Raising a Happy Notebook

Raising a Happy Notebook

(for the Coursera Café)

Awakening,

the notebook stretches

Limbering his binding

Fluffing his pages like a pillow

You may notice his blank eye seeks the sunlight

Imagining itself a flower

He plays with toes ignoring your pretended slumber

Gives sailboats on the sheet a kick

and sends a single digit spelunking from orifice to orifice

on morning recon

then from hunger

Deeper than his deepest blue striations

the omnivorous

howl rises

-       Reaching this point before

coffee’s made is not advised.

LFM

Theology

Theology (theo logos – god talk)


After the war
After the immolations
After the pedophilic priests
After the delay of the parousia
After the torching of old women labeled witches
After the fleecing of the flocks
After ecclesastical refusal to refuse the refuse of the machine
After the assassination of the prophets
After the crucifixion of the earth

One might ask, is any stomach left for
God talk?
And leave it believe me
we would

If the morning were not a new creation
If my child were not a miracle
If the doctor did not sometimes restore sight for free
If at the funeral there was not a forest of supporting arms
If in the streets there was not an oasis of occupation
If letter carriers did not collect cans of food
If at the stockholders meeting there was not a dissenting voice
If among political prisoners poets were not writing
If at her prayers a mother was not mopping up the blood of her child with her heart

Then God could
stop talking
But not
now.

Visit to the Grand Canyon

Visit to the Grand Canyon

Sitting together on the bumper at the edge of the Grand Canyon I see sonnet vultures circling the North Rim and I’m suddenly hungry for a sonnet, but the cover is more than I want to pay.

It’s an odd feeling, like being in a bar and realizing what you want, more than anything,

is Eucharist

Knowing you are no stranger to hunger, I say, “Does it seem odd to you that one who lectures others for a living would use the term “drill down” as a metaphor for clarification?”    

“Drilling is what two  sweaty men with a boom truck do in the middle of a field – creating a navel through which waters return to the sky. “

“Drilling is two mosquitoes inserting a steel proboscis 308 feet into the earth’s epidermis to a self-betraying vein that draws down a witches willow wand.”

“Drilling is what two reprobates do, sitting silent on the bumper of a truck as the sun sets, inserting memory needles into pains that go unnamed, immeasurable and unredeemed.”

“No,” you say,” those who steal words to describe a stolen life are always dressing themselves up like that in artifacts stolen from the lives of others.  It is the main reason they don’t write sonnets.”

LFM

May, 9, 2014 (formatting altered by Blogger.  Should be couplets.)

Like Snow

Poetry is thinking

Like snow and the fence post.

LFM

Covenant

Covenant

I meet my neighbor

at the fence

“Morning” he.

I, “Morning.”

  

where wire once

snagged my shirt

“Cold!” I.

“Yes.”

and tore a good

sized hole

“Coming?”

“Soon.”

and tongue-mowed grass

pricked my bared skin.

                               

“See you.”

“See you.”

LFM 2/28/2014

Email to a Poet

Mr. Dunn

Last summer I bought Richard Jones’ Poetry East Origins issue and found there your poem “Sacred.”

I read the poem and your brief accompanying essay in the bookstore of the College of William and Mary, where it was purchased, and then put the book away for months.  At the beginning of February 2014 I was taking a writing class the my local college.  Our text The Crafty Poet by Diane Lockward contained writing prompts exploring syntax.  I pulled out your poem and read it again, enjoying its use of inverted syntax.

What happened next is difficult to explain.  I am attaching my brief poem describing it. 

Valentine for a Poem

After you appeared in
this kitchen’s dim,

under- counter light and
I remembered us flirting last spring,

cloistered by a
sweet Virginia rain,

your spare
beauty

slim lines
sliding, it was

precisely that
moment when

your iridescent
becoming

transfixed,
transformed,

translated
me.

LFM

As I read the poem several times, the words of it fell away and the poem became a living thing.  It was for me, in that moment, Poetry.  Further, because it had a life and mind of its own that looked out at me, I felt as if the poem knew me rather more completely than I knew the poem. 

I struggled to put that into words for a week, using first religious language (“Sacred” suggested that.) Eventually, although it did seem an experience of something sacred, I moved to the sister language of love, and addressed the poem above to your poem, with gratitude.

When I shared this experience with my class, they suggested I write to tell you.  What I really want to do is simply to express appreciation for a fabulous poetic experience. 

Appreciatively,

Lowell Murphree

Ellensburg, Washington