Author Archives: writerspilecki

Part Two for Jane

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What the Pillow Said

 

All my life since the factory

I have lain on this one bed,

Cushioning the dreaming night

Visions of this one young man’s head

As they wandered through

The dizzy saturation of pictures–

Friends, storybook monsters–all blue

With memory. My job was clear

And without significant interest:

Make a soft place, put up here

And there with drool or even

The occasional murmur or snore.

 

So when he moved out of the dorm

I saw my chance and, leaping

From atop the laundry basket

Of despair, I fell. Keeping

Company with a telephone pole

For the last three nights and days

Has been eye-opening (or would have,

If I had eyes). Cars drive through haze

Into a future I could not imagine

Back then, before their journey showed

Me possibilities for adventure,

Before today began my life on the road.

Poem Written on Company Time #1

This poem is for Jane Kokernak of Leaf, Stitch Word, who saw this sight and wondered what I would make of it. “I don’t know why,” she said. “Because I write about weird shit,” I answered. “Oh, that’s true. You do.” Natch.

 

She asked me why a street might need its own

Pillow, off-white against concrete, light

And fluffy when compared to tar, all crabbed

And broken from wheels and feet and packages

Dropped, lives dropped. What moving student

Dropped the pillow, distracted, overloaded, and

Eager for freedom in a new space of his own?

 

No matter. No man’s pillow now resides here

In no-man’s land, as everyman tramples this

Sidewalk, proceeding from home to work,

From bliss to worries and woes. The sidewalk

Itself wearies from the eternal sickly glow of

Streetlamps, damp leaves, cigarette ends still

Smoking themselves. The sidewalk longs for sleep.

 

Now, Jane, send me the picture and I will write the other half of this poem…

Recognizing the Paradigm

 

I have been spending my summer vacation so far rereading the Harry Potter series. In Harry Potter: Goblet of Fire, the three European wizarding schools are set in a competition against each other. The individual champions must face dangerous tasks to prove how good they are at magic, strategic thinking and sheer bravery, all in the interest of fostering international and inter-school cooperation. Our Olympics are very similar, using a competition to foster cooperation.

This seems odd. Aren’t the skills that are inherent to competition kind of opposite those that are inherent to cooperation? I have been thinking about this in relation to my teaching these last two or three years. After teaching Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” two to five times a year for the last twenty-plus years, I have seen how he manages to avoid the language of combativeness and argument and replace it with a more nonviolent language of persuasion. He always treats his readers not as opponents who have to be put down or put right, but rather as people who don’t realize they are imminent allies or possibly already allies. This is a very different way of presenting one’s ideas and, if the American political discourse going on these days is a marker, possibly an alien one.

But it is not just politics that seem inherently combative. The news is full of this kind of language, from politics, to sports, to weather. So where do we go for alternate ways of speaking? I wonder if there are texts out there about artistic collaboration, people describing how they work together to create a shared vision. We need more of that and we need it yesterday everywhere. You can’t change the world’s paradigm if you can’t even talk outside the paradigm.

Bat Dance

Some thoughts on experimental poetry.

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Sometimes you want to dress up–top hat,

White tie and tails, a foreign medal, a cape.

The dance would be just as impressive,

A waltz, perhaps, certainly not something

With Cossacks. At least one would think

This would be the dance of formal bats,

Emotive, aristocratic and imperial.

 

One would be wrong. These are bats

Used to hanging upside down, letting blood

Rush to their heads when they are not

Bloodletting right side up. They are wild,

Jazz-inspired, impressionistic, and although

You expected the reverse, they are–in the best

Possible way–way out of your league.

Blue Heart

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“The heart is blue/it aches for its own fuel…” –Jeremy Nathan Marks

 

Blue as the sky on a day when the rain has run

Its course. Blue as the water beneath ice, cold and waiting

For spring to warm and melt. Blue as the jaybird

Perched among the lilacs fooling no one. We think

 

Of fuel as a motive force, a thing for dead machines

To use to rev and stutter to life. We think of fuel

As the gas in the stove, not the blue flame that warms

Our food, turns spices into vehicles of heat. We think

 

Of blue as a thing of ice and need, not the bringer of sun

And day. But the heart itself knows blue in all its shades,

From the jeans at the foot of the bed to the hydrangea

And morning glory out the window, from the dark distant

 

Mountains up to the pale sky framing clouds. Sorrow.

Loneliness. A loss for words. A lost friend. A lost love.

In one direction, purple like thistle in highland heather,

Reminder of battles lost and won. In the other, green

 

Like the spring’s first blades of grass, poking through

Snow, asserting the incipient end of winter, for now.

For now I will cling to blue as to peacock feathers, wild

Elaborate abundance, souvenir of past good fortune,

 

Blue as my eyes searching every other eye for a sign:

Is spring coming? Will the sun return to me? Will there be

Warm breezes, bees, robins, picnics, new love?

Are you the one to bring these things into being?

 

Image from Agents of SHIELD.

Grr. Arrgh.

So yesterday in my last day at MIT for the spring semester, I wrote a fairly brilliant little poem about blue based on two lines from a Jeremy Nathan Marks poem. I thought I had successfully emailed the file to myself, but no such luck. So I am going to have to go in to MIT to get it, because it is very cool and I want you to learn stuff about blue. Because blue is cool.

That is all.