Jazz and Poetry a little spot for notes & words to dance

Where I’m From

One of the writing prompts Cheryl Bromley Jones introduced to the Poetry Alive! teacher institute is a little exercise called "Where I'm From." I've written many of these and they keep changing as time moves on and I find myself "from" more places than before. This is what came out of the in-service we taught at C.W. Post Long Island University last week still in rough form:

I am from exploding mountains
& calm inter-coastal salt sea
From hidden driveways
& cedar trees

A garden box of love
Though the main geranium died
two others took root
& are better than one to have by my side

Autoslaloming home built race cars
Smokey bowling alleys & sunny amusement parks
Girl Scout camp, horse racing
dance, sing, dance, play

Rocky Mountain escapes
& choreographing lawn gymnastics
Collecting river rocks
to rattle in pockets like grandma's Yahtzee dice

I've heard "if you love some one set them free"
& we've never meant to be for each other
the miles stretch further
from one generation to another

I am from raging garage band grunge
& flapper jazz
Give me that back beat boogie
cause it's all rock & roll to me

I am from cool mountain air
& honeysuckle tickles my nose
while puppies & kitties tickle my toes
Ride my bike cause I don't own a car

I hear good old mountain music
teaching my ear to understand rather than fear
Though bluegrass wasn't ever my style
I've learned to appreciate it after a while

I've collected scars & bruises
& dirt under my nails
City girl in the country
Country girl in the city

I've been stargazing
ever since I was born
& seek out light
to help it shine bright.

Recycling the tales

I went back to a journal from 2000 to find a song I'd never finished. Out of curiosity I flipped the page to find a story that might have been or is yet to be.

From August 2000:

This is the story...

It begins somewhere & someplace else
writing itself out of time.
A boy and a girl,
like most stories have,
are the center of the tale.
But what is the magic in this particular combination?
A difference of opinion or the development of trust?

A lucky break under a lucky star,
with just enough difficulty for romance.
A meeting of strangers
mistaken about meeting before.
The blind meeting the blind
finally realizing they can see.
A heartbreak,
a rebound,
ten thousand songs whirling the night till dawn.

Chances are this never happened,
but that's what tales are made of,
a circumstance that could never be believed.
They say that truth is stranger than fiction.
So who can say?

He was going to kiss her,
but he left the chance untaken,
left her pouting to herself.
There are plenty of other things they could have done,
but this is what they chose.
An opportunity missed
or disaster side-stepped?

But that is not what the story is about.
This is a chance taken and a flame ignited
because that's what stories are made of...

She liked to be alone in public.
He liked to be in public alone.
Both were happy with their arrangement.
A butterfly's moment of conversation between notebooks & games.
One day she told him he was beautiful.
Without hesitation he replied that she was too.
That's how it started or ended or was about to begin.
He could play music that would make her dance.
She could write songs that would open his soul.
A tentative exchange begun balancing on the edge of a knife.
This left her alone in public not wanting to be alone.
He held a phone number in his hand that burned with a fire
he wasn't sure he wanted to play with.

And that's where the story ends
or begins again.

Finding inspiration for National Poetry Month

Last year I failed the 30/30 challenge of writing a poem a day for National Poetry Month by starting late and only getting through about 15 poems. I don't do well writing in the car and that's where I seem to spend most of my time in April as we bring Poetry Alive! to schools in a frenzy for the month.

This year I started at Doo-Nanny in my little nook above the main stage until the typewriter was rained out while helping save Resistance Force and the other electronic equipment and instruments on stage from the storm. I gave away the few poems I managed to type before the storm without mass producing them for all on the interwebs. Some sayings are too powerful to simply drop them into the general pool of thought anyway.

I didn't have much time to be sad about the typewriter malfunction anyway since the Screaming Js joined me on the upper deck to dance the night away and sing the sun up instead. When I got the typewriter home, my roommate gave it some TLC and it's back in working order again, but it's a bit awkward to carry everywhere I go.

However, I found time last weekend to sneak in a poem the old fashioned way with pen and ink. In fact, I reminded myself that my favorite place to write really is sitting at the bar while conversation is bubbling and the band is setting up. This past Saturday I discovered that strange pocket of calm while the storm danced on the horizon right before it all began.

Here are the couple of "doo-dads" (as Dorothy Parker liked to call them) from the book so far this month:

Note to self

Many hands to lift you
Will you continue to soar
touching down so lightly
so as to barely make a sound?
There is nothing you can't do now,
but what will you choose?

Flow

Spinning circles
Dropping into now
Among many other nows
All the rapid fire river
Splashing over rough spots
Washing it all away.
What was it that snagged the movement?
Eddying stagnant pools
Eventually wash on past the sediment
Sentimentally left behind
Rushing on to merge as one
Until the heat of a star
Calls the individual molecules
Skyward.