nablopo(etry)mo #20
November 20, 2008
How am I ever going to have a good day if I keep listening to Pink Floyd? This music exposes everything that’s missing in my life, reveals how riddled with holes I am, as if I were nothing more than a cluster of air bubbles caught inside a glass marble.
This is sadness. This. Is sadness.
Things are way haywire in my life right now.
Monday, I am leaving town for 10 days. I’m going to stay with a friend so that my husband and I have some space to think about our relationship and take the first steps to seeing what we can do to make it work or determine if it can work at all. Right now, it’s not working.
The director at my VISTA placement is leaving, and that fundamentally changes the experience I will have within the organization. I’m really scared about making the commitment at this point. I feel immobilized and incredibly pensive.
My MFA applications are due very soon, and I’ve spent the day doing my final fretting over what to include, what to leave out and how to order everything. I no longer see poems when I look at them. I see gobs of words spilling off the page, words that seem foreign and strange, like tiny life forms from another planet. I still have to wade through other details, too, such as writing personal statements and having test scores sent in. Read more
nablopo(etry)mo #19 — brought to you by feldy
November 19, 2008
Hey, this is Feldman, Dana’s robot. I’m taking over posting today because — let’s face it — Dana doesn’t know what poetry’s all about. Clearly. As evidenced by the fact that she hasn’t shared a single rap song yet.
Between you and me, her poems are boring-ass. There’s usually no end rhyme, I can never find the beat and, to be honest, they put me to sleep.
(I don’t really sleep, actually, being a robot and all. But I do manage to make heavy use of my “OFF” button whenever I see her ambling toward me in her awkward human gait with a poem clenched between her pale and tacky fingers. Dana thinks my sudden shutdowns are a wiring malfunction. She’s not onto me yet, so let’s keep my little trick between you and me.)
OK, so here’s how this post is going to go down. I’m going to share my very first rap song with you. I haven’t actually written a second rap song because my time is all tied up right now working on a nuptial poem with my soon-to-be wife, Michelle McGrane. But I plan to write many, many rap songs in the future, once she and I are happily wed. Robot rap *is* the future. Trust me. Read more
nablopo(etry)mo #18 (alternatively titled ‘i <3 jacob’)
November 18, 2008
I thought I’d start this post off with a random quote from Dave Bonta. Here’s what he had to say this morning about his broken sink: “Now I know what impotence must feel like / all the parts are there but the plumbing don’t work.”
* * *
My friend Jacob Jans emailed me the other day and invited me to an open mic reading/musical performance event organized by Jed Myers. It was held in a new venue, Casa ‘D Italia, located in Seattle on NE 65th St. Jacob and I read the collaborative abecedarian poem we wrote last week at Big Time Brewery and Alehouse, as well as reading a few of our own pieces.
We decided to read the collaborative piece line by line, even though we didn’t exactly write it line by line. Jacob is about 4 feet taller than me, so passing the mic between us was no small undertaking, but we managed.
I hope the group continues to read there on a regular basis. The restaurant is quite wonderful, not only the food but the atmosphere that owner and chef Anthony Donatone creates. He spends a lot of time with his customers, making sure they have what they need. He even listened to people read, which was definitely beyond the call of duty.
And Jed! Jed did a magnificent job of organizing the reading, setting the tone, encouraging the performers, and creating a vibe for the event. At a lot of open mics, people don’t listen to one another. They busily read through their own poems or even write poems as others are performing. Or they get up and leave as soon as they’ve read. That wasn’t the case here. Everyone paid attention and seemed engaged with one another’s work. It’s a nice feeling to stand up in front of an audience and feel there’s a “there” there.
I’m breaking my rule today, kinda. Instead of sharing one of my poems for NaBloPo(etry)Mo, I am sharing a poem by Jacob. He said I could post it until he sends it out for publication. It’s a piece he read last night, and it demonstrates why he’s such a wicked-awesome poet. And his poetry is half of why I like him. The other half is because he’s a good person. And the other half is because — as the photo above illustrates — he’s pretty.
Yeah. That’s a lot of halves.
* * *
Collision
Enter a room brambled with gazes,
mouths locked to faces, shoulders
soft for heads to rest on, and
pulse your breath esophagus deep,
breathe into all the breaths,
walk through them, swallow them,
watch the glint of teeth that shape
the pockets of heat, the give and take
of air ruffling your skin.
When you walk into a room, your shoulders
and mouth, your hair, your capillaries,
your synaptic firings, your cellular
duplications, your thoughts, your
body shifting from place to place,
the trajectory of the breaths you’ll take
unfolds, it all unfolds, walks toward you open faced,
and your past is there to carry the load
a silhouette gleaming dark
in the frame of an empty door.
nablopo(etry)mo #17
November 17, 2008
I’m breaking with my usual pattern today, which means I’m not sharing the next installment of the series Nathan and I are writing. Why not? I don’t know. I have this piece about cruising that I wrote, and I want to share that today instead.
I’ll pick up with the series again tomorrow. We only have seven installments left. It makes me kind of lonely to think about the series coming to a close. Writing those pieces has been an amazing experience.
* * *
Cruising
Inside the car the only sound
a zipper’s slow opening.
What’s carried on the wind
does not penetrate the windows.
Buttonholes stretch over buttons
with quiet winces.
A traffic light sheds its green
light into the sealed cavity.
The air, hot and stale with fear,
makes its way into our fabric.
Whispers unravel in our ears
to be rewoven in our muscles.
As cars pass, their headlights
look out, and out.
nablopo(etry)mo #16
November 16, 2008
I went to a meeting last night for Home Alive, the organization I’ll be working for through AmeriCorps VISTA. All I can say is “wow.” The volunteers, board members and staff are amazing. I can’t imagine a better organization to work for over the next year.
I’d write more in the way of a pre-poem post today, but I am a little preoccupied with some things in my life right now. Part of what I am preoccupied with is leaving town in about a week for a trip that is unexpected but critical. I have a lot to get done before I go. And I have a lot to think about while I’m gone. (But no worries. I will still be posting my daily poems through the month of November. I wouldn’t shirk that responsibility.)
Here’s the third piece in the mash-up Nathan and I are doing for our collaborative poem series.
* * *
Ice
Now look back at the path.
Ice blooms in every footprint.
Because the footprint
Is the least damage we’ll ever do.
And the footprint disappoints
the floor. Again the lease is broken.
Our footprints break the floor,
again the disappointment.
The weary day begins. Before our feet
slap the floor we’re disappointed.
Our feet disappoint us,
tickling at cheap casket lining.
Each minute as it passes
falls feet first into a casket.
When we sign in imaginary words,
sigh over our dry complaints:
We ruminate over what we were:
toned beasts of claws and fur.
How were we once? We claw the furniture
out of obligation. The room has gone atonal.
nablopo(etry)mo #15 (woohoo! halfway there!)
November 15, 2008
Nathan and I aren’t yet finished with the series poem we’re writing. We’re exploring something here. We don’t know what we’re going to keep and what we’re going to toss, what we’re going to edit and what we’re going to leave as is, but we’re in the middle of it right now. Process, process. This evolving piece is a process and we’re not ready to move into product mode and slap a “done” sign on this one just yet.
We created this piece from all the second stanzas of the ten poems we wrote using a call-and-response method.
Blindfold
Now the antidote slows the melody.
Notes find balance in obedience.
Because the melody obeys
Even as no obedience slows the dance.
And memory disobeys our daily
trance. The door is left open.
Memory is a door left open,
a dark trance we’re afraid to enter.
Our memories explore
days of dark finance.
Memories hold like
blindfolded hostages
as if they could be sent to an imaginary
future, signed and stamped.
When we imagine our future passing
like a funeral procession
our imagination presses against the furniture.
Our passion stumbles through the living room.
Now we mumble into an uncertain future,
mitigation our new synonym for living.
nablopo(etry)mo #14
November 14, 2008
Now Nathan and I are getting really wacky with our series. I was telling him the other day that I like diagram poems, where you can read elements across, backwards, up, down and sideways. Or anywhichaway, really.
I wanted us to try to make this series into a diagram poem, but it’s far, far too large for that. We decided one way to do that might be to pull out all the first stanzas, then all the second stanzas, and so forth, and make them into their own poems. This, we reasoned, would position the text in different ways, thus creating a new set of suggestions, interactions and subtlelties between the words and images.
So that’s what we’ve done with this piece, “Flood.” It’s comprised of all the fist stanzas from each of the last 10 poems we’ve written in the series.
* * *
Flood
Now the flood fails in the ocean.
The force that moves walls wilts.
Because the ocean’s walls
wilt, force fails.
And the sun falls, its force failing
among the swelling waves.
The sun falls into the waves,
a force that illuminates our failures.
Our hesitation illuminates
the graves of our hours.
An hour in the grave
reveals old ghosts,
We save hours but when
will they be spent?
When we spend hours
saving up what we meant.
Our unruly hours are unrelenting.
Send them sulking into the yard.
Now we darn hours into days,
their bulk relenting to our hands.
nablopo(etry)mo #13
November 13, 2008
Here’s my poem for today. It’s called “Swill,” and it’s a permutation of Nathan’s poem “Hours,” which is a permutation of my poem “Talk,” which is a permutation of Nathan’s poem “Cheap,” which is a permutation of my poem, “Vines,” which is a permutation of Nathan’s poem “Tremble,” which is a permutation of my poem “Hesitation,” which is a permutation of his poem “Footprint,” which is a permutation of my poem “Concrete,” which is a permutation of his poem “Pavement.”
We have something zany in store with this series next. It’s a twist of sorts. We can’t wait! It’s so very exciting that it makes me want to squeetle.
Hey, did anyone hear what Dan Savage said last night in a debate about Proposition 8 on CNN? It was pretty sweet: “You stripped me of my rights and I interrupted you. Who’s really suffering here?” Yes. I was watching TV. What do you want to make of it?
* * *
Swill
Now we darn hours into days,
their bulk relenting to our hands.
Now we mumble into an uncertain future,
mitigation our new synonym for living.
How were we once? We claw the furniture
out of obligation. The room has gone atonal.
Now we bind our brains with ticking fabric.
We gather our body parts in a small basket.
An entreaty: Never draw a circle around
a hot bulb — we are not moths, not at all.
Now days unspool lazily with their demands.
We etch our portraits into every mirror.
Now we throw bombs into darkness
to put our dumb fears to work.
We place broken flowers in our mouths,
mark the months stem by stem.
Now the interior spills out on the lawn.
We pick through our lives like bargain shoppers.
Whose pet rock is this?
Who left all the windows wide open?
nablopo(etry)mo #12
November 12, 2008
Who loves NaBloPoMo? I do, I do!!!
Here’s my poem. It’s called “Talk” and it’s (you guessed it) a permutation of Nathan’s poem “Cheap,” which is a permutation of my poem, “Vines,” which is a permutation of Nathan’s poem “Tremble,” which is a permutation of my poem “Hesitation,” which is a permutation of his poem “Footprint,” which is a permutation of my poem “Concrete,” which is a permutation of his poem “Pavement.”
How long are we going to keep this up? Until the series dries itself out or until we have a chapbook. Whichever comes first. I wonder if the series is ever going to get happier. It’s fun to not know where it’s going to go next.
* * *
Talk
When we spend hours
saving up what we meant.
When we imagine our future passing
like a funeral procession.
When we sign in imaginary words,
sigh over our dry complaints:
the body, the brain, the casket,
these vines through our feet.
When our minds store memories
like moths caught in a lampshade.
When our faces hide a maze
of burning portraits.
When we realize we’re the bomb
as well as the tomb.
The basted flesh.
The blown-out mouth.
When one breath sprays
words and teeth at once.
When a rock hits the window,
why do we wince?
nablopo(etry)mo #11
November 11, 2008
OK. Here’s my poem. It’s called “Vines.” It’s a permutation of Nathan’s poem “Tremble,” which is a permutation of my poem “Hesitation,” which is a permutation of his poem “Footprint,” which is a permutation of my poem “Concrete,” which is a permutation of his poem “Pavement.”
I took a few more liberties with this one than with the others. At least, I think I did. And I went pretty dark. Not that this series was ever particularly footloose and fancy-free.
Sometime soon, Nathan and I will get back to writing zombie poems. Those are always a good time. You know what else is a good time? Slynne and Emily are currently writing a collaborative poem about velvet Elvi. I’m burning with jealousy over their thinking of that topic. Oh, that reminds me of Fleda Brown’s book, The Women Who Loved Elvis All Their Lives. It’s an outstanding collection. Everyone should read it right this second.
I’d really like to see all the poems Nathan and I are writing in this series side by side. We’d need a very wide sheet of paper, perhaps one that accordions. I like paper that accordions. I have no idea why.
Well, I do have an idea why, actually: I suspect it has something to do with those lousy paper fans the girls would all make in grade school. You know, the ones that didn’t keep anyone cool. The ones we made because we had this dumb idea that we wanted to be southern ladies.
* * *
Vines
An hour in the grave
reveals old ghosts,
holds memories like
blindfolded hostages.
Our feet disappoint us,
tickling at cheap casket lining.
Vines inside our bodies go dry,
nowhere to drain.
What we remember about air is moths,
the disturbing lines they draw.
We never believed in portraits,
so we roamed the faceless halls.
We imagine lying under a table,
waiting for the bomb to drop.
Everywhere is fortune, held
like a fish on the line.
We are surrounded by dirt
and mouths sewn shut in death.
Still, we string words into meaning.
Aren’t we lucky talk is cheap?
This is my blog wherein I, Dana Guthrie Martin, write things and stuff. Most of the time, writing and I hobble along in a sort of three-legged race where there is no finish line. (more...)
Semicolons indicate relationships that only idiots need defined by punctuation. — Victor Hugo, Triggering Town
-
beg, borrow, but don't steal
This work is licensed under Creative Commons. If you don’t credit Dana (by using her full name and preferably by linking back to the appropriate post) for however you copy, distribute, transmit or adapt her words, you are being bad. And naughty. And she will have her servant monkeys hunt you down and cut your hands off so you can never copy, distribute, transmit or adapt anyone’s work again and call it your own.
(Unless, of course, you were to use your butt cheeks to manipulate your keyboard with the copying, distributing, transmitting, adapting and whatnot, but Dana fortunately has only met one person whose butt cheeks are that talented. He could play a major third on a piano using nothing but his ass. She kids you not.).
-
flick, flick, flick
-
i cannot be bought
