Peel Your Label

My son exhibits
symptoms, tell-tale

deficits
............of attention.

Poetry Gong - Poem 22

My Son Considers a Fallen Tree

I wrote this poem today. With my Poetry Gong partner, Carolee, on our weekly/semi-weekly writing date. Stay tuned for the next (read without a magnifying glass) version!

Summer is supposed to be fun

Just sent my son off to summer school (which we cleverly disguised as "summer camp") this morning. He is no dummy. He cried last night when we told him, and again this morning. He said, "It's going to be filled with dummies. I'm not stupid." Poor guy. He is 6, going into 2nd grade, and has a "non-verbal learning disorder," whatever that means.

What that means is, he has a hard time learning the traditional way. What it means is, he is always going ot be a little different. And now, at 6, that's not cool. Later on, when he's an artist or a forensic pathologist, slicing into dead bodies to find out what happened (his dream job !), different will serve him well.

I have 45 minutes to get ready for art camp. I love, love my art studio, but I wish I could spend the summer with my kids, lounging in our pajamas or hanging out at the lake. Ah well. Passion drives you. I want to have a successful business. I want to make art. I want to teach. But more than that, I want to write poetry.

Then there's the copycats. Two studios in my own town, offering similar stuff. And now one in the next city. It's great to be admired, and it is a free society, but, man, I hate capitalism! I can't figure out if it's pride in what I created (there were no teaching children's art studios when I started) or if it's jealousy, or fear of someone doing better.

Sometimes I even feel this way about poetry. Sometimes. Not often. But sometimes I look at all the books on store shelves and all the great poems in journals, and I think--why bother.

Perhaps this is a creative dilemma faced by all artists. Who knows?

All I know is, it feels good to let it all out. Maybe know I can get back to the business of poetry. And art. It's been too long.

Silver lining. Glass half-full. I've only not been writing for about two weeks. And even then, I've written two or three poems. I just haven't edited or sent anything out. I have been reading though!

Goal for the week: 2 new art lessons; type 3 new poems from old journals; send out poems to 1 pub; make an artist trading card.

Maybe I'll use the blog as my artist way/morning pages. Lose the funk. Get the art party crunk.

Anyone else having summer doldrums?

I Touched Him

because I couldn't see his back
rising and falling
like the length of his skinny body
in and out of the pool
all sticky
day long.

(Spotlight on the little-known
phenomenon--
dry-drowning.)

They’re never more angelic
than when they’re sleeping,
or so I’ve heard.

(Warning signs every parent
should be aware
of.)

You will not find the kind of mother
here, checking on her children
in the middle of the night.

In the middle of the night
I sleep.
Like a normal person.

(easily overlooked
or misinterpreted.)

I am no insomniac.
I know my children,
the span of their small
hands, the breadth of their
chests, the width of their feet
their lips, the measure of one eye
between their beautiful blue and hazels—
the third eye.

It’s just the media.
Blame it on the media.
Measuring the depth of my love
on the frequency of my obsession.

At one end,
the pool was twelve feet deep.
That’s three times
the size of my boy.
What is the direct route to his lungs?
How much could he inhale
in an instant?

Under pressure
we can all supply
what is needed.

*********************************************************************

I had used some indentations in this poem, for effect, but they didn't all show up when I cut and pasted. Can't seem to figure that out in Blogger. This indenting is something new I am trying...

NaPoWriMo #16 - Another Prose Poem

Following the LaChute

The water is louder than our words, more powerful than a pillow on a face. We can not hear ourselves breathe, can not feel the steady rhythm of our footsteps on the nature trail. Our eyes roam, light up when we find an unscuffed sneaker bottom side up in a tide pool. My son rushes to the other side of the foot bridge, spies the equally white mate, and the mother load—black pants and a wet pair of wool socks. I wonder if this is a phase, this obsession with death. Guns fashioned from Legos, sticks, digits, limbs. Constant talk of bad guys, blood, jail, death and dying. A phase, I wonder, or a premonition. Does he know when we are all going to die? Does he know we are all going to die? Has he, in his six years on earth, been granted vision? I drive him to the cemetery. If we cannot find a dead body in the river, we will certainly have more luck among the stones. We find long-lost uncles, three of them. He adds their dates. Figures before I can that his great-grandmother was just seventeen when she gave birth. Just seventeen when she had a funeral for her first child. Just what is it, again, we can learn from children?

**************************************************************************


Here's the thing. I'm not crazy about this first draft, but as first drafts go, I;m pretty pleased. Does that make sense? I considered, again, posting a poem written in late March. But, I really feel like if I miss a day of writing a new poem, I will miss something valuable. So, while this may not be the best poem I've ever written, it is a start. And I can go from here. And I will always remember this day.

Here's a question...what to do with all these drafts? Is anyone interested in starting a blog post-April to work on drafts? We can come up with a clever title and post the poems we liked from NaPo, the ones we would like more help shaping, forming, editing. Hmmm....? Anyone?

NaPoWriMo #6: Moving Right Along!

After the Race: Every Superhero Runs Fast

The boy will run like Flash Gordon.
He has been told to visualize
the long hall
he races up and down every morning.
He has been told to imagine chasing droids.
Be the Death Star.
Be the Millennium Falcon.
Don’t chew on your shoes.
Pull your tongues out.
Yank your Velcro tighter.
The boy has lined up,
stood with the fleet-footed herd.
He has waited,
watched the grown men
chase their rabbits.
He has jogged in place,
done the hockey player stretch,
the soccer switchback,
the marathoner lunges.
The boy has been told stories
of star runners
spitting over their shoulders
chasing off the competition.
The boy has been told
not to spit, even as a big boy
barrels by dripping white foam.
Does Superman lean into a running leap
before he takes flight?
Does Spiderman shake it out
before he slings a web?
The boy has been told
to do his best,
run for his life,
pretend he is racing to save someone.
At the finish line he breaks
through the rainbow ribbons,
chest ripped open,
pulsing red muscle held in front of him.
The boy has run his heart out.

****************************************************************


Since this is NaPoWriMo, and these are supposed to be drafts, let me ask a question... should the first line read:

The boy has run like Flash Gordon
The boy can run like Flash Gordon
The boy will run like Flash Gordon
The boy runs like Flash Gordon
The boy runs and he is Flash Gordon

I just can't decide. I had "has run" but then I thought it didn't flow. The last line reads "The boy has run his heart out," so maybe "The boy has run like Flash Gordon" works.

Tread carefully as you approach

War (historically re-enacted, not current & stupid...) makes my son happy. Half-naked Indians make me happy. One would imagine that our recent trip to Fort Ticonderoga to see the Revolutionary War re-enactment would have been a win-win situation, no?

Well, no. I sat down to write tonight, to fulfill my promise to Polkadot Witch and post my response to our most recent writers' meeting, and in came my sweet Jude--in tears. It was 9:07 and he couldn't sleep. He was in tears for the second time since 1st grade started. And it's only been two days of school so far. This does not bode well. I am, all kidding and writerly smart-ass aside, seriously worried. My heart is breaking for him. Breaks when he gets on the bus. Breaks at 9:10 when I imagine him settling in at his desk, one of four formica-topped mini desks, grouped into a girl, girl, girl, boy square. Breaks at lunch time, recess, all the way home.

Dropping pieces of my broken mommy-heart from my desk to his bed, I followed him, still crying, to his room, tucked him in, and lay down beside him. He talked about the time, how he didn't know an hour could go so fast. He talked about whether or not it was ok for great-grandma Jennie to be dead (she died ten years before he was born).

He surmised that maybe he didn't do enough today, and that was why he couldn't sleep. He observed that his mechanical volcano/nightlight seemed slower than usual. He noted that the cat was in the middle of his bed and was probably worried about him. He told me he loved me. He tossed. He turned. And mercifully, finally, he fell asleep.

Never has the rhythmic breathing of a child felt so comforting. Not because I was eager to write, but because I was eager for his day to be over, for sleep to relieve his anxiety.

This poem, written from a prompt using the four words: hammock, moon, ladybug & leaf, didn't seem to have much point when I wrote it, but re-reading it tonight, it somehow echoes what I imagine my son is feeling. Maybe it is melancholy.

Hammock, moon, ladybug, leaf.
My body touches each and I am alone.
Tread carefully as you approach,
the ladybug is not secured, is poised for flight.

Her children,
my children.
Always in danger of being crushed by a leaf.

So light, they are weightless.
So heavy the flame,
so heavy the smoke.
So suffocating the leaf
used to smother the fire.

Tread softly as you approach.
The moon of my backside will not rise
from the hammock today, will not rise tonight.

I may never leave
this holey suspension,
bound to earth by the feet of two trees,
held aloft by the pull of the moon.

Full moon
Harvest moon
Blue moon.

Two times I have asked, twice
my voice has risen,
round and clear
like the yellow moon that is not blue.

Tread carefully as you approach
and now I see,
now I feel,
now I hear,
you have crossed the lawn like a mower grown wild,
a beast of a machine with keys stuck in the ignition.

You have mown
the hammock,
the moon,
the ladybug,
the leaf.

I am lying on the sheared ground,
my body touching nothing (everything)
and I am alone.



















After I wrote this piece, I took a moment to reflect on how it felt to write and clarfiy what I might like to do with the poem. I wrote that I might like to put this into a form such as a sestine, or couplet form. Interestingly, I forgot this, and as I started to type it tonight, i tried couplets. Couldn't make it work, or maybe it didn't suit me...I'll have to see it it print first.

Thanks for reading!

Rubbing Two Sticks Together

Well, it wouldn't be my blog if there wasn't a poem about my son. And since it's almost Thursday, I am posting a poem for PoeTrY ThuRSdaY! I am having some trouble getting the words to flow, I have quite a few poems started but can't seem to get to the heart of them. I'm trying to find an online poetry class that doesn't cost a fortune. Anyone know of any? It seems foolhardy to spend money on an online course when I spent six years and way too much money on a Master's Degree in English, but I feel like I need the motivation.

Ah well. Here's the poem. Comments/critique welcome!



Rubbing Two Sticks Together

Out of the ashes of five, my son blazes
into his sixth year,
shrugging off the black
rubber fireman’s coat of kindergarten,
sliding easily into the asbestos mask
of first-grade pyromaniac.

Saving cats in trees
still heightens his senses,
but what if you rub two sticks together
at the base of the tree?
What if the roots ignited?
What if fire crawled up the belly of the tree,
licked the cat’s paws?
Who would save the son-of-a-tiger then?

Jagged sticks and branches
that used to be guns
take on new dimensions.
Rumor has it, rubbed hard and fast,
these pretend guns, these wooden fakes
spark blue blazes, the hottest fire, fast and furious.
Burn. Burn. Burn.
Danger. Danger. Danger.

In a white-hot flash, lightning scorches bad guys,
Death Star, Clone Troopers and both world wars.
God’s angry growl, electricity punching the air
assumes its rightful place as ultimate weapon.
What if lightning burns our house down?
What if the firemen need to come?
What if it’s a three-alarm fire?
What if the whole world burns up?

He has crawled out of his cave,
my son the first grader.
He has risen up on two legs,
smashed his sticks together,
and left the fire to burn
until he figures out
just what to do with it.

Here's to the underdog

Some things make my heart hurt. A lame deer, nudged along by his pack, until they just can't bring him along, so they leave him, camoflaged in the woods, while they carry on. A five-year-old, made fun of for having a fruit roll-up that is different. There is no accounting for what can pull at my heartstrings, just a guarantee that I always root for the underdog.

Tonight I decided I needed to write a poem. I pulled out a Sharon Olds' book, determined to try and write a poem like one of hers. The first two lines of "The Untangling" read, "Detritus, in uncorrected/nature, in streambeds or on wood floors..." I didn't read any further. I was just reminded of the mess that is my backyard as the Spring thaw begins, which reminded me of the deer, which, for whatever reason, reminded me of the story my son told me while we were grocery shopping for this week's snacks.

This is a first draft, a rough draft. Comments & critiques welcome!


Tracking a Lame Deer, My Son Speaks of Snack Time

Limb by limb, limp by limp, the broken deer hobbles
into our backyard and through an invisible mirror
into maimed animal heaven. The only sign, a mat of white
hair floating in a snow puddle. On three good legs
he has vanished into the February trees. Tracing his hoof prints

we see eternity. “The kids made fun of my snack,” my son tells me.
“They said my fruit roll-up was old.” It was, in fact, organic.
The best flattened fruit to be had, healthy, full of vitamins
and squashed love. Ostracized for healthy living. A small slight,
but still, the sugar-eaters and the red dye # 40-mongers have pushed

my son from the kindergarten fold. Mud sucks our boots,
pries our knees loose from our legs. There is no sign
of the deer we have called Luke, after the Star Wars hero
who turns to the dark side and back again. We’ve no choice
but to pass through the invisible mirror. Green fields swallow us.

Here our deer is gold, his leg has agreed to bend and steady,
his family of six has taken him back. He is once again lucky seven,
part of the crowd, welcomed on all the fence leaping, tree nuzzling romps.
It is what I wish for my son, to go back in time, to fill out his skeletal belly
with leaves not fallen, berries not rotten. At his last supper there will be no betrayal.