Writer by Joe Wenderoth - NPM20

Writer

A person, for you, is a book.
Impossible to categorize,
it veers from non-sense verse
to the most tedious of novels
and back
in just a breath.
And the book ends, the book ends.
And what makes the person more real,
then,
than a book,
is just that you cannot re-read
one chapter, one sentence, one word.
You must re-write him,
her,
and you cannot.
This inability is the source
of everything you have to say.

Wenderoth, Joe. "Writer". The Body Electric: America's Best Poetry from The American Poetry Review. Berg, Stephen, David Bonanno and Arthur Vogelsang, Eds. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2000. 734.

NaPoWriMo - day nineteen

golden beaches

i still remember those Saturdays

you and i heading downtown

to the library. i remember

spending hours reading,

just sitting and reading.

i always thought you were there

with me, your presence like a weight

on my shoulders.

i realize now that you weren’t there

all those mornings. just the idea of you,

the hope of you. as i was absorbed in my books

learning about lions and tigers and bears,

looking at paintings by Rembrandt and Warhol,

discovering Triceratops and ichthyosaurs,

exploring the worlds of Piper and Asimov and Tolkien,
you were elsewhere.

were you looking at architecture,

Frank Lloyd Wright and his modernist boxes,

or perhaps Shaker furniture

and its minimalist elegance?

were you dreaming of foreign lands –

Indonesia, or the Philippines –

and their golden beaches, their

golden beauties, their golden temples?

if i had gone looking for you,

calling your name in the stacks,

would i have found you?

would I have found you alone?

were you even in the library?

did you leave me in its care

as if it were my second home,

a papered sanctuary where i found

the seeds of my own stories,

where the lie that tells the truth was birthed?

were you outside, sitting in the sun,

dreaming for a moment you were unburdened,

without the responsibility of sons and wife and house?

were you imagining yourself

younger, more tanned, drinking

your espresso while watching young beauties

on some golden beach?

did you go for a walk and explore the courtyard

while drinking your coffee?

did you attempt to strike up conversations

with young women, with your broken English

and your thick, sturdy accent?

did you rely on awkward, boyish charm

and your Netherlandish bluster?

or were you further away?

did you meet up with a lover,

carving away time at the hotel next door

knowing i’d be lost for hours;

did you hold the memory of me in your mind

as you lost yourself in her embrace?

did you tell a librarian to watch over me

(you’d be right back)

as you ran to get something you forgot

knowing I would wait,

would step out of time

while buried in books?

it is a mystery to me,

or a secret, that there should be

this ghost here in my recollection,

a great puzzle i cannot solve.

i wish i had an answer.

i try not to read the story of my life backwards,

to let this memory accrue too much weight.

i don’t want to invent

all the reasons i can’t remember.

all i know now is that

i would still wish for your presence next to me.

i would like to sit in a library with you

and read some books,

to share my thoughts.

to discover yours.

but you are far from me,

you don’t even read my emails.

i have lost track of your story.

i don’t know how it ends,

other than you sitting out in the sun,

tanning on a golden beach.

Promise by Joe Wenderoth - NPM 19

Promise

I will turn on nothing.
I will take my walk in the fire.
I will sing the song I hear
coming from the fire where I walk.
I will not look into the fire.
I will stay in my room,
singing a song I can barely remember.
I will turn into the fire.
I will sing a song I can barely remember.
I will bury my room in my bed
and carry my bed into the fire.
I will not hear the song at all.
There will be my voice,
just my voice,
and words that could never have been in the song.

Wenderoth, Joe. "Promise". The Body Electric: America's Best Poetry from The American Poetry Review. Berg, Stephen, David Bonanno and Arthur Vogelsang, Eds. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2000. 731.

NaPoWriMo - day eighteen

diagnosis

all of me loves all of you

most of me loves most of you

some of me loves some of you

perhaps we might invent a new way

of measuring love. what scale

would we devise? we could

weigh all the words: forever,

undying, fealty, mine, yours.

we could test their health,

poke and prod them until they cry out,

until they carry their bruises with pride,

until their repetition tattoos your skin

with promises. we could document

the process – the causes and symptoms –

and track your progress

one word at a time. perhaps

we might find a cure

for all that ails us, for all that

makes us heartsick

and lovelorn. no more

wandering the empty halls

afraid of infection,

letting the words insert themselves,

measuring the distance

between embraces.

A Parable by Gregory Orr - NPM18

The stone strikes the body, because

that is what stones will do.

The wound opens after the stone's kiss,

too late to swallow the stone.

The wound and the stone become lovers.

The wound owes its life to the stone

and sings the stone's praises.

The stone is moved. At the stone's center,

a red hollow aches to touch the wound.

The gray walls of its body tear open

and the wound enters to dwell there.

A strangers picks up the stone

with the wound inside and carries it

with him until he dies.

Orr, Gregory "A Parable" Burning the Empty Nests. Pittsburgh: Carnegie Mellon University Press, 1997. 70.