I haven't forgotten to post, I just haven't been writing.  I do think about it occasionally, but I just don't follow up on it.  Interesting times anyway.  I've started a new semester, and I'm dealing with the changes involved.  It usually takes a couple of weeks to sort it all out and get a flow going, so I'm going to be busy doing that.  As soon as I have something of value to post, I will post it.  Until then, be well.

Okay, don't go into shock.  Two posts in the same week!  Wow.  I was sitting in a restaurant with my trusty tablet with me, and got into a weird mood, and started writing.  I do that on occasion, and sometimes I even get something from it that's worth keeping.  You'll have to decide that one for yourselves, I guess.  Anyway, here they are.

Who Chose?

Who chose the colors of the sky

  or the trees and rocks

Who sat there and thought

  green would look good

   against the blue

Maybe white for the clouds

That had to be tough

  the water was already blue

Clouds are water

  but they're white

   or dark grey

Where did the blue go

  when the water stopped

   being a lake?

c. 2012 C. Thames

I was looking at a small lake, then at the clouds, then back at the lake, and that one hit me.  I was following up on the Who idea for the next one.

Who Asks?

Who asks the water
  to stop being a river
and start being a cloud
Do the drops get together
  and decide
We're out of here!
Or, do the ones in the sky
  invite the rest
Come on up for a party
Hang for a while
  go home later

It's a cool deal
  hanging in a cloud
Circle the world
  then rain on a flower
Getting flushed can't be fun
 but it's gone
 back home.

c. 2012 C. Thames

I don't know that I like the second one that much.  It feels like it kind of falls apart in the last stanza.  I've been thinking about cycles lately, and both of these kind of represent that, in their own way.  Different ideas, different ways of looking at things.  All that.  Maybe that's the point of poetry?  Present a new way of looking at things?  I don't know.  It is kind of fun, though.

Three More

Wow, I must have too much time on my hands.  I've been writing a bit, but unfortunately not here.  I am trying to make an effort to put more stuff up here, but I get distracted and don't.  I know, there isn't much point to having a blog if you never write on it.  Oh well.  I figured out how to respond to a comment, so I can do that now.  Feel free to critique the poems if you want.  You won't hurt my feelings.

Days

      We all get them
Sunlight through the windows
   more than one in a row
lighting up the dust
piling up
  All over
   and over
Each a little different
  settling here but not there

Another night
  full of the day
   before it
Project into the dark
   fears worries and hopes
for the days
  to follow

c. 2012 C. Thames


I usually try to avoid "cute" in my poetry.  The next one isn't particularly cute, but it could be seen as a bit sardonic.

Robin

The first robin of spring
  back from his travels
The winter was long
  but not very cold
I wonder where he's been
  or if he enjoyed the trip
I guess it doesn't matter
  I'm just glad
TSA let him come back.

c. 2012 C.Thames

Okay, one more.  Like I said, I've been trying to write more.

Gentle Wind

Gentle wind blowing my mind
  where did it all start
In a dream – a dream of air
  moving moving moving
on the way away from here
  to somewhere not-here
like most dreams of where
  it is that's not where we are
Gone from here with its problems
  its incredible inconvenience
Day after night after day
  it never ends until it does
a quick cremation
  flame shedding the husk
freeing me into the air
  gentle wind blowing my mind

c. 2012 C. Thames

I've actually been writing a bit.  Evey now and then, someone will say something to me to get me going.  All I have to do is figure out how to sustain that.  Oh well.  Anyway, I mentioned in my last post that my friend was more interested in the words, and not so much interested in the message.  I've been thinking about that a lot.  I want to do both.  The question is, how important is that?  Is anyone interested in a message?  Do poems HAVE to mean something?  I don't think so.  The problem is, if they don't mean anything, they should be an experience in themselves, and that's hard to do.  I read a quotation by Picasso, and it hit home.  He said,

"Everyone wants to understand art. Why don't we try to understand the song of a bird? Why do we love the night, the flowers, everything around us, without trying to understand them? But in the case of a painting, people think they have to understand. If only they would realize above all that an artist works of necessity, that he himself is only an insignificant part of the world, and that no more importance should be attached to him than to plenty of other things which please us in the world though we can't explain them; people who try to explain pictures are usually barking up the wrong tree."
-- Picasso

I copied that from a Youtube post, and thought it was relevant.  Should we just shoot for the sound of the poem?  The sense of it?  Maybe if I understood art more I would be better at it?  Maybe if I understood art less I would be better at it?  I don't know.  Recently, someone posted a tribute to Leonard Cohen on Facebook.  In it, he was giving a speech on how he did what he did.  He basically said that everything he did sprang from six chords.  I cross-posted it on Gabrielle Calvocoressi's  page and asked if we had those six chords in us. She's a working poet who is scrambling like most working poets to stay alive while writing poetry.  She hasn't answered yet, and I'm not expecting an answer.  I put it there because she has thousands of friends, and I wanted them to be thinking about it.

I flipped back and forth on this one.  In one, I did the message thing, with an emphasis on the meaning.

A Ball of Yarn

Different roads like a ball of yarn
  all going around the center
So many strands
  going round and round
All connected
  One beginning, one end
One ball of yarn

c. 2012 C. Thames

In the next, I was reacting to the idea of linear progression.  I tend to do that.  I think it comes from a background as a short story writer.  I was actually writing poems before I wrote short stories, but it was ingrained into me that a short story much have a linear progression.  The guiding words are, "What happened next?" in a short story.  I reacted to that.  The result was interesting, at least to me.

Logical Progression

A can lead to B
  sunlight on a lake
Never ending ending
  that continues
    forever
Senses challenged
  by what is not there
serendipity
The wind in the trees
  not reaching my face
Sunlit midnight
  rain dripping from my mind
drop  drop  drop
lifening the grass
  lifting the life
holding down the fears
   for poor A


c. 2012 C. Thames

The first time I wrote that one, I wrote "lifting the grass" but when I transcribed it onto the computer, I did a typo, and found out that I liked it better the way it is here.  I like the idea of lifening.  I wrote a couple more, but they're going to have to wait until next post.  Enjoy.

Hello Again, Again

I've been gone for a while.  More mentally than physically, but the results are the same.  I recently visited with a friend who likes to write.  The thing is, she is more caught up in the sound of the words than the message.  I think you have to get over that one.  It took me a while to get over a love for words.  I think it's part of something we have to do to be able to communicate.  It's wonderful when they come together, but in the end, the words must serve the message, and not the other way around.  I know poets have been trying forever to get the right mixture, and some actually pull it off, but that's not the point, to me.  Then again, maybe it is the point, and that's why I've been gone.  Who knows.  It will take a smarter person than I am to figure that one out.  Hopefully, I will get it together sometime soon and start writing again.  I take a notebook with me where ever I go in case something pops out, but it just hasn't happened lately.  Maybe when spring actually springs, it will happen.  Until then....