A Seasonal Ghazal (revised)

A Seasonal Ghazal

What defines a ghazal is a constant longing.
Summer begins to cling, becomes quiet, slow, like longing:

In autumn the pine needles fall in droves.
Mid-fall is a fire; consumes like longing.

The crunch of winter, the acid smell of February.
Early March. Leaves freeze, trees know longing.

What’s the usual sound a leaf makes when
It hits the ground: a quick spring of longing:

Flowers and flowers drop pieces
Unintentionally. Wanting them back is longing.

What defines a ghazal is a constant, while
Seasons shape our wavering wants & longing.

A year’s length is a constant. It’s within it that we question:
“What does love look/like?” Probably like longing,

Whereas death, the other, stays obtuse,
Always pointing. This is a year’s length: love and longing.

Quote from Roethke

"It's the shifting of the thought that's important, often - the rightness (or wrongness!) of the imaginative jump. Many modern poets still are content only with the logical progression, or with metaphors - often beautiful, elaborate, fresh - but these consisting of little more than a listing of appositives. In the richest poetry even the juxtaposition of objects should be pleasurable..."


Something maybe I should start thinking about more often in my own poetry...I worry about it sometimes...

Sculptures

On M St., on the way to Georgetown,
before the main strip,
under a hotel's great brick cuppula,
appears a sculpture:

people crammed into one another,
crowding, hurrying, large-eyed
and looking at something
(we never know what)
with such intent, almost religious wonderment.
They forget

that in the back, they're pushing too.
A cigar smolders
exhaling ghosts into the air
and skeletal men laboring and laboring
as they slowly sink into the metal
that forged them.

I look at the faces of this fountain
sculpture in the entryway of Republica,
off the Alameda, in which
men and women alike
(the only difference are lumps on their chests)
stare into that bubbling spigot--
water over-flowing into the drain
at the base of the lifted bowl
(I don't know if this is bronze
or stone) and every one of them blank---
not even etched out,
just smoothed away, born without time
to mark the progression of their eyes,
how tired they must become
as night pushes itself into day---
just looking; always looking.

A quote torn from the headlines of Charles Olson's "Projective Verse" essay...

“Is” comes from the Aryan root, as, to breathe. The English “not” equals the Sanskrit na, which may come from the root na, to be lost, to perish. “Be” is from bhu, to grow.

interesting, eh?

After School Ends (pending title...this is almost all in syllabics...how did that happen??)

Comes the time again when we start to write.
It's summer and homework isn't hanging
over us like a mobile of little knives ---
no threat, we breathe, set a pen
in our hands and draw open the letters
of the year: how fall was tough
when we ended our relationship, and
especially March when our cousin died.
And then there was May, full
of hope for endings, since nothing begins
in summer: nature stagnates in heat
and humidity. Comes the pool,
comes the ice cream that fuels
the mind again, since we're out
of worries, besides August,
which levels the grass in rust,
a small signal of the September red
that we embrace like scholastic sex:
all classroom stuff & no exploration.

A Request for Good Old Age

That's not what old age is.
Hearing from my Bobi and Zaidi*
it's more like you slowing down
and trying not to let it
slow you all at once.
It always seemed a habit that
Zaidi shaved every day--
since his face looks hairless
like there never was anything to shave,

but this old man here has cuts all over
his chin, and a few on his neck;
blinks like he's confused
but I know (or guess, really;
one is only ever an observer)
he's got his faculties together.
His gaze shifts so much.
That's not old age. Younger,
I always thought it was when
veins pop out just a bit more.

When my hands shake
and I cover my face
and it ends up shaking
like a bebop tilt-a-whirl
set me straight, will you.
Keep my eyes from staring
in one place.
Why should the mind slow
just because the body dances
at tempo lento?
Mouth set, eyes sweeping.
I would do nothing else.



*pronounced Bu-bee and Zey-dee (grandma and grandpa in Yiddish)

A Seasonal Ghazal (a ghazal is a persian form, i believe, that has a pattern that you'll see that repeats)

this is from Jane Shore's poetry workshop back from last year -- took a long time to look at it again, I thought it was done for, but recently I looked at it, and revamped it. I think it's better looking, with a few kinks in the second line and fourth line...


A Seasonal Ghazal

What defines a ghazal is a constant longing.
Summer begins to cling, becomes quiet, slow, like longing:

In fall the pine needles fall in droves.
Mid-fall is a fire; consumes like longing.

The crunch of winter, the acid smell of February.
Early March. Leaves freeze, trees know longing.

What’s the usual sound a leaf makes when
It hits the ground: a quick scream of longing.

Flower and flower drop pieces
Unintentionally. Wanting them back is a longing.

What defines a ghazal is a constant, while
Seasons shape our wavering wants & longing.

A year’s length is a constant, it’s within it that we question:
“What does love look/like?” Probably like longing,

Whereas death, the other, stays obtuse,
Always pointing. This is a year’s length: love and longing.