Author: crow

I'm a writer and a dabbler. I live in Southern California.

Poet 20150904

crow

So, I usually write a haiku on Friday. I love the form and I try to read a lot of the classic poets (in translation–my Japanese is practically illiteracy). Since I wrote a funny poem poem, I thought I should look for a humorous poem from one of the masters.

The fly on the porch
while rubbing its hands–
swat!

Issa

from Haiku Humor: Wit and Folly in Japanese Poems and Prints
By Stephen Addiss
with Fumiko and Akira Yamamoto

(I love the haiku books edited/translated by Addiss and published by Weatherhill/Shambhala. Many are out of print, but if you can find them, snatch them up.)

Poem 20150903

crow

a conversation with my
phone
might start with
where am i?

and pleasant reassuring voice
comes back
with a slightly wrong address
and a map
where i almost am

no, i mean, where am i?
if you click on the map
you can zoom in
get latitude and longitude
still slightly off by maybe
20 feet
still not the answer i’m
looking for

wait wait wait

who am i?

i get all of the contact info
i entered into the phone
in one way or another
but no snarky remark about
it being an existential question
that she is ill-equipped to deal with
only that i have a name
and opted to have her call me
by another name

Poem 20150901

crow

not so picky about the details
or where the clay flies
the artist
pulls with the fine metal loop
tears out a huge
iris-shaped blob of soft clay
from the eye creating
the illusion of depth
and drives the tapered tip
of a paintbrush in
to make the pupil

it’s like those busts
at the haunted mansion
that seem to follow you
concave depressions
made to look like stone
but with the afterimage
of life
as they track you

these sculpted eyes too
follow you as you walk around it
even though they gaze into a future
of fire in the kiln
and uncertain finishes

Poem 20150831

crow

we hollow them out
the insides of bones
the insides
where the marrow sits
we hollow them out

we dig with our fingers
through the hollow channels
of our bones
whatever it is
that sits in our bones
whatever it is
the fills the bones up
before we hollow them out

we scoop it out
and make them hollow
using drills made for brownies
and pixies
we honeycomb our hollow bones
and make them lighter

getting rid of–
making ourselves lighter
making ourselves light
and we fly
and we

Poem 20150829

crow1 Comment

beowulf had the wrong idea
fighting grendel
he should have let the
monster clear heorot’s hall
of those small men
scrambling like rats
with their small worries

but he had gazed before
into the eyes of leviathans
had liked the taste of it
and knew what he was getting into

he must have stared long
and hard into grendel’s eyes
while he wrenched that arm free
of its socket

and longer still into the eyes
of grendel’s poor, grief-stricken
mother

he spent a lifetime
swallowing one abyss
after another
and as an old man
when it came to time to fight
his last monster
it was the biggest beast
he could muster from his own
soul

a dragon
but all beowulf wanted at the end
was a proper burial
and one last look at his wealth

if he had spent his youth
looking into the eyes of birds
would he have sprouted wings
and flown

—–
“Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster… for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you.”

― Friedrich Nietzsche