Walk Poem at Norwich University

for ENV 299, thank you

I wish I had sunglasses
on these short
annoying stairs.

I see Meg's dark eyes
much worse, the sun shines
and her smile still sparkles.

Looking up is fruitless.

The wind makes the leaves dance
and I wish they wouldn't
distract me so.

Stark shadow on the ground
is me getting out of my own way.

The bark eye of the tree
is underneath all things.

I smell asphalt on the wind.
I wish I didn't smell asphalt
but I wish I could smell wind.

Vibrant colors too clean and
bright and if we go down the stairs
I'll fall or not write as much.

The poet's obstacle course
can't make me jump the hoops
of all time.

Smelling green grass that grows fake
seeing gold chairs that feel hollow
why is it man-made life and
nature can both be so beautiful?

The newness mixed with the old
means nothing ever really dies.
It just changes shape.
Like this path that changes
from cement to dirt back to
cement again. Which one is the
true path? The way for poets?

I crashed my snowboard on this--
more stairs
steeply down
if I could wander down stairs,
across fields, in the sun toward a
glowing mountain of autumn leaves
forever, then I'd always know
I am alive. This heat gives life. This
bright green grass beneath my feet
that sparkles here and there with
leftover dew, tethers me to the ground.
Without ground, I'd float off
into an abstract sky.

Why call this fall when all we do is
stay? Stay here on the earth with
its crunchy leaves underfoot. Stay here
on an endless train track, forever
in both directions.

Moving into nature
say hello. Question.
Why this dirt?
Why that pile of hay?
Why that dead birch right there off
the path? Why do we veer off the path?

Listen! There's a sewer and underneath
a river flowing, I can hear it
shushing and lulling like a waterfall.

The crow caws, the sun makes me
glint and it hurts my eyes.

I run to catch up.
A gun shot far off in the hills.
I take a deep breath
a thousand breaths to make
this afternoon last forever.

Grab a hold of that light bulb
one flash and it's over.

I just found a poem I wrote in 2005 on an old hardrive, and I revised it into this new poem. What do you think?

-->

I want the weight of you,

not just your hand like a delicate shadow

on my belly;

Not just your open mouth on mine,

your scruff on my neck,  no

this won’t do.

I don’t want pieces of you.

I want the cool finger of vision,

your hands down my spine.

Our bodies wading shallow,

naked in a reflective pool. Two

puddles coming together,

the meniscus of our crescent

figures like droplets

returning from the waterfall.

On your lips I tell you this,

taste our stolen kiss.

You don’t hear me

through the rush.

© 2013 Samantha Kolber

A Poem for When I am Not Writing Poems

In fiction, I must ask:

What’s my character’s problem?

And not: Why aren’t I outside looking at the moon,

singing to her and pining for all things light and dark

to touch me in ways I can only dream of being touched?

In fiction I must write silence into my dialogue without saying

“Insert awkward silence here.”

Who knew?

Who knew that a life of nothing much would

lead me here, to a keyboard in the middle of the night,

to a man dancing parallel lines to my groovy hips?

And now I’m driving toward a one and only future,

one I can’t imagine but somehow have known,

at least I’ve known to write it down, to document.

I document for those who dare not speak, but what do I have to say for them?

I have no problem, hence

my character has no problem, unless you count

a general problem with the way the world works

as a central problem to solve. Why have we come this far

and not solved rape?

Why have we come this far to debate on

who can and cannot be married?

Why have we come this far?

It’s not very far at all, is it?

But we are far – far from the one, the one true point

I don’t even believe

we’ve really ever come from: that garden, that snake. Nope. Don’t buy it.

Everything will change, but how

have we evolved so far from divinity? So far from light and truth

and justice and peace for all? Who will you pledge your allegiance to

when the moon doth not shine? Who will you side with

when there is no light to see any sides? Because that light is gone

as far as I can tell,

and I’m not even a poet.

Anymore.

**

What it’s like to give up writing poems:

I’ve given up my camera,

I am unable to take pictures of your thoughts,

snap snap

I just took your heart

snap

an eyeball’s core with that image of

your brother’s bleeding wrists you had wanted to forget

snap

not even bandages cover up what my camera can capture.

I miss it. The darkness like my own private dark room,

the way my heart reached out to it

in negative phototropism.

The way my whole being would turn to it

in order to get the poem.

Poems come from dark and silent places,

and also light and fluffy ones.

But mostly dark.

Poets Know:

it’s not an attitude, it’s an attunement.

It’s not always about line breaks and enjamb

ments. Nor is it always about witnessing. Rhyming,

definitely not even close to being about rhyming.

But what? That question

says it all.

Fuck You, Depression

I.

I have stood where the wind

touches no one.

I have let her hollow cry

brush my ears.

And when she made me cry

from sheer bitterness

I went on pretending,

forced a plastered smile.

II.

I dress in black

and walk in snow,

rise tall like a shadow

or a ghost.

People say “Fuck

you, depression.”

I say nothing at all

and fall.

So tired and so awake

I recall whistling

to a dog in a sunny

park.

Was that my childhood

or just the one I wanted?

I lay with piles around

me—heaps and stacks I

never put away.

There’s just no room for it all.

I’m craving sunshine

big sky, curvy land,

vast ocean.

But I have snow, a grey sky,

city lights bounce off the

snow-covered streets.

Nothing much to anchor me

or help me feel.

III.

At home? Happy? Fulfilled? Who

ever really feels like that? I’m

hungry now, I always have

been. And this sucks, the

way I write now is always

looking for the good line, always

editing it down, even before I

write it to get the poem. I

can’t write the poem: it has

to write me. Oh I’ve forgotten

my tools. These are my tools.

Why am I filling my head with

fluff? Wasting my time with empty

entertainment? When I should be

carting my tools around

crafting stories and life from

the details I see.

I have always loved words.

Words are delicious.

Fucking depression. I will ninja

kick you back to hell.

Fuck you, depression. I will take a

Samurai sword and chop

your head off. Maybe even

borrow my dad’s machete. 

©2013 Samantha Kolber 

Clothes Shopping: Love/Hate Relationship with my Body

I just want to talk for a minute about women's bodies and shopping. Now, I have what I have always considered a normal body. I am not overweight, nor am I too skinny. I have some cellulose (perfectly normal) in my thighs, my calves are thick from sports, and I still have a waist (at my age and after having a kid). And I love my body--it grew and birthed a child, it has ran marathons and hiked up mountains, it has danced and laughed and repaired itself from illnesses and injuries--but I hate clothes shopping. The thing is, while trying on clothes and seeing how nothing fits even though I pick my size off the shelf, I start to loathe my body. Love body while not clothes shopping; hate body while clothes shopping. Tough equation.

In the dressing room while stuffing my all-of-a-sudden sausage legs into a size 10 pair of pants--damn "skinny" pants!--I start to feel fat. In a size 10. Scary double digits. I wonder, if sizes came in letters, A,B,C,D and so on, would I feel the same about my body? Or would I equate the letters with school grades and think I have failed if I wear a size F? Yet the numbers serve to tell me that the higher I go, the bigger I am. When in fact I am not big. I am just me. My body is perfectly sized exactly right just for me. So how is it nothing ever fits? Why aren't the clothing companies making clothes that actually fit my body? If one pair of pants is too small in the legs, they're too big in the waist. If another fits in the waist, they are two feet too long in the legs. Trying on endless pairs of pants, I find myself longing for the days where people made their own clothes, or had their own tailor.

And don't even get me started on those mirrors and those lights! While the clothing may make me feel fat, the lights and mirrors make me feel ugly! Blotchy, pale, discolored, wide, out of proportion--it's like a fun house mirror. If the companies do that on purpose to try and disorient us into making bad purchases, oh wait, it's working. I bought a royal blue blazer at the store where it looked awesome on me in their mirror, but when I got it home it looked like a Wal-Mart cashier  blazer! Sigh. Why do I even go shopping? Oh yeah, I usually don't shop at big box stores. Tonight was an exception. I think I'll stick to my local downtown stores who have signs on their regularly lighted mirrors that say "I am beautiful! I love my body." No more exceptions. No more cheap short-cuts to big box stores. Back to thrift stores and saving up for weeks to buy one item at a clothing boutique! You can't really win with clothes shopping, can you?

Constraints of a Box

Show me your fist
as if I didn’t know
you could hold it.

I never feel the blow
in my memory.
I’m too far out to row

through the possibilities.
Look at this beautiful
mess, the frailty

of your dutiful
voice: a perfect mess
you yell and yell.


©Samantha Kolber 2013