Of Poesy

I am tumbling poems over in my mind. Thinking and thinking which one to read. Do you understand let me tell you:

This Wednesday we will have a poetry slam (have I ever told you how much I hate that term) at my place of work. I will be there, my people having organized it, and, being there, should must read something of my stuff.

So I need to read something. So, I need to write something.

I am desperately tired of and never want to ever again write in the piece-by-piece perfection of the college undergrad. Look at the enjambment! That surprising turn of images! Did you know that she would say that next -- and By God that indentation!

Blah, boring, fuck, get an A. And forget escaping the shadow of Pound et al, let's pretend they were the only poets ever and just ape them til the end of time.

I'm sitting here raging and ranting and part of it is insecurity but what is the rest? I am a skilled reader and can make anything interesting but have I written anything worth sharing? I am torn, what to do, what would they accept. Some of my blog posts here can be maybe cut up and reread as poetics. Or maybe something older.

A year ago, we did a training where we read a cheesy poem about reading by some woman. After this we wrote our own poem "after the style of" it. I like mine. I also, I just remembered, a few years ago wrote a poem when someone told me that as a child she used to be afraid of Pancake Men living under her bed. That is an option too. I want to here print these things and you tell me what you think.

First, The Pancake Men:

The good little pancake men under my bed
Are singing fine songs, that fill me with dread
It seemed a delight til I learned what they said --
Those cruel little pancake men under my bed!

It seems they believe it's a cruel twist of fate,
That I have a bed while they grace a plate.
So they plot with their minds full-corrupted by hate
How they shall overcome their unfortunate fate.

The plan seems to be to slip out while I doze
And lop off my fingers, my ears, and my toes
And string me up by my neck with the garden hose
Then mash me to batter -- While I'm trying to doze!

Then they'll have the bed! And they'll rule this house!
And they'll steal my car to ca-ruise and carouse!
And they'll never be measured, nor poured by the ounce,
When I'm dead and eaten, and they rule this house!

Okay and now the one about reading, which takes a slightly different tone:

I am from shadows and necromantic whispers, Aha!,
the myriad unnamable Sea of memory and lies;
I am from the humble world beneath the garden shrubs,
of ants warring and spiders spinning visions in the dew;
I am from a fine strange cottage under the willow’s branches
by the stream, and the bone woman lives there, and the
Tulip-men, and you,
and there we danced merrily to thin white notes in the
Moonlight, when the winged dead flew down from the stars
and the Lord of Summernight Dreamtime sang in his voice
of crickets and breezes.

I am from fine old wisdom tales and the transmitted
memories in the fire’s crackling;
From a certain sunny pleasure dome and caves of ice, aha,
Beware!

From the words that spoke the sun to light,
From embers slowly dying,
and the welcoming laugh of the creek at noon (before they
drained it).

I am from endless dunes and caws of stately seagulls,
the voice of light shimmering on waves I took to be the
Voice of God;
from the ocean who made me his son as he watched my
father walk away;
the old oak tree that held us in her arms.

In the grey banality of the dying time, when color has
gone, and dreams, and music; In the place where cats
cannot speak and trees have no wisdom, Wind no soft
and loverly carress and Sun no stern but kind admonishment,
In the drunken hour hiding in the corner with forgotten light,
I am from the quiet ghost of pages rising in the mind,
singing memories of light, memories of home.

Oh and there it goes. This might, perhaps, need the original to be read first, and it was sort of a response to it; but maybe not; or maybe nothing. Dear Ones, what should i Do?