Tag Archives: NaPoWriMo 2018

Combustability

If you should choose to kiss, and kissing, turn

Redoubling, consuming in abandon

Then would love, in loving you, prove wanton

While terrestrial forests willingly burn.

Our lips in flames no waters extinguish

Until all love’s knowledge itself unlearn;

Our pupils for that flaming lesson yearn

Which bequeaths the heart unlessened anguish.

So loving you, I leave to turn and choose

In naughtiness regained when all is ash

To profit from the loss with naught to lose.

Thus eyes that gaze, unchastened, toward the lash

Must lose, in turn what all the world had gained . . .

Read half-coherent verse—and think half-brained.

 

 

faces in the crowd:
pedals on a wet black bike . . .
where is my bike lock?

American Iambs for Springtime

I couldn’t stop movin’ when it first took hold
It was a warm spring night at the old town hall
There was a group called The Jokers, they were layin’ it down
Don’t cha know I’m never gonna lose that funky sound

Rock and roll, Hoochie Koo / Lawdy mama light my fuse
Rock and roll, Hoochie Koo / Truck on out and spread the news

The skeeters start buzzing ’bout this time o’ year
I’m goin’ round back, she said she’d meet me there
We were rollin’ in the grass that grows behind the barn
When my ears started ringin’ like a fire alarm

Rock and roll, Hoochie Koo / Lawdy mama light my fuse
Rock and roll, Hoochie Koo / Truck on out and spread the news

Hope ya’ll know what I’m talkin’ about
The way they wiggle that thing really knocks me out
I’m gettin’ high all the time, hope ya’ll are too
Come on a little closer, gonna do it to you

Rock and roll, Hoochie Koo / Lawdy mama light my fuse
Rock and roll, Hoochie Koo / Truck on out and spread the news

That I’m tired of payin’ dues / Done said goodbye to all my blues
Lawdy mama light my fuse

 

AND NOW,
The MFA Modern Lit re-write:

spring: The Jokers
(in Hoochie-Koo, the lawdy Hoochie Koo—)

and so the laying-down
until fuse lit

the mama lawdyspread, a truck
trucking the news;

skeeters buzz the grass, rolling, rolling
alarmed: the barn fire

// she had said she would meet me//

in Hoochie-Koo (the lawdy Hoochie Koo)

wriggling, spring knocked
higher // closer than time had known

bitten, dues paid, bit-lit

illiterate

mama lit that fuse
in Hoochie-Koo, the lawdy

Name of a City

https://connecthook.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/0df85-boston1.jpg
So many people have come and gone… their faces fade as the years go by
Yet I still recall as I wander on — as clear as the sun in the summer sky
                                                                                                                            BOSTON

Your name remains: a magic word
to conjure nights of springs long-gone.
I muse upon your face, alone
and find my heaven’s hope deferred.
Since unpoetic life occurred,
Romance has gilded scenes long dead.
Nostalgic memory has fed
the embers of a fire you stirred.
You turned and walked out of my days.
I never heard your voice again.
Yet memories of you amaze
Engraved in my adoring brain.
In labyrinths we wander free
to meet again eventually.

or decasyllables . . .  which is better ?

Your name remains with me. A magic word
To conjure nights and scents of springs long-gone.
I muse upon your tawny face, alone
And find my heaven’s hope now long–deferred.
Since unpoetic life and age occurred,
Romance has gilded scenes that lie long dead.
Nostalgic memory of you has fed
The smoldering embers of a fire you stirred.
One spring, you turned and walked out of my days.
I never heard your feline voice again.
Yet memories of you, intense, amaze
Engraved for good in my adoring brain…
On, through the labyrinths, we wander free
To meet in time again, celestially.

 

Something Japanese:
carp-pools, bamboo, some old monk . . .
yes—Oriental !