an insatiable curiosity

“The Animal Spell”

Someone once told me that animals are people under spells, and if you fall in love with them the spell will be lifted. I recently fell in love with a black trumpeter swan. I watched her ruffle her neck feathers for hours, watched her peck bugs from her breast. I was sure she would make a beautiful bride, but she was always a black trumpeter swan. I once brushed a horse’s hair for three straight years until it crumpled to death. The truth is there are no such thing as spells. The world is always as it is, and always as it seems. And love is just our own kind voice that we whisper into our own blood. 

— Zachary Schomburg

“Mermaids”

Mermaids

Bella was a single mom
2 children and no man
She said he ran off one night
Leaving her alone to fend
for this now shattered family
Sabrina was putting herself
through law school
Worked by day as a legal aide
at night at the club
In between as a student
Filling in the empty moments
with reminders of her potential
Natalia was an engineer
paying off loans
Chelsea was taking care of her mother
Kira was a poet
who wouldn’t write about it for years
Dancers always have beautiful names
Signatures that are auras protecting the skin
that gracefully ripples across the eyes of men
They rename themselves Destiny
Maybe a little girl fantasy
of long flowing hair and beauty
There is always beauty

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“guitar picks”

your hands are
strangers to me. without
the breathing crystal scent
of the river on
your calloused fingertips,

you’re playing the same chords
but I can’t recognize
the song.

“two”

who are you to say that
a universe can reside within four walls?
I cannot thrive inside iron bars

to live each moment embracing a thought
not born from my own
what is being, when being becomes restricted by those before me
who accepted only what was given?
I want to shed my own luxuries

with eyes that are indifferent to the color of this room.
I won’t be confined to a world where I am
inevitably to be consumed by the subtle dust that permeates the air
how do you breathe?
when I am suffocated by what has been

it’s the promise of what could
and will be
that is the air that sustains me.


— mkb&trj,2008

maggie and milly and molly and may

maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach (to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn’t remember her troubles,and

milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles: and

may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)
it’s always ourselves we find in the sea


— e.e. cummings

“GATSBY”

through this twilight universe
where poor ghosts, breathing dreams
like air wander
they walked along the moon-lit gravel
into a bright rosy colored space

boats against the current
frightened but graceful, on the edge of
a deathless song

a stir and bustle among the stars
as she blossomed for him like a flower
pervading the air with shades and echoes of
still vibrant emotions

against the blue cool limit of the sky
he forever wed his unutterable visions
to her perishable breath
and so they drove on toward death through
the cooling twilight


— F. Scott Fitzgerald, and me*




* this was an assignment I had in highschool.. using the graceful words of Fitzgerald I assembled his lines from The Great Gatsby into a poem. wanted to revisit it, always after felt inspired by his style and choice of vocabulary..  

“i carry your heart”

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)


-- e.e. cummings

“somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond”

somewhere i have never travelled,glady beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gestures are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near.

your slightest look will easily unclose me
thought i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skillfully,mysteriously) her first rose

or if you wish to be close to me,i and
my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not eventhe rain,has such small hands

— e.e. cummings




** I think it’s worth saying that this poem was the reason I began caring about poetry, the moment that I understood that words were a medium of their own (tenth grade english class, an art project of our favorite poem). In the same way colors can blend and bend evoking emotions in the abstract, pencil and charcoal can draw grimaces and branches; these words and their eloquence— they pull images from my mind and emotions beyond imagination. I can only hope someday to emulate and sculpt the same way with my words..

“Two Poems On Fishing”

Should I go drinking and wenching?
Oh no. It isn’t proper for the poet that I am.
Shall I go hunting wealth and honor?
I am not inclined that way either.
Well, let me be a fisherman or shepherd
and enjoy myself on the reedy shore.

When it stops raining at the fishing site,
I will use green moss for bait. 
With no idea of catching the fish,
I will enjoy watching them at play. 
A slice of the moon passes as it cast a silver line
onto the green stream below.
 
- Kwon Homun 

“The Sea”

as is the sea marvelous
from god’s
hands which sent her forth
to sleep upon the world

and the earth withers
the moon crumbles
one by one
stars flutter into dust

but the sea
does not change
and she goes forth out of hands and
she returns into hands

and is with sleep…

     love,
the breaking

of your
    soul
     upon
 my lips

— e. e. cummings

(I think this might possibly be in my top five poems of all time; probably more than one e.e. cummings poem is. the simplicity, the imagery. I can’t wait to mark my body with these words..)