Aach...ye speak like a poet, but ye punch like one too...

PUNCH LIKE A POET

Saturday, May 20, 2006
  
Poem

SPAGHETTI WESTERN

No frying tomatoes stain the air with their fragrance.
She's gone. The apartment door swings open.
His backfiring Vespa parked against the curb below.
He learned Italian to make conversation with her mother
and she's gone. Every scrap of furniture too.
He lights a cigarette, imagines her dark haired cousins
carrying everything down the stairs for her, probably
singing some vulgar medieval folk song where a woman
leaves her dumb foreign husband. His dog's dead too,
curled like a closed parenthesis on the living room carpet.
The hot sun bleeds on the rooftops. Water glitters
like a fever in the bay. He throws his cigarette away
into the street. Cobblestones older than the great-grandfather
of the man who founded the town in Kansas where he was born.
Nothing left in the apartment but sunlight. Scattered
newspapers, broken pasta in the bottom of a drawer.
A tinny radio in the bedroom playing punk rock
in a local dialect he can't quite catch. Two weeks later
when he tracks her down in Salerno she'll swear
the dog was alive, howling as she left and he'll believe her.
But now he curses her in both their languages, lights
another cigarette. The DJ introduces musica americana
and plays Hank Williams. So lonesome he could cry.

# posted by Daniel at 2:40 PM.

Thursday, May 18, 2006
  
Green houses and other diversions

Lately (as in the last two weeks) I've been devouring a series of books on various green/low-energy home construction techniques. This covers a lot of ground--everything from passive solar design to composting toilets to rainwater catchment systems. Fanny and I intend eventually to build our own house, and right now my lack of job or educational responsibilities allows me the freedom to learn as much about this as possible. The ideal home would be a zero-energy house--it provides for its own energy, water, waste disposal, and climate control. Lots of fascinating stuff--probably too geeky and detailed for me to talk much about on this blog, but if anyone is interested in these sorts of things don't hesitate to chat me up next time we talk. The goal is to learn enough through research and workshops to be able to do as much of the actual construction ourselves as possible. And I'll make a standing offer now that when the time comes anyone who shows up to lift straw bales or dig holes will be treated to burgers and beer (Boca and wheatgrass for more enlightened readers).

In other news, we're slogging through the visa process for Fanny. Right now the first stage of the application is off at the Dept. of Homeland Security. We're hoping to have it back in the next couple of weeks so we can submit the second half of the required paperwork.

I've also been turning my poems "Speed" and "Rainboy" into kids' stories, as well as getting the Seamonster story back on track and coordinated with Carrie, who is doing the illustrations. These all seem to be coming along nicely.

Not a whole lot of poetry of late, but lots of other productive activity. And tomorrow I turn 27, which is a good age. Divisible by three and all. If you want to send me something send money to a charity instead. I recommend Canadian Food for the Hungry.

# posted by Daniel at 3:18 PM.

Friday, May 05, 2006
  
Dead Man Plug

Roger Jones over at PoBiz has some nice things to say about my chapbook. Dr. Jones was one of my Creative Writing profs at Texas State and the faculty advisor on Persona, the student literary journal I worked on for a couple of years. Most of what I know about the formal craft of writing I picked up in his classes, so it's heartening to get his professorial thumbs up.

# posted by Daniel at 3:16 PM.

Monday, May 01, 2006
  
Poem

LAWNMOWER MAN

Halfway through the back yard there's a growl
and kachunk. The whirling grass-wet blade
snarls out the back of the mower like a trained dog
off its chain and chews through his ankles. He crawls
bug eyed with panic through the half-finished manicure
of his lawn. The back porch looms like a sea-cliff.
Cut grass sticks to his face. Even as he swims
his scrabbling hands tell him how the lawn's begun
to grow again. He'll swear he heard it laughing.

(4/30/06)

# posted by Daniel at 12:20 AM.