Poetry, the Rough Stuff 龙诗人

Integral z-squared dz
from 1 to the cube root of 3
times the cosine of 3 pi over 9
equals log of the cube root of ‘e’.

Eva waved away the poems in her depression and wanted bilingual understanding and love without … something … she wanted life easy, you know, so i said:

I hope someday your heartstrings may be splendored
and some thought of fiction may inscape your life
that this many thing could be, in dreaming, verse
and yet, are real!
Oohhh, someday perhaps, it may.

A response to a poem by Anbon Pereira

Enticing,
words try to run away
you seem to have
if not their number
their many names.

A response to a poem by Michael Scott Pierce. AKA SweetEarthflying:

OOOOH, sometimes in the morning
we are walking together
with a poem and only later
it wakes up! So we say
Thank You!

A Reader Laments

When I was first in China and Japan
and other Asian galleys
I, so well beloved of western words
and literary intellectual smug-uggery
Could Not read … Could Not write
knowing the feeling that
even a preliterate slave had a home

Sometimes, I think this is one of the most beautiful equations in the universe. Other times I think it is a scary idea, and all the corollaries I have listed are there to make us properly thoughtful and humble.  When the Nurse Anesthetist and the Surgeon started placing things in my jugular vein in preparation for the heart lung machine (just prior to opening my chest and removing my heart), I decided to think deeply on the enigma which is the above equation. I had no great insights, but I did find the contemplation soothing, and the depth of the thought required to face these gems brought me to rest in no time, and I missed the excitement of the surgical interventions. Of course, I went under then, in winter, and now it is spring.

Or even sex … …

Oh, Nina, really
It’s not about the shape of your face
the width of your hips, the heat of your life
even the color of your blondness
fades as we admire the depth
of your wit, the mind in your words
the song of your heart soars,
snogging forever that memory
of your work and elocution
among the wounded.

Little Rhymes for Christof the Spoken Poet

Like Eliot, we are putting on a face
to meet the faces that we meet)

In the crowd a pleasant smiling softness
show faces changing feelings
wearing what we cannot hide
hiding what our smile never shows
feeling changes chasing wishes
Hiding among the bullies
and then desire — just a secret shock…

today reading Millay
and Berryman, of course and Wang Wei.
these three explode together
these three combine so fine-ly

a green and bluish muse, my baby oh yes
we need inspiration,
a quiet Chinese forest,
anxious american words
screeds against the ennui

shall i create a shambling devil pulling my soul

or yet describe — that night in jail
i could not believe how much stupidity existed
i sucked another nail –

Homer found Ulysses and also rhythm
what or who will i find in the seeking of a dragon
my muse in the future –

ha ha, i shall implore my soul
in missives to the dragon, follow my lead here
my dear.

describe the perfect description in musical words

Summers eve upon the plain
a languid silky shadowed sky,
lazy dusky sunshine warm
a prairie day declining lightly
wistful breezes weaving grasses
shadow clouds of summer storms
like birds upon a zephyr
fluttering ever
endlessly never
grasping soothing wafting fingers
slide like waving grasses
among this breathless touching
softly woven desire
floats on drifting air……..

Writing is albums of the heart,
we sigh – try to fly to birth this life
to share perhaps, our dreams.

Places find you in your wonder,
the air is ripe, plucking ears
like a blues harp in a smoky joint

singing in a many flowered voice.
waking the artist between refrains,
warm this strummin’ heart and sing
the sun and moon into our world

Her fiddle bowed
parts untamed sounds
and shapes the voice of air

quiet arrays, supporting chords
backups smile the music sweetly.

thumping, drumming, pounding sounds
pump our blood outright
bouncing counterpoint beats in style

lyrics find flirting hearts,
Spirits dancing air
prancing under sweet
cool lacquered strokes
from a breathless alto angel.

From uniform to pulp
Battlefield to workshop
Warrior to artist

Combat Paper Project
combatpaper.org

On twitter you might want to read @Longshiren, where I am posting very short images that seem pretty and poetic. Another experiment.

One of the reasons for creating this blog is to show some of the things we go through to take an idea from basic words to a finished poem.

Usually, the rough drafts, as shown below, are filled with the language as it originally expressed the idea. Sometimes this language really overflows and fills everything up, and covers or drowns the original thought.

Sometimes, we just cannot get past the beautiful words, phrases, images, little songlike patterns, and lovely laughing clauses. When we get so caught up in this the poem gets lost but the language is lovely, and that often makes for poor poetry, but really nice sounding daydreams.

We have found that the best way to pare the lines down to the core is to have the family dragon burn all the fluff away. We can then rebuild from that to make a clearer, if somewhat more astringent creation, dedicating the rebuilt phrases to the spare but now well defined poem.

If you don’t have a family dragon, well, you must find some other metaphor, then.

WELL, WE’RE AT WAR AGAIN

Sand and bombs and ugly little
desert spiders and a rancid smell

death on the street or fear in the locals?

Sitting in the waiting room at the VA hospital
spinning the new wheelchair smells like a new car

no spiders here no locals and maybe no bombs

but we still watch with the good eye
Talking to the new wounded and comparing

wheels like high school kids.