The last of the rain
hides under the chipped bench.
In a burrow ten feet away,
Summer and her bulimic brood.
Children stare at their faces in puddles,
faces framed by the
rainbow slick of motor oil
in the water.
What hallucinogenic heat
pushes a woman to the docks,
makes her surrender in
the family boat named
SS Hypatia?
Firm meadows
call me out.
Work is not my friend,
always one foot
ahead of my disease eaten ankle.
Tuesday will dissolve.
Over the years I have experimented with various ways of combining poetry with either color or image. I’ve done poems on images and Instagramed them. I’ve put interesting lines of poetry on solid blocks of color as names for those colors. I’ve tried over and over again to marry my obsession with color to my poetry.
I think I have something new to try. I’m downloading free textures online and tinting them different colors. By doing this, I am capturing not only a color I like, but ensuring there is texture to go with that color to make the image and color deeper. Then I write a poem that corresponds to that color/texture. It can correspond by mood, location, subject etc. But something about the poem has to relate to the color and image, or at the very least the color.
I’m excited about this project. Periodically I like to have something new to work on. Photo editing has always been enjoyable for me, and naturally I live for poetry. Plus, new projects are good for the mind. I know my husband has been hoping I would start something new recently. He feels it is good for me to have something I’m working on. Not anything too hard or stressful, but just something to add a little oomph to my days I guess.
To the north,
isolation escaping over ice.
I was born of the crowd
to the crowd,
my mouth pasted on me closed.
I whip my back with feathers,
wear sackcloth of spun gold.
As the curve of collective consciousness
moves us closer and closer
to opposite edges.
The secret catapult
and the old rope swing
evade notice.
Except to me,
my eyes red galoshes in a
congregation of black.
Did I ever loan him a life vest
or sell him food?
We live our lives in a
stranger’s life.
He ran alongside the
multitudes until he
absorbed them.
I died as a child,
and drew my first breath
as an adult.
The knife peels away
my life like skin from an apple.
My mouth was never
designed to grow old.
In the impossible hour,
my matter exposed to the end.
After metamorphosis –
thought,
projected project,
my tongue at the door.
After the renewal of my skin,
Vows of ivory.
All thoughtful ideas are
material things.
Lines construct wishes
That let you down face to face.
Somewhere in the identified town,
an old friend who does not tire out
lights the lamp.
It’s amazing what forms he takes
when he is alone.
Indivisible shape of personal election
and sweltering affiliation.
Loyalty of nationality,
shown by unlimited birth.
Women and infants like
oil and flame.
Surrounded by the neighbors,
He lives the life he has been given,
cleaning the cleanest of plants.
No matter how busy motherhood gets, I can’t imagine giving up my creative activities. I just read an article by a woman who did exactly that. She was a blogger and photographer, and she did no work for two years while she took care of her children. She said that she needed to be more present with them. She’s not the only one I have heard of who has done that. I have friends who have done that as well.
I admire the self-sacrifice and self-control, but I can’t really imagine doing that myself. Maybe it’s good that I have to stop at one child, as much as I wanted to have more. But if I had 10 kids I have a feeling I would still be squeezing in time to write poems or to paint. That maybe I would be in a situation at that point where I shouldn’t be doing those things, but I would do them anyway.
Poetry is such a part of me that I can’t imagine giving it up. I go through spells where I primarily read poetry rather than write it. When I do that I am often soaking up inspiration and gearing up for a period of intense writing. But to simply not have poetry in my life? I can’t even imagine.
Painting and photography have become primal urges for me. I can’t imagine putting my camera down as some of the mother photographers do. I might sometimes get lazy or too busy to take out my expensive camera, but I’ll at the very least be taking photos on my phone.
Perhaps all of this is selfish or self-absorbed, but I’m not so sure about that. Everyone needs their own identity. Everyone needs something that they love to do and an opportunity to do it. Naturally your husband and children have to take priority, but you can’t draw from an empty well. If you want to give them more, then you have to give yourself something. So many women say they’ve lost their identity in motherhood, and I just can’t relate. When I had my daughter I became even more myself. I still had all the artistic aspects of myself, all the general personality traits like introversion, I still liked the same foods and movies, only I was finally fully tapped into my maternal potential. Having a child didn’t sap my sense of identity. It completed it.
Not that I think I am really at risk of this, but I pray that I never put down the pen or the camera or the brush. These things are apart of me. Without them I think I would fall to pieces.
Small as a pond,
You are bordered by mossy velvet.
You act like me.
Rivers do not
associate with women.
First I was a fish.
Then I was provided with womanhood.
The oars on the canoe
Love one another in Morse code.
I’ll walk under the hollow water.
My understanding of
beauty and all that you can do
flourishes like kelp,
always below the surface.
Miniature Moon 