Join us every Monday evening for drinks at the new Kos community political poetry club. Drop by and speak your mind in rhyme or blank verse. Let’s use language to scream our passion to the world. Bongos, berets and turtle neck sweaters are optional. The keypad is mightier than the sword.
This new weekly community diary is a poetry reading, a jam, a workshop and a classroom.
Formats
• Individual hosts presenting their own politically-themed poetry
• Theme diaries; for when we have collected enough original poetry on a particular theme
• Poetry worshops, including tips on how to make poetry work, how to choose words, how to decide whether to put it in form or use free verse, how to pump the brain when there is nothing there but writer’s block, and so on
• Presentations of a favorite conscientious poet’s work in the public domain
• Other ideas for diary formats are welcome
Comments
• Poetry and verse are always welcome in the comments
This week’s theme is dedicated to the Gulf of Mexcio, its shoreline and anything attached. The only thing is, everything is attached. Nothing is completely disconnected.
The two middle poems were recently put together from notes I wrote months ago. I often refer to my poetry as lyric-poems; lyric poetry according to the basic definition of lyric poetry, as well as poetry that could be construed as song lyrics. Some are structured, and some are not. All have some kind of music to them, but that music is still deep inside my head.
About this week’s offerings:
Dislocation as in Luxation (autumn 2005)
We were watching the aftermath of Katrina on the news, while the remnants of the storm leaked into the front room of the top floor apartment where we lived at the time. Tropical depression indeed. There is an illustrated version of the poem here.
Oleaginous Spring (January 2011)
In early May of last year we spent a long weekend on the North Carolina coast visiting my niece and nephew-in-law (he’s stationed at Camp LeJeune). One windy afternoon we went to the ocean to get sandblasted. Another day we went to Wilmington along the Cape Fear River. The background soundtrack to this weekend was the news from the Gulf weaving its way through the rivers and inlets and swamps and shoreline of North Carolina. I couldn’t separate the two locales, or any other coastal place I’ve been.
Heat Wave Hurricane (January 2011)
Abstract thoughts and images come together on poverty, geography, geology and weather. That, and my reccuring tornado dreams are coming back.
All is Quiet on the Southern Front (February 2011)
Move along. Nothing to see here anymore...
—
Dislocation as in Luxation
So what do you do
when there's no time to go
when the day before there was no way to leave
what do you do when the water is rising
much faster than you can barely escape
what do you do when the only thing
you've got left for yourself
in this soaking wet world
is you
what do you do
From shotgun shacks
to walk-up flats
signals beam from beacons
it rains and then it breaches
producing puddles twice the size
of half a state
while we sit here dry inside
and slowly watch the ceiling leak
The awesome wonder and terror
of the balancing act that is nature
made substantially worse
by the fallacy of certain men
who are at it again
Dislocation as in luxation
a crucial joint
a juncture split
a shift in shelter
dislodged, displaced
from community to itinerancy
an uprooted tree
the family name
but only if you're lucky
written on a label
and pasted to a suitcase
—
Oleaginous Spring
I know the Atlantic, I know the Pacific,
the eastern seaboard flows more familiar
sandy toes soaking in the lapping waves
of the northeast and mid-Atlantic
it is spring, like she once said, silent spring
with all those slaughtering currents
breaking in the southern sea
Puget Sound, Long Island Sound
ferries crossing either way
silent spring, cacophonous spring
the reverberations of oil drilling
oil spilling, oil gushing
continuous machinery churning
all that yelling, bus exhausting
someone coughing, something spitting up
I heard somewhere the earth is bleeding
a deep cut leaking abysmally
beneath a surface once aquamarine
this wound cannot be licked
all tangled in the complexity
of waterways and watersheds
when the oil starts oozing in
permeating a sordid saturation
I don’t know the Gulf of Mexico
I’ve been as close as Tampa station
back up the train to turn it around
or the headwaters of the Rio Grande
and the Albuquerque beachfront
lazy lazy river, never in any rush
not on any given day
As reeds pierce the borders of the slick orange sea
fish choke and birds become tarred while feathered
crustaceans drown in this oil-laden soup
nothing but wasted in this hideous goop
and we wonder where have we come from
to ponder reeds and egrets
counting up all our regrets
for this prolonged and brutal suffering
for this oleaginous spring
the fluid lace of Spanish moss
becomes a million funereal veils
dripping from every tree
—
Heat Wave, Hurricane
It’s so flat out here
you can reach your hand out
and pat pat pat the ground
Hardpan, kick the can
it costs so much more
to be poor
than it ever did before
Heat wave, hurricane
torrential rain
sogging wet plain
staining purple juice ripening
the crackling of familiar trees
with the bees buzzing off
to a distant elsewhere
a lone finger sinks
into a rotting pear
A dream last night
they’re coming back
an ocean roils
a small beachpocket
wave after wave
flipping over and under
the water rising
the inland twisters
tornados by the dozen
here they are again
Heat wave, hurricane
for as many that are going out to sea
that many more will rage at we
—
All is Quiet on the Southern Front
All is quiet on the southern front
no electronic waves crashing in
not a peep from a mellow marsh chicken
nothing but a quietly lapping shore
because, surely it is over
maybe unusual warmth or a little snow
but it’s over
nothing to see here
go home
Or disperse
through contaminated underwater currents
sea turtles, brown pelicans
marsh-dwelling fish
migratory songbirds and shorebirds
lingering far too long in the stinging muck
bluefin tuna with the blue flu
a diagnosis of cyanosis
barely living through chemistry
dispersal is not so easy after all
we cannot leave here
go home, disperse to another planet
Neptune won’t have us for what we have done
All is quiet on the southern front
so many have been silenced
so many are now dead
—
(All poems above ©2005-2011, Alexandria Levin)