The World is Not Enough with Me [sonnet]

As a kid, I played
At Mass. I was the Priest.

I gave my sister Communion
In our plastic-draped, pastel living-

Room in our one-bedroom home
In our barrio in ritzy Westchester

In New York. We weren't allowed
In the living-room. But in

For penny -- in for pound.
We broke sugar cookie hosts.

We have no pictures;
We didn't document sins.

If I led down the aisle,
Would you convert?

Series: Watch a Poem Grow: Make a Noise

UPDATED: APRIL 30, 2017

A family of trees fall. Slugs
We leave. Snails, we keep. Watch
How shells repel the black stream.
See how feelers smell and retract,
Snap and grow. Regrow. Snap.

The PROCESS:

This poem was based on lyrics from MGMT's Kids. [See: Who is MGMT -- Watch Video ]

For days, the lyric segment, "take only what you need" kept haunting me. Seriously, it would repeat for hours, finally be sent packing by a major distraction, and return during any boring/routine activity. I did not like the message, therefore, Kill the messenger.

At a previously-scheduled retreat, during the inevitable collage-making activity, I cut thru a Forbes magazine & tried to pin down lyrical meaning.

When I returned, my son told me what he remembered of lyrics's chorus: Enjoy yourself// Take only what you need from him// A family of trees fallin// To be haunted.

OK, well that changes things. To be one of the title's "kids" is to enjoy yourself, and take only what you need might apply to a journey, as in when packing take only what you need -- a liberating message, no?

But... the mood of video -- where rotting monsters follow a crying toddler who walks away from an inattentive mother & heads to the forest -- that didn't connect.

So, I printed out true lyrics. It's really. CONTROL YOURSELF // Take only what you need from IT. // A family of trees wantin' // To be haunted.

Yeah. It was Poetry Time.

I did word analysis, breaking down lyrics (both real and misheard) into word groups: verbs, pronouns, nouns. Separately, I matched/generated sound alike words & pulled together full rhymes and slant rhymes, which are internal rhymes, which I use extensively.

Then, time to write. I started a haiku, which is three lines: 5, then 7, then 5 words each. This helped me simmer poem down to core. Haiku has two ideas or images; includes seasonal reference; and uses the "knife" -- a word that slices parts of poem into two images or ideas, with the "knife" word as bridge uniting the two components.

I like to brainstorm a Haiku, because, ha ha, it cuts poem to its core. Forces a setting or mood because of the need for seasonal reference. Forces turning points. Encourages concrete word usage and economic use of symbols.

From my haiku skeleton, I played around with words & symbols & double entendre, added what felt left out and voila, my draft of Make a noise.

So, I'll put it away for a months or so, and then start the long, long editing process.

Interplanet Hope

What if God were a planet—
In a white-hot, violet galaxy?
Perhaps if God were a planet
We'd relocate. We'd get new homes,

New pets, and shiny new clothes.
What if galaxies were God—
All of them? Might we evaporate
Into Divinity when we die?

Our ashy bodies compost, we know.
Even if, somewhere, we keep copies.
We'll leave molecules in tomatoes,
Wells, wool, sweat, and waffle cones.

On Earth, finally, we'd be everything.
Though what is the what, we won't know.
Somewhere, we do penance. Spit? Smoke?
Cast away? Lost in the belly of the Globe?

Demons who once breathed—
Who sold certificates for Heaven—
Who drank from jeweled grails—
Move to the Inner Circle.

[first draft of part 1]

Why Ancient Greeks Kick A-s

I love Ancient Greek poetry. They wrote such embodied, dramatic stuff. The best fiction is about matters of life and death, to paraphrase Tobias Wolff. And the Greeks totally nailed the life-and-death thing. Homer, or some guy with the same name, composed the Blockbusters of his day.

The Illiad Gets Real
The Iliad, for example, starts with the tale of two men fighting over one woman. What's at stake: HONOR: one warrior's wounded pride & what he's going to do about it. READ: ACTION is character. Achilles refuses to fight for the Achaeans (Greeks) because his mistress/spoil from war was taken from him, and given to a lesser warrior and not-altogether competent leader.

Starting to understand why kids don't read the Iliad in Public High Schools? Almost impossible to give the Iliad a Victorian or Right-Wing Christian White-Wash. Kids might really get into the story. And that would be terrible. What if they learn something inappropriate?

But seriously, Doesn't the basic Iliad story transcend time and place? Who hasn't been in a situation(s) where the Guy in Charge is a moron who gets the biggest salary/perks while you're out in the field dealing with real-world problems, kicking and busting your a-s for The Company?.

And when there are cutbacks, who gets hit the hardest? The competent guys doing the actual work, right?

So, Mr. Mediocre, Agamemnon, has to give up his slave-girl, Chryseis, who happens to be a Mighty Priest's daughter, for the good of the Achaean Legion. Agamemnon can't get out of doing his part; he's got to give Chryseis up, or take it up with the Gods, who have been raining fire & brimstone on the Greeks for weeks. And what does Agamemnon do? Mr. Mediocre turns around and demands the woman of Achilles, aka BEST WARRIOR of ALL TIME.

BUT, Achilles has grown fond of his slave woman, Briseis, whom he won in a fair fight. Well, fair by the standards of the time. Agamemnon already has a wife, and if he gets Briseis, he'll have two key women, and Achilles will have none. Furthermore, what a show of disrespect in front of the troops!

So Achilles says: Fine, Agamemnon, take my woman. But, I'm done with you. I'm leaving the battlefield, and I'll be "working" on the Pleasure Principle. Granted, Homer says it more gracefully. Read for yourself...

Wikicommons: L'ira di Achille, 1819, di Jacques-Louis David, Fort Worth, Kimbell Art Museum

The Iliad IGNITES...

"Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles son of Peleus, that brought
countless ills upon the Achaeans. Many a brave soul did it send
hurrying down to Hades, and many a hero did it yield a prey to dogs and
vultures...

...Achilles scowled at [Agamemnon] and answered, "You are steeped in insolence and
lust of gain. With what heart can any of the Achaeans do your bidding,
either on foray or in open fighting? I came not warring here for any
ill the Trojans had done me. I have no quarrel with them. They have not
raided my cattle nor my horses, nor cut down my harvests on the rich
plains of Phthia; for between me and them there is a great space, both
mountain and sounding sea. We have followed you, Sir Insolence! for
your pleasure, not ours--to gain satisfaction from the Trojans for your
shameless self and for Menelaus. You forget this, and threaten to rob
me of the prize for which I have toiled, and which the sons of the
Achaeans have given me. Never when the Achaeans sack any rich city of
the Trojans do I receive so good a prize as you do, though it is my
hands that do the better part of the fighting. When the sharing comes,
your share is far the largest, and I, forsooth, must go back to my
ships, take what I can get and be thankful, when my labour of fighting
is done. Now, therefore, I shall go back to Phthia; it will be much
better for me to return home with my ships, for I will not stay here
dishonoured to gather gold and substance for you."

And Agamemnon answered, "Fly if you will, I shall make you no prayers
to stay you. I have others here who will do me honour, and above all
Jove, the lord of counsel. There is no king here so hateful to me as
you are, for you are ever quarrelsome and ill-affected. What though you
be brave? Was it not heaven that made you so? Go home, then, with your
ships and comrades to lord it over the Myrmidons. I care neither for
you nor for your anger; and thus will I do: since Phoebus Apollo is
taking Chryseis from me, I shall send her with my ship and my
followers, but I shall come to your tent and take your own prize
Briseis, that you may learn how much stronger I am than you are, and
that another may fear to set himself up as equal or comparable with me."

....
[Achilles draws his sword to kill Agamemnon, but is stopped by goddess Minerva.]

The son of Peleus again began railing at the son of Atreus, for he
was still in a rage. "Wine-bibber," he cried, "with the face of a dog
and the heart of a hind, you never dare to go out with the host in
fight, nor yet with our chosen men in ambuscade. You shun this as you
do death itself. You had rather go round and rob his prizes from any
man who contradicts you. You devour your people, for you are king over
a feeble folk; otherwise, son of Atreus, henceforward you would insult
no man. Therefore I say, and swear it with a great oath--nay, by this
my sceptre which shalt sprout neither leaf nor shoot, nor bud anew from
the day on which it left its parent stem upon the mountains--for the
axe stripped it of leaf and bark, and now the sons of the Achaeans bear
it as judges and guardians of the decrees of heaven--so surely and
solemnly do I swear that hereafter they shall look fondly for Achilles
and shall not find him. In the day of your distress, when your men fall
dying by the murderous hand of Hector, you shall not know how to help
them, and shall rend your heart with rage for the hour when you offered
insult to the bravest of the Achaeans."

Click to read the Iliad online, via the Project Gutenberg

Don't worry. Agamemnon gets "his due" when he returns home to Greece, but that's a whole other epic! Did I mention that Agamemnon had his daughter sacrificed to the Goddess of Hunting? They don't make Patriarchs like they used to. Thank God. The Atreus Dynasty is seriously messed up. SEEK: Clytemnestra -- One Tough Mother

Poetry: Fountain of Youth

I write poetry because I need poems to vitalize everyday life, and not because I am a professional and/or "working" poet. I don't write every day. I should, but I don't. I'm a lover, alas. I'm not married to the Muse.

Perhaps, it's fear of commitment. Sometimes I go weeks w/o composing. But every single day, I envision poetry mentally & take out my five senses. Sometimes I experience a mental poem as vividly as I experience a film. A scene. Dialogue strings. A fight and/or flight. An image. A metaphor growing like a tree, with petals hue-ing & falling.

And daily, I play with words. We go running, words and I. Sometimes we take off, and fly too close to the sun. Call me spacey. Astronauts do it with more thrust.

Seriously, I don't desire publication, at this time. I have no desire to publish the Great America [fill in -------] at any point in my life. I've published exactly one poem. Which is one more than the number of stories or essays I have published. Unless you count the series of short stories I wrote for a student-organized tabloid at St. Augustine's Elementary School. That is, until we got busted for publishing w/o school authorization, and, audacious!, charging students for it, and best of all, making money :) Samizdat for the middle school set.

I want people to hear and be influenced by my poetry, and that objective won't be achieved by publishing in journals that few poets read, let alone the general public. My project is poetry performance, and getting grants to work on larger projects & craft, so that one day I will publish something meaningful. Something that spurs folks to do, to be, to vitalize their lives.

For now, I write lyrics, modern-day ballads, and psalms. Some are borderline erotic (ok, maybe I've crossed the border). Some are metaphysical, or otherwise philosophical. But all are passionate, that is embodied. Gut-sy. Incarnate or Carnal, depending on your point of view, or preferred organ of sensation. Whatever. I write what I write. What you do with my words. Well, that's up to you, isn't it?

****

Category: Psalm

Lord,

Show me mercy. I'm just
Human. Breathe me.

Break my blood-brain
Barriers. Commit me.

With your extravagant passion,
Fire me.