Tag Archives: Poetry

Rosie in Bed

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Birth, death, and the moments in between: all good stuff to write about.  Sometimes a good noun or verb and a simple image will get me started. Sometimes I need something extra: an interlocutor or proxy to courier difficult ideas from the noise in my head to the quietness of a blank page.

Animals have served this role for artists and writers for millennia. Really, almost anything on the other side of the imaginary wall which separates humans from nature can be anthropomorphized in service to disclosing what is too close to see. My interlocutor is my cat, Rosie.

 

Rosie in Bed

Rosie protests
my reading in bed.
She pushes books
out of my hands
and purrs,
“Read me instead!”

 

March 2012

Cat Mood

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Left for the day.
Forgot to feed the cat.
Bitching, moaning, whining,
and plodding like a miniature calico
draft horse around her empty kibble bowl.
Goddamn my sorry hairless Homosapien soul!
Filled the bowl and tickled her ticked-off nose—
hedged with a herring carcass on the heap.
Mea culpa. Cope with my caresses, Miss.
Don’t finger me your twitchy tail.
No, you took a bite or two,
pranced to the door,
left for the night.

 

Jan. 2013

 

From an Image of Dunbeath

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ROCK POOLS AT DUNBEATH, By Jean Horseman

 

Impended by November’s damp,
I would brace against a rocky shelf.
In oilcloth, beneath an old sowester–
my back to the wind to guard the ember
of a good cigar; a flask of Highland Park
in a felt pouch hanging from my neck;
a surveyor’s notebook in my left hand
and a stub of a pencil in my right–
I would ask no more from the storm
than synaptic sparks to connect
my words and sensibilities,
perhaps mistaking how what rules the
firmament above writes dreams below.

                 G W Sisk
                 Nov. 2012

 

Sleeping Moon

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rush rush run
howl the wind
the moon the mooon
howl the wolves
the wolf the wooolf
howl the moon
but you dont hear
her casting song
what with your deceiving ears
casting her hook
at twinkling eyes
fishing for the sun
for her the stars put on a guise.
I am the sun I am the sun!
Foolish moon
moon mooon!
Rush rush run
the sun he runs too soon
he twirls his curls down to the
wolves and warms the wind
and the stars all wallow
in their shame
so do the wolves and wind
and other things,
the moon and sun are of the same.

Hana Kurahara Sisk
Sept. 2012

Hana is my young daughter, though her age belies the truth about her old soul.  We both enjoy writing and often send extemporaneous poetry to each other via text messaging.  For both of us it’s a way of avoiding the mundane: homework, chores, paying bills.
There is a notable difference between her poetry and mine.  I put a great deal of effort into my poetry; for the same results, she writes with ease.  Though she reads my poetry and feels free to comment and ask questions, I never worry about her emulating me.  She already has a voice that goes with that old soul.

Sept. 23, 2012

Recess

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I’d bind these shattered, scattered pieces with
ribbons from a maypole–or memories of maypoles,
which we never really had, which instead of we had

a deflated leather ball that no one really liked,
and swung from a chain, rebounding off our fists.
Our red fists: at the bell they had rebounded from

the old black chalkboard and Big Chief tablets,
from endless long divisions, which we deserted like
a mob of happy crows. That seems so long ago,

and so much simpler than this division of memories:
our promises sparked red, faith pulsing in each kiss,
all our knotted fears unwound beneath the moon’s caress;

unwound like ribbons loosed to end a maypole dance,
which we no longer dance because all we have left
are deflated leather souls and flailing, angry hands.

Big Chief tablets wait blank on ink-stained desks,
and the chalkboard asks what we don’t want told.
The bell is ringing, calling us in from recess.


August 2012 (revised Jan. 2013)