Elise Matthesen

A poet with paper and pen is in business. 

 So this is from a while ago, and it is fashioned after an old poem of a cat and a monk, which I repurposed to pay compiments to my Obble and make her laugh. She is the Obble to me (and I the Obel to her) because Mike referred to us as a pair of Obelisks once and we kept it because we were charmed. (It's from a Dorothy Sayers book in which a character refers to "obelisks -- you know, ladies who aren't quite respectable" when the word actually wanted was "odalisques".). Anyhow, here, have a poem. It's all still quite true.

Mike wrote "The Declaration" for us in 1998, and a couple of years earlier I wrote a poem for him. Every now and then lines from both of them float through my consciousness. Sometimes, though, I need to go back and let the words pass before my eyes one by one, in their cadences, taking the time it takes to reread something that he undoubtedly knew I would go back to, and something else where I was trying to tell him about time and eternity-in-mortal-time and all sorts of things that I could only say with those lines.

Tonight it was this:

One partner: I stand here with you because together we possess infinity in a finite space of time, and our combined reach surpasses the mortal.

Other partner: I stand here with you because we have seen in each other a shared task: and though the void may separate us, and matter must always fail, we shall never truly be apart, one from the other.

Together we take joint and equal command of the time still before us, to watch and to defend, to endure the cold and the fire, to stand until the last.
For against that power armies are as nothing, and Death itself comes begging and ashamed.

So please be aware that all the CN are in the tags, and here, have a link: https://elisem.dreamwidth.org/1306788.html

A poet with paper and pen is in business. 
Don't let them know what you're doing.
Remember to keep your tools sharp.  
Brush up on your covert ops skills. 

Don't let them know what you're doing.
Poets know how to get past the borders. 
Brush up on your covert ops skills. 
It helps to look abstract, or pretty, or simple.

Poets know how to get past the borders. 
A poem can be a way of smuggling truth.
It helps to look abstract, or pretty, or simple; 
Some poems are strong enough to bear that.

A poem can be a way of smuggling truth.
Bones speak louder than official histories. 
Some poems are strong enough to bear that.
A poet can owe a debt of story to a bone.

Bones speak louder than official histories.
Some things demand that we tell how they happened. 
A poet can owe a debt of story to a bone 
Or a stick, a charred stub, white stones, blood. 

Some things demand that we tell how they happened.
A poet with paper and pen is in business, 
Or a stick, a charred stub, white stones, blood. 
Remember to keep your tools sharp. 

-- Elise Matthesen 

To the Self-Described Young Up and Coming Poet Who Tried to Steal Rachel McKibbens' Poetry


You were aiming for a prize but
You tried to lift something
You cannot lift
Something that took seven years to write. Or forty-two to survive.

You tried to lift something
That was the languaging of someone else’s survival.
Something that took seven years to write. Or forty-two to survive.
You cannot call it your own, though.

That was the languaging of someone else’s survival:
Ink and blood.
You cannot call it your own, though
You did pay someone to push ink through a needle into your arm,

Ink and blood,
Marking you forever.
You did pay someone to push ink through a needle into your arm,
Something to be remembered,

Marking you forever
As a thief. A thief of words, a would-be thief of memory and blood.
Something to be remembered,
Though not the way you expected.

As a thief, a thief of words, a would-be thief of memory and blood,
You are almost as small as your broke-down regurgitated poetry.
Though not the way you expected,
This has undoubtedly been educational for you.

You are almost as small as your broke-down regurgitated poetry.
You tried to steal a real poet’s truth, but her truth is bigger.
This has undoubtedly been educational for you.
You can’t carry off that kind of truth.

You tried to steal a real poet’s truth, and her truth is bigger.
You were aiming for a prize but
You can’t carry off the kind of truth
You cannot lift.

Praying Drunk

Our Father who art in heaven, I am drunk.
Again. Red wine. For which I offer thanks.
I ought to start with praise, but praise
comes hard to me. I stutter. Did I tell you
about the woman whom I taught, in bed,
this prayer? It starts with praise; the simple form
keeps things in order. I hear from her sometimes.
Do you? And after love, when I was hungry,
I said, Make me something to eat. She yelled,
Poof! You’re a casserole!—and laughed so hard
she fell out of the bed. Take care of her.

Next, confession—the dreary part. At night
deer drift from the dark woods and eat my garden.
They’re like enormous rats on stilts except,
of course, they’re beautiful. But why? What makes
them beautiful? I haven’t shot one yet.
I might. When I was twelve, I’d ride my bike
out to the dump and shoot the rats. It’s hard
to kill your rats, our Father. You have to use
a hollow point and hit them solidly.
A leg is not enough. The rat won’t pause.
Yeep! Yeep! it screams, and scrabbles, three-legged, back
into the trash, and I would feel a little bad
to kill something that wants to live
more savagely than I do, even if
it’s just a rat. My garden’s vanishing.
Perhaps I’ll merely plant more beans, though that
might mean more beautiful and hungry deer.
Who knows?
                   I’m sorry for the times I’ve driven
home past a black, enormous, twilight ridge.
Crested with mist, it looked like a giant wave
about to break and sweep across the valley,
and in my loneliness and fear I’ve thought,
O let it come and wash the whole world clean.
Forgive me. This is my favorite sin: despair—
whose love I celebrate with wine and prayer.

Our Father, thank you for all the birds and trees,
that nature stuff. I’m grateful for good health,
food, air, some laughs, and all the other things
I’m grateful that I’ve never had to do
without. I have confused myself. I’m glad
there’s not a rattrap large enough for deer.
While at the zoo last week, I sat and wept
when I saw one elephant insert his trunk
into another’s ass, pull out a lump,
and whip it back and forth impatiently
to free the goodies hidden in the lump.
I could have let it mean most anything,
but I was stunned again at just how little
we ask for in our lives. Don’t look! Don’t look!
Two young nuns tried to herd their giggling
schoolkids away. Line up, they called. Let’s go
and watch the monkeys in the monkey house.
I laughed, and got a dirty look. Dear Lord,
we lurch from metaphor to metaphor,
which is—let it be so—a form of praying.

I’m usually asleep by now—the time
for supplication. Requests. As if I’d stayed
up late and called the radio and asked
they play a sentimental song. Embarrassed.
I want a lot of money and a woman.
And, also, I want vanishing cream. You know—
a character like Popeye rubs it on
and disappears. Although you see right through him,
he’s there. He chuckles, stumbles into things,
and smoke that’s clearly visible escapes
from his invisible pipe. It makes me think,
sometimes, of you. What makes me think of me
is the poor jerk who wanders out on air
and then looks down. Below his feet, he sees
eternity, and suddenly his shoes
no longer work on nothingness, and down
he goes. As I fall past, remember me.


-- Andrew Hudgins, The Never-Ending: New Poems

"Poetry survives because it haunts and it haunts because it is simultaneously utterly clear and deeply mysterious; because it cannot be entirely accounted for, it cannot be exhausted." -- Louise Gluck, in the foreword to Katherine Larson's "Radial Symmetry" (Yale Series of Younger Poets).

(I might as well pull this out of comments and give it its own post right away, right? Right.)


Now, gather round, younglings, a story I'll tell
Of the smart careful humans who staff JPL
All humans have missions, and these sure had thars:
To get Curiosity safely to Mars.

To go very far takes a wonderful mix:
Some humans who build, some humans who fix,
Some humans who watch and take copious notes,
Some who grew up dreaming of airplanes and boats,

And some of them dress like the person next door
And others like nothing imagined before.
Some paint up their hairdos with colors from jars,
and the Bobak Ferdowsis have stars upon thars.

Now all of these humans use science and math
To keep Curiosity safe on her path
Combining their knowledge, invention and skill
And in the control room, they work with a will.

You can see them, intent on their consoles and charts,
With bright shining eyes, with hope in their hearts,
They come in all colors, all shapes and all sizes,
And so do their hairdos -- they're full of surprises.

We thank every one as the roll is now called,
The long-haired, the short-haired, the fuzzy, the bald;
They sent Curiosity safely to Mars.
(And the Bobak Ferdowsis have stars upon thars!)


(note: link away with gladness, and reprint if you like, but please credit Elise Matthesen. Thanks!)

'Tis brillig, and your safety card,
Does gimble in the pocket, right?
All mimsy is your safety belt:
Snug it and lock it tight.

Obey the lighted signs, my friend,
obey the crew, enjoy the ride;
Heed thou the lighted pathway to
the frumious exit slide.

If oxygen masks start to fall
put yours on first; do not delay.
Like Tum-tum trees, your cushion floats;
You'll up your odds that way.

And if in uffish thought you sit
plotting to smoke, you plot in vain.
There's whiffling in the tulgey wood
But none aboard this plane.

One two, one two, we have for you
Nice lavatories fore and aft
But touch those smoke detectors and
We'll bust you. Don't be daft.

And hast thou put thy luggage up
in that nice bin above your seat?
Stow it away! Callooh Callay!
Or put it by your feet.

We're making ready to depart
Seatbacks and trays may not be down.
Turn all arcane devices off
And we'll be off the ground.


(Yeah, there's poetry goofiness afoot over at Making Light again. I blame thank Abi for this round, which ate my brain until I finished that. Now I go back to getting cool stuff ready in the component section of the Current Shinies sale post.)