Hey all — I’ve got folks all over the world who subscribe to this blog, so I’m fully aware that not all of you celebrate the various Holidays this time of year….but if you do, may they be happy days indeed…and if you don’t? May they be the same. Thanks for reading.
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Notes on productivity
Eleven days till the end of 2012. If I can post eleven poems here between now and then — so, a poem a day — I will have posted 1400 poems in the three years since January 1, 2010.
Got three in the hopper in progress. Think I can do it? It is without question an Essentially Meaningless Goal. But those can be fun…
150,000 hits!
Just wanted you all to know that “Dark Matter” just crossed the 150,000 lifetime hits mark. As the Web goes, that’s not a huge number; it’s gratifying to me, though, thinking of 150,000 views of these poems…All a poet wants, I think, deep down, is to be heard and read.
Thank you all very much.
Tony
Break coming
I’ve got a couple of poems in progress, then I expect to take an indefinite break from posting for a variety of reasons. Please feel free to come and visit the site and look through back pages for older poems anytime.
Thanks for reading.
Bolorimbe Atrarcus (revised; original post 5/2009)
In my world we have a placeholder name we are given at birth
and a real one we pluck from the air by ourselves later,
the one we recognize immediately when it arrives.
In our tradition when we partner
we plant a dogwood tree by the door
of our first private home
and cut our chosen names into the young bark.
Custom dictates that every day, before sunrise,
before we go our ways, we rise together
and touch the wounded trunk, so that
we have at least that connection
before the day to day divides us.
No one knows how this all began.
I firat thought of my name
on the occasion of my first forbidden coitus
but only settled upon it
when at last both my parents
had passed. I’ve never said it out loud
or carved it anywhere. It’s my name,
a hideous name, an ugly breath
but my own.
If there is a house out there
with a yard big enough for a tree
that could hold two names
as thick and ugly as mine,
I’ve not found it yet.
When it happens, when it appears before me,
when I learn the big name of my partner
and there comes at last the carving time,
we will not plant a dogwood, of that I’m sure:
more likely an oak, even a banyan
if we’re somewhere a banyan will thrive.
Perhaps we’ll plant no tree at all
and just whisper our chosen names together
before each sunrise. Maybe at sunset, too.
Our names will be enough to make it pretty,
whatever we choose to do.
April poems
I will not be posting any new poems during the month of April.
I will, however, revisit poems from the 3000+ poem backlog I have here online and elsewhere, and repost them; some I’ll be revising.
Just thought it might be good to see where I’ve been. I’ve posted 81 new poems this year so far, which I think is slow for me but feels right at this time. A little retrospective feels right.
Short break in posting
Working on another project for a bit, so won’t be posting new poems for a short time. Please come back and read through the back pages…there are about 2000 poems to choose from.
Thanks.
Thanks.
Since this blog was created in May of 2009, there have been a lot of poems posted, a lot of comments, and a lot of readers coming by.
We’ve just passed 100,000 unique hits.
Thank you.
Happy holidays!
I’ll be gone for the next couple of days doing the family thingie, so Happy Holidays to all! Enjoy and be at peace.
Quick Note: The Duende Project
Just wanted to drop a note to the regular subscribers here (and anyone else coming by, for that matter):
First off, thanks for being here. It’s gratifying to know there’s a regular readership for this.
Second, thanks for all the comments lately. I’m normally really good about trying to respond to each one and it’s been tough lately. Will get back to that soon, promise.
Last point: I don’t usually refer to it here, but if you’re interested in The Duende Project, my poetry and music recording and performance project, you might want to join us on Facebook at:
http://www.facebook.com/TheDuendeProject
You’ll get updated info about shows, streamed tracks, occasional downloads for fans only…oh, I’m sure you know the drill.
Thanks, all.
T
A note about the recent poems
Just wanted to thank all the folks who’ve been reading and commenting on the poems lately. It’s gratifying to know that people I’ve never even met are getting to see them and that they’re being read.
It’s the whole reason I do the Dark Matter blog in the first place — to put an ongoing body of work in public for public view. Sometimes it feels downright quixotic, and I’m gladdened when it seems to work.
Heartfelt thanks to all.
Publication notice:
I’ve got a poem, “Awake,” in the new issue of Amethyst Arsenic!
Also includes poetry by Kristine Ong Muslim, Alexander Nemser, Tara Skurtu, Jade Sylvan, Michael Fitzgerald, Karen Locascio, Mangesh Naik, and more. Featuring artwork from Fred Byrd and Merlin Flower.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Hey all…
Just wanted to thank all the new subscribers who’ve signed on to follow the blog lately. There’s been a MESS of ya! Thanks for the support and hope you continue to read “Dark Matter.”
Tony
A note about the postings here…
The poem I posted just previous to this, “The Meaningless Goal,” marks the 1000th poem posted on this blog since January 1st, 2010.
I intend to take a short break from posting poems here, but would appreciate it if those of you who subscribe and read the blog would take some time and go back and read some of the previous postings while I’m on hiatus. There will be more poems eventually, but I kind of feel like I need to take some time and do some other stuff for a while.
Thanks for your kind attention, and I’ll be back soon. Promise.
Cante Jondo: When I Heard She Was Gone
My hands fell into my lap.
My palms
opened
face up.
I called out,
Who has a hand drum?
hoping to pound this
away from me.
I sang “Shenandoah,”
hoping to lure Death
far away, across the wide river —
but he stayed
for his flamenco moment.
Darkstruck guitar, dark heels and hands,
dark dance, dark jewel.
Cante jondo, they say. Deep, dark song.
Duende, putting a song into the air
to fill a hole
in the air. It’s not about death,
they say. It’s about life. And it is, and
they also say it is enough
though it is not enough.
But say it enough, maybe
it will become enough.
At the hospital, no music.
What sound they had for me was thin and cruel.
It’s nothing to repeat here.
I came home after I listened and heard enough,
and sat with
my hands
in my lap,
palms up.
Cante jondo, duende,
what can you bring to this,
to the hole in the air, to the not enough?
I am waiting to receive word
from far away, you rolling river,
from across the wide Missouri,
of dark eyes wide open,
a flash song in the deep, even just a chord. That
will be enough,
even if at once
it is not enough again…oh,
where is my bright dancer?
Dark Matter 