This is for you. Not the poem, per se, but the blog post. Indeed. The poem is what I'm in the midst of working on this spring break (look at that - almost exactly one year from my last blog post), and I've really enjoyed working on a poem of substantial length for the first time in a long time. It's far from done, but here you go. (Please excuse the slightly off formatting. It was mostly preserved, but the poem is intended to be a little more horizontally condensed, so as to counter weird eye-jump syndrome.)
Zelly, I love the pants off you. I'm sorry I obsessively send you poems. ;)
-Emma
Cast of the Thunder Ballet
Kitty on the cutting board, minnow in the pot,
Are we going to Camelot?
No my child; hold your heart, and we will walk this way,
Come peek inside at the Thunder Ballet.
Everything I’ve ever had is being taken.
[Aside]
This life is short
and pleasures few
and holed the ship
and drowned the crew
but oh! but oh! how very blue
the sea is.
THE ACCUSED:
She, Lady Gossip, prodigal daughter, inheritor of my talents
and heiress to the straw blonde hair. Cut her,
and see how green and red she veiny bleeds.
He, the so-called God Man, who flits with such delight from light to bright light,
who nightly bemoans his soul and takes his pleasure
in the body of another girl.
When I was thirteen
the children in my neighborhood stripped the bark off of a tree until it died.
Definitions of fear {n}:
to walk through a nighttime, yellow-eyed and belt-cracked
to be never happy when you hear sweet music
to look into the trees
Enter Madam Fallapart
Child of lovely complication, to whom I cling
most tightly when she grows nearer, and hate
most vilely when she is far away.
The better loved firstborn, the best adorned .
Enter Sir Fairweather
He will ask to be let inside. It is never permissible
to blame this kind of boy.
The cycle rounds and rounds and rears its head of let me prove
that I am better (let me beat it into you), and let me also need your help.
I suppose it’s a lot.
Breathein breathout, the watching widow wisely winds.
;
My head is underwater and I’ve forgotten how to swim.
There is a depth at which
a floating object will sink.
It is not weight; but fate.
Picadilly, whoopsalilly, kissandkilly fair
What do I spy in the morning air?
Listen to drumsongs, harpsongs - something is aflute,
Washing the wine down the garbage shoot.
Sir _____! Lord _____!
Oh, but they will hear me not.
[Askance]
The stars I know
fall from great height
like wounded birds
when dark the night
but oh! but oh! how bright the flight
the sky sees.
Miss Melancholy lives in a dancer’s colony,
and at night they hear her coughing and know that someone
has broken her heart.
The Knight arrived at the castle during a storm
and without an umbrella. I do not understand
but we are glad to see him after so many years of crusades.
When twins are born the nurse wraps a red string
around the wrist of the eldest.
There was once a rainstorm so great it made the sea,
and when I go to sleep I dream upon it.
The lightning danced in the thunder ballet, a play
so delicate and heavy. Like trying to play chess with boulders; meaty feathers; alabaster roses.
Mr. Miracle wakes up early every day of the week
because he likes to run. He listens to any type of music
he likes to listen to. He likes animals.
His wife called me to tell me the medication
was like sunshine after a very long, cloudy day.
And then we laughed and laughed about poetry, and other people’s shoes.
(I enjoy them both.) But then
in those cigaretted moments of After, I remember:
There is a heat at which
a person will leap from the top window of a burning building.
It is not desire; but fire.
Penultimately: It is a hard things being a person.
A harder thing to know it’s the only thing you can.
(But this is not the hardest thing I will ever ask you to do.)
Once upon a raincoat in a kingdom too nearby,
Did the princess swallow the fly?
Steel nails in the oysters when we’re sucking back the brine;
Tragedy’s our play and the moral is time.
The code is binary: each day we die, or we do not.
[Askew]
The path is hard
and canyons deep
the valleys wide
and mountains steep
but oh! but oh! what wondrous sleep
the earth knows.
Our meeting was cinematic in such lights!camera! fashion,
but the drama has since faded to its grimy unscripted roots
until now, when I trust you, I trust you not.
You are fragile like a bird and strong like an animal bred to pull a plow.
You are trying to pour clear water into a broken glass.
You are more than you will ever know and I wish I could tell that to you.
I am hypochondriac Cassandra.
I always suspected Juliet knew the ending of her play.
Oh, what an ill-divining soul have I,
to think I see you as one dead in the bottom of a tomb.
The earth will kiss your face
But I hope it does not kiss you today.
There is a height at which
my love will not be enough.
( I am so afraid that I will blink and you will go away. )
Table of Contents
Our Lady Flirt and Hawthorne’s Preacher............................Yesterday
Madam Chaos and the Child..........................................Only At Night
Miss Melancholy and the Knight................................When Necessary
Mr. and Mrs. Miracle.......................................Maybe Later This Week
The Angel and the Oracle.........................................................Always
Stir with a spoon. Serve chilled and distilled over ice.
THAT is the cast of creatures on my mind;
they come with hooves that press upon my rounded jelly eyes
my full stomach
my freely given swollen heart until
I love them.
[Epilogue]
And then eventually,
the questions that come like the ghosts breathed on the window pane:
What do you know
and
how could you?
