The Other Side of Life

  Out of the Darkness
—Poetry by Joyce Odam and Robin Gale Odam,
Sacramento, CA
—Visuals by Joyce Odam

 

 

GODS OF A HUNDRED ILLUSIONS
—Joyce Odam

Angels flutter their wings
In their transparency
I see them

or is that an error of human imagination :
what are gods without angels
angels without gods

but I see them from the hundred windows
that my mind creates,    believes,    denies,
these spellings of illogical truth.

I feel the chill at my back
and turn around to the disconnection
of a receding, dispassionate landscape.
                                          

(prev. pub. in Medusa’s Kitchen, 1/22/19; 8/27/24)

 

 

 

 The Iris

GRAVEN
—Robin Gale Odam

No other gods before me
graven into stone . . . the heart of
stone, the deaf ear, the fabrication in
earnest, the zealous appetite of the artist
at the gallery—the palate of the starving
and the thirst of fishes sipping at mud—
no, none.

                                
(prev. pub. in Medusa’s Kitchen, 12/27/22)

 

 

 

 Shadows Folding Back

COBWEB
—Joyce Odam

You’ve hung there for years.
You have become my favorite design,
the way you drape across the corner,
like an awning,
the way your spider has abandoned you.

Too much elegance for this room,
this bedroom of stuffed closet
and insomnia,
this room with its piles of clothes
and a blanket that drags
one corner to the floor.

How often I have watched you
with concentration
at just the right angle  
when I lean my head back
against the wall.

You are like a shadow drawn
as an interesting detail in a painting,
I wonder why no moth has found you.

 

 

 

 Softspoken

DISCURSIVE  (II)
—Joyce Odam

I do not yet know enough about the things I love :
the way of shadow—the grace of light—play
against play—question against answer.

I strive to be what I love,
but am a self at peril—a fool at tears.  
Weeping is not enough.

I must become more to become enough.
No lesson is unlearned :
the thrashed, the torn—the almost drowned.

The flood of meaning is harsh—
my wants excessive—my needs too few.
I over-ride what I should hold innocent of me.

I live in my own world and do not understand
how it is different
from the sureness of others.

What hope is there
for those at the edge where everything falls away
except intention.

 
(prev. pub. in Medusa’s Kitchen, 1/16/24)

 

 

 

 In A Deep And Recovery Sleep

IN THE FOREST
—Joyce Odam

in the forest
which had been silent
something happened

a tree fell
taking at least
a century

it fell to the ground
and shuddered
taking at least a year or two

and made itself
comfortable there
while all its vibrations

reverberated still
and the air
resumed its breathing


(prev. pub. in Cotyledon 7, August, l998;
and Medusa’s Kitchen, 8/9/11)

 

 

 

The Book

MERCY
—Robin Gale Odam

could I offer mercy for the
whispered truth of my muse,
truthteller at the waking edge of

sleep—the low reach of memory,
where I pull myself into morning
and then rise, fully awake, into

daylight, with reservation and the
preference to chronicle the peaceful
dark after sundown, the sacred

nighttime—but she has secured her
offering . . . bare branches of winter,
little birds of morning, the raucous crow
                           

(prev. pub. in Medusa’s Kitchen, 2/7/23) 

 

 

 

  Very Still

OF HUMAN CRIES
—Joyce Odam

Lest I let my heart be broken by too many truths,
my spirit sullied by lies of the soul,
bewildered by my darknesses,

how let the terrible light be a blinding fact
to my groping—body is proof—
it gropes and limps

through years and centuries
forward and backward
into myths and superstitions—

native to nothing but self—a nomad
of every homeless thought to bless the wondering
that cannot free the mind of murkiness

or clear the eyes from sadness and terror
in such a prison as one can stay imprisoned in
—let me thus resolve myself of all life's grief
                                                                                                         
(prev. pub. in Medusa’s Kitchen, 3/8/23) 

 

 

 

The Lyric of Tears

JOURNAL
—Joyce Odam

why weeping—why not,
have I not felt the sway of
great emotion, felt time
slip past before readiness,
how I favor regret over
the contradiction
of the mirror—glass
breaks and multiplies,
with image, and I run
past myself through the
mirror to the other side of life—
that parallel—time is on a wheel
rolling, backward, always ending up
back to the moment which is smooth—
coiled with momentum—Ferris Wheel

 

 

 

Simply Quiet

TIME LINK
—Joyce Odam

Late summer. Sundown.
A long empty beach.
Thinning cries of gulls.
Slow shushing of the waves
only my footprints on the gray,
wet sand. I am singing to myself.

My memory house is somewhere
up ahead with all its lights on,
but I am not late.  

The waves rush up and back,
leaving small tickles of foam
and gold flecks on my feet.
The slow circling gulls
scold my presence
but I do not hurry or mind
their scolding. This is my time
to own all this—even them.

                           
(prev. pub. in Poets' Forum Magazine; 

and Medusa’s Kitchen, 8/6/19)

 

 

 

 Where Has Everything Gone?

                                              

SLOW THAW
—Joyce Odam

all the efforts clang like uphill trains;
or boats in fog;
or the distance from drowning
at the edge of the shore

like the slow grief of water
wanting to be born
but the earth is slow
and the air cannot remember

all the sleepers are dead, so there is
no dreamer—one far-off poet
remaining in words,
those prisons of inarticulation . . .

every sorrow has a name—whatever
you call it; whatever you want and
cannot have; whatever you lose and cannot
find; whatever you explain to unhappiness

if there is a reason for healing
let it not be this one
there is too much to do yet,
too much loss and too much grieving


(prev. pub. in Medusa’s Kitchen, 3/8/11)

_____________________

Today’s LittleNip:

THE OLD DARK
—Joyce Odam

From the breath of cities comes the old dark
and its favorite night bird that
chittters once outside my window
and is gone—gone to what other darknesses
there are between it, and its swift reflection—

that myth of substance—and I feel the night
close over where the night bird was
and erase the memory of itself—and now
the porch light shifts back into place,
and I turn back from that sound that I imagined.

_____________________

My Only Indulgence (our Seed of the Week) is Odam poetry and visuals, and we have plenty of those today, thanks to Joyce and Robin Gale Odam! An early seasonal gift, these are, and many thanks for all of it!

Our new Seed of the Week is “Light / tunnel / and all that”. 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.

Be sure to check each Tuesday for the latest Seed of the Week.

_______________________

—Medusa

 

 

 

 So much good poetry—I just can’t BEAR it… 

(and that's no bear-faced lie!_!

* * *
—Public Domain Photo Courtesy
of Joe Nolan, Stockton, CA

 

 

 

 

A reminder that
Twin Lotus Thai presents
Special Poetry w/Piano Night
open mic plus poets
Ann Michaels & Bob Stanley
tonight, 6pm.
Reservations strongly recommended!
For info about this and other
future poetry happenings in
Northern California and otherwheres,
click on
UPCOMING NORCAL EVENTS
(http://medusaskitchen.blogspot.com/p/wtf.html)
in the links at the top of this page—
and keep an eye on this link and on
the daily Kitchen for happenings
that might pop up
—or get changed!—
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