Voz

As I struggle to visually depict voice, I think about how objects do this everyday.....I think about the hidden lives in material, in dust, in objects made by, with, and through man and woman.

Bottles and Bullets

I want to thank Valdemar for helping me to share my piece last week. Some things are hard to say because we don't want to seem over-dramatic or self-indulging, even though you want people to know and to understand.

I have had those bullet shells for over a year. I shot them myself, my first time shooting a gun. I found them scarily beautiful, and the act of shooting even more frighteningly so. I liked it. I have been wanting to make something with them for a while and so they have lived in a cigar box with a lot of other tid-bits I have gathered and kept for unknown futures. It was obvious to me, after seeing the other end of the gun leveled at my gut, that it was time to engage with them again, perhaps even necessary. And the words for the week also seemed to fit.....fiesta.....tristeza.....a party and a sadness. I can't think of a better way to describe a spent bullet.

And I still wanted them to be beautiful, to dance, to glitter, to chime. The bottle was first for the noise and then the light and fragility. I only decided to fill it the day of class, and not least because I wanted to feel what it would be like to drink from it....

Cryptic?

(What I just said, about poetry being cryptic, evasively solid, reminded me of another poem I wrote for a friend who was troubled by it.....so I'm putting it in here too.)

Cryptic?

I step outside to see the moon
strung up on the telephone wire
like a single pearl
And it seems an appropriate beauty
Is the one
Who said the poem was cryptic
Was right
As wrong and circumstance
Was right
And crippling encoded
Cryptic coupling kissed
Metaphors tease wits
Spat and coo and cope
With imperfection
Crudely
Like a single pearl 
Still waging wire
Sometimes nights fair better
left unsaid

No soy Indigina

No soy indigena. A a cualquier lugar. And so these songs make me sad today. And instead of longing for place, I long for times that it stopped mattering that I don't have one. For people who made with me place that was ours like places can only belong to people in love.

That is what the poem is about, and the face sort of. I guess it is me a bit too, though I didn't mean it that way. But part of longing for other time-places I think is longing for who we were or could be. And I do miss the person made through me with him and maybe part of me wants her back, the me of particular created time and place. The imagery comes from the particulars of a summer, an attic, a garden, a promise, and a lie. 

Poems are cryptic thus, evasive even if not vague, leaving things which are solid to be other than what they say they are, leaving them always open to new meanings. If I continue to add poetry to this notebook, I would be curious to hear what meanings my poems take on. Please do share.

Anhelo

Anhelo-Longing

The time that wont be had
dark eyes and a smooth face
benieth the eves cracks
we delighted the trains pass
and eachothers backs
We did nothing
but turn the soil

The child that wont be had
in the living room
twisted the quilt red
we delivered dreams stain
into eachothers hands bled
We did nothing
to sop it up

The lie that wont be had
not banished easily
distances whispering baited
we delayed a while longer
would have on rooftop waited
We did nothing
but say I love you