ㅁ living with someone who denies a slight deafness you learn to not say
– a pseudo-haiku.
Category: My Poetry & Fiction
Caveat: Poem #1377 “Presentation”
ㅁ The deer stood at the top of the rocks, looking at me as if surprised. It had come down that steep path - the one I'd made last year. It browsed some green leaves: blueberry plants reaching out to feed deer.
– a nonnet.
Caveat: Poem #1376 “Point of view”
ㅁ Down through the railing, the tide had been slipping down; Cormorant possessed a rock that was showing there.
– a couplet in a semi-successful dactylic tetrameter.
Caveat: Poem #1375 “Distributions”
ㅁ The sun shone on me. A cloud, deep and gray, passed by. Rain was scattered round.
– a pseudo-haiku
Caveat: Poem #1374 “What can trying hurt?”
ㅁ Now tomatoes begin to sprout, so small: a bit of purplish fuzz along the leaves.
– a couplet in blank verse (iambic pentameter). The tomato is 1/4 inch tall.
Caveat: Poem #1373 “Obsesión en romance”
ㅁ Obsesión en romance Verde, que te quiero verde, Verdes ramas, cabello verde - Federico García Lorca. verde poeta que escribe verde poema de amor verde, dulce, sin sabor. verde que no puede ver, verde violencia boreal verde nieve me cae un copo verde. es agonía de mártir verde: niñez de montaña verde, y yace sobre tierra verde y fango verde y lodo verde. un caminante anda, verde calor de alma sola y verde, porque la mía sufre verde, porque el aire que es verde respira cabello verde de amor. soledad verde, invierno lluvioso y verde, como animales verdes. besos verdes. bailes verdes. niño verde, niña verde. el dios es ondulante y verde. un mar, que es increíble y verde... enojo... suicidio verde, me tiro en frente de un verde tren, tren rápido, verde, oscuro, poderoso y verde todavía. mátame, verde, aplástame ya que yo - verde - no quiero vivir. verde es odio del verde amor. verde es la revolución. verde, que se desangra, roja y verde. la odio. la odio tanto, verde, como rojo, pero verde, más bien es color verde que me asalta la nariz, verde como una máquina verde y poderosa: el alma verde. nos perdona la ira verde, nos antagoniza: verde faz completamente verde, cara de sangre - la verde sangre - de nuestra ira. verde en el suelo que es verde, escarcha de la estrella verde del cielo porque la verde redentora dice '¡verde muerte, verde vida, verde muera, verde viva!' verde ira, que nos enoja, verde grito en la noche verde pierde, raudamente, verde sentido - concepto verde - que conceptualiza un verde signo: Verdenada. es verde, nada, tras celeste y verde infierno, pide fiera verde, ¡oh, bestia!, come carne verde y podrida. pudor verde no perdonaría el verde espíritu claro, verde, ¿cómo conmover un verde apocalipsis? ¿qué es verde? es pérdida de amor verde que me es personal, verde, tan íntima. ¡huida verde hacia retrobución! verde me seduce tanto: verde de roja madera verde, aquel locus amoenus verde, es un espacio aterior. verde dentro verde. fuera, verde, una mera sonrisa verde... él vende el violento verde viento, va, devora, verde demonio, una momia verde, que padece el amor. verde estoy aquí esperando, verde te espero sin nada, verde, en el corazón mío. verde, blanco y azul soy, verde poeta con temor: el verde enojo me controla verdemente con verde ojo... verde ojo: te odio todo. verde es todo, resentido, verde que es resentimiento, verde que no es un dolor. verde, oh, ¡verde!, ¡no me digas! verde peso. verde sol. verde idiota, no te quiero. verde sube. verde baja. verde héroe en ascensor: verde bajando, subiendo, el verde nos sube, bajando. verde no nos puede ver, verde no ve verde nieve: es verde, o sea, que me dice esto: 'verde vida vale nada.' el verde enojo duele tanto, verde dolor, ¡la alienación verde no implica valor! es verde espacio, aterior. verde magia. verde amor. la verde pregunta no tiene verde calor, no responde verdemente, no responde. es verde salida: un razor verde... como mi dios. verde es existencialismo, verde captura la guerra. el verde suprime un vector de verde escape mayor, porque verde no me es nada más que verde. no quiero saber el verde nombre, tetraletra verde, diagrama letal: 'verde, verde, verde amor.' verde es un cuerpo sin órganos verdes, veo como película verde. verde joder, o hacer pajas, verde coño con coñac, verde verga rosada de un verde ojito singular y verde, me escupa semén verde y blanco. no tolero verde, es reinvindicación. verde es todo un universo verde, peregrino soy - verde - y me identifico con: ¡verde abismo, verde caos, verde desesperación! verde demonio locuaz, verde con conocimiento verde, y con olvido audaz. verde y rojo, desconexos. verde reina y verde rey. verde... sé que ideología es verde, y que encapsula verde vegetal y bestia verde (maniquea visión), verde miembro perdido por verde, como manicomio verde, con su corazón verde, explota en pedazos verdes, destruye el alma. verde pubis, ... mejor, ¡chocha verde!, que come como la verde diosa de la isla de verde costa y verde mar. verde nos explica que lo verde es la masturbación verde, y ¡tan intelectual! verde puta con vestido verde, con carne podrida, verde. Oh madre, madre tierra, verde tierra se cae (y cae verde) hacia abajo. un trabajo verde con verde cerebro. verde, anda adelante como verde caballo o caballo verde. yo tengo apellido verde, y dios tiene apellido verde: verde, como el mar. 'verde' describe la crisis verde ambiental del tercer verde disco, suspendido - verde - en cielo negro, solo. verde cerca, ver de lejos, verde loco, no me importa. verde onanismo de loco... verde obsesión sexual. verde demonio con pelo verde, y ahora llora un mar verde de lágrimas, ... bellas. verde es la inocencia, o sea verde la es mi amor. ¿no ves? un verde helicóptero alegre... verde choque de suicidio.
– un poema largo en métrica romance. This is another “guest post from the past.” It was written leading up to and during a hospital stay in early 1996. It’s not perfect – indeed it’s quite strange – but I feel it’s actually the most “literary” thing I ever did in Spanish. In origin, it leapt off from the famous poem by García Lorca, “Romance sonámbulo.” It might also be the longest poem I’ve written, to date, in either Spanish or English.
Caveat: Poem #1372 “Epistemology”
ㅁ Sight constructs images engendering thoughts hopes dreams doubts plans which swirl in vast spirals on the field of perception sweeping conceptual gestures like galaxies of damp greenery.
– a reverse nonnet.
Caveat: Poem #1371 “Alternatives”
ㅁ I dreamed it, vivid though I had never lived there the streets, sky, people
– a pseudo-haiku
Caveat: Poem #1370 “Lollygagging vegetables”
ㅁ Here I have planted tomatoes to grow. Their germination - it seems to me slow. Giving them water and sunlight I guess serves to inspire them to lollygag less.
– a quatrain in a dactylic tetrameter.
Caveat: Poem #1369 “Curtailment”
ㅁ
The rain had washed the world all clean:
from the trees' branches hung blinded eyes,
but mud-scrubbed stones held the road.
A bird sang suggestions, remained unseen:
a purple fog had captured the skies,
but a sun peered through a mist that flowed.
I walked up the gravel road a ways:
feeling as if reduced in size
by the looming trees with their secret code.
That rain had fallen for many days:
time's old load.
– a curtal sonnet. I’m not sure how well I did. I tried to imitate the form invented by the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, with a four-foot “sprung rhythm” and 10 1/2 lines.
Caveat: Poem #1368 “The new house”
ㅁ In the dream I visited a house. It was a vast house, modernist, a tall central room, columns, an incomplete kitchen, filled with cut firewood, oh and classrooms on one side; the name: "Light."
– a nonnet. This was an actual dream I awoke from just now.
Caveat: Poem #1367 “Time”
ㅁ Frogs and horses, why are they? Time is inescapable. A burden. We cannot ever escape. A child knows not time but they make him learn. They throw it on his back, and he never notices until one day, then it is too late, and they are happy.
– a free-form poem. This poem is a “guest post” from my own past. A distant past. I wrote this while in high school, in December, 1981. I remember writing it… vaguely.
Caveat: Poem #1366 “Fresh start”
ㅁ the rain washed it all the trees the stones the birds' songs the morning was clean
– a pseudo-haiku.
Caveat: Poem #1365 “Vanity publication”
ㅁ I placed my words upon this blog for all. Some people read, and others didn't care.
– a couplet in blank verse (iambic pentameter).
Caveat: Poem #1364 “Dirt vs Wind”
ㅁ Wind blows the rain at the earth, which resists: the dirt insists on its worth, with cold mirth.
– an englyn cil-dwrn
Caveat: Poem #1363 “A garden’s genesis”
ㅁ I built a greenhouse on the corner; my garden isn't very big. I just laid out plastic tubs, and filled them with dark soil. I planted some seeds, water daily, keep watching, shoots sprout, grow.
– a nonnet.
Caveat: Poem #1362 “Always just starting things”
ㅁ Easy to start things... Harder to make some progress: Other things get started.
– a pseudo-haiku
Caveat: Poem #1361 “Sixteenth stanza”
ㅁ Not-a-Wolf found out a path for his hopes, walked up and down the cold shore. Misanthropes told him their lies but his dream opened out, showing his ancestors dancing about.
– a quatrain in a defective dactylic tetrameter. Not-a-Wolf is a fictional character in the alternate-universe place called Makaska.
Caveat: Poem #1360 “Árbol”
ㅁ árbol abre corazones árbol come toda tierra árbol espera de paso árbol sopla gran verdor
– un cuarteto de métrica romance
Caveat: Poem: Mostly in Alaska
I have created an author page on Amazon. It’s rudimentary – they don’t give you a lot of room for customization, but that’s fine. I’ve added a link to the top-most menu on this blog, to the right.
More significantly, I am now getting ready to publish the always intended second volume of poems, which will cover the time period from my departure from Korea to the current date. I suppose the poems included in it will be those right up through the moment I am ready to push the “publish” button.
The Library of Congress number has been applied for, and I have finished the formatting work for the text. I have also made a draft cover design.
Caveat: Poem #1359 “A diagram of the local weather”
ㅁ gray skies calm skies brooding skies intermittent drizzle damp ground seeping ground squishy ground drifting mist rocking trees steadfast trees green trees steady rain you watch out the window awaiting something which remains undefined yet urgent focused thoughts observational thoughts random thoughts meteorological meditations
– a quennet
Caveat: Poem #1358 “Fifteenth stanza”
ㅁ Kiamon tried to retrieve her lost soul, searching the forest and hunting a role. Slowly her hope drained away, till at last, Only a ghost trod the earth. She had passed.
– a quatrain in dactylic tetrameter
Caveat: Poem #1357 “What lines will do”
ㅁ The lines had minds, expressed their deepest thoughts, and curved, and took the long way round to maps.
– a couplet in blank verse (iambic pentameter)
Caveat: Poem #1356 “Last night’s detour”
ㅁ Most nights I sleep fine. A quick trip from dusk to dawn. Then, last night, awake.
– a pseudo-haiku
Caveat: Poem #1355 “Fourteenth stanza”
ㅁ Kiamon went on refusing to fight, peering around in an eerie half-light, kicking at dirt and escaping her friends: heartless and actually seeking her end.
– a quatrain in dactylic tetrameter
Caveat: Poem #1354 “Anti-Chomskyan”
ㅁ And still my luck was green and colorless and dwelt among ideas like a ghost.
– a couplet in blank verse (iambic pentameter). This obliquely references the famous Chomskyan composition which he used to demonstrate the distinction between syntactic well-formedness and semantic well-formedness.
Caveat: Poem #1353 “The rainforest’s shore”
ㅁ The rain had returned. A luminous dusk showed mist. The sea tasted rocks.
– a pseudo-haiku
Caveat: Poem #1352 “Thirteenth stanza”
ㅁ Kiamon drifted, as drifters will drift, taking in scenery, hoping for lift. Nothing appeared, though, and life carried on. Sighing, she wandered... evading the dawn.
– a quatrain in dactylic tetrameter
Caveat: Poem #1351 “Mental health”
ㅁ I dreamed I was on a train... on the roof, looking for proof that my brain takes the strain.
– an englyn cil-dwrn
Caveat: Poem #1350 “What the stones do”
ㅁ The stones deceive. They lie in wait. They sleep. A road goes past, and cars and trucks don't see.
– a couplet in blank verse (iambic pentameter).
Caveat: Poem #1349 “The beast outside”
ㅁ I got up early. The purpleness of pre-dawn Groped my windows.
– a pseudo-haiku.
Caveat: Poem #1348 “What they said about Michelle”
ㅁ The trees surround us. "Find your way," they say. The stones are singing, night and day, they say. They sing their geologic dirges, then. They grasp the roots of trees and play, they say. A raven might make signs across the sky. That kind of bird can't see the gray, they say. You waited but refused to change your mind. Your ghost just watched and didn't say, they say. I saw it once out on the tidal flats. You'd hoped that I could learn to pray, they say. The orange-hued bits of sun revealed your face. It seemed to you I'd lost my way, they say.
– a ghazal with six couplets. Ghazal is an originally Arabic poetic form, later popularized and spread through the old world by the Persians. It has a long history of adaptation into different languages, including into English. I was struck by the repeating identical refrain of the second line of each couplet, and I felt it demanded an adaptation to the “second-hand-orality” (my own term) that I’ve seen in a lot of translations of classical Haida and Tlingit literature here in Southeast Alaska. Aside from constraints on theme and voice, and of course the repeated rhyme and refrain, there seems to be some freedom with respect to meter – it only demands that it be in some kind of consistent meter – so I’ve chosen iambic pentameter as fairly appropriate for an English adaptation.
Caveat: unknown machine-animal conjugations
I guess someone (2 someones) actually ordered my book.
That’s kinda cool. Thank you to whomever that was!
Joke seen on internet:
Q: What do you get if you cross a helicopter and rhinoceros?
A: Hell-if-I-know.