Tag Archives: my poems

how poems come

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how poems come
Elliott batTzedek

For myself, a poem emerges by itself, like something developing in a dark place.
Fanny Howe, “Bewilderment”

someone has taken a photo, photos, has not wound the film forward all the way, or too far, imprinting overlapping, underlapping, multiple exposures, images piling up, separated, blank space blank space blank space normal human turned devil-eyed by the flash

someone has taken photos and handed me the camera

i studied photography for two months in high school, which was a long time ago or maybe never but i take the camera and go into the dark room

dark has a smell and it is chemical and acrid and wet and anticipation and frustration and elation and oh the sorrow of the lost century that digital has no dark and no dark smell

that i go into because someone has handed me the camera. i have some experience and some control and some likelihood and no patience none at all so maybe they took a great photo, maybe it was the best photo ever taken and if so, why the fuck did they trust the film to me? i’m just a poet and seeing my life so far i wouldn’t trust me with a great truth because the image is only as good as the filter and, honestly, i suck as a screen, i like to live with all the doors and windows open and dirty laundry hanging everywhere

because washing clothes is not a priority, i’d rather be in the dark

where much to my surprise, and with my gratitude or my unwarranted and unlicensed and gossamer cock-sure arrogance, a real stunner comes out of that liquid bath from time to time. Shadow and light, time and eternity, detail and universe, I and thou, word and sound, so balanced that just for a flash unbalanced ceases to be possible.

“You must have shadow and light source both, listen, listen.” Damn mystics, damn poets, damn darkness that i want more than i want anything because hunkering down and bending over and peering through the wet veil while praying one sharp image will develop is the most devotion-like motion in my muscles’ memory.

Give me the camera, give me the damn camera already, i can promise you nothing but oh

oh how i will serve you if you just keep the cameras coming

new work – On finding a kindred spirit in Sappho, then

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On finding a kindred spirit in Sappho, 
then knowing too much anthropology
to trust my own instincts
Elliott batTzedek

I have had not one word from her
Frankly I wish I was dead	
		Sappho (Barnard translation)

Times change
cultures change
languages change
but the human heart remains the same.

As if!

As if we don’t foolishly scrawl
our ignorance across everything
we encounter: 		
Kilroy was here to claim that he knows that you are
just like him.

As if the world weren’t 
bigger than big
"Shakespeare in the bush"
and all that
etc etc etc

Maybe it is only this foolishness
that stays the same:

a need for analogy
soldered to an evolutionary tangle
reading into what we can’t remotely understand
a meaning
to feed our own need—
the need of our time
our culture
our language, our heart.

new work – A Prayer of Petition

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A Prayer of Petition
Elliott batTzedek

is too easy—ridiculous, pathetic,
to consider that a request, small or 
desperate, could be answered

might be
would be

Save me. Help me. Stop them. Save me.

a child’s refrain

mine

They told me I had a Savior
so I called him every day
ringing ringing ringing ringing ringing
sometimes twice in a day
ringing ringing ringing ringing ringing
until one day
the line was dead
uuuuuuuuuuuunnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn

I had to save myself

about which I remain somewhat bitter

If you can ask with a heart 
you still can open

I am jealous

I am broken

I am not like you

new work – Lullaby

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Lullaby
Elliott batTzedek

What is the oldest true thing
you know 	      and how
does it bind you?

Softly, I pray for you, gently—
Mississippi River silt, puppy ears, bunny fur,
Downy, Charmin, Palmolive

or if rigidly     	 then may it, I pray,
be the spine that keeps you upright
as the cedars of Lebanon

Mine wraps me tight	      so calm so
reassuring, lullabying its sweet refrain:
there is no place for you in this world

there is no    place         for you          in this world
there is no   there is no   there is no    there is no place
there is no   there is no   there is no    there is no you

Colonies

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I had a lot of time to think yesterday, about the break up of a political group, and the ongoing painful dissolution of an intimate working relationship. And bees — I spent a lot of time thinking about bees.

Colonies
Elliott batTzedek

It is not that we can not work together.

It’s that we work as bee colonies.

Individuals, droning in shared purpose,
pausing in doorways, dancing
to give such divinely complicated directions
to the pollen
that comes and goes so quickly.

And the queen bee?
Ah—the queen bee. Well.
The colony keeps her undercover,
everything delivered to support her single task—
making more of us
and more.
There are always more and always
at some point
other queens arise and we divide,
we divide,
and some stay and some follow
to a new field.

This is a beginning,
     always beginning, a fresh start
     in an old world.
This is birth,
     survival at the most 
     fundamental level—
resources stretched too far can not suffice.
And, too crowded,
we do sting one another
more or less accidentally.

So we go off
carrying all we’ve learned
carrying shared genes, shared dreams
and remembering
how to make honey
how to make honey
how to make more of us
    and feed each other honey.

A Poem for Earth Day

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A Poem for Earth Day
Elliott batTzedek

I wake up, drag
my ass out of bed when
the dogs’ whining is several
decibels past unavoidable and then
they cascade down stairs as I
galumph behind, then
out the back door they go
so they can pee, then
the same for me,
but in the bathroom,
where I finish and flush
and then grab a plastic bag and scoop
the cat shit and piss clumps from
the litter box, tie the bag, take it out
the front door and throw
it in the garbage, go back
to the bathroom, where a cat will be
using the clean field, and I listen
to the scratching while I wash
my hands, fill the cat food bowl then
back into kitchen to turn on
the water for coffee and fill
the dog food bowls then let
the dogs in to eat as I dump
yesterday’s grounds into the compost bucket and eat
my morning protein bar with vitamin water to wash
down the various drugs and herbs
and supplements, then let
the dogs out to poop, which I will later
put into plastic bags and throw
into the garbage, but right now I press
the French press and add
splenda and half and half, then let
the dogs back in and head
upstairs again, sucking in coffee with each
step, to check my morning email, and by
the time I address the first several electronic
urgencies and scan NYTimes online the coffee has
worked its daily magic and I go
back to the bathroom for my morning poop, which
I also flush away, and I understand
perfectly well the process
of digestion, so I know
where all this shit comes from. The question
today is where is
all this shit going cause
there’s no such place
as away and I don’t know what
I think I’m saving with that
one little compost bucket trick but
I am quite certain it is
not the Earth.

New work up – Psalms and Piyyutim

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I’m starting to upload a new section of work – more psalms about assorted subjects from my daily life, and piyyutim, or prayer poems. The latter are, so far, a genre I’m calling “collages,” poems created by weaving together words from many different poets to create one piece that is a kind of dialogue about a topic between writers of very different eras and languages. I have two of these so far, one with ocean images, and one with river images (I’m a Pisces, whaddya want from me??). I plan to have more over the next few months.

For reasons unknown, I can’t get wordpress to make a new tab for this section at the top of my home page, so you can find it here:Psalms and Piyyutim

new work up – Ken and I Were Dykes

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Look in “Creative Nonfiction” for the first section of a new long essay whose working title is “Gender: A non-theoretical autobiography.” Section one is called “Ken and I Were Dykes”

The Sound of Silence

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The Sound of Silence
Elliott batTzedek

Reunion tour, two men, singing in tempo, in tune,
in time, but in no visible intimacy.
They sang how terribly strange to be
seventy—poignancy of what youth couldn’t know
dulled by pre-arranged contractual promise of an audience
coming to deliver poignancy.

Crash course of greatest duo hits, crowd sighing
none of us are young anymore remember when?
The Everly Brothers are still alive?

Then those first solo songs, all Paul,
oh what he could do with lyric and line, so fine,
so lush. So full, so complete. Then that most
familiar high tenor was suddenly there.
There, where it hadn’t been but had to be.
There, one song then the next. Each one created
unfinished. In everything an empty space
for this voice, in every foundation a crack sealed
with session takes so only one would feel
the chill wind howling through.

He left a space in everything, a space that cast
a lanky bushy-haired shadow. Those city boys,
those neighborhood boys, this loss
that only love could lose.

What my love could never lose is its dignity, gained
by struggle, gay and lesbian brought out of shadow
into space blown open for complex sexualities.
Still, when I think of the road we’ve traveled on, I wonder
what we’ve lost, why we have no word for them,
these two aging men, with their passionate love played
on stage and jumbotron every night. If they,
if I, if you, make love, and refuse to mean
a trite euphemism for genital muscle spasms,
then in place of a name for this love I have
only longing and silence. And didn’t we dream
those would shatter no more souls? But here
we are. We’ve bought the tickets and t-shirts and yet
what we clearly see confuses us. But I know
how love sounds when it’s sung, and it’s alright,
it’s all right, it’s all right. And we’re trying to get,
that’s all, that’s all, that’s all
we’re trying to get the rest.

Notes
I would never have heard the space, my ears don’t work like that. Otter heard it, it made her cry, and me too, when she explained why what I was hearing mattered. Poets are like crows, I think, gathering shiny things, a habit some call theft but crows call instinct. So the insight is Otter’s shiny thing, and the poem is mine.

This poem has been sitting in me, trying to find a shape, since 2003. That it came out now was in part triggered by watching an astounding video of Paul Simon singing “American Tune” with just his guitar on