Auntie's Anti-Poems

[AuntShecky]

Please note:
The Literature Network administrators have advised us to post all of our poems into a single thread. The following thread, "Auntie's Anti-Poetry," contains several poems. When commenting on a particular poem, please indicate the title of the work in your reply.

“When I wrote that, God and I knew what it meant, but now God alone knows.”
–Robert Browning


The Puzzle and the Pity

We cannot see the ciphers, such a stretch
of forest, dense with senseless reason, and
no rhyme. A murky stream from a source unknown
churns deep beneath our unschooled reckoning.

From splatters of thoughts in scatter-shot lines
we seek some soul-balm from the sensitive,
at bottom as sincere as an infant’s cry:
a babble, sure, yet rarefied as Yeats.

We dread the water, then attempt to wade.
Too swiftly comes the splashback: “too mainstream,” “derivative,” “colloquial,” “too trite,”
or “déclassé,” or worst of all, ignored.

Listen, we don't do this because it’s easy
or that we can (or think we can.) We see
an empty page as an anti-Everest
that may be worth the risk of an unsafe climb
in front of us, because it isn't there.

[PrinceMyshkin]

Oh, those magical final lines! The glorious truth it posits about poetry! And with what composure and lyric flow you approach it!

I envy you your equal talent in rhymed and unrhymed poetry.

[Virgil]

Auntie, that is excellent. Yes I liked that last stanza too, but I also liked this one as well:

From splatters of thoughts in scatter-shot lines
we seek some soul-balm from the sensitive,
at bottom as sincere as an infant’s cry:
a babble, sure, yet rarefied as Yeats.

"As sincere as an infant's cry," what a marvelous simile. Love the "s" sounds too.

[AuntShecky]

In his autobiography, My Life and Hard Times, James Thurber included an anecdote from his college days relating that immediately after one of his professors announced, “I do not expect you to take notes in this class,” every student wrote that it down. In a televised interview a few years ago, Sharon Olds told Bill Moyers that once while walking through a garden she was suddenly inspired, and not having her notebook with her, she mimed the action of writing on her palm to help her remember the idea. A mainstream magazine having published a tribute to Raymond Carver revealed that for a time after his death, his widow Tess Gallagher would find around the house random notes in which he had written what might appear to be non sequiturs, bits of seemingly unrelated phrases, and odd words such as “Antarctica.”

Hypergraphia

Symptoms include fear
of temporary memory lapse,
extreme dependence
upon blank paper, writing implements,
a vade mecum ready to be taken
several times daily, or severe anxiety
upon loss of same,
occasional cramping of an upper extremity,
and the tell-tale tiny bump,
a callus caused by constant pressure
of a pen, on the middle finger
of the dominant hand.

Prognosis indicates potential
allusions of possible grandeur--
beyond the quotidian memo:
“dish liquid,” “cheese,” “paper towels,”
tacked up here and there –
scraps of large possibilities writ small;
a strange compulsion
to capture the elusive:
an exact replica of what’s been said,
or a Karner Blue before it flutters
its way toward extinction,
or a diving Adélie lest
it disappear beneath
a sheet of ice.

[PrinceMyshkin]

Hypergraphia

Symptoms include fear
of temporary memory lapse,
extreme dependence
upon blank paper, writing implements,
a vade mecum ready to be taken
several times daily, or severe anxiety
upon loss of same,
occasional cramping of an upper extremity,
and the tell-tale tiny bump,
a callus caused by constant pressure
of a pen, on the middle finger
of the dominant hand.

Prognosis indicates potential
allusions of possible grandeur--
beyond the quotidian memo:
“dish liquid,” “cheese,” “paper towels,”
tacked up here and there –
scraps of large possibilities writ small;
a strange compulsion
to capture the elusive:
an exact replica of what’s been said,
or a Karner Blue before it flutters
its way toward extinction,
or a diving Adélie lest
it disappear beneath
a sheet of ice.

Remember that famous scene in "When Harry Met Sally" in which Meg Ryan demonstrates to Billy Crystal how a woman might convincingly fake orgasm, in reaction to which an older woman says to the waitress, "I'll have whatever she's having!"

Well, after your last several poems & this one in particular, I understand exactly how that woman felt! (Assuming, of course, that whatever you're on is perfectly legal...)

[Lynne50]

Aunty Shecky

Please help! I have that affliction of which you speak. Especially the ..."symptoms include fear of temporary memory lapse..."

And it has gotten worse since I joined Litnet. Bits of scraps litter my computer table and I have "notes to myself" everywhere. I know when I pass on my children will not understand any of my compulsiveness and out all of it will go.

I really enjoyed this poem, by the way.

[PrinceMyshkin]

Aunty Shecky

Please help! I have that affliction of which you speak. Especially the ..."symptoms include fear of temporary memory lapse..."

And it has gotten worse since I joined Litnet. Bits of scraps litter my computer table and I have "notes to myself" everywhere. I know when I pass on my children will not understand any of my compulsiveness and out all of it will go.

Possibly, but you're overlooking the jots and fragments of conversation, the memories you've already deposited, intentionally or not, in their minds, which they will track back to the you they already know...

[AuntShecky]

"Life's a tough proposition, and the first hundred years are the hardest," said the American writer, Wilson Mizner (1876-1933). A boxing manager, playwright, screenwriter, and a Hollywood raconteur, he was married to a socialite, for according to his biographer, Alva Johnson, "He was an idol of low society and a pet of high."

But Mizner was also a poker enthusiast. During a game, Mizner’s opponent took out his wallet, tossed it on the table, and announced, “I call you.” Mizner took off his shoe, put it on the table and said, “If we're playing for leather, I raise.”

Up the Ante

How about trying your hand
at a little crier’s poker?
Here’s my childhood,
a fistful of taunts and
ridicule, no way to treat
an orphan. And I'll throw
into the pot my acne-pitted
adolescence, a snake-bitten
siege of abashment –

then I'll raise you
with a middle age
knocked out by debts and
punch-drunk with grief,
as I tried to climb up
and looked down to see
my rock of dreams get chiseled
away, chip by chip, so let’s

see what you've got, huh?
Huh? Let’s see how the darts
in your gin mill pierced
through the soft, green felt
of hope. Show me
what’s in your wallet,
thickened by the upper cuts
of life –

Hey! Where're you going?
Come back here! You
haven't had a bite
of these store-bought
sandwiches, you haven't
even touched
the cheese dip!

[AuntShecky]

“What does woman want? God, what does she want?"
-- Freud

“[Americans] don't know what we want, but we are ready to bite somebody to get it.” – Will Rogers

The American Dream (in a Big Nutshell)

Let me tell ya: I want
superfecta bombs and mega-
lottery jackpots and broken
banks from Atlantic City, Vegas,
and Monte Carlo;

and I want tax-free sums
from highly-publicized divorce
settlements and the real
estate profits from sales
of Park Avenue penthouses
and summer complexes in all
of the Hamptons;

and I want a big budget
from a Hollywood summer
blockbuster movie and all
the overseas box office
receipts (gross, not net);
and I want the entire
Yankee player payroll
and the astronomical tab
from thirty-second
Superbowl commercials;
and I want late-night-TV-
talk-show-host money,

and Oprah money
and Bill Gates money
and iPod money
and Google money
and YouTube money
and FaceBook money
and Twitter money
and Exxon-Mobil money
and OPEC oil minister money
and billion-trillion-gazillion
national deficit money;

for as Bogey said
way back in 1948 in
The Treasure of
Sierra Madre: “I want
dough. . .

. . .and plenty of it!”

[PrinceMyshkin]

“What does woman want? God, what does she want?"
-- Freud

Pardon my quibble (if it is that) but I always thought that the second half began "Dear God..."

As for the rest of this, the poem proper, it's equally witty, funny and doubtless true for a great many of us, men & women!

[AuntShecky]

“Oyster, n., A slimy, globby shellfish which civilization gives men the hardihood to eat without removing its entrails! The shells are sometimes given to the poor.” –Ambrose Bierce

“It’s a very remarkable circumstance, Sir, that poverty and oysters always seem to go together.” –The Pickwick Papers


“Nacre-Philia”

The scuttlebutt says that the natives mine
a kind of gold from a lucky dive, for among
the scores of all the dripping bivalves shucked,
one could by chance offer an opalescent gift.

It glistens in the sun, but we wouldn't say
it shines. Even the tiny diatoms floating by
reveal more glitter. Aphrodite posing on
half a shell overpowered its mortal beauty.

Still, awe and marvel greet this find,
with a momentary neglect of the pearl’s
plebeian source: over time the mollusk
scratched and rubbed a sore under its shell.

For years and years an invading alien
irked an oyster into making a pearl,
as eon after eon of monumental pressure
makes a diamond from a pebble of coal.

Through painful ores we could pan and sift
through irritating cares and itching woes
in the prospect of producing, finally,
something better, something precious;

yet no matter how much uninvited grief
infiltrates under our less-stony skin,
we're left only with a speck of grit
in an endless month without an “r.”

[PrinceMyshkin]

I hereby rename you "AuntShucky"! It's astonishing how something can be created so light-hearted - and so beautiful, at the same time.

[firefangled]

“Oyster, n., A slimy, globby shellfish which civilization gives men the hardihood to eat without removing its entrails! The shells are sometimes given to the poor.” –Ambrose Bierce

“It’s a very remarkable circumstance, Sir, that poverty and oysters always seem to go together.” –The Pickwick Papers


“Nacre-Philia”

The scuttlebutt says that the natives mine
a kind of gold from a lucky dive, for among
the scores of all the dripping bivalves shucked,
one could by chance offer an opalescent gift.

It glistens in the sun, but we wouldn't say
it shines. Even the tiny diatoms floating by
reveal more glitter. Aphrodite posing on
half a shell overpowered its mortal beauty.

Still, awe and marvel greet this find,
with a momentary neglect of the pearl’s
plebeian source: over time the mollusk
scratched and rubbed a sore under its shell.

For years and years an invading alien
irked an oyster into making a pearl,
as eon after eon of monumental pressure
makes a diamond from a pebble of coal.

Through painful ores we could pan and sift
through irritating cares and itching woes
in the prospect of producing, finally,
something better, something precious;

yet no matter how much uninvited grief
infiltrates under our less-stony skin,
we're left only with a speck of grit
in an endless month without an “r.”

Bless everything about this, from the title to those longed for months with rs. Very fitting internal and off rhymes. If we could only reap such beauty from our grit...

I long for the days when things had a preciousness because they had limited availability - oysters only in the months with rs, watermelon only in the summer and pearls only if you were lucky to find the long enduring oyster.

A pleasure to read. Thanks!

[AuntShecky]

I Thought of You, Joan K.

I know you only from pictures
and old clips on a flickering screen,
and saw you only in a shadow,
as your famous spouse blocked your light.

Still, somehow I knew of your private
pain, your failings, and your grief,
always accompanied by some comment,
the pundits condescending to pity.

So when the dignitary died --
his own sins rightfully covered
by the greater effect of his deeds --
I heard encomia for your successor,

whose support for him was worthy
of such praise. Yet you, too, came
to mind – you as one of the intermediaries,
a buffer between the great and the little

people like me. I wondered where you
were and how you felt -- perhaps
a little sad, like me --
watching the funeral on tv.

[PrinceMyshkin]

My God, that is beautiful! It would be for the sentiment alone but the dignity of it, the decorum, adds so much to what is, in the best sense, a sisterly hug. None of the commentators, as far as I've noticed, thought to mention Joan, but you did - out of some well of compassion you have.

Is there some way you could (and would) send this to her?