Poetry Archives -

You might come here Sunday on a whim…

Posted on January 6, 2023 by KarenW

A few friends asked me if the stabbing headaches have subsided and I’m happy to report, indeed they have. All it took was solid sleep and going back to the gym and writing a lot with the days off I had this week. I am back to work on Monday, but I do enjoy the time off.

I’ve been following the weather news in California. Floods, trees down, all of it. Part of me is jealous I’m missing such an epic series of storms in San Francisco, but I know it’s not anything close to fun for those who had to break the sandbags out or go without power for hours on end. There’s rain here in Ireland today, of course. A lovely wash of roiling grey skies and occasional spears of water. Deep cleaned the flat today, out with the auld, in with the new.

Found myself missing a few poets from Seattle. Roethke and Richard Hugo. Has to be that weather putting me in the mood for it. So I’m dropping a poem in here by Richard Hugo, one of my favorite place poets, truth be told. Though over the last week I finished Diane Seuss’s frank: sonnets, and almost done with a book of essays called Typewriters, Bombs, Jellyfish by Tom McCarthy. Lots of reading, writing (a few poems even), sleeping. It conspires to make the world a bit better, larger…all that. Here’s one of Hugo’s most iconic poems…with that arrow sharp opening….You might come here Sunday on a whim. Say your life broke down….

Degrees of Gray at Philipsburg

–Richard Hugo

You might come here Sunday on a whim.

Say your life broke down. The last good kiss

you had was years ago. You walk these streets

laid out by the insane, past hotels

that didn’t last, bars that did, the tortured try

of local drivers to accelerate their lives.

Only churches are kept up. The jail

turned 70 this year. The only prisoner

is always in, not knowing what he’s done.

The principal supporting business now

is rage. Hatred of the various grays

the mountain sends, hatred of the mill,

The Silver Bill repeal, the best liked girls

who leave each year for Butte. One good

restaurant and bars can’t wipe the boredom out.

The 1907 boom, eight going silver mines,

a dance floor built on springs—

all memory resolves itself in gaze,

in panoramic green you know the cattle eat

or two stacks high above the town,

two dead kilns, the huge mill in collapse

for fifty years that won’t fall finally down.

Isn’t this your life? That ancient kiss

still burning out your eyes? Isn’t this defeat

so accurate, the church bell simply seems

a pure announcement: ring and no one comes?

Don’t empty houses ring? Are magnesium

and scorn sufficient to support a town,

not just Philipsburg, but towns

of towering blondes, good jazz and booze

the world will never let you have

until the town you came from dies inside?

Say no to yourself. The old man, twenty

when the jail was built, still laughs

although his lips collapse. Someday soon,

he says, I’ll go to sleep and not wake up.

You tell him no. You’re talking to yourself.

The car that brought you here still runs.

The money you buy lunch with,

no matter where it’s mined, is silver

and the girl who serves your food

is slender and her red hair lights the wall.

Shook foil smeared with toil…

Posted on October 25, 2022October 25, 2022 by KarenW

I’m not the biggest fan of Halloween. I don’t love dressing up. Also, I find Halloween parties kind of exhausting. You can conclude from this, already, I might not be the kind of fun you want around on Oct. 31st. But I’m very much looking forward to Samhain which, like all Irish words, is not pronounced phonetically. “SOW – in” is the correct way to say (mh is pronounced like a W in Irish), but honestly, no one here would be too offended if an American started pronouncing Irish words the wrong way. More like, they are amused when people try to say Irish words without knowing anything about the strange ways the words work.

The other day I was waiting for a bus in N. Strand, where I live, when a gang of tracksuit lads all marched past me, out in the middle of the road, dragging stolen bins full of wooden pallets. There was an older tracksuit lad in charge of them, shouting at them to pick up the pace before the Garda came. Apparently, Samhain bonfires are a big deal here. I, for one, am looking forward to the Samhain bonfires. See, I think that would have more impact on me…looking out over the North Wall and seeing illicit bonfires lighting up the sky in the Dublin dark. Fireworks exploding blue flowers and green shimmer over the canal.

My roommate had tried to get me excited about the prospect of a Halloween party in our apartment here, but truth be told, I didn’t share the excitement. This will be my first Samhain and I’d rather attend something like the Bram Stoker festival. He lived right around the corner from where I live now and finished Dracula right here in the Big Smoke (Dublin). The Irish love their famous writers and what good would his hard work be without a proper festival to celebrate?

When I walk into downtown, I pass by his old row house on the way in. I wonder if he got to enjoy the same tax free status on book sales that the modern day writer publishing in Ireland gets to enjoy? Probably not. It was a long time ago. And the Irish passed the law protecting artists from taxation in the late 60s. Quite a few European artists move here looking to save proceeds on their books or art this way. Irvine Welsh did it (well actually, it was for other reasons but he still signed up for the scheme and probably got well deserved money back in his pocket). Honestly, I think America should do this. Can you imagine? Encourage artists to make a living off of writing or painting?

Anyway, I got on the bus and rode all the way up north to Glasnevin cemetery. Brought the camera and spent a few hours slow walking around taking photos, making notes. The only disappointment was the fact that it was sunny and bright out. I had been hoping for dark skies, moody light, a spit or two of rain. Still, Ireland’s famous people are buried there so it’s a bit of a history lesson. You can learn a lot from a graveyard out here.

So most Irish rebels, thinkers, politicians are buried there, including (much to my surprise), Gerard Manley Hopkins, the genius who developed sprung rhythm. I always think of this one, God’s Grandeur, when I think of him. The way this first stanza hit me in college when I first encountered it is a memory I still associate with really wanting to be a writer. Give it a try out loud. It finds a power there.

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

    It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

    It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

    And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

    And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

Shook foil. Ooze of oil. This was pretty groundbreaking stuff back in the Victorian era. There’s a lot in this stanza, but when I read it, it feels charged in its own right with the frictive energy of sounds rubbed together in close, tight ways…ways to discharge the energy of the sublime into a poem that continues on past his death, past our own brief beach bonfire fire flashes in the night. God, the sublime, that which is bigger than us.

I don’t care for the whole Higher Power verbiage some might use to politely denote the very fabric of the Universe. I’m not a believer in a god. But I do believe the universe is astonishing in what it contains and how it works (as if I knew, even, how it works) and I think we are merely a microscopic organism, burrowed into some other microscopic organism, riding parasitically on the skin of the infinite. Hopkins uses words to spark a poetic conflagration. Anyway, he passed at forty four in Dublin (he was English but also a Jesuit priest and then taught here in Dublin). So he is buried here.

Then I made my way to the Gravedigger’s pub for a pint after. It’s so named for the tradition the pub had of passing pints out the window balanced on shovels for the gravediggers as they finished (or perhaps even just continued) the task of making sure the dead were buried in their plots.

Spoke for an hour or so to a man about my age about the chemical composition of Guinness. How nitrogen works. How molecules work together to change the very nature of a substance. A brief rain came out of nowhere and a hard deluge found our heads, which we all enjoyed while crowded together on the small walkway in front of the pub (one must always drink outside of the Gravediggers, not so much inside), and the barkeep came out with his awning rod to extend the awning over our heads so no one would feel like they needed to seek shelter.

The man and I covered a wide variety of subjects. Matthew McConaughey, whom I learned is a great guy because he’s nice to everyone on the set (this guy’s friend works on films…or as he pronounced it…”fil-ems”). He also revealed to me the best car to have for the coming apocalypse, which is a Toyota Hilux. We spoke about Bill Gates (our man in this conversation has a special hatred for Bill Gates). The Trump slow motion indictment nightmare and whether or not he will end up in chains and what the fuck America, like, just arrest him already! Death, school, politics, and life in Ireland before 20 years ago and life in Dublin now. The rain began to soften. Then stopped altogether and the world looked clean. Shining. Shook out and hung to dry. The last of the day speared through the clouds and swept the cemetery one last time, then the evening dark set in. Then, he and I parted ways and after dinner, I was home in bed before ten. Early darkness is the tonic, right now, for my insomnia. Exhausting, it can be, spending a dreaded sunny day in the cemetery.

A dreaded sunny day and we drank by the cemetery gates…

“A dreaded sunny daySo let’s go where we’re happyAnd I meet you at the cemetry gates”

The arrows that feed us…

Posted on October 21, 2022 by KarenW

Sitting in the Irish dark. Sitting in the Guinness black mouth of morning. Small snippets of sky. Movement of ancient east. Seagulls not yet. To have been there all along. To contain all the supplies you need for life. Dreams or more featured events. Balloons that hurt. Planes that sink. Wimmer wimmer goes the wind, clam shell pock in the mud like foot prints. Waiting, still, in the Irish dark. Rumble of train, tumble of noise. That low anapest of inked in rhythm. Shot through with it, we all are. Best to leave that arrow in. We will grow around it. We always do.

———-

Well that’s my brain dump after I get up. Whatever remnants of dream kicking around thrown out of the slop bucket onto the page… My morning exercise if you will.

I have been waking up in the dawn dark at 5:30 or so and quietly, quietly shuffling my feet along the laminate floors (don’t wake the roommate) to the living room to write. Though it’s not to write, per se, it’s my time to do with what I want. When I was home in America, it was apparent how little time people have for themselves there. Children are the predominant takers of time. Thieves of time, the young ones are. And they are so lucky to have it move slowly in them. My many friends who have kids, I can see through them what I put my parents through. The choices you have to make because you have this love for the humans you’re raising.

Then the other thieves, employment. The career, the almighty American career. Or the job, slaving away at the job and being treated as disposable. Hanging on and giving everything. What else? Oh, I was in San Francisco, so let’s be completely honest…hedonism. The card games with friends, the theater shows, the drag shows, the spectacle of the San Francisco streets, the dinner with friends, the drinks with friends. The music, the endless sublime music played live in a airy stage of eucalyptus and cypress trees all there in Golden Gate Park. The heady intoxication of memory.

But I’m home now. You hear that, America? H O M E….Ireland, is home.

Just off the plane, I go into the little Spar store (think Irish 7-11 for you ‘Mericans) there in the airport and got a bottled water. Waited in line. Took sips from it for I was thirsty. The older Irish woman, the long days of Spar work etched into her face ushered me over.

“We’ll just use the self-checkout, it’ll be quicker,” she intoned not looking convinced. I put the bottle on the side that weighs it after scanning it and the machine complains the product doesn’t match. “Oh shit,” I exclaim, “the weight is off. I drank from it.” She tries entering more buttons. We watch together as the screen flashes more denial, more messages that the product is wrong, we are wrong, nothing can be tallied. “Fuck it,” she said with a laugh, “you’re grand, go on then.” I almost wanted to hug her. We both smiled, made eye contact and started to laugh. Off I went with my free Spar water. Lucky me, lucky charms.

——

I was having a conversation with someone about my time in East St. Louis. When I attended aircraft mechanics school. I was telling her about this guy at the school (it was a sorry little community college plunked down in the industrial landscape of Granite City, Illinois) and how he invited me to his house for beers. He had a large purple Mohawk. He lived there with his mother. Out of the bedroom window, we could see the bar across the street, the 19th Hole.

“My mom used to work the men in that bar right there,” he said as he popped open a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon. I looked at it in the gray light. Tired neon half illuminated. “Worked?” I asked stupidly. “Yeah, you know…worked,” he said with emphasis. “Oh,” I replied stupidly, “ooohhh, I see.”

I was retelling the story about him. How he hoped to fucking christ becoming an aircraft mechanic would get him out of there forever. That he would never have to come back to Granite City and look out his window to see his mom tottering outside in the dirty snow laughing with the guys who worked in the steel mill down the street.

The steel mill closed when I lived there, thanks to NAFTA. The few months that followed, the sheriff went door to door on my block to all those squat peeling paint homes with an eviction notice in hand. Can’t pay the rent. Time to get out. And watching their lives piling up on the street. Kids, dogs, couches. The middle class gone in an instant. I always wondered what happened to him. I quit that school not long after. Headed to New Mexico. When I fly, I think about all the maintenance logs on the plane. Who is watching over the engines.

These poems were published back in 2005. Reprinted here (on a private blog not geared for any search engine). Hopefully, it’s ok to put these two poems here. (Marin Poetry Center Anthology – Vol 8 2005).