poem

Gideon

It was raining and it was Wednesday, praying,
Where the man stood on the corner coldly
Handing out green New Testaments

They were gold and it wasn't raining
But it was cold where the man stood
Loving in a torn friar's robe

His face was torn, gaunt and gilded
Where the two streets swished with cars,
Cold cars with torn people

Staring grimly into the grim air, praying,
Eyes that sped through pages of green New Testaments
Stacked high along the corner.

It was Wednesday, gaunt and gilded
Where the weathered man stood in the rain
The day was sobbing on the green corner.

-nathan shank-
10/15/08


Thoughts? good, bad?
How is the ending? Is the poem too short?
Does it need more punctuation?
Does "swished" work?
Anything corny?
Title?

The Stable

Hey kids, here's a Christmas poem that's been brewing for a while. It doesn't feel finished to me yet, especially the last half. So let me know what you think it needs -- as well as the usual whether it's intelligible and if there are lines that don't work. (For those who were at Scribblers last night, this is nearly the same thing I read.)

The Stable

The stable stands in floods of chill, dark air,
And it is like a hand that keeps a flame
From drowning in the wind that whines without.
And also, it is like that braying boat
That captain Noah, baffled, plies on silt
(And underneath the silt the hungry fish
Lurch through the broken doorways munching bones).
But in the boat – and in the stable too –
Breath waits to kindle out on the dank world.
And when, wing-tired, the tattered dove finds perch,
Then claws and hooves of squinting animals
Will tramp into the day outside the dark.
The stable, like the boat, will grind to ground
Against a hill and make an altar there,
And from an open door among the bones
The living scramble out and try their eyes.
But now the stable floats in lapping floods;
Its beams withstand the splashing of the night.

J. Benskin, 2008. (v.7)

catching the bouquet

two of the roses’ stems snapped in the toss,
and all of them still had thorns.
but i don’t believe in ritual symbols anyway.

untitled

Sunday wakes up like
A crumpled dollar bill.
It yawns, checks the stocks,
And curls back the covers,
Falling asleep.

-nathan shank-

A question

On NPR this morning, there was an interview with Brian Turner, a poet who published a book of poetry about his time as an infantry soldier in Iraq. The interviewer asked him whether he was still writing about Iraq. He answered:

"I'm actually writing about what I feel is missing back here. I was trying to write poems that were in Iraq, poems that I'd started over there and were never finished, and I found they weren't working. And I realized of course I'm no longer there, so I can't write those poems."

What do you think of that? It seems to fly in the face of, for instance, Wordsworth's ideas about "emotion recollected in tranquility." Do you find that you write more about where you are (either physically or metaphorically), or about where you've been?




You can listen to the interview online -- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92771250
He reads a couple of the poems from the book. I especially like the second one, "What Every Soldier Should Know."

Guardian of the Black Garden

Here's something I just thought up today and wrote, tell me what ya think. It's still very much in working stages and this is all I have so I don't really know what's gonna happen in it.

Guardian of the Black Garden

In the beginning the Great One created two gardens, the Garden of Light and the Garden of Night. In the Garden of Light were placed the animals of the world, the ones that all know and Man. In the Garden of Night were placed all the creatures of shadows, those considered evil and perverse. In each Garden there was a Guardian was set to keep track of the creatures placed within and keep out all who would trespass. Not long after the creation of the world and the Gardens came what most call the Fall of Man, though the Guardian’s simply know it as the Corruption. Man abandoned the Garden of Light and the animals scattered over the face of Gaiya. The Guardian was sent to roam aimlessly through the world and the Garden of Night fell into myth just like the Garden of Light, and as the years passed the Garden simply became known as, The Black Garden.

Mission

The Guardian of the Black Garden walked slowly along, the obsidian glass that made up the path crunched and cracked under his black leather boots. He held his pitch night cloak close about him, his hood up, in a small attempt to stave off the cold of the night, though the cold bothered him little, things such as the weather and it’s variations could do practically nothing to him, still he wished it were warmer. He glanced briefly at the flowers to his left, the Starlight Roses. They were his favorites, if he had to choose. The elegant play of shining white stars upon silent black petals always brought a smile to his face. On any other night he would have stopped to admire the roses but this night was special, it was different. This night was when things would finally begin to change.
The Guardian had grown weary and tired of what the world had become. Ever since the Corruption there had been nothing but death and destruction orchestrated by men. Though he could care less about the world at large, his duty was simply to watch over the Black Garden, but recently things had changed, a threat had appeared bent on the destruction of the world and especially the Black Garden. He’d seen what had happened to the Garden of Light and would not let it happen to his Garden.
It didn’t take him long to reach the Black Sorra tree that stood at the center of the Garden. It towered above all the other trees, despite that it stood upon a hill. Its bark was the deepest brown and it’s leaves, like almost all the other flora, were as black as the perpetual night that covered the Garden. The crunch of the rocks ceased as the path ended and he proceeded on, his footsteps now as silent as death upon the deep green of the grass. Off in the distance a nightingale sang it’s beautiful song as the clouds parted revealing the full moon, it’s white light washing down illuminating the Black Garden, it wasn’t enough to banish the dark, not even the sun could accomplish such a feet, but it made it seem more cheery.
He stopped a few feet from the wide trunk of the tree and looked up into the branches calling out in a hushed voice. “Come down Shyla, I’m in need of your assistance.”
The leaves rustled and a dark shape decended landing nimbly to kneel before the Guardian. “What is thy bidding, oh great Guardian?” The figure asked in a voice of feminine silk.
“The time has come to do something about man and his destructive ways. The threat to the Garden of Night grows with every passing day, I’m afraid a fear I have had for some time has come true, the Guardian of the Garden of Light has betrayed us.” His voice was filled with sadness for his former friend and fellow Guardian. It had been the hardest thing in the world to see the Guardian cast away from his duty and out into the world.
The figure stood its hands curling into claws and it’s eyes blazing red. “Speak and I shall find him and destroy him.” Shyla’s voice was now granite hard.
The Guardian sighed. “If only it were that simple Shyla. You would never be a match for him; I’m hesitant to say that I could even defeat him. He was always the stronger. And besides, if it were a simply matter of destroying him then I would have set off with the Eclipse Guard and done so, I’m afraid things are more dire than that. He’s gathered the former members of the Daylight Shield and has set the Kingdom of Dawn to conquering the world and to come and destroy us. He’s gathered many powerful allies that once dwelled within his Garden and many others that have come about.” His head fell and his hands clenched beneath his cloak. “We have a war coming our way.”
“What would you have me do my Lord?” Shyla bowed, it’s hair touching the ground.
“I want you and Wolv to go out and find someone. My old friend is looking for him as well but we must find him first.” The Guardian turned his head and let out a high-pitched musical whistle. Within a few moments a giant wolf, twice the size of The Guardian, came lopping up to them. It loomed over them in what could have been interpreted as a threatening manner, but that image was dispelled as it laid down it’s head tilted down and eyes closed as if in a bow towards the Guardian.
Thy Bidding? The thought entered the Guardian’s head.
“The both of you are to go and find the one that can call upon the Twilight Defenders.”
The two others looked up in surprise. “The Twilight Defenders? Sir, are you so sure that we cannot handle this on our own?” Shyla asked.
“I would say that we could fight on our own, but too much would be lost. Too much would be destroyed of our world and man’s. No, we must gain all the help that we can and that means gaining the aid of the Twilight and not letting my friend get a hold of them first.”
Shyla and Wolv’s heads bowed again as they awaited their instructions.

Here's another short poem.

The Curse of Adulthood

Is when there's concrete drying
And you don't want to do anything to it,
Don't even want to touch it.
You'd have to think of something to write and
Your name isn't enough.

Summer Reading?

Hey everybody,

I was just wondering what y'all are reading this summer, and whether you have any recommendations.

Probably the best I've read so far this summer are Life of Pi by Yann Martel, Atonement by Ian McEwan, and (if I can say this without being too cliche) Emma by Jane Austen.

Unfortunately, I haven't done a lot of writing this summer ... Perhaps I will before it's over.

whoa, everybody! i'm so encouraged to read what you've been working on! my summer's gotten off to a rocky start, and i'm anxious to get to colorado and start classes. i've had a few epiphanies, and you guys will be the first to know when they manifest themselves into poems. i'm starting to get worried that everything i want to write has already been written by william carlos williams...?

at the very least, i'll be producing a short story before the end of the year as part of a genre study at csu. i apologize in advance to the prose people.

Karyn poems for me?

So, here are a couple of off-brand Karyn poem attempts I made, though I cannot hope to emulate the real Karyn.

I can't quite dispense with capital letters, but I did awkward line breaks, and (unlike last time) it isn't concealed pentameter. :-P Criticism is welcome.


I wonder if my dog is
jealous
when I walk him in the morning
because
last night
I dreamed of
cats.


And another:


Some blushes
sting from the back of God's
bony hand
across your
own cheekbone.

Graveside

Comments and criticism very welcome:

Graveside

Flowers aren’t enough
We start out going weekly, quickly
Fading into monthly, monthly
Into yearly and yearly
Added to the budget: Annual Bouquet, $50.

We give dead flowers to the dead,
Living for ones that are alive
Write elegies in a country churchyard
Kneel or weep into a napkin.

There is no place for the ancestors,
Hovering over us critically
Like bees before a flower.

And we wonder why our honey tastes bland,
Hovering over our own fountains
Of nectar and pollen, packing
Our throats with sweet and our leg flaps with powder.

We buzz around the city
And finally outside it,
Wilting flower after flower till we reach
A spray of roses, abandoned with love
By a wet, stone tablet.

But the roses are parched
Ruby-throated necks slit
And we waft a little lower
Where a small clover grows,
a red eye just cracked open,
yawning to the spring of its ruddy childhood.

5/7/08

Dust

I've brought this poem to Scribblers a couple of times, and now here's draft thirty-seven or something. Comments welcome.

Dust

I scrubbed and scraped and scoured my skin
Till most of the African dust came off.
It took most of the skin with it.
Tan lines from sandals fade after a few months,
And bleach removes dust-colored stains.

Forgive me.
I can’t always talk about the dust.
Sometimes I can’t speak at all.

Forgive me if I don’t tell you
About a calculating lioness
Crouched in spiked grass,
Or about the gazelle
That almost didn’t get away.

Forgive me
If I can’t tell you
About an orphaned child’s dirty diapers,
Or about her smile,
Or about how her bottom lip stuck out
When she cried.

Forgive me if I can’t talk about the dust itself,
But know that everything I say is stained by it.
(Or at least it ought to be.
Minds shouldn’t be like skin or clothes.)

Forgive me
If I show you a picture, instead,
Of someone you’ll never know,
Of a smile, or a tear, or a snotty nose,
On glossy paper.
Forgive me for using that photo as a weapon.

Canoeing Poem

I brought this a few weeks ago, and I've just made a couple of little changes. I'm mostly posting it for Katie and Tim, but if any suggestions come to mind, they're welcome. Karyn, enjoy the awkward line breaks. ;)

Town Lake

The loud anhingas
breaking from cool roost
(as we come near) fall
upward on the sky
with scattering of
sharp, black feathertips.

I stand unsteady
in the shifting bow
and stretch to catch and
clip a spray of blooms.
With the snip’s jerk the
petals break on me
and on the boat and
water like the wings
break on the sky.

Skin on a turtle’s neck
is like a bright maze
or a winding map
of park trails. “You Are
Here,” the eye’s dot says
and slaps into the
lake with breaking drops
that scatter like the
petals or the wings.

(v. 3)

for a prose guy, i seem to be posting a lot of poetry lately

so this was written many moons ago, when the earth was much younger, but i found it the other day and remembered that nothing had been posted here in a while, so have at it. it was actually an early precursor to my story published in shook foil.


When he saw you down on Hampton looking lively and alive,
Was that merely Chinese lantern sleight of hand:
Some fleet memory, behind a veil of candid innocence,
From a former life now lost in shifting sand?

Once you lived alone in splendor, waiting naked by the phone
In the hollow of your swank Manhattan digs,
Cultivating rough hewn calluses, maturity in youth;
It could never be a life of wine and figs.

But self-banishment does not suffice, such penance will not do
On the outskirts of this worn and rusted place.
Dr Heidegger has no respite to soothe this older you,
Etching shadows in that sweet unbroken face.

See the tattered shroud of memory attempt to find a cure:
Tracing specters of emaciated thought
As you struggle with your demons, still skull deep in mellow jack,
Only praying to escape the prize you’ve bought.

The beautiful insanity that lit upon your brain
For a moment, while that adolescent stood
In his ignorance unable to do anything but watch
And perhaps reluctant even if he could,

Has eaten what was left of you, the choicest morsels gone,
Leaving nothing but illusion-riddled scraps
And your burned out elegance lies dying, bleeding in the dust.
Don’t speak now. Please. There’s nothing left to say.

finally

hello peoples - sorry this poem-ish thing is so late being posted, but i would really appreciate feedback - it seems like it should be the beginning, or ending, of something i have not yet written.

"Scrambled Eggs and Dotted Swiss"

In the kitchen

Scrambling eggs

With anxious hands and

Hair falling from a rag of dotted swiss,

She looks up with broken eyes - 

He cannot meet them,

Cannot meet her

So appallingly vulnerable - 

He flees from the eggs shells and salt shakers

 - From the eyes and dotted swiss.

Whoa, Emily actually wrote stuff

This is a revamped version of the Christmas poem I brought at the beginning of the semester -- it decided it wanted to be prose.

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

“Merry Christmas, God bless,” mutters the raisin-faced Salvation Army worker. From behind a scarf, a teenage girl imagines Santa Claus or Jesus someone propping the old man there, leaning against the pole, and telling him to repeat these words, over and over. The old man doesn’t raise his head as the girl’s gloved hand drops a pocketful of change into his bucket. “Merry Christmas, God bless you,” he mutters. “You, too,” says the girl.

The girl also sometimes says “Merry Christmas” to particularly harried customers, though she knows it’s supposed to be Happy Holidays. She takes her post in ladies’ sleepwear, occupying her mind by wondering about the recipients of the gifts customers are buying.

A round man, well past middle age, greets her cheerily. He’s looking for a nightgown, he says. He pulls a slip of paper out of his pants pocket and holds it at arm’s length, squinting. Shaking his head, he pulls out his spectacles from his breast pocket, puts them on, then reads, “Long-sleeved, size extra large.” It’s for his mother, he tells the girl. That’s about all she needs these days, pajamas.

She’s a hundred and two.

He chuckles nostalgically. Every year since nineteen forty-five, he’s gotten her a box of chocolate covered cherries. Every year since nineteen forty-five. She’s a hundred and two now. The man turns his face a way. Every year since nineteen forty-five, he says, his voice cracking a bit. Since nineteen forty-five. But this year, she can’t —

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have come right now, I’ll be back later —” he says, crumpling his slip of paper and hurrying away. The girl watches him as he leaves, brushing his eyes.

Briefly neglecting her register later in the shift, the girl rummages through the nightgowns (taking note of all the long-sleeved, extra large ones appropriate for a hundred-and-two-year-old woman), in case the man should come back. She wants to tell him, “Merry Christmas, God bless you, and God bless your mother.”

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

Here's the original:

Merry Christmas, God bless you,
Mutters the raisin-faced Salvation Army worker.
She leans against a pole like a plank of wood propped against a tree.
She doesn’t raise her head
As a gloved hand out of a bundle of warm clothes
Drops a pocketful of change in the bucket.
Merry Christmas, God bless you, she mutters,
Her cheerful bell tinkling.
You, too, a voice says from under a scarf.

The girl under the scarf
(Who occasionally says Merry Christmas to particularly harried customers,
Though she knows it’s supposed to be happy holidays)
Takes her post in ladies’ sleepwear.
A round man – well past middle age –
Greets her cheerily.
He’s looking for a nightgown, he says,
Long-sleeved, size extra large,
He reads off a slip of paper.
It’s for his mother.
She’s confined to a nursing home now, he tells the girl.
That’s about all she needs these days – pajamas.
She’s a hundred and two.

He chuckles nostalgically.
Every year since nineteen forty five,
He’s gotten her a box of chocolate covered cherries.
Every year since nineteen forty five.
She’s a hundred and two now.
The man turns his face away.
Every year since nineteen forty five,
He says,
His voice cracking a bit.
Since nineteen forty five.
But this year she can’t –
Can’t eat them –

I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have come right now, I’ll be back later,
He says, crumpling his slip of paper and hurrying away,
Brushing his eyes as he leaves.

Briefly neglecting her register later in the shift,
The girl rummages through the nightgowns,
(Noting the loveliest,
Softest,
Silkiest,
Long-sleeved, extra-large gowns)
In case the man should come back.
She wants to tell him,
God bless you,
And God bless your mother.

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

Specifically, I'm wondering about the paragraph that begins "He chuckles nostalgically." That was my favorite stanza back when it was verse, but I'm not quite sure how to handle it in prose. Suggestions on any part are welcome, though.

So this is still a very rough draft. I suspect that before I'm finished, the whole thing will be metered. The free verse stuff captures the general language and imagery that I'm liking at the moment. I don't have a copy of the first draft with me, so those of you who haven't read it or don't remember it, just treat this as a first draft.

A little background for those who aren't familiar with the story of Tantalus and Pelops: Tantalus was a Greek king who was the favorite of the gods. One day he threw a banquet for the gods in his palace, and served as the main fare the flesh of his son: Pelops. Demeter was the first to taste the meat, and as soon as she did, the gods realized what Tantalus had done. They were enraged, sentanced him to be chained to a rock in hell, with a pool of water at his feet that dried up every time he tried to drink of it, and a bunch of grapes hanging from a branch above his head that were blown out of his reach by the wind every time he tried to grab one. He is starved and thirsty for eternity. His son was restored to life, except for a chunk missing from his shoulder where Demeter took her bite.


Spit in thine eye, cries Tantalus the Man
To gods who sit in judgment
Over inadequate welcome-gifts.

The sacrifice of Abraham once made,
And once accepted though returned unused,
Now offered freely, unsolicited
Has been found lacking.

Worse than lacking: offensive, cruel.

But not cruel in the mind of a father,
Unless it be the cruelty of gods
Who do not make their wishes clearly known
And arrive uninvited for dinner.

For Tantalus the Man is not Abraham.
He has no manna from on high,
No ambrosial fare fit for Holy guests
And knows no hospitality but this:
That he lay down the life of his son,
Precious fruit of his man-flesh
To feed the appetite of immortals.

But now he stands alone, accused, alone,
Condemned by those he sought to honor most.
For there does Pelops wait in shadowy wing
Behind the throne of Zeus, and makes his case.
Plaintiff phantasmal showing tattered eye
And masticated shoulder now in shreds,
He does not comprehend his father’s choice
But only feels the slash of gruesome blade.

So Tantalus the Man recieves his doom
And slouches toward the everlasting hunger.
As Charon anchors manacles infernal
The gods nod in approval, sated, full.


Still a long way to go I think, but its getting there. This poetry stuff is kind of fun.

shipwreck poem, modified

Here's the poem the way I brought it last time:

I have been shipwrecked on the coast of God,
And ankle-deep in frigid, lapping froth,
I scanned the dim horizon for a sail.
To build up fires of curling signal smoke
I stooped and found dry branches from the trees
Whose fragrant fruit leaned down around my head.
I thirsted, splashing in no inland springs,
But sullen on the sandy, rocky shore
I strove in useless straining to escape
The crushing truth: I know no other land.

Karyn pointed out that "fragrant" in the 6th line was too easy, and we also had problems with the last two lines and said the images there needed to fit better with the rest of the poem. Here's the new draft. Attempts to address those two issues are the only changes:

I have been shipwrecked on the coast of God,
And ankle-deep in frigid, lapping froth,
I scanned the dim horizon for a sail.
To build up fires of curling signal smoke
I stooped and found dry branches from the trees
Whose fruit on tenuous stem swung near my head.
I thirsted, splashing in no inland springs,
But sullen on the sandy, rocky shore
I set my mind to dry the pounding, blue
Enormous truth: I know no other land.

What do you think? I don't know if it works yet.

Ground rules?

Hiya,

A couple of brief organizational suggestions, and I'll try to post something real in the next couple of days.

- Let's try to keep comment conversations all in one place so people can follow them. So instead of posting the reply to someone's comment to that person's other blog, keep the thread together. When you comment you can check "email follow-up comments to me" so it'll email you if other people comment.

- For longer works, could maybe we number paragraphs/lines for reference? If that's too much of a pain or turns out aesthetically offensive it isn't a big deal, but it might be helpful.

Anything else?

Welcome

Hello.

This is the Scribblers joint blog. Subscribe to the RSS.

Please send me (or post) your gmail addresses so that I can give you permission to post.

This blog is largely here because some of us are scattered around (or soon will be), so we want a diaspora-friendly place to share Scribblers material. But we'll see how it ends up working as we go. To start, we can go ahead and post things we've brought to Scribblers recently.

I'll make this prettier and add links and quotes and such later. Yup, that's about it for now. Welcome.

- Joanna