i miss:
nachos
the great lakes
daily interraction with children
a season without mosquitos
music shows
hot chocolate
baking cookies
slippers, a coat, and a cigarette
heaps of covers
cajun spices



i don't miss:
driving
memorizing lines
local news
thinking about one language at a time
wearing boots
beer
that van
unthawing feet
fast food drive thrus
socks

ALPHABET POEMS

Uses letters as points of departure for lines or whole poems.

exercise uno

Write a poem just from the way the letter looks.

WHO ARE YOU. CROOKED Z?

Scurrying down the steps

your keys wait by the door

next in line
your wallet waits in the pocket
of another coat.

exercise dos
write a 26 letter poem with a-z as the first letters of each word.

bold catastrophes drip energy.
forget gain.
hold instances judiciously
(karma.)
like monkeys navigate
orangutan prairies.
(quite.)
red supermodels
trust underwear
(vixens.)
witchdoctor xenophobes yell zulu.

acrostics one and two

First letters in each line make a word, phrase, or sentence.

Exercise Uno:

Single Acrostic

Write a word/phrase/sentence down the side and then try to fill in the words. Best written at top speed.

BABY SITTER

Of course we don’t know much;
next to nothing, only the vaguest details,
we might say.

Across oceans of ambivalence,
roads, winding around passion,
did we stop to breathe? Did
we once take a moment, and,
earnestly, count what has been
made or what had been destroyed?
Are we made to worship this
reality? On the dining-room
chair: hardened macaroni, a golden
hair, a sticky blob of warm vanilla.

Exercise Dos

Double Acrostic

Make a phrase on both sides of the line


another girl has
negotiated with a guru:
drug dealing aphrodisiac
of a part-time patch
the man did not know
her heart, ripped into
ephemeral fleets of promise
revealed only to the greats

Abstract Poem III

Exercise tres

Take an existing poem and take out enough words so it makes no sense but the words sound cool


4th of July

(Version One)

the world's in flame
or so it seems
i hear cannons and popcorn
two neighborhoods away
i see red and blewdust and smoke crawls
over pines and maples
and oaks in bloom
surrounding my subdivision
this is not war, this is
celebration, the grand finale now
mimics the more exuberant display
over windsor, hart plaza, for fearless
crowds who've dared to cross
the city line. canada and states uniteto salute the flags that stream behind
jets above the river tonight
explosives equal freedomwe are free

mysterious creation
the sliver of pink haze moon
still glows. you can find it
somehow still more spectacular


(Version Two:)

this is not war,
this is the grand finale.

fear crowds salute:
explosives equal freedom.

(mysterious creation of pink haze moon
somehow more spectacular)

Abstract Poem II

Exercise dos
Take a poem by you or someone else and change most of the words:
Count the nouns, verbs, and adjectives. List these parts of speech in numbers equal to that in the poem. Replace the corresponding words in the poem. You can play around with the choices and modify the verbs appropriately.

(from ee )

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any--lifted from the no
of allnothing--human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

--
(verbs(12): grow, find, search, greet, hate, heal, snuff, reach, teach, grasp, cut, quit
nouns (20): blanket, queen, perfume, alligator, novel, feather-duster, scythe, prayer, pain, top-hat, passageway, nation, steamboat, snowflake, ladybug, amulet, talisman, wrinkle, timepiece, swirl
adj (14): gray, withered, stooped, crunchy, stiff, lackadaisical, carefree, ephemeral, caustic, roundabout, grand, lofty, equivocal, soft)
--

i find You God for most this stiff
top-hat: for the searching crunchy passageways of scythes
and a withered soft steamboat of pain; and for everything
which is grand which is equivocal which is yes

(i who have taught and am caustic again today,
and this is the nation's talisman; this is the amulet
queen of prayer and of ladybugs and wrinkles: and of the stooped
ephemeral feather-duster carefree timepiece)

how should greeting hating grasping cutting
healing any—growing from the blanket
of perfume--alligator merely reaching
snowflake lackadaisical You?

(now the swirl of my swirls roundabout and
now the novel of my novels is gray)

Poetry Forms

(I am going through my mom's book of poetry forms. I was doing this before, in the US, but lost my disk with them on it. Woe was me... Luckily, I had posted many on this blog. Since moving halfway across the world lends itself as a nice fresh start, I decided to go through the forms again, from the beginning.

Feel free to take the forms and experiment with them. High heavenly rankings to those who post their poems in the comment section...)


1. ABSTRACT POEM

Experiments of pattern and sound
The meaning is secondary to the sound of the word
Can also be abstract based on density of images

Exercise Uno take a word and say it over and over until it loses its meaning so then the mind is focused on sound. Then write whatever comes to mind because of the sounds.

(Word choice: peanut)

The Plexiglas crack of finery
spews gross pleas into cherry tree smiles. The girls
forgot to love the sticky canvass of personality
and whisk the brisk bunny away. Many swish
across the velvet mud; the whole of happiness
stirs pudding in wooden hate, crying out to woven
pitfalls. Stopping. Cursing
the swords of saints,
generosity seeps deep into bowls of lemons.

saai can mean left, sand, or late, depending on tone * the cup i'm drinking out of says: If you want a wicked time/then Amy is the one/Because she's really funky/and flippen loads of fun! * There is a blue flower painted on the back of the cat Joel sent me from MexicoTOWN * I can still wear flip flops * I always buy the wrong drink because I don't read labels carefully enough to find that the contents are written in English somewhere on there too * Eating Thai pineapple is a sort of rebirth * P'George spelled Sinderlela like that * I have my own room * My mind is expanding * I'm eating a chocolate covered bread stick and when an officemate handed it to me she said, "pock-EE" because it's called Pockey * I have a blue ink spot right above my writer's bump because I had a leaky pen when I prayed this morning... through ink * I don't have to impress anyone * I'm not driving and don't pay for car insurance * I eat Indian food everyday for 20 baht a plate, in someone's front "yard" * P'Nui always says "closely" when she means "close," so to her, something is always "closely to" something else. * My friend May has the most mischeivous laugh I've ever heard and it is loud * Pink is not a feminine color in Thailand * Being a transvestite is perfectly acceptable here * I don't have to prepare for auditions anymore * I have three poetry braids going on at once and they are good for me * My relationship with God is not abstract * Thais believe that if your spoon hits someone elses at dinner (when you're both taking soup from the same bowl because everyone shares the same bowl) that means you will have a visitor and for some reason that's a bad thing * I have enough

Song For Joel

(guitar picking includes what sounds like a clock chime... hurray)

I wait for the clock
There are better things to do
learn the language, or sleep
write a letter to you

I wait for a prayer
confirmation song, a dream
Walk across an ocean
wake a faithless scream

I wait for the silence
when words are not required
just a sigh, from time
a whine: I'm tired

I wait for surprise
hope I'll not expect
so much I'm disappointed
and don't want what I get

I wait for a selah
a break into a twist
when nothing can be questioned
when no one can be missed.