Today’s exercise asks us to utilize our senses when we write a poem. I’m here watching this video, smelling my sweat, greasy hair stuck to my brow, thinking, duh.
But, Ms J Suskin, let us honor the gods with our five senses! Below are my five and a bonus one:
Smell
More than dust enters
my nose
in the fragrant city of Bucharest
charred corn on the cob
wet grass and the clean smell of sunlight
mix with the fumes of a brand new
exhaust pipe
of a Dacia car
all of it telling my nose
to keep on going
Sight
I see stillness
at my wooden desk
resting pens and pencils
the bubbling of a mineral water
next to an empty espresso cup
which reads
Love you More
It isn’t mine
But the feeling’s mutual
Sound
If this apartment were a person
it would be a teenage girl
always antsy, always fidgeting
always talking
making noise
tinkering away
those drops from the air conditioning outside
the hammering on the fifth floor
the sweeping of dust above us
the clattering of keyboards in the bedroom
and the living room
this place is a living place
making noise
talking
saying go, go, go
Touch
The most sensitive part of my body
is not the one you’re thinking
it’s the soles of my feet
the part of my body always touching something
except when it’s not
and then the sensation is unbearable
electric tickles carpet my sole
when dangling off a cliff
even before that, falling asleep
blood veining through the course
my feet catch on fire
with the thought–yes they think–
of falling off the ledge
EVEN NOW
at this chair, typing, my fingers echoing the feeling below
my feet roar
with excitement
Taste
I may not be from Buenos Aires
but I need my bitter black
washed by the bubbling clear
I may not be from New York
but I need my coils of meat
slathered in seedy cream
I may not be from Bucharest
but when I order a roll
the shiny stuff better be boiled in the crunchy stuff
My mouth, were it a passport,
would need hundreds of hundreds of hundreds
of stamps
with so many names plus yours
So the bonus poem also comes from today’s exercise, and basically it asks for us to explore pain and joy. I always think of Khalil Gibran’s work on these two subjects–particularly with how he juxtaposes them. Off the top of my head, I believe he says you need one for the other, or, closer to his words: Pain is the knife that carves the cup we will with joy. Something like that. Just google it. (Or was it sorrow?)
In other news, here is a poem that explores those subjects together:
Today
I’m tired of my old pain and old joys
tired of them like old gods
who stuck around after the party was over
call them by another name
or ditch them dump them
but give me new ones
new pains to give new poems to
new joys to drink wine with
let my life take a new direction
new is the pain of tomorrow I want
new is the joy I share I want
I am ready
I am wanting
give them to me now now now
that I may heal
that I may grow
that I may help you
help yourself
too
