The Cerebral Mum

The assignments I haven’t done from 30 poems in 30 days are just sitting there, clogging up my dashboard. I can’t write anything good. It feels like thinking. And I can’t think. So I’m just going to do them. Randomly. Whatever assignment I open, I’m cutting and pasting it in, then… Bang: A poem! In 30 seconds. I don’t even care how bad they are, or good. I just want my brain to start feeling fluid again. Instead of crushed.

So..

Bang! The 10th assignment: The good, the bad and the meter…

“Write a three or more stanza poem that uses a metered style for the first two stanzas and a non-metered format for the remaining stanzas.”

My head is just imploding,
I don’t know what I’m saying,
I’m sick of all this thinking,
There are no words left in me.

Numb and poetry is lost,
Blind and all my meaning gone,
Nights too short and days too long,
There are no words left in me.

I hate this.

I hate my stuck mind,
I hate my lost time,
and yesterday
and nothing.

There are no words left in me.

Bang! The 17th assignment: The constraint as a tool.

“Wikipedia’s Random Button is a great and magical thing. Today it lead me to an article about Cheshire Mammoth Cheese. The story of Cheshire Mammoth Cheese has everything you need for poetic inspiration. It has historical significance. It has political significance. It has small town appeal. It has people working together toward a common goaland it contains a pop culture reference. Most importantly, it has cheese. Find a way to incorporate this article into a poem.”

I’m not reading about the stupid cheese.
Seriously? Seriously?
(That’s a pop culture reference. )

I’ve heard the story before.
Cheese and politics
and highways for wolves
on The West Wing.
(That’s the pop culture reference.)

But politics isn’t like that,
It wasn’t like that then either.
Now, we talk faster.
We film it, dreaming they
Talk faster. And better.
Politics is pop culture.

Buffy likes cheese.
(That’s a pop culture reference.)

Bang! The 13th assignment: What is your writing process?

“Today is a two-part assignment. The first part is to think about your method of writing poetry… The second part is to shake up your process. If you have a lot of structure, try loosening up. If you write very loosely, try adding some structure to the process. Find a new place to write or use a different tool. The change doesn’t have to be major, but if you post your poem, please tell us what you changed.”

I normally don’t write poems
in 30 seconds bang.
I normally don’t write poetry at all.
I’m not a poet.

None of that’s true,
or it wasn’t once,
once-upon-a-time.

Then, I just wrote
and words were dark
and rich
and deep,
saturated with music
and sensation.

Redolent.

Now, nothing.

Bang! The 15th assignment: Imagism.

“Write a poem that follows the three rules of the imagists.

1. Direct treatment of the “thing”, whether subjective or objective.
2. To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation.
3. As regarding rhythm: to compose in sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of the metronome.”

Too rigid, imagism.
Too conscientiously flowing. Abrupt. Flowing.
The thing is not a thing.
It expands, contracts, unfolds. It has no substance.
I am not T.S Eliot,
The thing is words, stripped words, naked, undulating.
Shock me with it. Hurts like hills and dreams and loves,
like blood.
Flowing.
Gone.

Bang! The 14th assignment: Repetition

“Write a poem that uses at least two different forms of repetition. Try to embrace at least one form of repetition that you don’t ordinarily use. “

Repeat.
Repeat.
That’s all I do.

Fucking echoing, empty
chamber of my mind.

Repeat.
Repeat.

Dead nouns. Dead signs.
No metaphor,
no semaphore,
Just dot dot dot,
dash dash dash,
dot dot dot.

Repeat.

Bang! The sixth assignment: Developing your voice…

“Take at least five minutes to meditate in a quite room free of outside influences before you write today’s poem. Try to clear your head of stray thoughts. Once you feel like you are clear and calm, write your poem. Let the topic be about whatever comes to mind after your meditation. If you have never meditated before, simply sit in a chair with your eyes closed and try to relax.”

Yeah, right. That’s going to happen. I couldn’t do it then. And I sure as hell can’t now.

How long is a second,
how long a breath?
How many moments spent,
With glass grating
my screaming head?

How long is five minutes?
Is it tense or dead?
My only thought:
Too much. I’m going
to bed.

So, I got some things done today. Not a lot, but some. And I said this would be my reward but somehow I’ve forgotten how to write without conscious thought, and I just don’t want to struggle with words right now. Instead, I’m looking at snippets of my other writing, old writing, better writing. I’m not even gone to try to understand what they mean, or why I chose them. I’m just going to be with them.

There’s this, the beginning of a short story never written, with a note that the title phrase comes from Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem, The Revolt of Islam and to research Fanny Godwin.

The Eloquent Sleep

…She dreams of opium beds and laudanum. She dreams of her hands hanging heavily from wrists limp and numb, of her arms sunk deeply into cushions which bear the weight of her bones like frothing waves. She dreams of reeds and dense, green rivers and a punt drifting. She dreams of the blurring warmth of moisture-laden air, of the liquefaction of her hair pooling, of her eyes washed to lavender.

She dreams of her mind submerged and magnified.

She waters the potted plants around her front step as dusk falls. She moves subtly, with her breath held and all her focus contained within the needle’s eye of her mourning larynx. A twig may snap and she may start at the sound and then quiver. A car may pass along her street and she may shrink back into the shadows and swallow painfully.

Her footfalls are silent.

She dreams of evanescence, of existing as the shadow of herself, of existing only as the ethereal void of her empty belly. She dreams of her skin gossamer, of her veins delicately spiderwebbed, of her coffin glass. She dreams of lying passive in the space between breath.

She wishes that she could hear the frogs croaking. Nothing so fecund can be heard above the grating of the cicadas in the sequoia tree at Number 5.

She dreams of the shocking fluorescence of pale skin under water.

There is no still point.

2002

And there’s this, a poem I wrote during my Professional Writing & Editing course…

Amphibian

Do you recognise night when I sleep
or just rapid-eye under the sun
when I sleep   when I sleep?

In spite of me and it all you will grow.
You tell lies like a lady in muslin, like alfred,
play cucumber tennis, spread marmalade thin,
and sing high.
You don’t realise how quickly the shadows can fall
upon life; you don’t see passing clouds, closing days.
But you’ll grow.

So I hurt like a lake when you sleep
I pond without water   eat toads
when you sleep   when you sleep.

1993

I wanted to put an excerpt from my novel here, but the passage I wanted hasn’t been re-typed since the last great computer disaster. So one more poem, and then goodnight…

Prenuptial

When the time comes, I will quietly press God’s jaw
And bite at the tendons of his stiffening neck.
I am disoriented.
When the time comes, I will face East.

Bedlam is the home of women with tangled hair
And I have no hair.
This is my home.
Men wear white when they visit me;
They are bridal.
I pick flowers from the fields to earn my keep.
No. That was in another place.
I’ll tell you a story.

When I was a girl, the grass grew.
Oh, I know the grass grows still
- I am not crazy -
But then it grew in the fields I grew in
And I raced to grow faster than it,
Taller than it.
But I fell and it defeated me.

A snake entered the pit of my womb
And planted there a seed
Which grew round and downward.
My woman’s body was not built for movement
So I lay still.
This is the meaning of the story.
The teaching.

When the snake enters,
When his fangs are poised,
Do not interrupt. Lie still.
Talk to the grass for whom you raced and fell.
You belong to the grass.
This is an old, old teaching.

My bridal men stand poised with syringes
While I murmur to you.
I have another story.
When I was a girl I wore a crown.
Now I have no hair and God is coming.

199?

[*edited to change “Lay still” to “Lie still” as per Rosemary’s comment. Aside from the question of grammar, it sounds better. We all know sound trumps grammar. Still, I’m appalled that I missed it.]

The 18th assignment for 30 Poems in 3o Days: Joining the community.

“Include the words “formal” and “casual” at some point in your poem.”

He introduces us…

Now at the bar,
while he greets friends and fellow artists,
you make a casual inquiry
into my formal education,
into how I make my living,
and my face shutters
as yours did
when you saw me walking toward you
on the candled city street
and he said hello
and your grip tightened
on his arm.

I know your kind
but I recite
a hollow resume for you
while you resent me for the flower
in my hair.

And you have no more conversation,
so I turn my attention
to the stranger at my left
while you stare at
anaglypta on the walls.

Later, at the table,
with your pretended inattention,
with your eyes drifting, seeing nothing,
with your nothingness to say,
you sit, say nothing,
while all his people, strangers,
discuss art and film and music
until his name is called
and he accepts his award
and then returns and your grip tightens
on his arm.

I know your kind
but I, polite,
try to include you in our talk
while you resent me for the flower
in my hair.

This still reads as a little juvenile to me. It is too direct, I think, relying on explicit statements rather than letting the feelings come out through imagery. It also needs some makor editing. I shall sit on it a while and see what I can do with it.

In the meantime, I might perhaps write a post about “her kind”.

The 12th assignment from 30 poems in 30 days:

“Write a poem using syllabic verse. You can assign length ether by line or stanza. If you are stuck for a way to begin, start with this two-word ten-syllable line:

Incompatible Participation”

I wrote two, using set forms.

Summer Cinquain

Sunshine,
Lure me again
to Lych Gate; December
cherries; dense green shade; picnic lace
and words.

Winter Tanka

So long were the nights
of our grey stolen season.
Cold glitter of stars,
in the mist corporeal,
broken by morning’s bright frost.

It’s been interesting experimenting with formal structures as I have previously written most of my poetry without them, although I have used syllabics often in the past without realising that constituted an “official” technique. (Incidentally, I used them for the last three lines in each stanza of Barcelona.) I chose to use recognised forms here, without rhyme, as I did with Sapphics on the Deep in order to keep my focus on the specifics of the assignment.

But isn’t it odd what you pick up via osmosis. I remember in my first year of Professional Writing & Editing taking a long, complicated poem I wrote to my grammar teacher, the adored, illustrious Captain Slusher, and asking him to check it for me. He told me I could do it myself. I told him I hadn’t learned enough grammar yet and he said, Not consciously…

The 11th assignment from 30 poems in 30 days: Courting controversy…

“Read a poet you don’t like. Try to figure out what they do that upsets you and determine whether or not this assessment is fair. Try to think of ways that you would approach the same subject matter using your style. Write a poem that addresses some of the same subject / style / tone of the poet you dislike but do it in your own style.”

I am breaking my tradition and writing about this poem before you get to read it. The poet I chose is Robert Frost, whom I loathe and detest with a violent passion. I have heard him referred to as ambiguous but I find his work overly simplistic, transparent and smarmy. Dainty, lily-livered pop-psychology with no real sensitivity, abusing what can truly be seen through nature just to make himself appear insightful. Truly, he makes me vomit a little in my mouth.

The poem I chose was A Minor Bird and I veered slightly off the assignment by writing something of an invective rather than approaching the subject matter in a different way.

I do not need
to speak of birds
I can say the word
Depression.

I can say
I hate
the imitation of my sorrow
by a mynah at my window
or echoed in a song
in minor key.

I don’t need
pastoral devices
to disguise
my inner turmoil.

Fences do not make
good poets
Just say the word
Depression.

As I said over at The Writer’s Resource… If Robert Frost could be framed, he would be a motivational poster.

The 9th assignment from 30 poems in 30 days… A brief glossary of metre…

“Write a poem using a specific meter. The meter can be of your own choosing or even your own making, as long as you put a pattern into place.”

Sapphics of the Deep

Clams without teeth stopper their jaws and bind the
Currents; white flotillas of paper beach on
Tideless shores; I walk through convention, silenced,
Greeting the grey men.

Speaking nothing, language reduced by empty
Habit; sounds now mindless, unmade, like boats that
Drift in shallows, seeking no stormfront, sighting
No more the giants.

Leashed what once was swollen with Gods and Jung and
Darkness; thick, primordial waters made of
Words like squid, electric and phosphorescent
Colours in ink moved.

Never having worked with meter before (I don’t count bad sonnets) I chose, in my ignorance, to use sapphic meter. It had been my intention to publish just the one post tonight with all my “catch-up” poems and call it Bloody awful poetry… Instead, I am bloody proud of this and it gets to have a post all of it’s own.

Let me just say, Sapphics are hard.

Perhaps someone better-versed in scansion than me will find fault with what I have written. It is possibly imperfect. But I didn’t know what a trochee was before I started this and working with such an unnatural meter, in a language the meter was not intended for, I think I succeeded.

Not only that, but I have been frustrated by the simplicity of my previous poems and their lack of imagery. I used to write poetry in a very stream-of-consciousness way and it was dense with symbolism, not deliberately but because my mind thought in pictures.

Finally, I have written pictures with my words again.

The 8th assignment from 30 poems in 30 days… Elegies and memories…

“Write an elegy about a person or event that is meaningful to you. You don’t necessarily have to approach the most tragic event in your life. Don’t try to take on an event that is still too difficult for you to deal with. Look for something that you can handle. “

Blight

We planted wisteria for you
last week
in cold, loamy soil.
It is dormant now,
awaiting your arrival.

Full bellied,
hands resting
on the curve of you,
she said as a child would
-This week
we’re growing teeth.

The next day
he turns the echo
away from her,
he says
-There is no yolk.

You never divided
to become one of us.

It falls to me
to keep a silent vigil
while she rides
the contractions of your passing,
to boil water,
make useless tea,
remove blood-stained towels
as you seep into the sheets
before her drained
and empty slumber.

In early spring
long racemes of purple
will hang above our doorway
but we can never
bring you home.