American Sentences is a switched-up version of haiku invented by Allan Ginsberg. He defined it as one single 17-syllable sentence instead of the 5-7-5 syllable, three-line format in other American interpretations of Japanese haiku.
Valentine’s Day over, time to take down paper roses from the door,
and past time to put away that basket of glittered pink hearts you kept.
Sweep the floor, and open into shamrocks with the wide green spring ahead.
When you stumble into a poem,
life—your life—is suddenly
Lit Up. Exactly what it was—
only the angle
shifts, and tumbles you
into a brand new world.
All day, you can open this drawer in your mind,
remember the lamplight before dawn,
scent of morning coffee,
the cat anxious to be on the other side
of any door, while you write.
Later,during ordinary gray
bits of the day, find yourself
Smiling, the air filled with lavender.
According to Steve Kowit in his wonderful book, In The Palm of Your Hand: The Poet’s Portable Workshop, “a translitic is a poem ‘translated’ from a foreign language by paying attention not to the meaning of words but to their sounds.” It’s a way to shake loose when words feel dull or frozen.
Translitic based on Jorge Luis Borge’s El Guardian de Los Libros
Here the gardens, the temples, the temple
Of wrecked music and wrecked palaces
The sense of seven, four-sided walks,
The right to be summoned, amicable, in unison
Before the opening night sky and the crowds
That decorate the blue-water emperor
Cued to serenity, fueled by reflection of the world
And especially the compass, dabbling in the fruit,
Torrential respectability at the margins
And the unicorn herd, parting with their fins
All their regrets.
The secrets layer eternally,
The concerts orbit
And each house of memory stands free
in custody of its own world.
We cross worlds each night inside our dreams,
but the images we carry back are garbled.
This is intentional–
Its job is to remind us which are real
of all the worlds we wander.
Ordinary women with long-braided pasts, feasting on Greek salads–
heads bent over dishes thick with feta, dolmades, falafel.
Someday, I picture us eating this exact meal by the Mediterranean,
in sun dresses instead of wool, the water out our window a
wide blue sea salty as Kalamatas
instead of this narrow gray canal, dotted with ducks.
But here today, we make our own warmth with stories,
listening to tales of deaths, diets, miracle lotions, far flung dreams.
Eyes fill with tears, and clear again,
like the water glasses our patient waiter refills
as we recite the litany of our losses, which are many.
Look at us. Look at our bags laid down, at rest after being carried so far.
Look how we laugh, funny and hope-filled,
dreaming of beaches and Europe, wine country and cottages.
How beautiful we are–the way we dream those futures
but brush our hair today
and put on mascara we know will
be cried off before dessert
chances equal that our tears are from sadness
or laughing so hard we cry.
Either way, our hearts crack open over
this gift, this day of being ladies who lunch.
When my world feels pinched
And dry, I look at the roses you sent.
They arrived like messengers
From a far-off country
With urgent news–
Two dozen sweetheart faces from dark red
To pale pink, yellow, orange, peach,
And a soft cream the color
of vanilla and old lace.
Every time I see them,
Relaxed and blooming now that
All their traveling is done
Their soft faces urge me
To take a deep breath and remember
I can relax and bloom too
Having read their message:
There are places in the world where beauty grows
Even now, in the middle of winter.
Late last night, the angel in the backyard
spread his wings and nearly spoke.
Today, all that’s left is an odd pattern
where the world is melting beneath my window,
as if the barn spent all evening practicing
snow angels on the ground.
You’ve spent a life time
here in the City of Lacking
writing endless lists in your heart,
gray pebbles of all you don’t have–
a bit more of something:
Money, time, talent, beauty.
It’s time to move.
Now set up house across the green–
call it Joy Lane,
where the lists are of moments
laid out end to end or heaped together
glinting like hidden treasure.
When I was little and clever, nurses in crisp white uniforms appeared now and then at school, armed with sugar cubes and needles to protect us from many things. They assured us the diseases would be much worse than the shots. I remained unconvinced. But I always had a plan. Our teacher handed out half-slips of paper for our mothers to sign, one for each of the shots you’d need. Each disease prevented was on a different colored paper. A good year, you’d get just one color, or two and one was purple which was good because that one wasn’t a shot but something they squeezed from an eye dropper onto a sugar cube. Naturally everyone wanted to be protected from that disease.
On my walk home, I’d throw the papers away, cleverly hidden in a neighbor’s trash bin, as sneaky and smooth as if I was disposing of a body. Then my only job was not to look too smug on shot day when everyone else was lining up for pain.
Eventually I got caught and my teacher sent me home with a rainbow mountain of paper permission slips. Everything I’d avoided stapled together.
This is the story playing in my head all the time now, like a song the body forgets it’s humming, as I check the mail each day, waiting for the divorce papers to arrive, waiting for something I can sign.
are crowded with artifacts.
The robin’s left with one strand of tinsel,
some dried grass, and a scrap of blue silk ribbon.
I get soccer cleats, Legoes
and the ruins of a medieval castle
built entirely of sugar cubes.
there's a poem in every day
aka: The Happy Bookers
Artist
I came to where you were living, up a stair. There was no one there.--John Ashberry, "The New Higher"
custom poems on vintage typewriters
One Poet's Writing Practice: Poems by Mary Kendall
A Ronka Poetry Practice Since 2014
Living in the moment
Puff Of Smoke Poems 