Cymbal Monkey

It is no shame, clay, if you cannot be a vase.

In your terra cotta I can see the face

of a cottage set in the corner of a lot,

surrounded by roses and forget-me-nots,

all snugly wrapped in a whitewashed slatted fence.

It is no shame to trade flash for permanence.

***

This poem is the 22nd in my marathon of poems (plus 3.8) for Tupelo Press’s cool fundraising project 30/30.  You can view the poems I and the other “runners” submit every day during the month of March, at

http://tupelopress.wordpress.com/3030-project/.

Please follow our work, and if you find it even the slightest bit entertaining, engaging, thought-provoking, or just generally worthy, donate to Tupelo Press, an independent literary publisher.  Sponsor me by entering T. Thibodeaux Baar in the “in honor of” line on the donation form, which you can find here:

https://www.tupelopress.org/donate.php

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The lump of clay with which you start

seems no mystery; after all, it is little more than mud.

No more, in fact, than the mud you scraped up as a child

from the damp earth beneath your grandmother’s apple tree

to make tiny dishes and fancy sculpted figures

which you never named, except maybe

freer from leaves and seeds and twigs.

The lump of clay with which you start

seems no mystery, but even dirt can fool you.

And you know this.  So even though you’ve wedged it

long enough to make your forearms ache

and Methuselah sigh, you will wedge it just a little bit

longer.  Because you know.

What you don’t know, ever, is whether

there really is potential in the bump

you’ve smacked onto the wheel, coaxing it to center

with the heel of your hand and a sponge full of water

in those first few spins, when you’re just remembering

the music of the turning, the cool fine feel

of the top-heart as you press your thumb down

to concave, navel, hollow,

always with the bath to keep

friction from tearing down your walls.

You can hope there is a vase in every throw,

that every pound of clay you slice off the end

of the pugged line can, at least,

be a beautiful pot or plate or bowl, but

what if that isn’t the case?

What if the likely isn’t in the clay?

What if some lumps are only ever going to be lumps?

What if there is no beautiful and tall cylinder in

this particular pound; no lamp or candle-shade,

no flower-pond basin, no vessel at all

to hold your lovely:  after all,

it is only clay, and it may be no mystery,

but it can fool you.

***

This poem is the 21st in my marathon of poems (plus 3.8) for Tupelo Press’s cool fundraising project 30/30.  You can view the poems I and the other “runners” submit every day during the month of March, at

http://tupelopress.wordpress.com/3030-project/.

Please follow our work, and if you find it even the slightest bit entertaining, engaging, thought-provoking, or just generally worthy, donate to Tupelo Press, an independent literary publisher.  Sponsor me by entering T. Thibodeaux Baar in the “in honor of” line on the donation form, which you can find here:

https://www.tupelopress.org/donate.php

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Leave it for the angels’ share;

the wine is good, and we don’t want

to burn up like a brimstone flare.

Leave it for the angels’ share.

The night is young, and devils may care,

but we are old and nonchalant;

leave it for the angel’s share.

The wine is good, and we don’t want.

Give it to the devil’s cut;

go down fightin’, or stay up

until the sunrise, that old slut,

gives it up to the devil’s cut.

Bottles open, shutters shut,

take a pull or raise a cup;

give it to the devil’s cut.

Go down’ fightin’.  Or, stay up.

***

This poem is the twentieth in my marathon of poems (plus 3.8) for Tupelo Press’s cool fundraising project 30/30.  You can view the poems I and the other “runners” submit every day during the month of March, at

http://tupelopress.wordpress.com/3030-project/.

Please follow our work, and if you find it even the slightest bit entertaining, engaging, thought-provoking, or just generally worthy, donate to Tupelo Press, an independent literary publisher.  Sponsor me by entering T. Thibodeaux Baar in the “in honor of” line on the donation form, which you can find here:

https://www.tupelopress.org/donate.php

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Thanks for stopping by!  I am happy to hear from you via email or comments.

At my favorite neighborhood place, the food is made fresh by the owner’s own hands, the wine is dark and light, and the company is always a blessing.  The table isn’t always lit by candlelight, but just after the Majestic fire the power was spotty for several days, so Anthony had candelabras on hand.  Note, too, the décor.  Which doesn’t suck.

Tonight’s poems is a triolet–my first one ever–which I hope turned out at least passable.  It was inspired by Anthony’s generosity; he gave us sweets to try after we finished our pie, and they were like manna from heaven.  So good it was tough to know when to quit!

The fine-forged mesh of his gleaming mail-shirt;

I put me in your wise governance.

Who does not know his rasp of reeds,

clever talk and a pretentious manner?

An English version with an introduction.

Her words he heard, her speech found favor.

He took her back with him to Troy, where she lived with him as his wife.

Since the names of the fallen are already on record,

the lots are drawn and there stands the urn.

It was love; love, the consolation of the human race.

Thousands of flowers have blossomed today;

the coldness of the pavement, the cement,

his chin nuzzled into his breast

unbind the crumbling clod.

Charity departed when I came aboard.

Decision harder than the dreams of a hammer,

madness of chance / madness fullgrown;

when I was little I loved to be good.

Human beings know what they need.

He dances in his sadness brilliantly in the moonlight.

When one has lived a long time alone

it is hard to remember if he suffered much.

From those very fingers emerge pistols of love.

***

This poem is the nineteenth (!) in my marathon of poems (plus 3.8) for Tupelo Press’s cool fundraising project 30/30.  You can view the poems I and the other “runners” submit every day during the month of March, at

http://tupelopress.wordpress.com/3030-project/.

Please follow our work, and if you find it even the slightest bit entertaining, engaging, thought-provoking, or just generally worthy, donate to Tupelo Press, an independent literary publisher.  Sponsor me by entering T. Thibodeaux Baar in the “in honor of” line on the donation form, which you can find here:

https://www.tupelopress.org/donate.php

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This was a fun poem to compose: it is actually based upon two contrivances, not just one.  I knew I wanted to write a cento, but I was worried that it would take forever to sift through poems and collect lines, and I am (as you know) on a deadline.  I needed a random generator of some sort.  So, I started with a deck of cards.  I assigned numerical values to the face cards, creating a range of one to thirteen.  I turned the cards over and wrote the number of each turn down the left margin of the paper.

I took the numbers to the bookshelf, where I took down a book at a time, from left to right.  For each number on my page, I flipped to the indicated page in the book I had in hand and chose a line from that page.  I admit I had to  cheat a little, since (who knew??) so many books start numbering before the first content page (even counting blank pages).  I stuck as close to the system as possible, though, and I was really pleasantly surprised at the poem that took shape through this strategy.

Thought I would/should share the authors with you–set a good example for…somebody lol.  These are in order from top to bottom.  If you seem to notice a pattern, it might be helpful to know that the top shelf in my case holds classics I use for World Lit, and the second shelf is more contemporary poetry.  🙂

(Anonymous author of Beowulf); Chaucer; Wole Soyinka; Confucius; N.K. Sandars; (Anonymous author of Gilgamesh); Homer; (Anonymous author of Song of  Roland); Virgil; Voltaire; Arif Viqar; Arif Viqar; George Orwell; Virgil; Stan Rice; Tess Gallagher; Stan Rice; Jack Myers; Louise Gluck (apologies for the missing umlaut); Jack Gilbert; Galway Kinnell; Ai; C.D. Wright.

1.

They bear the energy over, while

all carry on underneath—

all the moving parts, the subtle intrigues—

without the lines, no heat, no force:

(Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.)

Where does it come from, this authority?  What spark

(…who made thee? Dost thou know who…)

lights, and how it ignites, like magic

…spirit and process…

(What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate.)

2.

Of magnetism, dynamism, (witchery?):

(Come live with me, and be my love)

Too, mystery:

mastery, my story, messy missing madnessy

(heaven must be missing an angel)

Cut

the lines become

masquerades, or they mask themselves so

(You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows)

or do you?

3.

There is only one path to one place,

and it runs

beneath these (Danger!) lines.

You may read between them;

you may color inside them;

you may love in spite of them;

but you need them, and when they won’t come

you are left in the dark.

***Credit?  In order, Wallace Stevens; William Blake; Don Pearce & Frank Pierson; Christopher Marlowe; (every imaginationless bar hawk, ever, and) Freddie Perren & Keni St. Lewis; Bob Dylan…

***

This poem is the eleventh in my marathon of poems (plus 3.8) for Tupelo Press’s cool fundraising project 30/30.  You can view the poems I and the other “runners” submit every day during the month of March, at

http://tupelopress.wordpress.com/3030-project/.

Please follow our work, and if you find it even the slightest bit entertaining, engaging, thought-provoking, or just generally worthy, donate to Tupelo Press, an independent literary publisher.  Sponsor me by entering T. Thibodeaux Baar in the “in honor of” line on the donation form, which you can find here:

https://www.tupelopress.org/donate.php

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This old house, which was at one time a B-and-B (or at least tried to be), is on the route I sometimes take to the park.  I call her the Bad Sister, because she reminds me of my own house, to which I am partial even though my own house probably needs more work even than this old dame.

When I really look at it, though, the house strikes me as such a likely playground for kids. Not the kind of kids you see today, with their screen-parallel faces all sickly-aglow, but the kind of kids I remember us being:  clothes dusty, hair all sweaty, faces aglow from the heat and chasing one another down the street at dusk.  Just look at that porch!  Even on the rainiest day, the Bad Sister would give us a way to play outdoors.

Summer is coming.

Intrepid

In front of the old b-and-b, daffodils

poke their heads through the wrought-iron fence.

When we were kids, we used to poke our heads between

fence posts, too.

What is it with kids and reaching into spaces

unknown?  Even seeing beyond the pickets

didn’t disabuse us of the idea that somehow,

sticking your head through made it

different.  That you could know something

with your body on one side of the balusters

and your noggin on the other side

that you couldn’t know  otherwise.

And once in a while, someone would get stuck, right?

Remember that?  Remember how red

that kid’s ears would get as he gave it

just one more try to get free, screwing up his face

against the rub-burn and bruising before

giving in to the inevitable?

And you know what really kills me?

How many things we did like that,

how many places we went in without looking,

or looking, but just not believing our eyes,

despite our fathers’ warnings

never to reach blindly into the hedge

where the blackberry vines grew,

where the snakes love the berries, too.

***

This poem is the tenth (yikes!) in my marathon of poems (plus 3.8) for Tupelo Press’s cool fundraising project 30/30.  You can view the poems I and the other “runners” submit every day during the month of March, at

http://tupelopress.wordpress.com/3030-project/.

Please follow our work, and if you find it even the slightest bit entertaining, engaging, thought-provoking, or just generally worthy, donate to Tupelo Press, an independent literary publisher.  Sponsor me by entering T. Thibodeaux Baar in the “in honor of” line on the donation form, which you can find here:

https://www.tupelopress.org/donate.php

(Scroll down; it’s a form!)

Thanks for stopping by!  I am happy to hear from you via email or comments.

As the arrow flies, one day may as well be another, or,

as Janis Joplin famously said,

It’s all the same fucking day, man.

Quiver that:  As the crow flies,

the vantage is much better, and fields

with fences turn to calendars—days into

haystacks, weeks into rows of corn.

You could put up a murder of relish.

Hush.  As the Monarch flies, all the days

spread out like spilled honey,

glowing and sweet, creeping slow

and sticking to your wings.

If you got it today, you don’t wear it tomorrow, man.

***

This poem is the fifth in my marathon of poems (plus 3.8) for Tupelo Press’s cool fundraising project 30/30.  You can view the poems I and the other “runners” submit every day during the month of March, at

http://tupelopress.wordpress.com/3030-project/.

Please follow our work, and if you find it even the slightest bit entertaining, engaging, thought-provoking, or just generally worthy, donate to Tupelo Press, an independent literary publisher.  Sponsor me by entering T. Thibodeaux Baar in the “in honor of” line on the donation form, which you can find here:

https://www.tupelopress.org/donate.php

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Thanks for stopping by!  I am happy to hear from you via email or comments.

LouLou (the main monkey)