Rome Poem

-A poem by my wonderful study abroad friend, Melissa Croce, who articulated Rome in a way I've been without words for since that summer two years ago.

When I bring you to Rome, it's how I teach you about me.
Like the city, I let you see me in parts and pieces.
Like a ruin, you uncover me.

You discover:
Cobblestones, jagged like my nails, on which my off-kilter gait balances.
Wide bridges where I split eggs and watched their yokes sizzle into the cracks.
Dusty, narrow alleyways where I learned how to be alone.
A sun-lit kitchen where I discovered the joy of cooking with others.
The names of my future daughters, Cecilia and Lucia, blindness and light, two sides of the same coin.
The grave of an English poet, where I learned how to stop fearing death.
The cool basement of a white church where I found faith.

When I bring you to Rome, it's how I trust you with me.
Like a lover, Rome ruins me for others.
Like a savior, you resurrect me.

Together:
I feed you honey gelato, forgetting my own, dark chocolate rum sliding down my fingers.
You buy me a single sunflower tucked into an empty olive oil bottle.
We make a spolia wall out of pottery pieces, pistachio shells, fingerprints on Prosperina's hips, ruins.
I hold your hand when you trip over cobblestones.
You sing to me in the grotto of a villa as water echoes around us.
We find new bridges to cross.

When I bring you to Rome, it's how I tell you I love you.

Kites

*written for my beautiful Seattle community & all those affected by the recent SPU tragedy. Also written for the metaphorical cities we live in, the ones where we've experienced loss and forgotten how to be children.

~

Our city sleeps,

but I awake to the remembering

of a rhythm

my feet still know.

They lead me, stumbling out

into the grey light.

The cars and rooftops sleep

in a dusty glow.

It is easy now, sinking back

into my child feet, these feet

that skipped around broken glass

bottles like they were a sprinkling

of treasure, the music of pirates.

I follow my child feet back

through the alleys lit

with flower baskets,

to the corner where we sucked chocolate

off our fingers in the sizzling heat,

to the hill where our kites rose

before their tails snagged

on tree branches.

Those kite tails,

where we tied our prayers and poems,

watching them flutter like wind chimes,

a sailboat parade

rising into the bluest sea.

But our city has forgotten

the nonsense of kites.

And my shadow feet remember now

the roar of new flags in our streets,

like the growling of pirates,

who never sprinkle treasure

or believe in nonsensical things.

But their flags stoop over now

like old men,

their promises but a chasing

of wind.

It is best now, to sleep.

So I sit below the hill,

sifting dirt between my hands.

Your footsteps come so softly,

I don’t turn until you bend beside me.

You sift the dirt in slow rhythm.

I sneak glances at you.

You still look as young as you used to,

sucking chocolate off your fingers

and tying kite strings.

And then you bend to smooth the soil.

Slowly, firmly, together,

we plant one tiny mustard seed.

At the Louvre

 

2nd draft, discovered from 2012

The steady glow of morning

softens the sea of wood floors,

and all the portraits become strikingly clear

vessels in time.

I am a gaunt faced man who forgot

to shave his whiskers this morning.

Instead I woke up feeling hungry

and decided to go to the museum.

My legs propel me to my favorite spot:

Lisa, how she never changes.

But today, her sails are loose

in an ill-directed wind.

Beside her, a new portrait awaits:

a woman with two noses.

Lisa sniffles:

“Tell me, how ever do you sneeze?”

“Sneeze?”

“Yes, of course, sneeze! You couldn’t

fit your noses into a handkerchief

at my dinner party!

And for all your curves,

you couldn’t even seduce a rat.”

At this point, I try to interrupt Lisa

to remind her she hasn’t had her coffee yet.

It’s a cruel thing, Lisa, picking on

other portrait’s noses.

Lisa does not hear.

“Did you know that when Time

takes his evening stroll, he bends to dip

his hat at me?

“I have sprinkled seeds of poetry

in the hearts of thieves and kings.

Men have moaned in blood bath

over the curve of my lips.

Have you watched Napoleon weep

over his Josephine’s womb?

His King Louis XIV bent

in the shadow of your sails?

Do travelers mingle your name

with escargot and rare wine?

“But you, poor blazing masquerade,

are a rowboat in an ocean’s tide.”

And then the youth replies:

“I smack gum,

smoke jazz, and

sizzle

like graffiti

on summer- washed walls.

Oh, I throw!

my anchor into the stars

and sail

round heaven just for fun.

I am the symphony

of a hurricane!

           

my back a cello,

            my eyes,

trumpet blasts.

My laugh!

like bike bells

in a parade.

How I love

            to march,

                        march,

                                    march.

Oh Lisa, a sailor is better

with two noses,

and the masses will decide

my success.”

           

The people file in,

and the morning’s charm is broken.

I check my pocket watch.

It is a good hour for French toast.

Hush

Discovered from around 2012. Enjoy!

Hush.

 The lake bathed

           In  the  shadows  of

                                                                   fall and the     yawning of

                                                                   morning.              

        Beside

         the

         board

                                                                       walk

                                                                          murky

                waters

                freckled

      by water

              skaters murmur

            while the reeds rise,

     fall, a frog rustles, thrums,

                                                           a bird chimes, and squirrels stir

                                                        in  hurried duet  to pluck an acorn

   from its nest. The score grows, and the

      trees, dressed in gold, enclose the dark waters

            with their brightening limbs, while the fog lifts in

slow dance, steaming into sun-breath. Now they descend,

            a flock of white, billowing sails, strong and wide, upon the dark,

the waters held by light. The light a silver, golden glimmer. Gliding on, on, on.

Once & Still Roman

(draft 2)

If one could have a love affair with a city,

I might be tempted

to take Rome in,

undercover,

just for a day.

Rome would smoke his cigar

and tell me about the panini

and bus protests, the heat, and how at night

the Colosseum still fills with its ghosts.

Then Rome would sing

me a song I heard once in a

ristorante by a man wiping

display windows,

whose deep voice sauntered

for the sake of singing,

or for the afternoon break,

or for living itself.

Rome, you re-arranged me,

I would say after his song

simmered to a whisper.

Then he would lean back in his chair

and take a long, slow puff of his cigar.

Go on.

Well, I don’t quite know how to

put myself back together again,

Before I met you, I didn’t understand that

every city has a birth,

a life,

a death.

First, I measured in you in mornings:

the beggar on the bridge,

the dogs at the water spigot,

the quilt-patch buildings, and the stiches

of street lines.

And in Roman nights:

the old man with the thick arms

of an ex-convict,  

who sold tender, silk bags

of lavender for 3€ each, 2 for 5€.

And below my window,

the women in stiletto,

the clatter of dishes, a river of voices,

and bell-chimes of laughter

as I chased sleep.

Then I learned to measure you in vino rosso years,

in hundreds, even thousands (as well as any American can).

vino rosso, meaning: the perfect blend

of bitter and seduction,

in which the glass is never emptied,

in which I implored of saints and of billboards,

of ruins and of vespas.

In which I watched your thousand deaths

and rebirths with aching fingers,

the words in my journal crumbling and moaning

like a drunkard trying to paint

an angel.

I also measured you in vino bianco days:

delicate, siesta days,

when my eyes felt heavy with sleep,

and I sat in the balcony to watch

our neighbor’s clothesline flicker

in the warm breeze,

and my American home was just a yawn

and a cat’s stroll away.

Rome, you seduced me with your white wine

days. You re-arranged me

while he waited.

The way he and I talked,

words full as a plate of pasta,

but the slightest—

was it hesitation?

lingered in my mouth,

impossible to trace, as if stained on my fork

before the meal arrived.

We spoke of the lover’s locks

clasped to the Ponte Milvio bridge.

But I never leaned to drown

a key in those brown, eternal waters.

Maybe then I knew

our kisses were collecting dust.

Every city has

a birth,

a life,

a death.

So goes the saying.

And I see you, Rome,

in my city and in myself.

I still cross sidewalks illegally,

and if given the option,

I’ll take my coffee strong in a

small, porcelain tea cup.

And I see your bridges

and crumbling pillars in my

poems.

Sometimes, I wonder,

what will happen with them?

Will they become their own Forum?
Will tourists of some kind

sweep in and purge,

pointing with cameras

and sticky fingers,

or will these written memories

be tucked away

like the sacred dead under church

floors, in cemeteries

below

cemeteries?

Every city has a birth,

a life,

a death.

Rome teaches this most.

Here, we like our hours

clean, and sharpened to the minute.

But

for all our archiving,

at the end of the day

our clock hands

still twist toward Roman dust.

A Poetry Review of Two Travelers

Destination Zero, Sam Hamill

(photo by seattlebloggers)

 I read Sam Hamill’s “Destination Zero” from under a sun hat, but I would always forget that. I would slip away from my front lawn to walk along a grey coast, face stinging with September salt. I noted the “curtsies” of African Violets, the cries of newborn chicks in a musky barn, and the “choir of stars” above valleys and mountains. Before reading his poetry, I had never fully articulated my experience of living in the Northwest. Hamill captures its throbbing beauty, stormy diversity, and tender loneliness with the skill of a painter. In other words, he puts watercolor to what was once inarticulate and paper-white.

Like a painter, Hamill begins with a foundation color. His poem, “A Lover’s Quarrel,” becomes the significant base for which the rest of the book can be read. This poem introduces his relationship with nature, which is a complex character of its own.

Throughout the poem, Hamill examines everything that the wind touches: the evergreens, “half-garbled songs of finches,” moon, “swollen skies,” and himself. He longs to feel completely at home in nature but finds himself grasping. While he is intrinsically connected to the wind, he cannot hold it. The wind becomes a greater metaphor for his aching for unity and permanence, for home: “I’d kiss a fish/ and love a stone/ and marry the winter rain/ if I could persuade this battered earth/ to let me make it home.”

Perhaps Hamill longs to transcend and solidify nature’s fleeting beauty. Its transient quality makes him feel like an outsider. I suppose this aching for beauty is something that drives many poets and artists, as Keats once said, “A thing of beauty is a joy for ever/ Its loveliness increases; it will never/ Pass into nothingness; but still will keep.”

If this is true, then how does this influence our understanding of the title, “Destination Zero”? What is his destination, exactly? Can it be reached? These are questions he may keep you asking too.

And speaking of destinations, if you’re curious about where he resides in the Northwest, Sam Hamill co-founded Copper Canyon Press in Port Townsend.

Froth Poems, Jaroslaw Mikolajewski

Can the empty spaces on a poem’s page be just as captivating as its words?

Yes. A resounding yes for “Froth Poems,” a translation of works by Polish poet, Jaroslaw Mikolajewski. Each carefully selected word pierces and fills its page with haunting and beautiful images. Mikolajewski style can be mirrored after his poem, “rome 3:37 a.m.,” in which he writes:“rome is silent and I think so is the rest/ of the world… the silence is so perfect that if you sighed/or coughed/rome would be full of you in a moment.”  The empty spaces in his writing are a part of the magic. Like the silence in Rome, his words need room to quiver, breathe, expand, overflow.

Mikolajewski is a traveler. He walks between the worlds of his inner and outer conversations, airports, countries, dreams, and generations. Some poems like “Froth” left me tingling from their ghastly darkness, while others beckoned me into the intimacy of his treasured  relationships. In describing his wife’s spine, Mikolajewski writes: “And when my wife is pregnant/ her spine is a bough/ breaking under the weight of apples…” Her spine becomes a scarf, a zipper in a suitcase, a viper, and even a steel rope: “On nights of human love/ it is the steel rope / rustling in the wind, at the highest voltage.” Ordinary objects such as these become vessels for intimate and surprising metaphor.

And this traveler does not lock his metaphors tightly inside a suitcase between poems. The last line on every page ends in white space. Mikolajewski never uses a period, and his poems often begin in lower case, as if mid-sentence. This all contributes to the feeling of motion and expansion, as if “Froth” is really circular, global, all poems blending into each other.

Although translation is essential for English readers, its essence is not lost. Rather, I felt as if I were traveling alongside Jaroslaw Mikolajewski through his worlds.

 (photo above by http://www.hektoeninternational.org/Intercepted-letters.html)

Stars

 

(photo from http://infinite-paradox.tumblr.com/post/29838214255)

On a long drive home when hope was lost, we all started to believe that the only things left in this world break hearts.

…but watching the stars makes you want to believe in God.

Because, looking up, there's something more beautiful than what we have and what we are and what we've done.

…like the stars are still there despite us and will be there despite us. We can hide the stars from ourselves with fake stars and fake skies, but the stars will continue being more beautiful than those things. Continue to be there when we decide to dim our fake stars.

We become blinded sometimes from staring into our lights. And how much more comforting is the sky that belongs to God in that moment.

And if the stars are His, I wish there were more stars.


~Felicia Deng