A Facebook Memory and the Origin of Tweetspeak Poetry

It’s difficult for me to imagine that I’ve had a Facebook account for at least 17 years, but a Facebook memory popped up this week to prove it. It caught my attention became of the title: “Who Were You in My Dream?” 

I thought, why does that sound like a poem?

 

Probably because it was. But not just any poem.

 

One Saturday afternoon in the summer of 2009, back when Twitter was called Twitter, three people were having a Twitter conversation – L.L. Barkat, Jim Woods, and myself. Somehow, the subject turned to poetry (well. L.L. Barkat was involved, so that was probably inevitable), and we began tweeting poetic lines at each other. And an idea was born. What about doing a poetry jam on Twitter?

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Photograph by Melpo Tsiliaki via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Thursday Readings

 

“The Silver Swan, Who Living Had No Note,” poem by Orlando Gibbons and “Out Upon It,” poem by Sir John Suckling– Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Those Constant Stars, Thine Eyes: A reading of Shakespeare’s fourteenth sonnet – K.S. Bernstein at Apple Blossoms in a Mournful Wood.

A Year Away from Twitter / X

Twitter was the first social media platform I joined, way back in 2008. I was far from being an early adopter, but I was one of the first people at work to sign up. 

Even that early, you could see the enormous potential for good and bad that a social media platform like Twitter could have. What we know as cancel culture developed early.

 

From 2008 to 2023, I had a consistent strategy in how I used the platform. I tweeted positive stuff. I didn’t engage in politics or controversies. I highlighted good things people were doing or writing. And I have to say I was steadfast from the beginning to the end.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Photograph by David Paschke via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

Failure to Thrive – Brian Miller at A South Roane Agrarian.

 

The Previous Lives of Used Books – Thea Rosenberg at Story Warren.

 

Buckner, Jr. at Gettysburg 1913 – Chris Kolakowski at Emerging Civil War.

 

Why Are the Classics Necessary? – Louise Cowan at Th imaginative Conservative.

 

In Search of the Rarest Book in American Literature: Edgar Allen Poe’s Tamarlane – Bradford Morrow at Literary Hub.

Tweetspeak Poetry Jam, Part 2: Skywoman Braids Sweetgrass

Tweetspeak Poetry’s jam on Twitter on Jan. 15 used prompts from Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teaching of Plants by botanist and Native American Robin Wall Kimmerer. As might be expected, the prompts contained numerous references to nature – to trees, plants, flowers, and fruits.

The lines on Twitter don’t flow chronologically, because people see a prompt, consider a response, and then tweet the line or lines they’ve created. Some people tweet quickly; others take their time. The result is a series of tweets like overlapping arcs. When you look at the entire list, it appears formidable: how do you fashion poems from what looks like a disjointed incoherence?

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Tweetspeak Poetry Jam: Skywoman Braids Sweetgrass

Tweetspeak Poetry was born on Twitter. Even before a web site existed, poetry jams were being hosted, participated in, and then edited into a kind of official record of the jams. The prompts to spark the jam came from a wide variety of sources – poetry collections, Greek myths, non-fiction works, memoirs, and other works. About the only thing each jam had in common was the length – always kept to one hour.

On Tuesday, January 15, Tweetspeak hosted another poetry jam on Twitter. This time, the prompts were taken from Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teaching of Plants by botanist and Native American Robin Wall Kimmerer. The book fuses Kimmerer’s scientific training as well as the stories told by flowers, fruit, vegetables, grasses, and other plants. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Twitter Party: Slivers of Plum at Midnight

It’s been a while since we last hosted a poetry party on Twitter, but it finally happened. Nine Twitter poets participated, responding to prompts by @tspoetry taken from Dave Malone’s (that’s @dzmalone in the vernacular of Twitter) most recent poetry collection, O: Love Songs from the Ozarks. Our review of the collection was posted here at Tweetspeak Poetry back in February.

Tweetspeak Poetry was born as a result of series of poetry parties on Twitter. For a while we posted the resulting poems on my personal blog, but finally created a site just for that purpose. Over time, the site grew, additional additional features like Poetry at Work Day and Bring Your Poet to Work Day, literary tours, poetry reviews, poetry prompts and more.

Like every previous poetry party, the lines for poems developed on a number of different levels, some people following the prompt and others responding to each other; while some kept closely to the timing of prompt as others were more considered in their responses. It’s great fun, but it takes some detective work on the part of the editor (me) to identify which lines belong with which poem. But I think you’ll like the resulting poems.

To continue reading (and to see the poems), please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Illustration by jks Lola via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Twitter Party: The Poetry Home Repair Manual 2

At our recent Twitter party, things took a decided turn toward the planet Saturn, silver ribbons down the back stairs, or perhaps the front stairs, and lemon custard (don’t shoot me, I’m only the piano player). A digression into dirty dishes (likely latent guilt for tweeting poetic lines while filled sinks remained, well, filled) was soon left behind.

The prompts were taken from The Poetry Home Repair Manual: Practical Advice for Beginning Poets by Ted Kooser, the former U.S. poet laureate. I’m not sure if he ever imagined his book would be pressed into service for a poetry jam on Twitter, but something tells me he would likely be pleased.

What’s rather fascinating for an editor of poetic tweets is to see how the thoughts and inspirations flow and play off each other. It’s hard to follow that when you’re in the thick of rapid-fire tweeting, but once the tweets are brought together and, in a sense, stop moving, the underlying inspiration can be seen.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Photograph by George Hodan via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Twitter Party: The Poetry Home Repair Manual

I have a theory about poets and poetry, and it is this: there are only four poets in the United States who make a living by writing poetry. One of them is Billy Collins. I’m not sure who the other three are. But I know they must be out there. Somewhere.

At our recent poetry jam on Twitter, the very first prompt spoke to my theory: “You’ll never be able to make a living writing poems.” It’s a line from The Poetry Home Repair Manual: Practical Advice for Beginning Poets by Ted Kooser, former U.S. Poet Laureate and author of some wonderful collections of poetry. (And if you wonder if he is one of the other three poets making a living from writing poems, you should know he retired from an insurance company in Nebraska, where he spent most of his adult working life.)

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Photograph by Peter Griffin via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Twitter Poetry: Spinning for Tickets for a Prayer Wheel 3

The next groups of poems from our recent poetry jam on Twitter is posted today at Tweetspeak Poetry. The poems take a turn toward swans and petals, green skies and blue music, gourds and story-weaving. The prompts for the jam were taken from Annie Dillard’s volume of poetry Tickets for a Prayer Wheel: Poems.

To continue reading (and see the poems), please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Photograph by Petr Kratockvil via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Twitter Poetry: Spinning for Tickets for a Prayer Wheel 2

It takes time to sift through the contributions to our Tweetspeak Poetry jams on Twitter, time to make sure all of the lines are, first, grouped together, and then, second, arranged for editing. People think and respond to the prompts (and each other) very differently, and that diversity is one of the strengths of these poetry jams. It also requires some careful editing.

For our most recent jam, all of the prompts were taken from Tickets for a Prayer Wheel: Poems by Annie Dillard. To see the next six poems in the series, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry. 

Photograph by Petr Kratockvil via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Spinning for Tickets for a Prayer Wheel

Some 15 poets gathered at the recent Tweetspeak Poetry jam on Twitter, and early on tried to guess the source of the prompts. Some thought it was Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, popular with many of us poets and writers, so popular, in fact, that some of the jam participants kept holding on to it. As it turns out, the source was Annie Dillard, but it was her poetry volume Tickets for a Prayer Wheel: Poems that was the source.

To continue reading (and see the first five poems), please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Photograph by Petr Kratockvil via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Of Shells, Fireworks, and Novellas

On October 9, 17 people (and a few retweeters) came together for a Twitter poetry jam, with the prompts coming from lines in The Novelist, the new novella by L.L. Barkat. We set off fireworks, we went to the beach, we roamed through the forests and probably would still be tweeting if we hadn't stopped at our one-hour deadline.

We tweeted, we responded, we counter-tweeted, we had side jams going on, we had occasional retweeters come swooping in and swooping out, we had direct messages flying around. But in the end, it all got collected.

And became poetry. To see the first five poems from the Twitter poetry jam, please see my new post at TweetSpeak Poetry.

Scenes from The Whipping Club 2

Over at TweetSpeak Poetry today, I had a post on seven new poems from our recent poetry jam on Twitter. For the first five, we went into the woods, then to the ballroom, and then back to the woods.

Now we have the next seven more, and we’re deep into shoes, and shoelaces, and lace and gossamer (you can see the thread developing) and back to the woods, and we stumble and find – granite. And even a “he said/she said” poem.

All prompts were lines taken from the novel The Whipping Club by Deborah Henry.

To read the seven new poems, please visit Tweetspeak Poetry.

Scenes from The Whipping Club

It was another TweetSpeak Poetry Twitter party last Tuesday, and 13 intrepid souls braved the shock of their Twitter followers and tweeted away, creating lines of poetry. The prompts were all taken from The Whipping Club by Deborah Henry, the novel published by T.S. Poetry Press and listed as one of Oprah’s Hot Summer Reads.

This Twitter party started in the woods, moved quickly to the ballroom, and then sailed back to the woods, before moving elsewhere.

To read the first five poems, please visit TweetSpeak Poetry.

It's All Changing

I’m working on a presentation about social media (my full-time job) (except for the other stuff that’s not social media), and I deliberately carved out some time to think about the impact it’s having on the work that I’ve been associated with for more than 35 years.

You have to carve out the time – block out the calendar and close the office door, or find a space if you occupy a cubicle – to think. Social media has a tendency to make you do that – forcibly block out the time to think, that is.

The first indication I had of the personally transformative impact of social media happened three years. I was giving a speech in New York – and the editor of a trade publication was livetweeting my speech. The people back at the office – and those in the room with access – were following what I said and how I answered questions. Fortunately, everything went well.

That doesn’t happen all the time when a speech is livetweeted. There are plenty of stories of what happened when an executive’s speech was livetweeted – and people in the audience started following the tweets – and people inside and outside the room started fact-checking – and all of it was being tweeted and retweeted. The people in the room began to talk among themselves, and the speech (and the speaker) ended up trashed.

This is the world of social media. Remember Toyota’s problem with reports of brakes failing? It started as a single tweet on Twitter. It ended months later in a government exoneration – but Toyota went through a smashed quality reputation for a considerable period of time.

At work we’ve learned that Twitter and Facebook function like headline news alerts. We see information faster on Twitter than you can get via Google news alerts. Beyond just alerts, social media collectively is replacing traditional journalism as news sources. A business journalist writing for CNBC recently pointed out that his main sources of information have dramatically shifted – today, he relies upon StockTwits.

First lesson: With social media and the ease of using the various channels, everyone has become a journalist. Traditional journalism has been in decline for years. It’s not dead, and it won’t die anytime soon, but its power and influence are much reduced from 30 and 40 years ago.

Related to that is the second lesson: Expertise counts for less than it once did; influence is what matters now. If people trust you as a source, they will believe most if not all of what you say and likely retweet it on Twitter and share it or like it on Facebook. And who needs experts anyway if you can find everything you need online?

This is especially frustrating for people with expertise. People with PhDs in one of the sciences, say biochemistry, are shocked to learn that what they say will usually count less than an actress or a popular book author. Our culture’s fixation with celebrity has contributed to this. The inability of a lot of experts to speak in understandable language is also a factor. Plus experts are usually (and rightfully) cautious; they know what all the studies and tests and evidence say and how far they can go with that; people on social media have no compunction about proclaiming something – no matter how ridiculous – as true.

These changes suggest a third lesson – social media inevitably cause conflict within an organization. Employees have access to more information than ever, including bad news. Traditional communication departments struggle to deal with what looks like the Wild West, a free-for-all and total chaos. Many executives deliberately choose not to involve themselves in Twitter and Facebook, and so don’t understand what it’s about, how to deal with it, and how to resource it.

A fourth lesson: you can’t not participate, even if it’s only to watch and monitor, learn and understand. Many public relations people will tell you that you can’t properly do any communications job today without being at least involved in and have an understanding of social media. And no matter what kind of work we do, if we’re working for an organization, we’re communicators, no matter what the work at hand is.

And someone out there is tweeting the kind of work you do, posting it on Facebook, creating a short video for YouTube, blogging about it, adding photos to Pinterest and Flickr, creating a new App for your phone and a new iBook for your iPad. (If you want a good example of how an entire industry can be transformed in a fairly short period of time, look at the publishing industry.)

It’s all changing. Yes, it’s wild. But participation is no longer an option.

Joshua Waldman's "Job Searching with Social Media for Dummies"

It’s a Dummies book, with that trademark black and yellow cover. Its title is Job Searching with Social Media for Dummies. And it is what it says it is – author Joshua Waldman delivers with 322 pages of resources, strategies, explanations, guidelines and suggestions for finding a job using social media.

But it’s also a lot more. It’s one of the best summaries of how to use social media that I’ve seen (and I’ve seen a lot – my job is leading a team to manage online media for a Fortune 500 company). It should be valuable for a job seeker – and it should be valuable even if you’re not looking for a job but need help in creating a network, building a personal brand, building a platform and a host of other things people use social media to do.

I learned something new or found at least one useful resource in every chapter – and I’m not looking for a job.

Waldman founded the website CareerEnlightenment.com, which is all about using social media to find a job. He knows what he’s talking about – he’s done it himself.

In simple, straightforward language, you will read about the key social media – Linked In, Twitter and Facebook – how they function, how to utilize them, how to customize your information on them and basic social etiquette for operating within them.

You will learn the basics of personal branding – what it is, how it happens, why it’s important, and the thing you can do to do it yourself.

You will read how to manage your online reputation, with online tools that will help you gain an understanding of how visible you are (or aren’t) and what that visibility means. You’ll see the basics about social media search engines, how to repair a bad reputation, and how to build a better one.

You’ll find out why a personal blog is important, how to create a social media resume (I’ve heard of social media news releases but this was introduction to social media resumes), why you should have a video resume, and a host of online sites that can provide information about people, companies and industries.

And then Waldman tells you how to stay up-to-date with the constant changes going on in social media.

Job Searching with Social Media for Dummies may be targeted at job seekers, but the information it contains is valuable for anyone involved with social media on a regular basis. I was expecting a “digital” version of What Color is Your Parachute? and instead got a social media primer and bible. 

Update on My Twitter Problems

Yesterday, I posted about the problems I was having with Twitter, specifically with my main account having been deemed “spammy” by Twitter’s algorithm. “Spammy” is different from “spam,” in that spam is blocked and “spammy” is only cordoned off from the use of hashtags and showing up in Google search results.

I don’t particularly care about the Google search results; but the hashtag block is a real problem for participating in our Twitter poetry jams. There’s one tonight, hosted at TweetSpeak Poetry at 9:30 p.m. eastern time. You can participate directly from there or from Twitter, Tweetdeck, HootSuite, etc. (just make sure you use the #tsptry hashtag) (the one I can’t use).

The developer of the TweetSpeak Twitter application learned what my problem was from a developer at Twitter. I’m glad they told someone, although it would have been helpful to have also told me. The developer requested that my account be fixed, but said I would likely have to contact Twitter directly (which customers like me can only do via the U.S. post office). In the meantime, I could create a new Twitter account, so I could at least participate in the poetry jams.

I created a new account yesterday. I tweeted it a total of five times. And then I discovered this morning that it, too, has been classified the same way as my main account. I could tweet, but I can’t use the hashtag and I can’t use the application developed for TweetSpeak poetry.

The Twitter algorithm didn’t do that. Not that fast. And not for five tweets, which went to a total of nine followers. And the new account worked with the hashtag yesterday.

Not to mention the fact that my Twitter account for work functions just fine and is able to use the hashtag with no problem. I just can’t use my work account for poetry jams.

So I have now sent off a letter to Twitter via the post office. Twitter should receive it by Thursday or Friday. We’ll see what, if any, kind of response I get, and how long it takes.

Now I’m going to go do something productive. But I really hate to miss the poetry jam.

Twitter: No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

A mystery has been solved.

For our last poetry jam on Twitter, something odd happened – when I used the hashtag (#tsptry) with posts, my tweets didn’t show up in the hashtag stream.

At first I suspected that something had happened when the new Twitter app developed for TweetSpeak poetry has been installed and launched. Matt Priour, the developer in Texas who did the app with Marcus Goodyear, couldn’t find a problem.

Marcus discovered that my #tsptry tweets were also not showing up in Google searches. And that was the first clue.

Matt contacted Twitter and learned that, according to the current version of the Twitter algorithm, my Twitter account is considered “spammy.” Not exactly spam, but more “spam-like,” because my tweets include a lot of links and a lot of retweets. So I haven’t been kicked off for spam; my followers can still see my tweets; but forget it when it comes to using hashtags or having your tweets available to search engines.

It’s true that my tweets include a lot of links and retweets – by design. I find a lot of good things online – articles, posts, commentaries, poems – that I like to call attention to. And according to the Twitter rules: you’re spamming “if your updates consist mainly of links, and not personal updates.” (The “if” in that statement is significant – it doesn’t mean it will happen, only that it’s possible.)

The Twitter algorithm has decided that doing that is “spammy.” Actually, the people who design the algorithm have decided that. And no one actually examined by tweet stream and applied rational human judgment. Or even human understanding.

I have to keep reminding myself that Twitter’s algorithm is designed by IT people, that it’s constantly being tweaked, that they try to protect Twitter users from spam.

(And I also have to remind myself that it was the most visionary IT I knew who told me (in 1995) that the worldwide web was a flash in the technological pan, that it would soon go the way of eight-track tapes, because the future was Lotus Notes.)

Matt asked Twitter to fix it, but he said it may require me contacting them directly.

Have you ever tried to contact Twitter?

If you’re a developer or a reporter or a policeman, there are special contact email boxes. If you’re a customer, you click on customer support on the contact page, and you get an array of boxes that relate to commonly asked questions.

But no email box. That’s a hint that Twitter thinks it has answered every question possible and so you won’t need to contact them.

But they do provide a mailing address. That’s right, the king (or co-king) of social media provides one way for customers to contact them – and that’s via the post office.

Very retro. But not very cool. Unintended or not, there’s an important message there – that reporters and developers matter more to Twitter than customers.

So I will have to create a new Twitter account for the TweetSpeak poetry jams to be able to use the #tsptry hashtag and have it show up. Which I will do.

I’m also going to be radically reducing the links I use in tweets and the number of retweets – because I could get blocked completely. (One caution – this happened about the time of my first anniversary on Twitter, so be aware if something similar happens to you.)

But my days on Twitter are likely numbered – by my choice. I’m beginning to understand why people are migrating to Facebook exclusively. I beginning to see what several of the people I followed – people who have run afoul of Twitter rules because of how the algorithm was programmed at the time (and was later changed) – rarely post any tweets now. And these were people with vastly larger numbers of followers than I have.

But a social media algorithm is only as good as the human understanding that goes into it.

Editing a Twoem

It started as something of a lark. L.L. Barkat, Eric Swalberg and I, with a little commentary from Bradley Moore, decided to do a poetry jam on Twitter. Only L.L., Eric and I actually participated in the first session; Bradley had to take a shower after cleaning out horse stables all day for a project at work (I am not making this up).

We had a great time, talked it up a bit, and then started making plans for the second. At some point between the first and second sessions, L.L. suggested creating a site to house the Twitter poems and do other “poetically related” things like recommend books; Eric said he would be up for setting the site up; and I volunteered to edit and manage content. And just that fast, TweetSpeakPoetry.com was born.

Pulling all of the tweeted contributions together into some kind of coherent whole was relatively easy for the first two jams. The number of participants was three or four; we had gotten to know each other and each other’s writing through Twitter, Facebook, our blogs and email.

With the third session, things had begun to change a bit. From a contributor’s perspective, the “Twoems” (Twitter poems) are becoming wonderfully more varied and creative. And they’re also becoming more complex. More poet/tweeters are involved (a good thing), all write extremely and creatively well (another good thing), and all get involved in the jams in very individual ways (a third good thing and what makes the twoems so creative). But it makes for some challenging editing.

What helps is how certain themes will repeat themselves. In the third poetry jam, held Sept. 30, various kinds of fruit trees kept popping up, and I was able to use the idea of orchards to frame the twoem, entitled it “The Orchards of Desire.” For the last one, held Oct. 6, the phrases “ruby moon” or “ruby-red moon” kept recurring, and provided considerable help in editing the eight pages of printed tweets that became "The Poems of the Ruby Moon."

The editing process has its own mystique. I’ve edited a lot of documents during my professional career – speeches, news releases, articles and stories, even book manuscripts. But I haven’t edited poetry contributions tweeted on Twitter in a poetry jam. And it’s a collection of contributions that are made at different levels and different entry points, and with different perspectives on where things should go. And then you add our tendencies (including mine) to interject comments and asides, and it gets quite complicated.

What helps is to love the language. To see what comes from our poetry contributors, writing in short bursts of 140 characters, is absolutely amazing. Many of these contributions are startling, almost shockingly beautiful, and you just think “Wow!” when you see them appear on the screen.

I resist the urge to edit the words. That’s an urge common to all humanity, and especially lawyers. But I resist it. I may add a comma or semi-colon; I may move an entire line or two to another place because the fit is better. But I leave the words alone. I even leave the words of my own contributions alone, even if I see where I can improve them after the jam is over. That kind of editing goes against the spirit of a Twitter poem in the first place – writing tightly and quickly within that 140-character limit. So in spite of all my editing and structuring, there is still a sense of spontaneity – joyful spontaneity – about the finished whole and its component parts.

It’s tremendous fun. And more than that, it’s humbling and instructive to work with such talented writers.

(This article is also posted today at TweetSpeakPoetry.com. If you haven’t visited our poetry journal before, please do so. I hope you enjoy reading it even half as much as we do creating it.)

A Book Review on Work, and TweetSpeak Poetry

A few weeks back, my friend Bradley Moore asked if I would be interested in writing a book review for his blog. Bradley is a business executive in the Northeast, who writes about business and spirituality at Shrinking the Camel. He writes cool stuff, raising questions that stimulate, provoke and make you think. This morning, he posted the book review I wrote for his blog, on Alain de Botton's The Joys and Pleasures of Work.

Last night, just my wife and I were getting ready to go to a concert (Dee Dee Bridgewater, if you're interested), an email arrived from one of my online poetry co-conspirators, Eric Swalberg. He was letting me and Laura Barkat, the other main co-conspirator, know that TweetSpeak Poetry was live and ready to rock. This is the place where we'll be placing all of the "twoems" from our twitter poetry jams. (Laura invented the name "twoem," for Twitter poem. I invented the name "twepic," for twitter epic, which is what one of the twoems turned into.)

Our first jam was Sept. 9; our second on Sept. 22; and our third and most recent on Sept. 30. Other online poets have joined us from time to time, and we've collected all of the tweets at @tspoetry (when we remember to use the hashtag) and on this blog, where I've taken all three and edited them.

We had a technical glitch last night (that means we've really, really arrived) but the site is back up; I posted the first "twoem" this morning. It's entitled "At the Oasis, The Camel on Caravan," in honor of Bradley Moore, who wasn't able to participate.

A poetry journal launched, a book review published -- I thought Sundays were supposed to be quiet.

Twoem #3: The Orchards of Desire

We had another twoem, or poetry jam, on Twitter last night. I got in a few tweets before I disappeared for a while, but @llbarkat, @arestlessheart, and @poemsandprayers hung in there. And @mhsteger made a cameo appearance.

To frame the twoem, @tspoetry used lines from John Poch’s book Two Men Fighting With a Knife. Below, whenever you see a line in quotations, it’s taken from the Poch book. I’ll take the credit (or the blame) for the title.


The Orchards of Desire

By @llbarkat, @poemsandprayers, @arestlessheart, @mhsteger and a couple of slight things by @gyoung9751

“Pater Noster
What can we learn from a 1913 toaster?”

"Through the sunflower field (the off-yellow
pollen fallen onto, staining my shirt)..."

The texture of toast

Is better now
Than years of 94.
I am drawn to the flavor of serene;
The smock of Van Gogh
In pollenish paint
Mimics the swaying sunflowers.
Pollen toasted,
Roasted to bronze
Would feed my love
For painted days.
Serena was her name,
Her hair a flavor of plums.
Pollen fallen,
Pixie dust staining swaying breeze,
Sunlight scattered.
Summer dies;
Sunflowers,
Serene,
Flavor the plums
With golden light.
Light filters through gold,
Pollen through wafts of scented air.

"...the violet glass that must have once adorned/the windows of their houses..."

She slipped into yellow dress,
Breathing plum-sweet,
And prayed her crimson lover
Home.
My breath hanging in mid air,
I catch myself unaware
And whisper.
Violet pixie
Scatters summer;
Plums fall,
Smash, paint earth.

"Hungry, you call me by your name. Under
Barbed wire and up arroyos I come crawling..."

"When the eggs hatch,
The nymphs drop and crawl through vetch."

Must adieu ,
releasing the call, though hunger
Lingers sweet;
Crawling beneath sheets for little love
And sleep.
I plum smashed them eggs
Like glass;
Go ahead, call me;
I am left hanging by the wings.
Adieu restless heart
Drifting like pollen
Over the face
Of night.
It flows like yellow hot wax from a flame.
If plums had wings,
Would they fly
Past arroyos,
Teasing coyotes
Purpled with hunger?

"...our fathers gone,
our mothers scrubbing through a collar stain..."

"...MADE IN JAPAN
with wood shipped from the USA and back
again, the lamp is worn with years of smoke..."

There is hunger at every turn; the sheets will burn and swim.
Life worn like wood/steals labels to explain:
Made in Japan,
Made in the USA,
Preshrunk,
Keep out.
A change of mind;
The room spins like a long, long tale.

"Her purblind eyes the pearls of memory"

Whad'ya mean
"Made in Japan?"
I never heard 'a
Such 'a thing;
Plum, ain't all sheets
Made in China?
Pearls spin
Past pain,
Burn my eyes
With sheeted
Memories.

"... the doubt
of history extinguished with a mirror..."

The luxury of clear thought of blue marbles in glass jars,
To be aware of sunflowers touching the sky
And not care why.
Blue pearls
Smashed like glass;
My thoughts
Careen and
Flee.
Smoke and wood,
Haze and sun.
If sunflowers
Touched us lightly
As pollen on a
Blue day,
Would we not
Care, again dream?
Lamps to light the night.

"An unscathed apple under the pines like a cone
Stopped me. Buoyant in my hand, it shone..."

Apple, plum,
Pine.
What would it
Take to rouse
Your heart again?
Taken from the shrine,
It shone like pebbles on the beach

"The screens were torn--we woke to insect needles..."

Build the shrine,
I told him.
Build it with apples,
Plums, pebbles.
Light a flame
Torn from the
Flowers of my
Heart;
Replace the falling star in the blue of night.

"I leapt at the walls like Mars in love with Venus."

What is night?
Mars, Venus,
The promise of torn stars,
Falling.

"We need nectar: this orange tree, this jasmine-
hung patio. Look how an orange has veered..."

Jasmine, orange,
Plum,
The bowl tips
And I stain my fingers
With nectar-scented
love.
Collect the scent of the burning leaves,
Paint a picture of the stars looking through the trees

"Imagine me applauding
Your skirt and loving the suspense”

Trees embrace
Cobalt night,
Drink starshine
As if from
Burning bowls.
Imagine
The scent,
Your skirt burning
Jasmine
Like flowered
Stars.

"crackling the whistle of a darker darling,/beak yellow as cucumber flowers"

Wrap around me your warm soft jacket with the scent of autumn.
Jasmine would not
Crackle; it is too soft for that.
Whistle it might,
A sweet song of
Goodnight.
Bring to me the gift of time upon a sapphire pillow.
Life is a thief;
Its victims defy number.
Scotland Yard and FBI miss their mark.
You mustn't slumber.
The wind whistles above the pine as the fire crackles and burns;
Toward the east, the poems are silent within a dream.
The words travel west and swirl around in the dusk and land at the foot of the pine.
The apple drops to the ground; the words no longer make a sound.