Poets Should Not Post Love Poems On The Internet

Oriental Turtle Dove (Streptopelia orientalis) by Nikhil
Source

"Dead Birds Sigh A Prayer"*
by Nordette N. Adams

I have been told,
"Do not post poems on the Internet!"

See, the serious poet
embeds her words
only at the base of ivory
towers where an usher pushes
a diamond-crusted elevator button,
calling offerings to the spire
of the poet gods.

"A poem is a sacrifice,"
I have been told, and

"Love poems are the worst things in the world to share,
ruining reputations."

I see
you too,
poet,
have been told
how to withhold romance
from mortals. Yet

our love poems crust with dust in digital drawers for
googling imaginations.

We are a sad pair,
me saving feathers
on a green cliff,
you moulting,
solitary,
midair.

So, ignore      these words,
                      not
                      a poem,
                      just
my working-through-
losing-you drafts,
you man with feathers
who for me was what
Dickinson heard
singing.

© 2013 Nordette N. Adams

*Title taken from the last line of Shakespeare's "The Phoenix and the Turtle Dove."

The Real Thing About It: Peaceful Co-existence and More

I am still contemplating the capacity to love unconditionally. Here is my poem, not meant for literary magazines, but for all people in struggle for peaceful human co-existence: "The Real Thing About It."

It is a meditation.

News Driven Visions Strike Again through Poetry

Cinéma Vérité
By Nordette N. Adams

A mother creeps through the streets
of New Orleans. Her dress has the hue
of fresh blood because her children
are dead. She clangs an old cowbell,
     shouting:

"You thought it was a movie, but

the Zombie Apocalypse is here.
People fear leaving their homes
because the dead-eyed
swarm.

"I have seen the walking dead.
Their teeth gleam as bullets,
seeking warm flesh, biting necks,
infecting. They fall upon our
town, old City of the Dead,
new City of Dread, where
they, futureless, aim AK47s
at the heads of their reflections,
futureless, copulating with the Void.

"Romero may now be named a prophet, or
in the words of Paul Revere revised,
'The zombies are coming! The Zombies
are here!' See them," she points
toward the corner of Washington and
Carrollton Avenues, ten steps from a college
by Gert Town, not far from Holly Grove,
minutes from the Sheriff's office.

"See how they stagger beside the canals,
listening for the sounds of our rising,
listening for the rhythm of our breathing,
listening for the rush of our blood.

"See them," she yells, "cruising
in their pimped trucks,looking
for their kind who love plastic,
metal, and stone more than they may
ever love the beautiful drool of a baby's
budding kisses on a parent's cheek;
yet, they seek zombie brides to bear
their zombie children who will arrive
next to your children some day, dead-eyed
at school, famished, never having known
the fragance of a healthy father
who lives with sweet promise.

From all directions a chorus chants:
"Shaped by zombie life into the image
of a grave, these zombie children limp
into the world, unable
to see beyond the gloom, unable
to jump at the sun, unable
to make room for life's potential
unable to leap or run the obstacle
course the sytem's laid out for them."

The mother wrings her hand, then wipes her
palms against her red dress, hollering
her madness, "I wish I could tell you
different. I wish I had an intelligible
hope to pray, but I am at the end
of heavenly tongues. Dear Lord, mercy."
She gazes down Broadway, taking in its
tarred-over pot holes, its ugly lumps.
They look like burial mounds to her.
"I fear Death has won!"

A man of the city comes and stands beside her.
He carries something she had tossed in a ditch.
Falling to the hem of her dress, he sobs:
"Take up your sword, again, Spirit of Truth.
Might not you birth more children?"

He lifts his head to the skies,
"Take up your healing salve,
O' Love. Apply it to her eyes.
Take up your golden quiver,
Courage. Pierce our inner breasts.
And you, Justice, take to your great
chariot. Deliver to us a warrior's
endurance and wisdom, revive
in us a savior's heart. Providence,
shall you not arm those willing to fight
for light in the city
with the arrows and the skill to slay
the Cyclops of Violence?

"Yes, we have empowered it to spit its virus
into our streets, into the nostrils
of the hopeless, but will you let the remnants
of hope perish with the horde?
Take up your garment of grace."

He reaches for the mother's hand and
strokes it. She sits beside him. They
tarry a while and try not to shudder
at the sssuhhhhhh-sssuhhhhhh of dragging feet,
at the groans and growls of dead throats.
They think of how a giggling toddler sounds,
and then they plead for a way,
a way to rewire the zombie mind,
a way to call the children home
before the Void comes culling
a larger share.

© Copyright  2012 Nordette N. Adams 
Cross-posted at The Urban Mother's Book of Prayers.

The Double-Mitt Twins: Ticket Rhetoric (poem)

Ticket Rhetoric  
By Nordette N. Adams

Romney/Ryan.
   Mitt's mechanistic;
   Paul's penile-Palin,
   but smarter . . . maybe.
The Double-Mitt Twins
conceived to re-position
the winds of forefathers:

Mayonnaise-y,
   retro-phase-y —
A paste-hasty
   empire strike!

Resetting grand narrative
to unrainbowed heritage:
   America unwomened
   then America unblack —
The great take-back.

Hegemonically suitable.
Red, white, and blues doable
America: the rerun.

© 2012 Nordette N. Adams

The Colorado Shooting: processing our fragility and the odd coincidences in this tragic moment

At the outset, my prayers are with the victims and their families whose lives have been irrevocably changed due to today's massacre in Aurora, Colorado (71 people shot of which 12 are dead). There's no need for me to cover the details here because any reader can visit the websites of the major networks and watch as well as read the coverage of James Holmes's rampage. I'm posting now because I'm processing the carnage and can't help pondering odd coincidences emerging in this story.

Raw Hypertext
by Nordette N. Adams

First, I heard that one of the victims, Jessica (Ghawi) Redfield, who aspired to be a sports newscaster, "narrowly escaped death" at the Toronto Mall shootings on June 3. She wrote about it at her blog under "Late Night Thoughts on Eaton Centre Shooting." As MTV reports, "Redfield escaped the incident unscathed, only to be counted among the victims of Friday's shooting."

Perhaps we should consider here that humans love
and revere guns more than the mysteries of breath,
more than the quest for sapient connections.

Second, Warner Brothers has pulled its preview of Gangster Squad, which was supposed to run in theaters before The Dark Knight Rises, because the end of the trailer has a scene of gangsters shooting up a movie theater. Although Gangster Squad is a period piece, taking place in the 1940s, the studio rightfully understands that given today's shootings in a movie theater, showing such a scene to moviegoers would seem callous, but still . . .

Perhaps we should consider here that humans love
and revere guns more than the mysteries of breath,
more than the quest for sapient connections.

Third, and finally, Gabbie Giffords has been mentioned during news coverage of today's tragedy. The congresswoman was shot last year during a massacre at a speaking event but survived. What I'm recalling here is the eerie coincidence of the July 15 episode of HBO's Newsroom.  Last week's show, "I Will Fix You," ended with breaking news of that horrific Arizona massacre and who has the right to declare a human dead. The characters had been involved in a variety of petty, personal dramas when the news of the shooting broke; the tragedy seemed to snap them out of their insular worlds and wake them to our American crisis and weeping.

Breitbart.com has decried the episode as Aaron Sorkin, the show's writer, firing blanks at the Second Amendment, America's right o bear arms just in case the government evolves to a socialist state and revokes our right to kill each other. Today, however, although I'm sure the Breitbarts would object, Sorkin sounds civilized.

Perhaps we should consider here that humans love
and revere guns 
more . . .

© 2012 Nordette N. Adams

Related: Mashable covers story from social media angle, and below is ABC's report. In the video you'll see a young man fall apart recounting what he saw. So many people's heads will be messed up over this massacre. It's another dark moment in our history that reminds us of how fragile we are.



I end this post with some Sting's lyrics and his music video.

Fragile

by Sting

If blood will flow when flesh and steel are one
Drying in the colour of the evening sun
Tomorrow's rain will wash the stains away
But something in our minds will always stay
Perhaps this final act was meant
To clinch a lifetime's argument
That nothing comes from violence and nothing ever could
For all those born beneath an angry star
Lest we forget how fragile we are

On and on the rain will fall
Like tears from a star, like tears from a star
On and on the rain will say
How fragile we are, how fragile we are

What's wrong with writing sentimental poetry and fiction?

If you would prefer to read the text of this poem outside the video, click here.

I do not have an easy answer to that question in the title of this post--"What's wrong with writing sentimental poetry and fiction?"--but I have a few thoughts about why writing critics reject poets who write what they call "Hallmark Card verse" or fiction authors who slather on the sentimentality that causes readers to reach for the tissues. The primary critique usually goes along the lines that writing overly-emotional verse and prose is easy, and within that objection is the unspoken bias that the creation of genuine art always entails struggle, a nose-to-the-grindstone crafting of one's work, that anything that produces tears--of joy or of pain--easily can't be any good.

However, I also think that in Euro-American culture since the so-called Age of Reason fell upon its consciousness, a long-standing belief's taken root that intelligent humans are rational creatures, not beings driven or swayed too easily by emotion, and this bias against emotion--against obvious pathos--causes critics to deem emotional writing to be synonymous with the mundane and stupidity. I add that this bias also manifest as a bias against women's writing in many cases. Within the concept of the Enlightenment self--the unified and rational self--a preference for masculine attitudes and masculine behavior dominates. Consequently, anything associated too much with femininity, such as emotional and subjective responses, is deemed inferior. You may also consider how often people of color are associated with emotion: people of African descent are "soulful" and those of Latin descent are "hot-blooded" and "passionate."

I recall now how some critics of Elizabeth Alexander's poem "Praise Song for the Day," delivered at President Obama's inauguration, was blasted by some poetry critics because at the end it speaks of love. However, it could be argued that we don't talk about love enough, especially brotherly love and that the day Obama was inaugurated was a day characterizes by a sense of unity and love with hope for forgiveness, and so the mention of love was appropriate, but that's another post.

Anyway, I suspect my mulling over varying concepts of subjectivity--the unified self of Enlightenment versus the fragmented self of Post-modernism--and why shows of emotion in not only writing but also in life are often disdained was on my mind somewhat when I wrote the poem in the video above, "End Times." And I was also thinking as I wrote it about deflection in general and that sometimes people do not want anything that goes directly for the heartstrings because they don't want to feel anything that may cause them alarm or perhaps to take action for something in which they believe.

Sometimes people want to disconnect from their feelings so they can rationalize the paths and stances they repeatedly choose to take. Some of those paths and corresponding attitudes include ignoring that we're running out of oil, that we're in a global economy that makes American exceptionalism a thing of the past (if it ever really existed at all), that perpetuating political polarization has become the standard, and that proponents of a political ideology that applauds the elimination of public sector jobs and services has gained the upper-hand in this nation. Few people want to contemplate that we're headed toward an age of austerity and that we may have to completely overhaul our current economic system. I don't mention these issues in the poem, but they have been on my mind.

The poem also reflects my contemplation of how obscure language has become associated with brilliance and plain speech or "being real" has become associated with a lack of talent in some schools of thought. It seems sometimes that some people think that the more you use language to obscure meaning, the better, which begs the question what is it we're trying to obscure: is the goal to steer people away from contemplating that injustice, murder and mayhem is still with us and something we must resist? When I think of political language, I observe how often it's used today to keep Americans from seeing the truth that the party's over: we live on a finite planet with finite resources; material growth cannot be a constant. Perhaps spiritual growth can be so, however.

Guess I was in a philosophical mood and moody today. It's like that sometimes. Woke up this morning with blue moon in my eye, but I did not get myself a gun; I got myself a poem. :-)

Silk and Flour (A Video Meditation)

Written in 2005, the poem "Silk and Flour" was originally entitled "Silk and Flowers," but while creating the video, I changed the title to one I had considered nearly seven years ago. I don't remember what incident inspired the poem. It may have been nothing but a muse in my head, but I feel like I had seen something in the news that caused me to think about the dark side of ego that reveals itself when we indulge in self-pity parties.

Sometimes we get bent out of shape over the most insignificant things and whine so much about what we don't have that we think we deserve that we forget how much more we have than others in the world, sometimes others in our same cities, sometimes people in our own families.

This video is also cross-posted at The Urban Mother's Book of Prayers.

Another Poem for Martin Luther King Day, Simple with Rhyme

Today is Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday. He was born January 15, 1929, and tomorrow the nation celebrates. President Ronald Reagan signed the order for the holiday on November 2, 1983, and Coretta Scott King, according to Time.com, said then "This is not a black holiday; it is a people's holiday."

I remember when whether or not to make his birthday a national holiday was bitterly debated in the U.S.A., and now I look at how the celebration has grown, especially the movement to make the day a day of service, and I think that Dr. King would be proud. Americans should be proud also that its legislators listened to the people and approved King's birthday as a Federal holiday and that at least once a year we contemplate his life, the legacy of the Civil Rights Movement, and the significance of social justice in a nation with a Declaration of Independence espousing the unalienable rights of humans.

When I started this post, I had planned to only post the image above and say, "Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day," but as I wrote, a simple poem emerged with some other thoughts about poetry's place in the country. The poem and my thoughts are posted below the line here.

---

Marking Martin's Day
By Nordette N. Adams

Some mark this day with service.
Some mark this day to shop.
Some mark this day to tell us
the struggle never stops.
Some grimace, grumbling still
that we mark this day at all,
but Martin's shout for justice
helped us answer freedom's call.
He moved America
to strive for its ideals
to uphold its Declaration
and recall its founding zeal to build
a glorious nation
that stands for liberty.

King pricked the people's

conscience to seek equality.

© 2012 Nordette Adams

I present this poem not only in honor of Martin Luther King Jr.'s birth and legacy, but also in honor of my mother, a school teacher who died November 12, 2008. She required that her students and her daughter memorize and recite poetry. She loved special school programs for which she would have her elementary students learn and recite poems, often poems with messages about making a better world or striving to attain a nobler character.

As a poet, I know that we poets keep an eye on poetry critics and academics and are influenced by advice to not ever write didactic, accessible verse: if you want to wreck your reputation as a contemporary poet, then write for the masses. Experts in the ivory tower will scorn you. But lately, looking at this nation and in particular the violence in the cities, especially my city, New Orleans, I've been thinking less about the poetry police and more about whether poets can make any difference in the lives of children by writing poetry on current issues that a school teacher can use.

There was a time when ordinary people knew the names of poets. What happened? Are we sure television's popularity only is at fault? Perhaps the poets themselves deserve some blame for withdrawing to caves, to chambers concerned only with themselves.

I don't remember my mother's students resenting her because she made them memorize poems. I remember them loving her for it and the joy on many of her students' faces as they recited these poems in groups. Perhaps some poets forget that it was most likely an accessible poem with a clear rhythm and rhyme that drew us to poetry when we were children ourselves. We grew and learned that there's more to poetry than rhyme and tales of flowers and teen love.

Yes, but there is also more than ego to poetry and more to loving language than an appreciation of Shakespeare or T.S. Eliot, both of whom wrote lighter verse sometimes. Children do not fall in love with poetry because their fourth grade teachers assigned them to read or recite "The Waste Land."

I'm sure this topic is also on my mind because every year starting around December I see people looking for poems about Martin Luther King Jr. because they end up at my poem "Remembering a Life," a poem honoring King that I wrote for my children. I'm glad it's reached other children.

New Orleans Crime Weights the Soul

I can only work through the misery via creativity. The post on this piece is at the Urban Mother's Book of Prayers.

And Then the Rain God Screamed for Love (Video poem)

In the above video, Nordette Adams recites Aberjhani's poem "And Then the Rain God Screamed for Love" with original music composed by Mark "Rahkyt" Rockeymoore.

Kathleen Thomas is the photographer who took the picture of Aberjhani you see in this post.

Poem: The Reflection in Our New Backyard Pond (Hurricanes)

The Reflection in Our New Backyard Pond
By Nordette N. Adams

'Twas the season of hurricanes, when all through the land,
creatures called "Whodats" scurried and ran
to Home Depot, to Lowe's, to Sam's and to Rouses
for candles and canned goods and fixin's for houses.

They tuned in TVs to local news stations,
dreading the word, "evacuation."
They counted their children and grandparents, too,
and hit ATMs and banks for their loot.

In New Orleans, where people love Jazz,
the second line stopped to fill cars with gas.
Folks checked radios and contraflow maps
while little ones dozed in afternoon naps.

Come Papa, come Mama, come Parran and Nannan,
come bébé, come boo, come cher and come tout,
come, let's prepare for some new hurricane,
and comfort our hearts so we remain sane.

They bow heads, remembering one called Katrina,
the nightmare that left them stronger but leaner.
And still they choose this land by the Gulf:
They love hard and hope; they live and they cope.

© 2011 Nordette N. Adams

Computer-Generated Stars: Yeats, The Center Unravels Still

So, Japan has digitized commercial spokespeople and holographic rock stars.

Creation
By Nordette N. Adams

The new world comes at us fast:
Unhuman creatures, made to last.
Pretty zombies of our minds—
not of flesh, born of time—
will count our days and nights
as we inject nanobots to spite
our blood. Desperate, we fight Death
or God to overcome the soiled breath
we have called life.
Dust mocks us to the grave.

Is this our brave new world
or the long song of decay,
Yeats? No. It does not hold.
The center still unfolds.

© 2011 Nordette N. Adams

Prose Poem for the Living Dead

Prose Poem for the Living Dead
By Nordette N. Adams

If you had written your name all over my body and sang to me the passion you claim in that song, then love may not have seeped away leaving cracked earth beneath us. If you had opened the spirit flesh of your heart like you claim you opened and had remained so--as unfurled as the lotus--then would I be here writing bitter syllables about a zombie? My mistake was that I expected you to save me because I was too stupid to know a woman can only save herself. The wise man slips the lifesaver over his head first in the ocean. He may hoist his lover on his back with good intention, but being not as strong as the ocean he must let her go, feel her fingers slip from his wet hands, watch her wrestle with herself in the ocean until she swims with her own limbs either to him or to that other shore. Sorry, I could not have been more of who you needed.
Sorry, we each needed so much more.

How Many Hits Will this Poem Get from Sex Surfers?

Sex and the 50-Year-Old Woman
By Nordette N. Adams

With a body like Helen Mirren's--
never burdened by babies stretching
skin to an alien curve--she is much at 50
the same as 30, bold and glistening,
fevered with lust.

With a body like Venus of Willendorf,
stretched after bearing fresh blood,
she forgets her name, contemplates
skin alien as cratered moons cooling,
damp and mysterious--the unexplored cave.

© 2010 Nordette N. Adams

Poem from the Still Small Voice

Under the Covers
By Nordette N. Adams

Under cover of scars crissrossing the torso,
purple-blue etchings mesh into one nest
stubborn spirits of slurs escaped
from inept exorcisms, hiding
an impostor's beat. This metronome
times the rise of withering supplications.

Alone, she skates figure eights,
the eternal curve. If only
she could swerve off the deepening groove
to sail a new arc high through air,
she could retire her blades, rend the mask,
reveal the straight lip, the damp eye,
the brow wrinkled as a mother's
when children fail and fail again.

She's prayed this pain projecting from her
back, through the shrink of cleansing organs,
means wings budding, that God is
closing windows to open the door wide
for her soft, feathered, coverless journey.


© 2010 Nordette N. Adams
July 18

Remember When the Saints Had Us So High? (Oil Spill Poetry)

Another poem about the oil leak/spill in the Gulf of Mexico, 2010.

Gold and Black to Black Gold Blues
By Nordette N. Adams

Remember when the Saints had us so high,
so high that low meant do the slower second line
and the dirge signaled juke joint jig?
Remember when New Orleans won the Super Bowl
and none could silence our wild Tchoupitoulas,
Who Dat! hearts? The whole world laughed
and leaped to the beat of rebirth brass.

Black gold creeps up the wetlands grass,
invoking weeping Orishas.
It smothers shrimp, oysters, Brown Pelican wings--
extensions of Cajun and Creole soul,
of fishermen dreaming green,
and the splendid Carnival purple plume,
it dyes morbid gray.

Deepwater Horizon builds like night terrors
its own black hole beneath the Gulf,
swallowing the unseen, hiding
knowledge of death and life.

We live here in a purgatory of anticipation
that oils the slip of the trombone.
What once sounded like music
is noise.

But I must believe in the promise
of Phoenix feathers, in the hope of Easter morn,
I make believe the look of death
is Louisiana life
reborn.

© 2010 Nordette N. Adams

Related:

• Gaining Yardage
• Oil Spilling Poetry
• Crescent City Blues in K
• Brass Band Mythology
• Poet Seeks Oil Spill Poetry to Feature in Column

Reversible Poetry from Twitter: Your Brain on Self-Branding

A Brand Named Human
By Nordette N. Adams

People play.
See me when you try to care how I see.
See you when you stop
chasing fame.
See me when you learn my name
Stop tripping 'cuz
I'm deep!

Lost to you and the games,
I'm deep under midnight
in what you call blue funk
Howling in my soul's blues trunk
after hanging low to weep
See you when I rise for air.

See me.

See me when I rise for air
after hanging low to weep,
howling in my soul's blues trunk
in what you call blue funk.
I'm deep under midnight.

Lost to you and the games,
stop tripping 'cuz
I'm deep!
See me when you learn my name,
chasing fame.
See you when you stop.
See me when you try to care how I see.
People play.

© 2010 Nordette N. Adams

Sometimes on Twitter, I don't concern myself with people but the interface itself and how writing fiction or poetry that's longer than 140 characters might be read on the micro-blogging site. People's tweets sometimes are read out of context, and I've seen those kinds of readings start arguments. The person who's been misunderstood will usually tweet to the person picking the fight, "That's not what I meant when I said XYZ. Read my Twitter stream!" And then if the person does, what does he or she see?

A seasoned Twitter member knows to read the tweets backwards in order of the time they were twittered, but someone unfamiliar with Twitter may look at the tweets and do what comes naturally, read from the top down. If it's a poem that takes up more than one tweet, then what the poet intended--meter, rhyme scheme, meaning or flow in general--may get lost. So, sometimes, like on Twitter yesterday, I experiment with writing poetry that can be read backwards or forwards.

At the moment of writing this poem on Twitter, I was thinking about the tenuous nature of social media and Internet relationships in this era of branding the self, something I think writers should forget about until they actually publish a book or two.

Brokenhearted Survivor's Sonnet: More Play With Poetry Forms

Earlier this month I fiddled with acrostics just to flex the poetry muscle. Today it's sonnets.

Brokenhearted Survivor's Sonnet
By Nordette N. Adams

Is it my heart that you have cruely cursed,
My blood confined to boiling rage in hate?
Or have you left a chamber fit to thirst
For one last romance a fresh love may sate?
You came as one with ill intent in mind
And stole from dreams a peace I'd nurtured long,
Taking no care to gently seek and find
The hidden notes that culminate my song.

But I unlike a starry-eyed young girl
Can bear the treachery you've planted here
And shine in time this sand into a pearl
The envy of your bitter mind to fear.

Thus will I be at once and evermore
A lighthouse to the wounded who seek shore.

© 2010 Nordette N. Adams

Still in an Acrostic Mood with Immigration Poetry

The acrostic poetic form is second on the list of forms at Robert Lee Brewer's Poetic Asides blog. This form makes me think of childhood, and I occasionally play with it just for fun.

I wrote one last night under the blog title "Does this poem look illegal?" but the poem is called "Everywhere a Native Born." I took poetic license with the word "xenophobic" in it and you can see where I'm going, perhaps. I lean toward acrostics being a good form for political protests. (but changed it later)

Still playing with acrostic today, I riffed off the actual word "xenophobia" in a new poem. Other than to write about the misleading story regarding the bogus boycott of Arizona Tea, I haven't said much about Arizona losing its mind with its show-your-papers law and kicking teachers with accents out of schools.

Letters of the Law
By Nordette N. Adams

X marks your state of being
Exceptionally hostile, so
Nimble with nefarious gestures
Offering a pretense of innocent,
Patriotic
Housekeeping,
Offensively defending
Borders and exploiting fear, pushing
Insular states of mind, so very
Arizona.

© 2010 Nordette N. Adams

Does this Poem Look Illegal? Xenophobia

Everywhere A Native Born
By Nordette N. Adams

Americans love Lady Liberty.
Rabidly fascinated by her coveted
Island life, we imagine she is surrounded,
Zealously xenophobic, and loud like Texas patriots.
Owning a tuft of citizen green, Liberty, we think,
Nurses torch fire like doomsday prophets
Awaiting the brown apocalypse.

© 2010 Nordette N. Adams

Related poem: "Letters of the Law"

Merriam Webster definition: "xenophobia."