For about two weeks I have listened to nothing else than "Red Lamb" by The Monolators. I simply will not let this song escape from my head. In an interesting side note, up-and-coming British blog, The Devil Has the Best Tuna, recently proclaimed their song "Red Lamb" as the best song of 2006. Indeed!
The kind folks at 14×14 accepted the sonnet The Bluest of Lips for publication for their "Love and Lust" February issue. O Happy Days!
In the poem The Golden Legend, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow talks about the maritime belief concerning a capful of wind:
Only a little hour ago
I was whistling to Saint Antonio
For a capful of wind to fill our sail,
And instead of a breeze he has sent a gale.
Literally the term means a sudden light breeze (enough to fit inside a sailor's cap); but the term is also applied to one who, in myth, could control the ocean's winds and weather. In the Dark Ages it was a common belief that witches could do just that. With all knowledge comes sacrifice; I wonder what a person needed to do to discover the wind's secrets? Something terrible, no doubt, something terrible.
She did not take it. I gave up that eye
to her. Yes. I let her draw the sickle
toothed-shark bone across me. Screamed as the sky
went out and the waves rushed in. All that gruel
meat of an eyeball. Gone. She packed it full
of spiced tide weeds, sewed it shut. My poor skull
shattered. My spine burned. Now with my capful
of wind I have become a sea jackal.
My scar remains. The way it crisscrosses
across my right cheekbone, like a ripple,
a fate, something lost while the sea rages.
Even now it binds me. Something hateful.
Spiteful. Something I could not hear clearly
but a thing I'll always have to carry.
Earlier this morning I was thinking about the problem with writing a haiku. The easy part is figuring out the form (three lines; the first and third line have five beats and the middle has seven beats to it). What I find difficult is the idea of having to have a twist to the poem, something that illustrates the interconnectedness of ourselves and our natural world but with a surprise, something new (which, now I come to think about it, is the challenge of all poetry).
All of this started as I worked on a poem about an ayakashi; a Japanese word for a ghost appearing at sea during a shipwreck. My first draft of a haiku looked like this:
even the soft crabs
avoid the dead girl's bright eyes
in the snarled rigging
Then I thought about it and wondered if I placed the "surprise" (such as it is) too much in the middle of the poem, so I decided to re-write it. I am not sure if there is a huge amount of difference in the two, but I find it an interesting question regardless; this sentimentality I have over the dead.
even the soft crabs
in the snarled rigging avoid
the dead girl's bright eyes
It is curious we live in an era where sentimentality in art is frowned upon as being trite or unnecessary. For my part it is sentiment that connects me to this terrible and beautiful world. Why, then, do so many people act like they are disconnected? I tend to end up worrying about the dead more than I probably should. Especially when it comes to folklore about the ghosts of children. After all, that inability to feel connected to the rest of the world creates a sense of alienation while we are alive; who knows what it would do to a person who, once dead, is expected to be a literal part of this cosmos? Why are we caught up doing the same thing over and over? Is it simply a lack of imagination or something deeper? Will sentiment, in the end, be our saving grace? It is not the sort of question I expect answered; still, all those poor lost children does bothers me.
The waves at dawn have secrets to tell you
and all the pickle-black weeds washed ashore
worry about you. The sea groans, you knew
that. I can hear it too. I am so sure
it will be there – all the pain the waves tell,
the hurt the beach has – but still, you ignore
that. On the other side where the wave fell
and drew back – in that narrow space before
it falls back – that's me; because I can't leave.
I can't wander or sleep or say goodbye.
I am stuck there with all the roar and hiss
of waves. Blurred. Lost. Because I can't conceive
any other world than this. Because I
cannot conceive another world than this.
My friend, Diane T. Sands, is a "a naturalist, cartoonist, librarian, and free-lance scientific illustrator, who also uses the sketchbook as a medium for recording the natural movements of the world around her." She is also the California president of Guild of Natural Science Illustrators.
I woke up this groggy Monday morning (deep snow, all dark outside) and found, waiting in my gmail in-box, that she had drawn this illustration for me. I was so amazed by it I wanted to share it with all of you. What a wonderful way to start a week! Diane, your visions are amazing!
Does it bother anyone
in ballads when the dead
maid sings from the grave
after courtly love
and suicide:"with the long, green grass
growin' over me"?
And she is in
the grass
and she is
the grass
and that grass is in
my parent's
backyard.I planted fox fur
near its roots today
from a clutchful
of glorious red,
that with a tug,
came loose
in my hand,
tail and all,
from the scraps
on the highway.I had some scraps left
in my pocket. I bring
back bits of dead stuff
to feed to the grass
stems, as if grass eats;
as if a dead girl could use
a fox as a companion.
