I Am Currently Jealous of Walt Whitman, Robert Desnos, and David K. Wheeler

How hard could it be?

I was reading about a poetry technique called cataloging. It seemed simple enough. Until I tried it. The technique uses word-repetition to create a sense of praise (for the object, concept, or beloved). Or sometimes to create a sense of magic or prophetic voice.

How hard could it be to repeat words and make a good catalog poem?

Whitman did it in Song of Myself...

Have you reckon’d a thousand acres much? have you reckon’d the earth much?
Have you practis’d so long to learn to read?
Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?

Robert Desnos did it in The Voice of Robert Desnos...

the one I love is not listening
the one I love does not hear
the one I love does not answer

David K. Wheeler did it in On Restlessness...

There was never a time that I knew everything.
There wasn't a night I wanted you to lose sleep.
There are some words you can say with a blink.
There are nights I wake up curled on the floor.
There are appliances that refuse to operate.
There are solutions that don't have a question.

But in the end, I could not write a catalog poem. Not to my satisfaction. So I wrote this poem instead...

Poetry 101: Cataloging

All day I have been tapping out words, trying to catalog
my love for you. I've been sketching where the type would go
and the images— Bratz, Tonkas, a red truck that takes off
without pushing, after just a bit of pre-winding against a warm oak floor.
I've been shaking words into phrases that could go under little squares
on catalog pages; squares of silken ties, underwear, tube socks
and, surprisingly, Martha Stewart pillows (throw, in all the latest
catalog colors; this year it's yellow, which is far too bright
for how I feel... a catalog should never steal my love by pushing
the commercial sense of hue and shade on I-love-you; I tried those
too, you know— notebooks stamped I love you, with bubble hearts,
balloons, and ungodly purple butterflies). No matter how I listed,
squared, adjusted like a quintessential Sears, nothing seemed to finally do
what a catalog of broken lines should somehow, without measure, do.

This post is in honor of One Shot Wednesday.

On, In and Around Mondays: How Do You Feel About 'Again'?

I have been here before, says one of my favorite poets, in "Yoked Together."

These words follow me around the yard. I have been here, and here, and here before. I have raked pine needles at the crest of this hill, watched autumn have its turn with maples, dogwood, the blueberry bushes now crimson. I have been here before.

I lean to pick up a pile of pine needles, put them in my wheel barrow. Why should I come back to this another year? Why should I care? It is like the way I made tea again this morning, ate an apple, kissed my daughter on the top of her head. It is never enough (the same favorite poet said that), but it is also too much. I wonder about the repetition of it all.

This is the kind of thing that drove me mildly insane as a mother to young children. Again, again! Always again. Some Dora song would haunt me in my dreams. "Delicioso!" Dora cried. And I thought maybe I would cry at the monotony of it.

I am no longer a mother to young children. But the yard needs raking. Again. I have been here before.

I turn the wheelbarrow over, dump pine needles into the compost pile. I think about my grandmother's last years. She could look my mother straight in the face and say, "You're my friend, right?" but not know why my mother would care to be her friend. My mother's name was gone, and too the days when my mother probably sang her own version of a Dora song. There was no again for my grandmother. This is insanity.

In Memory for Forgetfulness,* poet Mahmoud Darwish writes of exile. It is worth quoting at length...

You want to travel to Greece? You ask for a passport, but you discover you're not a citizen because your father or one of your relatives had fled with you during the Palestine war. You were a child. And you discover that any Arab who had left his country during that period and had stolen back in had lost his right to citizenship.

You despair of the passport and ask for a laissez-passer. You find out you're not a resident of Israel because you have no certificate of residence. You think it's a joke and run to tell a lawyer friend: 'Here, I'm not a citizen, I'm not a resident. Then where and who am I?' You're surprised to find the law is on their side, and you must prove you exist. You ask the Ministry of the Interior, 'Am I here, or am I absent? Give me an expert in philosophy, so that I can prove to him I exist.'

Then you realize that philosophically you exist but legally you do not.

The exile has reached a point of no return. There is no again. Perhaps it could drive a person quietly insane. More so than my grandmother, who didn't understand what she had lost.

Now I rake more pine needles. The hill is almost clean. I know that I have been here before. I want to come again.

Sunday Visit at Anya's photo, by Sara. Used with permission. *Darwish quote is in Memory for Forgetfulness, quoting original source Journal of an Ordinary Grief.



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On, In and Around Mondays (which partly means you can post any day and still add a link) is an invitation to write from where you are. Tell us what is on, in, around (over, under, near, by...) you. Feel free to write any which way... compose a tight poem or just ramble for a few paragraphs. But we should feel a sense of place.

Would you like to try? Write something 'in place' and add your link below. If you could kindly link back here when you post, it will create a central meeting place. :)

On, In and Around Mondays: Let Me Place You in Autumn

What do you do, when the rain is falling? I asked. For Autumn has come, and with it the rains.

What do you do when the rain is falling?

Maybe just this. You take the time to set it down. In words, or images. In an afternoon spent walking, pulling someone close. Or just watching a loved-one move in her own space, outside of you, beyond...


Pound Ridge, Autumn

There are so many years
between us,
like these fields
now stand between us; you never stop
moving South, touching
tops of bronzed grass bending
to the weight of September.
I hold quite still, note
that you don't look back.
And I don't want
to look forward.



Pound Ridge in Autumn photos, by L.L. Barkat. This post is also offered as part of One Shot Wednesday.

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On, In and Around Mondays (which partly means you can post any day and still add a link) is an invitation to write from where you are. Tell us what is on, in, around (over, under, near, by...) you. Feel free to write any which way... compose a tight poem or just ramble for a few paragraphs. But we should feel a sense of place.

Would you like to try? Write something 'in place' and add your link below. If you could kindly link back here when you post, it will create a central meeting place. :)

The Find

Where does your writing come from? Where does mine come from? This is an especially important question when we're feeling a sense of writer's block.

For a while I've felt I couldn't find poems anymore. So last night I sat down and thought about where I've literally been and what I've been doing. I let myself feel certain sadnesses I haven't been willing to embrace. And this was when I finally found my poems. I wrote and wrote last night. Here's just one, appropriately called "The Find."

The Find

To me, it is just
a cave— a bouldered space
held dark against this mountain.
To you, it opens
dreams of dragons, pink and green
as the dragon-scale shoes
I bought for you just yesterday,
knowing it would be too soon before
you came upon this place, only to find it had become
just a cave... an empty bouldered space.


At the Cave photo, by L.L. Barkat.

Because this photo tells a story, in my mind, I'm also offering it for Three From Here and There's Storytelling prompt...

The Poetry of Pie

I have always preferred pie to other desserts, especially on my birthday.

Perhaps I agree with Ken Haedrich. In Pie: 300 Tried-and-True Recipes for Delicious Homemade Pie, Haedrich says...

To me, pie is poetry that makes the world a better place. Oh yes.

But poetry is also sometimes pie. Like last week at TweetSpeak's poetry party. Here are a few slices for you from my personal 140-character pie plate... :)


Listen, Lover Boy,
to the mourners
marching,
while we eat milk pie
and turn our sheets
to the night

*

And mourners need
floured hands,
ghosting lost pleasures

*

Make mine apple,
make yours mincemeat;
I will put them
near each other
on the maple table

*

Is there such a thing
as disposable sexy pie?
Does it come in aluminum, flimsy?

*

I have upended pies
and brothers of pies
and sisters of pies
in search of my grandmother's
last touch

*

Quick,
give me a cherry pie,
I am in need of
a sweet and sour
red night






Pie photos by L.L. Barkat.

This post is in honor of TheHighCalling.org's Twitter Pie Party, tonight. (Add your pie post link here.) It is also for One Shot Wednesday.

On, In and Around Mondays: Dragon Scales to Go, to Stay

I'm pulling shoes out of boxes.

"Try these on." White and blue sneakers, black shoes with silver-beaded rosettes, brown shoes with faux brass buckles. Fancy shoes, walking shoes, boots. Shoes to show off. Shoes to run and jump in.



She has her eye on the dragon-scale flat sneakers, but I'm focused on other pairs. Push, pull, zip. On, off. Next, next, next. I keep handing her new options (and remember vaguely how my mother said it used to take me hours to choose shoes when I was a child). She's on the floor, trying, trying.



Looking down at her small fingers, brown hair shiny-tangled, I try to smile. But I feel impatient. "Not like that," I tug a boot zipper, push its flap inside. The pop music is too loud. "I am so done here," I tell her.

I pick up the yellow box with the useful sneakers, turn to go.



"Can I try on the dragon-scale ones too?

"Sure, sure. Try them on. Why don't they have laces?" I pull them off the shelf and look inside the shoes to see if the laces are hidden inside, undone.

"That's the style," says my daughter.

A saleswoman passes and I ask, "Where are the laces for these?"

"That's the style," she says.

My daughter laughs a soft laugh. She wants these sneakers, but they are loose without laces. We buy pink sparkle ones. She frees them from plastic and tries to put them on the shoes before we pay.

"Do it in the car," I tell her, looking down. She's fumbling with the laces, and I don't want to wait. (Credit card, signature, bag the boxes. I am so done here.)

When we walk outside, she says, "I couldn't breathe in the store."

"It was the music," I say. "Too loud." She leans into me, and I pull her close, put my face in her hair.

At home, she laces the dragon-scale sneakers. The useful blue and white pair never make it out of the box. All night she wears her sparkly sneakers in the house. She knows she can do that, because they are still clean. When I go to tuck her in at bedtime, the sneakers are near her bed, where she can look down at them and smile. The laces are marvelously, outrageously pink. They lie open and ready for tomorrow.

It is quiet here, and I feel like I can breathe.





Dragon-Scale Sneaker photos, by L.L. Barkat.

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On, In and Around Mondays (which partly means you can post any day and still add a link) is an invitation to write from where you are. Tell us what is on, in, around (over, under, near, by...) you. Feel free to write any which way... compose a tight poem or just ramble for a few paragraphs. But we should feel a sense of place.

Would you like to try? Write something 'in place' and add your link below. If you could kindly link back here when you post, it will create a central meeting place. :)

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This post is also in honor of the PhotoPlay prompt at TheHighCalling.org. Why did I choose to photograph down? It was the posture I felt existed in the whole incident. Looking down is an opportunity. I feel I kind of missed mine (or not... it is ambiguous), but my daughter embraced her chance to look down lovingly.

Tea is For Anything Life Brings

So much going on, I tell her. I will post next week.

Because, it is true. There is excitement and work. Sorrow, deep sorrow. Birth of friendships, or maybe just deepening.

I will have tea with you next week, I tell her. I am overwhelmed.

Then I see this at April Harris's Life and Times. She is writing about tea...

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But it isn’t just the drink itself that is important, it is the ritual round it. Not that we have tea ceremonies like in Japan or anything, but the simple act of boiling water, pouring it over tea and serving it, is very centering. You see, whether you are making a cup of tea as a celebration, as commiseration and comfort, or to calm someone, the way you make it is the same. So even if your life is falling to pieces around you, or someone in an impossible situation has come to you for help and you have no idea where to start or what to say, making tea is something you can do.

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April is right. I will post today. Because I must make tea, for the cup that Ann gave me.

I put water in the stainless steal teapot. I boil it. I measure Creme Earl Grey into a ceramic container with its little nylon tea basket. I smell the scent that says, "Celebrate" and, on the other hand, "I am so sorry." I run my finger along the fragile line of the tea cup. It tapers to a fine edge. I can feel that it is indeed antique. Light comes through the cup where it thins.

Remembering another friend's journey, I choose to sit outside to drink.



Now the sky and autumn rides on the surface of Creme Earl Grey. Colors of both hope and sorrow.



Tea is something we can do. So I am doing it today.



Tea Cup from Ann Kroeker. Photos by L.L. Barkat. Want to have tea with us? Add your link at Ann's.

Come to the Twitter Pie Party

Finally.

After months of planning, hard work, hoping, designing. It's time.

To celebrate!

The new HighCalling.org is here, and it seems a little pie is in order.

So on Tuesday, October 12, at 9:30-10:30 p.m. EST, we'll be having a Twitter party to celebrate. (Follow us at @thehighcalling. The hashtag will be #goodwork and the location is http://tweetchat.com/room/goodwork)

We'll spend some time getting to know each other, chatting about blogging and other stuff. Altogether, it should be a lot of fun.

Bring your pie (bought or homemade) to the party, and a favorite hot drink, and tweet it so we can enjoy. If you want to do a whole celebratory pie post on your blog and add your link below, you can do that too.

I'm hoping some of you will share your recipes (hint, hint, Laura... on that awesome dinner apple pie!) Or pie stories from childhood. Or maybe even some pie poems.

For the occasion, I got the book on...

pie!

In Pie: 300 Tried-and-True Recipes for Delicious Homemade Pie, Ken Haedrich says...

Pie, in a word, is my passion. Since as far back as I can remember, watching my mom and dad make their apple pies together every fall as a young boy, I have simply loved pie. I can't really explain why. If one loves poetry, or growing orchids, or walking along the beach at sunset, the why isn't all that important. To me, pie is poetry that makes the world a better place.

Now, I've got to go figure out which pie I'm going to make! See you Tuesday at the Twitter Pie Party. And here with your yummy link.


Pie Book photo, by L.L. Barkat.

Crossing the Texas Border with Spam

It was Sam's idea. Honor a person by sharing an item of any kind. The item just needed to have sentimental value you could somehow explain... to say, you are important to me because.



I received gifts of this kind from the HighCallingBlogs team. Many gifts were shyly given in private. All were (and are) cherished.

But the Spam. Ah, the Spam!

"Oh, I bet there's a story behind this," said the airport searcher.

"I, well. It was a gift."

The airport searcher looked at me with a small smile that said, Sure lady. "Don't touch anything Ma'am." (he said, for the third time). "I'm going to run the bag through again." (for the fifth time) "Without the Spam."

Personal items were strewn all over the metal counter. More gifts, some fragile, some amusingly resilient. Poetry soap, a ceramic butterfly, a baby shoe, kids' toothpaste, a white teacup, a stone engraved with "strength," a handmade candle, a poetry book, a picture of someone in his big-glasses stage (long ago). The rosary was hidden in my purse. The shalom necklace in a small tin.

In the end, I was not carrying any explosives. Nothing noxious or dangerous. Just a crowned blue can that spoke, with a laugh, of love.

Spam and Gifts photos, by L.L. Barkat.

On, In and Around Mondays: Saturday Escape to Silence

I am sitting on the concrete porch outside my door in Texas. Today the Retreat goes on without me.

Earlier, the rush of shower water next door told me Brad and Dan were awake. I listened to the sounds. Open. Close. Thump.

Yes, I am supposed to be somewhere. Breakfast with its pottery mugs, blue-grey. A view of the Canyon. Sky and circling birds. I pull the sheets to my chin. I am missing scrambled eggs, English muffins, a chance to talk to Ann or Ann.

I feel the gentle push-back from my pillow. I am not ready to leave my dreams, which must have mingled laughter, the Milky Way, me-sized cactus, blue-green river and turtles swimming.

A blond woman with a smiling voice opens my door. “Housekeeping.”

“Sorry! I’m still in bed,” I say.

“Are you okay? Can I get you anything?”

“No. No thank you. I stayed up late. I’ll be out in an hour. Sorry!”

Shoonk. The door shuts. I pull the sheets over my shoulder. I should get up.

I catalog what I have already missed. The eggs. Tea. Ann and Ann. Soon it will also be the morning speaker and maybe Ashley Cleveland, who laughs and sings deep, and moves with her magenta (or aqua) guitar.



Out the window are splintery trees I don’t understand, and white rocks in the sun. If I move quickly I will make it in time for the songwriting workshop with Over the Rhine.



Shower. Hair brush. Tazo tea, made in the coffee maker. Bagel I brought from New York, cinnamon raisin, already buttered. I think these things will mean a movement towards the crowd. They don’t. Maybe because I open my window and feel the morning air.



It is decided. Brown and white Indian-print skirt, a sleeveless brown shirt, blue sparkle bracelet, the silver shalom necklace I just opened (a gift). Tea on this concrete porch.



I need the silence, which is riffled only by small sounds I cannot place. I cannot seem to hear, or maybe answer. Are the trees saying, Thtick, thtick, thtick? Or is it phah-phah-phah, phah-phah-phah? Or maybe tahk-a-shh, tahk-a-shh?

My hair moves in the slight breeze. Grasses, long, with tawny feather tops, move too. The silence, the mild sounds of not-silence, tickling trees and wooden swings and me. I need this unscripted song, which is just now being written by the day.



Laity Lodge photos, by L.L. Barkat.

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On, In and Around Mondays (which partly means you can post any day and still add a link) is an invitation to write from where you are. Tell us what is on, in, around (over, under, near, by...) you. Feel free to write any which way... compose a tight poem or just ramble for a few paragraphs. But we should feel a sense of place.

Would you like to try? Write something 'in place' and add your link below. If you could kindly link back here when you post, it will create a central meeting place. :)