pollyopolis

[pollyopolis]

#studio quarantinedpoet

[pollyopolis]

L’Age D’Or

My student makes a face. Her wee 'abode' on Zoom is close to mine, so i notice it, rather than scroll over the three other pages, pardon, 'galleries.' On the subject of book recommendations for this French class, as she is more advanced and it's an all-level course, i brought up Francoise Gilot's "Life with Picasso." And Marguerite Duras. And the Surrealist poets, and the Negritude founders, aussi des poetes. Poets who led countries and began the Negritude movement synchronistically paralleling the Harlem Renaissance. Was that disgust she revealed in regard to Gilot and Picasso's age difference? Did anyone else cringe? Or cringe at her disdain? Right. In three years, they would be Gilot's age. So, yes, a 40 year difference seems great. But...it's Picasso. Why wouldn't anyone fall into his Malagan depths? In a photo of my paternal grandfather (who married & divorced my grandmother thrice), she's 19. He's 43 and did i imagine his smoking a pipe? Ceci n'est pas une pipe? They had a yen for Hawaii, built a home on the Kona coast. The house was sold in his final divorce. Then there were the homes in the Valley, north, north east of downtown L.A. One had a superb waterfall which cascaded into their mega lima bean of a swimming hole. But the sunken, stepdown bedroom, led to a circular bed! I had never seen such Bondness, Q! Yes, they were a model of happiness. Even at the expense of someone else's disdain...My grandmother never remarried but my father once (proudly?) mentioned she had been Bradbury's lover. She was a pistol: taught bilingual elementary classes in Watts. Taught her mother English when they moved from Warsaw to Van Nuys. Was escorted by the Black Panthers during Watts' Riots to her parking spot, all the way back to her abode on the Westside, where a framed poster of Tuesday Weld pointing a gun at the viewer stood above the steps, for the adaptation of my pop's first novel, "She Let Him Continue." So she grimaced. So possibly only i noticed. What does one give up with such an age difference? Time? Adoration from others? And what does "Ay, there's the rub!" truly mean?

[pollyopolis]

Ode to the DMV

[pollyopolis]

For(e)ward

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Ode to Bergman

[pollyopolis]

Found Object Poem #2

[pollyopolis]

December Song

Commissionned by Restaurant Cortez

Vetiver travels in cashmere through layers of trunk goods deliquescence and atmospheric rivers whitewash a memento June replacing plums in the icebox the brush of cicada wings transposing melodies as analog hum.

Time’s stylus stops one tree ring after another and no deejay can play it soft enough for any god to hear, for all gods are busy, and who can blame them.

The luck the benediction a Christopher an Avila amulets for lovers and surfer saints This is the island of skipped mantras here, but by the grace of a cat’s purr which turn-turns the seasons in messianic din or beats the drum in quiet sin and chortles at what’s left: to begin

[pollyopolis]

[pollyopolis]

Found Object Poem #1 - SOLD

[pollyopolis]

From ‘A Book of Cures’

American Spirit

Come, Light

Be still, Beats per Second

asthma 

summoned from Tibet, a parcel of ground precious stones one teaspoon with warm goat milk upon retiring

Ba

the end of all ones sheep but have you tried counting those left to graze?

Binomial

B: You are very nice, but you are only a translation. M: Don’t complete that thought. B: I’ll try not to think of Mexico. M: I’ve been told that before. B: About the immigrant problem? M: Tea? B: You forgot to count the stars. Again.

Eavesdropping

-I’d like to think that I have hope -She has kind of a raspy voice -Taxi -It’s hard to look at -I’d like to think we were -We’re spiritually limber -Petty -Just think -How kind! -How realistic it would be

Earthdreamers

we once lived near trees

netted recoiling and corresponding to the surround

I have explored an image of a house connected to mother

what was mine is now years

Heartbreach

in Brazil, ‘saudade’ is used for, no other language puts pain on the existential map x marks the spot where you are not

Sing to birds in flight Paint it in glue And recall Others have been there Many times before ya.

My words as comeuppance, Shared mantra-like:

i once craved the habit(at) of you but you are sulphur and I am hungry hungry for wheat and marigold leaves

Jumpstart Dictionary

Honto- says it drives Itai – and it hurts You are deaf, is that right? Mo – always means more          And surpasses time. Shiga – I’ve visited once Zembu – all of us Melon milk: Take before rising Minna- What brought her here Konna-No – Cuts like an elder’s knife Rapucha – the inability to recall a loved one’s face.

Migraine

Not coffee Not wine Not chocolate Not fermented cheese Not light (Whether refracted or dimmed) Not noise

in the quiet, deleted pressing ice to fuel pumps at the brow forehead to pillow the dull drill, a reminder repeating a tantivy

if the morning

Nepotism

It’s not you This business, a clogged drain 100,000 actors storming down over hills desperation screaming silently Oh look, over there! Fake lips eating a pancake Talent gets fat The popcorn, stale And the newest remake Streams faster than We hulu – Hey, it’s hard being rejected. Narcissus needs a greyhound bus A train through dust and new Palm Springs Bend bend bend with the tracks Find your own bloody tune Sans Meisner or method Or mama’s melancholy Come to me In deep focus, My citizen K? Next!

O for Benjamin Zeitgeist

The center of it all Some call it the onion Meditation is a cloak He felt as the sole intact atom At the center of a nuclear explosion And mentioned the many watercolors he painted of Laotians paddling downstream in boats of bomb shells That’s poetic Or, Not

P

Q

R

Suture

Shane does Shannon

Taonga

she (took me for granted) sent me adrift through the window from a cabin on stilts

why, within the bottle, my wooden sails have weight? and eelgrass seems seaweed or palomino mane under waves carry us to new banks now covered in snow

Trip to the Moon To Pierre Bettencourt

he has pills to help him dream

last  night he gave me one on which was written in small letters ambience

and before I reach the well between cotton and plays of scale he awakens me from a nocturnal proscenium

Unsomnia

I’m Me Keeps me up At night And you?

Vertigo

The grey flannel pencil skirt doesn’t fit Kim Novak or me this season

I warble and the sidewalk gives up

In black and white, I have found Harry Lime On cobble-stoned streets far from Vienna But the tune,   I can only slightly hum

Zibeline Allergy (See Knitting)

Zoetrope Spotted on Cardiff, On Main Imagos spun for one and all withheld

[pollyopolis]

Santa Monica Alleyway.

[pollyopolis]

Last night the wind spoke your name

Last night the wind spoke your name and a moth neared the lamp which cast enough inspiration to thread each spring teasing with one lover after another Until familiarity became damp, the faint trill and trickle of time Until that which has been takes a name a life of its own wind giving form to absence

Last night, in the rustle of a frond in the gurgle of a garden fountain locus amoenus Each hoot of the unseen owl called out your name

[pollyopolis]

[pollyopolis]

LA Excerpts

Because in this city of farce and reinvention one fidgets to see clearly. This morning the Two north was unfamiliar under foggy canopy. The cop with speedgun at the underpass by Verdugo, unimportant. And KUSC brought a guest deejay, an actor who plays Beethoven. There was a party, a dinner party, a local restaurant, and one dear friend after another reminded of the rain.

Because nothing but the natural order of things matters. An absence, a blessing. Four days ago, the woodpeckers’ eggs hatched. She goes in first as he stands watch.

At the entrance to the 101 North on Bellevue and Echo Park: the black jeep, a phone in the driver’s hand. Entropy, dismissive of green signals. Honk if you like reading.

A wall-eyed terrier as companion for the night; its human in New York. The apartment window, facing north. Boreos all quiet; true north finds Wilshire,a welcomed drone. Do you think of me?

I enter the hammock of abandon, as one slips into the Ganges… the lone tourist buying cardboard, candle, and flowers to float and come clean. 21 years ago, I rolled west onto less peaceful terrain, and in Pasadena I find the arroyo seco, a devil of an earthquake, the chill of civil unrest, and pine for the Pacific. Restaurants and jazz as wallpaper.

Music music and no one here can march in time– Offer up the periodic table and spin a diamond for each candle, each tooth, and pray no more. Build these dreams then where? South? Under ocean floors? On a floating island of plastics? And some have never been kissed.

[pollyopolis]

Veering West.

[pollyopolis]

No Direction

The south

Faux fur and feathers heat up hats Came by herself to church without boy or man Ran the June bug up and down her arm Didn’t believe in molasses A thousand miles away The Spanish moss is calling From ancestors to voodoo doctors

The north

Bend under snow The branches you carry There is no end to the stars and the wind There is only you yourself Scream from a bridge if you have to

The east

A pied, A cheval Pas en voiture, c’est impossible King David is a short walk to sand dunes Float atop salt Salt and years

The  west

Way out there In the Land of Divorce and backlots I met a woman so lonely She looked younger each day

My southpacific

Naka’apu’eo From uke strings And a church named Aloha Where a street sign points to either volcano or airport

When we found the school And peered off the cliff’s edge Ocean violent : the lava devouring history You requested lunch

[pollyopolis]

Time, Unscrewed.