one last time...

Ok, as per Cara's request, here is the once-again-updated version of my paper world poem. I am considering reading it at the poetry slam...will let you know how it goes if I do!

**********

I have recently come to realize that I am living in 

a paper world,

a delicate shoebox diorama

that I have carefully constructed out of tiny strips

cut from the pages of storybooks and novels

and other people’s poems.

Painstakingly I have trimmed and clipped and curled them

into familiar objects, arranged them

within their three cardboard walls

as a child arranges and rearranges a dollhouse.

I have cut out crisp silhouettes for companions,

detailed their arms and eyes and hair

with a sharp pencil,

painted their bracelets and neckties

in rich colors with a tiny brush.

I have dyed the background of my box

a brilliant life-green like trees

and a wild blue like the ocean.

I know this paper world of mine.

I have traced over every corner,

every curve of it with my fingers

a thousand times.

But this is a world that must be kept out of the wind,

away from the fire.

(Paper lovers beware.)

It is a world once removed from its own beating heart,

a flat white story full of words and wisdoms,

signifying nothing,

and I do not want to live here anymore.

I want the world of heavy winds and sharp coral and open seas,

or better yet,

I want the world of leaping flames and flying sparks,

where words burn away to reveal

a truer story.

But as you can see, I am still a prisoner

here in this paper cell, and the paper warden guards her ring of keys

as I guard my stories and my metaphors,

each one thickening the wall between us by another hair’s breadth.

I speak to you now through this flat sheet of paper

only because it is all I have,

but enough words.

You are my only visitor today,

and I have only one question for you:

do you have a match?

Tree Poem

HEY GUYS! I wrote something! So exciting. Once a year, I'm in VT and have almost 3 whole days to write, and so I do. Last year I wrote this poem. And hated it. So I left it alone, didn't look at it, and this year I thought, oh yeah, that poem. Didn't look at it again, but rewrote it.
So, this is it. Fire away.

 My First Friend in Brookline

 Dapple-barked giant on a quiet side-street,
 all greens and browns, cool to the touch,
 smooth, but alive as my own frantic heart.
 She doesn’t cry out to me, just whispers—
 the shhhhhhhh of wind above rooftops in her brittle leaves. 

Before the bus stop, before the sidewalks,
 before brownstones, before gas lights. Before
 they built the synagogue or (maybe) even filled in the swamp—
you might say she’s been here a long time, but
 I know she, like me, comes from somewhere far away.

 Her gnarled root-knees bully back the sidewalk,
 buckling pavement with their slow strength.
 I stand on her lap, when I think no one is watching,
 and lean against her, my face, my damp cheek staining--
 Her leaves whisper shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, like a mother in the dark.
 I imagine her sap pulling me up from broad trunk
 to huge limbs, to branches still touched by sunset, out
 to tiny twigs too high to see, to leaves that drink in the city,
 turning what’s foul back to sweet.

 Maybe I can learn the trick.

 I bring her my panic, trembling with car horns, dust,
 dog shit, worries of money and work and the wary stares 
of toddlers when I wander alone by the park. 
Plastered in advertising, tangled in trash, drug-addict hands
 grasping at my ankles, I drag myself to her side. I look up, begging.

Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, she says. (What else, after all, can a sycamore say?)
 And what more could I hope to learn than calm, patience, transformation?
When the rain falls on her whorled bark the browns deepen, the greens pop.

paper/fire

[This is much revised from the previous version I posted]

I speak to you now from my paper world,

this delicate shoebox diorama

that I have carefully constructed out of tiny strips

cut from the pages of storybooks

and other people’s poems.

Painstakingly I have trimmed and clipped and curled them

into familiar objects, arranged them

within these three cardboard walls

as a child arranges and rearranges a dollhouse.

I have cut out crisp silhouettes for companions,

lovingly detailed their arms and eyes and hair

with a sharp pencil,

painted their bracelets and neckties

in rich colors with a tiny brush.

I have dyed the background of my box

a brilliant life-green like trees

and a wild blue like the ocean.

This is a world that must be kept out of the wind,

away from the fire.

(Paper lovers beware.)

It is a world once removed from its own beating heart,

a flat white story, full of words and wisdoms,

signifying nothing.

I know this world.

I have traced over every corner,

every curve of it with my fingers

a thousand times.

But it is not the world I want.

I want the flame world,

I want the world of hot coals and heavy winds and open seas.

I speak to you now through these flat sheets of paper

only because

they are all I have.

A match, a match, my kingdom for a match.

note to myself

Listen carefully.

You do not remember this, but believe me when I tell you that

yesterday at dawn

you saw God from the riverbank.

God was stranded over the water,

a great expanse of billowing light

caught between cross-winds,

and God was calling to you for help.

God’s cry,

a song of desperate longing,

cut into the morning calm.

Your heart,

a solitary fist,

uncurled its shaking fingers.

Then your heart ballooned outward in all directions,

its edges passing beyond the very borders of your skin

and across the water.

It slipped through iron fences, enveloped everything in sight.

It gathered up the dogs on their leashes,

the solemn runners,

the commuters, lonely and desperate in their cars.

It loved them all for their limbs and eyelashes,

their mass and mystery.

And then the edges of your heart slid into nothingness,

and God, set free, rushed over the river and into the streets,

spilling brightness into all the crevices and cracks.

Do not scoff, I beg of you.

You must pull on your sneakers, now,

and run to the river again.

There is room in your heart for much more.

Kneel down at the river and fill it up.

Watering Places

Here are your waters and your watering place

Drink and be whole again beyond confusion
-Directive

I.

“Go on, sure… see if the old tin cup’s still there—“

Awaiting no further permission, we cousins dash down the path,

balance across the beam of the concrete holding back the little reservoir,

bend uphill and race to the river (a stream really),

scamper across moss-slick stones

to the thin locust, wrinkled so prematurely it was-- is-- ageless.

The tree hid our treasure- the tin cup

I imagined to be like Benny’s of the Boxcar Children

tied by a string to the limb by our late grandmother

within reach of the continuously refreshed pools

free of collected pollen or building muck

water clear through to stones and only a few leaves.

Here, we were allowed to drink from the ground

Here, we knew the source of the stream

Here, my father had ‘always drunk this water without a problem’

so we would too.

And always, it was delicious.

So sweet, so cold

I’d feel I should ask for forgiveness.

II.

“Grab the other empty glass jars.  Let’s go—“

(Alone in 7-mile cabin in the middle of the woods,

even after working outdoors all day, sometimes

one of the other of us would have the urge to get outside again

for a different physical contact than setting up poles or nets or watching the sun rise.

I might lie on a log across the stream, he would often stride up the hillside

and on this night, the cloudless moon beckoned, and he remembered

the spring he had seen

on the topo map. )

He set off with glass jars and no flashlight, not checking to see if I was behind him

And I strode quickly through the already-wet tall grass to catch up

We hopped across the stream, then scrambled up to the dirt road

Our shoes suddenly harsh on the gravel

I followed his sometimes-veering, sometimes pausing, direction,

sensed without a dowsing rod but with memory of maps

until he bent over a puddle in the grass

Not a bubble, but a seep, still—

The water was clear with a film of mud at the bottom and grass thick along the side

Without pause, he lay on his belly and put his face in the pool. Lapped up the water.

I didn’t want to get all wet.  But then, I couldn’t resist

stretching along the damp grass to douse my face in that pool

and drink.

III.

“Oh!  Look up!  There are stars- up above”

the clouds have cleared

so I can see the trail to guide my friends

the ones who urge me always to look up, look out, and see

I lead them to the river

tell tales of tin cups

and drinking from the ground 

Now the cup lost its hold on the string

and a sturdy log bridge crosses the stream

but the water still pools

between moss covered rocks

and my friend dips her tin bottle

and drinks – delicious

we smile knowingly

straight from the source

(Note: Ok, this was rushed at the end since the silly buzzer was sounding.  I need to go back to it- but ideas for the end would be particularly useful!)

Rain Walkers

At stoplights,

I watch people walk in the rain

from behind furrows of water running down the windshield

that are swept away by the wipers,

 revealing through momentarily clear glass

forms in liquid motion

faces like wet petals, or the undersides of leaves tossed up before a storm

faces washed out so that this time,  the forms reveal the individuals.

A slight figure huddles herself

wrapping up , tucking in a birdlike chin

One line of a man shields with his black overcoat

firmly drawn across his chest

A hopping boy tries to outrun the raindrops

And place his feet outside the puddles

and last to cross the intersection, a woman with no umbrella and no hood,

who refuses to be rushed by rain, by waiting cars, by flashing lights or crosswalk chirps.

she strides, hands swinging free, face turned up—

she almost drinks the rain

and radiates that  rain, the cleanser and creator

I vow to not wrap, duck, shield, or run, but

stride, face drinking the skies, like this last woman- whom I can’t take my eyes off

as the light turns green