the goblin

Untitled Poem No. 3

When can I drink you, my wine?
Let my lips touch your lips
    and make you a part of my self?
Advance through these veins and conquer
    all of me
From the toes that love to touch your
    toes to my knees that sometimes
    shake to the brain and bits of system
    that explode when I am with you.
When I am shy, loosen my tongue.
When I am a poet, fasten it tight.
That for once I might be silent
Then, at last, you will be mine.

Untitled Poem No. 2

i do not see your face in the moon
though once i saw your face in the moonlight, and
i cannot find you in the sunset
though once we walked
through an explosion of amber, ruby and topaz
and talked of nothing and all things and sun things.
i look for you in the stars of steel
and space-age plastics that orbit my backyard,
relaying phone calls not from you and television programs
     you never approved of.
once i had you but now I have lost you.
yet i do not suffer from the delusions of the brokenhearted,
because i do not see you everywhere i go.
i see only that you are not with me.

Poem Of The Week

Ramón Chaparro is a good friend of mine - more like family, really.

He is restless, a kind of vagabond poet-theologian, with a heart for the far-flung and the forgotten, and a knack for creating community wherever he goes. (I sometimes imagine that he must have a lot in common with Rich Mullins, the late singer-songwriter.)

Throughout the month of April, Ramón is posting one of his poems each day on his website. "A Long Week" is my favorite so far, and not just because it reflects the author's intelligence, sensitivity, wit, and deep wisdom. It's just really, really good.

I posted it on the Burnside Writers Collective blog as the Poem Of The Day. If there is anyone who visits this site but doesn't regularly visit the BWC blog, you should read Ramón's poem by going to either the BWC or Ramón's personal blog.

9/11/02

The rivers run.
The tides change,
And the mountains are gradually worn down to a nub.
And I,
I go to sleep each night to the sound of the shopping
    network that takes over our local CBS affiliate in the
    early hours of the morning,
Secure in the knowledge that if anything truly
    momentous happens
Dan Rather will interrupt the TV personalities peddling costume
    jewelry
And I,
I will be the first to know.
The rivers run.
The tides change,
The desert advances, like an army,
And the insomniacs and the senior citizens keep the wheels of
    capitalism turning long into the night.

Untitled Poem No. 1

I want to be a poet.
I want to be Pablo Neruda,
Because you loved Pablo Neruda.

You loved his Latin-ness:
Es tan corto el amir, y es tan largo el olvido.
I want to be Latin.
I want to be in translation.

Neruda said things to you that I never could.
I wanted to name you the queen.
I wanted to cast my net into your oceanic eyes.
Did I never mention any of this?
No matter:
You had eyes for only Neruda.

I want to use words like blood and
Barley and
Gypsum and
Skin and
Get away with it.

I want to be a tortured genius.
I want you to introduce me to your sister as
"My poet, my melancholy one, whom I love."
We would sit on the rock wall overlooking your ocean, and
I would write you poems that I hated but you loved.

I want to be a communist.

I want to live in exile.
I want to attend parties for all our expatriate friends, where

You would introduce me again as
"My poet, my melancholy one, whom I love."
And I would nod politely.

Then I would pull you over to a darkened
Corner of the room and monopolize your attention there.
I would ask you questions and drink.
I would whisper poems in your ear
And kiss you again in front of all our expatriate friends.

Shop Talk

Dominant Male, requires adoring and
obedient submissive for strict discipline
and body worship.

Vintage-model SWM, 50, looking for
experienced driver with well-kept garage who
prefers smooth driving for possible long-distance
adventure. I handle mountain roads well and

still have juice in the battery.
Voice Mailbox 50235.
She circles this one with her felt-tip
pen and mumbles a kind of voodoo

mantra, willing the red ink,
this unbroken circle of her own blood, to
keep out the others. She saw him first.
She claims 50235 for herself and they consume

each other with the fierce, impetuous
hunger of books she is to proud to read.
She calls and leaves a message:
whispering semi-erotic shop talk

about garages and tools and classic cars and
how she is getting hot. Mmm, so hot.

Now they are zipping through the Sierras in 50235’s
Cadillac – a convertible – his platinum
hair impervious to the wind
and he is so dashing. He smiles

this disarming smile…shockingly white teeth (all real)
…and his bronze skin a leather landscape…
and they listen to good jazz as they drive…
and, God, she is so witty.

Friendship and more. SWF seeking
feminine middle-aged man hater with
no sexual hang-ups.
This is unexplored territory for her.

Now they are sharing a plate of sashimi and
oyster shooters at The Raw Bar. Now they are going
to poetry readings at the Pink Flamingo…
and they sit in front of the fireplace…hot

on her skin…and she is soft…
and men – the bastards – are the furthest
thing from her mind

as 61834 moves a hand
further up her thigh.

Faithfully yours. Two Ch men, one shy,
one outgoing, seeking 2 Ch women, for private Bible
study, must have humor, sensitivity, security,
nonsmokers only.

MWF seeking anybody,
warm hands but cold feet,
pours over the personals each evening at
her kitchen table and lives a 2nd-hand

life there. Oldest son upstairs
annihilating zombies on his computer.
Husband throwing touchdown passes
from the pocket of his La-Z-Boy chair.

Blogging Poetry

I mentioned in a previous post that I am posting a new poem each day on the Burnside Writers Collective blog in honor of National Poetry Month. And - can I just say? - I'm loving it. I read for at least twenty hours a week, immersing myself in novels, memoirs and biographies, books on science, nature, history, and Americana. But, with the exception of a survey class I took in college, this is the first time I have interacted with poetry - especially poetry from a diverse group of poets - on a daily basis. I don't want it to end. I'm sad for the inevitability of May.

I'm considering different ways of carrying on this project after April ends. One idea is to post a "poem of the day" here on The Goblin, with a format similar to the one I'm using now on the BWC.

I'm also considering starting a new blog called something like "The Poetry Almanac," which would feature daily poems, historical information, poetry news from around the web, book reviews, and more. I foresee at least three problems with starting a "Poetry Almanac."

The first problem is one of practicality: I already maintain one blog (and inconsistently at that), contribute to a second blog, and owe outstanding "assignments" for a third site. Where would I find the time for a new blog?

The second problem is one of legality: What are the copyright requirements for posting poetry on a blog, since I wouldn't want to limit my poems to those in the public domain (i.e., dead white dudes)?

The third problem is one of reality: The word "almanac" implies, if not comprehensive knowledge, then at least wide-ranging familiarity with a subject, which I certainly do not have with poetry. Any poetry blog would necessarily flow from my own inexperience. (This is the actually the least of my concerns; a little water behind the ears could conceivably be an asset.)

Do any of you have opinions/advice for me?

National Poetry Month has also caused me to dig deep into my personal archives to find my own erstwhile attempts at poetry. I've written a total of ten poems in my life, with no immediate plans to write more. I imagine that poets labor over their poems like a labor over my prose (blog excepted), obsessing over words, balancing precision with rhythm and tone and pitch. I've never written a poem that way. My poems come in flashes of inspiration and seem to write themselves. I rarely revise and I'm sure it shows.

That being said, in a burst of April exuberance I am sure I will come to regret, I've decided to post several of my own poems here on The Goblin, starting tomorrow. The last time these poems saw the light of day was when my younger brother Dustin bullied me into reading them at one of his coffee shop concerts. Dustin, a gifted singer-songwriter, is the real poet in the family. (You can see him play at Muddy Waters in Portland on April 26.) Strangely, that my poems are  unpolished and unsophisticated doesn't bother me enough to keep them buried in my computer hard drive. I blame it on National Poetry Month.

Update: Two friends (Ramon and Kimberly) are posting on their blogs poems they've written. Check them out.

"I go among trees and sit still"

I am currently reading "A Timbered Choir," a collection of poetry by Wendell Berry. These are the "Sabbath Poems," written over two decades on Berry's weekly Sunday walks through nature. He writes in his preface: "These poems were written in silence, in solitude, mainly out of doors...I hope that some readers will read them as they were written: slowly, and with more patience than effort." In this area, as in so many others, I'm trying to do as the poet-novelist-essayist-activist- farmer from Port Royal, Kentucky advises. I've copied out a couple of the poems into a notebook that I carry in my back pocket. Here's a Sabbath Poem I intend to memorize, along with the epigraph from Isaiah inscribed at the beginning of this excellent book:

"The whole earth is at rest, and is
quiet: they break forth into singing."
                                    ISAIAH 14:7

1979 (I)

I go among trees and sit still.
All my stirring becomes quiet
around me like circles on water.
My tasks lie in their places
where I left them, asleep like cattle.

Then what is afraid of me comes
and lives a while in my sight.
What it fears in me leaves me,
and the fear of me leaves it.
It sings, and I hear its song.

Then what I am afraid of comes.
I live for a while in its sight.
What I fear in it leaves it,
and the fear of it leaves me.
It sings, and I hear its song.

After days of labor,
mute in my consternations,
I hear my song at last,
and I sing it. As we sing,
the day turns, the trees move.

Here is an excellent interview with Wendell Berry in the Fall 2007 issue of Shenandoah (via Poetry Daily).

[William] Blake said that the arts are our way of conversing with paradise, and that's probably as good a generalization as could be made. There is time, and then there is timelessness. And if you're lucky, and if you can be still enough, observant enough, you may be able to know and speak about that intersection of time and timelessness, or time and eternity. And, of course, that's one of the possibilities contemplated in the biblical idea of the Sabbath...If you take up that theme of the Sabbath you're going to take up also the theme of failure, of all the things in our life that obstruct such apprehension, and make it difficult or impossible. But maybe it's possible to have moments when you're just freely in place, apart from the clutter of what Shakespeare called the workaday world.

A second interview, in prose, from Sojourners (July 2004).