So, I told Lisa that I had written a poem (on a dare. Of course.) about using a fire extinguisher as a sex toy. If you really must see a copy (it's more humorous than it sounds), I will email it by request.
But because this is sort of a family-oriented blog, I'm going to censor myself and instead just share the first poem-not-a-poem that I wrote at the retreat, pretty much as I wrote it. (We had an hour to do this). I don't consider it finished, and it may not even be worth finishing. But anyway:
I Have No Poem To Give You
I cannot tell you with a few odd trochees
how many toes a crow has, or divulge
the secret waiting silent in the papyrus' stalk.
I don't have a stanza revealing the answers
that swirl in a chambered nautilus' shell.
Don't ask me to tell you in blank verse or sestina
about the best that mankind has to offer, or the worst
moment of a childhood I once thought fine.
None of that is mine or biddable, none of that is near.
No. Here's the truth:
it's not that the heavens wrapped up
in couplets won't come to my call, and throw themselves
like obedient slaves under the wheels of my ball point,
crushed between lines on the page. The truth is, I don't call.
It seems so like hubris, and besides, I can't pronounce their names.
I cannot offer you anything, let alone poetry.
And it's been that way for years.
I might look under the toppling stacks of paper,
listing sideways like guilt with unread tips
on saving for retirement or pruning roses -
look there for the lines that will make you catch your breath
the way a half-trained trapeze artist's sway
draws your hand to your heart, make you drop your popcorn.
But more paper is in the way. And under the bed, where
I thought I'd placed them, next to the pictures I'll
someday organize, I've lost the words
that would change your life. I apologize.
I did find this while looking at home and through my purse
beside the bills: I found that I am afraid of nothing.
Of being nothing, becoming nil, having been
only a soft body held together by ticks and worries and fear.
I hear you. Ah, you're saying,
there's the heart of the matter. The part excavated
from under the dry, packed dirt, beneath the top
of the earth burned hard by the sun and trampled down
by habit, and laundry and the daily commute.
Here's the little hot detail of a heart
pumping pomegranate red. Oh, let there be a poem
in the blood on the page. Let that, at least flow.
But even this, the ruby from my chest, is on display
behind glass, with a sign giving you a Latinate name and a few
lesser known facts. And you can't touch it, I've labeled it mine.
And I won't give it away, anymore than I'd bequeath you
the quick high quips of the swallows flying over the sea this morning,
the water's pushing murmur, the smell of the dirt here.
What would you do with a poem about all that, anyway?
Watch it lie on a desk, a bird that has fallen from its nest,
lizard-like, bald and blind and flightless, and too young
to put back, destined for the trash with a lie to the children
about what really happened? No, better to confess
that I have nothing to share. I remain poemless.
I have nothing inspired to say, nothing
to put a lit taper to the tallow of your bones,
transmute the crescent moon on the waves.
Nothing to slip the cypress-spotted hillside out
from under your sacred feet, or shatter the glass display.
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