Oh Marjy, Marjy ("New York style poem")

Oh Marjy Marjy it is thunderstorm black on the walkway side

of Mr. Zastrow's square-tabled physics room but nothing, not a drop

on the other side of the lab. Just look through those diamond-shaped

bars on the windows, it is coming down sideways soaking

the covered walkway—we are going to have to dash

to Bonnie's music room. Scott's already reclining

across the piano. And we can't put the yearbook

to bed today, Royce and Jeff are giggling in the darkroom

with Phusi but we won't be able to drive

downtown, there's some kind of parade

on Boulevard du Trente Juin, another holiday,

another— oh look at these senior pictures, remember

tenth grade, everybody wearing Midema floursack

dresses, pants, even the yearbook cover

a Midema floursack.

The rainsquall's over, Marjy, no need to slip

into our Bata flip-flops after all, all

the sunshine is here in the days

of our senior year, we are the big kids, we own

the minutes hours double periods A days B days we own

the years cascading backwards and today this minute Dr. Dave

patrolling, strolling, Kendall and Bit hunched and giggling,

in the brightshine of lunchtime the hostel buses pulling up

to the hardpacked dirt plaza with pans of lasagna, we own

the fainting, braiding, leotard for you and bathing suit for me

and the smokers behind the student store but not us goody-

goody the hostel days for you me always just a visitor outside looking

in our long long legs walking us up and down past the railroad,

the presidential park, the okapis. Every step we take intertwined

but pulling us apart is ballet, boys, summers, history, tomorrow,

my body, your body, the things you know and I don't, the things

I know and you do not. All your quiet competence. Your prophecies

I hold onto.

good-bye

good-bye

we say it every day, streetcar after streetcar, practice, practice and then I am saying it to air. please no, we were still practicing. I'm not good enough yet.

an apple you cannot bite into more than once without kissing the tiny toothmarks of the last good-bye, tasting the lipsticktang of the lips that got there first.

still practicing after the bows and curtseys, the set has been struck. good-bye is at our backs, tomorrow and freedom whipping just ahead, but oh here for a minute we turn around, turn back, bury our wide-open mouths noses eyes in the musty pillow that is good-bye. hold it with both hands.

your snaking oxygen tube. your skinny aggro. your shaky release. the boys. the babies. my own own body.

still practicing. in my pyjama drawer, on the coffee table, next to the morning grapefruit. good-bye goes with you and stays with me, precarious splits, I am left holding it, practicing it, eating it. kissing it. 

What are we going to do about the years, Daddy?

What are we going to do about the years, Daddy?

What are we going to do about the years, Daddy?

What are we going to do about the papers?

What are we going to do with the lists and the boxes,

the disappeared datebooks,

the days of your hard-driving, hard-driven hours?

What are we going to do, Daddy,

with the nights of chocolate and mistletoe, guestbooks full of

European guests learning to drink water at your table?

What if I put you into a poem, folded

the lankiness, the King Kong act, the seal bark,

those high-waisted red jeans and Bessie the sideways cello

into words on a page titled Daddy in a poem

and what would you say?

Oh throw it out, throw it out, aren't those just the

gee-whiz, what-a-guy, ain't-he-a-character

pieces?

(You were documenting,

documenting, all those years, ink

on the lines, lines

on the page, pages

in the datebook, and datebook

onto the shelf full of datebooks

but now, now that my house is groaning

with the boxes of your years,

boy and man and son and grandson,

the datebooks have disappeared.)

What are we going to do about the years, Daddy,

and all the papers? Am I supposed to tie

a bow around it, wrap you up?

The photographs, the things you said,

the things I've heard, the things I've read.

What about the freckle-faced earnest boy

and the paranoid man, what about

the papers and lists and notecards, Daddy,

the boxes of notecards, 3 x 5, backing up

everything?

What about those ten hard best-spent years,

the plain bare rooms you filled

with cards

filled with verses

you and Mr. Makwala,

you and Mr. Mwanga, Mr. Maleme,

you and the verses,

the Greek, the French, the Kituba,

the hours

the chairs, the typewriters,

the years spent getting ready

all the ways you reinvented yourself afterwards?

What are we going to do about the years?

What are we going to do about the papers?

Make it happen, please - ghazal

Jesus is talking to his disciples about how to pray and he says:

“When you pray, do not use a lot of meaningless words, as the pagans do, who think that their gods will hear them because their prayers are long. Do not be like them. Your Father already knows what you need before you ask him. This, then, is how you should pray" (Good News Bible, Matthew 6:7–9):

Old man in heaven to us below, make it happen, please
Your name be made to blaze and glow, make it happen, please

Bring on those crownlands, help us do the things you want us to
On land, in air, in rain or snow: make it happen, please

Please give us what we need to eat, forgive us when we stray,
While we excuse our own poor foe: make it happen, please

Don't take us where we might be drawn to risk a little badness
And please make you-know-who let go: make it happen, please

This land is yours, the clout is yours, the brilliance and the force
Please make it so, dear Daddy-o: make it happen, please

Today's Napowrimo prompt was to translate a poem from a language you don't know. I cheated and did it differently a little.

I only ever tell the truth

I only ever tell the truth

If you wear bifocals long enough you start to see a line
right through the middle of the world
even when you take them off.

When you get an artificial hip you never need to clip your toenails again on that side.

Crossing your eyes too often will make them stay that way, but it's actually cute,
it's a nice look for you.

If you kiss a baby's ear it will forever be deaf to love on that side.

I don't care what you think of me.

The pencils roll under the typewriter to the magnet at the bottom of its center.

I know exactly how I feel about everything, including you.

Every book in the library has a hidden commie pinko hippie Kabbalist message in it
in code near the bottom of page 7 or 13.

You have never hurt me.

I have never wanted to hurt you back. 

Deep in the bookhouse

Deep in the bookhouse we tap, look, stop

In the belly of this papertemple we make our own pages

Sue sits across from me at the hardsquare and we rest our things down

Our spilled eyeframes, inkwriters, empty slurped drinkcylinders, shouldersacks and shoulderwarmers

All our debris of houselockers, machinecozies, wordvaults

The hardsquare holds it all, holds up our ownedthings and our boughtthings and our madethings and our bodythings, I can rest my armbenders on it, even my thinkball if my thinkball gets too heavy or tired

The cool flat hardsquare holds it, takes it, here in the papertemple

While Sue and I silently look for simplicity.

Napowrimo challenge from Day 13: incorporate kennings, new metaphorical compounds:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenning