Poetry by Gennarose Pope |
||||||||||||||||
On Freeing Myself from Codependency The coffin nail, the spike that anchors the dog leash, the lobotomy pick— These are the tools of men, and the tools of women who Have not been cursed with the violation intense enough To shake them free from their tree place and upside down like me. It’s just me here, upside down and pedaling backwards With the tree trunks whizzing by like tree tops and leaves But all I can see is dirt. Old soda and beer cans, used condoms, The feet of men who think they’re standing straight up. But I’m standing straight up, they’re upside down. Who is it who can defy expectation and transcend what’s carved for us As a menial existence? All I want Is the chance to rebirth myself through someone who wants more. Idealistic. But the feet of men I see fly by are sticking out of coffins hanging from those trees. They protect themselves with death as the only change, the Only chance for something new. They lack the tools required To spit me, gooey, sprawling into another life. So here I fly by, left to my own upside down devices (no, not a space pen, Because they are a tool of men, too) with a chance, at least, Of achieving something—halfway there—if I could only Disentrance myself from the rubbish and feet and lose the fear of falling on my head. |
||||||||||||||||
Fullfillment See it there, the movement, the moment Where it could have been, will have been, but isn’t In the circumstantial way it exists, transient Like death And it hangs there In delayed momentum and I grab at it But it defies me At the very instance that I realize it Twists, lurches, seizes, shoots Like the seed of all comprehensive being just above Where we can physically, psychically reach Preaching itself But, overreaching, we seem To miss it every time, build goals and games And philosophies And music and lives around it Where ambition misses, passion compensates And fails as diligence struggles when Discipline gives it the ole’ college try but Falls short of it—so close to it— Seems we’re full of it while every day losing it To the competition Of instant gratification and impatience and humaneness And the like Like children, laughing, recalling Spelling bees, pep rallies, proms, job interviews, Promotions, first loves, All culminating in an ever-elusive instant So we bow low to it in our daily pittances And cycles and efforts and die Without knowing it was with us all along Plainly laid beneath the splendor of the quest. |
||||||||||||||||
On Reconciling Past and Future I feel the rain From some disproportionate sky Sometimes And sometimes then the feast commences With lime twists and tangos Lurches with the way life procures it And it secures The angles of a time never spent Coinciding with the nostalgia that comes of it. Sometimes, With a skewed vision to guide me Quiets me And the experience is enough To make the scheme anew Turns twice themes that I've harbored so long But with a freshness That confounds them all Without an "it happens all the time" to fall back on. It spins again From syndicates of memory besides Abandoned For the new-spangled breath of reason Redistributing skeins That the neighbor's cat can play with And all I've done this year Is a jig for a small season That wouldn't have come at all if I hadn't asked. |
||||||||||||||||
On Building a Legacy Has it become you yet The pearls of praise and prejudice strung together In a gin and tonic haste Dripping from elders' lips at the top of the stairway Nay and aye-saying With that memorial day smell Conveyed easily on the hazy barroom air-- But you're only just learning now And jewels sit heavy on your wispy neck And one has a hard time telling it From the scraggly strands of silver That adorn your head With all the grace that you've put forth And all the gore that you've put up with Come repelling down in piles spread before you So know:one can say either way What you are or what you will have been Pause awhile, here While you still have hands to stroke with I'll make myself willing Because, my liege, everyone needs much practice It can get slippery here But not as slick as the ways out there The ever-pressing by-ways and prose-ways Can become leaden and tedious And you'll remember this nest-- This many-chambered feather nest-- For its labyrinths and maplessness And foul smell for lack of soap, glitter, garland The stuff you can quite put your fingers on Quick! The sooner you leave The sooner the vice grip will re-grip And crush the armament of footprints you'll leave behind. |
||||||||||||||||
On Writing Changed priorities ahead Of a small inconsequential pair of poised lips Dangle like the fruit Delicate, red, Sincere and demanding like A how-to manual inscribed in code And coded for those Already ahead one play. No entourage to shuffle me through While the others have to feel it out Well, we're in the same yacht now. I used to hate them. But the old woman on the sail talked me into it-- A strange little thing That liked to gorge herself on brothers and sisters-- Taught me about it. I've called on brevity And he was in a meeting Insulting, but I knew it all along in an early way Seemingly indifferent But that planner I wore through (the laughed one) Was full of more than laundry lists And the to-do's Were figures of destiny-- Unclear and they enclosed me While I thought to wait in ambush. |
||||||||||||||||
My inspiration: JOHN ASHBERY KENNETH KOCH |
||||||||||||||||
TRUNK POEM... | ||||||||||||||||