IT LIVES.

Welcome to the resuscitation of this half-dead blog!

I decided last week to write a poem a day, with some help from the fine prompts at  http://poetry.poewar.com/ and the fact that Gabriel is house-sitting, leaving me with many long silent evening hours to fill with whatever I choose (no bad sci-fi VHS tapes in the background!).

I am going to post two a day to catch myself up, and then things will peter off to one a day, in theory. My hope is that I will be able to avoid all but a minimum of commentary. Let me start things off by warning you that I am not posting these in their true chronological order, but in a sequence with a better sense of narrative. Also, I play fast and loose with prompts so don't expect anything to line up nice and neat. These poems sound somehow... different than my writing from months past? I want terribly to know what the world thinks. So there. So much for a minimum of commentary.

On Loss: First Meditation

You enter the woods with a vision

of the clear path stretched out before you.

The way is soft with loam and leaves.

Light seeps in, its angle sharper, sharper,

sharpening toward evening.

Branches filter out cloud, let gold sluice down.

You walk on.

The path you thought belonged to you dissolves.

Coarse grain, dark and spreading outward, an embrace.

The path is moss, is dead leaves, is earth.

The path is roots and rises upward into trees,

exhales itself into sky.

You belong to it now:

lightless body engulfed by lightless path.

It spreads you out, stretches your limbs compass-like; a rose.

You belong to the four corners and beyond.

Your every breath becomes the sky,

a promise in leaves, and coursing just below the skin.

Owl cry; rough oily engine whine; rustle of small paws; a fire—

all is faraway and at your throat

and in you, smoldering.

You enter the woods as clay, unshapen and soft.

You leave it twisted serpentines, hollows that howl,

etched as if with frost.

Rooted and aloft, you leave the woods but do not part from it.

Walking gentle into golden dawn,

you are the path you thought you'd lost.

Second Meditation on Loss

My words leave me as leaves—

prematurely. I cannot blame the frost.

I wake with sweat wooling my pores,

toss, roll, inescapable animal

fecundity sharp musk.

Precious concentrate, thought:

once honeythick, raw viscous and alive,

now weightless frass I cannot hold,

torn from me by gestures not so strong, even,

as the wind.

I pass a bumper sticker asking,

GOT TODAY?

and think, not really.

Caught suffocating on the past,

its rags—

choked arid dead grass

fills my nostrils

wads behind my teeth—

I stumble drunk on future

into brickstone stodgy promises

rest my head—the pressure!

Choketongued, gaghearted,

bound with jute and lead,

rounding corners invisible,

swept by breath that isn't wind,

fearing the pop of chance bullet,

stray knife, window shatter,

first my limps go wrist.

Static crackles like thunder—

O unfetttered, onslaughtered,

the radio waves! I ride.

Thought rides upon thought—

words not lost,

all breath static, phlegm stymies—

speech my parasite and I, its host,

perpetual standoff,

can't back from the brink—

Dare you to tell!

Not words I've lost

but something hid too well,

strung taught as an arrow

and never launched.