Response to Rober Bogin's Poem "Nineteen", Scribbled into my notebook in 7 minutes

Response to Rober Bogin's Poem "Nineteen", Scribbled into my notebook in 7 minutes
(Poem follows)

I wonder if the poet was depressed or nostalgic while looking back or creating this moment because it certainly depresses me! Perhaps because I am approaching middle age, where romance is supplanted by toddlers, tantrums, and dished; by texts, tweets, and duties. I'm mad at that young man, "Take the Fucking chance, man!" You think love drops into your lap everyday!?

OK - let's talk about poetic choices and style-

He's taking a philosophy class -
So, what is the poet's philosophy (and, geez, did her learn ANYTHING!) on first love, or love at first site? That it is an illusion - was this girl even REAL or just the wish of a boy? She is made up? The mythical 'perfect' woman? So chauvinistic. He doesn't want to ruin this image of her by actually engaging with her as a person or having a REAL relationship- an excuse as old as old men.

It is obvious he was/probably still is - weak.

He is "open-throated" in all areas of his life - walking around agape, amazed that life and women are so beautiful- but not talking part in any of it. Just eat the damn fruit and find out!

This reminds me of the poem by T.S. Elliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." Dare I "eat a peach!" Yes, please. They both need more daring. But they are both middle-aged men who have passed by the pleasures of life - now, once they realized what they have forsaken they are awakened by memories and "mermaids" - and they "drown" - in their regrets - and die.



"Nineteen"
-George Bogin (1920 - 1988)

On the first day of Philosophy 148, a small girl walked in,
freckled, solemn, cute, whom I liked right off.

Next time, our eyes met and she smiled a little.
I was already in love.

I always tried to arrive before she did so I could watch her
coming through the doorway, each time lover her more.

She began to look at me, too, hoping for a word, I suppose,
but when our eyes met mine would drop.

Once I heard her ask someone for a pencil.
I passed mine back without turning or speaking.

Spring came and we saw each other on campus
open-throated, wordless, everywhere.

On the last day of exam week I was reading at the far end
of the Philosophy Library. Not a soul there but the librarian.
Dust in the sunbeams. End of college.

The door opened. It was my girl. I looked down.

In all that empty library she came to my side,
to the very next chair. Sweet springtime love.
Lovely last chance first love.

I could have taken her by the hand and walked the whole 60 blocks
to the piers right onto a steamer to France or somewhere,
but I said nothing and after a while got up
and walked out into middle age.

Sestina 2

Sestina 2

Across a gravely road

Slurried a brown mouse

Startling the girl

Who sat with her pen

Poised over the papers

She was marking in red

The movement slooched red

Ink from the pen

Dotting the papers

With marks like mouse

Feet covering a road

or tears from a girl

Who thinks a girl

Who sometimes wears red

To avoid being mouse-

Like on the road

Of life, and who papers

Her life with her pen

Shouldn't see pen

Marks as tears, mouse

Feet, or inroads

To failure. Oh girl,

You should have read

Yesterday's newspapers

To know these papers

Marked up with your pen

Won't pave the road

With gold or red

Ribbons for a girl

or rain gutters for a mouse

Everything, even a mouse,

Knows it takes more than paper

Takes more than your pen

to shelter a girl

Trying to build a red

House along a gravely road

Lead yourself to that road, Girl

Wring the red from the pen, turn your lion on that mouse

it’s only paper.

Nature

It’s the birds I hate most

When June’s grey sky

invades NPR’s report

on the water supply

My morning routine

becomes as impossible

as the debate over caffeine-

coffee or tea? so philosophical

The sun’s not even up! I growl

pulling over my covers

Fifty-seven doves Coo!

to their mottled old lovers

Outside my back porch

They scratch and they flit

The cat ‘s here, asleep!

as luck would have it

I’d rise and I’d shine

I’d not bum about

if the birds wouldn’t consort

day in and day out

National Day of Writing, October 20, 2009

Good news! In the previous post in a poem. A sestina to be exact. And...I've recieved an invitation from the National Council of Teachers of English (The NCTE, you'd think they'd have a name that rolls off the tongue a little easier...) to have my poem part of their virtual gallery in honor of the National Day of Writing. Let's keep our fingers crossed it all works out. It also makes me think I should do more writing...

Beach Day for the Writing Project, A Sestina

The girl asked her professor to explain in more detail
the class trip to the beach. “Our intention is to write,
meet for coffee and be home before dark.
Bring sunscreen, umbrellas; bring pens, paper and water.”
Face heatstroke, strangers, flabby tourists, death at sea?
For odes and prose? Seemed like quite a risk.

The girl went to the beach anyway, forgetting the risk
of poor grammar, of writer’s block, of conflicting character detail.
All the students headed to the shore, hoping to see
Venus shoved from foamy waves, on her right
Calliope, on her left, Eros, all thrashing in the water,
bringing the lifeguards, who’d drag the muses to the dark

shade of the first-aide tower. The gods, unused to the dark,
looked to each other, an inquiring glare, what kind of risk
had they taken, coming to these writers, afraid of the water.
The class pressed them, “Just give us more detail!
Please! You don’t know what it’s like to have to write!”
But the muses moved past them, head back to the sea.

Staring at the celestial backs, aghast by what they see,
“Now what?” the students thrash about like new mermaids, dark
waves drag their musings down, their ideas struggle to right
themselves on jumbled, green rocks. Untried words willing to risk
their prefixes, cutting themselves into roots, just a detail
gone ignored, a suffix dropped off, to avoid drowning in the water

of rough drafts. The girl trashes her first copy, drinks her water.
Is it already time for lunch? Most of the class, she can see,
is already heading for a café, one where each detail
of the menu is neatly written in neon chalk in a dark
corner, the blackboard hangs ominously above waitresses who risk
it all, balancing iced tea and salads to write
the menu items while standing on stools, not caring if the spelling is right
or worrying that a muse has slipped back into the water
or turning grey at the thought of the taking a plot risk.
Their sails have no holes; their boats not lost at sea.
They don't wonder if their peers pass judgment, critical and dark,
"She's no artist! Her abysmal word choice! The lack of detail!”

Finally, the girl steeled herself, took a risk that day to write
about every detail – the gods, the waitress, the water.
And though she can’t see the way, words float in from the dark.

11 Ways of Looking at Zucchini

I.
Zucchini strips green and greener
Fuzzy prickly starchy seeds

II.
Bees in yellow blossoms
Big as my hand
in July turn into zucchini

III.
Luscious, dark, intense
Chocolate cake,
Infused with 2 cups of
jade zucchini
Served to vegetable avoiding
step-mother
as dessert

IV.
Kitchens, hot as rusty August cars,
On the counters
Zucchini, tomatoes, basil, garlic
In the garden
Pumpkins wait for grey October
Mornings

V.
Cafés in Paris serve
Smoky ham and white cheese
On baguettes
or
Zucchini omelets
Sautéed with earthy mushrooms
And wine in brown clay pots

VI.
Two orange cats
Toy with the small mouse
Found in the dirt behind
The zucchini patch

VII.
You have thrown away
My brilliant love
The way a toddler
tosses
Zucchini
To the cold, linoleum floor

VIII.
She looked great,
Amazing, in fact
10 pounds lighter, easily.
“Zucchini” she replied
when asked,
what was her secret

IX. Men must feel weak
Near an unpicked
Zucchini

X.
Lock the doors,
roll up the car windows,
cross the street
Here comes the neighbor
With more bags of zucchini

XI.
The young people held hands
Milling through gardens
Of lavender, rosemary,
Stopping abruptly
At golden
Zucchini blossoms
Which he picked for her
took a petal and placed it
on her tongue

Train Song, a photo poem

Train Song

Nothing ever happens on the southbound train

In a way, it is the people's stomping feet

That signals any motion.

Nothing every happens on the train
except a man in dark glasses
not noticing the way a Carlsbad gull
dives into the lagoon, rising in the surface of a wave
looking across the ocean, nothing is happening
the Pacific is still salty and blue

On the train, nothing is happening
As the announcer declares, through crusty static,
The stops for Encinitas, for Solana Beach, for Old Town
Where you can take a bus, a trolley, or a cab to somewhere else
Where, likely, nothing happens

Nothing is happening
So the poet in yellow is distressed, she clutches her neon pink
Composition book
And watches the new arrivals clomp to their seats
The train climbs passed Torrey pines, then eucalyptus
Parallel to Highway 101,
See The Bar Leucadian, the Just Peachy Fresh Fruit stand,
Then a bump, the lost rhythm of train tracks at Lou’s Records

There is nothing to see on the southbound train
Girls in blue dresses, their boyfriends in baseball caps
Tourists pull a sandwich from their packs, then a sweater
To ward against the impossible cool of the indoor air
Just another day, without anything to see
A man in the corner lays his head down on the small center table
Sleeps

The middle-aged couple, in matching khaki shorts
Move toward a seat across from the poet,
A smile offered as a way to simply ask
That her feet be removed from the seat the woman wants

All the people on the train
Look out the window, toward the fairground
Something is probably happening there
Ferris rides, deep fried turkey legs
But the train rushes by too fast to know for sure

The passengers with window seats move their
Eyes
Above them a fighter jet wings towards Miramar
Then, nature gets the last say
a hawk echoes the flight of the jet

Inside the train, its clear little happens
Four people are chewing gum
One a texter
One talking on a cell phone
The man who has awakened from his nap
And the poet

Who, though she is almost 35 years old,
feels young again.
She resolves to enjoy the nothingness on the train
The lack of drama and
Puts away her notebook.
Nothing needs to happen on the southbound train.

San Diego's Sante Fe Station