Day 46 of #the100dayproject - Ritual

Ritual

And so he prays behind me,

Completely bare, naked,

In his purest form

A statue of vulnerability.

His skin itself a prayer

His body the body of god.

Elevated by the vermillion

And the nutmeg nuts

Painted with grains of rice.

Each one of them a planet

Orbiting his body, his nakedness

The center of a humble husk

Of bone and blood, his hair

Curling outward, a universe

In each inky strand.

Day 45 of #the100dayproject - Sight

Sight 

The scent of flowers would hold a soft tone,

A music, a humming that captures color

Behind my eyelids.

Even when I am blind,

The world will be visible in flashes of light,

An aura that is beyond sight, only seen

When I close my eyes.

Day 44 of #the100dayproject - Shame, Shame

Shame, Shame

The weather is titanium, clouds unbreakable,

the tops of the evergreens cannot puncture through

the day’s armor. The monotony of sleep and breath,

building up like the scales of soap scum on

the brushed nickel faucet. Everything can be made

into a guise of protection. My words can move around

you as if to keep you safe, but they are the horse

outside of Troy, a mane made of driftwood and nails.

I am not what I say, I am what is inside, a sword

that hungers for so much undoing.

Day 43 of #the100dayproject - Old Flames

Old Flames

I am wheat leaning with the wind, the untouched earth, waiting to be opened like a zipper.

Root and burrow, the tunnels and network maps of creatures inside of me.

My scent like the big sky, tastes a cold glass of water;

I am all of these things. I never had old flames

that fanned out to torch the prairies of my body, scar me burnt or sad.

I want only one man to wonder my vast spaces and move through

my endless fields, his hands touching each tassel of grass

gentle, coaxing as if to draw me out and tame my infinite fervor,

to quench my wild thirst.

Day 42 of #the100dayproject - Moon as Aged Cheese

Moon as Aged Cheese

The moon is milk curdled with a couple

drops of lemon. It once sprawled

like the milky way; a spilled bucket

of milk across the sky. A squirt of citrus

brought it together into the shape

of a curdled globe, a head of cheese.

I raise it out of the vast vat

of space, that black ink brine

of salt and meteorite. I take a bite

from it, ripe with gravity. The mass of its

flavor, floral, ribboned with silver mold,

bitter, creamy. I will pair it with andromeda

in my stemmed wine glass, swirl the galaxy

and sip its aroma, the taste of black holes and

rolling the fragrance of deepest space, silence

casked and barreled, the universe a cellar,

cool and damp, storing away the flavors

of earth, planet, and shooting star.

Day 41 of #the100dayproject - Internal Labor

Internal Labor

I am a stethoscope of hearing,

My ear curved internally to listen

To the sound of my neck muscles

Stretching, relaxing, creaking

Like the sound of evergreens

As the wind sends them listing

Against themselves. I can hear

The sound of ear wax as it cracks

And pops, the pressure like

A release of a soda can tab,

Suction and bubbles, or plastic

Packaging, taking a whole mass

Of it in hand and wringing

Until every cell bursts at once.

All the sounds move to the rhythm

Of my blood, pulsing. My heart

Beat overshadows any other sound,

Even the engulfing wave of vibration

From my throat swallowing, the ripple

Effect of my vertebrae clicking

In my neck. My internal motions

How red and endearing, to listen

To my body glisten through its

Daily work, expanding and contracting

Itself in a routine of janitorial work

The cleaning and healing,

The endless hours of upkeep.

Day 40 of #the100dayproject - When I Take Another Form

When I Take Another Form

I am baking in my kitchen,

the heat from the oven pinching

my face into a sourdough loaf.

This day is a type of lynching

where the hot element glows,

a brand that can alter my skin.

Written words are too much

some ingredients are missing

inside of me, inside this body.

I am comprised of fiction

and if proofed and baked

I will turn to stone,

my heart encased

in my body’s prison.

Day 39 of #the100dayproject - Matunuck Beach

Matunuck Beach

Any time I walk towards the ocean

I feel the sand buff and

peel away the layers

of my armor. I want to be raw

from the salt in my wounds

taste the grit in my teeth.

When I lay myself down onto

the beach, my body is a letter

written to the ocean, tucked away

into an envelope of sand,

stamped by a beach towel,

addressed to the tide, sea foam

and conical shells that house

a body of a creature, not unlike myself.

Day 38 of #the100dayproject - Road Work

Road Work

They ripped up the road, but the road was still good.

A long crack had formed a fissure where small tufts

Of grass rooted themselves between the asphalt.

The steel grates, rusted well, held up to every foot,

Tire and storm. The water drains painted sky blue,

The paint peeled and chipping. It grew cracks,

Just like my eyes started to show lines like start bursts.

A sign of experience, the middling age, hints of pain

And gray come subtle, but can still be hidden

as if old age can be tucked away, dyed, stuffed

in a drawer, forgotten until an earthquake sections

a road like how a surgeon cracks open a sternum.

It’s better to bare a white flag of surrender,

Relieve ourselves of our weapons and useless armor.

Day 37 of #the100dayproject - Spring

Spring

The diaphanous lives of plant

and tree, their desires,

their pleasures, mysteries.

Rose, lilac, magnolia, cherry;

they mingle with one another

their cocktails of pollen,

fibers and molecules of sex,

genitalia and fragrance.

Of course it’s all a dance,

a language; the wind

a carriage to give them

speech. Attempt

to reach out, touch

one another, entangle

their branches and bodies

as if they could lift

themselves and be free.

Day 36 of #the100dayproject - Hive

Hive

A paper brown bag stuck in the branches of a tree

                                                                                      Or

Old bark curling off into muslin pearls

                                                                        Maybe

Dead leaves gathered into a bunch, stuck

                             In the intersection of trunk and branch

Instead

The fine walled architecture of a wasp’s nest

                             Blending in with the bark of the tree

The wasp, with its segmented head, drank

                                           From puddles and mud,

Spit its nest into a thin form, paper clay

                             Such craft from its mouth

The entrance to the hive like a gaping hole

                                                            O, surprised

                                                            O, humming

                                                            O, screaming

O, mouth that licks the hole, the buzz, tongue and mandible,

O, chews the meat of the earth, carnivorous

                                                                       

Day 35 of #the100dayproject - A Poetry Reading

For my day 35, I was working on reading three of my poems for a video. I uploaded this as a request from The Heartland Review to share with their poetry community. "Black Hills Gold" won first place of the 2020 Joy Bale Boone Poetry Prize and "Portrait in Gray" was a finalist.

Day 34 of #the100dayproject - Just a Thought

Just a Thought

I want to be forgiven

For the parts of me

That continue to unspool

And fray. I want to be

Forgiven for the raggedness

Of my edges, the imperfections.

Sometimes I want to be

Forgiven for being me.

But I sometimes want

To be the one forgiving;

I’m not the only one

That is on this earth

struggling to find my way.

Day 33 of #the100dayproject - Skykomish

Skykomish

The snowmelt river

Submerged boulders,

Funneled into

The depths of the

River bed. White

Is the color of its

Rage and what

Else can I do

But attempt to ride

Its anger, kayak through

Its emotions,

Move along its surface

Like and oak leaf,

And break through

Its rapid heartbeat,

Deposited in the smooth

Glass of its calm waters.

Day 32 of #the100dayproject - Antiquity

Antiquity

a person thins to a point

where even their bones

move beneath the flesh,

strange animals, dolphins

and monsters under

the ocean of skin until

the person winnows away

and all that is left are

the animals picked clean,

butterfly and fish, beautiful

collections, the museums

hidden within us.

Day 31 of #the100dayproject - Silhouette

Silhouette

a crow lands outside my window,

insect in its beak, swallows and parts

the morning with its caw, caw, caw.

a crow never wants to be a rooster.

a crow is what it is, it never dreams

of anything else. all of our striving

we are hungry for the carrion

of our bodies, to bring us closer

to our untimely death, and the crow

will be there, not to wake us like

a rooster, but to crow as a crow crows,

to warn that worms will bite,

that even the flies will sting.

a crow knows what we taste like

without pecking our bones clean;

we taste like a grub, those cut-worms

that burrow into squash roots then

shed their old body into a new body

leaving the remains mixed in the earth.

a crow knows the smell of us

when we are close to that border,

the in between when we are

no longer a body, but not yet its food,

but when we are moving from human

to ylem, our atoms shifting into

our next phase.

Walt Whitman

Do I contradict myself?

Very well then I contradict myself,

(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

-Leaves of Grass,

Book III Song of Myself,

Walt Whitman

Everyone in the US has heard of him. Some may know the name, but not his occupation. But even the name Whitman rings a bell with people who do not know his poetry. Walt Whitman was a witness to his times, and his writings and poetry are the vehicle of his history and the people of that time’s history. People who’ve read his work could say it is superfluous and long winded, but I disagree.

His poetry exists for praise. He praises the living and the dead. He praises the rich and poor, the virtuous and the criminal, prostitutes and virgins. He leaves no one out. He showers love and attention on everyone, indiscriminately, and accepts everyone just as he accepts his own body, his faults, and his own inevitable death. For him, no topic was off limits. He wrote about God, the soul, sex, foreign countries, and equality for all sexes and races.

In my exploration of Leaves of Grass, I found that his writing is meant to be cherished and savored. The slower I read his writing, the more inspiration and appreciation I have for his detailed work. His work has brought new inspiration to my own life and has introduced new topics and broken down boundaries and preconceived notions that I never realized I had. He has forced me to look at myself and my writing and love every detail and every flaw. He has given me the courage to improve. So many of his poems and passages exhibit such simple but profound observations of his world and of human nature. And now that I have read his work, I feel that I understand more of the world that I live in.

So without any hesitation, I dedicate my first April post to Whitman and I will proceed with a few excerpts from Leaves of Grass that I enjoyed the most.

As Adam Early in the Morning

  As Adam early in the morning,

  Walking forth from the bower refresh'd with sleep,

  Behold me where I pass, hear my voice, approach,

  Touch me, touch the palm of your hand to my body as I pass,

  Be not afraid of my body.

The fact that the subject of the poem is Adam, most like the Adam from Eden, his first thoughts when he fell from God’s graces was shame of his body. In embarrassment, he reaches for a fig leaf to cover his nakedness and hide what makes him human.

However, Whitman praises the body. Many passages throughout the book describe in great deal the touching and feeling of faces and limbs and of the beauty of movement while people work, play or have sex. And the last line of this excerpt shows that most people are afraid of others and afraid of their own body. Afraid of the unknown and afraid to break free from what they are taught. The narrator implores almost tries to persuade and seduce Adam to touch him. In a way, Adam is being tempted away from his shame and embarrassment.

Book VI, Salut au Monde! (Praise the World!)

All you continentals of Asia, Africa, Europe, Australia, indifferent

      of place!

  All you on the numberless islands of the archipelagoes of the sea!

  And you of centuries hence when you listen to me!

  And you each and everywhere whom I specify not, but include just the same!

  Health to you! good will to you all, from me and America sent!

  Each of us inevitable,

  Each of us limitless—each of us with his or her right upon the earth,

  Each of us allow'd the eternal purports of the earth,

  Each of us here as divinely as any is here.

This passage is self-explanatory, but it sums up much of what Whitman tries to explain in his writing. He describes that no one is greater or better than another, no God, person, or animal. All are divine and beautiful. All have a purpose and a right to the Earth. I love this piece because the last stanza clarifies what he wishes to impart on his readers. He is upfront and unapologetic and one must remember the age when he wrote Leaves of Grass. Stating that everyone is divine would be considered blasphemy in the eyes of 1800s America immersed in a religious awakening.

Book III, Song of Myself

You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through

      the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books,

  You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,

  You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.

In such eloquent words, he states don’t believe anything anyone says, not even what he says. Only listen and then decide what you believe and decide who you are without the influence of others. For me, this passage closely speaks to writing style and the topic of concern for many writers; the fear of sounding like their favorite authors. Whitman implores you to look at the world through your own eyes and see it, observe it, and experience it so that you can fully become yourself. His advice holds true for the writer. As long as we stay true to our experiences, we will stay true to our unique styles and bring forth original and engaging work.

If you're interested in reading Leaves of Grass, you can read it for free here on Project Gutenberg.