what things mean.

 

 

 

 

First,

poems mean I had no one to talk to last night.

Then morning came on Newton as the

enemy of spiritual truth.

There are no planets. Just elfish grays

or white fires, waiting for the spell to break.

 

In Detroit, there's a dead man

the snow covered, least the whirling

and singing of weeds and post war

General Electric TV's with heavy wooden

cabinets

 

that hide his features, invokes pogroms

and the holocaust. "Couldn't tell if it

was male or female" the reported said. Into

madness, still not done, helpless

children

 

pretend their rotten art in open fields, thinking

there is fortune to be made of bullshit, or

like Dunchamp  the sentiment and affection

of found objects. "In advance of broken arms"

the blades, only, of snow shovels

from this seven month winter.

 

But truth be told, art has been dead since

Coltrane gave to Paul the spire of bright lights.

The spherical answer that feelings,

the conscious recognition of self,

are just a wonderful thickness,

trying hard.

 

Birdland this morning is quiet but beautiful.

Tomorrow mothers mind wont focus.

Cant call the names of anything but puzzle castles

and hurt.  Ravishing fearfullness. Oh please

love me God of little else. Tell  me

why  the heart  can just pick up and go

like some unencumbered someone to love?

 

Second,

I am lonely as hell and with the surety

of another night, will be the same. Third,

fourth and  fifthly, I understand

how beautiful this meaning is. How pain,

whatever we understand about it's secrets,

 

finds us all.

 

Reviews

[Tree]

First. That first verse was perfect. And so true. A poem is born/ in solitude.

A rich fleshy human-earthiness exudes out of this poem, and I miss the way you give cold inanimate objects life, a personality. Your poetry gives us a deep insight into how we might see things if we allow ourselves to just be Alone with our things. I don't know how else to say this, except, that your poems become a living, crawling, organism to me.
I want to stab it with my fork.

A tremendous poem, Dana.

[Horizon K.]

I want to paste your entire first and final stanzas here and say, I love them, I love them... because I feel them...

Gosh, this was beautiful Dana, lonely... And we read poetry alone so often too, and even if we are not /by ourselves... we might stray into that singular place to hear it, feel it, ruminate in that beautiful pain... Don't make me afraid, that poetry would ever die...

[Roger Turgeon]

I think this means your mind really works when your alone.... not wishing you an eternity of loneliness, just a few evenings worth. Enjoyed.

[emmajoy]

Read this three times, pausing at different places, seeing the scenes, the people, set in words sown with incredible clarity. There's a 'head in sky' sort of feeling, as if this place on earth and its contents human and otherwise are being stared at, analysed, absorbed.. and then, somehow etched so deeply in case the like never returns., Your alone.ness (not loneliness) is more than sad, your words are more than .. more.

That final stanza hits the heart.. hard.

[ChemicalMadness]

least importantly of all, you capture a piece of Detroit here...more importantly, you speak with authority, certainty, and empathy...and the voice of someone who has been and will be there again...and again...and do us all the favor of writing about it. so all of your points are beautifully made and humbly taken, for you've offered not only a window here, but also cause for reflection.

CM.

[jacob erin-cilberto]

"poems mean i had no one to talk to last night" what an entrance this poem makes...
all the things that make up a poem...the living the dead, the winter covering up our mistakes...poetry illustrating them, admitting them...

and then just how damn lonely we get sometimes lost within our own poetic world feeling both in touch and completely out of touch with others...but in the end, yes, it is true ...Pain finds us all..
and maybe we are the lucky ones who get to channel it through our writing...whether in Detroit or Carbondale or wherever....

so deeply touching this poem is.

[K. Louis]

I was thinking about the word forever, having a hard time with the word adaptation. This touched me; made my holes ache a little less.

[W.k.kortas]

Whew. It would be cute and showy to call this an "anit-poem", and I suppose that it is that in a sense, but that's a little too easy, a little too much of a throwaway phrase. What this piece is is some damned hard work, a bucketful of hard truths. The images are vivid, but unsparing--no lovely springtime couples holding hands in some leafy glade, just endless winter, long and cold and desloate enough to hide and de-sex a body over its duration, and the harsh (but utterly true) judgement of the final three lines. There isn't always a happy ending, but if you can't have one, at least the moral of the story be told like this.

[kmartell]

aiming for the moon and surrounded by these others, but you no or yes, what good needs fall like your summer after the "seven month winter". dream on toward and away from beatiful darkness, I read on, I catch fire with little sparks and things, this very good to me, poetry is moment after moment thank you for this.