"Rubato"

"Rubato" comes from Italian, and is used as a musical term to roughly mean "robbed time." It's something felt, rarely written; regardless of time signature, regardless of notation, you steal the space in between the notes to create another dimension there. The listener suspends her breath. 

Rubato

One wandering eye flits

to tepid milk sitting out. I’d

forgotten. He is in it, as he is in

every vaporous toccata whirling

lost inside the radio. Questionnez,

rubato. I cannot tell which eye is my

enemy. I eye with love, with loathing,

any tool to scoop it out. But which simply

sees? Which connects dizzyingly out of a grab

bag of images, its open-mouth socket a noiseless vacuum?

 

1. The other in bed sings as if

underwater.

12. A house clicks

and shudders in southeast wind.

 

5. Long curtain shadows twitch

in powdered light.

 

 

With each forced closure, I lose

a whole dimension.

 

Acknowledgment.

For relatively new writers, it comes less often than Christmas, and is over just as quickly. It's come, for me, in the forms of: wait-listing, a lengthy and beautiful and encouraging letter from a lit mag co-editor, and nudging brilliant writer-professors. Most recently, I got this rejection letter from Gulf Coast...

Piss-off auto-generated rejection:

"Dear Fellow Writer,

Thank you for your submission to Gulf Coast. We're very sorry that your work doesn't fit out needs at this time. Due to the volume of submissions we receive, we are unable to comment on individual submissions, but we look forward to reading your work in the future and wish you the best of luck in placing it elsewhere.

Sincerely, 

The Editors

Blow us hard."

I invented that last part. 

But then there's this, handwritten, a little further down the letter...

"Jamie, We really liked "Rubato," even if it didn't make the final cut. Please send again! -SB"

That's from Sean Bishop, Managing Editor. 

Christmas explosion.

It's almost better than an acceptance into a magazine, because it's a personal acknowledgment. Yes, these are people, not litera-robo-prototypes, reading your poems. And, yes, they like them. And, yes, you should keep writing. 

Written June 28th. A work in progress. It's not really about a sea gull.

i was on the beach collecting language

when you appeared as a gull, out

on the crests, cresting. you were always 

a gull, as gulls have always been.

here i saw that i could collect you also. 

your wild-eyed symmetry, symmetry

of your own language, your calling

out sounding like awe or raw...

raw, algae ripped out and whorled

into tide, beaching itself. raw, skin

laid out whipped by hot grains 

of sand. raw carelessness that belongs

to the world, that the world doles

out needlessly. 

you will one day land

on a live wire. in your mouth you'll carry

shock, loss, your pulse less 

and less. it will be the symmetry 

that eliminates you. its syllables that 

gag you like too big fish.

seconds from your end, i will see you

and there will be nothing i can do. 

foam from your mouth, calls falling 

out, will become foam on the sea. foam 

i will collect and swallow, 

calling and recalling.  

Because the world consists largely of fragments...

...and because it's often the individual parts we love as much as the whole (the individual line in the poem, the lines in the lover's face), here are some fragments of poems of mine. It takes fistfuls of guts to post one's poems to a public audience. I'm not ready for that. I need to shower first. And swallow hard. And get ahold of some bourbon. 

+Nopeology—the study of things that probably won’t happen

  Maybology—the study of things that may or may not happen

+The only thing that saves you

from infinity is your own breath and

your cells’ decisive birth and death.

+Tiny cannons dabbing at cerulean, another kind of blue. 

+Red: the last color lost on the way to the ocean floor. 

+pulse pulse pulse

flip

  pulse pulse pulse 

flip

+I know that military cut

close to the head

close to the throat

  Depth of guilt directly correlative

to the degree of sin

  Morning shave arithmetic 

  Nick, whisker, blood speck

+Faith, To a Beta:

a stone man in a diving bell.

False coral paradise, fluorescent filter hell.

No one really reads this yet. I'm kind of glad for that. 

Somebody Else's Poetry Before Mine

Lo-fi digital photograph courtesy of Nicolette Van Doorn, onepixelpower.blogspot.com. 

Madrid In June

I suppose I made this blog to put poetry on it.

A first, because there is always.

There are plenty of reasons not to do anything. Anything is exhausting, but there's also the dark matter mystery of whatif and whatnext. Making a blog, for example. Why the hell would I make a blog? What can I have to say that hasn't been said, whatif, whatnext? I don't know is a fine answer. I'll go with I Don't Know. I Don't Know what I want for breakfast. I Don't Know why I'm in Laos. I Don't Know why I made a blog.