Category: poetry alive

Poem (mine).

Published on by taylor mardis katz1 Comment

How it happened

I was free to choose me here or me in Colorado but
California wins I’m hurt while he makes his decision
then reverent when he comes along I write it all down
to remember the ways we might have done it otherwise.
We go to California stay in a mansion the people
are related to me but the carpet’s too thick gets stuck
in our toes we’re there for 3 weeks which is just
the point they start to tire of us our sleepings late
our books around and computers we smoke in the guest
room bathroom after they’ve gone to sleep, towel
the door like teenagers I’m waiting to like someone
I meet but I haven’t met anyone yet only
seen them at grocery stores not yet at my school
where I’m supposed to love people for three years
minimum then we finally find a house buy a spatula (two
by accident!) and a broom and at the beginning
life is slow and I organize the shoes a lot then
I become a shopping bag the type that’s the only one
you brought to the store even though you bought
a whole week’s worth of groceries and goodness
then I’m all purchased bagged and overfilled and the shoes
get sloppy but the days get good

Literary love (Baldwin).

Published on by taylor mardis katzLeave a comment

I’m in the middle of my fourth reading of Giovanni’s Room–the third reading this year. I don’t think there’s much left for me to underline, but I’m sure I’ll find a way.

“People who believe that they are strong-willed and the masters of their destiny can only continue to believe this by becoming specialists in self-deception. Their decisions are not really decisions at all—a real decision makes one humble, one knows that it is at the mercy of more things than can be named—but elaborate systems of evasion, of illusion, designed to make themselves and the world appear to be what they and the world are not.”

A song is a poem (and not just because of lyrics).

Published on by taylor mardis katz1 Comment

Just when I thought I’d finally gotten over this song…I’m presented with a new reason to love it.

Chelsea Hotel No. 2 by Leonard Cohen

I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel,
you were talking so brave and so sweet,
giving me head on the unmade bed,
while the limousines wait in the street.
Those were the reasons and that was New York,
we were running for the money and the flesh.
And that was called love for the workers in song
probably still is for those of them left.
Ah but you got away, didn’t you babe,
you just turned your back on the crowd,
you got away, I never once heard you say,
I need you, I don’t need you,
I need you, I don’t need you
and all of that jiving around.

I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel
you were famous, your heart was a legend.
You told me again you preferred handsome men
but for me you would make an exception.
And clenching your fist for the ones like us
who are oppressed by the figures of beauty,
you fixed yourself, you said, “Well never mind,
we are ugly but we have the music.”

I don’t mean to suggest that I loved you the best,
I can’t keep track of each fallen robin.
I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel,
that’s all, I don’t even think of you that often.

A friend is a poem: part 2 (Joanna Roberts).

Published on by taylor mardis katzLeave a comment

“This is something I can give you for your birthday”

as told by Joanna Roberts to my message machine

I’m moving from my apartment
and I can’t stop thinking of this past fall
in which I only wore two pairs of boots—
such. city. boots. in that the tall brown ones
always made my ankles bleed and the little
black witchy ones somehow left
this irreversible lump of cartilage on my heel
and I walked so. much. in them and they’re not.
meant! for walking! they’re meant for viewing!
and they’ve left hilarious damage on my feet
and what makes me think of them is
that there’s this old woman who lives
in the apartment below me and I always hear her
coughing in the morning through the pipes
and I rarely every see her, the only times
I‘ve ever really seen her were when
in the fall I’d go trampling down the stairs
to get to work or to go off on some adventure
in those boots
and I would almost run her over
and she was coming back from brunch
with her sister or something like that
in her cane and her big floral dresses—

I’ll call it wisdom (Ilya Kaminsky).

Published on by taylor mardis katzLeave a comment

“A poem is not a report on life. A poem is life.”

And also, this week:

learned how to use a letter press

acquired dreams of grandeur associated with said letter press

constructed new life plan which combines countryside + visitors + artists + farming

read a poem that exploded some hairs from my head: woah

panicked about taxes & other numbers

humbled/thrilled by my poems in a screenplay thanks to jessie katz (!!)

piled lots of birthday mail on the table for wednesday

read lowell insatiably, aided by the notes of my mother, camels class of ’78 (thanks mom)

ate triple citrus

ate tuna fish

ate entire daytimes, ate a cookie from a stranger & ice cream from the carton

watched misha with a smartphone

remembered that when people make me uncomfortable i unconsciously sing otis redding to myself &

sissykatz arrives on saturday (& thank goodness for THAT)

 

 

There’s no perfect rhyme for Valentine (mine).

Published on by taylor mardis katz1 Comment

I love a man, a plan, a canal, Canada.
I love various women in black tights in Brooklyn, NY.
I love a cat, and a dog named Satchel.
I love a woman wrapped in florals.
I love an author and her drawings.
I love concentric circles and the shapes of toes.
I love a plant’s refusal.
I love a man in only socks.
I love a map on the wall and its tacks.
I love Eloise, a bird I know.
I love the squeeze of heels and walking slow.
I love an employee of our government.
I love the giving of a blanket.
I love hot pink and rolling.
I love a man in Nike sneaks.
I’d love a doctor in the family.
To love a train conductor is, for me, a natural act.
I love in pairs of two and seven, of four and eight, of six.
I love a taller sister.
I love the postman in his sturdy hat.
I love a man named Ed on Robinson.
I love a poet lost.
I love a farther toss than I can throw.
I love a lengthy gait.
I love a saucer as a plate, a teacup for a bowl.
I love the class of ’78.
I love many chickens and various goats.
I love on a swift diagonal and often with a pen.
I love three men I’ll never meet.
I love the summer’s slicing heat and those I’ve found in August.
I love a mother and a dad.
I love a flannel dyed to plaid.
I love the witches and the Wiccans and the West.
I love three meats I’ll never test.
I love the sound of words more than what they mean.
I love a vestibule, a room for shoes, a coffee paid in quarters.
I love a midget and a mouse.
I love the characters in books.
I love a shameful act of bathroom talk at 10pm.
I love a Christmas day.
I love a solid mound of clay.
I love instructions from the ground.
I love all Katzes, near and far.
I love the cheeses that I know, and the tallgirl at the bar.
I love the French, the Portuguese, the Italian and the Danes.
I love a three pack of girly-patterned Hanes.
I love the flowers in the pitcher and three kisses on the cheek.
I love a meek and puddled world, a squirrel, and a moat.
I love a bruise begotten in the rain.
I love the smell of toast and all the skills a man can boast about.
I love a month from which the country flees; I love mosquitoes dressed as bees, and sweeping up the kitchen mess, and dressing for the day, and all the boys and girls at school, and staying dry, and fish that’s fried, and all the ways we pry and prod and pinch, and the inches that we gain, and the  points amassed along the way, and all the ways to say it.

Poem I heard in DC (Rita Dove).

Published on by taylor mardis katzLeave a comment

Describe Yourself in Three Words or Less

I’m not the kind of person who praises
openly, or for profit; I’m not the kind
who will steal a scene unless
I’ve designed it. I’m not a kind at all,
in fact: I’m itchy and pug-willed,
gnarled and wrong-headed,
never amorous but possessing
a wild, thatched soul.

Each night I set my boats to sea
and leave them to their bawdy business.
Whether they drift off
maddened, moon-rinsed,
or dock in the morning
scuffed and chastened—
is simply how it is, and I gather them in.

You are mine, I say to the twice-dunked cruller
before I eat it. Then I sing
to the bright-beaked bird outside,
then to the manicured spider
between window and screen;
then I will stop, and forget the singing.
(See? I have already forgotten you.)