ain’t that the truth – Page 8

The poets and the farmers (poem) (mine).

Published on 08/06/2011 by taylor mardis katz1 Comment

The poets and the farmers

For a while now the poets have known

the farmers and now the farmers know

the poets and they say hello and hug them

and Elle says again, You were so wonderful

on Friday night and Frankie is smiling

because it is never too late or early for

a compliment meant genuinely and I give

Frankie free zinnias by Ellie not because

she is a poet but because she is a very good

human who has such strange handwriting

that it makes people want to tattoo it on their

bodies, and she tattooed it on hers but not

in a braggy way, in a columnar/cut-off way,

and I like to watch people ask her about it

and I think to myself that I’d never tattoo

myself because I hate repeating myself

but, to repeat myself, now the farmers know

the poets and they like them for their words

and savvy presentation (I think of Scott

in the front row of the sideyard smiling like

someone gave him the exact correct birthday

present) and the poets love the farmers

for their very good foods like Nardello

peppers which are sweet and the most

divine, they’re Ellie’s favorite and she’s

a painter and a farmer, too. And life, I think,

is not as simply roasted as a pepper is, but

it is sweet to watch a farmer hug a poet

hug a professor hug a trapezist hug

a graphic designer slash table maker

hug a videographer hug me, I’m hugging

all of them one after another or two

at once at the farmstand on a Sunday,

and I think we’re all farmers inside somehow,

all artily growing or having newly grown.

the after-sideyard:

Published on 07/30/201107/30/2011 by taylor mardis katz1 Comment

mostly just this

mixed in with this

(thanks kaz)

and frankie’s feeling it too

and misha sold four prints

and there are flowers all over the house, even by the sink and right here on the desk

and there are four dollars in “20,000 words” which means at least 2 people have my chapbooks

and maybe, maybe, some sort of art scene to remember is getting going in san diego, but even if not, even if we’re all just smartpeople in a yard for a party, it feels good to remember how many good people there are in this city, and that with some wood and tacks and trashbins-turned-to-tables and the help of farmily, art can happen right next to where we live, and even though no one on the east has seen this thing we did and made, we will bring it wherever we bring our selves, sideyard or sideporch or sideacre of a plot of land…

I know right?! (cartoon humor.)

Published on 07/26/2011 by taylor mardis katzLeave a comment

Advice needed (yesplease & thankyou).

Published on 07/16/2011 by taylor mardis katzLeave a comment

(via this isn’t happiness)

Birthday poem for Kyle (I wrote it).

Published on 07/15/2011 by taylor mardis katzLeave a comment

Like a mini-mart off the highway,

Kyle Martindale gets older. Unlike

most poets, Kyle’s often on his way

from the gym, where he was rowing

on a machine outta water. Kyle got

hitched, hiked paths, chose classic

reggae, and flew on airplanes this year,

and that’s just this year. Not even gonna

count up all the feats he finished

during the other twenty-four. Hey

Kyle, we miss you here, the way

you’d decide on dancing most times

and eat the same beany slop three

meals a day, sometimes in a good bowl

from home, on the go, on campus. Hey

Kyle, there are people that you know

that don’t know how to handstand like

you do. But Kyle, we know you’d teach

us if we asked. You always do.

Poem painted on a wall (Hafiz).

Published on 07/11/2011 by taylor mardis katz2 Comments

sometimes a poem is a reminder

sometimes a poem is a reverberation of other sounds

sometimes a poem says something that everyone technically already knows

sometimes a poem is an oiled torch

sometimes a poem forgets the significance of numbers

sometimes a poem lights a whole sky.

Poem about onions (William Matthews).

Published on 07/06/2011 by taylor mardis katzLeave a comment

Onions

How easily happiness begins by
dicing onions. A lump of sweet butter
slithers and swirls across the floor
of the sauté pan, especially if its
errant path crosses a tiny slick
of olive oil. Then a tumble of onions.

This could mean soup or risotto
or chutney (from the Sanskrit
chatni, to lick). Slowly the onions
go limp and then nacreous
and then what cookbooks call clear,
though if they were eyes you could see

clearly the cataracts in them.
It’s true it can make you weep
to peel them, to unfurl and to tease
from the taut ball first the brittle,
caramel-colored and decrepit
papery outside layer, the least

recent the reticent onion
wrapped around its growing body,
for there’s nothing to an onion
but skin, and it’s true you can go on
weeping as you go on in, through
the moist middle skins, the sweetest

and thickest, and you can go on
in to the core, to the bud-like,
acrid, fibrous skins densely
clustered there, stalky and in-
complete, and these are the most
pungent, like the nuggets of nightmare

and rage and murmury animal
comfort that infant humans secrete.
This is the best domestic perfume.
You sit down to eat with a rumor
of onions still on your twice-washed
hands and lift to your mouth a hint

of a story about loam and usual
endurance. It’s there when you clean up
and rinse the wine glasses and make
a joke, and you leave the minutest
whiff of it on the light switch,
later, when you climb the stairs.