Tag: poetry

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you caught me at a moment when I’m trying and abundantly failing to write a poem. here’s some parts of this failed & failing poem:

Any space that can be filled with a seatback screen and the full run of Transformers
Dark of the Moon or in your case a paperback of Dhalgren
is enough time for anyone and now I’m done waiting

                     which is just bodies and words
but such soft bodies. Such fearful words.

Someone else’s mouth— not mine
I can’t feel things with my mouth—

…so anyway now we know what it looks like when i spin my wheels frantically at some Words

i am fucking struggling with the directive to interact syntax and line, friends. i don’t know shit about either one! mostly line. i’m very bad at line

April 20, 2007: It Happens Like This, James Tate

april-is:

It Happens Like This
James Tate

I was outside St. Cecelia’s Rectory
smoking a cigarette when a goat appeared beside me.
It was mostly black and white, with a little reddish
brown here and there. When I started to walk away,
it followed. I was amused and delighted, but wondered
what the laws were on this kind of thing. There’s
a leash law for dogs, but what about goats? People
smiled at me and admired the goat. “It’s not my goat,”
I explained. “It’s the town’s goat. I’m just taking
my turn caring for it.” “I didn’t know we had a goat,”
one of them said. “I wonder when my turn is.” “Soon,”
I said. “Be patient. Your time is coming.” The goat
stayed by my side. It stopped when I stopped. It looked
up at me and I stared into its eyes. I felt he knew
everything essential about me. We walked on. A police-
man on his beat looked us over. “That’s a mighty
fine goat you got there,” he said, stopping to admire.
“It’s the town’s goat,” I said. “His family goes back
three-hundred years with us,” I said, “from the beginning.”
The officer leaned forward to touch him, then stopped
and looked up at me. “Mind if I pat him?” he asked.
“Touching this goat will change your life,” I said.
“It’s your decision.” He thought real hard for a minute,
and then stood up and said, “What’s his name?” “He’s
called the Prince of Peace,” I said. “God! This town
is like a fairy tale. Everywhere you turn there’s mystery
and wonder. And I’m just a child playing cops and robbers
forever. Please forgive me if I cry.” “We forgive you,
Officer,” I said. “And we understand why you, more than
anybody, should never touch the Prince.” The goat and
I walked on. It was getting dark and we were beginning
to wonder where we would spend the night.

[James Tate is SO WEIRD and fantastic.  His poems are surreal and funny little stories, and I really recommend reading more.  He won the 1992 Pulitzer Prize.]

More like this:
The List of Famous Hats, James Tate
Shut Up and Eat Your Toad, James Tate

A year ago: Tantalus in May, Reginald Shepherd
Two years ago: September Song, Geoffrey Hill

a-pair-of-ragged-claws:

I am not asking to suffer less.
I hope to be nearly crucified.
To live because I don’t want to.

That hope, that sweet agent —
My best work is its work.
The horse I ride into Hell is my best horse
And bears its name.
So, friends, drink your cocktails and wear your hats.
Thank you for leaving me this whole world to go mad in.

I am not asking for mercy. I am asking for more.
I don’t mind when no mercy comes
Or when it comes in the form of my mad self
Running at me. I am not asking for mercy.

—Sarah Manguso, “Asking For More,” Siste Viator (Four Way Books, 2006)

i wrote a poem

about this

here it is:

MACE WINDU TRANSFORMING MECH POEM

He’s got a sword in each hand.
The swords glow purple
and that’s important.
That’s how you know he matters,
that he’ll get one last long fight
with the world’s worst person
before dying. We’ll see the whole thing:
no cutaways to a woman
and her useless obstetrician,
no long shots from a puppet war,
and three squid aliens killed first
to show he’s serious.
This is what comes after.
After he is betrayed and killed
and left to fall through the skyline in shocks—
when the camera cuts away
so he might fall forever—
something of him is found and made anew

like the enemy he was told to seek once,
though he keeps, at least, his face,
the trappings of honor, some sign
of the man in dark robes.
In all his metal newness a message:
You might have been hollowed out.
You might feel that everything once part of you
is missing, even your legs proportioned wrong,
at any time you might fold in on yourself
and cease to be human,
and still there will be something left:
someone on your arm to follow you.
A part like your own body that
in untranslatable sound
says you are not
at the last
left alone.

here’s my concept: find a BUNCH of some kind of in-high-quantities-mildly-concerning container or wrapper online, like maybe 300 empty pocky boxes or 200 2 liter bottles of a regional pop, & use that and none of your actual trash, or in addition to like 1 other item. or something non-edible that creates the same air of worrying mystery, like 4 cans of axe

unopenablebox:

veronica you’re a genius all the time

#ok. consider:#elizabeth bishop’s “the monument” but about a tower of 300 empty pocky boxes.

i’d like to apologize for writing this tag as though the monument is not already about a tower of empty pocky boxes

triumph! i have written a poem about sex and blood and plastic bags, but like, less annoying than that sounds.

well, no, it’s extremely annoying, but mainly bc i spend half the poem mugging the camera and making jerk-off motions that i’ll have to go back and edit out later, not because it’s ~about sex and blood and plastic bags~ per se