once more to the attic

For the past couple of years, I've been writing what I call the Facebook Poems. I ask, as a status update, for my friends to submit words, and each supplies one until I cut the thread. I like to keep it rule-less, but I have to remind people to keep the words simple. The goal is not merely for me to write a poem; it's for people to like poetry; somehow, if they have invested a word in it, they are more interested in watching it come to life. To some extent, I think they are surprised by how beautiful a poem can be—intelligible, too, and enjoyable.

Still, I get oddball words—words even I have to look up, words that sound icky, like my least favorite of all words, refrigerator. It troubles me to use "forthwith" in a poem because no one says forthwith in daily conversation. Banana is hard, too, especially for a serious poem. Bananas are insanely funny.

I got this set of words a few weeks ago, and I've been stifled. But I was determined to end this year with a new poem. And it brings me to my goal for the new year. I am hoping to write the rest of my Facebook Poems and send the complete book off to a publisher or an agent or something. I'm tired of my poems languishing while my blog flourishes.

Of course, my goal for last year was to get into a recording studio with a few of our best songs, and that never happened. So I'ma make it happen, hear me? This year.

Best wishes to you out there in space and time. I hope to see you again—always better in real space and real time, but I'll take what I can get. Without further ado, the words and then the poem.

humble (kim g), loquacious (tamelyn f), gold (beth mvb), lost (julie h), wicker (jane t), caress (sarah b), strength (gail d), fervent (lynne f), quixotic (sandra r), forthwith (jason d), magenta (randy s), rime (sarah m), phoenix (julie f), warmth (beth s), parchment (michele d), scumble (craig h), lactation (jamie c), banana (mindi s), banal (peggy b), serenade (patrick p)

once more to the attic
for Bruce Ansley and Cleopatra

in the golden space between house and tree
—now magenta, now indigo—
in that space of fiery fervent sky,
I swim, lost in the bleeding striations of sunset.
In the attic, with its wicker chairs, old floors, and new heat
that squeak and hiss and settle, loquacious
as an eager child, I test my strength:
if I climb, I live, though it sounds banal.

in the rimed space between house and tree,
we bury the dog in a caress of old blankets,
pacified momentarily by the gesture of warmth,
like an infant suckling water for lactose,
a serenade of rush-hour crows poking holes
in the blurry scumble of greys above us.
we are raw as parchment’s deckle edge,
small humble mourners trembling.

in the quixotic space between house and tree
the scent of banana bread wafts outside, licks the bleak air
and, forthwith, shoots embers to the heavens.
like a phoenix, and once more to the attic I climb, I live.

the sun and I will have our ups and downs

When your back is wrecked, you sometimes can't walk, sit, stand, or lie down without a whole lot of pain. When it's on the mend, you sometimes need a reminder of the things you can't do.

1. You can’t go grocery shopping and pick up the giant box of large-size Milkbones from the bottom shelf, put it in your cart, put it on the conveyor belt, put it back in the cart, put it in your car, and bring it in your house. You can’t even do the first thing.

2. You can’t lug your new kneeling chair, which you discover was delivered without so much as a knock at the door (you know, because your junkyard dogs would have made a fuss), into the kitchen. You can’t even squeeze the 19.55 pound box from the place between the railings where the UPS guy wedged it.

3. You cannot put together the chair that you cannot lug into the kitchen from the front porch, especially hunched over in another chair while holding the heavy metal parts in the air until you get their holes matched and their screws tightened.

4. You cannot sit on your ass for hours writing, while your L5 throbs, and your feet grow numb.

5. You cannot make the bed! Do not make the bed! You don’t even make the bed when you’re feeling good!

6. You cannot take forty of your husband’s long-sleeved shirts off the hangers to the washing machine in the basement; take them out, wet, to put them in the dryer; and bring them all upstairs, where you cannot hang each of them back up in the closet, fastening at least the top two buttons while you lean over the bed. And you cannot do this after having done this with forty short-sleeve shirts, and you cannot do it again with forty more long-sleeve shirts. And your husband, who refuses to wear deodorant, but whom you caught hanging up a shirt he’d just taken off after working in it all day—on a day he walked a mile to work-doesn’t even understand why you would.

7. You cannot squander the sunsets. You cannot miss the chance to carry your heavy camera up three flights of stairs to the attic, slide up the window screen, and lean, crookedly, on a narrow, dirty sill filled with dead bees, and shoot the sunset.

Because when the time comes that the list of things you can’t do grows unwieldy, itself a thing you cannot lift, your ability to enjoy the sunset—no, your desire to enjoy the sunset, your not having given up on the sun’s big, smeary, wet goodnight kiss—is the test of whether you should continue—making lists, adding to your list of days.





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