Poet Tree

Poems Are Never Finished

2012-01-29T23:20:00.002-05:00

A poem is never finished, only abandoned.
Well none of us ever fit the whole of our soul on one page.
I look back through my journal, come across anchored, dolphins,
flips end over end. It was New Year's Day.

He didn't say he didn't love me, though he didn't say he did.
With the most ordinary garbage floating around in my brain
how could I think he'd pick me? I pick and bite my fingertips till
they bleed. Trying to be healthy, we're eating rain-

bows and writing down our thoughts. You can't put cerebellum
in a poem, he says. The dark and dreamy luxury of winter...
Luxury? Winter? What?! Frosted with winter sun,
I say, the dark and dreary dream is splintered.

Liminality, then. Identity, too.
It's small enough, this boundary to you.

Samantha Kolber

2012-01-06T23:52:00.001-05:00

I see a big tree
it doesn't see me
I am so very small
nothing sees me at all

2011-06-27T11:03:00.008-04:00

Poems published in Red Silk, an anthology of women's writing published by Womanspace of Rockford, IL.

Mud Season in Vermont

April, mud season, also marks the anniversary
of my son’s birth. I spread his eight years on the table
as if he could be measured or given monetary
value. Someone has to write the fable

of his life and keep it like a promissory note.
Someone has to witness the new leaf
on the maple, tote
around the vision, tinged with the belief

that symbiosis is prone to etiolate
the mother. The boy, flippant as a magazine.
Of course I chose to germinate, to create.
But who tells you motherhood is so byzantine?

These eight years my body feels the slake
of the turning of baby to boy to grown man. A solemn
memory, his body in mine, I take
with me in my cells. His life, this spring, rises like a column

from the mud: full of grit
and wet black Earth. I’m bound
to get stuck. May as well tie me to the spit
and roast me. Listen to the sound.

and:

Rant Poem Written in 7 Minutes

I tie a ribbon in a foolish way
because I’m a fool and a foolish
lover.

I have wet dreams all night about
that guy who grabbed my ass.

I have visions of writing a script but
have no clue how to write one.

I spend way too much time Googling
how to write a script and not enough
time actually writing.

I am so happy at the return of the
sun.

I have all these lines of poetry
bubbling in my head and I fear they
will fizzle out and go flat like when
you leave a bottle of soda open on
the counter.

When I get these lines and words &
pieces of poems trying to worm out
I feel as if I have a battle raging
inside me: a battle between team
poet and team responsible.

The latter often wins.

I have yet to learn how to live fully
as a full-time poet in this world.

Sometimes I think there must be a
different, secret world where poets
live.

My son is asking me where the tape
is and I want to tell him to shut up.

I only asked for seven minutes and
he’s supposed to be brushing his
teeth!

I’m still in my pajamas at 2 o’clock
in the afternoon.

A dog barks.

The sun is quietly peeking out from
behind a cloud.

There are battles going on, both
inside and out.

The dog still barks.

Things everywhere rage.

Samantha Kolber

2010-12-09T08:44:00.002-05:00

Truro Sunset

When it drops below the water
that’s only the beginning.
Musical notes drop and drift
like layers upon layers of clouds glowing

and the foam on the crest
of the waves are even whiter
than the corners of your eyes.

Sky blue pink, but there’s more than that
more than the last licks of
the fire hat of the sky.

There were seven kings of Rome
your dad tells me.
Here we sit the four of us
watching night arrive, silent
as the common man.

2010-11-18T00:24:00.002-05:00

Hubbard Park At Dusk

Here I sit with the melting sky,
the sun sunken behind bald mountains,
the trees: just sticks I can see through,
the screams and laughter and stomping feet of the boys behind me
and the light fading imperceptibly so

and somehow I know
that each tall pine standing in a circle around me
appreciates the sound of the children's laughter
piercing the silence
ever so shockingly often.

2010-10-04T12:17:00.000-04:00

If a Moment

If a moment could stretch
into a day, a year, a lifetime,
let it be that moment in the orchard,
where the blue of your eyes
matched the blue of the sky,
and the red cheek of the apple matched
my smile, and we kissed and touched and
walked the whole length of the
row of trees hand in hand, and
the ground became the sky became the sun
became the invisible stars that look so much like
the pinpoints of light on the apple
I hold out to you in amazement.

2010-09-07T10:20:00.000-04:00

Sleepy and Septembery

a fall poem written hastily
at work
on a computer
yes, there’s a window next to my screen
yes, I see the faint outline of Camel’s Hump
on the horizon through fog
yes, I hear clicking keyboards
and squeaks of chairs
yes, I have a florescent light shining overhead
and people talking over my head
and so this is a fall of sorts:
a fall of beautiful surroundings
a fall of my freedom to create
a fall of my heart into his
a falling away from this dullness
that has been filling my days
making me sleepy
making me miss
wispy Septembery days

2010-07-10T11:39:00.000-04:00

Letter to my Country in the Middle of the Night:

No, I am not afraid
to walk down the deserted street
of a beach vacation town
in the middle of the night.

I’m not afraid. I am comfortable.

I am lost in a sea, a sea of
mediocrity, of sameness, of states
joined together by the dotted lines of
Wal-Marts and McDonalds on the map.

My dear country who has raised me
to be so unafraid and free: Do you see me
sitting here in filth?

Don’t you see that “Farm-to-Table”
is not just another corporate marketing ploy
to generate a profit? Don’t you see that
I am lonely, too?

I am grateful to glide through your land
unscathed, my dear country, but please
just look at me. Look at me and see me.
Then maybe I won’t be so lost and lonely
on your shores.

2010-04-20T23:00:00.002-04:00

"You do not know what wars are going on down there where the spirit meets the bone." - Miller Williams.

You do not know
what to do
about your mother who
all your life
has been a sort of kept woman.
You do not know
except you do.
You get identical
headaches
you stay up late
you swear at your
child in the same
breath you tell him
you love him.
You search and
search in all the dumbest
places for love:
at the bar
on-line
driving past cars in traffic
(you look, you can't help it)
all the while
the love you seek
is right here
down at the sinew
the spirit and the bone
your own blood
your flesh and smile
burned like snapshots
on your brain.

2010-04-11T21:35:00.000-04:00

Mud Season

Vermont, April 2010 marks the anniversary
of my son’s birth. I spread his eight years on the table
as if he could be measured or given monetary
value. Someone has to write the fable

of his life and keep it like a promissory note.
Someone has to witness the new leaf
on the maple, tote
around the vision, tinged with the belief

that symbiosis is prone to etiolate
the mother. The boy, flippant as a magazine.
Of course I chose to germinate, to create.
But who tells you motherhood is like the metabolic catalyst Tetrazene?

These eight years my body feels the slake
of the turning of baby to boy to grown man. A solemn
memory, his body in mine, I take
with me in my cells. His life, this spring, rises like a column

from the mud: full of grit
and wet black Earth. I’m bound
to get stuck. May as well tie me to the spit
and roast me. Listen to the sound.

2010-03-28T12:48:00.002-04:00

Recycled

Spring has sprung.
The same road
carves out
the dull path
you take through landscapes
daily.
Hidden
broken
things are
revealed in spring.
Chunks of asphalt
wind-strewn limbs.
In between
Not a Thru Street
(but a blur of rain)
and Easy St.
a man
checks his mail
sifts
through stark white
pieces
of unwanted
information
quickly calculates
what he’ll keep
what he’ll recycle.

2010-03-02T14:43:00.002-05:00

From Hunger Mountain Journal: Congratulations also to runner-up Samantha Kolber of Montpelier, Vermont for “Jewel Tones,” a Pantoum (in which the second and fourth lines of each stanza become the first and third lines of the following stanza.)

“One of the many difficulties of writing in strict form is the pitfall of allowing the form of the poem to take over the content or the intention of the poet,” writes Matthew Dickman. “In “Jewel Tones” we see the opposite: A poet utilizing the form to carry the very human desire of the person writing it.”

Please check the website of Hunger Mountain Journal for my poem, Jewel Tones, to be published there soon: www.hungermtn.org

2010-02-23T09:56:00.002-05:00

Dear Matthew: A Ghazal

Remember me, remember me: it’s what any woman wants.
Between night & sleep your arm hooks around my waist but I want the security of your days.

Days dragged out in quiet inner longings. Do you meditatate on the curve of my hips?
I want to know you might even smile when you think of me.

I want to know you know me as well as your hands know how to hold me,
That your heart and mind pin me down as hard.

We don’t do lovemaking, most of the time it’s just sex.
Skin on skin, the smell of you: I can get drunk on less than this.

Enough wine and your whispering in my ear all the desires of your cock
I might just believe it feels something like love.

2010-01-30T15:50:00.003-05:00

I want to tell you everything I know.
Lives invisible live within these walls
Yet they hold me, and that is what I know.
They hold my books, my poems, family portraits,
Blankets, a couch, an unplayed guitar: All
the things I think I need to live a life.
And that is what I know. To live one's life
Between walls, among things. Comfort. Luxuries.
I dip Oreos in milk; the wind howls.
Winter screeches past my door and I am warm
Inside, while outside, the almost full moon,
With its cold face, stares down the snowy ground.
It's all I know: to watch with rapture at
The seasons, to listen and think each car
That squeals by or parks in front of my house
Is him, coming to tell me he loves me.
But it's not him. It's just me. And the wind.
Cookies & milk. These four walls I call home.

2009-12-31T01:55:00.000-05:00

I am broken, I feel broken, only happy when I write a poem though I hear nothing nothing in the wind in the street in my cat’s sleeping breath to suggest a poem tonight. I hear nothing. I see nothing, therefore, I am nothing. Thinking is never enough to be something. You can’t just think to be. You must also see. You must also hear. You must also feel. You must be. Otherwise, what separates us from a tree stump? How do we know if a tree can or cannot think? Or feel? Or see? Or hear? Or know—I write that word real slow and if the font of my handwriting had an “italics” function I’d use it on know. It’s this “knowing” we seek, we look for, we crave to be part of. It’s this knowing I sometimes convince myself I have, I set myself apart, and then never really find anyone else who “knows” (words real slow BOLD and italics in quotations just to set it apart, to give it weight, to give it importance.) And I don’t even know what I know or how I know, but I know I know, and I crave to meet others who do, too. Like I can just look them in the eyes and I’ll know, and he or she will know, too, and we’ll be together in this knowing. Am I talking crazy talk or does it all make sense? Maybe it was all that acid in my youth, maybe the endorphins from my natural childbirth in my twenties, maybe the hiking to the tops of mountains, I don’t know what, or who, or what, gave it to me but I feel so strongly that I have it. You know?

2009-08-25T12:26:00.005-04:00

Blue on white.
Blue on green.
Blue on blue.
The colors of you
Mother.
Crooked branch,
frozen thigh,
I just barely see you with my eye.
Drive by one yellow tree
in a huddle of March
green firs.

How you confer
your muddled shapes
your muted grays
in a veil.

Many times I’ve come to your chair.
Today I notice the seams in
your ocean wall,
the line down and through
the dolphin’s tail.

Black-striped
diamond
drill-bit
saws
at my tooth.
I smell the burn fetid burn,
swallow blood, bits of bone
the sucker missed.

I had to surrender to the
needle’s rape of me:
the plum violation
in my jaw — red , raw, plunged
yellow grip — needless to say
I felt more
than the tip.

I’m gonna get you numb.

That’s what we tell our Mother
when the winter comes.

The icicles demand
their stake in my mouth.

Bite down hard.

2009-07-31T13:30:00.002-04:00

I write in raindrops Scottie in the Kingdom says to me, and a deluge of creativity comes raining down on me, comes pouring down sometimes when that muse whispers in my ear, tells me what I want to hear, which is people being creative and making meaning with their lives. Meaning with words, and meaning in whorls, which can't even be recreated no matter how hard we try, no matter how often we ask why, there's just a certain something to the science of life recreating itself in intermittent shadows and swirls of worlds.

2009-06-16T11:16:00.002-04:00

An Excerpt from Everyday Seven Minutes, my book in progress:

I glide miraculous through this air that could be the air rushing off the peaked mountains in your picture, or the red and yellow fire of autumn in the fields of that other picture, or the rusted boat in Honduras. I glide miraculous through words and worlds and who needs travel when you've got a pen. I could be Zen, I could be back then going everywhere I should have gone before becoming a mother. But I am this other creature, this other human of inhuman remains what maintains stability in the frothy light of dusk and bedtime, you don't even know what's mine as you drive this time to my house. I am miraculous as I glide, and slide, and love the feeling of you inside me, how could it be, a poet finds something so divine outside herself, she can't help herself, she just wants to write and be heard and be understood, no matter what's good, no matter my mood, or who or what or where. You like hardware, and we write a poem about it, and you are genius in your simplicity, so simple, no duplicity, hard at work making wood, making words, making poems, who could have known? I'd have a naked man on my couch this evening. Do I dare, do I dare? How could I be so bold? Don't I do as I'm told? Writing. Free. So free to be me. To look at this man asleep and wonder if he really knows me. Or does he really want to.

2009-04-23T21:50:00.002-04:00

Mammography Room

The mammography room where
my left breast is talked about
is small, and on the desk stands
a rubber spatula
in a silly wicker basket in the shape of an owl.

Rubber pads on machines can't cushion the words
nodule, left quadrant, biopsy.
My blood drips from bitten cuticles
(I could never shake your hand,
doctor).

His voice on the other end of the phone is only
36 hours too late, babbling about tastes
not having colors, and Swedish Fish turned hairy
at the bottom of a pint glass of beer.

Some performance, this life.
This pain and swollen mass, this
learning how to listen
to these vibes, the ones that tell me when
to cry, when to write.

Telling me: he was never the one.
I'm always looking, just as deep,
trying to pick up the one blip in the x-ray
that could mean something
or nothing at all.

2009-02-16T13:24:00.007-05:00

Making Metaphors About Metaphors on Valentine's Day

My heart scrapes against glass
again in the wind. It's a metal heart,
red, with a small hole in the upper left corner.
It's less than perfect (everything always is).

The wind shoots down the street as if it's aimed,
a tunnel of sound, it's the only sound in this small town.
A few ghostly howls, a steady drone, and it could almost lull me
to sleep if not for that jolting scrape of metal and glass.

It gives me a start as I lay in bed, and makes me think twice
about hanging love out on the porch like that.
After tonight's storm, I'll find my heart on the ground.
A little dented maybe. All wet. That's how it goes, I guess.

I still have hope that this time, the storm won't be too strong.
And this time my heart will survive. I'll just pick it up, brush it
off, and hang it back up on that rusted nail.
'Cause I'm the kind of gal who hangs her heart outside, who loves hearts made of steel.

2009-01-03T23:56:00.001-05:00

Single-handedly
I alone
am alone
by choosing
to be me
by choosing
to be free
what crazy woman
raises a son on her own
what crazy woman
falls in love
more than once
and thinks each time
this is the one
the one true saving
she’s been waiting for.

2008-12-09T01:13:00.000-05:00

Triolet

Pieces of you get left behind.
Ripe dandelions on a windy day,
stragglers by design.
Pieces of you get left behind:
your skin, your breath, your imprint on my mind.
Sometimes I wish the whole of you would stay.
Pieces of you get left behind
as ripe dandelions on a windy day.

2008-12-07T19:34:00.001-05:00

Methodically walking because it’s the only thing I know how to do
as I contemplate leaving you.

I know you’re not the one but I still want you to be.
You’re too different from me.

I just want someone to love;
to love me.

To hold hands with down the street;
recite poetry.

But don’t cover me, nor devour me
or make me feel incomplete.

Life’s just not that neat
even with all the straight lines I see

as I walk from line to line
on the squares of sidewalk.

I gawk at the way we follow lines:
the crosswalk
the timeline, and tick-tock, the clock.

Even the cigarette in the hand
is a line to our death.

Oh nonsense, nonsense, none of this
makes any sense, like the yew and the moontree,

some great powers that be,
an inverted universe

where I am a poet
and the lines follow me.

Samantha Kolber
from 1/17/08

2008-10-23T14:41:00.002-04:00

I Think It’s Sort of Amazing

With the wind at my back, the points of yellow stars always point to you
as if the punt in the bottle coaxes the wine from the neck.

Sometimes your mind won’t stop, not even for
a moment, not even to take in the shift in color in a cloud at sunset.

They say the whole is greater than the sum
but I wonder if greater is better...or worse.

The sky that just sits above your head as an offering:
some silence is peaceful while others are awkward, drinking

wine the color of crimson and blood, like oceans after
a feed, rolling through folds of a tapestry more colorful than you can possibly weave.

Ruled by ways we can’t understand, the not knowing a weight on our shoulders,
and maybe, just maybe, all that came before, is all that will come to be.

2008-08-24T21:48:00.005-04:00

Words like branches reach out to the sky;
Poets always walk alone and wonder why.

Poets always stare too long at the beautiful:
a child, the moon, a blueberry bush so full.

A random lady in front of a Friendly's
bends to touch a white flower, its green leaves

point up skyward.
Again, I see that metaphor, awkward

of life and beings all reaching up
as if to grow from bottom to top is not to give up.

As if to write about it makes it so.
My son says don't write about me though.

He asks, Is it about these crayons?
It is now, but way beyond

those four basic colors, red, yellow, green, blue,
which can't even capture you.

The riper of two fruits to my taste
is a man's words that fall from so much haste.

All this desire I try to feed,
my fingertips stained from picking blueberries.

A Sunday afternoon, a day almost done.
A poet almost satisfied with what she's begun

to articulate, to communicate:
a fishamajig on a plate,

a few french fries, the still blue skies
and something from deep within that plies

through the waves of black ink crashing down on the pages through this pen.
As if writing in a booth in a crowded Friendly's is a way to find my Zen.

2008-08-20T23:03:00.001-04:00

Divine Light wants to pour into my head through an opening I am not sure I want to admit exists. If I am open, I am vulnerable. If I am closed, I may as well be dead.

2008-08-05T02:39:00.001-04:00

Epiphany at the end of a poem (or at 2:39 am)

This is what a poet must do: make the invisible visible
a thought, a feeling, an idea
only poets see these
fly as a bird, run as a wolf, stand naked as a tree.

2008-08-02T16:05:00.004-04:00

Red Dragon Breathing Flames

No one says the word baby and I
Place the box of tissues over the magazine cover of a round belly
I know she saw, the one unsterile detail in the room, the
Red dragon breathing flames,

Like the suction hose and speculum full of blood.
Her belly licks of stretch marks and scars,
Some fullness holding tight to walls
In that high tower, as if waiting to be rescued

Is a bad thing. No one knows the strength
Of princesses: women concrete in naïveté
Until it’s time to swim away
On white, fluffy clouds. On bubbles.

And she holds my hands too tight
And we fill the room with chatter
Contracting to anything
Born from the night and given to the light of day.

No one sees the curls of her hair stuck to her forehead
Or the brown bark in her eyes turn to water
To nurture the severed roots
As her fingers spasm in odd waves with the pain.

Definitely no one sees the secret muscle
Too deep inside layers of anatomy
Being tugged and pulled to almost weeping, and
Kahlua-colored iodine cold on thighs, which

Even the cotton balls can’t soften.

2008-08-01T12:48:00.002-04:00

Origins of Sweet and Salt

Sweet sap of Earth and trees
of land-locked lines rushing through
the orange plastic, running into
buckets, oh fill thy cup with sweet sap of Earth
boiled and taken to holy shades, cooked
and poured raw over fresh-baked buns.

Salt water of Ocean and cavernous depths
of the space between what land we see
what lands we don't, oh Mother Ocean,
borne of her amniotic waters, pulled into her
tides, her mouths, her great, powerful surges
what salty dangers wash us clean, and what do we offer her
but littered shores?

If only we could combine the two.
It would be like a chocolate-covered pretzel,
we'd suck and bite its sweet-salt pleasure just to enjoy
that moment.

2008-04-06T21:15:00.005-04:00

My Two Selves or Like Having Two Seasons at Once

The scope of winter things:
the baby in the bed,
frost on the windshield;
a low pervasive hum is Spring

as silent snow falls and gathers unseen.
Just last week the moon hung low in a pale blue sky
still and more silent than night.
I wished for green

instead of last night's dishes in the sink.
There was the sun showing,
my rhythms, like plants, turn to its glowing,
a miracle on the brink.

I used to gather sticks for my survival
now I buy four loaves of fresh rye,
an engine idles nearby,
a street corner's revival.

There's stasis in the daily shuffle:
people, kids, papers, things, dust and dirt
move back and forth like love and hurt,
move back and forth between home and work, it's awful

how a Self can be divided.
It takes a child to show that life's alright
look at the shadow of the spider in the flashlight
it's here I am mom and poet, united.

2008-01-14T00:38:00.000-05:00

Stolen Kiss

Time can always have blue,
the night star,
the white anchor above my head.

But not my heart
or my feet that leave the cobblestone
to jump into your embrace.

I curse time!

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.
Like two puddles coming together,
the meniscus of our

crescent shape
droplets
returning from the waterfall.

On your lips I tell you this,

taste our stolen kiss.
You don’t hear me
through the rush.

2008-01-09T22:51:00.000-05:00

A Place to Curl Into

Recently I found a dead mouse
in the toe of my son’s ice skate. No, I’m sorry,
dead isn’t the word for it: Decomposed.

Forgiven any semblance of a life form or body, just

Dark, downy fur in tufts and
tiny, white dollhouse bones. Dried,
papery shell-skins of maggots. And, oh, the smell!
The stench was deafening, or whatever the word is
that means impairment to your olfactory sense.

Deafening and maddening yet I inhaled it
so that now the mouse is part of me.
Particulate pieces of its body
now inhabit mine.

We all want that place to curl into

be it a shoe, warm house, or someone’s
pair of lungs with its many winding passageways.

2007-12-02T11:43:00.000-05:00

I am now the proud parent of a myspace page. She is about a week old, and so the soft spot is still open, the bones still forming, and the reflex to suckle is still new. She is very cute and her mood changes drastically, her cries are always different. If you'd like to meet her please visit her at:
http://www.myspace.com/slampoetsam
or click on Link below.

Poets Who Blog: Ride the Poetry Wave

2007-11-28T22:13:00.000-05:00

Poets Who Blog: Ride the Poetry Wave

2007-11-28T16:16:00.002-05:00

Poetry Slam Winners 2007!
So it has taken me this long to acknowledge last week's Poetry Slam at Langdon Street Cafe (Wednesday, Nov. 21) because directly after the Slam I flew out to San Diego for Thanksgiving. Anyway, the Slam was awesome, lots of great talent, the Cafe was packed, and, can you believe it, I won first place! Hooray (and finally, I've slammed enough to land a win!). Thanks to Geof Hewitt for acting as Slam Master, one of his many talents. A good time was had by all. Here are my poems I read that night:

The Affair

It's not the pure, gold baby of hate
We relate to, but the wire mother,
The one void of softness in her cage.
It's the metaphysical, terrycloth other

We crave. We dig into each other's flesh
Hungrily, though our lips never meet.
You think it will lift your depressing crash,
I use your body to fill my sexual need.

I'm aware of this, our using, our skin
The hard grab of your hands, first on my feet
Then up to my calves. Here is where desire begins.
It knows nothing of wives, nor can it see

Our crimes. We close our eyes to this, but we know.
It's why we don't kiss. Oh sure,
You kiss my hipbone, you bite it on the way down to where I want you to go
To kiss the dark, wet part of me so pure.

Pure as that gold baby, or the Macaque
Tested and tested for its warm longing.
The same longing that gives you back.
The same longing that keeps you here 'til morning.

Golden Spiral
The toil of its symmetry and complicated simplicity haunts me
the learning of it's so daunting, the form and curvature
of each fraction's metamorphosis into the Divine, that 1.618 and so on
translation of perfection
to say you are Golden is just an expression of mathematics
the Sacred Geometry matches the birth of the seashell, the wave, the unfurling of a fern in the dampening of spring, and any rectangle my eyes desire.

They are all one, the one true form of beauty
the one the Universe handed down to us as she kissed the moon's forehead goodnight,
and turned on the stars, a night-light reminder of who we are, and of who we will still be when the sun awakens.

Let us not forget, we did not invent ourselves
a Universal language, it was already here. No amount of adding or subtracting
will ruin it, no matter how divided we become.

2007-11-08T22:51:00.000-05:00

Well, someone was depressed. Now someone has flower essences in her water.

2007-11-01T17:24:00.000-04:00

I just realized that the word poetry has the word try in it, and sometimes I feel like I don't live up to it. I don't try to poe it. And lately the force that wills me to is gone. I lost my try in poetry and now all I have is bad poems.

2007-10-22T22:48:00.000-04:00

Though My Seals Don't Require Tools

A life half-packed
in closets
and storage units
my friends' garage
mom's basement

a box older than my son
labelled Sam's Bedroom
has been picked up and moved
to each of my bedrooms
year after year
yet never unpacked

it could be said
that Sam's Bedroom
is that old Organic Grapes box
with four air holes in each side

it has gone so far as
to have its top folded open
a few things
are visible
a black velvet pouch
wads of white tissue paper
something precious, perhaps, inside
a strand of garnet stones
meant for jewelery

I had another garnet piece
an engagement ring he stole back
so I wouldn't flush it away in anger

As if I let anything go
insignificant things
packed away
a trick chamber
in a tomb.

2007-09-12T09:28:00.000-04:00

A few fall Haiku...

My window a door
to that green and windy world
of air.

Sunshine gone
grey does not complement green
or make me smile.

Do pens
cry joy at the sight of
the page?

It's funny how
a heart can weep and laugh
at the same time.

2007-08-18T21:59:00.000-04:00

There's a rhythm to that one that is so crucial
he says
and goes off to the bathroom, where,
if you listen hard enough
you could hear his pee stream
in a tinkling rhythm
similar to the one in my pantoum
Jewel Tones
the one he refers to
a handful of Goldfish in his hand
sits on a creaky couch
in my living room
what could be more perfect than this
old friends
crunching on junk food
new friends reading poems
I got it right there

2007-07-31T17:27:00.000-04:00

Apple

Red, round, and for all we know
you could be a womb, for contained
inside your sweet flesh
are seeds to bear more

fruit.

It's no coincidence
the phallus-ness of your ways
the penetrating pollination and
theft of your babes
by cold ground or hungry mouths.

I

too, am guilty; a whole bag of you
sits in my refrigerator
I even oblingingly nip the skins off
for my own offspring to eat
naked fruit
then fetch from his hand
to eat after he's chewed through with your
waxy persona, skimpy skin of false self
no real protection from our teeth, our

Knives.

Is it no wonder a fantasy of mine
is to live among an apple orchard?
Miles of sweet fertility all around me
screaming Earth Mother! Earth Mother! from early spring
to late fall, the harvesting
a death to you, apple tree, Earth & Mother,
the winter your respite
the spring your great renewal
rise up from the stake
transform to Mother, bear fruit, again and again.

2007-07-24T22:53:00.000-04:00

Hey, just got word of this cool poetry thing, unfortunately I can't make it, something called a job...maybe if you don't have one of those interfering with your life, love and writing, you could go and show some support for awesome poet Ruth Stone:
House Chamber of the Statehouse, Montpelier, 4:00 p.m. Celebration for honoring Ruth Stone as Vermont's new State Poet. Open to the public.

2007-07-16T23:56:00.001-04:00

Here are some words just to say I am here. Head, neck, butt, aches on this hard chair. Street echoes outside my window. My finger in a partial cast really itches. I am heartbroken and fight the tears. My fiance moved out; yeah, left me. I am trying to be okay. I am trying to be. Be. Just be.

2007-06-14T09:56:00.000-04:00

Untitled 2004
(Here is a poem I started three years ago, in the fall of 2004. I just uncovered and revised a bit, and now I feel the need to share)

I slip into a flannel Universe
the multiple moons and stars a warm
lullaby before sleep and dreams.

I try to plan my dreams these days.
At night I play alchemist
cover myself with three blankets and settle in
for the ultimate magic trick.

Lead belly and limbs to gold,
transformation comes in sleep.
The glass beakers we hold metals
turned to jewels.

I dream, dream, dream
into the night, penetrate dark with
multifaceted light and with
slight of hands the beakers smash
and shatter glass fragments to the corners.

What's changed is now what's left to wake:
my warm body
refuses to step out
into the cold reality,
hardwood floors of morning.

2007-06-01T12:22:00.000-04:00

I am obsessed with baby names lately. I am not pregnant, yet. But I have names. I feel like I need to share them, get them out of my system so to speak. If I have a boy, his name is already deemed to be Calvin, because Ran3dy (not a typo) has always dreamed of having a boy named Calvin. He's got a tattoo of Calvin from Calvin & Hobbes on his shoulder. I like Calvin. His full name would be Calvin Hunter Kolber Bright.

So he's the easy one. But I have three or so really good girls' names I love. Tell me what you think: Eve Trillium Kolber Bright; Una Harvest Kolber Bright; and Providence Kolber Bright, PK for short.

I am probably more in love with the words. But you gotta admit naming a child is trying, especially when one loves words as much as I. If I were a brave mother, I'd name my daughter Forsythia. That word is poetry to me. It's poetry to see the flowering bush of bright, yellow sprigs reaching up to the sun. It's the first color of spring. Yellow hair of the Earth washed in spring rain, abuzz with fat bees. Forsythia Darling Bright.

2007-04-07T12:08:00.000-04:00

Winners of the Bear Pond Books Poetry Slam 2007:

First Place: Danny Dover of Bethel, VT

Second Place: Geof Hewitt of Calais, VT

Third Place: Newton Baker of Montpelier, VT

2007-03-19T21:58:00.000-04:00

Poetry Slam in Montpelier hosted by Yours Truly:
Tuesday, April 3 from 7-9pm
at Bear Pond Books
info: 802-229-0774
www.bearpondbooks.com

2007-03-16T13:56:00.000-04:00

Youth in black, youth in revolt, in gothic droves of hilarity and self-esteem, the kind that allows them to pretend to be disenfranchised with their cell phone swapping, hair hanging down in eyes, tight, black clothes, swigging from bottles of birch beer, pretend beat group. Oh that youth! The only reason I'm so sour about them is that I am no longer one of them.

2007-03-16T13:54:00.000-04:00

A January Poem

As infants wide open
as this winter sky
the sun through a snowy haze
and condensation on the
window panes

as open as death
which is clear but blurry
not even a focal point
like this pale green
dragonfly etched in round glass
elements open
in the wind.

2007-02-15T16:38:00.000-05:00

Ok, middle of February and I haven't written since November--call me a slacker with other priorities right now. Baby-making. This is what's on my mind, and you'd think I'd be writing some amazing stuff about it, but not really. I am very uncreative right now, except for some ad and web design I am doing for work. But that's about it. Even the love holiday didn't spark any romantic musings. And I call myself a poet! Maybe I'm hibernating. A bear is still a bear when sleeping off a winter.

2006-11-27T19:47:00.000-05:00

"Mid-day Lunch"

She inhaled and exhaled two, long, luxurious breaths in between bites of grilled cheese and bologna on pumperknickel. Out of the corner of her left eye she caught her boyfriend watching her. "What?"
"Nothing" he faked. She raised her eyebrows. "It's just that I was wondering why you're breathing so hard."
"I had a cough earlier," she started, "and when I breathe deep my ribs and lungs hurt a little, like maybe I'm getting sick or something." He smiled inconsolingly. "I DID cough a bunch today and even now just saying the word 'cough' makes me need to." She turned her head a bit away from him and let out a tiny "khuh khuh." She looked back and his grin broadened. "What! I really do have to cough but I wanted to suppress it so you wouldn't see so much of my neuroses." She giggled, but not with embarrassment. She knew he would play the game.
He did. He laughed. "Oh honey, I know all about your neuroses and I still love you." His eyes sparkled, marvelously flirtatious and true. She put her leg up on his lap and inched her foot up his chest. He pushed up her thin, cotton, lavender pants and began to stroke her hairy calves with both hands. Their eyes locked.
Plates with crusts and corn chip remnants sat on the table in front of them, but thier bodies were now turned toward each other. It was such a rare, quiet, mid-day lunch together, both on break from work at the same time.
"So..." she cooed as his hands rubbed and her toes wandered down, deep into his hardened loins. "You got time for a nooner?"

2006-09-16T10:19:00.000-04:00

Sleep in my eyes and on my breath
I tell him
You can put your penis in my vagina if you want.
He holds me close, spooning, cuddling
in our warm bed
then jumps out.
I hear clothes being torn off and tossed on the floor
he jumps back into bed, one fell swoop
a hawk on his prey
and strokes my hip, my round ass
too soft to be talons on my skin
he pushes into me, I'm already wet
A miracle, he tells me.
I smile and half-heartedly push back
into him.

2006-08-23T00:16:00.000-04:00

I don't have a job yet, but the exciting news is that I started attending a free creative writing class, so I am writing again, I mean really writing, and feeling alive again, I mean really alive. I want to share a piece I wrote in a free-write exercise tonight. The prompts were "I believe," and "I didn't expect that to happen." I sort of did a stream-of-consciousness thing, and I like it. Here it is:

Here I sit, facing a green wall in the basement of the library. What color green I cannot even name. Maybe it's somewhere between a lime and a sea green? Or spring green on a cloudy day. Yeah, that's it. Spring green on a cloudy day. I did sort of expect something different than another prompt exercise, something more off-color, as is this green wall. But here I sit, facing the same wall for an hour and fifteen minutes. If Stella and Katie and Percy all stood against the wall, they'd each be half camouflaged according to the greens of their clothes: one top and two bottoms.
I bite hard into a pretzel, the crunch reverberates in my head, in the quietness of scribbling pens on paper. Pens on paper, that's what I like to hear. It's why I suck on my pretzel rather than chew.
Why is this so hard to write what I believe? I believe in this: writing. Writing and nothing else. No, that's not true. I believe in love, in magic, and, quite naively, in the goodness of people. I believe in Mother Earth, in music, in poetry. I believe in life, most days. I am here today, and I believe, no, I know it is because of writing.
I write to process; I write to know; I write to show; I write to tell. I write because I can, because I have a voice, and because I believe in that voice, my voice, and in the right to express it, shout it if I want to, or, more politely, write it in my journal.
How many lives now have been lost so I can have my polite and civil freedom to write my voice? How many young voices squandered, parched and lost in the desert? Dried up tongues in sand so the rest of the free world can thirst and thrive on oil. Oh, Christ! I don't want this, I don't want to go there now. I still want to believe the world is good. I want to believe in fairies and angels and peace. In the power of my son's laughter and in the protection of my love. But Cindy Sheehan knows, love is not enough. Love is not enough unless it has a voice. And voice is not enough unless you use it. And you can only use it if silent people fight terrorists and spy on our library cards, all to insure our freedoms and civil liberties. You know, the ones that make this country so great. The country that gives us each a voice in our votes (granted it took women and minorities almost two hundred years to have voices and votes, but you know, uh, what would our President say?). But we do have a voice, one voice, one vote, right? We do have a right, a vote, a voice. Right? Write?

2006-08-14T12:29:00.000-04:00

11 August 2006
Well it’s finally time for me to grow up and stop this fantasizing about being a writer, a poet, a professor of such…I am getting a real job. That’s it, I am. And I am going to like it. I am. I will write in my spare time while bringing in money to the family income, saving for a house, planning a new baby, saving for Emmett’s education…you know, the responsible, adult things to do. And it’s about time, I mean I am turning thirty this year. Hmm. Time for that necessary loss of lost dreams, lost visions, lost self, of youth and spontaneity, and all that stuff that comes with not having any grey hair. Yes, I have grey hairs. Yes, I am reading Harry Potter books. And yes, I steer clear of mosh pits at concerts, even wincing when I see youths stage dive, watching them disappear into the crowd thinking, gosh, I hope they don’t get hurt. What a mother I am! I mean, I’m not their mother, why do I act like I am mother of the world? Am I just joined in that universal mother role where all we do is worry about the life on this planet? How is it that women, mothers, are more concerned with saving and preserving life than the men who are in power around the globe right now? It really does take a mother, a human who has been through the depths of pain and labor it takes to birth a child, a woman who has given small pieces of herself to nurse and raise the child in health and sickness and sadness and learning and teaching and loving and cuddling, and no, we will not let other people destroy this life we put so much of ourselves into. I know how Cindy Sheehan feels. When you destroy a child, a part of the mother dies, too. How many children and mothers must suffer before we realize we’re killing our own mothers. When we destroy ourselves we destroy our creator, Gaia, Earth, the one mother everywhere. I can’t stand it anymore. I became a mother to join the life-giving force, to share my love with a new little person of pure love, and here I am, I have to sit here and watch the death toll of sons and daughters rise. I guess if I had a full-time job I wouldn’t have time to think about things like this anymore.

2006-08-11T12:29:00.000-04:00

So the poetry slam was fun but I didn't get the reaction I thought I would from the audience. I read the Sestina, the one on this blog about the guy from the Lovebomb who was the most "unromantic lover...his dick went off too soon," and I figured everyone would laugh, but it was like crickets out there. What the hay?

2006-08-01T22:12:00.000-04:00

Hey poets, slammers, crazy folks, whatever, I just wanted to tell you all about the upcoming Poetry Slam hosted by Geof Hewitt at the Northeast Kingdom Music Festival this weekend in East Albany, VT. It was great fun last year, and Slam Greatness himself was there, I am talking about Saul Williams! If you have never heard or seen him perform, please go to your local library or video store right now and look for Slam Nation, a documentary about the National Poetry Slam, in which local Calais man Geof Hewitt has performed in! So anyway, come to the festival: camping, music, theater, and on Saturday at 1:15 there will be a fine poetry slam for anyone to join or watch. I will be there and maybe I'll actually win this time. Though that's not really what it's all about.

2006-08-01T21:46:00.000-04:00

Middle of January (We've all been there)

I am black ink
dark goddess cloak
with six little seeds
bittersweet
icy heart.

I am unforgiving
of the force that pulls me down
and at the same time
in love.

If only I could turn everything as black
as my kitten's round eyes
with her two black lines
that run down from the corners
as if she's been crying inky tears.

Sylvia--or as we call her at home
baby kitty Sylvia--dark namesake
mother of starkness
darkness in her ink
she grabbed at it and came up
with a chokekold of blue-flamed gas.

It's this heat we crave
in the middle of January.

2006-07-17T23:21:00.000-04:00

Jewel Tones

For twenty-five dollars
my mother can dress your feet.
You send her a check,
and she'll send you jewel tones.

My mother can dress your feet,
she does it by hand, with fingers curled as a reflex.
She'll send you jewel tones.
Around needles, without thought

she does it by hand, with fingers curled as a reflex.
Intricate toes and heels form tubular
around needles, without thought
my mother knits.

Intricate toes and heels form tubular.
One hand over the other,
my mother knits;
she doesn't need to think anymore.

One hand over the other,
knit one, purl two,
she doesn't need to think anymore,
lost in knitter's repetition.

Knit one, purl two,
while the television blares she
is lost in knitter's repetition,
her private concerto.

While the television blares she
works in jewel tones,
her private concerto,
with lips moving in the counting.

She works in jewel tones
and large glasses sliding down her nose
with lips moving in the counting
as a sign of her concentration.

Large glasses sliding down her nose,
inaudibly whispering to herself
is a sign of her concentration.
But she holds back her world.

Inaudibly whispering to herself
for if she let her excitement out
-she holds back her world-
she might disturb our TV show.

If she let her excitement out
in unraveling emotions in the family room
she might disturb our TV show,
or we might disturb her.

In unraveling emotions in the family room
sometimes instead of the sitcom, I watch her
but not to disturb her,
her inner world that non of us enter.

Sometimes instead of the sitcom, I watch her
knitting, her way to escape
into her inner world that none of us enter
where beautiful things are born.

Knitting, her way to escape,
making socks instead of time
where beautiful things are born
in a now empty nest.

Making socks instead of time,
the lines of worlds fade, and all that's left
in a now empty nest
are the lines of corrugated yarn in a spiral design.

The lines of worlds fade, and all that's left
is wrapped around needles, lips, and hearts.
The lines of corrugated yarn in a spiral design
coming together in knots,

wrapped around needles, lips, and hearts.
A pair of jewel-toned socks
coming together in knots.
And she'll send them to you,

a pair of jewel-toned socks.
You send her a check
and she'll send them to you
for twenty-five dollars.

2006-07-10T13:01:00.000-04:00

Someday he will be more than this
pretend lizard in the back seat
I'm gonna eat you
pretend tiger shark because he
just wants to eat people
his play voice rises higher than anywhere
I've ever flown to.

2006-06-28T12:53:00.000-04:00

What Kind of Word Pool Is This? (Rainy Day)

I am not swimming
I am drowning
in my own words
in my own world
in my head
no images today
no metaphors
or similies
nor smiles
nothing but me
and sometimes
this should be enough.

2006-06-28T12:50:00.000-04:00

18 May 2006
Not writing anything, not doing anything, enjoying nothing, creating nada leaves me indoors on a rainy thunderstorm night all melancholy even in the arms of my honey and my baby, even writing the beginning of some short story of raunchy proportions and I have little hope. Just letting my life pour over me like this rain that pours down, just letting it all build up around me in giant piles of heaping shit. Did the dishes and now I’m listening to the Cowboy Junkies’ version of Sweet Jane over and over on repeat the drone of it so comforting so constant like the constant drone of boredom of depression of loneliness of the big gaping hole in my heart and no, Randy, my new love, even you can’t fill it within me, for me, but you can fill my time so I ignore the blackness within me. Yes, time, take away my time with your sex, your incredible body, the orgasms you give me, your smell and sweat, your embrace, your promises…take away my time with your promise of tomorrow, of forever…I’m not using my time for anything else anyway. And I guess this is my fear, using up my time on nothing much. Or not using my time on what’s important. I don’t want my time to slip away, yet I fully realize that I have so much of it, that life is just so much time…there will be more thunderstorms to appreciate from our hammock on the porch, I will write more poems, and there will always be chores around the house to do, hell there will always be the time to build a house, and a family. But things recorded evade time. My thoughts evade time, therefore I exist. Sometimes I forget. Like I forget how much calmer I feel when I have a clean kitchen! I’m working on the piles of shit. It’s not as chaotic now although I still can’t see my kitchen table. But I can see my sink and countertops. One step at a time. Humankind progresses in small, small steps in time. Infinitesimal steps across the surface of time.

2006-06-28T12:46:00.000-04:00

24 May 2006
My four-year-old contemplates mortality as he sits on the toilet, pooping. Questions like, “How did people come alive after the dinosaurs?” and “Do I have to die in a long, long time? Do houses die?” and telling me his plan, “Me and Isabelle want to never die and if we never die we will be the only people alive, me and her, the only two people alive. We want to stay alive for the whole day. Can we stay alive for the whole day?”

2006-06-05T10:45:00.000-04:00

At Least I Make Sense! Sestina, 24 February 2006

So I want to write this fucking sestina
yeah I'm mad, it started at the Lovebomb
art show, dance, and human twister to amuse,
where I met this man who had promised me a river
but oh, the drama
talkin' to this chick in a red dress with face paint: men!

If only I could attract men
a little more predictable, as is this sestina.
1:27 in the morning can't stop thinking about the drama
I started when I dropped the first lovebomb,
a poem I wrote, flowed like a river
down to New Hampshire to amuse

this artist whom I thought was a (my) muse.
Mere mortals don't walk among such men
as they paint pictures, a canvas river.
But who am I as I write this sestina?
A Goddess scorched by my own failed lovebomb
an explosion of such drama-

tical force: my fire, his water, our drama
of the Centuar and Crab, oh they do amuse.
Oh, they fucked like a lovebomb,
I should be used to this from such men.
Alas, I am young, hence I've chosen to write a sestina
to hold my deep emotion, a river

swelling to the overflow point, where the river
turns to waterfall in that falling drama
lost in the flow, how it just goes, like this sestina.
But I do so hope you are still amused?
How could I not be? Burned by men
I'll never take one home from the Lovebomb

again. His dick went off too soon, the love bombed
indeed, inside me, most unromantic lover, no river
flowing through me-oh yeah, most men
can't tap that orgasmic drama
of the female vagina. Am I to be so amused
by the rythmic grind, a sestina

of sex and just as short as a sestina? The ticking lovebomb
is my only muse in this cold river
of life, and my only drama: I always choose the wrong men!

2006-06-05T10:27:00.000-04:00

More journal 4-6-06:
I'm still practicing stars, trying to find that perfect five-point form of the divine shape. Pentagram. Pentacle. It's supposed to be the golden shape: perfect. But not by mt hand. My hand creates the imperfect shape and scribbles dark secrets of my shadow. I like to push dark holes through the pages and watch ages of voices rearrange the words I speak.
Unclear, I know. This is all supposed to lead to clarity. What a parody: I only write to feel less alone. It's not a matter of discipline or career objective. It's a survival tool my psyche and my body have adapted to keep me sane, make me whole.
Why are we born into this world broken? I do so want to believe we are born whole and perfect. I really believe my son was, is. But what if he grows up and struggles as I do? What if he can't find truth and wholeness? It's a heavy burden to lay on him, I know, to claim he is perfect, he is true, he is whole. It's really what I long to say for myself, yet can't.
I keep myself down in a cave, not ready to acknowledge the light in my spirit. And also not ready to give it up in order to join the real world - Capitalism - job market. I do not belong there. I belong here, in these words, in this book, in the divin Universe of the written word and language and blankness filling up. I am this book. I am married to it. It's my soul mate. It's why I can't find a human soul mate. Who else could give me this divine space, so clear and unquestioning, so patient and understanding?

2006-06-01T12:20:00.000-04:00

Transferred from my journal 4-6-06:
This divine journal, blank pages white as pure sky and the light so light until dark ink burdens its face. Each page a face I put my hand on and caress as I would the cheek of a lover, the cheek of a child, or the cheek of God. All this searching for God is really just a pilgrimage to get home, back to the Mother, our one, true love, the beginning. Everything we search for is a search for Her. And it's as if we are all estranged from our Mothers. Why is this so? Why does She birth us and leave us to feel so helpless, so hopeless, so alone? If only we could reconnect we could be truly happy, truly pure, truly light. No more darkness. This is my form of prayer, this writing. It's my Zen, my meditation, my search for my lost Mother. It's my peace, my center, my Buddha. My God, my flow, the fiber of my being. Words. Writing. Talking to the divine, of the divine, for the divine. Or just to hear myself talk.

2006-05-31T16:04:00.000-04:00

LOVE

I could sleep with your fingers inside me
I whispered
I could kiss you 'till the end of time.

I could look at this clear blue sky
and only see your eyes and I could stare
through mountains to get a glimpse of your smile.

I'm walking in a waking dream
I see images of you in the pool
of my coffee, your name on my dashboard
your whole being in the interstice of time.
I just can't count the seconds fast enough
until I really see you, really feel you
under the sun, in my arms, your lips on mine
making solid the ghost of you
who haunts me in my days.

2006-05-31T16:02:00.000-04:00

My Son

Birds in flight
have no creation
bigger than mine
this child
just because he has no wings
doesn't mean
he can't fly.

He is my greatest poem
yet only I can read him.

2006-05-31T15:47:00.000-04:00

I haven't written any war poems in awhile, or, more accurately, peace poems. Is this any time for poems anyway? Who reads them, who cares, who really makes a difference, or even a living from words, short words, long words, in proper placement, or haphazardly spread around, does it really matter what words we use? We are at war. People die each day and it is our will. By our, I mean collectively as a nation, though I don't like to be connected to this nation's reality. A thunderstorm here in my neck of the woods turns me blue, I can't garden anymore, yet on the other side of our Earth people dig holes in the ground to plant their loved ones, water them with tears. A single teardrop is lost, but a nation of them creates a global storm.

2006-05-31T13:24:00.002-04:00

Birthing the sacred woman
See how she's grown
From empty-vesselled innocent
To full-bellied, tired and spent
What fire awaits her body's glow
To push bone against bone in that slow
Transition from woman to mother
Embodiment of power no other
Will love laboriously into being
A small, sacred body fleeing
Red-wombed house of mirth
To milk, mother, Earth.