I receive in my email box the Poem of the Day from two organizations. That makes two poems a day. I don’t always read them, but the title My Father’s Tie Rack caught my attention. There is something about domestic themes, poems of the details of daily life that appeal to me. So today I will share my own creation from a few months ago, followed by My Father’s Tie Rack, by Joan Larkin, which is delightful, and a lot better than mine, although we are not here to make comparisons. You will see the common theme:

IN MY CLOSET

I opened my closet door this morning
And found your two shirts hanging there

Tightly pressed against the right wall
Slumped together on the hanger
Collars drooping and buttons down
Almost hiding, unassuming
Trying to take so little place.

One was brown and reminded me
Subtly of past woes of matrimony
It called back domesticity’s fears
Of laundry, boredom, treachery
A few furrowed brows down its sleeves.

The other was the blue of summer memories,
I brushed off sunlight dust from it
A couple of mosquito bites
Handfuls of smitten smiles in its seams
And piano notes lost in creases.

Together they were joining forces
To mark the new territory
Among the tremendous collection
Of my dresses and pants and skirts
Marking past, present, and future.

And my heart skipped a beat
In spite of all my experience
At this new love in the closet
At this new joy on a hanger.

 

and now by Joan Larkin:

MY FATHER’S TIE RACK

Back of the door to his dark closet,
eye height, with clever steel
pegs I could flip both ways.
A row of pendulums. Of tongues.
Words, wordless. Witnesses
waiting to be sworn. The town secret.
A silk body, a man’s plenty.
A wild ache, a knot. One painted
with gold mums, one with blood
leaves on mud. Vishnu’s skin, twenty
shades of sky. White flag iris.
Slick sheen of a greenblack snake.
Which one went with him into the hole?
Somewhere else: his belts.

The picture above has nothing to do with either of the poems. I saw it yesterday and it spoke to me as a poem in image. So beautiful, succinct and meaningful at the same time. I tracked the credits to the following site: http://misterblick.free.fr/

 

CONTRE NATURE OR &%#$$#@@#!!!

I do not use nearly enough fucking swear words
I don’t even know many
I am too fucking polite!
Because I was raised to be meek
Afraid of retaliation

 

So does that mean
I will never write hard-hitting,
Powerful writing?

Shit!

What if I tried to insert some of that freaking shit
in my poems?
If I started to use “shitass” and “bitch”
Would it sound spicy and exciting?
Eyebrow-raising and delighting?
Or would I sound hilarious
Instead of passionate and crazy

I have to admit it feels good
to give the finger, in general, to no-one in particular
it makes my inner school-girl giggle
and wiggle her toes
inside her goody-two shoes.

I’d need to try and go further
Stretch my limits
Try to find someone to hate
Or to be afraid of, and call it Asshole!
Cock-sucker, Motherfucker!
I’d need to start seeing men and women in a different light
Maybe start bitching about those bitches myself.

Why do I think I’d look smarter, more powerful?
It takes a lot of hate
To call someone Motherfucker
Testosterone

And it seems to me grossly deprived
Of emotional intelligence.

And I like to write about beautiful things!

*

Dear reader, I have been writing this week. Yes I have. But some of my creations I am not ready to publish. Some things have to stay private. Yes, I am cultivating a secret garden as well. So because I keep my promises, here is a poem which is not entirely new.  It dates from the time I was trying to set up this blog. And maybe cursing helped since you are reading it in these pages.

ODE à MARZUYAND

Oh Marzuyand, toi sans qui
Le visage de Lochrist ne serait pas ce qu’il est
Je ne sais plus si je t’ai jamais vue de face
Petite silhouette sombre
Rabougrie sous la bruine bretonne
Un petit nœud de cheveux jaunes noués
Sous une petite coiffe défraichie

Tu sortais de ta maison
Au bout du petit village fermé
Drapée de l’ombre de ses habitants
Ses mesquineries, ses petitesses
Et toutes ses sombres névroses
Dans le châle sur tes épaules

Marzuyand sans enfants ni famille
Personnage de nos contes de fées
Petite vieille silencieuse
Magnifique Sorcière maléfique
Victime de tous les complots enfantins
Tu avançais dans le brouillard,
Sur la route vers le village
Même pas bretonne de Gauguin.

Je voudrais ici te rendre la vie
Te rendre ce qu’on t’avait enlevé
La dignité
Restaurer dans ma mémoire
Ton visage complet
Rien que pour faire la paix
Pour te demander pardon
Il serait temps
Peut-être parce que j’ai un peu peur
A l’heure de mes cinquante ans
De te ressembler un jour
Et que des gamins méchants
Viennent lancer des pétards
Devant ma porte pour s’enfuir en riant.

No-one in my family knows where the name of Marzuyand comes from or what it means, but it was how we called the woman who lived two houses down from my grandmother’s house.

---

ODE TO TITI

My apologies to you Titi,
As to all I have not loved well.

No dog was ever given
A more ridiculous name to start with
Or a twitchier little self
I remember your stingy tail
Your common white and black thin coat
Or was it brown?

Poor sorry excuse for a dog
Runt of the mutt-iest of litters
Who came from I don’t know where
I wish I could say I cared for a dog
In my reasonably happy childhood
But that was not close to the truth
Titi!

Almost hampering our lives
Rather than adding to them,
With your unending erratic high-pitched barks
Aggressive gnawing of our shoes
Frightening passers-by at the gate
With your crazy teeth-baring and growls

It’s not that we were cruel
Or animal haters
We wanted to love you
But did you have to eat your own poop?

Where did you go when you left our house
When you ran away of your own volition?
Did you escape to the wasteland across the street?
Did you find a better place?
(As in here, on earth?)

I don’t want to wish you ill
The laurel tree that you watered
Missed you for a long time.

---

EXITING THE AIRPORT

One always gets lost in airport parking lots
In Paris, Boston, Seattle
Guided by odd combinations
Of numbers and letters on signs
With erratic arrows indicating motion
Frantic with emotion and haste
Under the neon lights of
Level P1, P2, P3, P4
Carry-ons in tow
Fingering ticket in pocket
Through industrial-size rooms and covered passages
Elevators, hallways, corridors

Blabbering incoherent tidbits
And intently listening to the same
The way crazed moths get dizzy
Seeking the way out
Looking for the light out of the tunnel.

CYMBALS crash a few wavelengths away
Principally into your ears
And you pray that it will be enough
To keep you awake
For a few minutes
Before the soothing bassoon…
And the violins buzzing swarm…
Your eyes slowly close,
Cradled and rocked by a smooth cello sound

Your body bends slightly forward
While you dream of a flat EKG
Or a flat EEG
Anything flat that would let you
Shut off your eyes, and the system.
Come on!
Your cells cry for renewal
Stop the insult!
Or else! ?
You could grow 100 years old
In a few minutes, erase your total hard-drive
Creating utter chaos.

You could lie down on the dark floor
Right now
Nobody would see you
No-one would care
So says the id

But that would be so rude
The super-ego revolts.

The Ego just waves around
Undulating on the chair
Crossing legs, right on top
For one second,
Other leg up,
Doing its own St. Vitus dance
Echoing the one on-stage

You dream of the trip to the airport
You hang on to that thought,
Only a few more minutes, forty minutes
Are nothing, piece of cake
Maybe you’ll be able to sleep in the car
Close your eyes and let go
Let go…
Let go…
CYMBALS CRASHING AGAIN
Help, help me!
You hang on to the flash of an arm, a leg
Appearing in your vision field
How can they be so alive on stage?
How can they not feel like you
The whole world nodding off
Shutting down – how is that possible?
Not to feel it?

Turn to the monitor screen on your left
Hoping that the neck movement
Will hold you up, awake
A tenth of a second
Before your whole being relaxes again
Into deeeeeeep sleeeeeep….

Castanets, lovely castanets
Memory from childhood
Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?
Some kind of art aficionado you are!
Guilt guilt – be damned!!

Clap clap, curtain down. You fly.
Somehow you’ll remember this performance for ever
Every precious second of it marked in your memory.

***

I had the privilege, not long ago, to attend the dress rehearsal and the Premiere of the Nutcracker ballet at the PNB in Seattle. I was also offered the unique experience of seeing and hearing it all from the orchestra pit. However, the second night, not due to lack of interest, which is unbounded, but to the time difference (past my bedtime) and too much fun within a short weekend, this is what happened.

I made a discovery recently that I added to my Journal section. See you there.

Rummaging through my wallet
While waiting for our meals to arrive
I fished out three IDs
On forgotten official documents.

Without having dropped Acid,
I saw, like Richard Alpert did
Some of my past Identities
Float in front of my bemused eyes
One by one.

Hi, dewy-skin doe-eyed kid with the caterpillar eyebrows!
I remember the morning in Montpellier, France when
You pedaled down in the heat to the mall
And incidentally how lightning reflected on the ocean out there
Some nights turned the world white like a cosmic flash.

Hello young woman with the little pinched smile,
I remember well the day you tried on
That business suit, near Gare Saint Lazare
Where you found the Photomaton that so skillfully captured
The sheepish look.

And there you are again – looks like you mean business
At the campus Police station for this memorable mugshot
The day students were moving in
At the college where you taught French.

I hope you all enjoyed your youth and the journey so far

And how beautiful to know that
The “I” who played those lovely roles
Tragedy, comedy, happy endings and all
May still have many more in store
New sets, co-stars and stories

Now in the next snapshots of this life
Among other things (such as love and laughter)
“I” plan to conjure up matching eyebrows
And to do something with the hair.

* * *

I subscribe to the idea that “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.” (This quote has been disputably attributed to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin). Also this was before the selfie era, which did so much for the self-esteem of our daughters’ generation.

 

 

I find a diminutive plastic bag
On my kitchen counter
With a button in it
The kind that companies give you
Attached to a garment.

It’s a medium-size plastic button
With a shiny round edge.
It looks pretty important in there

And I debate what to do with it
whether to throw it in the trash
Or in the already full drawer

“Not the trash!“ it says to me
I’m an esthetically perfect creation
In a perfectly crafted plastic bag
With its scaled plastic seal.
Think of all it took to make us
Me and the bag.
Put me aside if you must,
but you’ll be happy to find me
The day your button fails!”

“But I don’t even know what piece of clothing
You come from” I answer.

And I try to picture the day
I lose a button
And look for a needle
And a thread,
And string the thread
In the needle,
And set to find the button
If I remember where I put it
Then sit down in broad daylight
And maybe look for my glasses
And finally get to sew the button
To whatever it is.
And it makes me very tired.

I’d rather write poems
Than spend my time sawing buttons.

“Look, if I listened to you
I would have to keep everything.
Think about:
The books I bought and have not read yet
And the magazines,
The earrings I never wore, and the rest
I can’t start saving buttons now.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

“Maybe you could recycle us?
Save us in a tin box like Grandma? For craft projects?
For a memory bead necklace?”

Nice try. Ludicrous.

I rail at clothing companies
The waste they engender,
The crime they push me to consider.

Then close my eyes, pretend that I am not doing it
And throw the perfect baggie in the trash.

I hear it scream in there.

Oh, the instinct of survival!

“Ok, ok, I’ll recycle you,”
In a poem.

* * *

I wish I could (always) write deep, sacred poems that would touch people from spirit to spirit, but inspiration is not always accommodating. The inspiration for this item I found lying on my kitchen counter.

This poem actually gathered some very positive reviews, as shared here:

“Critics strain for new superlatives in lauding debut of new New England poet.” – The New Yolk Thymes

“Emerging from a long development as a hidden chrysalis, V. H. effortlessly floats from American to French flowers, drinking the nectar of inspiration.” – The Aurelian

” “Seems, madam? Nay, it is. I know not seems.” Newcomer V. H. is a gifted artificer and conjurer who weaves a seamless fabric of observation and reflection as naturally flowing as a purling stream descending a gentle slope.” – The Journal of the International Ladies Garments Workers Union

There was one negative reaction:

“Her appeal to a sentimental nostalgia for a retrograde technology left us feeling as though we had been buttonholed by an advocate of Ecological Probity. – The Velcro Institute

One of my greatest joys when I was a little girl, eight or nine, was to receive in the mail the collection of writings published by the school. This was my grandmother’s village where I stayed during summer vacation, a very small town in the West of France, Brittany. The “gazette” came in the mail as a pile of duplicated papers bound together with staples. It smelled of solvent and the contributors’ handwriting had turned pink and purple. I would sit at my grandmother’s kitchen table and read the local school students and teachers’ prose, poems, letters, memoirs, drawings. It was so charming it moved me deeply. I realized I knew these people and felt closer to them than if I had met them in person.

In the Memoir section I put up Piano files. This is no Stephen King suspense and certainly not a page-turner. What I am serving here is not a story, just the life of a woman through the prism of piano. I could have seen it through other angles, such as writing, or food which I actually did (coming soon).

In Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire, the two angels Damiel and Cassiel roam around Berlin, listening to the living, while invisible to them. This is what you would hear if you bent over my shoulder to hear my story. I would like to be one of those angels and listen to what people have to say as well.

Cramped in my narrow seat
Sandwiched between my daughter
And a man with a shirt striped with green
Who looks like he wouldn’t mind
Falling asleep on my shoulder.
In the dimmed cabin light
I consider the 7:40 hours flight ahead.
I feel tired, it’s been frantic
We ran around like there was no tomorrow
No tomorrow in France that is
And already we are leaving.

Soon I discover
A last minute gift from the gods
Ensconced in the reclining seat
In front of me:
A screen offering a selection
Of in-flight entertainment

I pick Chansons Françaises

Darting through the sky at 516 miles per hour
I sample the last sampler
Of things I didn’t have time to do
Life is short
But things accelerate
Between time zones
Forced rest and I fast forward

Je n’aurai pas le temps
Dit Michel Fugain
Chanté par un autre
Qui n’aura pas le temps non plus
Nous n’aurons pas le temps,
De tout faire.

Même en cent ans
Je n’aurai pas le temps,
Pas le temps.

 

THEATRE

Nous étions au théâtre, il m’avait laissée seule,
Pendant qu’il se changeait (il dirigeait l’orchestre)
Avait dit attends-moi, alors je suis restée
Entre quatre murs blancs fortement éclairés

Dans cette pièce nue, ni scène ni théâtre
J’étais seule et perdue dans une quatrième zone
Qui étais-je en ces lieux qui servaient de coulisses ?
Ni actrice ni danseuse, ni non plus spectatrice

A droite les escaliers, à gauche la sortie
Et en face une Bouche, un trou aux lèvres noires

La voix d’un haut-parleur sonnait de temps en temps
Puis un ou deux artistes passaient en coup de vent
Et sans peur par la bouche se faisaient avaler

Et si l’un d’eux devait, par un triste accident
Me pousser dans cet antre et m’emporter sur scène ?
J’avais des inquiétudes et me sentais zombie.

Et si un des gardiens me voyant en ces lieux
Oisive, décidait de m’envoyer dehors ?
Je me sentais bien mal, comme un couac dans l’orchestre

J’essayais tour à tour de trouver contenance
Etudiant les posters ornant certains des murs
Ou la boite de beignets vide trainant sur la table

Quand soudain j’ai senti les murs me regarder
Ils prenaient l’air méfiant et semblaient chuchoter
« Mais que fait-elle fait ici, sans pointes, ni tutu ? »

Que puis-je leur répondre me suis-je demandé
Qui suis-je ? Quel est mon rôle ? Hélas je n’en ai pas !
Sinon celui d’attendre, cela n’est pas assez.

Et puis j’ai eu, comme ça, un petit trait d’esprit
J’ai pensé à l’aimant sur le frigo chez moi
Qui disait « We are the hero of our own story »

Lors, j’ai levé la tête et regardé les murs
Et leur ai assené (ils en étaient bouche-bée)
« Qui suis-je ? Messieurs, qui suis-je ? Et bien veuillez apprendre
Que je suis l’héroïne de ma propre histoire,
Le personnage central de cette pièce-ci. »
J’ai levé un chapeau imaginaire, à plume
Et les ai salués, imitant Cyrano.
Et à partir de là les choses étaient faciles
Nous avons bavardé comme de vieux amis.

Je leur ai raconté mes épiques périples
Comme je venais de loin et par monts et par vaux
Par Paris, Columbus, Boston puis Seattle
En quête d’aventure, de sagesse et d’amour

Et que la destinée me faisait faire escale
En ce lieu imprévu, électrique et prenant.

Si le danseur fougueux de qui j’avais eu peur
M’avait poussé sur scène à cet instant précis
J’aurais sans hésiter fait quelques pas de danse
Et puis pris la parole et dit les mêmes mots.

Mais à ce moment-là mon hôte est revenu
Et saisissant mon bras emmené avec lui
Nous avons pris ensemble la sortie des artistes
Et avons pris congé sous les applaudissements.

J’ai eu la chance, cette année, de visiter le Pacific Northwest Ballet à Seattle pour une représentation remarquable (voir critique sur la page Stories de mon blog). Pendant que j’attendais Allan dans les coulisses, je regardais une boite de beignets qui se vidait très vite, moi qui croyais que les danseurs ne mangeaient que des carottes crues. Le poème de cette semaine est une narration, en alexandrins, non rimés, de mon expérience.

Top picture: Benoît-Constant Coquelin as Cyrano, photogravure by H. Dujardin after a watercolor by J. Guth