Curl: NaPoWrimo 2015, Day 12

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Curl

Walls are the minds of other people.
I sit in piles on the desktop–
a black sun,
the leg of a poem.

A glass eye drops
to the bedside table,
having seen enough.

My rumpled bed
is full of poems.
My closet stuffed with words
in too many sizes
that go unworn.

They are purses never used,
these poems I have departed from.
Still, I slip into their pages
day by day.

I drown in these things
I have assembled a life from.
Prehispanic bowls on the mantel.
A tiny dried seahorse
standing on a curled tail

The Prompt: Describe in great detail your favorite room, place, meal, day, or person. You can do this in paragraph form. Now cut unnecessary words like articles and determiners (a, the, that) and anything that isn’t really necessary for content; leave mainly nouns, verbs, a few adjectives.

In case you are curious, here is my original paragraph the poem was culled from:

Around me on my walls are the minds of other people. A black bird faces an orange sun, a leg lies suspended over a poem. Fish swim by with hands and a woman stands bare breasted holding birds on the palms of her hands. A Bedouin woman holds three roosters and there is much more of other people’s minds on other walls. My mind sits in piles on the desktop. boxes, papers, heaps of contents migrated from other rooms. A case with hundreds of different DVD’s behind a TV with VCR player. my life piled around me ..what is not nailed onto walls. A half-empty glass with soda straw and eye drops on the bedside table. I am too tired of this room to describe it more. My backboard of my bed is a file cabinet full of poems. My closet stuffed with clothes in too many sizes. Belts that no longer fit. shoes that go unworn. Purses lined up but never used. Int the bookcase, poetry books I haven’t read for years. Words of friends I have departed from or who’ve departed this world. My house my room like a giant scrapbook of my life I slip into the pages of more securely day by day. Wondering about escape but questioning whether I really want to. We are all consumed by our lives in the end. My air running out. In my mind I escape seaward. Where I drown instead of smothering. No way out of this life in the end but t drown in something: life or death. Either way, we need to leave these things we have assembled a life from. Prehispanic bowls on a mantel. A clay warrior holding a lance, a tiny dried seahorse, standing on curled tail, and a Huichol painting of curled string.

As you can see, many of the images in the above paragraph fell away, mainly because I’d dealt with them in an earlier poem. Links tto hat earlier poem and to photographs of the room are given below:

For another poem about this room go HERE.
And for images of the room described in both poems, go HERE.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/interplanet-janet/

11 thoughts on “Curl: NaPoWrimo 2015, Day 12

  1. Allenda Moriarty

    I can see it all in my mind. It troubles me that you seem so exhausted by it all. Resigned, I guess. I am watching a little gray bird hopping from twig to twig in the dogwood tree as I sit here on that brown leather couch in the living room that used to be in our office. You would love the dogwoods now in full bloom. There is always room on the couch if you care to put some burden down. T is sitting at the desk behind the couch tapping away on his computer. We could have three people in the same room tapping away until beckoned outside by bird calls. I have to get out with my camera, the tulips have been splendid this year, but largely unrecorded other than by our eyes. Sending many hugs and lots of wishes for happiness and a glorious day.

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  2. lifelessons Post author

    I have always loved dogwood trees and for years in Boulder Creek, intended to plant one. Then one day long after we’d moved there, I backed out of our long driveway and just where it met the traffic circle, I saw a wonderful dogwood tree in full bloom. White with bits of green…It was so large that it must have been there all along, but we were so busy with the kids and traveling to do shows and intent in our studios when at home, that I’d never noticed it! That memory and your reminder prompt me to get out in the world more, and yet it is so pleasant just staying home..Life is a tide, one force pulling us out into the world, the other pulling us back home again.

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  3. Allenda Moriarty

    I can remember being enchanted by the image of a dogwood tree in a book, when I was in 2nd grade and drawing a blossom, of which I was quite proud. I was so disappointed that they didn’t grow in the North at that time and was delighted when I finally saw my first dogwoods in Arkansas probably 30 years later. Now we live in the South and can see them from every window. The Botanical Gardens are having their annual Spring sale this coming weekend, so you know where I will be headed. I planted ferns back by the cave this week, and Perry planted hosts and lily of the valley for me last week and they have already come up about 4 inches. I have to get out in the yard every day and check on Mother Nature’s efforts. We don’t have to go far in the world for those joys. Your own yard is a treasure of visual delights. It gives me pleasure just to remember it. Enjoy!

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  4. Roberta

    Hello Judy, I am enjoying your blog very much. I am intrigued by the thought of this bog, or perhaps another, with photos of your art work. Perhaps such a blog might even be open to faithful ‘blogees’ like me. I could post a photo of my six foot mermaid who languishing in my studio in Colima.

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    1. lifelessons Post author

      Absolutely. You’ve already sold me on the idea. I’m trying to think up a name for it. So far all the ones I’ve come up with are taken. I’ve established one named “The Poet’s Eye, the Artist’s Tongue” but was saving it for when this blog fills up and I have to establish a new one…I accept all suggestions as a name is really important. Laura M, if you see this, you have the most intriguing blog name I know. Do you have an idea for a name for an Art blog?

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