face sinks into trance,
And your eyes like a sleepwalker’s,
And your lips of a woman
Cruel to herself.
I like to
Think of you clothed, your body
Shut to the world and self contained,
Its wonderful arrogance
That makes all women envy you.
I can remember every dress,
Each more proud then a naked nun.
When I go to sleep my eyes
Close in a mesh of memory.
Its cloud of intimate odor
Dreams instead of myself.