The BlueIris Semi-Nightly Poetry Break, 2/4/09

[BlueIris]

"Eleven O'Clock at Night"

I lie alone in my bed; cooking and stories are over at
last, and some peace comes.  And what did I do today?
I wrote down some thoughts on sacrifice that other
people had, but couldn't relate them to my own life.
I brought my daughter to the bus—on the way to
Minneapolis for a haircut—and I waited twenty
minutes with her in the somnolent hotel lobby.  I wanted
the mail to bring some praise for my ego to eat, and
was disappointed.  I added up my bank balance, and
found only $65, when I need over a thousand to pay
the bills for this month alone.  So this is how my life
is passing before the grace?
            The walnut of my brain glows.  I feel it irradiate
the skull.  I am aware of the consciousness I have,
and mourn the consciousness I do not have.
            Stubborn things lie and stand around me—
the walls, a bookcase with its few books, the foot-
board of the bed, my shoes that lay against the
blanket tentatively, as if they were animals sitting at
table, my stomach with its curved demand.  I see the
bedside lamp, and the thumb of my right hand, the
pen my fingers hold so trustingly.  There is no way to
escape from these.  Many times in poems I have
escaped—from myself.  I sit for hours and at last see a
pinhole in the top of the pumpkin, and I slip out of that
pinhole, gone!  The genie expands and is gone; no one
can get him back in the bottle again; he is hovering
over a car cemetery somewhere.
            Now more and more I long for what I cannot
escape from.  The sun shines on the side of the house
across the street.  Eternity is near, but it is not here.
My shoes, my thumbs, my stomach, remain inside
the room, and for that there is no solution.  Consciousness
comes so slowly, half our life passes, we eat and
talk asleep—and for that there is no solution.  Since
Pythagoras died the world has gone down a certain
path, and I cannot change that.  Someone not in my
family invented the microscope, and Western eyes
grew the intense will to pierce down through its
darkening tunnel.  Air itself is willing without pay 
to lift the 707's wing, and for that there is no solution.
Pistons and rings have appeared in the world; valves
usher gas vapor in and out of the theater box ten 
times a second; and for that there is no solution.
Something besides my will loves the woman I love.
I love my children, though I did not know them
before they came.  I change every day.  For the winter
dark of late December there is no solution.

—Robert Bly

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. My dear BlueIris...

Ah, this is beautiful, but so dark...

...there is no solution.

*sigh*

Thank you!

[BlueIris]

2. I've been re-exploring both Bly and the prose poem lately. I find that form especially

difficult and have written only one completed prose poem in my life. Bly is excellent at it.

[BlueIris]

3. Kick.