Friday, December 12, 2008

A sort of ...

This post is from September 2006. I posted a link last night, but I'm bumping it up by itself because I think people should see the comments. I think this is one of the most i9nteresting things that has happened on this blog and exemplifies an outstanding feature of the internet.

... Inquiry
(with apologies to Wallace Stevens)
Presume the poem to be
A ripened fruit upon a page,
Like a pear upon a plate,
Sliced and splayed,
Seeds discarded.

Beads of nectar
Grace its flesh.

The poem remains
Intact and seedless.

Stem and blossom,
Leaf and root
Precede the pear.

What precedes the poem?
Comments in verse preferred, but not required.
Update: I thought I should make it explicit that I was thinking of Wallace Stevens when I wrote the above. As for comments, a good but modest start. Come one, Internet poets, weigh in.
Update II: Now we're startin' to roll. Keep 'em comin'.

27 comments:

  1. Anonymous2:32 PM

    An image,
    planted in the brain;
    fruit perfume,
    activated by rain.

    An itch,
    to close the gaps
    between dense orb in hand
    and tingling synapse.

    --i timed it: a 47 second poem. took me longer to type it here. And my son ate the last pear we had... Damn.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I can't write in verse
    But what I thought would come first
    Before the poem,
    Would be the thought

    ReplyDelete
  3. Heat and thirst, the perfect
    shade, a ramshackle
    ladder propped, the drone of bees, waiting.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Carelessly discarded, a seed may find
    fertile earth, germinate, mature
    over time into the flourishing
    tree that gives forth fruit—
    a pear, plucked with wonder
    by the knowing hand.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Anonymous6:46 PM

    When a poet's cut,
    he bleeds in verse;
    drops lines of words
    upon the page.

    What event precedes
    this purgative verseletting?
    Why, that which cuts
    the poet's brain.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Anonymous7:09 PM

    sometimes the merest
    little seeds lies soaking
    unnoticed in loamy mud
    having wintered
    leaf fall, snow,
    the hunger of finches,
    we are no more aware of it
    than the husks of old grass
    even the germination itself
    is invisible in layers
    of life among weeds
    until one morning
    we see the full golden blossom
    and are awed at a miracle
    of sponteneity

    ReplyDelete
  7. My bad poetic thought of the day:

    Before the Word

    An hour's not enough, nor two.
    A thought, the seed, the fruit
    should stew.

    Careless seasoning makes
    naught but sticky jam
    or transforms the sweet
    into pickled ham.

    Gardens grow, flourish
    with tender hand and soil.
    The fruit, the food, the flower
    zenith over scientific toil.

    The ferment of the poet's fruit
    relieves itself of sugar and haste.
    Better than the flesh, the taste
    of a perfectly aged brew.

    ReplyDelete
  8. All that Abel bled into the earth,
    the secrets and dreams
    our dead took with them,

    the transforming, once more,
    of the soul in the earth--

    visions of what should have been,
    signs to follow,
    apportioned up through roots and vines,

    what kings thought they killed
    and tyrants tortured to death,
    and paradigms shifted away from--

    back like mystic weeds,
    for another shared taste.

    ReplyDelete
  9. on the plate

    pip called seed called stone called pit
    shadow hulled to calyxed heart
    dare and dares this skin to split
    fruitless care from prickling start
    further: peel the morning's dry
    juice the midhours for what they're
    worth - maraudering nearby
    midday masks a thankless pair
    skin so like flesh it barely
    misses handling; sink teeth to wishes
    lips cannot trust a scarcely
    bitten truth. Sweet! You are semi- smitten
    by being turned outside in - all ruse
    where softer men would risk to loose

    ReplyDelete
  10. Anonymous5:18 PM

    Rain and rot,
    not
    too little or too much sun,
    a seed blown
    from another hill,
    shat from a sparrow's vent, or shed
    by a ground-rolling dog,
    black loam, streaked sand
    and hardpan clay,
    and time, a season or two,
    a life,
    a century, an age,
    a day.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Before the poem was
    the darkness,
    a cold underskin of pear,
    a softness so dense
    the uncreated light
    took its hard edge
    elsewhere,
    hovering on a word

    until the word begat
    a taste, and taste begat
    a mood, and mood begat
    a poem, and the poem
    was the pear, but now
    different from before.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Anonymous10:20 PM

    A poet
    tastes an apple
    in words,
    a painter
    in colors,
    a composer
    in sound.

    "Bite me,"
    says the apple
    just by being.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Anonymous11:51 AM

    What precedes the poem?

    The chicken
    precedes the poem
    to chickens.

    The pear seed
    follows the egg
    about seeds.

    The poem
    brings a chicken
    to the seeds.

    Even the egg
    or chicken.
    Poems and pear seeds.

    ReplyDelete
  14. too many have sang
    verses sweet
    of what precedes
    in perfect beat

    I add no more
    a humbled soul
    by words that
    make the puzzle whole

    except to say,
    congrats you all
    beautifully done
    you've heeded the call

    ReplyDelete
  15. What precedes the poem?

    I think...
    A thought from God
    an angels tear
    pear shaped
    as it drops from
    heaven
    to touch the heart
    of the poet
    there
    so he can
    contemplate
    the pear

    ReplyDelete
  16. Anonymous5:45 PM

    Upon the plate
    Rests my fate
    Will I be ate?

    Or merely ingested
    Without being digested

    And from where I sit
    It will come out like ………

    ReplyDelete
  17. 'Me' said the worm
    'I started the chain
    tilling the earth
    for inspiring rain'

    'Twas I' said the bee
    'carrying pollen to invoke the flower
    to end with the seed
    and give words the power'

    'It was me' said the bird
    'I carried the seed, small and round
    laying ideas upon the ground'

    'No' said the sun
    'it was surely me
    I ripened the thought
    that made you see'

    'Yes' laughed the wordsmith
    'all are true
    nothing would happen
    if it wasn't for you
    my eyes would not see
    my fingers stiff
    life needs to happen
    to receive this gift'

    ReplyDelete
  18. Anonymous9:58 PM

    Book Of Days

    Wet land
    swallows brown cracks.
    Mossy interlopers
    tailor through paths of brick and mock
    ivy.

    Ivy
    creeps in twisted
    brocade through pointed eaves
    and split gutters. Age weaves weathered
    shutters

    Shutters
    wave shingles and
    ruffle borders. Moles swell
    through sinking plots where chapters lie
    scattered.

    ReplyDelete
  19. What precedes the poem?

    A dry mouthed cry,
    spots on the carpeted stairs -
    coffee or flea blood -
    a girl in camo
    waving from the curb,
    a girl in camera, thirty-five years
    text messaging from her bunker -
    plywood doors, canvas shelves -
    and where's the loo today,
    and the wastebasket
    with its sparkling seahorses?
    The doula with her warm towels -
    she'll remember, yes! Her number
    is at the Maple Ridge Cemetery, engraved
    beneath the bell-pull. Do do,
    la la, the poet and the girl danced
    when the man was gone,
    left all the lights on, let the dog
    into the kitchen where he spread
    out over the warm tiles and snorted -
    it's all there in the linen books,
    acid-free ... it begins
    with a cat's rough tongue
    licking the writer's cheek.

    ReplyDelete
  20. Anonymous8:02 AM

    Emboss the snowflake
    while the cold remains,
    a verse is as vulnerable --
    spreading to all domains.

    ReplyDelete
  21. What precedes a poem?

    Blossoms begin with seed.
    Most seed needs earth, earth water,
    warmth and light.

    Pre-seed, great heat
    forced out - big BANG!

    Pre-heat? Is faith
    great things are made of plans.

    -blue

    ReplyDelete
  22. Anonymous2:46 PM

    A memory floods the brain,
    fruit trees, quivering
    in the wind and Mama
    on the ladder, promising
    pies and cakes and jams.

    The clean white plate
    the paring knife and
    my watering mouth make
    the picture complete.

    And afterward, the words
    about all this are found
    like the taste that lingers
    in my mouth.

    ReplyDelete
  23. I'm posting this for IVOR (poeticpiers from The Waters)

    From whence the inspiration comes.
    I neither know nor do I care.
    I hear the beat of distant drums
    rousing memories hard to bear.
    I find writing a therapy.
    A private self analysis,
    which leads to me becoming free
    from guilt ridden paralysis.
    Your train of thought contains it all
    these words must surely strike a chord
    within the hearts of poets:All
    then become of one accord.
    We can concede that dreams precede.
    The pen.the paer and the screed.

    ReplyDelete
  24. Anonymous9:56 AM

    If we are permitted more than one...

    Likened to an earthquake
    when magma builds till
    the breaking point; until
    rocks split from the intense
    heat, and lava flows, burning
    a path down the mountain.
    So words are thrust upward
    and rain down upon the page.
    My creation comes from feeling
    the heat.

    ReplyDelete
  25. Anonymous6:06 PM

    Fruition

    Suck the sweetness
    of dried fruit
    raisins, apricots, and prunes.
    This is the poem.

    Smell the new grass,
    the citrus sharpness—
    this was the idea.

    ReplyDelete
  26. Let it be a seed

    OK, let it be a seed
    or the plum that dropped its thought
    onto warming ground, or need
    let it be what need has brought

    to the plum that dropped its thought
    in the orchard with its nests and roots.
    Let it be what need has brought
    to the plate - the egg that's fruit

    from the orchard with its nests and roots
    to this room all shadowed and dark
    for the plate, the egg that's fruit
    and its broken yolk and its yellow heart

    There's this room, all shadowed and dark
    where the great muse roosts and the ovum sing
    of yellow yolk and broken hearts
    and the poet gardens beneath its wing.

    The great muse roosts and the ovum sing
    over warming ground, over need
    while the poet gardens beneath its wing
    OK then, let it be a seed.

    ReplyDelete
  27. Hunger and thirst.
    the insatiable yearning
    for words,
    syllables dripping.

    And the grainy taste
    of imparted thought
    on paper.

    ReplyDelete