Piecing It Apartogether

I'm not so great around my birthday anymore since my mother died. I feel deeply lonely, no matter what, and a scrambled, frenetic energy that goes nowhere. For my 56th birthday, I was determined to make the best of a year that was divisible by eight, my favorite number. I collected all the self-portraits I've written over the years, took them to Staples, and had copies made to create a book. My plan was to make the book interactive with pull-outs and pockets with secret messages for the recipient, and collaged covers. This never happened because the project was beset with printing errors, user errors, and a general sense of "maybe this just doesn't matter all that much to anyone other than me." So I relegated all 100 (why?!) copies, and the special binding machine I purchased to the attic storage, and forgot about it. A week or so ago when I was digging around for art supplies, I opened up a suitcase and rediscovered all the copies of poems.

I left them out as I worked on another project. "Maybe now is the time to do something with these," I thought. Then I really looked them over, all these versions of me, poems I no longer related to, and I threw them all away. The spontaneity! Whee! I'm letting go of all this ego! Also, how wasteful. I felt liberated, with a coating of light guilt and melancholy.

Later that week I was looking for some drawings to show my friend, and I found yet another box of those self portraits. I must have said to myself that if I left the poems within view, I'd do something with them. But the box became part of my everyday landscape, just another object my eyes grazed over to get to the glue sticks or pompoms they were truly seeking. I ignored them.

"Those are some determined poems," I decided. Now I had to do something with them. 

Every morning I've been cutting these self-portraits apart, redacting myself. I redacted my own book of poems, Year in the Blanks, a few times over, and I have so many versions of that book now on my hard drive it's confusing. My process was different for that. I started by blacking out words and phrases on the printed pages, and then quickly went into the file and removed words, and tinkered with space. It had less a physical, visceral feeling to it. I was, for the most part, focused on a screen.

Cut-up technique is nothing new. The Dadaists started it in the 1920s, and William S. Burroughs began cutting up newspaper articles and rearranging the words to create prophetic phrasings in the 50s and 60s. Many artists use the technique now in varying ways. 

"When you cut into the present, the future leaks out."  - William S. Burroughs

I'm not exactly cutting into the present when I take apart my old poems. I'm cutting into the past me, revealing what I hope is more present tense, and less about me. It's hard to get away from yourself when creating though. There's always just a titch of you flavoring the soup. I think that's what I find fascinating about this. How much do I pare away and what do I keep?

Cutting up paper is a very tactile, focused experience. The screech of scissors from the 1970s, the little slivers of paper that I flip over carefully with a licked finger then shuffle around the desk. I trim away suffixes, prefixes, rearrange words in a puzzle that has no end goal image to follow. When I'm done I take a few photos of the poems as they rest on the desk, and then I whisk them into the trash bin. Ephemeral. That kind of letting go feels good too. It is pure play. Quiet and filled with delight.

Here's the source self-portrait I used this morning. The poems you've seen throughout this post were made from this poem. 

The Best of It

“How is the ring of my being singing through others?”

- Nora Bateson

Of course this book of poems

is me, and you, 

and the stranger who

starred in it, looped, bracketed, underlined

whole passages —

order is always

starting over

A reminder that objects

invite our touches,

just a highlight here

and there

As though the self

were eager to be wrecked

As though each of our selves

were dying to be found

and then cut out 

of our muzzy landscapes

and the chap of dreams, 

rearranged, out-of-context,

and out of order.

How messy

it is to live, all

marks and meaning

to get to some final

point of exclamation,

to feel connected.

How distance

begins to look extraordinary

and logimagical enough to abandon

this poem-book-lover-past-tense-childhood

for someone else to pick up 

and start over. 

Viewfinder

I wake.
My soul spent the night
resting on an eyelash.
It slips into an iris, 
ready for duty. 
I hear my heart 
beat again, feel 
the smoothness
of pillowcase, lift
the whole corporeal canister
to reach for my glasses.

Cool arms curl each ear,
a bridge arches nose, 
lenses tighten the resolution 
of each scene — everything 
obscured or enhanced 
by the tip of my nose, 
my fleshy cheeks. 

Our private viewfinders
draw us like dogs with cameras 
attached to our heads —
lovable goofballs
lumping through life,
gusto noses 
leading the way.

Where is my soul now
that I am awake? 

Ribcage,
liver, 
duodenum —
in the darkest places,
out of frame,
editorial.

--

I've kept an index card with a scribbled note on it on my desk for several weeks: "noticing your cheeks, heartbeat, breath, end of nose, frames of glasses." Yesterday this poem arrived. 

Snow

Snow celebrates the unseen — bird footprints, fox tracks.
Snow celebrates the edges of things — curved branches, 

the tops of fenceposts, distorted diamonds of chainlink.

Snow spotlights the holy dry weed standing in the field alone.

Snow celebrates quiet — slows all human traffic, alters schedules, 

changes moods, puts the kaybosh on sound, shuts off lights.
Snow celebrates coldness  — it packs itself 

into the ribbing at the wrist of your glove, 

the ankle of your boot, reminds you of the warm pulse inside you.

Snow celebrates longing and impermanence 

as the building material for snowmen, 

and wishful, ramshackle hideaways during snowball fights.
Snow pulls its comforter over graves, reminds the dead 

and the living of the celebration of rest and spirit.

Snow celebrates newness, cleanliness, and chaotic order 

in a show of snowflakes, and endless white surfaces.

Snow makes it easy on the hawk, but hard on the chickadee.

Snow celebrates without knowing it is a celebration.
Beauty has a lack of awareness of its supremacy — 

its message of brevity: celebrate now.

Some Messages You May Receive

Your primary tab is empty.

There is Fool's Gold in your third eye. 

You have reached your time limit for today.

Your paternal grandfather is behind you, to your left.

You have successfully unsubscribed from this list.

Meet the gaze of your dead mother.

You've logged 124 hours of meditation. Way to go!

You have a strong heart.

Level up. 

What would it take to say "I know"?

Power down.

You are very powerful, you know that? 

You have three new notifications.

Your daughter: "It's in the words, Mom."

What would you like to watch?

There you are at 4 years old, in the mirror.

You shut down because of a problem. Error 101.

 Go ahead and skip that rope, then let go of it.

Your credit card statement is ready.

Your third eye is like the star on a Christmas tree.

We've received your message.

You have the awareness.

Leave meeting.

Connect to the natural world.

Sign up for rewards.

 

Distance

That row of houses splits
sky from water as a thought divides
a moment into a memory.
The space between the trees
is for the fox to slip between
and the area around the fox
is for the trees and wind to fill.
Clouds weigh on average
about five elephants, and all
around them is weightless.
There is always room for more.
The American Promise. Here,
even clouds can’t just be themselves,
we must see ourselves in them.
All those molecules are eyes, nose, lips,
just the right proportions, to be us.

Last night, I filled the openness
of our living room with a Bengal tiger.
It wasn’t enough to have the space
around the sofa and cold television.
In its pace, there was more detached ennui
than stalking. It floated once
through the ottoman and a pile of books,
unable to see through its sadness
where it was going.

The distance between my face
and your face is a filter.
Apply fox eyes, and a bright burnt sienna
blaze becomes you, as an old woman shouts,
“Get out of here! You’re beautiful!”
Run. Become an atom,
the distance between clouds.

Self-Portrait as a Butterfly Leaving

The wind is he
who comes to blow away our footprints. 

    -- from Southern Bushmen’s Song

Now it is 6:47 a.m. Dark panes.
Do not check email.
I wish to stay in my cave of questions
but the bodies of trees are already visible.
Soon all my thoughts will be too.

I’ve overeaten poetry in the dark again.
Not one more nibble of a poem of love, dying,
or the sun rising over the hills as it is now,
the traitor. I once thought her free speech of fire
was only inside of me, for my growth.

Can I just stay here
in the office of butterflies,
with its memos of moss and lichen?
A good swagger of wind leaves us
staggering in the grass, caught
on tree branches. Do not mistake us.
We don’t wish to linger, but remind
as you scroll, archive, and delete,
that leaves should stay green.

Remember caterpillars, air, whole trees
full of insinuating, intimate conversations,
rumors, murmurs, susurrations.
 

Self-Portrait at 52

Hex of snow I pluck,
lattice of lines I live with,
and this body, Saturnalian,
still rises at 5 a.m.
A quick jerk, upright
each minute the last minute
in this hollow hour.
Bees spark inside me,
and stones moss over,
the entrance shaded.
There’s less to say now.
I see.

First Bees of the Season

At my feet the star-shot hum —
drunken reveling, intrigue.
Focused in crocus, wild aplomb —
at my feet the star-shot hum
as tiny legs build income.
Honeyed soon, prestige!
At my feet the star-shot hum —
drunken reveling, intrigue.

--

A triolet.

I Dream of Rain

My body buzzes with the grumble
of a tractor beneath it, my feet
become tires, my back a cart
that carries pails of water
to dry fields, and stones
to fill the swale. There’s
a heavy hope in our air,
tension in each lump of clay
we release to crumbs.
I point out the boulders
across the road, and later,
returned to my own legs
for balance, crouch to lift
a duck feather from the grass
and watch it drift,
a weightless curve
of what we dream on,
find our rest.

Happy Mother's Day

For a Five-Year-Old

A snail is climbing up the window-sill
into your room, after a night of rain.
You call me in to see, and I explain
that it would be unkind to leave it there:
it might crawl to the floor; we must take care
that no one squashes it. You understand,
and carry it outside, with careful hand,
to eat a daffodil.

I see, then, that a kind of faith prevails:
your gentleness is moulded still by words
from me, who have trapped mice and shot wild birds,
from me, who drowned your kittens, who betrayed
your closest relatives, and who purveyed
the harshest kind of truth to many another.
But that is how things are: I am your mother,
and we are kind to snails.

Fleur Adcock, Poems 1960-2000, Bloodaxe Books, 2000 .

This poem by Fleur Adcock reminds me of my mother, and it is one that is in the unkempt and mislabeled filing system of my mind. It's the connection of kindness and truth, and the phrasing of the last two lines that make me think of her. The harshness of the truths in the second stanza of the poem, so harsh they make the reader wonder if they are all true, well, they are necessary to making the poem work the way it does. It's so good.

There's a family story which is related to this poem resonating with me as well. When my sister and I were young, Mom saw an opportunity to teach us a bit about science. There were a couple of slugs near the house that she sprinkled with salt to show us how they dehydrate. "You were both mortified," she said, when retelling this family story. "You cried. I felt awful." It wasn't an entirely botched lesson. I still think about it, and the places where wonder and sadness meet.

Also, I try to stay hydrated when working outside.

Thanks, Mom. I miss the realness of you.

Silence

The stone at the edge of the pond
doesn’t know it is called a stone,
nor does it need to in order to exist.
The pond water laps in wind
and all three nouns in that phrase
pond - water - wind
manage well without language,
or our categories for it,
any parts of speech, like noun.
None of this world
had a name before us,
and it still turned on its axis
somehow, without a word
for axis. Without a word.

What Lives There

The shed is home to a metal bouquet of tools,
hungry shovels, rakes of all stripes,
a carpenter bee snugged deep in a beam.
A nail holds the poultry waterer,
from another dangles a rag, red bucket,
a misanthropic hula hoop. Empty feed bags
(too good to throw away), sag in a corner
and complain with a coterie of fenceposts.
The shelf is a smattering of goat treats,
an opened bag of generic cheerios,
animal crackers, and the saltine box
where you found a field mouse
rustling around in a blissful panic.
The floor is rotted, just another task
we say “tomorrow” to, and from behind
a tub of sweet feed, the upside down
Mona Lisa smile of the scythe sneers
her editorial work — the instrument
made to cut out all we don’t want
from the living.

Since Your Death

A found poem from signage read on the PA Turnpike between the Quakertown and Wilkes-Barre exits

Fallen rocks
Falling rocks
Fallen
Fallen
Fallen rocks
Fallen
Fallen
Falling rocks
Fallen
Falling
Fallen
Fallen
Fallen
Fallen
Fallen