Wednesday, March 31, 2010

CD

I wonder if he thought
east in his flight, of
Mr. O'Donnell's voice
intoning
Atman, Brahman,
we are one with all,
the air,the
ground.

CVP

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

On Your Way/Twenty Two Fourteen

I don't have anything to listen to
And that really scares me
"You have music," you say
But sometimes I'm not so sure

"I absolutely cannot write about it," I say
But sometimes I'm not so sure
Scribbled notes on discarded notecards
Folded 8.5x11 sheets: name cellphone email

This doesn't feel right
Neither does that
It isn't the words
(Or that)
Or the melody-
But maybe both, at once

But this
This I can do
This,
Turned up all the way
The hums, vibrations, ring out against the tiny membranes that are responsible for so much
So many thoughts
Tears
Smiles
And sometimes, no reaction at all
Simply a quenching
Of a thirst I didn't know I had
Until days like today
When I don't know what to listen to.

-LIL

blame the rain

what is a coincidence
more than
the scatterplot
of random events
making up the universe
--transiently--
appearing
correlated?

and what is happiness
more than
buzzing neurons
buzzing
in the
right
directions?

and what is love
more than
the convergence
of these
two
newly effable,
and ever passive
circumstances?

DLS

unseasonably mild

tired of rain,
but not today.
wet, but not cold
grey, but not sad
short, but not gone
yet.

today i'll have it all
get it all
do it all...
and tomorrow,
"residual rain," he called it--
one day closer
to the sun.

-KAL

days in review

I wonder how much more I'm
dreaming, with all this sleep?
how many more minutes of
unconscious emotion
where in warmer rain Gael Garcia Bernal's
smile made me cry
for the open road of
Argentina ayayayy las
pampas, la moto, las
lagrimas
but only on Monday, and
really it's that many more minutes
to the tune of a relaxed heartbeat
a playlist of warm
sun and seed dance
pizza and tea and the hugs
that sustain me, sightings of
a neighbor so far away
I don't feel like
walking there anymore.

How do we move in dreams?
At night, all's right in the
world when we're up against the wall--
dancing,
flying made of luna bars and laughter
--or wandering
on a percoset wave watching warm
conversation and raucous room of
trappist beer, burgers, bright-
eyed friend of so many bad
puns and double periods,
connecting
--or floating, like
my mother in grace and
Indian shawl who heals my
throat with her cold tickly hands and
on my way back to sleep
four rowers at High St loiter
and give me a dusky daffodil

unfolding
dreams of a
tent made of intertwining vines,
where the stars are far-
away echos of our
flashlight beams.

CVP

Monday, March 29, 2010

a rain dance

how delicate the rain
against my pounding heart
how boisterous the wind
against my tangled brain
joining together
to drop a beat
for the sun,
gathering a crescendo of grey
to call forth the
bright warmth
squinting eyes
and slow smile.

fearlessly stomping through puddles,
an army of wet socks
wrinkly fingertips
dewy faces
and wavy hair
will dissipate the clouds
with their footsteps,
i tell myself.

DLS

Sunday, March 28, 2010

sleepy poem from a caffeinated shop

when the sky is white,
and the buds not yet leaves,
the branches seem to reach higher.
dark on a blank canvas,
they squirm into the sky,
stretching in every direction
uncontrollably,
like limbs in the morning.

DLS

Saturday, March 27, 2010

A Villanelle

And here I sit alone, home all alone
But for some midair specks of dust
The sun picks out, no longer unknown.

Once filled with chatter, my friends have flown
From these blue rooms. Their jokes have no thrust
Now that I’m alone, home all alone.

These stamps I place on letters to them seem sown
Together, the ribbed edges waving trust.
The sun picks up, no longer unknown

To lazy, unmoving birds who sing and moan
And warm their branches which cast off the rust
Of winter. I’m alone, home all alone.

I open the windows to hear
More clearly, lazy, even notes though the gust
Sharpens and picks up. No longer unknown,

The sun atones, the wind atones, and now,
How now? my heart atones to find a lust
For life. And here at home, I sit alone.
The sun picks me up, no longer unknown.

-EWW

Thursday, March 25, 2010

Yesterday, a woman in workboots planted pansies in two huge pots outside Sterling: buckets of purple and green spring candy!!

CVP

Spring

Spring
Sprong
Spreung
Sprüng
Sprocket.

-LIL

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

pitfalls of pratfalls

your blunders
drew me in
and my good sense
drove me out

in heated rooms and itchy grass,
your big hands cupped my "little one" world

slowly, i have peeled away your fingers
making red your white knuckles
and free my big girl world

but on this one day of the year
i will un-nostagically reminisce
the hidden pictures and rooftop ventures
as i sift my fingers through
our charm bracelet of saline pillows and double jointed heartbeats

DLS

March 23, Late and still Light out.

The smell of rain reminds
Too much of times past
Times when it also rained
And I was also sad.

So the sun relieves.
In a wash of light and warmth,
Denies me the sad memory
With involuntary smiles all the more pleasant
For their spontaneity.

Except when wind ruffles the sun-soaked air,
Disruptive rushes of cold to which
I find myself so vulnerable.

EWV

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

re: charms

well bizz buzz ms. bird
i'm looking up at you
most days
soaringscanningswooping
i catch my breath when you flap your wings
i close my eyes when i hear your song
i twitch my fingers when i long to emulate your motions
singswoopsoar
scanscintillatesigh
swimsauntersing
being you should be being me
but being you may not be what it is to me

DLS

written on break between awake and asleep

This whole writing thing intrigues me--
why sometimes the mind decides it's
capable of encoding fragile shifting
mosaics in monogrammed
turns of phrase supposed to stand
up to spontaneous scrutiny and be
cracked by every human bean. And
then--it doesn't and decides
it likes silent plaster, white
wash--possessing every color, but
showing none, preferring to
let the spectrum be
more vibrant, undisturbed,
oil slick in a
rain puddle.
I sleep well in
whitewashed rooms and
awake with the day
(mine) under the pillow.

CVP

March 23rd, 2010

It is rainy this morning
And I do not know that there are any songs about rainy Tuesdays:
All the songs are about Mondays, or Sundays, or Fridays, or Saturdays,
And I wonder why we walk through Tuesday each week unnoticed.
It is grey and brown and very green outside.
The few early morning walkers trudge along drearily,
dragging their heels in lackluster effort,
As if their feet were not ready to go quite as far as their bodies would take them.

Or perhaps I read this onto them.

This morning is a morning like any other:
Some people have been awake for hours, catching the 5:45 train to work:
Some parents have just dropped their children off at school,
and I wonder, if, coming home, they know entirely what to do with their mornings.
I hear the construction workers outside with their heavy metal tools, despite the rain,

And, I, this morning, take my time.

How nice it is to have time to take,
What a luxury to be still on this dark and gloomy day.

But soon, I will go for breakfast.

Maybe I will walk around a little while to a coffee shop
And I will get the very biggest mug of warm, frothy, milk-soothed coffee:
One that is large enough to hold with my two hands,
And warm enough that I can trace its path to my stomach by the way
it heats up my mouth, then my throat, then that bit between my heart and lungs,
and finally its round, empty destination: my belly.
Perhaps, with a bit of luck, it will be large enough and warm enough to heat up my soul,
And it won’t be such a dreary Tuesday.

-BHN

Monday, March 22, 2010

Known Landscape

What is this phenomena?
Onetime unfamiliar landscape
Known?
And loved!

Where did the strangeness go?
I think it fled -- In dread!
Of a surging sense
Of a happy feeling
Of belonging.

But how and when?
Ha! I know why
And why is who
And who is you!

You who make this place
You with your smiling face
Impossible to replace
Ah! You are too many to embrace
(At once, that is)

The first day back is over, now
To another's embrace
To the arms of morpheus
I race

Goodnight
I hope to see you
At breakfast

-NSG

Sunday, March 21, 2010

charms

You can be a condor and
rise above,
strong and fierce,
balanced
between the iridescent
tips of each wing feather,
riding flights of
pure air in
joy

CVP
-spring-
is here.
SPRING
i said!
is here at last

it took us
sidewaysrain | overheatedlibraries | slushysnow
overcaffeination | shiveryhugs | woolsocks

... and the like
to arrive at this day of lit up eyelashes and skin that's toasty underneath.

DLS

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Blood Type 1--March 16th

B+
B PLUS
B plus
Be plus.
B+
B+.
B positive
B POSITIVE
BEE POSITIVE
Be positive.

--EWW

Saturday, March 13, 2010

March 13 Litany

Coca leaves, cinnamon tea, and chocolate filled with marzipan,
we eat.
Crumbs from sweetbreads bought at bus terminals at 4 am,
we drop behind us.
For cold beer, made in Cusco,
we hand over coins and paper.
Beside us, women weave while walking.

We open our Russian books to mountain air
and on stale buses, whose saving grace, their windows,
frame the terraces the Incas wrought from soil, water, will.

We hike
dusty trails and canyons veined with gold.
We tour
Cathedrals made of white volcanic rock.
Hostels house us.

We buy tickets, take combis, slurp soup.
We stay up late and sleep through days.
We talk in broken Spanish, enthusiasm whole.
A condor swoops at us in the distance,
and we take his cue: tonight, we'll dance.

CDL

Friday, March 12, 2010

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Lady Bug

Today is gray but
I don't mind--the sky
Is Russian
And introverted
Which is fitting

There is a lady bug
Hanging upside down
And crawling
I noticed her when
I stretched just now

Her curvaceous shell
Is full and red...
How silly
To be turned on
By a bug

But I don't mind
She's more a lady
Than a bug
Dolled up and rubescent
Defying the drizzle

-NSG

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Two Today

We three sprawled
on the porch
a scene like a
Wes Anderson movie,
few words
somehow brimming.

Eclipse glasses make the
sun look like the moon and
Ellie and I both exclaimed
at their coolness.

Jamie knew that
already, read Siddhartha
out loud and told us matter of factly
the author spelled it wrong

then continued, a funny
echo of our mother when he was
1 and she would read us
Dr. Doolittle, Peter Pan,
with him at her breast.

When he got bored of wisdom,
wise 11-year-old he
threw slush at our sunbathing
stomachs and we laughed to
feel it melt.

Ellie made the soundtrack.
Wes picks his before the scene
but ours somehow fit better
on the fly from her speakers
songs for
three siblings, shot of sky
three shades blue of deep
and stick trees to pin it up.

I'm fascinated by the invisible
line where half our
snowy lawn has turned to
brilliant muddy grass, and
we danced barefoot on the snow
to bid it adieu.

Then Ellie and J went to
play Sims and I went
for a walk in the woods
where I found shiny sticks,
mushrooms, and
frozen dad footprints that
looked like dinosaur fossils.

**********

I wanted heat, winetipsy
tropical jungle and latenighttinted
love, conversations with stars south of
the equator and laughs in desert
sand washed down by a Pisco sour.
Set free by not knowing and not really
understanding, my eyes would
open wider, I thought, and
our hostel lounge realizations
on life would stop us in
surprised joy and send us,
fortified, to the world.
My hips still ache to shake,
my eyes still crave the dawn,
and I most certainly still wish
to meet this Mama Africa
but gravity has a way of working
even when your feet have ended up
behind your head somehow and
somewhere today,
between a noontime wake up
20 salted dark chocolate almonds and
a walk with my grandmother,
I think I've realized that
this is what I need, that
this hemisphere is perfect
for the next fourteen sunny afternoons

CVP
(a long-winded windbag today, sorry)

Breakfast

Is coffee and a cupcake,
The wrapper picked for crumbs.
It's late too late for lunch. But I
Like leisure, lolling, hums

The sunlight slipping slow
Ly onto my sleeping
Lids, late, late in the afternoon,
When creeping light still lingers.

-EWW

Monday, March 8, 2010

a day trip

morning
a blueberry bagel, nothing like home's,
a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, made just right.

afternoon--brooklyn and a flannel shirt.
gratin, walt whitman,
and a sunset.

evening is dinner, departure
missed trains, confused taxis
worth it in the end.

(i still don't know who won best picture)

-KAL

porch nap

today i lay on the porch and
worshipped the sun,
golden god.

face warm, feet bare, i
felt new freckles and
fell asleep unknowingly,
dreamt i was
somewhere and
someone gave me
headphones with phoenix,

then woke up hot and happy
in my puddle of sun
and stretched
my legs off the steps,
toes tentatively searching
for the earth, rejoicing
to find grass.

snow was melting, and i could
swear the air smelled like
daffodils.

CVP

March 8th, 2010

Today I eat for breakfast
Two soft-boiled eggs
A large coffee with one cube of brown sugar,
One cube of white,
And a fig.

The sun is glistening on the half-melted snow,
But it is too hazy to see the mountains across the lake.
At times, our guests joke
That they really don't exist at all
-We must have made them up!
An ode to our foggy weather.

After lazing about for another hour or so,
Perhaps I will take a ride on my bike
To the center of town,
That metropolitan ant,
And stop in for a coffee with my mother.

How lovely it is to be home.

BHN

Saturday, March 6, 2010

The Night Before Breakfast Tomorrow

Paper
Is what my train ticket
Departing New Haven
Was printed on
And what I'm writing now
And hopefully what I'll print
My job applications on this break
Before mailing them in
Paper envelopes.

Earlier today my dad
Told me to stop lugging
Paper books around.
His better idea:
The Amazon Kindle.

I'd rather rip off my own leg.
-NSG

Holiday

The weather today
Calls for the spring
Empty campus
People are everywhere
Probably having fun
Or more likely, asleep at home.
Don't lie to me, sun
Spring'll be a lot of rain
But when you come
I'll forget all about that

-LIL

Friday, March 5, 2010

eyes closed, a turning in

it mostly feels far
like i am the sky
and you're the earth
together
like small hands
reaching
to see whose fingers
are longer
but never letting them touch

DLS

New Title

A little hungover
I feel the warmth of this library
In my socks
The ground on the green
Is firm,
Ready anew for the trample of feet
Returning from the world
But for now,
Ready for rest too.

-LIL

Thursday, March 4, 2010

Motives

Yesterday I took notes as neatly as I was able
Because I wanted you to rest your head on me that night.

Tomorrow I will go to Massachusetts alone
Because I want you always to be next to me.

Everything I do is for something else
Even this.

JKP

4 March

The light's got that
quality right now
The one where it comes through the window
But not quite,
it just is everywhere
Penetrating
Clear
Not necessarily happy or joyful
Just all enveloping.
Cold, yes
But also a nice reminder
That we are alive
And that the world is here,
you can't avoid it
or hide
well, I suppose you could
but then you'd be missing out on the
light

-LIL

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

guilt

i spent the day lamenting the fate of women around the world

trafficked liked objects
ignored like air
raped until ruined
impoverished until hungry
silenced across borders

what a cruel world, i let myself think
don't people see what this discrimination is doing to us?

but when the day was over
and late at night it became
i stood alone on a new haven street
near union station
waiting for my ride back to comfort

i stood scared
because a black man
with baggy pants and a flat brim and overflowing beats from his headphones
was the only other person there

DLS

March 3

Stepped off the New Haven platform
and darted through a train car
into Grand Central.
The sidewalks were cool, grey and welcoming, outside;
the passersby oblivious.
I picked up my passport
from a drawer in my mother's dresser
and a pair of red sandals
slipped into a canvas bag,
and stepped back onto the train
and out the door
and into the library
where I sit now, no one the wiser.

- CDL

degrees

travel
fever

only 99.1 degrees
enough to take me
.25 the way around the world
but i'm greedy
and i want
all 360

CVP

March 3rd

My head aches today
And the weather is quite dreary.
Oh, all my past regrets
I blame on your mother's fruit tea.

-BHN

3 March

Time to face
The rain
Shake the sleep out of my eyes
Wool socks (just right) on
Boots (too big) laced up,
Today, at the very least
Is one day less

-LIL

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

March 2

Hands in pockets I feel
Two pictures of myself nestled
One on either side
The somewhat ridiculous result of a lost-id
And inertia
Too specific a story for a poem, perhaps.

I burnt toast today
Not in the normal bit-too-brown burnt but
Flames
Menacingly languid and rabid orange

It didn't scare me

Because I’m invincible and
Innumerable
With back-up faces
One on either side

EWV

March 2nd

spring breezes are among
the best sensations in the
great vaulting world
if you ask me
and I would know

for instance today I
took someone in my arms
read a newspaper and wondered how the world could seize so easily and without warning
picked up a paycheck in a white stamped envelope
walked in a drizzle in evening air
eating an apple and looking forward
to where I was going
wrote a music review that had a line about poisonous mushrooms
not that they were very relevant

today was
rice krispies in berkeley
an afternoon nap
a conversation about stolen art
and looking, leaning
forward toward
one another
gladly

CDL

a daydream, or a proposal

i want to spin in a field of yellow dandelions and tall grass and bare feet.

my hair will fly
your laugh will echo
she will cover her giggle with her hand
he will nod to the rhythms in his head

i want to fall onto the ground in exhaustion.

we'll breathe shallow breaths through our smiles
the earth will hold us with infinite love
the grass will tickle our feet
the sun will sting the sweat on our faces

and when we go to sleep that night, we'll grin at the day we've had.
oh, what a day it will have been.

(we miss your laugh, EWW)

DLS

A Few Sentences to Start the Week Off Right

two weeks ago (it was february 15) a woman drove her convertible with the top down.

now, spring teases at least and throwing pears in unimaginably huge arcs over rooves and (accidentally) at windows has to be the best method for bursting with laughter. i bet sidewalk-splattered pears taste better.





don't you love the guy who plays afternoon harmonica on the corner of chapel st?

CVP

My Father and Me

"Tug on my beard,” said that man in the red,
“I promise it doesn’t hurt!”
So I climbed on his lap and did just what he said,
But oddly he gasped in alert.
-
You were wrong that Christmas, I’m sorry to say,
And maybe I just tugged too hard,
But whatever you said wouldn’t hurt on that day,
Has forever my childhood scarred.
-
No breakfast today,
Only memories.
The Love Song of Roland
Sung by a socialist
Heard by a soul-less
Hungry, un-showered mess--
Me before breakfast.

A scale scales the walls
Of Slytherin then momentarily stalls;
Frankly, I wish "to stall" meant "to stop forever."

Sam Sullivan salutes you, Evan Walker-Wells!
Not with bells or well wishes, but with a trumpet...
This olfactory experience does not translate well onto paper.

Gilmore is insecure.
He cautions us against other professor's lure.
I dont mind--
Class is canceled!
-NSG

Pre-breakfast

The welcome screen on my
new cell phone (!)
Says "sun, peeking out behind
clouds, today"
The view from my desk,
cluttered, covered and stacked,
Says "sun, from the side,
cast shadows along the soggy green
grass. And light blue,
with wisps of white:
the sky, today"
---
Am I ready?
Tuesday is here, one day after monday
5 days before Sunday
The sky is certain,
assured. May the gleaming gold
of turrets unknown
from my desk's window
Allow me
Some respite

-LIL

Monday, March 1, 2010

March 1st from Brooklyn

There's less than an hour
Left in today,
And like the boiling water
Which tries to escape this silver kettle
Through the small little hole,
And turns the whistle round and round till it says
Ai, ai, aiee, aieeee—
———
And fills the dark kitchen
With misty steam,
All the items on my to-do
List—finish this book, write
This letter, call—who?—
Some illegible name—take my
Medicine—that remain undone
Fight to be checked off my list.
This is their last chance not to be neglected
To limbo, without a day, without a plan,
Till I find another place and write
Another daily list in tomorrow's sun.

—EWW

what is a passing day?

was today in the midst?
--a powerpoint on kant
an unedited essay
an overslept nap
a frenetic lunch
a full inbox
a scolding voice--

was today on the mend?
--a lost dream
a benched chat
a far away run
a spontaneous dance
a kind stranger
an adventure of pears--

was today in the sun?
(i stopped today.
i closed my eyes and
just
breathed.
i felt that warmth
on my eyelids,
and i think i fell in love with the sky.)

DLS

March 1st (morning)

It's nice to be around at this time.
Quiet,
like how this city must be when it
half-dies in the hot flash of summer.
I love this walk,
a moment to think.
Maybe there's a bright side to these mornings
after all.

-KAL

March 1st

Spent today with
Edmund Burke, Marie Antoinette, Mephistopheles
and some others.
We planned our summers,
studied for the psych final,
gossiped over coffee.
Marie ate all the cake.

CDL
Today the wind was nostalgic
It made me remember
November
-NSG

March 1st

Today
Spring?
Regardless, sun and the smell
of new things.
Maybe it will snow
again
But today
doesn't know that

-LIL

The more the merrier!

March 1st marks a new month, and a new start for "Breakfast Poems" - with many more posters! Hopefully we can have one poem or thought a day... Welcome, everybody.