Seven Minutes for a Solstice Poem

There’s a lot of talk about “Let’s put the soul back in solstice” but how can we do that when we’re a society of zombies, walking around flat and attacking innocent children with semi-automatic weapons?

What soul?

A soul is not a compass, leading you in a moral direction.

A soul does not cover you like a shroud, or cloak your nakedness.

It does not stand there, solid as a tree. A soul is not solid.

How can you dare to put it into something as sure and solid as the solstice? We can count on the solstice; it comes twice a year.

It returns to us, unasked.

Once your soul leaves, will it return?

Sun- and soul-free time of winter: now is when we make our bad decisions—sleep too late, eat junk food, plot a massacre, mechanically go about our days.

Winter is when you’ll buy the things you do not need, say the things you don’t believe, break up with the ones you love because you’re just so glum and sure to find happiness with someone else, somewhere else.

So, you search for your soul.

You find that giving a hug to your son’s teacher at school brings a lump in your throat; being serenaded by a kilt-wearing banjo player in an art gallery brings tears to your eyes.

Oh yeah, you think: there you are, my soul.

                                     
                                           Samantha Kolber 12/21/12

Thanks for reading! And yes, I did write this in seven minutes. Part of my desire to be part of the Holiday Blog Tour was to force me to write, as I find myself too busy these days to engage with my passion. So, sitting down for seven minutes at a time works for me.

A BIG THANK YOU to Icess Fernandez Rojas for putting this Holiday Blog Tour 2012 together. 

Please be sure to read the next featured blogger in the tour tomorrow: Thelma T. Rayna at www.theliteraryself.blogspot.com. She has a long list of awards and published books (congrats, Thelma), but more importantly, she writes because it's good for her soul. And yours. Happy reading! And, happy holidays and blessings for the return of the sun.

Poet Tree Joins Holiday Blog Tour

Breaking News: I will be participating in the 2012 Holiday Blog Tour! Run by writer and Goddard College alumna Icess Fernandez Rojas of Writing to Insanity, this tour features an all-star cast of (mostly) women writers & artists in all genres: short fiction, poetry, creative non-fiction, painting, illustration, and more!

Mark your calendars to discover some amazing blog--I mean writing--talent (I will be writing a Solstice poem on the 21st):

Dec. 7 Lupe Mendez, The Poet Mendez
Dec. 8 Gwendolyn Jerris, Silence & Honeysuckle
Dec. 9 Natasha Oliver, 2 cents
Dec. 10 Regina Tingle, Unsolicited Certainties 
Dec. 11 Caridad Pineiro, Paranormal Romance Author Caridad Pineiro
Dec. 12 Teresa Carbajal Ravet, Sententia Vera
Dec. 13 Nathasha Alvarez, AudaciousLady
Dec. 14 Stephanie Dorman, How Many Frogs
Dec. 15 Karen La Beau, My Life on Canvas
Dec. 16 Annette Santos, The Monga Confesses
Dec. 17 Zoraida Cordova, Zoraida Writes
Dec. 18 Kristy Harding, Kristy Harding
Dec. 19 Nikki Kallio, Purple Houses
Dec. 20 Sujeiry Gonzalez, Love Sujeiry
Dec. 21 Samantha Kolber, Sam Poet 
Dec. 22 Thelma T. Reyna, The Literary Self
Dec. 23 Julia Amante, Julia Amante
Dec. 24 Icess Fernandez Rojas



I hope you follow along, and happy holidays!

All She Does is Write it Down and Say Thank You

                        for Annie Finch

What she hears

in the solitude of water

she remembers

into poems.

It Was Written Long Ago

It was written long ago: the wing’s beat

and the owl’s stare; the cool drink of morning

on the mountain. The verdant fields knew how

to sing long before the blue bunting rose

to the occasion, long before tourists

rose up from the pavement and declared this

land pure.

                     Vessels with technology might

be combing Lake Champlain for history

but we know there’s no fatidic tale the

lake will tell. It was written in our bones

only we don’t pay attention to that

story anymore. The ursine birth of

our distractions keeps us hibernated

through winter and beyond.

                                                  It is quiet

enough at the top of Owl’s Head to hear

your own voice pierce the stillness, crack it like

a quartz line.  The fear settles over you,

an infant in a blanket.  The wind. 

It was written long ago: The echo 

of someone’s love barely touching your skin. 

It was always going to be like this. 

Samantha Kolber

 

Chris’s Villanelle

That’s because it’s a burn from 

the cheap polyester socks that rub against skin.   

Every time I slide I get some

new scrape on top of the old one.

The healing process can’t begin.    

That’s because it’s a burn from     

being fast enough, or dumb           

enough to make the slide, again

to second. Every time I slide I get some

rush of feeling I didn’t have before.

I just quit smoking

because it’s like burning from

the inside out. I must have smoked a ton

and I never really let anyone in.

Sometimes I slide and I get some

cigarettes, just to have some

security, just in case I need a clip

to keep me from the burn, from

feeling every time I slide.

God, My Father

Aching for a reason, and
Because we don’t know any better we
Coalesce our beliefs with our cognizance.
Defiantly we look out instead of in,
Exacting our own
Fates as if we’re surgeons with no
Grief, looking for a
Harbour from our sins, our desires.
Immortality is what will abrade
Justice over time, just as humanity
Kills again and again the spark, that
Light. Salient and
Manic in our search,
Nearing psychotic episodes
Of garrulous grandiosity like
Prayer. But we still pan for heaven,
Quarrel here on earth. We still ask our questions,
Rage wars that tickle His toes. We
Still try and wend our way to Him.
Thinking like Icarus, we blindly scoop our eyes
Upward to gain entrance. The
Very morning comes
Where this is all a dream, an
X-ray image of my father’s neck confirms:
You fly too close, you do get burned.
Zeroing in on the answer, we keep from flying home.

Samantha Lori Kolber

RIP Adrienne Rich

Poems Are Never Finished

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

"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.

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.

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.

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

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.