valentine- from me to you

There’s something priceless and dear about having so many people who bring you joy in one room. It is a gift of temporality that shimmers. Jean Valentine’s collection “Little Boat” features these beautifully compressed poems that are so spare and full of air in the form of spacing and interesting syntax. I remembered enjoying dissecting “Moose and Calf” at our last residency. There is an earthen gravitas that suspends in the air, where the reader can enter at multiple points. I want to be a writer who invites multiple entries into my work. From me to you, the poem is ours. And tonight it’s Valentine’s.

How will you/have you prepare(d) for your death?
Jean Valentine

quiet ready
the wires inside the walls

and when no wires
and when no walls

- with you it wasn’t flesh & blood, it was under:
I know you brokenheart before this world,
and I know you after.

up late with seifert

I owe the mad rush of energy working its way out of my fingertips to the drummer from the Over the Rhine concert tonight. He had me tapping my palm, my thigh, knee and just when I thought I couldn’t get more amped up, they ended with some lovely ballads. So it was a good evening to have a nightcap with Jaroslav Seifert, Czech poet extraordinaire. Enjoy.

To Be a Poet
by Jaroslav Seifert, tr. George Gibian

Life taught me long ago
that music and poetry
are the most beautiful things on earth
that life can give us.
Except for love, of course.

In an old textbook,
published by the Imperial Printing House
in the year of Vrchlicky’s death,
I looked up the section on poetics
and poetic ornament.

Then I placed a rose in a tumbler,
lit a candle
and started to write my first verses.

Flare up, then, flame of words,
and soar,
even if my fingers get burned!

A startling metaphor is worth more
than a ring on one’s finger.
But not even Puchmajer’s Rhyming Dictionary
was any use to me.

In vain I snatched for ideas
and frantically closed my eyes
in order to hear that first magic line…

some call it an elephant

Tonight, I felt this strong compulsion to meditate and pray. It’s great when the word is that clear and the word tonight was “consecrate” or “set yourself apart.” In the midst of my praying my thoughts drifted to little Iz. and his terribly confusing situation of being back with his grandmother, missing his adoptive parents who have had to give him back. I was praying for him and broke out in goosebumps, thinking about the anger, the confusion, the loneliness he must be feeling of going from a family of four to a family of one. I believe naming is one of the most powerful gifts we have been given and thus at the end of my prayer looked up the name given to him at birth and discovered it means, “God is my salvation,” which was what I had been praying that his five year old self would know he’s not alone and that he is incredibly loved. I wrote a poem for him a month back, posted below. Say a prayer for Iz. if you are the praying sort and one for the mom and dad whose hearts are rent at this time. Thanks.

some call it an elephant

some call it an elephant
but i call it a boy five years
old with sea glass eyes,
hair the wind riffs golden
stalks of wheat dancing,
pale slip of a boy who falls
through cracks without trying.

(name like shattered glass, caught dagger name)

how you slept, steady rise and fall
buckled into backseat, peaceful
against my tear blocked eyes, throat
full of words i’ll never get to say-
how you wake up i can’t see this-
you, child with a heart as big as an
elephant crowd my fragile thoughts,
continue to fill this brittle room of emptiness.

gift from the wilderness

This year has been such a topsy turvy ride. But life is like that, sometimes you get signed up for classes you never thought you needed to take. I for one was thinking about all these good things happening right now in my life. And how sometimes when you’re great but the people around you are crumbling, you feel that being quiet about goodness is the right way to be. But sometimes you just really want to shout. And today is one of those days. I think all of us have a bit of chicken hemmed to our heart. A bit of wariness that is learned along the way as a survival tactic.

In yoga class, we always end our practice with a time of silence to say internally what we are thankful for. Tonight I found gratitude welling up inside me for the assault that I never would have wanted, asked for or wished on my worst enemy. But because of it, I am living in a space of deeper self-awareness and other-awareness. It’s as if the very worst thing that I could imagine has happened and now am living in the freedom of it already having happened.

One of my favorite all-time quotes is from Vincent van Gogh. “The fishermen know the sea is dangerous and the storms are terrible, but they never found this sufficient reason to remain on shore.” I rode MUNI for the first time this Saturday with my friend Kenny-O since the 38 incident. He didn’t know this until we were almost to his house, but I woke up and decided it was the day. I also decided that if I had a panic attack when on the bus I could get off and not feel any shame in it.

Life requires a certain amount of feckless risk. I’m glad that my life is not ruled and ordered by my whims but instead by a God who sees me and knows me intimately. Makes the risks less dubious. I was thinking about the idea of living in a reality where every good thing is received as gift. The opposite response to me would be living a life of entitlement. Crushing disappointment comes from unmet expectation. Instead I want to see every person I encounter and my time with them as gift, plain and simple. On the flip side would be seeing bad things that happen as gift. This is a harder one to receive. But how we respond when the shit hits the fan really says a lot about the core of our inner being. I want to have an inner being that is crafted of iron so I can be iron to the people around me- with tremendously long outstretched arms.

Many of my poems have been inspired by the duress of plain people mired in their lives’ darkness, but reveal that even darkness has a thread of shadow and light to it. We need light especially in darkness if we are ever to find our way out of it.

If you’re reading this- thanks. It’s kind of a rambly post, but my thoughts are swirling about less linear than usual. I guess the point of it is to just encourage you to think about life as gift or life as entitlement and which would be the cloak you might choose to wear. Cheers.