Absurd and Lonely Prize

  First Stanza
—Poetry by Joyce Odam and Robin Gale Odam,
Sacramento, CA
—Visuals by Joyce Odam

 

 

THE ALBINO PEACOCK 

—Joyce Odam

At night,
beside the Fool,
the peacock strolls the grounds
and in the moonlight rounds
the courtyard pool—
a quite

absurd
and lonely prize—
white peacock of the King
the Fool leads on a string
for the Queen’s eyes.
He’d heard

the Queen
once say how she
pitied what the King kept
blinded—how she had wept:
it could not see
to preen.

                         
(prev. pub. in Medusa’s Kitchen, 6/1/11) 

 

 

 

Without Shore

SESSIONS
—Joyce Odam

Oh world, I shall not be with you today—
today I shall be traveling inward
to myself,
homeless as a city . . .

I am not immune to love—love just
keeps being love—and I just keep
looking up the word, which is absurd.

I am lying in the sand with my Mother,
reading True Confession magazines.
It is summer and we are young,

and wherever I have been,
I have left me there,
wandering
the curio
shops,
touching things—
waiting for endings of seasons
and pretending I am not just a visitor . . .

A policeman
    mis-asking me why I am crying—
        because I-am-a-child-! I tell him,
               and run—run back to now.

 

 

 

Aminal

ASKANCE
—Robin Gale Odam

The tilt of humor, the mask of
curiosity, the worry of judgment—

the dubiously disapproving suspicion,
disdainfully oblique and skeptically askew—

show it all at once.

                                        
(prev. pub. in Medusa’s Kitchen, 11/22/22; 5/14/24)

 

 

 

 Theater

AS IF IN VIENNA
—Joyce Odam

There we were in the land
of waltz—stoned on love,
and happy to the core—waltzing

to some old Vienna tune
we thought we heard. Laughing
and tipsy. A bit pathetic. A bit absurd.

We loved the music
that drifted in from the boardwalk.
The one-bulb ceiling light

burned and blurred
as we reeled together—
out into the fragrant night

full of dazed somnambulates
who did not know
we waltzed among them—entering

each dream—stealing their sadness.
We would need it later—think it ours.
Such a little while love had lasted.

                                      
(prev. pub. in Song of the San Joaquin, Spring 2006)

 

 

 

 A Very Intoxicating Liqueur

NO MORE DRUNKEN NIGHTS, MY LOVE
—Joyce Odam

You poured wine over my head, and I
poured wine over your head. Then we wept.

Now you come over the telephone with foolish
words, a bouquet of praises in your mouth.

What am I to believe? I have closed the door.
I have sealed the envelope.

I am an old woman now in a wooden chair.
I sit and think of nothing . . . I stare and stare . . .

                                                   
(prev. pub. in Medusa’s Kitchen, 12/6/11)

 

 

 

 Dark Moon Night

FINALITIES
—Joyce Odam

Because we are done. At once. Sudden
and silent, not even time for a last no.
        .
A little bit mysterious. Even for us.
But that is how we surprise each other.
        .
Old quarrels are best. So well known
we can say them at the drop of a guard.
        .
Just now : Your splendid rage, causing
its reaction, your eyes like a sermon.
        .
I am no Amen. I go into the room at the
back of my mind and rock in the dark.
        .
Each night I kill a moth because it is frantic
in the lamp and attacking me in its blindness.
        .
Even when we try, we are unable to repair
what is valued and broken.
        .
Just now—this dangerous look between us.
No compromise.

                                              
(prev. pub. in Medusa’s Kitchen, 12/20/16; 2/15/22)

 

 

 

 A Little Tenderness

FOOLISH THOUGHTS
—Joyce Odam

What is this feeling that comes over me?
I hear a dove and sense a loneliness.

A tiny sparrow makes me want to cry.
Oh, Fie! — That strange word.

How can a word come back like that
from nowhere?

Makes no sense to be so close to tears :
something as simple as a texture,

or a tone
of someone’s voice.

What do I miss this moody day
that overwhelms me so?


(prev. pub. in Medusa’s Kitchen, 4/5/16; 2/25/20) 

 

 

 

 Talisman

HEAVY
—Joyce Odam

Am I not the one with the heart made of lead,
eyes made of brass—hands without touch
through gloves of numb—am I not that one…?

I saw the peacock spread its fan,
and I wept for all women
vainer than seduction with its pretty ways :

how they preened back—in spite of
memory’s sweet haze. Never mind that :
I am the one without words enough to say

the deep yearn that lives
next to the leaden throb—the one
who pines away—who will foolishly sob.

                                                   
(prev. pub. in Medusa’s Kitchen, 7/2/13)

 

 

 

 Just One Sip

TOASTING YOUR HAPPINESS
—Joyce Odam

In love again
so foolish in your second happiness
sitting close enough to touch
and laughing at every glance,
you bring your news to us,
your friends.

We pour the wine to toast you . . .

You do not notice our loveless eyes
our smiles that hurt
our words that come
like finished marriages
the way we touch each lifted glass
except our own.


(prev. pub. as Urban Voices That Matter broadside;
and in Medusa’s Kitchen, 7/2/13; 12/15/15)

 

 

 

 

Notes in Zen

STARLIGHT
—Robin Gale Odam

Tonight my shadow
wrote this poem—it was for
all of you, shadows of shadows,
cast across the floor in the dark.

I move carefully through the house,
avoid the windows, the starlight.
                     

(prev. pub. in Medusa’s Kitchen, 10/10/23) 

 

 

 

Eddie-Lou’s Dream

AN OLD ASPIRATION
—Joyce Odam

Hold me, the way a poem holds
words, the way shadow holds light,
the way anything lost is wanted.

Let nothing aspire beyond its being,
or better yet—aspire—as if
we are capable of love

that does not change,
that risks another’s love,
and thus creates a tragedy.

I have an old aspiration
anxious to repair its energy.
It lasts as long as I think about it.

What is this worth
that demands so much,
that is never paid in full,

that is like a debt
of something worthless
now, except for its experience?

How will we ever make good
on all our promises that were coerced,
or foolishly offered, becoming these weights?

                                        
(prev. pub. in Medusa’s Kitchen, 9/3/13)

 

 

 

 Sleepwriting

Today’s LittleNip:

OF COURSE IT WAS A DREAM
—Robin Gale Odam

My mother guarded me with her
fine synonyms for fire, embers of
values from interpretations of fables
and guile.

The children of her muse wrapped me
with ribbons of disguise for the blessing
of anguish. Of course it was a dream.

              
(prev. pub. in Brevities, May 2020)

__________________

Many thanks to the Odam poets for today's fine fare as they riff on our Seed of the Week, "Beyond Absurd". Our new SOW is “The Lingering Scent of Roses”. 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. And see every Form Fiddlers’ Friday for poetry form challenges, including those of the Ekphrastic type.

___________________

—Medusa

 

 

 

 

Sommerfrische

—Public Domain Photo Courtesy of Medusa

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A reminder that

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Cynthia Linville, Sue Daly,

and Richard Turner tonight

in Sacramento, 6pm.

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