NaPoWriMo Day 25: A Work Poem

Some days, I like my work, by which I mean, my wage-earning, get dressed in a suit, meet with customers employment. I get to travel on occasion and most people I encounter are funny, kind, hard-working–in general, nice people who I don’t mind spending a few minutes, or in some cases, whole days with.

Other days, and other people in certain circumstances, I do not. I do not like them (the people or the days) with a vehement, name-calling, furniture-kicking spite. They sap my joie de vivre, they foster my anti-social tendencies, and worst of all, they rob me of time, with my husband, with my friends, with my real work–this writing thing that I do and love and wish I got to do more often.

On a recent The Writer’s Almanac (with silver-soft Garrison Keillor), Keillor talked about the poet Ted Kooser, who woke at 4:30 every morning to write for a couple of hours before work. Kooser wanted to write poems for the everyman, poems that talked about everyday life and experience. Which got me thinking about the thing that I complain about most these days: my job.

This is nothing new. People have been frustrated by their jobs for eons. And there are days that don’t make me sick with rage and pent-up frustration. Days that my coworkers are a joy and testament to the power of friendship and camaraderie to get you through the mundane and not so pleasant aspects of grown-up life. Other days, not so much.

NaPoWriMo 2013: Poem for 04.14.13

We’re at the halfway mark for NaPoWriMo, and my writing desk is a mass of stacked papers, books, doodads and paperclips right now. I always like to keep a poetry book or two nearby, so I can flip through their pages and find inspiration when I’m flagging and staring too long at a blank screen.

On top of the stack this week is Sean Nevin‘s Oblivio Gate. This is an amazing book, about family, loss, redemption and especially Alzheimer’s. The cover says it all.

The loss of one’s memory, one’s mind, I would argue, one’s self is a terrifying thing to think about, and it’s something we think about in my family because my grandfather suffered through it.

NaPoWriMo 2013 & a Poem

If you haven’t heard of it before, NaPoWriMo is short for “National Poetry Writing Month,” which celebrates April, National Poetry Month, with a flurry of new poems by a committed band of global poets who have pledged to write a new poem every day in April. I tried it in 2010, during what I now call “my New York years,” when I was unemployed and driftless in a new city, anchored only by my love of literature (and CityBoy who isn’t small potatoes but less relevant to my drifting as he was then working 40-50 hours a week and not home a lot). It was hard, the 2010 NaPoWriMo, but it was a great experience and taught me a lot about sucking it up and getting down to the business of writing.

As we edged closer into spring this year, I decided to give it another whirl, to see if a) I could still write that prolifically while b) gainfully (and sometimes wearyingly) employed. So, I give you NaPoWriMo 2013!

30 poems in 30 days . . . gulp!

Only 9 days into the project, and I can tell you – man, this shit is hard! The temptation to flake, to agree to that post-work Happy Hour or sink down into the bliss of the TV-viewing couch, is great. And mighty. And a daily battle. But then, isn’t life and by extension, writing?

I’m sure there will be a lot of drivel this month getting pushed out by my touch-typing fingers, but maybe, just maybe there will be good work.

Here’s my poem for 04.09.13:

Work in Progress: Natural History

I’ve been tinkering with this poem for a while now. I first wrote it when I was still living in New York City, after seeing the famous life-sized dioramas at the American Museum of Natural History, which is an excellent place to while away several hours moving from diorama to diorama, enraptured by the amount of detail and work that must have gone into making them.

But anyways, back to the poem. I discovered that I had started a draft of this post back in the day, with this iteration of the poem:

Natural History

*poof*

Work in Progress 06/18/12: Gargantuan Love

* poof  *

Friday’s Poem: Touching

Touching

          – After Richard Renaldi’s Touching Strangers photographs

* poof *

Work in Progress: Swarm

Here’s a brand-new poem. I love it when friends “assign” me an idea for a poem. Keep them coming.

 

Swarm

For Ja’net

The girl’s vacant hands
beat the air, the stick thrown down,
stolid instrument to her impulse

to thump and rattle, thrash and shake.
The bees had their own music,
the dry husk rattle of the thousands

pouring out, their intent bodies
ululating a high-pitched warrior
cry. They descended, an angry mass.

They found purchase on lips
and eyelids, the delicate skin
between the girl’s shirt and pants.

She crushed them as she fell,
lumpen and dark-throated,
into the spoiling leaves.

Work in Progress: Boys on the Subway (revised)

It’s the fall again, or at least it will be if this damn weather stops pretending to be summer. It’s my favorite season. Something about back to school and the cooler weather, the leaves changing and the sky darkening earlier and earlier. The air smells of sharpened pencils and wool sweaters (I think I may have stolen this from You’ve Got Mail, which is one of those ridiculous movies that I can’t NOT watch when it’s on TV. I know. You’re thinking, “Meg Ryan? Tom Hanks? Sheesh.” But if you haven’t watched it, do so. You will thank me. Or we’ll discover that we might not become such great friends).

The wedding is finally behind us (or at least it will be after this weekend’s final celebratory dinner with CityBoy’s East Coast family), and we can both breathe a long sigh of relief. We made it. We’re still talking. We still like each other.

Which means that life can get back on track and we can refocus on the things that we love and make us feel human. For me, this means writing again.

CityBoy’s brother gave a beautiful reading at our ceremony, which of course I loved since he purloined some things from my blog as a jumping point to talk about marriage and relationships. I was compelled to admit that I have shamefully ignored this blog and done very little writing this year. Jobs, and proposals, and travel, got in the way.

So I’m recommitting (again). It’s time to get my ass back in the chair and do what I love best: form words into sentences into stories…”the best words, in the best order.”

My writing friends have been instrumental to the “best order” part. It’s amazing what another set of eyes, eyes you value and admire, can do for your own work. I found the idea of starting with a fresh, blank page a little daunting this morning, so I pulled a new poem out of my waiting-to-be-revised batch and I’m quite pleased with the result. You’ll have to let me know what you think.

*poof*

Work in Progress: Boys on the Subway

I’m always checking people out on the subway, much to CityBoy’s chagrin, who maintains that no eye contact is good eye contact on the train. But I can’t help looking. There’s so much strangeness and vulnerability and drama on the subway.

The other day, I watched this young tough size up the young guy sitting next to me on the train. It was chilling to watch him. I almost felt as if I should escort the guy off the train and make sure he got to his destination alright. This is what came to mind when I was sitting my ass in the chair:

 

Boys on the Subway

It’s still the schoolyard, the toughs braced
against the chainlink, the outfits the same—
hooded sweatshirt, a shroud of menace
framing thrust-out chins, their just-cinched
pants straining at the nexus of their crotches ,
stubble pressing through their doughy faces—
everything oversized, unlaced, splayed.
They take up too much, spread their knees
wide across the bench seats, the tongues
of their spit-clean sneakers bright white
against a lunar background of logoed
blacks and grays.  Eager as untrained
pups, their eyes lap up every girl, dissect
their figures into breast sizes, hand spans
of waist, the canted arc of their jeans-
encased asses. They let them know
with licks and swipes of their eyes
which they’d take to a dim corner.

Work in Progress: Before Going to the Front, Hungary, 1916

I was at Strand Books the other day, waiting for none other than Andrew McCarthy (yes, that Andrew McCarthy) to read at a food and travel writing event, when I spied this little volume of photos: André Kertész: The Early Years. It’s a really beautiful little book, full of tiny works, about the size of contact photos. I’d never heard of the photographer before (I’m not that well-versed in the art world though I love photography) and I was struck by how clear and precise his images were. He later moved to larger photos (once he could afford it) but there’s something striking about these little pictures, like the cameos that the Victorians carried on their persons of loved ones. Each photo is like a little memorial. I’ve been flipping through it for inspiration.

Here’s one based on the photograph of the same name:

 

Before Going to the Front, Hungary, 1916

– After André Kertész

The cellist anchors his instrument
in the dirt, its tail spike finding a groove
in the rutted road side, and begins to play,
his finger pads hardened by years of this
action, the alternating bowing and picking, gentle
or savage depending on the piece,
the movement, the wavering pencil work
on his copy of the concerto.

Today he does not need to brush back
his coat tails, wing the twin swallows
of his black-polished tuxedo
before he sits. His soldier’s uniform
is utilitarian olive drab, the buttons
flat discs of wood, his shined boots
the only spangle of ornamentation.

The others, dressed like him,
their knapsacks full of rationed bread,
gather to one side, listen to the rise in his cello’s
open belly, the wild keening he coaxes
stoking their own throats.  Their swallowed
goodbyes blend into the trafficked air.