Monday poems Archives

Monday poem: David Lee

David Lee | "Tuesday Morning, Loading Pigs"

The worse goddam job of all
sez John pushing a thick slat
in front of the posts
behind the sow in the loading chute
so when she balked and backed up
she couldn't turn and get away
I never seen a sow or a hog load easy
some boars will
mebbe it's because they got balls
or something I don't know
but I seen them do it
that Brown feller the FFA
he's got this boar he just opens the trailer door
he comes and gets in
course he mebbe knows what
he's being loaded up for

it was this Ivie boy back home
the best I ever seen for loading
he wasn't scared of nothing
he'd get right in and shove them up
he put sixteen top hogs
in the back of a Studebaker pickup
by hisself I seen it
when he was a boy he opened up
the tank on the tractor
smelling gas
made his brains go soft they sed
he failed fifth grade
but it wasn't his fault
he could load up hogs

I always had to at home
cause I was the youngest
I sed then it was two things
I wouldn't do when I grown up
warsh no dishes or load up hogs
by god they can set in the sink
a month before I'll warsh them
a man's got to have a principle
he can live by is what I say
now you grab her ears and pull
I'll push from back here
we'll get that sonofabitch in the truck.

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Monday Poem: T.S. Eliot

T.S. Eliot | "Preludes"

I

The winter evening settles down
With smell of steaks in passageways.

Six o'clock.
The burnt-out ends of smoky days.
And now a gusty shower wraps
The grimy scraps
Of withered leaves about your feet
And newspapers from vacant lots;
The showers beat
On broken blinds and chimneypots,
And at the corner of the street
A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.
And then the lighting of the lamps.

II

The morning comes to consciousness
Of faint stale smells of beer
From the sawdust-trampled street
With all its muddy feet that press
To early coffee-stands.
With the other masquerades
That times resumes,
One thinks of all the hands
That are raising dingy shades

In a thousand furnished rooms.

III

You tossed a blanket from the bed

You lay upon your back, and waited;
You dozed, and watched the night revealing
The thousand sordid images
Of which your soul was constituted;
They flickered against the ceiling.
And when all the world came back
And the light crept up between the shutters

And you heard the sparrows in the gutters,
You had such a vision of the street
As the street hardly understands;
Sitting along the bed's edge, where
You curled the papers from your hair,
Or clasped the yellow soles of feet

In the palms of both soiled hands.

IV

His soul stretched tight across the skies
That fade behind a city block,
Or trampled by insistent feet
At four and five and six o'clock;
And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
And evening newspapers, and eyes
Assured of certain certainties,
The conscience of a blackened street

Impatient to assume the world.



I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle

Infinitely suffering thing.


Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.

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Monday poem: Larry Levis

Larry Levis | "For Zbigniew Herbert, Summer, 1971, Los Angeles"

No matter how hard I listen, the wind speaks
One syllable, which has no comfort in it--
Only a rasping of air through the dead elm.

*

Once a poet told me of his friend who was torn apart
By two pigs in a field in Poland. The man
Was a prisoner of the Nazis, and they watched,
He said, with interest and a drunken approval . . .
If terror is a state of complete understanding,

Then there was probably a point at which the man
Went mad, and felt nothing, though certainly
He understood everything that was there: after all,
He could see blood splash beneath him on the stubble,
He could hear singing float toward him from the barracks.

*

And though I don't know much about madness,
I know it lives in the thin body like a harp
Behind the rib cage. It makes it painful to move.
And when you kneel in madness your knees are glass,
And so you must stand up again with great care.

*

Maybe this wind was what he heard in 1941.
Maybe I have raised a dead man into this air,
And now I will have to bury him inside my body,
And breathe him in, and do nothing but listen--
Until I hear the black blood rushing over
The stone of my skull, and believe it is music.

But some things are not possible on the earth.
And that is why people make poems about the dead.
And the dead watch over then, until they are finished:
Until their hands feel like glass on the page,
And snow collects in the blind eyes of statues.

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Monday poem: Charles Bukowski

After a few dead weeks (appropriate, eh), the Monday poem is back with something which dovetails nicely into an earlier post about music and passion. It's incredible that its taken me this long to post a work by Bukowski - I, like so many of us, was consumed by his rambling music during the hazy, coffee-and-beer-fueled days of mid-college - but I could never find the right piece for the right day. This poem isn't quite right either, but its damn good and a little different, and so here we go.

For those of you playing at home, I'd like some style points for moving from The Donald to Mr. Barfly himself. A thanks is deserved to Tony Towle who was kind enough to write a nice note to me (my first from a featured poet!) in the small hours of the morning (sorry again about the mistake in your piece!) which got my juices flowing. I like the idea of a NY-guy amping me up to publish a L.A. story. Thanks again, Tony - I hereby dedicate line 19 (if someone can do so from a poem that isn't theirs) to you. Sorry Mr. Trump, no dice for you.

Charles Bukowski | me and Faulkner

sure, I know that you are tired of hearing about it, but
most repeat the same theme over and over again, it's
as if they were trying to refine what seems so strange
and off and important to them, it's done by everybody
because everybody is of a different stripe and form
and each must work out what is before them
over and over again because
that is their personal tiny miracle
their bit of luck

like now as like before and before I have been slowly
drinking this fine red wine and listening to symphony after
symphony from this black radio to my left

some symphonies remind me of certain cities and certain rooms,
make me realize that certain people now long dead were able to
transgress graveyards

and traps and cages and bones and limbs

people who broke through with joy and madness and with
insurmountable force

in tiny rented rooms I was struck by miracles

and even now after decades of listening I still am able to hear
a new work never heard before that is totally
bright, a fresh-blazing sun

there are countless sub-stratas of rising surprise from the
human firmament

music has an expansive and endless flow of ungodly
exploration

writers are confined to the limit of sight and feeling upon the
page while musicians leap into unrestricted immensity

right now it's just old Tchaikowsky moaning and groaning his
way through symphony #5
but it's just as good as when I first heard it

I haven't heard one of my favorites, Eric Coates, for some time
but I know that if I keep drinking the good red and listening
that he will be along

there are others, many others

and so
this is just another poem about drinking and listening to
music

repeat, right?

but look at Faulkner, he not only said the same thing over and
over but he said the same
place

so, please, let me boost these giants of our lives
once more: the classical composers of our time and
of times past

it has kept the rope from my throat

maybe it will loosen
yours

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Monday poem: Wallace Stevens

My head is full... even as my calendar remains relatively calm and care-free. There has been a lot of really wonderful personal time spent lately that I feel very thankful for. I joined the girlfriend down in the Keys for a few days of sun, sand, snorkeling, and seafood to round out the holiday last week. She is in the middle of a 5-week family medicine rotation to begin her 3rd year of medical school. Meanwhile, I'm manning the fort back home in Miami, watching Deadwood, drinking my swollen collection of fine whiskies, shooting the occasional photography job, and thinking... about what and where is next, what I'm shooting and not, what my personal work and Blueeyes means to me, and to the industry, and generally about where the meaning is in a life.

A couple of weeks ago I read the first bits of Jim Lo Scalzo's upcoming memoir about finding meaning in a life spent on the road as a photojournalist, and from the abstract alone I was nodding my head up and down (I've already pre-ordered, you should too). Then I watched these two video teasers he put together and they had me in tears. Not sadness; but touching something deep inside many of us who are trying to create something more significant than ourselves, and feel lost or disconnected at so many points.

Maybe this is just getting older, maybe its just too much coffee or simply our modern world, but more and more I feel life speeding up all around me, the patchwork of realities and abstracted systems spinning 'round, my personal and professional lives increasingly at odds, and the industry I work in unfamiliar. It's not good or bad, its just more and different. And as I try to keep an ever tighter grip on the lines leading from and to the past and the present, I wondering how long I can hold on, or if letting go is what must eventually happen.

This morning I did some searching for poetry about the Florida Keys and immediately came upon this Wallace Stevens' poem that captured me. Stevens' believed that reality was verb, an active object instead of a static, one-dimensional thing, which required energy and imagination to make any sense of whatsoever (Amen, brotha). And even then he writes that we can only see the clear picture of our lives for a brief moment, before being awash in another wave of obscurity. On top of that complexity, I love this piece for its being a knowing poem from a place formed by of the sea, an outcrop of rocks in the its' void, always a wild place of Florida, unknowable.

Wallace Stevens | The Idea of Order at Key West

She sang beyond the genius of the sea.
The water never formed to mind or voice,
Like a body wholly body, fluttering
Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion
Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry,
That was not ours although we understood,
Inhuman, of the veritable ocean.

The sea was not a mask. No more was she.
The song and water were not medleyed sound
Even if what she sang was what she heard,
Since what she sang was uttered word by word.
It may be that in all her phrases stirred
The grinding water and the gasping wind;
But it was she and not the sea we heard.

For she was the maker of the song she sang.
The ever-hooded, tragic-gestured sea
Was merely a place by which she walked to sing.
Whose spirit is this? we said, because we knew
It was the spirit that we sought and knew
That we should ask this often as she sang.
If it was only the dark voice of the sea
That rose, or even colored by many waves;
If it was only the outer voice of sky
And cloud, of the sunken coral water-walled,
However clear, it would have been deep air,
The heaving speech of air, a summer sound
Repeated in a summer without end
And sound alone. But it was more than that,
More even than her voice, and ours, among
The meaningless plungings of water and the wind,
Theatrical distances, bronze shadows heaped
On high horizons, mountainous atmospheres
Of sky and sea.

It was her voice that made
The sky acutest at its vanishing.
She measured to the hour its solitude.
She was the single artificer of the world
In which she sang. And when she sang, the sea,
Whatever self it had, became the self
That was her song, for she was the maker. Then we,
As we beheld her striding there alone,
Knew that there never was a world for her
Except the one she sang and, singing, made.

Ramon Fernandez, tell me, if you know,
Why, when the singing ended and we turned
Toward the town, tell why the glassy lights,
The lights in the fishing boats at anchor there,
As the night descended, tilting in the air,
Mastered the night and portioned out the sea,
Fixing emblazoned zones and fiery poles,
Arranging, deepening, enchanting night.

Oh! Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon,
The maker's rage to order words of the sea,
Words of the fragrant portals, dimly-starred,
And of ourselves and of our origins,
In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds.

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Monday poem: Beth Ann Fennelly

Here's a poem I came across in an anthology recently that reminded me of the strange holiday (so many different emotions, meanings (patriotism? movie blockbusters?)) marking this week. And what better way to probe the meaning of being American than to dare suggest becoming more French! (Full disclosure: at this very second I have a tub of duck fat in my fridge, not to mention some extremely smelly cheese that our favorite French sushi chef, Julien, recommended to us). Happy 4th to all!

Beth Ann Fennelly | I Need to Be More French. Or Japanese.

Then I wouldn’t prefer the California wine,
its big sugar, big fruit rolling down my tongue,
a cornucopia spilled across a tacky tablecloth.
I’d prefer the French, its smoke and rot.
Said Cézanne: Le monde—c’est terrible!
Which means, The world—it bites the big weenie.
People sound smarter in French.
The Japanese prefer the crescent moon to the full,
prefer the rose before it blooms.
Oh, I have been to the temples of Kyoto,
I have stood on the Pont Neuf, and my eyes,
they drank it in, but my taste buds
shuffled along in the beer line at Wrigley Field.
It was the day they gave out foam fingers.
I hereby pledge to wear more gray, less yellow
of the beaks of baby mockingbirds,
that huge yellow yawping open on wobbly necks,
trusting something yummy will be dropped inside,
soon. I hereby pledge to be reserved.
When the French designer learned
I didn’t like her mockups for my book cover,
she sniffed, They’re not for everyone. They’re
subtle. What area code is 662 anyway? I said,
Mississippi, sweetheart. Bet you couldn’t find it
with a map. Okay: I didn’t really. But so what
if I’m subtle as May in Mississippi, my nose
in the wine-bowl of this magnolia bloom, so what
if I’m mellow as the punch-drunk bee.
If I were Japanese I’d write about magnolias
in March, how tonal, each bud long as a pencil,
sheathed in celadon suede, jutting from a cluster
of glossy leaves. I’d end the poem before anything
bloomed, end with rain swelling the buds
and the sheaths bursting, then falling to the grass
like a fairy’s castoff slippers, like candy wrappers,
like spent firecrackers. Yes, my poem
would end there, spent firecrackers.
If I were French, I’d capture post-peak, in July,
the petals floppy, creased brown with age,
the stamens naked, stripped of yellow filaments.
The bees lazy now, bungling the ballet, thinking
for the first time about October. If I were French,
I’d prefer this, end with the red-tipped filaments
scattered on the scorched brown grass,
and my poem would incite the sophisticated,
the French and the Japanese readers—
because the filaments look like matchsticks,
and it’s matchsticks, we all know, that start the fire.

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Monday poem: Tony Towle

New York has been on my mind lately, as I heard recaps of the Magnum Festival events from friends and decided not to attend a party for Redux's 5th anniversary this week. More importantly though, the city has been floating around the girlfriend and I's thoughts as we look into the future and try to figure out which new place will be our next home as we tire of Miami and she moves towards her residency.

Who better than a New York poet to play with these ideas and memories, drawing a line through the thousand of hours I've waited in coffee shops ever so patiently for a tiny spark of inspiration to occur.

Tony Towle | In the Coffee Shop

the Mona Lisa, in the Village
at Bleecker and Seventh, a blip
from the middle ages
on the radar screen
of that young woman over there,
while she thinks of someone else.

I should have brought
something to read
because I have nothing to do now but write,
the way I used to
forty years ago, in the Figaro,
in the Village
at MacDougal and Bleecker, exhilarated
by loneliness, poverty, and paralyzing
indecision, and resolutely ignoring the fact
that everyone cool in there
could tell that I wasn't --
lost to what was happening
behind the overpriced coffee, 35 cents
for the fuel
to infiltrate oblivion;

and I waited for a girlfriend
and composed jejune little ironies
that I hoped would pass for poems,
and I had all the time in the world.

I could see the San Remo bar across the street
where I learned years later
real New York poets went
and drank real drinks;
but the San Remo has since disappeared
with everything else from 1960--
discarded, lost, or broken, or certainly
wouldn't fit me anymore,
except the sound advice
still gathering dust:

Think before you speak.
(Yes, I probably should have done that.)
A penny saved is a penny earned.
(That could have been made a bit clearer, perhaps.)
Don't be a complete idiot.
(Hey, I gave it a shot.)
You really should think about a career.
I'm thinking about it now
and there it is: involuntary barbs,
unasked-for opinions
and missed opportunities strewn
and rusting about the incorporeal field.

I told Diane I'd be here 'til six. Waiting
for a girlfriend literally is a great improvement
over afternoons at the Figaro;
and in fact it's cool to have a girlfriend at my age
I think amusedly to myself
behind the overpriced coffee,
2.95 to contemplate the traffic
fleeing down Seventh and into the past,
which brings me up to the present,
where I put down my pen, figuratively.

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Monday poem: Cecilia Woloch

A quick 2 weeks later and I'm back in South Florida and at "work" once again. The trip, which I'll post about in more illustrated detail this week, was fantastic and the Siblings 3 (me, my sister Amy, and little brother Mikey) traveled very well together and had a great time exploring the UK.

Our vacation also returned me to a perfect place to react to the following piece by Cecilia Woloch, who is a poet that until this morning I knew nothing about. The title made me immediately recall an exercise in my middle school algebra class where we were given xeroxed images of traffic signs and asked to think about what they mean, and the ways in which so many signs all around us really mean or don't mean so many things. And in that way, the delicate balance of perception and perspective, a journey to a new place is the perfect way to reset my life back on what is actually worthwhile.

Cecilia Woloch | Slow Children at Play

All the quick children have gone inside, called
by their mothers to hurry-up-wash-your-hands
honey-dinner’s-getting-cold, just-wait-till-your-father-gets-home-
and only the slow children out on the lawns, marking off
paths between fireflies, making soft little sounds with their mouths, ohs
that glow and go out and glow. And their slow mothers flickering,
pale in the dusk, watching them turn in the gentle air, watching them
twirling, their arms spread wide, thinking, These are my children, thinking
Where is their dinner? Where has their father gone?

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Monday poem: Dylan Thomas

After two weeks of laziness I'm back with another Monday poem, which despite today's holiday is focused on my vacation beginning this week to the U.K. I'll be away from the phones, e-mail, and blog for 2 weeks while I take a long (figurative) walk from London to Edinburgh (via Bath, Snowdonia, and York, roughly) with two of my siblings. The trip will be our first to the British Isles, and we are very, very excited. Though I'm certain London will be a lot of fun, I'm already dreaming about escaping the city and settling into the drive through Wales and up into lower Scotland, and thus present this favorite from Dylan Thomas.

I'll be back in mid-June with a new set of promo cards (in the mail now), next month's newsletter, and hopefully some nice postcards from the trip. Until then...

Dylan Thomas | "Fern Hill"

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.

And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
In the sun that is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
And the sabbath rang slowly
In the pebbles of the holy streams.

All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
And playing, lovely and watery
And fire green as grass.
And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
Flying with the ricks, and the horses
Flashing into the dark.

And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
The sky gathered again
And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
Out of the whinnying green stable
On to the fields of praise.

And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
In the sun born over and over,
I ran my heedless ways,
My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
Before the children green and golden
Follow him out of grace,

Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
In the moon that is always rising,
Nor that riding to sleep
I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

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Monday poem: Tom Waits

In college I found Magnum and Tom Waits at roughly the same time, which was also roughly the same time that I began to drink coffee and bourbon (separately). I was probably at some party at Mizzou, stealing beers from grad students who should know better than to buy a premium six-pack and leave it unguarded in the fridge, when someone put on a Waits album. Already passionate for jazz and blues, I was instantly hooked. Later I remember my friend Travis driving us a ridiculously short distance to Ernie's diner in the morning hungover after several too many, he had a cigarette hanging wildly out of his mouth while shouting the lyrics caterwaul-style, so we could replay a mix CD with "Filipino Box Spring Hog" on it. Damn, that's a great tune.

I'm going to write a longer post about Waits and how I wish I could photograph even a fraction of the way that he can create music... but for now enjoy these two rather short song/poems. The second should be familiar to those of you out there who are (like me) fans of HBO's "The Wire."

Tom Waits | "Frank's Wild Years (for Frankie Z.)"

Well Frank settled down in the Valley
and hung his wild years
on a nail that he drove through
his wife's forehead
he sold used office furniture
out there on San Fernando Road
and assumed a $30,000 loan
at 15 1/4 % and put down payment
on a little two bedroom place

his wife was a spent piece of used jet trash
made good bloody marys
kept her mouth shut most of the time
had a little Chihuahua named Carlos
that had some kind of skin disease
and was totally blind. They had a
thoroughly modern kitchen
self-cleaning oven (the whole bit)
Frank drove a little sedan
they were so happy

One night Frank was on his way home
from work, stopped at the liquor store,
picked up a couple Mickey's Big Mouths
drank 'em in the car on his way
to the Shell station, he got a gallon of
gas in a can, drove home, doused
everything in the house, torched it,
parked across the street, laughing,
watching it burn, all Halloween
orange and chimney red then

Frank put on a top forty station
got on the Hollywood Freeway
headed north
Never could stand that dog

Tom Waits | "Way Down in the Hole"

When you walk through the garden
you gotta watch your back
well I beg your pardon
walk the straight and narrow track
if you walk with Jesus
he's gonna save your soul
you gotta keep the devil
way down in the hole

he's got the fire and the fury
at his command
well you don't have to worry
if you hold on to Jesus hand
we'll all be safe from Satan
when the thunder rolls
just gotta help me keep the devil
way down in the hole

All the angels sing about Jesus' mighty sword
and they'll shield you with their wings
and keep you close to the lord
don't pay heed to temptation
for his hands are so cold
you gotta help me keep the devil
way down in the hole

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Monday poem: E. E. Cummings

Something short and sweet for the season and my friend Erin, who knows a lot better than I (eg. Prague vs. Miami) what the long-awaited joy of Spring means.
(Apologies to the author for the lack of correct spacing...)

E. E. Cummings | in Just-

in Just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame balloonman

whistles far and wee

and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it's
spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer
old baloonman whistles
far and wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it's
spring
and
the

goat-footed

balloonMan whistles
far
and
wee

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Monday poem: Billy Collins

It seems appropriate to start with a poem by one of my favorite contemporary poets, writing about poetry, the trouble with creative acts that have no end, and stealing from others, for the inaugural post of a new feature I'm swiping from Alec Soth, whose Friday poems I've enjoyed for months. Really, its only borrowing, Mr. Soth, because you see these will be Monday poems. Monday. Not Friday; not the end of the week. Totally different.

This selection is especially apt because Mr. Collins' incredible and simple (meant in the very best and most grateful way) work has lately re-energized my attention to poetry, which along with photography was one of the things that made my life in high school infinitely brighter.

Billy Collins | The Trouble with Poetry

The trouble with poetry, I realized
as I walked along a beach one night --
cold Florida sand under my bare feet,
a show of stars in the sky --

the trouble with poetry is
that it encourages the writing of more poetry,
more guppies crowding the fish tank,
more baby rabbits
hopping out of their mothers into the dewy grass.

And how will it ever end?
unless the day finally arrives
when we have compared everything in the world
to everything else in the world,

and there is nothing left to do
but quietly close our notebooks
and sit with our hands folded on our desks.

Poetry fills me with joy
and I rise like a feather in the wind.
Poetry fills me with sorrow
and I sink like a chain flung from a bridge.

But mostly poetry fills me
with the urge to write poetry,
to sit in the dark and wait for a little flame
to appear at the tip of my pencil.

And along with that, the longing to steal,
to break into the poems of others
with a flashlight and a ski mask.

And what an unmerry band of thieves we are,
cut-purses, common shoplifters,
I thought to myself
as a cold wave swirled around my feet
and the lighthouse moved its megaphone over the sea,
which is an image I stole directly
from Lawrence Ferlinghetti --
to be perfectly honest for a moment --

the bicycling poet of San Francisco
whose little amusement park of a book
I carried in a side pocket of my uniform
up and down the treacherous halls of high school.

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