Poem a day update

The poem a day blog goes well, somewhat to my surprise. I had honestly expected to burn out by this time of the year, but haven't yet. Of course, November is nanowrimo, and the end of December is x-mas/going away -- so we'll see. With luck, I'll make good headway on the only novel in October and stop it for Nano without too much difficulty.

POEM ROUNDUP FOR SEPTEMBER

POEM ROUNDUP FOR SEPTEMBER

Number of poems written: 52
Average number per day: 1.7
Longest poem: Canada (39 lines)
Shortest poem: Censorship (0 lines)
Total wordcount: 4,163

Answers

Answers flatter before
Unfathomed depths of question.
A hunger. Reaching. Gnawing:
Seeking, searching causes
For effects. The building of conclusions
Is a house of cards, each one
What we thought it would be,
The final proof what we always
Knew we would find.

Deaths In Lonely Places

The struggle through answers
toward questions --
after the death of hope what is left?
To silence, only tears;
too perfect uniform suits
somehow
free of stains.
Where are the heroes now when
all real men are gone,
dead screaming defiance every one?
We have nothing to expiate,
we say, declaim; but the need
haunts us even so.

Canada

Canada I've given you little got a little in return.
Canada the dollar bill gone 1989.
Sometimes I mind things.
Canada when will we end the u war?
Go drop a language bomb
Je ne me sens pas que bon ne me tracassez pas.
I can write this in a Right-thinking country.
Canada were you ever really good government?
Did you every take off our clothes?
Did you carry frostbite to your graves?
When will you be worthy of your 200 FLQ?
Canada why are your libraries full of books?
Canada will you send your regrets to Rwanda?
I'm burdening your free health care with my sickness.
When can I again buy Mello Yello with my looks?
Canada after all it is you and I who compromise nothing else.
Your smugness is too much for me.
You made me want to be American.
There must be ways to settle this compromise.
Someone famous is somewhere in Canada being famous is sinister.
Are you trying to be famous or is this some type of joke?
I've a finger am trying to point.
I refuse to give up my TV.
Canada stop pushing I know I am staying.
Canada the golden apples are falling.
I haven't read the newspaper for weeks, everyday nothing
happens.
Canada I feel sentimental about toonies.
Canada I used to despise you as a kid and I'm not sorry.
I smoke to cripple the health system every chance I get.
I sit in my office for days and stare at my screen saver.
There used to be a Chinatown but the racists tore it down.
I think there used to be troubles.
You should see people reading in Little Sister's.
My psychoanalyst thinks we're both completely normal.
I never said the Lord's Prayer in school.
I don't have time for mystic visions or cosmic cookie cutters.
Canada I still haven't told you how you turned away
your crimes.

Shore

At the end of life a door.
Behind it all that we adore.
Behind it everything abhorred.
Context is everything evermore.
Context is our god, furthermore,
At the door we weep and weep sore.

Death Over Phone Lines

One day, way back when
When the world was more blue
And lots less real, mommy had this job.
It was crappy, made her crabby,
And we all hated it. So one day,
I told her to call in dead.
She did, figuring it would be hard
For them to argue. She said there was
This silence, and then they hung up.
But then the social workers came
In their cheap suits and polyester smiles
And lawyers and the executor of the will
And family and friends and flowers
For funeral arrangements.

No matter what mommy told them,
They still thought she was dead.
I laughed, and I laughed: I was a kid,
It's what we do. But I never found out
What became of mommy, where she went,
If she really ever died. Looking back from now,
Though, it was still pretty funny.

Understand

Understand --
If you'd said all you had to say
Your love would have left anyway.

Understand --
If you said you loved her anyway,
It's stopped mattering anyway.

Understand --
If you'd given your heart for her to stay
You'd still be a worthless sod anyway.

Understand --
No matter what you do to delay
She saw you as you really are today.

Understand --
Once the masks all fell away
She had no myth or love to make her stay.

Start of a sample Sonnet About Nature

And the water turned pitch black, pitch as black
Only, now, all living breathing things did it lack
As scum rises to surface in politics, so too
Our impurities made the world of Nature impure.

Local Hero

Have you see the Real Man?
Yes, I have! Yes, I can!
He lives next door to everyone,
A neighbour and a friend.

What's be done that's made the news?
All things you or I could do!
He's the man who lends a hand,
Knows the power of the magic word.

He helps us when times are tough,.
Always willing to lend an ear.
He'd never say he is any hero,
Just a common man -- but Real!

(a reply to this poem

731

People will forgive anything.
God may not, but God
Does not need people.
Needs must, they say, when
The Devil drives, but there is
No Devil, just us, and faces
In the mirror. No monster
Terrifies more. Ends justified
By means are quests for good
That always end as evil.
Some things should not be justified.

The Letter

How I used to dream:
Voices holding me,
Stigma of family
Wounds driving tears
Into palms.

The tree they hung me on
Pine, decorated for the season
In flashing lights and
Multiphonic tears.

You became as them
When, laughing, told me
Dreams good as dust.
But ashes are pure.

&& I found something
Almost real in
Brand New Dreams,
Bravery found outside
Your love.

When I am famous,
Will you write books?
Do talk shows? Tell everyone
You knew?

Say Something About Cheese

Hunkered down in flesh
flash! skin bereft of zipper,
No way wiggle out & free.
Clothing of words a harsh nakedness
Light without shadows emptied
Down through bones.
Clock whir flicker flash
A hum under a single eye;
Magic forcing false smiles.
Soul slivers compressed into
Albums, black white x-rays
Under colour, a flash of magic
Startling faces to life.

No One Believes Me

A work of art, a masterpiece
Telling truths that will not cease.
I shall not be faithful, I say,
And yet you love me anyway.
Why this is I cannot say
But you claim to be at peace.

Waiting For Them To Die First

Old age is buying pets --
(is a series of bowel movements)
Accompanied by a cat chorus
at the door. It becomes a decline
Of health, the loss of friends
And time; giving forgetfulness,
Taking all else -- and finally
Life is waiting for your pets to die,
Knowing you will follow;
Only wishing to not precede them
Into rest and to silence.

Censorship III

They are all like the doctors:
Quiet, but not as removed.
Telling me they are sorry
For my loss, not looking
At the stumps, hoping
They get some money
When I sue the company.

No one knows I saw it
Coming down the tracks,
Or that only by fondling
The stumps can I get it up
Every morning, secret lusts
Become real, just like in
My dreams. If only I
Had been born broken
Outside, as well as in
Some are not meant
For mending, only for this.

My hunger is sated now.
I finally love my body.

Censorship II

Things fell apart;
To pieces; the day
Adverts became art

Dissection will never find a soul.
And gods       Are real
Inside our heads, the only
Place that they are

We continue to confuse
Movement with action

Real?

If only she was real.
Really a woman, I mean.
If only I could be sure.
But I can't, not - anymore.
No one can be sure, about anything.

Least of all the little things.
Her eyes, lashes fluttering
Like dead insect legs, so hungry.
What is she so hungry for?

It could be a joke, just - a video,
For the net, a night of dressing
To get other men cross.
God help me, I don't know.
I don't know if she's real.

So, it's late and dead pigeons led to Iran led to Superman IV ....

"Can you describe the suspect who destroyed Omegapolois, ma'am?"
"He - he wore his underwear."
"Ma'am?"
"HE WORE IT OUTSIDE HIS PANTS!"
"Oh, god, this is live, right? Ma'am, how much did you have to drink?"
"THEY WERE RED! HE HAD RED UNDERWEAR! I will never forget it!"

Censorship

On Silliness

Most people don't believe in common wonders
Forsaking leaves for crystals, pseudo from science
As if the fall of a leaf was not magic in itself --
For the rotting of nature is a true delight, a wonder.

Shuggling

And the Old Ones shuggled
Together under the light
Of the dead cities giggled
Into the desiccated night.

Grandma

Every year a cake, from memory.
The cake rises as memory fails,
Ingredients like collapsing into
Singularity, a white hole of food.
Every year she says it's love.
Every year it's less edible, and her
Smile is that much wider.

                                                  You
Wonder sometimes, through a prism
darkly, if she knows; if this is just
A joke she's playing, knowing no one
Will ever call her on it; her only
Revenge on a world grown too young.

Wonder

Battering down the hatches, the gods
Sneezing from the common cold of prayer.
The old woman standing in line
Knitting warmth from out of the cold.
Every day she hears the gods
Serenade the moon from fences.
There is only mystery when we
Are wise enough to close our eyes
Willing to pretend we do not see.

Ah, the morning....

Bill Clinton warns against wide torture approval (Reuters)

... I read that as "wife torture approval"

Life

At it's best, life is
The pursuit of pleasure;
At it's worst, there is
Insisting where it should be found.
One man's chains are
Another's bondage gear.

Fragment

Every day the world seems to get a little stupider.
I used to blame the TV, and even my family.
Now I can only blame those who made it.
"It is people. It is people. It is people."

Odd Little Thing

They said there was a way to Heaven,
I just had to turn and walk away.
They said there was a way to Hell
I just had to keep on going
Keep on living keep on loving
Pretending this life wasn't just for show

Don't you know that no one can tell you
They can tell you all about Hell
How it isn't swell and full of fire and sin
But when it comes to heaven, they tell you
Nothing at all, not a single thing
Except that you get wings.

I swore to them I was living
For more than wings or a prayer
I said if God loved us heaven was a given
So I kept on going, on dreaming,
On living, on loving, on sinning
And I got in the gates anyway.

Don't you know no one will tell you
They won't tell you about Heaven
Cuz if it's perfect, everything you've been
Wanting, why would you remain down here
In a world of fear and pain, where nothing
Stops you from getting wings
You just clip your life and fly away.

Talk Like A Pirate Poem

[For Talk Like A Pirate Day]

If yer t' be talkin like a pirate, matey
Ye needs ta be salty 'n a tich a cruel
Yer gotta gets em to walk the plank
To hoist the jib, the scallywags,
If ye ain't a landlubber - say it true.

If you yo ho here we'll keel-haul yer
We're real, ye scrubby plounders,
We say arr and avast and ahoy and we
Want our pieces of eight fer sure.

Yer c'n go about with an act 'o grace
But it's a bachelor's wife for me
And if yer bilged by her own anchor
Well, Davy Jones claims ye true.

She's the sea and she's o'r muther
-- to the brig for them's say otherwise
It's a jack o' this and a jack 'o that
And a shoop n' sail and open skies.

Conceptions

Putting gods into boxes is:
"You can only believe as we do",
is:
"You can only see as we do",
is:
"You can only know as we do"
as if they were limited
by our shallow desire.

Magic, Lack of

There is not enough magic
To form bonds that do not break.
That we are connected at all --
A word, a glance, shared jokes;
Our flimsy miracles laughed,
Launched into the silences.
Between woods and deeds we hover,
The cage of our longings a song.
Mourning notes raised
          high
                                      enough
                                                                      become angelic
things

Sting

last cry shrill screaming
dreams devolve to screams
delighting in fear to
thunder pressure
a swift death the
reward for fear final spasms
stinging the green inside
of the garbage can.

Stories

Stories do the telling, fitting us into their tales.
Hero, Legend, Lover: we are become clichés , every one.
Everyone of us moving, suspended between names
And extremes. In the story we play our part --
Within the Story, bit players one and all.
Only the Story, going on, that never stills.
Before the silence in defiance of all ends
We have "Once upon a time ..." and need nothing else.

Quiet Destroyer 34.06

Government grants and forged loans:
These alone do not a villain make.
Captain Flux does not create his foes,
But I believe he funds them, trying to
Justify his existence one panel at a time.

But he is not the reason I fail.
The reason is simpler: I hire people
To do things, the capitalist way,
Following the Dollar, obeying my will.
But they always, ever fail me.

My henchmen are morons.
It is my fault, I know, for hiring
University graduates, but even so:
If they are a cream, of any crop,
Why wonder that I wish to rule this world?

They NEED Captain Flux, need a hero
Of platitudes and saccarine sayings who
Never offends them, never changes them,
Never asks them to be more
Than they are: he is their religion.

So, to fight him, I have only his creations.
The modern man: gormless, unable
To save himself, expecting salvation
From Flux: doorstops of the revolution.
But I will turn them into his destroyer.

Sonnet XVIII

Comparing thee to a summer's day
In boiling heights of temperature.
June third was quite nice I must say,
And of this truth I feel assured.
Spring compasses just falling rain
And insects that steadily whine.
Winter has snow and cold to call:
Nothing that is the least sublime.
Fall is only winter's soft kin --
A dearth of leaves and nothing fine.
It is on summer that I pin
All hopes that you will yet be mine.
        That day in June I give to you
        Hoping summer alone is true.

Untitled

The way of pain is cold & hard & high
And power comes to those who
Wish to do more than to die.
Holding onto memory suspended between earth & sky
We live and wish to make it real
And grant the universe our reply.

Traps

Building a better cat trap:
Food and fame and commercial spots;
The promise of toothless kittens
And human servants
Turned slow with age and fat and rot.

Life

It'll never be the same again
But there's no tomorrow
Nor yesterdays.
Just the same damn day
Over and over again.

Short Poem

Standing between the living and the dead all in all
Tired of alms giving and wishing for an end to all
I wonder about the things that call us home at night:
When the final doorbell rings do we fall or see a light?

On Starting A Novel

The joy of creation is
Cause enough to create,
It is worth all sins,
Mother of promises
And the only road
To the pure redemption of
Once upon a time . . .

Belief

The UFO did not surprise me.
I believed for long, lonely years.
Nor did they, grey and reptiloid,
Wanting our women and flesh:
I can understand all of that.
I will never grok their gift shop.

There Are Gods In The Kleenex

There are gods everywhere,
Filling the air with names:
Dreams, destines, masquerades.

Common as the cold, as changing
As the wind, yet they remain:
Neither living not dead, only virii.

Quiet Destroyer 28.0724

It's been a good day.

There was this hero, all primary
And golden, and I had men shoot her
Until she stopped moving, and after.

She will return. They all do, their Heaven
A revolving door, but no one will know,
No one will mourn her: Hooded,
She has no name, no identity, and dies
As unknown as she lived.
There was no hope for her.

And what else? Else what? - ah!
I helped sow discord among
The League of Galactic Heroes:
Little things -- a word here, one there:
"Perhaps they are pro human, eh?
Perhaps pro-Flux? oxygen breather?
Two-legged?" Little things, but they matter,
Will come back to haunt him during
Elections. I could have told him
That a real leader doesn't use votes.
A real leader does not give power,
A real leader IS power. Some day,
I will explain that to him.

But not today. Today was just a good day.

Tomorrow will be even better.

Profile of a famous artist in old age

There is a longing inside us
The hideous need, the terrible.
The terrible grasp, longing
For what we may never have.
About me fly the whims of
Misspent youth and age,
Follies of life and love and strife
Ah! What of it? Only,
This: there is longing still.
Even death does not remove,
Nor time's harsh embrace decay --
We long for perfect we
May never know, & we
Grasp in vain for things
Smaller men do not see.
One achieves greatness in
The flower of youth, or in
The fullness of life and age.
I have lived this long in vain hope
That my flowering was still to be,
Still to come; would to God that
It could be so, but it was not.
Those first acts, the first bloom
Of creation, raw, will never come,
Never be again; and I stumble over
Them again and again and again
By God! Trying to pick of pieces,
To Create -- But even God flowered
Once, with Creation, and failed
With man. This insight denobles Him,
But makes my own tragedy easier
To Bear in this small room with
A heater and pen and nothing of fame.
I do not die. Nor kill myself. Why,
I wonder, since the fullness of my gift
Is gone, but it is simple: The Devil Fell,
But I wonder, now, if that was not
His gift, only others shouting such things,
In fear, and he wil bloom, eventually,
To outshine the promise of his youth.
I am not devil, and yet I yearn for this
Perfection I may never know, and is not
Mine to have, or hold; but I only wish
To give it away to the world.

Driving

Told him not to speed
Mother in law in front seat
Not worth impacting on the shield
(besides, harder to clean up from
the inside, without a windshield
wiper -- disinfectant never gets
the smell of her breath away.).
There are sirens, a hard on
At the city noisescape, the wails
Like the end of the world,
Just for me and just for you.

There will be people speeding
And no laws or rules or warrants.
You will finally know enough
To be afraid of me. I will maybe
Come to love you, but only if
You never pay the speeding ticket.

Dark Matter

i.

Dark matter is the iceberg
Of lives barely visible, surface tensions
rippling through magic volume unseen,
unknowable, but still real.

ii.

The urban myth is that
90% of the brain goes unused.
Yet 90% of the matter
In the universe is unseen.
You think this is coincidental?
You think it doesn't matter?
Think again. Everything matters.

Creating A Hero

Packaging new wine in old bottles,
The still gurgling its quiet songs --
We wait for an explosion, hoping
(hopefully, O, not in vain)
That this time it will explode, that
This time there will be power, that
This time we will become superhuman.
If it works for rocks from space,
Dad said, it should work for other things
(like radiation, even if all Uncle Jeffery got
was dying in a hospital bed)
And so we're hoping that one of us
Becomes Super Stillman, so we can make
Drinks galore and become filthy rich.
I just hope that, if I am Super Stillman,
I can still get drunk on what I make.

YA Trilogy

.. has a title. Finally. As I sat down to write the first chapter, and even had the chapter named, I realized I needed - well, a working title at least.

Dogs of War, consisting of three volumes:
Book 1: Contact
Book 2: Conversion
Book 3: War

Nice and simple. Now, to begin...

At The Outdoor Orchestra

The symphony is notes mixed
With the pedestrian, cold wind,
Crying children, bored adults --
Classics unable to overcome ennui.
Sound failing into grey noise
As people turn, talk to one another,
Unable to see the symphony
(Only to hear) and untouched, unmoved.
The supremacy of sight complete.

I cried myself to sleep last night

I cried myself to sleep last night
Trying to remember why.

I thought tears would bring you back
After the well of hate ran dry.

I cried myself to sleep last night
By the altar of Your fame.

I thought faith could move mountains
And tears give You some shame.

I cried myself to sleep last night
And you were outside the door.

I thought you'd come in, ask me why,
But we never talk anymore.

I cried myself to sleep last night
Without hope of reply.

I cried myself to sleep last night
And never wondered why.

Bystander #1

PAGE 21, PANEL 5

There's this thing you don't understand.
Too busy oppressing, being The Man
All that holds it together is the status quo
Pretending our laws aren't just for show.
But if all the super villains vanished one day
And the super heroes too -- well, I say:
Don't you agree, hero, or think it true
That we'd be better off without all of you?

Random Musing Late At Night

Sometimes there aren't differences.
Sometimes laughter is like crying:
No noise, shoulders shaking,
Only signal -- and what it means we
May never know. Everything depends
On that, on what others see,
On what they believe, on interpretation.
Even things that go beyond words
Doesn't go near deep enough.

Bush admits secret CIA terror detentions

Bush insisted that the detainees were not tortured.
"I want to be absolutely clear with our people, and the world: The United States does not torture," Bush said. "It's against our laws, and it's against our values. I have not authorized it, and I will not authorize it."

"Furthmore," the President added, "It's like trees falling in woods. I miight know a tree could fall, but if I wasn't there then it never will fall. This is like the cat in a box, y' know. Until we take the prisoner out of the cell, we don't know if they've been tortured or not."

Magic

There is no such thing as magic.
Not real magic, of words shaping worlds,
of taking on new shapes and shedding shadow.
Real magic is giving, in this world,
without expectation of return.
The magics of story and fable are only stories,
with just the spells a story can weave
but nothing real. In all our seeking,
we have yet to find, to see it
dream it be it hold it know it
- so we know it doesn't exist.

Sky Stuff

Not seeing things is easy,
one feels. It is a simple thing
to see only what others
see, to never wonder what
trees were before they
were trees, or the sky before
the colour blue came along.
Maybe it was azure
way back then.

When Life

And when life steps,
soft, between love --
what is left that endures?
What is left to believe
so strongly in again?

Musing on Curtains

The world occluded by blinds
Is a prison of faded colours:
Sky, rooftops, and nothing else.
But I have a secret. A little one,
And yet it is mine, and that
Makes all the difference: Ready?
I can open them anytime I want to.

Wind Song

There is no running
Deep as song and drowning.

The wind is - just! - laughter
A child's song ever after.

Questions are more important

What would you
Destroy
Yourself for?

All sky is closed
The stars
A net holding it fast.

If all your dreams are
Achievable
Why do you have them?

Silence the only answer
Words
Too hard to find.

Dreams rising

The dreams of the people will rise,
Ashes and wishes meeting in our eyes:
Dandelions lend colour to the snow,
There is always a home for us to go
And what we know we don't disguise.

-- But there is broken glass

Her hands falling
to the side
          there should be words
A head turns away
    breath
          and another
almost shuddering
          there should be - words

They are empty utterances.
"To your room."
    and "Go."
    there is nothing
    real to them, behind them, just sound
          moving still air
          there should be

Almost, I step
    on the glass, to get something
    to get reaction, movement
          but I am so afraid
          there will be nothing
          but there should be

But.

Speaking Times

Sky grey thunder
rumbles
promising - nothing,
dust-dry souls hover
voices pithering about
other times --
green lands &
corpse pale skies,
but wise enough
in this
not to call them
happier days.

After The Test Was Over

I told you to bury
All thoughts and memories
Said I was sorry
That I couldn't make you see.
You said it was love
I said it was an experiment in
Testing hopes of
Men, psychology looking within.

A Wind

                            A wind
                        dancing
                                  whispering
                        leaves
                   scattershot around the ground
                        flying
                                  up to the stars
                       we are singing
                       we are
                                  and the wind
                            Is
                        the softest smile.

Regret, This

Regret, this
Asking for a loan,
Consolidation -
Borrowing
To pay off debts.

The manager's reply
- No, not for you -
Jarring as a clown
Without a smile,
Only, just, his
too-sharp teeth.

POEM ROUNDUP FOR AUGUST

Number of poems written: 56
Average number per day: 1.8
Longest poem: Song of the Dwarf (31 lines)
Shortest poem: Haiku (3 lines)
Total wordcount: 4,341

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

4 month round up:

Total # of of poems in 4 months: 182
Total Four Month Word Count: 12,812
Total # of poems a day: 1.45

The Dance

It's prom night and the
Hungry ghosts are shivering
Over the dance to the gods,
Hoping for a new body
To ride until the dawn.

The dance beats out
Older than ritual,
Deeper than longing,
Thanking the universe
That they are.