Poetry Thoughts

Thinking in poems, making un-poems. Please do not consider items posted here as “poetry.”

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Tula Died

When they die I think in Poetry
Otherwise not
Seems Pain is the only ink
Between us then

I used to confuse her name with his
The boy’s
He said I didn’t know his name
Couldn’t remember it

But it was the same
With all of them
The litany of names
To call them out. The one

The same with the dogs
She’s gone now
Left after I asked her not to
Yet stayed for a while after that

All black and gray now
I sang her song
Kisses all over my face
She knew her name

Tula Died on Sunday, March 13, 2022. She would have been 12 on June 16. There’s no one here now who knows all of the songs: It’s Suppertime!; Lullaby and good night; Let’s go for a walk; Walkin’, Talkin’…

When it’s time, it’s time, but it takes so much along with it. No one tells you that.

Here’s my all-time favorite photo of her. It’s from when she was a pup and just learning things. She was so proud everytime she mastered something, and she loved this hoop to its very death. I was always sad I could never find another to replace it. But that’s OK. Later on in years she decided she would not bring anything back. No retrieving. Nope. Too adult for the childish nonsense. But then she decided she would only listen to instructions by choice. No blind obedience crap. I’m glad I honored her choices and her decision to be an equal partner in our relationship. It worked.

Tula in the park in Manitou

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Because Lisa Died

She was a Bosch painting
Of mangled bodies deformed
And perverted into a nightmare
of her own screams
And
The meadows of Spring
Running through tall Indian grass
and daises and daffodils
And
A child of the Ether in skirts
Made of silver spider webs and butterfly wings

She was Hell itself anchored in
Despair and the flames of Demons
Rocked in the cradle of Doubt
Opened by a bloody knife
of her own wounds and scarred the same

She was a Poem of Light
And Smiles of soft shining fireflies,
Curls around an eternal face
Sparkled in diamonds and sunlight

She saved a life and killed a man
Ran full force across the world and
Dove off the cliffs unto the rocks
Unstoppable
Unbreathable
Unbearable

She searched for God
so she could punch Him
in the face,
Tear off His gowns to leave Him
Naked in His own blasphemy
of Creation
He Who created the Minotaur
As well as Theseus
Father of Evil, Tormentor of Souls

She wrote and Sang and Painted
She marched the stairs and
Laughed and cooked and baked
And Created her own music and Love
And
Still kept the unborn in jars
Fermented in the formaldehyde of
Alcohol underneath the floor

Until she became the Nightmare
Itself drowned alone in the vomit of her sins
And in the stream below the rocks her body broken
Where it can at last Sing out…
“So this is it? This is all ‘ya got?”

And she was all things

And she was nothing

And she wore boots so heavy
she could not leave the earth
her moans heard now only by Angels
who cry to God…our pain, her worth

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Scribble

I drank a wine
of possibility with Rumi
And shivered:
How can I scribble
a poem of nothing
I’m not
just fix upon the world
a scribble
meant to be that poem
for I am
Winter and Water
in Time
that Poem is me

L.E. Hansen

I wrote a poem upon demand which struck me as odd, along with the rule of 44 words to be contained within. So many things off the beam on this which made it ravishing of course. And of and for and to the 10,000 things no less.

And so I did. Write it and yet not, more like a vomit of words, not mine.

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Last Night

 

Last Night
I was going to die
It was a soft thing,
immutable

The rain itself slow
over the forest
and without wings floating

Until I saw the child I love
And all stars and nights
and moons and blood
twisted

into the marrow of dreams
And splintered like lights
bursting across the skies

Until sorrow soon itself
once raped of joy
shook this sweet death
until it woke the lie

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Sometimes

(Only because it takes a while to dig yourself out)

When I think I can

I’ll transmute the poems in the air
the ones that haunt and suffocate
to paintings of English Gardens
or maybe a little stream where
silver fish glimmer and glimpse
the part of me that lingers there

When I think I can’t

I’ll slide the scale of dumbed down
notes to impossible depths of immortality
where the worn and sick climb
rocks of smooth and simple betrayal
not of human form but life
on songs that were not chiseled there

(And then sometimes you don’t quite make it)