Tuesday, November 29, 2022

From a Writer's Notebook (2006). We Were Playing with Shape Poems so I Wrote Around MY HANDS & I've Always Wanted to Translate from Composition to a Digital Platform

Reading Torrey Maldonado's Hands that will be coming out in 2023, I remembered I had a poem by the same title and searched my Brown School notebooks in search of it. Found it. And with that, another day commences.

These hands are marked.

They’ve been blistered by good intentions

and pushing the rock upon Kentucky hills & New York State highways.
They’ve layered brick & tile
upon concrete, lifted fallen trees
into sawdust epiphanies.
They’ve pushed aside dust
into piles of forgotten yesterdays.
The blisters eventually popped
causing callousness & walls around the soul.

I am thicker today than I was yesterday... ...a little bit wider - more cautious
of the sculptures I create & relate
to what I’ve destroyed


from a lily pad.
Another palmed creation
sparkling in bedazzled stupidity.
My humility has sunk below
& sits aglow before koi,
catfish, & worms.
These ideas squirm from synapse to synapse, with the momentary lapses in fluidity.
At the tips of my fingers are dreams
& it seems as if they wanted to burst, shooting stars across liquid landscapes.
Yet, they struck & stuck by
the lack of luck in all my fortunate.
I am rich & have a world
in the center of my palm.
Stay calm.


PURPOSE. DOUBT. CREATION. INTEGRITY. SOUL.

METAMORPHOSIS. BIRTH. JOURNEY. WONDER. DEATH.