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‘Poetry’ Category

Bobku

February 20, 2007 :: 10:16 am

It seems like all my brother did in grad school was write haiku, yet he still managed to get his PhD in mathematics last summer. The kid must be smart or something. :)

why topology?
there is only one reason
its spelled p. h. d.

statistics, haiku
both involve counting
only one is fun

dude! look at my hand
its so weird and colorful
oh my god i’m high!

2^3+20
= 24+4
a number haiku!

(x-π)^2
= x^2+π^2
-2πx

y=6x
implies 1/2 y =
x+x+x

just reading the book
is not an effective way
to teach to the class

haiku may have five
syllables on the last line
but bobku has one more

second hand smoke kills
says the surgeon general
so, i’ll stick to first

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The Sugar-Plum Tree

January 8, 2007 :: 9:59 pm

THE SUGAR-PLUM TREE

by: Eugene Field (1850-1895)

Have you ever heard of the Sugar-Plum Tree?
‘Tis a marvel of great renown!
It blooms on the shore of the Lollipop Sea
In the garden of Shut-Eye Town;
The fruit that it bears is so wondrously sweet
(As those who have tasted it say)
That good little children have only to eat
Of that fruit to be happy next day.

When you’ve got to the tree, you would have a hard time
To capture the fruit which I sing;
The tree is so tall that no person could climb
To the boughs where the sugar-plums swing!
But up in that tree sits a chocolate cat,
And a gingerbread dog prowls below —
And this is the way you contrive to get at
Those sugar-plums tempting you so:

You say but the word to that gingerbread dog
And he barks with such terrible zest
That the chocolate cat is at once all agog,
As her swelling proportions attest.
And the chocolate cat goes cavorting around
From this leafy limb unto that,
And the sugar-plums tumble, of course, to the ground —
Hurrah for that chocolate cat!

There are marshmallows, gumdrops, and peppermint canes,
With stripings of scarlet or gold,
And you carry away of the treasure that rains
As much as your apron can hold!
So come, little child, cuddle closer to me
In your dainty white nightcap and gown,
And I’ll rock you away to that Sugar-Plum Tree
In the garden of Shut-Eye Town.

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november snowstorm

November 30, 2006 :: 7:37 pm

The unseasonable warmth of the past week collapsed under the weight of a wintry storm. Snow fell for hours. Tiny ice pellets coated my car.

The chill of the north wind cut through my light jacket, through all the layers of my skin, muscle, fat, and all the way to the bone.

Bodies unprepared for the sudden arrival of the twenties scurried from building to building, seeking escape from uncontrollable shivering.

Category Poetry, Snow, Storm, Weather | Tags: | No Comments
45 mercy street

July 23, 2006 :: 6:13 pm

One of my favorite poems in the world (along with The Wasteland and The Hollow Men by T.S. Eliot, and Domination of Black by Wallace Stevens).

45 Mercy Street
by Anne Sexton
In my dream,
drilling into the marrow
of my entire bone,
my real dream,
I’m walking up and down Beacon Hill
searching for a street sign –
namely MERCY STREET.
Not there.

I try the Back Bay.
Not there.
Not there.
And yet I know the number.
45 Mercy Street.
I know the stained-glass window
of the foyer,
the three flights of the house
with its parquet floors.
I know the furniture and
mother, grandmother, great-grandmother,
the servants.
I know the cupboard of Spode
the boat of ice, solid silver,
where the butter sits in neat squares
like strange giant’s teeth
on the big mahogany table.
I know it well.
Not there.

Where did you go?
45 Mercy Street,
with great-grandmother
kneeling in her whale-bone corset
and praying gently but fiercely
to the wash basin,
at five A.M.
at noon
dozing in her wiggy rocker,
grandfather taking a nap in the pantry,
grandmother pushing the bell for the downstairs maid,
and Nana rocking Mother with an oversized flower
on her forehead to cover the curl
of when she was good and when she was…
And where she was begat
and in a generation
the third she will beget,
me,
with the stranger’s seed blooming
into the flower called Horrid.

I walk in a yellow dress
and a white pocketbook stuffed with cigarettes,
enough pills, my wallet, my keys,
and being twenty-eight, or is it forty-five?
I walk. I walk.
I hold matches at street signs
for it is dark,
as dark as the leathery dead
and I have lost my green Ford,
my house in the suburbs,
two little kids
sucked up like pollen by the bee in me
and a husband
who has wiped off his eyes
in order not to see my inside out
and I am walking and looking
and this is no dream
just my oily life
where the people are alibis
and the street is unfindable for an
entire lifetime.

Pull the shades down –
I don’t care!
Bolt the door, mercy,
erase the number,
rip down the street sign,
what can it matter,
what can it matter to this cheapskate
who wants to own the past
that went out on a dead ship
and left me only with paper?

Not there.

I open my pocketbook,
as women do,
and fish swim back and forth
between the dollars and the lipstick.
I pick them out,
one by one
and throw them at the street signs,
and shoot my pocketbook
into the Charles River.
Next I pull the dream off
and slam into the cement wall
of the clumsy calendar
I live in,
my life,
and its hauled up
notebooks.

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Bad bus poetry

May 30, 2006 :: 3:53 pm

The driver of the bus I take in the morning is very chatty. He seems like a very nice man but it is 7:30 in the morning and I don’t want to talk to anyone at that hour. I use my work-issued bus pass, so we have previously had the conversation where he thinks I’m a student, and I tell him I’m not, and he says I’m too young to be an employee, and blah blah blah. You know the one.

So, this morning, I was actively trying NOT to engage in conversation and so very conspicuously I pulled a novel from my bag and settled back to read. However, I was the only one on the bus and he was in a chatty mood. He asked me what I was reading, then asked if I liked poetry, and then held up a dirty dog-eared thin paperback book — a book of romance poetry written by his son, and he wanted to know what I thought of it.

I got up, lurched my way to the front of the moving bus and told him that I don’t know much about poetry (lie) but I’d be happy to read some of it on the way to the train station (another lie).

And folks, let me tell you — it was painful. I applaud the kid for trying, and his dad is obviously extremely proud if he’s asking random strangers on the bus to read it — but in all honesty the ones I looked at read like bad modern R&B songs… “Girl, I love you so much, when you’re gone I long for your touch.” I could almost hear a multi-octave wandering warble in the singer’s voice. I love yoooooooooou, girl it’s troooo, oooooo oooo ooo ooooooo ooooooooooooooo. I guess that’s some peoples’ cup of tea, but not mine. I didn’t want to be rude, though, so I kept pretending to read all the way to the train station.

ACK!

I can’t even remember what I ended up saying to him as I got off the bus and handed the book back; I think it was something like “Thanks, that was really nice.”

I really need to develop a strategy on how not to feel forced into making conversation at 7:30 a.m. with a stranger who thinks I like bad romance poetry! I’m thinking: sunglasses, coffee, and an iPod with the volume set to “drown.”

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sleep deprivation inspires poetry

September 2, 2005 :: 8:43 am

AIM IM with Murdock Scott

8/31/05, 4:37 PM
Katy Scott: la dee da
Katy Scott: la dee dee
Katy Scott: i hate powerpoint
Katy Scott: it sucks pee!
Katy Scott: … a poem by Katy Scott.

4:40 PM
Murdock Scott: Roundness of the ovals i create… shape of the egg shape of our labor, Point us in the direction of your dithered yet somehow seemingly translucent pixels. What is this power you so proudly proclaim? The power to chart our course… to chart our course and be led by a stick figure grotesque in features.

4:45 PM
Katy Scott: WOW
Katy Scott: that was…… beautiful.

Katy Scott: the body, tired and sore, finds respite for a brief sunlit moment, bathed in cool blue chlorinated life-giving fluid, flailing rapidly to avoid the Snake, oldest of the biblical life forms, and the floaty saggy titties of our elder mothers.
Katy Scott: a poem entitled “From 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. Tonight”, by Katy Scott.
Murdock Scott: hehe
Murdock Scott: what about work!

Katy Scott: the body, tired and sore, sits its ass down in a leather desk chair at 7:30 p.m., typing, typing. for hours on end the body types, shadows, places, creates, until it is a dried husk at 2 a.m. and falls hollowly into bed, until the cycle begins again.
Murdock Scott: Magic worky, worky. worky elves worky elves, Magic worky elves.

4:50 PM
Katy Scott: (magic worky elves)
Katy Scott: ok i really did laugh out loud at that
Murdock Scott: afk bio ddp k?
Katy Scott: lol
Katy Scott: k

Category Doc, Poetry, Technology, Writing | Tags: | No Comments
whipped-cream hats

June 26, 2005 :: 9:26 pm

Chocolate bears and gingerbread cats,
All dressed up in whipped-cream hats.
Danced in the garden under the moon,
Beat sweet rhythms with a wooden spoon,
Whirling, turning, jumping to the beat,
Melting down to their ice cream feet.

Category Poetry | Tags: | 1 Comment
my inspiration to become a writer

April 12, 2005 :: 10:20 pm

before i went and did something crazy like write a book, i wrote poetry. learning this art taught me the most important skill in writing: how to say more with less. it’s easy to write a few hundred or thousand words on a subject, but the true art comes in cutting that in half or a third or less, keeping the meaning, and making it crystal, sharp, intense, and true.

my first formal poetry course was an intensive month-long class when i was eighteen. during this class something happened that changed my life: dr. peter lucchesi, who many students thought of as an eccentric, crabby old guy who rarely gave compliments or “A” grades, wrote four simple words at the top of one of my poems: “You Are A Writer.”

i’m not sure what peter saw in these first poems that i wrote between the ages of 18 and 20. looking back on them now, i can see that they are not that good. they are the words of a teenager, and from the perspective of a now-32-year-old, they seem a little trite. i would write them differently now, but they’re solid in that they’re based in true real hard emotion. but to have his words “You Are A Writer” directed at me, coming from someone i respected and feared as much as peter, was just incredible. it gave me much-needed confidence.

this is something i wrote for peter when i was about nineteen, that i still think is decent. i have added one word, removed another, removed an ellipsis, and modified three line breaks… but other than that, it’s unchanged from the time i wrote it.

first.

white
clouds drift, hot & slow, from one horizon to
the other side
of the earth;

a boy sits on the edge of a lake
fishing for trout with line and stick
thinking of her; now, will the fish
take his bait? will she…?
his black hair falls again
into his eyes; he
ties it back with a red cloth
and thinks of her soft back
her belly,
his own strangely new desires

fish glide around rocks
in the silt at the floor of the lake
one finally snaps at his hook
the boy reels it in sharply
and it suffers the pain in silent flopping, eyes rolling
he pictures the girl, tossing her brown hair
layer upon thin layer
of rich mud
he says softly, “i’d do anything…”

it is now dusk and the fish has stopped moving
the boy places it in a bucket,
stands,
and walks toward home

many years from now
remnants of the night before
will hang lifeless on the chair,
or strewn across the floor
and he will think of the lake,
and he won’t know why,
and he will think,
“the cars sound different
and the fish look strange.”

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eliot, sexton, stevens

:: 10:18 pm

thanks to a suspiciously astute anonymous comment on yesterday’s post, i’ve been thinking about poetry all day today. i re-read (skimmed, actually) eliot’s “the hollow men” after lunch, and printed out a copy of “the waste land” to dive into again. (those are pearls that were his eyes…)

some of my favorites include wallace stevens’ domination of black …

Out of the window
I saw how the planets gathered
Like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind.
I saw how the night came,
Came striding like the color of the heavy hemlocks
I felt afraid.
And I remembered the cry of the peacocks.

… and his sunday morning …

What is divinity if it can come
Only in silent shadows and in dreams?
Shall she not find in comforts of the sun,
In pungent fruit and bright, green wings, or else
In any balm or beauty of the earth,
Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?

…and anne sexton’s 45 mercy street …

I hold matches at street signs
for it is dark,
as dark as the leathery dead
and I have lost my green Ford,
my house in the suburbs,
two little kids
sucked up like pollen by the bee in me
and a husband
who has wiped off his eyes
in order not to see my inside out

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i’m a tree catching my own oranges as they fall from my head

February 4, 2004 :: 9:54 pm

did she fall, or was she pushed?

your shirt on my chair

your shirt on my chair

i’ll be with you

i’ll be there

i’ll never leave you

your shirt on my chair

come here little girl, get into the car

it’s a brand new cadillac

bright red

come here little girl

hey, haven’t i seen you somewhere before?

your despair in my heart

bright red

your words in my ears

i’ll be with you

i’ll be there

i’ll never leave you

wild beasts shall rest there

and owls shall answer one another there

and the hairy ones shall dance there

and sirens in the temples of pleasure

your shirt on my chair

i’ll be with you

i’ll be there

i’ll never leave you

your shirt on my chair

Category Music, Poetry | Tags: | No Comments
is anybody ever really interested in anyone else’s memoirs?

September 8, 2003 :: 10:12 pm

Went to the first session of Flash I tonight, but the instructor never showed up. Car trouble or something. Had a fun weekend with friends – happy hour on Friday with Joel, Valerie, Kim, and Brittney, which then turned into several hours hanging out at their house and playing board games and talking and eating semisweet chocolate chips. Saturday went to dinner with Bruce and Leslie at Trinity Hall. Sunday night met Brittney for ice cream. Shopped for Doc for his birthday. Nearly bought a full set of Asian Crackle dinnerware from Pier One, but then found out that it is neither dishwasher or microwave safe. I bought one set and am abusing it to see just how non-safe it is, or if it will work out. It’s 40% off, so it’s hard to pass it up.

For A Poet

I have wrapped my dreams in a silken cloth,

And laid them away in a box of gold;

Where long will cling the lips of the moth,

I have wrapped my dreams in a silken cloth;

I hide no hate, I am not even wroth

Who found earth’s breath so keen and cold;

I have wrapped my dreams in a silken cloth,

And laid them away in a box of gold.

– Countee Cullen

I’m going to start writing down my stories so I don’t forget them. True life stories, of things that happened to me, memories, that for whatever reason I don’t want to forget. Things that are fresh or at least still live near the front of my mind, but probably won’t forever.

So here are some of my early memories:

For preschool and kindergarten, I went to a tiny private school called Applewood Elementary in Houston. I don’t remember much of preschool, of course, except that it involved a lot of glitter and glue and colored popcorn, and learning Spanish. I can still count to ten, I know some of the colors, and I can sing two songs phonetically, including “La Cucaracha.” We made Christmas ornaments, one of which I still have — a little styrofoam boot that I stuck red sequins and pearl-tipped pins into. We also drew on colored construction paper using q-tips dipped in bleach. Wow, was that safe for a 4-year-old? Maybe not. Mom did some substitute teaching for my class. I thought that I was special and so I went and sat in her lap behind the teacher’s desk. We sang lots of songs at school, including one that went “If all of the raindrops were lemon drops and gumdrops, oh what a rain it would be. I wouldn’t care if the sun would never shine; I’d keep on eating raindrops all the time.” I looooooved thinking about that song.

In kindergarten, my teacher was Mrs. Walls (whom my mom still keeps in touch with). In her class we got to play Red Rover at recess. I think that once I peed my pants because there was no teacher in the room, and I had to go, but I knew I wasn’t allowed to leave the classroom by myself. Also, the stalls had no doors in this bathroom. In this class we once got to make some candy — we melted chocolate chips and butter, and poured it over those little crunchy Chinese noodles. I think that we called it “worms,” or something. Mrs. Walls had our class over to her house once (which was only 2 streets over from my house). I can’t remember why, but we were in her backyard eating watermelon. She lived on the bayou, so that was behind her back fence. I remember her backyard being extremely large and long, but that may be because I was pretty small. She had a cement back porch/deck with wooden trellising and vines covering it and providing shade. She must have known that I didn’t like watermelon because she gave me a coconut popsicle instead.

Category Memories, My Boring Life, Poetry, School | Tags: | No Comments