ktravula – a travelogue!

Poem for Pumpkin

I miss her when she’s gone. She has the shrillest voice around

A smile so piercing, laughter so fluid, and a most charming sound.031020091506

There she is on the white wall, like a doll, staring my cold away,

and texts, like words, move my stone mind like music did today.

And not just flesh at this moment, a virtual soothing thought

stares gently back, half removed by not just a large pond, but like a dot.

I will put my feet to test, seeking the corridors of a winding maze

to bring her out. It is lonesome now without the thrill of her chase.

Without the petting that I seek, without the pat of her doting hand,

I swoon only with her stare from this wall, her charming face, and

the only thing I hold are rounds of rumbling laughter – it is the joy

but it is also a peeping-eyed hug of a less harming kind. She’s the coy

muse of my long distant nights. She’s the round and wingless muse

of lines that form with one closed eye. A love from the depth of snooze.

Poem for Pumpkin was published on November 12th, 2009, with the tags , , , under the Art, Fun category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.

America Tonight

IMG_0782It’s just the rustling leaves on the ground – the gentle breeze

that blows. It’s the glow of lights around the evening trees.

It’s the smiles in her joyful eyes, the love that I see around.

It’s the warm nudge, a subtle touch of flesh, or a gentle sound.

I felt it tonight, within hopes on the faces I see wherever I look.

Graceful laughs under branches, and falling rain around the brook.

I smell it in the cold night air, brown like the leaves of autumn’s rust

I touch it in hugs of fleece, wondrous wool, fabric mufflers of trust.

IMG_0750

It’s in the sound of music, softened in bits of sweet tingling taste.

It’s in the rustling of leaves on the ground – a season of deathly waste.

It’s America tonight, Midwest, in the folds of a gradually freezing host:

I stand with words as shield, the less squelching shawls I know the most.

America Tonight was published on October 23rd, 2009, with the tags , , , , under the Art, Fun, Observations category. There are currently 7 comments on this article so far.

A Food With No Name

Whenever I sit and stare at an empty page like tonight, my mind wanders to the the many things I could be blogging about besides the adventures of class and teaching. Earlier today I tried without luck to write a poem about the foods I eat with names I can’t pronounce. I failed. The reason for that, in my opinion, is that I was hungry. I had the image I wanted to portray in my head, but my stomach hurt a little from not having eating in the morning so I couldn’t get my words out in the particular order of my choice. Feeling deflated, I went out and got myself some really nice microwave-ready food which was ready to eat in less than ten minutes. But by the time I got well fed and satiated, the muse had left. I was left only with desires of different kind so I went into Facebook to stare at pictures instead. When poet Maya Angelou came to SIUe in early October, one of the poems she read was called The Health-Food Diner, a satirical response to a particular occasion when she was stopped from smoking in a public restaurant. In the absence of a own lyrical response to my particular situation at the moment, I will leave you with Maya Angelou’s words. It’s certainly one of her funniest poems.

The Health-Food Diner 

No sprouted wheat and soya shootsIMG_0469
And Brussels in a cake,
Carrot straw and spinach raw,
(Today, I need a steak).

Not thick brown rice and rice pilaw
Or mushrooms creamed on toast,
Turnips mashed and parsnips hashed,
(I'm dreaming of a roast).

Health-food folks around the world
Are thinned by anxious zeal,
They look for help in seafood kelp
(I count on breaded veal).

No smoking signs, raw mustard greens,
Zucchini by the ton,
Uncooked kale and bodies frail
Are sure to make me run

to

Loins of pork and chicken thighs
And standing rib, so prime,
Pork chops brown and fresh ground round
(I crave them all the time).

Irish stews and boiled corned beef
and hot dogs by the scores,
or any place that saves a space
For smoking carnivores.

	-- Maya Angelou
Culled from http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/383.html

A Food With No Name was published on October 17th, 2009, with the tags , , , under the Soliloquy category. There are currently 1 comment on this article so far.

Waiting for Maya (2)

300920091487ALONE

Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

There are some millionaires
With money they can’t use
Their wives run round like banshees
Their children sing the blues
They’ve got expensive doctors
To cure  their hearts of stone.
But nobody
No, nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Now if you listen closely
I’ll tell you what I know
Storm clouds are gathering
The wind is gonna blow
The race of man is suffering
And I can hear the moan,
‘Cause nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Maya Angelou

Waiting for Maya (2) was published on October 2nd, 2009, with the tags , , under the Art category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.

Home Alone, Traveller.

170920091321

for October – an excerpt.


The heavy hum-dum of numb dumbbells lazing on a dirty rug

does not rise above this state, nor do the electro-carts that tug

in whimpers at his idle mind. There stirs and falls in random beats,

like hearts half-baked in a searing whirlwind of summer heats,

doses of silence, filtered in cold, frittered in the evening eye.

“It will not be tonight when the world ends.” Only a cycle crawls by.

 

A new man peers across a ledge, pondering time, pondering faces;

and only a thicket of quiet responds, louder than a din of dank spaces.

It bobs, it weaves a yarn of times. It reeks of a kind of cold, sour breath,

of stories told again and again; a non-listening ear. A certain death.

It is silent here now, as memory plays roughly along the helm of choice,

heaving noise: “It will not be tonight when the world ends,” in a low lone voice.

Home Alone, Traveller. was published on September 29th, 2009, with the tags , under the Observations, Soliloquy category. There are currently 12 comments on this article so far.