Cryptography
( a love poem to my fellow poets)
By Annie FarnsworthI want to read what you’ve written,
all of it up until now, and
I would like to read your traffic jam,
your broken shoelace. Don’t leave out
the short-change, the oil change,
the change of scenery.
I would like to read what you write
when you are lonely and even the tiniest bones
of your hand ache in their own remembrance
of another hand held.
Don’t be alarmed,
but there are things your grocery list
is saying behind your back.
There are furtive scrawls
on the back of your matchbooks, secrets
in both of your palms.I read somewhere the average person
walks three miles, just in the course
of daily room-to-room, car to bank,
doorstep to mailbox. Shuffling on the line
at the Shop ‘n Save. I’m thinking what if
if I could get high enough, maybe
in a helicopter, and look down,
like those archeologists
who plot out the crop circles, photograph
the giant hieroglyphs
on dusty South American plateaus,
I could look down on your day and surely
this movement, these three miles of looping,
of backtrack and straight shots, would spell something out,
would tell me more tell me more tell me more.
You just keep walking those big words, honey,
and I’ll be studying
for my pilot’s license. In the meantime
I will be the one with the gypsy scarves,
swirling the cup when you’ve finished
the tea. I’ll be the fingertips
tracing your braille,
looking for lines I can read between.
The Secret of a Good Kiss
by Jamie Morewood AndersonThe secret of a good kiss
is simple geometry and geography.
It is the grand permissionto draw a woman like a lodestone
and leave her trusting
that more will come. It is a rivered pulsewith too much water and just enough bridge,
and then the soft shoring up
of a good cast and a wide net.Don’t come at me
and land on my bones, raw and gaping.
Be more grounded than that.I am watered silk at the neckline,
a dip and hollow of throat; a courtyard of skin.
Kiss me here and breathe,it will turn my cells inside out, snap
my lesser person in two.
Your mouth is the country I rememberand we, the compatriots, fight for no flag
but the lovely human particulars
that wear this world out.
Miz Edna Waits for the Bus
by Kelly SternsI’ve got my teeth in my hand
not in my mouth.
I won’t have that soft, worn place on my gums
for the dentist when she comes looking
but who cares?I’ve never known anyone whose mouth really fit them.
Have you?They make a tick-tack clatter-clatter
that I kind of like
a flamenco dancer with castanets that are Efferdent white
instead of worn and wooden brown.
Can you lift your heels as quickly as I can sing this poem?I am quickquickquick and you are getting kind of portly
let’s admit it.
I wish you had a cape and I had better shoes with taps.
And those nice little bows at the ankles.We’ve got two minutes, not time for any real change of costume.
Still we can dance a minute, kick up our heels
‘ til that Twenty-five pulls up, spills exhaust in my mouth
And we both start coughing.
Just don’t forget to curtsy right as you say goodbye.
I like my dancers to give a little twirl when they exit.
Castigate v 1: censure severely; "She chastised him for his insensitive remarks" [syn: chastise, objurgate, chasten, correct] 2: inflict severe punishment on
Castigate comes from Latin castigare, "to purify, to correct, to punish," from castus, "pure."Chas·tise tr.v.chas·tised,chas·tis·ing,chas·tis·es 1. To punish, as by beating. See Synonyms at punish. 2. To criticize severely; rebuke. 3. Archaic. To purify.
v 1: censure severely; "She chastised him for his insensitive remarks" [syn: chastise, castigate, objurgate, correct] 2: restrain or temper [syn: moderate, temper] 3: correct by punishment or discipline [syn: tame, subdue]
[Middle English chastisen, alteration of chasten, chastien. See chasten.]
Pun·ish v.pun·ished,pun·ish·ing,pun·ish·es
v.tr. 1. To subject to a penalty for an offense, sin, or fault. 2. To inflict a penalty for (an offense). 3. To handle roughly; hurt: My boots were punished by our long trek through the desert.
v.intr. To exact or mete out punishment.
Synonyms: punish, correct, chastise, discipline, castigate, penalize
These verbs mean to subject a person to something negative for an offense, sin, or fault. Punish is the least specific: The principal punished the students who were caught cheating. To correct is to punish so that the offender will mend his or her ways: Regulations formerly permitted prison wardens to correct unruly inmates.Chastise implies either corporal punishment or a verbal rebuke, as a means of effecting improvement in behavior: I chastised the bully by giving him a thrashing. The sarcastic child was roundly chastised for insolence.Discipline stresses punishment inflicted by an authority in order to control or to eliminate unacceptable conduct: The worker was disciplined for insubordination.Castigate means to censure or criticize severely, often in public: The judge castigated the attorney for badgering the witness.Penalize usually implies the forfeiture of money or of a privilege or gain because rules or regulations have been broken: Those who file their income-tax returns late will be penalized.
18 May 2006 We have been having big dramas at work, many of them in our little shared office, in fact. ( Did i mention that yesterday? i might have). Having sweet Teresa B. rush out of the office Monday afternoon sobbing, vowing to turn in her resignation -- it was wrenching. And rumors of renewed alcohol-abuse by Bonnie, the hair-on-fire project director. Not good either. Helping Gloria move out, from the Link Project Offices in Continuing Education back to the Admissions Department. sigh. Dru coming by, and talking about her battle to make her dysfunctional older brother move out of their house. "He was treating us like servants," she said, in an exasperated voice. Yuck, thinks Dot. Sounds hard. Then Joy P., in the halls yesterday, said it was the 14th anniversary of her sister's death (of Lupus). In addition to some poignant comments about her quick trip to Portland to see her mother and some painful observations about her husband -- who is a "good provider" but has "no social conscience" whatsoever. (Read: selfish, wounded, immature? Hmm).
A swirl of voices speaking, saying words that resonate. Sharing their stories. Looking into one another's eyes. Looking down. Staring off. A shrug. A quick hug. I am being carried downstream on the torrent. White water. Sharp rocks. Hoping for the best. That's all I can do since the course of this is all new to me. Unfamiliar. I am t rying to be limp, to float, lean a little this way or that-- by way of picking a path. Moment to moment. Hoping to survive. Hoping not to be dashed suddenly. Unluckily. Perhaps I will eventually find myself belched up onto a shallow scrag and crawl out onto the ground. How do I make sense of this? ( All 'sound and fury'?.. Signifying nothing?! which reminds me that someone wanted to set up a Shakespeare day with me in my dreams last night... i remember thinking, gee, i haven't really ever studied his sonnets... & it's been a long time since i've even seen, let alone read, a play...)
“Having an objective is important.
Without an objective,
you could end up someplace else…
and not even know it.”
Don Clark. “Introduction to Instructional System Design.”
http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/sat1.html
Elbow Grease and Forgiveness
By JB Bryanif only for astonishment
to stand in the middle of the driveway
& look up into sparkling galaxies
where light forms us all as loversto live by imagination & one heart,
to invent, to know, to play
advises Max Jacob
curtsy of every scuffling troubadourbeget of unexpected convergences
actually a lot of elbow grease & forgiveness
to stay experimental at all costs
candlelight drawn with a knifewhy not make altars for the sake of altars?
old trucks, old dogs, old cats, old grace
when wind shakes the roof
nails may or may not holdthorny vines encircle a flame around our breath
if someone offers an easy way out
reply that you’d like to be dropped off
in the vast sloppy middle of nowhere
