Tag Archives: poem

How to Say Babylon A Memoir Safiya Sinclair
Weekend Write-Off, Writing

A Word That Leapt Aflame in My Mind

“I sounded the lines out aloud, feeling the rhymes growing delicious on my tongue.  Later I went to the Encyclopaedia Brittanica and looked up William Blake. I couldn’t believe it.  He died nearly 170 years before me, but his words grew a thriving forest in my head. A thought, I understood it then, and its incendiary mind, could outlive itself. A well-made word could outspan carbon, and bone, and halved uranium.  Until now, I imagined the world divided in two halves: the world of the spiritual, of my parents: Jah and levity, vibrations, energies, and chakras.  And then, there was a world of things I could measure and understand, visible and knowable.  Now, I felt there was another world just out of reach.  A gossamer wing flashed against the bedroom window.  I took out my journal and wrote my first lines of poetry in vines of cursive.  Wings in the sunlight, wings against my dress.  I pulled wing after luminous wing from my mouth. Watching them flutter alive with each word, my hands a vibrant garden. The poem was called ‘The Butterfly,’ the first to pull itself from the soft veil between all worlds, a seam to slip through to any place, any time. I knew then that as long as I had a word that leapt aflame in my mind, I would always be living in an age of wonder.”
from How to Say Babylon: A Memoir by Safiya Sinclair

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River in the middle of green trees
Survival

To those of us in middle age

Who curse out our parents for ‘giving it to us’

– whatever it may be:

diabetes, depression, attention deficit disorder –

and then turn around to our teens cursing us out for giving it to them.

Who move children into college

and come home to crap they’ve left behind.

Who are exhausted in every sense of the word.

Whose friends are going through it.

Whose parents are ill or actively dying.

Who alternately sweat or shake with chills or shit after drinking wine

It all feels like too much –

but this is life for a lot of us right now.

We are not alone and we will survive.

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Bernstein Amber Gem
Poetry

Reptile in Amber

If I get a pet snake
I'll name him Nigel

inspired by "Making Plans for . . ."
as I drove home late at night
reminded of Geoff

who like a frustrated spouse
told me I didn't discipline our campers enough
and always made him the heavy.
But we laughed together when we heard 
XTC sing about Nigel
on our lunch break.

And I think of him every time I hear it
his laugh ever present in the quirky name
though some crazy cancer
took him before he could ripen into a man old enough to carry a name like Nigel

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Hand writing on a notebook
Writing

Am Writing

When one is task oriented and working to deadlines,
the work becomes scripted and static.

Sure there are moments that shine,

but they're in the initial spark of the idea
or reserved for the intro or concluding paragraph.

Never in the middle, in the meat of the piece.

When one is free to write for writing sake, 
the work becomes invisible
         or even ceases to exist.

When creativity has no bounds

it often flies away.
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humpback whale moss on branch
Living, Uncategorized

Beautiful and Terrifying

Outside

moss consumes everything.

Entire branches swallowed down and in.

To extract takes an unearthing you didn’t even know was needed

until the last.bite.left crunched underfoot.

At night

whales swam overhead, a beautiful and terrifying snow globe effect

as tidal waves stacked up on the periphery,

walls of water threatening your wooden stance.

There is beauty and potentiality

in design

intention

in terror.

You just have to keep the forces of nature at bay.

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Amarita Getty Images via Canva
Living, Poetry

Ode to a Dinner Roll

Going gluten free has taken away the joy of a dinner roll.

What is it about that plump pillow of yeasty goodness

that inspires joy

that conjures childhood holiday dinners

Fresh white linens nestled into the silvery swoop of a bread bowl,

cradling the warm treasure inside.

Peeling the paper thin square from its side,

folding it into my mouth where it immediately melts,

before pressing a cool smear of butter

against its warm surface

leaving enough of a layer

so the salty bite stands on its own for just a beat before

it melds together in all its glutinous glory.

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Poetry

Personal Effects II

I wrote a poem about loss.

No one died, but all around me there was empty space with the possibility.

When we worry, when the unknowns build into an ugly catastrophe

it’s easy to be overwhelmed by the gravity of it all.

In the stark cavity created by the spidery black legs of a thinly padded plastic chair and the expanse of institutional white tile below

sat the plastic bag

holding the physical items that tied personality to my baby

The ones she doffed for an anonymous starched gown

that dwarfed her inside

all of the unknown

While I sat staring at the obscenely transparent plastic holding but a small part of her.

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