The Karma Abacus: Birthday Blooms

Another year. I used to think of it like it was over, like I’d just completed something, marking an X on the wall like I’d done time. I don’t know why; I just did. But this year I am decidedly feeling like it is a beginning. At some point in the last year I could see the trajectory of my life was not one my heart felt called to anymore. So, I threw a wrench into the works knowing it would insist on change.

I think some era’s in life begin this way—with a sense of feeling life as you’ve known it is coming to an end. Like weeding a garden that’s gone to seed. You can hear something calling to you, a far away bloom, a perfume of future creativity. If I was being honest I would say I am intoxicated with the scent of it already.

Wherever you are, I’m toasting you for reading this blog and I hope to share many more words this year with you than last.

Birthday

It’s that time of year again,

hang my flag, say it’s my day.

Bring your weak lumbar,

your wrecked knee, fading eyebrows and

fear of earthquakes —

 

acknowledge aloneness

assess the years on the

karma abacus, your finger

touching more and more beads

sliding over years one by one

 

insistent, resigned,

a birthday.

 

Still, at night

You have a hunger, a mortal wish

to uncover promises you made to

yourself, so you route around

on the silty floor of the past,

and find your life

stubbornly

still breathing

ready at long last

to be understood.

 

 

 

The blood jet is poetry, there is no stopping it

The headline is a line from Sylvia Plath’s poem, Kindness. I read it decades ago and it pops in my mind at least once a week still. Usually when I have poems caged in my chest and stuck there behind a lineup of copy I have to write for my day job. I know it’s inevitable I’ll let them out because…the bloodjet is poetry, there is no stopping it.

But what I’ve never done a good job at is sending them along into the world. Specifically, to publishers. I was knocked back, rejected and told I was shite early on in my 20’s and it really just made me feel like I was a terrible writer and though I would often perform my poetry and do plays with poems I stopped sending them out into the world to publishers or anyone else that might be in a position to knock them down and tear a hole in my heart.

That was then. Now I’m shrugging my shoulders and writing like a demon because I’m determined to find an audience. One way I’ve found this week is through Instagram. It’s so immediate and wonderful. You write a little poem and people like it, comment, and voila! Insta-poet.

If you are a proper published poet you are likely sighing and sitting back in your chair and shaking your head at me. And that is just fine. But I know some young kids who don’t care about which medium as long as its digital and will never read your beautifully bound little slim volume in a library. Sad but true. I don’t want to be a forgotten poet at the back of a dusty row of books. So I’m going to fool around with media and the medium a bit. I’m also wanting to do video poems because again, I think these are much more likely to find an audience.

It is fun to write for Instagram–it’s a very tight format, you have to fit them into one or two stanzas tops. If you care to follow me, I’m letting it all out @poemsbymeforyou. Keep in mind they’re for social media–not a literary magazine. Enjoy!

November

You must know the rain

Cannot sound like it did then—

No, it comes down now as ordinary

As a cobbler or librarian, doing a days work

And nothing more. No wild mercury elasticity

To its droplets, no mad bouncing in joy like

A love-sick puppy, laughing under an eave

Dripping down between my breasts as I call you

In Germany, hold the phone up so you can hear its silvery song. 

 

My love. It is still raining.

It no longer rains for us.