Category Archives: poetry

poetry, travel

My Uncle Travelin’ Sonnet, Deux

Another woes-of-the-road sonnet, from Will “Complaining” Shakespeare. Honestly, I wish he’d stop ripping off Bob Seger.

CXIII.

Since I left you, mine eye is in my mind;
And that which governs me to go about
Doth part his function and is partly blind,
Seems seeing, but effectually is out;
For it no form delivers to the heart
Of bird of flower, or shape, which it doth latch:
Of his quick objects hath the mind no part,
Nor his own vision holds what it doth catch:
For if it see the rudest or gentlest sight,
The most sweet favour or deformed’st creature,
The mountain or the sea, the day or night,
The crow or dove, it shapes them to your feature:
Incapable of more, replete with you,
My most true mind thus makes mine eye untrue.

Standard
a propos of nothing, poetry

White Christmas, Indeed

It started snowing at about 1 am last night like it was making up for the week of clear skies. Outside, it looks like a sideways salt shaker.

I was trying to find a nice Charles Bukowski poem to put up here for Christmas – Death Wants More Death, for example – but I stumbled on this old article instead – about a guy who found some of his poems in the street in my old neighborhood in LA –

“…In any event, just weeks after Bukowski’s death, Stella came upon an important piece of the poet’s life in a heap of trash on a Los Feliz curb.”

As long as we can still discover poetry in the Los Angeles garbage, there’s hope – for both poetry and my city. (And for garbage.) I wish I was at home, especially over the holidays, careening down Franklin towards the Valley, but Charles’s ghost is doing a great job of holding down the fort. If you’re in LA, do me a favor – check your trash for poems tonight. And your poems for trash.

I have two Christmas parties tonight, one with little kids. I bought one of them a box of 64 Crayolas. She’s probably too young for it, but I want to give it to her anyway. I remember my 64-crayon box very well.

And then rehearsals resume tomorrow.

“….
and I run child-like
with God’s anger a step behind,
back to simple sunlight,
wondering
as the world goes by
with curled smile
if anyone else
saw or sensed my crime”

Standard
poetry

My Uncle Travelin’ Sonnet

This sonnet, 109, seems very appropriate to me for someone who’s on the road a lot. From Shakespeare Sonnet-A-Day.

CIX.

O, never say that I was false of heart,
Though absence seem’d my flame to qualify.
As easy might I from myself depart
As from my soul, which in thy breast doth lie:
That is my home of love: if I have ranged,
Like him that travels I return again,
Just to the time, not with the time exchanged,
So that myself bring water for my stain.
Never believe, though in my nature reign’d
All frailties that besiege all kinds of blood,
That it could so preposterously be stain’d,
To leave for nothing all thy sum of good;
For nothing this wide universe I call,
Save thou, my rose; in it thou art my all.

I find myself reassured by Shakespeare using the same rhyme-word twice in different forms – stain and stain’d. It seems fine. In fact, it seems done on purpose.

I was thinking I would like to make a poetry mix of sort for people at some point, but I wish there was a better way to do it. I could xerox them by hand, or email them as an attachment or as text, but I really wish there was a way to have poems on your IPod. Maybe it has to do with getting actors to read them out loud, recording them. But then I also wish that you could simultaneously see the lyrics on the screen as you listened.

Standard
metablog, poetry

I have decided

to steal the way I’m titling posts from Ellen, who has a series of poems where the poem’s title begins the first sentence of the poem – sometimes the character name, as in,

Jennifer

is sitting alone, by the wall.

She does it better than I do, and I don’t want to steal it from her poetically. But as a stylistic device, I think this blog can use it as a homage.

(Can’t believe I didn’t have a poetry category before this.)

Standard