Swimming Downward Into Words

Listen, Listen

—Poems and Photos by Joyce Odam, Sacramento, CA

THE TAXIDERMY SHOP AT NIGHT

Behind the soiled night glass, a bear on hind legs;
behind him a polar bear, one paw on a seal;
and farther back, a ghost-white mountain goat . . .

among all these, the blur of smaller animals,
of dusty fish and dusty birds.

But the window-bear commands the front of the shop,
his claws as long as my fingers, his brown glass
eyes connected to my glass-deep stare.

The window shifts, and I feel my breath in his chest
when the car lights pass;

and on the hearth-rug by the counter just inside
the door, a small round dog who does not bark
at anyone any more—asleep forever.

                                     
(first pub. in Pudding Magazine, 2002)

_________________

THE COLOR OF WHITE

Moth-words that do not
connect

but say into silence
what there is to say

of all that cannot
reach;

words that
become frail wings of effort,

breaking on
refusal and deafness;

words that find other than
intention—that must

fight the maze of another’s mind 
and be turned into weapons.

How does this happen—
that love against love

becomes a battleground—
a terrible place to die.

 Listening

WHO WILL TRANSLATE

my senseless poem
from English into English

when I am famous enough to warrant
translation—

my hurried or labored words—
my complex thought—my obscurity.

I cannot help you
with this.  I am beyond this work

and into another language of discerning:
who am I . . . ?  why do I seek myself . . . ?

how can I go that deep
and still remain at my surface . . . ?

when I am swimming downward
into words . . . 

________________

ANOTHER LITTLE-BOY-LOST

“Are you gentle,” I asked.
“You seem to be gentle.”

“I am a user,” he confessed.
Or else he smiled,

but he said, “Do you really
need to ask?”

And his eyes were puppy brown,
and his hair was ringlet young, and
he had soft ways about him, being
delicate of gesture and expression,
making circles with his hands, out-
ward from his breast, to be emphatic.
And I wondered if he needed protection,

But I know how masks are chosen,
so, yes, I needed to ask—to save time—

to get at the heart of things. I offered
an invitation he seemed to accept.

I know how to buy time with invitations
disguised as good advice. It was a beginning.

 Memory

GOING BACK

It was a pale morning of love
that was neither love nor pale.
It was a virtual memory.
              __________

If we take the quiet to heart,
might we deserve it? We are such
a din, the many of us who complain,
then cry about the crying.
              __________

However we mean this is nothing
compared to the literal meaning
that swirls through the other effort
of trying to comprehend.
              ___________

Savor this—this reactionary memory
of loneliness with its false perfection.
Oh, never mind that—it was as you want it.

 Silvanna Cenni

PRIVATE COLLECTION
After Silvanna Cenni by Felice Casorati, 1922

Made to fit garment,
cloth girl,
narrow girl,
pale, pale girl,
matte-featured, asleep
in fading window-light,
preparing to levitate,
let the undone white robe
slip from her
as she floats
out the window—
over the rooftops—
to the thin gray sky,
her feet gently pushing
against the floor
to help her rise,
her wing-like arms
foreshortened by her pose,
her hands limp,
as if not part of the effort,
her face in a trance.

Her eyes never open. She is obsessed with
whatever thoughts possess her. What holds
her is the dark edge of personal art—his—
his notion of her, his private desire, formed
by his brush, his pen, his eye. For whatever
love he feels—she is his.

 Something to be Said

SIDEWALK

Sidle me forward over the cracks and
ruts that flatten to allow trickery
of sensation, the whole foot
or the arch of the foot
as it tries not to feel
the tangible
fractures of
the imagination.
Sidle over the
shadows that have
the sameness of texture
felt by the eyes
as a difference.
Avoid the randoming
twigs
and skitter of leaves.
They are blameless.
Aversions must be met
by the self alone, the pace set
to control the phobia that will not let you.
Sidle is the only way to approach the effort
of nonchalance—the guise of control.

 Thorn Bottle

So why is blue so lost amid gold swirl and bruising red?
After Angel of the Last Judgement by Vasily Kandinsky, 1911

Is the soul so lost in turmoil that it is
torn on its own ascent?
Is the wing

conditional to flight and effort freed?
What need persists beyond a meaning that is moot?
There is no form for life to fit except its own.

Who cares if music dies without its praise, if lies
are meant to soothe all hurt. Then lies be blest.
Let hurt assuage its own connective.

What is worth an answer if it’s wrong? Let’s reassess :
The blue is torn. The wing is fragment-white.
The gold is truth but smeared within the ruin of light.

What’s left is rage and melancholy—
love is the music at the center, and the edge,
as if one thing were another.

The blend is felt as one perfection :
movement and stillness—
expressed in abstract harmony. Let it be so.

All is enough and what it is.
Let’s look—and look away—before we know.
Knowing is the end to what we seek.

So it was light—that and the darkness light concealed,
the allowing of color to form itself with the help
of brush and mind—the guilt of weeping afterwards.

 Beyond Self

DIRECTIONS

I fold my life in half until it fits. I tell my arrow not to
warp. I drift upon all ebbs-and-flows and do not drown.
I dare thin atmospheres of effort and thrill at my accomp-
lishment. I cross the cold blue deserts of night until I find
the warm heart of some safe creature to lie beside. I ex-
plore thick forests of nightmare and learn to waken. I
dream the dream is real. I re-enter days of endlessness
that fill and fill with more of themselves. I get through,
moment by moment. I ask the arms of heaviness not to
drop me—to be patient with my frailty. I fold my life in
half again—my Self to keep.

___________________

Today’s LittleNip:

THE PET SHOP OWNER
—Joyce Odam

he takes favorite lizards
home
feeds them crickets

        *        *       *

listens happily to them
all night
singing in the lizards’ bellies

__________________

Many thanks to Joyce Odam for her poems on workshops (and workshopping one’s life) this morning, after our Seed of the Week: Workshops. Our new Seed of the Week is Hotter’n Hell. (Are we talking about the weather here, or some ill-fated romance?) Send your poems, photos & artwork about this (or any other) subject to kathykieth@hotmail.com. No deadline on SOWs, though, and for a peek at our past ones, click on “Calliope’s Closet”, the link at the top of this column, for plenty of others to choose from.

—Medusa

 Angel of the Last Judgement by Vasily Kandinsky
Celebrate Poetry—and the poetry of color!

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then click on the X in the top right corner to come back
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