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I can do it too

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Rodia
Post subject: I can do it too
Posted: Tue 29 Mar , 2005 3:06 pm
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Nothing like Estel to get my courage up...she went and reposted her poems from the Scriptorium, well, I decided to go dig out mine.

:D

Yesterday

The chain fell off my bike, and in a funny way
When I got out my keys and bent the handlebar down
To pull it back around
The teeth
(here as I tested my icon white hands against mud and rust I thought
of great factories, steel and smoke, and marching ranks
proud Soviet smiles, with bicycles like mine)
I pulled it around, and turned the bike back up
Wiped down the saddle, and hopped on
For a glorious ten yards of satisfaction.
Then, the chain broke.
I might mention the day was rainy and cold
And my American shoes were full of holes
As big as your thumb.
I walked back home
Soggy socked
And sacrificed a driving class to stay and soothe
My icon white hands, as brown as chocolate
Or the boy from Zaire who takes the class with me.
I told him to take notes,
And gave him a fiver for his lunch
And aspirin.
It’s a rainy day
I can neither trust the Cold, Dead Hands
Or that There Will Always Be Sunshine.


-------------------

The Curse

'One twenty downhill isn't smart', said Blaise
'Especially with a tall thin black boy in the front seat
Instead of the usual heavyweight skinhead.'
'Driving with Blaise isn't smart', said my mother
'Especially down that tragic road to Lodz and back
You must remember his family curse'.
But I ride with Blaise, in his fast little Fiat
With a camera in the back seat, safer than me
With the big Jew or the thin black
With the radio on full blast.
We always say: This is the danger spot
Fourty five accidents, ten people dead.
This is a railroad crossing, so look carefully
Remember how the racecar driver got killed.
This is a tricky bend.
Blaise has a family curse, or so they say
He was in the car that crashed. The driver in a coma
Died weeks later. I had German with him.
Blaise's brother killed his girlfriend by driving into a tree
On the same road we flew down at twice the speed limit.
The girl's father is the one who helped me be born
'Push' he said to my mother, and cut my umbilical cord.
It's a small world.
'You can tell your mother trains aren't any safer' said Blaise
'Just look at Spain.'


------------------------

This is my country

This is my country:

This birchmud and snowsand, pepper and salt
The mines in the south, holes in the asphalt,
And pretzels. Of history fled and revived
Of those gone. Those lost. Of those still alive
Of me and my city, my freedom, my God
A bright coat of paint where the mortar has crumbled
The sulking suburbia
And Stalin unhumbled
The birches and mud.

-------------------------------------

Cold

Tender is my sinus membrane
Both of them, as is
If I have two. I should beg pardon,
Biology was never my best.
But to put in perspective the need
The desperate need, blind and supersticious
For decongestants,antihistamines and suppressants
Or was it anticongestants, depressants and suhistamines?
Really, you ask too much, my best friend
My love, you demand miracles!
Mummy dearest, I'm fine. Piss off.
And Godard, up yours with the Herald Tribune.
Who said snow was a warm blanket, eh
Stupid Russian willow-bark folklore
I couldn't match it if I tried for centuries, and you know
Perhaps Norstein is a vampire, drinking ink
I wouldn't put it past him.
What I really really think
Is I will take the whole blasted day off tomorrow
Supplied with soup, bread, butter and a sheet of hanging cloth
Which is better than barbed wire, where roomies are concerned.

-------------------------------

Christmas

Whipped cream!
Foam!
Stars!
Cotton wool!
That mystic fluff that makes me wonder
Every time,
What the people who divide their year
Into muddy and cracked
Would think.
Because seriously, if it's a magic to me
And I've been hearing the scratching of shovels forever
(I have pictures to prove it)
Wouldn't it turn their world upside down?
We benefit from zoos, but I wouldn't say I ever saw a giraffe.

---------------------------------------

People can fly
And brave the impossible
And mate on lightbeams
I possess sunshine at night
I possess a memory of touch
That becomes near everything
A phonebox in the snow contains
My most elaborate elation
Which is but a shade of premonition
A flier thrown across the ocean
Advertising, proclaiming, screaming
The life I've caught a thread of
To be knitted into hope and babies.


----------------------

Fox

The fox is loose
The fox is wild
The fox is hunting near your gate
Good man with the poet's name
Set your snares out for the fox
She will scratch against your door
She will bite the wired fence
Good man with the picture eyes
Keep a look out for your fox.

---------------------


Friends

Geek me
Shriek me
I sit hours thinking I'm hacking,
Racking my head thinking
Why the files won't do what I ask them to do
But files don't usually 'do' anything
Baby fun
Mattie broke a limb, he hops like
A bald kangaroo on the wrong side of the globe
Flightless kiwi of a cat, my kiwi stayed up all night
I have friends. Sage Stellie, Sexy Steve, Better-than-me Becca
David with a toolbox and five extra years
For my housewarming
(Roxy brought the coat hanger)
I have Hoosier Kat llama-rider, with too much on her mind
Too much on my mind, with another theme
Friends of the one I loved are flying where I'm flying
I have Mat the cat with his kangaroo limb
I have Julia
Trucker grocery seller, postman, office rat
Bowling on tuesday with someone I hug
Oxf*** in a fortnight, Steve went to Cambridge
Shakespeare I never loved, he serves me despite
Hairy MacLary and the moon over Warsaw
Geek me, shriek me
A copperheaded blink would be nice
I have the enchanting immigrant, to thank I have
The Lily Rose, the fellowship, the Asgard bridge
The ones I missed
To conclude
I have a bike
I can't quite write like mr Stipe
But to conclude, I have Chris
And everyone else by default.

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Rodia
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Posted: Tue 29 Mar , 2005 3:20 pm
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And some that apparently never made it to TORC...well some did..um...yes.

------------------

Dear Lord, the dust sticks to cat piss. Did you know that?
And there's a force field over the trash can
Wouldn't it be nice to be always of the dark dark earth
To bury waste, to pull up carrots
Ah, what a bastard little poem this is.

------------------

Sleep

There is a wedding a year from now, after the hurricane,
And my cat thinks she is pregnant again. It's normal,
It's winter come early
It's time for disconcert and stumbling a bit after the film
The seventh this week, and it's tuesday marching
I am the two wheeled sing-along superhero,
Mesmerised not but in love and unprepared
Ferrari stickers and a city in Indiana that
Clouds over too frequently
Californian sunshine, music and archive
A change and turnover to make me crazy, and save the world.
I want to sleep
And own the whole of this foundation.

--------------

Aching Feet and a bit of a Heart Throb


We're sitting on a bench in the Tate Modern
And you're still queasy from the flight.
Perhaps the fear is mixed with the sunshine
I've forgotten it since, tuesday from then
Sitting on a bench in the Parthenon room
With Keats' heifer lowing at the skies
And no air-co.Thursday we are smarter
Leaving our bags and donating a pound
So that we may gawk, unencumbered
At Meadow Madonnas and each other.

Friday it is I think I pull you
To visit Joseph's workshop, and the Saltonstalls
The Prowses for chocolate
And I feel upset. You take me to Charing Cross
And walk with me to the tiny graves
Of Phoebe Phelps, and little Walter
At which we needn't pray.

Good man, I cried on Tuesday
But we both got drenched on High Holborn Road.
And I'm at home now. The soles of my feet hurt
So I sit down on a bench in the Tate Modern
I don't think much of cubists.
I'm fond of Millais.
I'm in love with you.

-----------------------

A Little Island Infatuation
(for Paul Durcan)

I call him Mr Durcan by respect
Though he begs to be called Paul
When he shows me the great womb of Ireland
And the empty chair at his breakfast table.
I would fly right now, were I still crazy
Ask him to whisper me snails, grass and raw magic
Saltwater fingertips
To roll off the tongue.
But I am not crazy
Not since this winter
And he is older than I am
And a poet besides.

--------------

:P

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Griffon64
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Posted: Tue 29 Mar , 2005 6:22 pm
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Ro - just want to say again that I loved the poem about the fox. You had it in your siggie along with this most amazing drawing of a man reaching down to a fox you did yourself. That was stunning.

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Rodia
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Posted: Tue 29 Mar , 2005 9:42 pm
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[ img ]

:D

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gimli_axe_wielder
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Posted: Tue 29 Mar , 2005 11:51 pm
The easily amuse-OH SHINY!
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I think Lidless has that drawing :)

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Rodia
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Posted: Tue 29 Mar , 2005 11:55 pm
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No he doesn't. He has the one with the carollers that I don't have up online.

I should probably give this one to you.

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gimli_axe_wielder
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Posted: Wed 30 Mar , 2005 12:03 am
The easily amuse-OH SHINY!
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ahem.. nevermind :oops:

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Rodia
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Posted: Wed 30 Mar , 2005 12:11 am
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My silly dwarf is as tall as my father
And his name is equally literary
But he hates the tangle of my personal metaphorical quizzical parralels
Parralel is parking for my dwarf, but,
Think not his soul is rough around the edges! He
Has gentle fingers and gentle eyes
And he touches me across ten hours of flight.
:love:

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gimli_axe_wielder
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Posted: Wed 30 Mar , 2005 3:35 am
The easily amuse-OH SHINY!
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:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D
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vison
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Posted: Wed 30 Mar , 2005 4:30 am
Best friends forever
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Rodia, you are a poet of rare talent. These are wonderful!!!!!

What a pleasure to find your poems!!!!

I am using up my year's supply
Of exclamation points.
But when the poems come down the pike
So round and fine,
What else can I do?

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Nin
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Posted: Wed 30 Mar , 2005 7:55 am
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The London poem made me give your PM.... I wanted to read it over and over.

:D

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Rodia
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Posted: Wed 30 Mar , 2005 9:08 am
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Please notice that Gimli also wrote a poem, using only smileys.

That's talent!!

( :oops: )

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enchantress
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Posted: Wed 30 Mar , 2005 11:54 am
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I've always ADORED the fox one... and that last quick little gem on the dwarf... simply lovely... :oops: :D :bow:

...also love the "my country" one... that actually made me tear up... :oops: :neutral: sigh...

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Rodia
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Posted: Tue 06 Dec , 2005 7:44 pm
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Glupstwo

Sugar goes well with fresh buttered bread, and cheese goes well with pasta
I used to go well with you
But I think I went stale.
Or perhaps the window opened and the rain came in
The bread got soggy
What a foolish thing to happen.

I came back too late
To a puddle on the floor with your reflection in it
From which you smiled
And smile at me still.
My affection was posted courtesy of friends
As once were my letters. I hated such distance
Twice the world between us became farther yet
I salvaged some crumbs, but
They were too small for you to feed on.

And they will tell you, such is life, my friend
My friend
You can't always eat everything
And sometimes it happens without your fault or mine
Sometimes you get tired of sugar on your bread.

Neither friend or sandwich is entitled to a grudge
After years and years
We may welcome tastes that sickened us
That is my sweetener.




(just in case anyone is worried this is NOT about Chris and myself. It's about a friend that drifted away.)


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Rodia
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Posted: Sun 11 Dec , 2005 8:09 pm
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1980+

As I catch wisdom from the blurry screen
My father
Mirrors my father
No longer with the pipe
No longer in that light
A different dog sleeping on the couch
And a cat at the window.

The camera wasn't steady, the reporter
Fidgeted like a boy freed from a lesson of lies
Asked questions he knew answers to, but
The delight was in hearing them spoken.

My father was a film critic once. He fell in love
With general Chapayev
Now he sits and asks me
"Am I boring?"
His shirts have grown a size, his left eye a glaze
No longer the bard of hussars, just
My father
Still with the skipper's cap, under which he holds
Words I sometimes try to borrow. Sometimes.
"No, you spoke well." I reassure him
A stupid youth with no battles to fight
No rationed music, no censored meals.
No iron fence to hold this poem
Back from whom it may concern.

That leather jacket he wore in the studio
My mother had to make many debts for it.
I think
There are yet hussars who remember
To thread his song into their wings
Before they ride.

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