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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

"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?"

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.

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?

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.

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?

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.

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.