I want to write you poetry (couplets)

I want to write you poetry,
but earnestness is hard for me.

Instead, I ask you if you've eaten,

show you other things I've written,

cheer you on from the back row

and hold your hand after the show.

We laugh at silly inside jokes,

mimic hoots and baas and croaks,

wave cheekily across the tracks

with dance still in our legs and backs.

I laugh because you always bring

too many sweaters. And here's the thing—

I want to show you what I write,

so even if these aren't quite

the lovely words of poets past

I think I'll show you this at last,

for I want to write you poetry

though earnestness is hard for me.

lingua franca

You said you used to hate our common tongue
before we met. But we have no other, so
you call it back from books abandoned
in earlier days. You’re better than you know,

improvising verbs that disagree
with subject words we pilfered from another
language to begin with. Your previous dislike
did not keep this language out altogether.

Should we part, I wonder if in anger
you would throw this language out again,
like the belongings of a lover no longer.
Boxes left to fall apart in the rain.

Yet this is not my language either,
except that history foisted it on me and
I claimed it out of need, as you do now.
I didn’t have the luxury of making a stand

against it as you did. And so, for you
this language is linked to me, and sometimes
monolingual strangers are shocked I wield
their language well enough to write these rhymes.

neighbourly behaviour (quatern)

We’re all one happy family.
We should always help who we can,
including that woman having
a psychotic episode on

the sidewalk. Call the ambulance.
We’re all one happy family.
The emergency room surely
will be kind to that woman and

she’ll get out of that hospital
feeling safe and cared for, because
we’re all one happy family,
so my fears for her are baseless.

The smirking first responders can
be trusted to treat her as their
fellow man. You made the right call.
We’re all one happy family.
___

Having complicated feelings about an incident last night in which a friend and I had different ideas about the best course of action.

marc antony, remixed (roundel)

They tell me Brutus is an honourable man,
that Caesar was ambitious. But did you ever see –
in his charity and tears for the poor – this ambition?
They tell me

Caesar has paid for ambition. Perhaps, but three
times is too many to refuse a crown and
still be called ambitious. You all loved him, happy

to call him king. Don’t mind my tears. I’ve no plan
to praise Caesar when Brutus means to bury
him. And sure, Brutus is an honourable man,
or so they tell me.

____


Many thanks to old Bill for lending me his ears words.

hyperlink (acrostic/blank verse)

Remember as you read this that you love me.
It may be easy to forget in rage.
Cool it, I say, as you seethe and your
knuckles turn white. You’re far away and neither
rail nor road can bring you here to punch me
on the nose, as I deserve, right in my
laughing face. Read, and remember that I
love you too, for all my impish ways.
___

For a friend whom I love to affectionately bother <3

oceans apart (two nonets)

Nothing as poetic as a fish,
you said. You were talking about
the way they live, their vast homes,
their diversity of
colour and shape. You

caught all this

when you

drew.

I thought instead of us. I hope we
disprove the faithless parable
of the fish and the bird in
love. There is poetry
in defiance. My
hand in yours, I
ask you, where
shall we
live?

verb forms (haibun)

In Marathi, the word for solving, as used for math problems, is सोडवणे. I found this unusual as a child because this is also the word for untangling. Solving a math problem is a series of steps that takes you from a knotty problem to a solution, something dissolved, not tied together.

My main association with this word was to hair being combed out until it was no longer tangled. Like a math problem, long tangled hair can be split into sections and methodically untangled. Vertical sections to give one only a little to work with at a time. Horizontal sections created naturally by the comb as it pushes the tangles slowly down until they dissolve into nothing at the tips of the hair.

सोडणे, on the other hand, means to let go. The additional consonant in सोडवणे means that it literally translates to “to cause to be let go.” But सोडणे has a more immediate connotation, without the process, or the distance between the subject and the one letting go. One untangles hair, causing each strand to be unwound from the others, while one simply, easily, lets go of things held in one’s own hand.

This word can also mean dropping someone off somewhere. घरी सोडणे is to drop someone home, to take them there and then go away, to have them relatively move away from you because you are leaving. And the same phrase can be used for something left behind – let go of – at home.

We move now from subject to object. Whatever is let go of – the knot, the person, the object – has escaped or been left behind. This is सुटणे, the same verb as before, but now applied to a different part of the sentence and so changed.

The common confusion of lose/loose finds solace here. Something may be set loose. Unbound and unpackaged objects may be sold loose. The stays or bonds that hold something together are loosened, and one loses what was held in fingers that were too loose to grasp it tight enough.

One can let go of anger and feel a loosening of the heart. राग सोड, you might tell someone, in hopes that it will set them free – तू सुटशील – you will escape. This last phrase is also used for someone about to win a game in which the goal is to get rid of all one’s cards. When a player wins by losing their cards, they may exclaim, सुटलो!

There is the question of whether one escaped or was let go of, but Marathi manages to do both in active voice by deftly switching subject and object in context, in a manner that feels less clunky than in English’s subject-hungry sentence structure. Marathi is content with just an object, if that is all we have, and so we get सोडलं कि सुटलं – who acted in this event? Whose fault, or whose agency?

And then there is सुट्टी, a holiday, when you are let loose, have been let go of by your obligations and all the problems you have to solve.

math problems and
formal rhyming poetry
methodical untangling

breath (bref double)

The mazurka is not an easy dance.

Your head is far too full of threes

and fours. Habit prompts a step

at every beat. But wait –

Don’t take the bait just yet. Listen

to that sliding note, a chance

to embellish when the music breathes.

Shift your weight –

You are not off kilter, but together

spinning surprise into fluidity,

fording lacunae with ease

until it feels innate –

No surplus steps in this trance

with elided beats and swaying knees.

research (shakespearean sonnet)

I’m reading about plants once more.

I left botany behind in school.

But now, a tendril to explore

the field. And maybe I’ll unspool

the personhood we closely guard –

we feel, we speak, we think, and act.

There’s little thought for those we’ve barred,

as we refuse to see as fact

the lives of those who cannot talk

to tell us their own mind. In learning

about sentience, I saw philosophy walk

home to science. Like roots, turning

towards water, my mind reaches for

any field that will tell me more.

after the show (curtal sonnet)

I thank the drag queen as she leaves the stage.

She had perched upon a bar stool and,

amid abandoned corsetry, she’d said

that drag, for her, was an antidote to rage,

to ward off those who didn’t understand

that she was free and loved, while they’d been fed

lies about the people she called family.

But in this bar, a soft place to land,

I see her lift her chin and look ahead.

“Great show,” I say as she passes me,

“Thank you.”

mr nobody, kitchen edition (rondine)

there's no food left in the kitchen.

someone's been eating it all. though

I buy more each week: flour for dough,

fruits, milk, cucumber, chicken,

chocolate for cravings unbidden —

I stock the shelves, the fridge, its door,

and yet, though it should not be so,

there's no food left.

 

the one who's eating it is brazen,

and does not care that I must go

restock food that I didn't eat, no.

not me. it's a ghost, I'm certain.

sigh - there's no food left.

 

---

(This poem brought to you by my great surprise every time I need to get groceries. That's today - wish me luck! My apologies to the original - and ironically, anonymous - writer of Mr Nobody.)

 

books to talk about tomorrow (flamenca)

heavy linguistics books

you lent to me after

we talked of schwas, morphemes,

the way our tongues shape sounds,

fricatives and laughter

 

a walk to talk about

nothing. bicycles, fries,

false Irishness. time

enough to take in your

handmade scarf, your grey eyes

ballroom (villanelle)

spin around, darling, dance with me
the harp, the flute, the violin
a waltz is easy - one, two, three

moving through this ballroom, we
forget what’s next or where we’ve been
spin around, darling, dance with me

I may not know you, but you see,
in this embrace we're almost kin
a waltz is easy - one, two, three

we move in wordless unity.
I bask in your laugh as I twirl you in
spin around, darling, dance with me

the music slows and so do we
moving closer, skin on skin
a waltz is easy - one, two, three

we step a footwork filigree.
before this ends, will you spin,
spin around, darling, dance with me?
a waltz is easy - one, two, three

socks

knitting the last row

as the sun comes up

autoplay enabled

delay

As the train pulled into the station

The driver got very impatient.

I yelled, "Not again!

Away goes my train!

That's fine - I'll extend my vacation."