April 2012
53 posts
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“The first track still almost swings. High hat and snare, even
A few bars of sax...”
– “The Universe: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack” by Tracy K. Smith
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The Enterprise
I.
The other night the trees poked the forest
and crackled about in unpleasant moments
of unfettered booze running dry. It’s always vigorous,
the sun plummeting at great speed from the sun
down to us, and lighted by my grandpa’s arrow
Zippo I smoked to its brilliant delivery but awarded
it a 8.9 with points deducted
for the imperfect dismount upon my knees.
II.
Poems, to...
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A Poem for the Enterprise
The pigeons coughed at the sight of a shuttle
trying to hump a plane: he’s doing it all wrong!
-C.S. Henderson
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“Sometimes dogs eat melon rinds and apple leaves but though I know this there has...”
– Lyn Hejinian, The Book of a Thousand Eyes
nicki-minaj1101 asked: did u write long poems like for beginners?was it easy?why did u start writing poems?
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These are the kinds of emails I send, or, see what...
“First of all, thank you for choosing to embark with me on this journey. It will be treacherous, no doubt. It will be long. We will probably have to battle colossi, harpies, sirens, cyclopes, dire wolves, griffins, and all sorts of beasts on our trek over the Brooklyn Bridge. But we shall prevail, if we bring strong, rigid broad swords and stick to this loose, malleable plan:
- If people...
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“A noiseless, patient spider,
I mark’d, where, on a little promontory, it...”
– Walt Whitman “A Noiseless Patient Spider
Not Whitman’s best by any means, but always a personal favorite.
cordeliagablewrites asked: When you are reviewing poetry, how do you assess whether a poem is "good"?
nicki-minaj1101 asked: when did u start writing poems???
Anonymous asked: What is the meaning behind your url? I think someone asked this already, but I can't remember.
whimsicaltuesday asked: Now I feel cheated because I didn't start following you until your year of poetry was (almost) up. What am I supposed to do without poetry on my dash every morning with coffee?
give me liberty! or give me television!:... →
thetargetbird:
Do people have like, questions, or something?
I mean, I’ll talk about cats and falafel and The Rock all day, but I don’t know if that’s sustainable in the long term.
Man, the Internet is awkward. I feel like I’m caught in that weird lull period between conversations during a…
I really appreciate wrestling as this weird melding of performance art, live entertainment, and...
Anonymous asked: What is your favorite pen?
Anonymous asked: If you could have an unlimited amount of puppies, how many would you have?
Anonymous asked: What is your favorite soap opera? what is your favorite soap? what is your least favorite opera?
Do people have like, questions, or something?
I mean, I’ll talk about cats and falafel and The Rock all day, but I don’t know if that’s sustainable in the long term.
Man, the Internet is awkward. I feel like I’m caught in that weird lull period between conversations during a first date where I want to just blurt out something about The Rock but feel like I’ll get...
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Inside I'm Rioting: Psychoanalysis: An Elegy by... →
hiccupsanonymous:
What are you thinking about? I am thinking of an early summer.
I am thinking of wet hills in the rain
Pouring water. Shedding it
Down empty acres of oak and manzanita
Down to the old green brush tangled in the sun,
Greasewood, sage, and spring mustard.
Or the hot wind coming down from Santa...
Growing up in L.A., I’ve always loved how this poem makes me feel the...
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brickdaniels replied to your post: Alternatively, I have been working on one of those… I so desperately hope you aren’t kidding.
Absolutely not. I’ve been thinking about it for months. Ask Sonofapritch
Alternatively, I have been working on one of those sonnets dedicated to the only rock that matters: Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.
Will post when it’s good enough for you guys to smell what it’s cookin’
Forget 582 Love Sonnets to the Rock, I should write 1389 Odes to the Falafel Over Rice Street Meat Lunch.
That shit never lets me down.
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“I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark,...”
– Philip Larken - Aubade link
I feel like most of the poems I write are just mangled attempts at writing this poem.
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So, what do I do now?
At a loss of what do to with this.
Maybe I should just turn this into a cat blog.
A cat a day for a year.
Yeah?
I added a page for the year’s worth of poems for easy viewing: The Target Bird Year
*Note: not all poems are there for publication consideration, and more will probably be removed for the same reason.
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Post 400
Yesterday, I posted my 365th poem for The Target Bird, completing a year of posting a poem a day for a year (the rarely mentioned reason this blog exists).
Everyday, this blog has left me a bit overwhelmed — this was a secret project (the only person who knew I was writing it was Sonofapritch) and I never expected it to grow into anything other than me and him reading it. Truly, I’m...
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Nightmares formulate a horizon
blistering as a cold,
wet air hanging in the throat
along a drunk moon,
a blood poured out in fever
climbing out of sleep as a cable car.
-C.S. Henderson
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582 Love Sonnets to the Rock: 13
What we knew about the problem
Was the problem itself - it grew
In promethean light, stealing rejoinders
And roses and all things related
To entropic scaffolds holding back the gloom.
New words slow in tongue - slipped
Out along the shins and and snowed
In us until the subduction.
What could have been was not:
A cake to welcome the band of heat,
Neat drinks poured into the inferno,
A...
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582 Love Sonnets to the Rock: 11
The sea explodes, turns around, bathes in pale
semblance of an opening in the cell’s corner,
sees suffering in a vision carried generations away.
Bull shit, Ma’am, there are no whispers there,
you know, lost and alive and colorful and drawing
themselves in all looming ebbs.
I suspect the mountains
are watching; I suspect their desire;
I suspect it’s true and will...
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In Which The Poet Decides What He Wants On A Nice...
I want maimed declinations to follow me,
to spoil and bloom and warm the day
on beer, birds to shit poems on hats,
and men to throw them away; throw
away the sandwich wrappers and souls
thrown into the curb’s moat, throw
away everything into the cloistered noon.
I could be blue all day, if the weather,
ignorantly intimate, would still grope me.
-C.S. Henderson
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It starts here, giving formlessness
to the formless as a train aflame and rolling
so long as there’s a track — so then words
spaz out frivolously as a form of suspense:
to birth a universe fresh with meaning reminds me
of what I threw up yesterday if words
can also be like drinking. If it started once,
then at some point end must come to play
like wall mice, like Clue, like...
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the24project: I Want To Go On Strike - David W.... →
This is another poem from Consequences (where all of the Rejected Consequences came from), written by my collaborator, David W. Pritchard. Best read in tandem with my poem posted in The 24 Project, Actual Love (Scriabin Remix).
the24project:
*NOTE: This poem comes from a longer sequence entitled Consequences, a collaboration with Kevin Grijalva.
If love is written down it’s fair enough
to...
Also just remembered this week is the last week of...
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78. Actual Love (Scriabin Remix) - Kevin Grijalva
Hey guys, you know all those Rejected Consequences I wrote throughout the year? Well, thanks to the good folks who are doing The 24 Project you can read a full, un-rejected Consequence below (might be worthwhile to click-through and see it on their blog, the line breaks look like they get messed up when reblogged):
the24project:
If love is using poetry
as the scaffolding to erect
a more...
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What To Start With, Someday
Start with something you wouldn’t have said
“This mango is quite peachy today”
Then dream of only a before driven
100 miles out to the desert
Smitten by a headache and waves
Of palms gripping the gaudy tender
Arrow piercing the galaxy and the bedroom
Where we are melted in blood
And sweet comes out all confused.
-C.S. Henderson
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But The Heat Died Us Off
Also: there’s an open door, I want
I want I want. That was a prayer, once
Again, left over, alive under the porch.
-C.S. Henderson
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In Which The Poet Considers If He Should Be
willing to be slight carried loosened know yourself
forgotten turn a fleshless world arrest air strike ceremony
because it moved flow miserably impoverish of grins price check
ennuize speed smoke sharpen seal out dusk park peek sit oil
the threshold to glide past impersonate ghost as a passing verb pass
leave exhausted drink stranger dreams emit through a gap grin again grin.
-C.S....
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In Which The Poet Thinks It Looks Like A Nice Day
Noise, still clinging like dream
to the dark, refuses the gaps of air
and inevitably draws pictures
along the unstoppable misnomers of space.
Divided about boredom, I shut
my eyes in full light,
ache of its husky throat spiraling
out of the threshold — I wish to
vouch for your impatience
to scream and bump phenomenal
out of cynicism, or anyone’s who won’t
come to the...
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Strange world: you’ve moved on as I suggested
there be a recoil but without exceptions the rules
force all intimacy to be in repose; so far I’ve exploded
the commitment and committed
to the kinetic
architecture of the hands — shame
on you for building all cures without shade
to cool down in. Something in my debris
chips at the neck, plunged
by a panicky matador’s...
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The function abandoned us, commandment
convenient, such as this is my body: whole,
when in fact I am a torus, more in common
with a doughnut than indigenous oragami
folded into a cross — it shakes in the subway’s
rattle, scolding the city’s execution of chaos
rising in continuum without graceful, abrupt
turns and severe light-like glass peering
into the steep mesa of...
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The chest is indeed a war of holding
space; I’ve embraced a big ol’
cake as the only reward left sweet
enough to seem witty — hang on to me
as sustenance against empty.
At a distance I told you I had overcome,
had replaced, had loved all quarter centuries
as I would a shell that shushed out
in roars. The nearest I could be bothered, then,
would only be if my chest again...
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I Have An Arrow
What I say was penetrated by perhaps
I’m still caught on was and watching
Threads pull out by the steeple-full
I was nobody’s darling but I have an arrow
And a mountain to give
There was a glare and correcting it
Involved the whole day
Trying to describe it ended up soaking
And moving past it left me squashed accordion
Like somewhere there was a bird secret
That slept when...
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A Shadow of Leaves on a Head
The damp lead heat is a method, the kinetic
splits and bird song, contemporary and friend
of man — a samurai doing the honorable
prep work of the problem, asking if you’d
stay, saving on ice something natural
that died sleepily in the afternoon believing
in painting, in costume, in dogs, in voilent
necessary spiritual qualities of a strong wrist,
in a spinning bull and the...
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Breathe, a moment in nature: the seconds’
autopsy brings an April all galloped out.
Breathe, out among the ice and bus
stations, flood the sleeping bags
as motive against blinking,
spelunk down a planet if you’re gray-
tired of chasing the sun.
-C.S. Henderson
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The gods are dead — this isn’t the problem;
we know how to hold the sun in forceps
how to make hunger look like an omen
how to melt as man might like ice.
Days upended revealed the lost shoes
laces undone, holey soled, to traipse
about days’ magnificent hawkishness
in flow. Where we lose is in the snaggle
toothed ghosts unending, married
to space born from each void...
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I Can Tell You A Joke
buried in the manual of sleep, lacking fear
tightroped into the shock of soul dangling
in difference. Leap if you’ve a fistful of sparrows:
reflect the gallows in a stammer
unpacked in that image, engaged justly just
as a tickle creeps up leg-wise when toeing the bridge.
I couldn’t stomach the wail any more than I could
pick the lock keeping the outside compressed like a coin....
middleofthenightdaydreams asked: Hi C.S.? I loved your blog, your writing is awesome. Congrats on being featured, and by that I mean that it's really nice that great writers as yourself are highlighted so more people can be inspired by your and others -wannabe writers in my case- can get to know you :) I once tagged my entries with the feedback p. but if there's any chance you might give me your opinion -which I'd...
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Sometimes I wonder what life I could have if I opened up the mail;
sometimes I realize nothing is ever “in” me;
our selves are shushed into ourselves
screaming at the distant excitement
overcoming clouds in a shell.
There wasn’t enough time to come up
with names that wouldn’t minimize
their things to a crude lock
of hair in hand.
So I open the first letter:...
