Category Archives: poetry

twice my age

Shaded eyes
soulful,
under hot lights and sweating.

There, in the midst of Zeppelin blues and the crowd,
the ageless anticipation, the complicated thought of:
Screams from bodies trembling, hear those
soft six string moans,
microphone inhales and stifled words,
fevered hands grasping air
harmonica in crescendo
until the volume is unbearable, consumed.

We are so far; I know nothing of him.
We are so close; I see him there
leaning darkly beside the stairs.

[written when i was 20. revised here]

The Connection between Business and Poetry: Interview with Dana Goia

For those of us living in both worlds of business and art~ check out the following interview! I think you’ll really enjoy it. 

The Connection Between Business & Poetry

–by Interview with Dana Goia by Knowledge@Wharton, Original Story, Jan 28, 2013
SELECTED PASSAGE:
Useem: Let me reverse the question. From your own experience, can business managers themselves benefit the other way around from poetry?

Gioia: Oh absolutely, but I think that my own theory on it may surprise people. I think that if you come into the business, with an arts background, you have a tremendously difficult time initially. This is because it’s a very different world, it looks at problems differently and by and large, they don’t necessarily respect your background.

For that reason, I did not let anyone I worked with know that I was a poet. This is because, let me ask you a question, if you had a poet working for you, wouldn’t you check his or her addition? So privately I went through a very difficult time. That being said, as you rise in business, as you get out of the lower level staff jobs and the quantitative analysis, and you get into the higher level of problems, I felt that I had an enormous advantage over my colleagues because I had a background in the imagination, in language and in literature.

This is because once you get into middle and upper management, the decisions that you make are largely qualitative and creative. And, most people who do really well in the early quantitative stages are grossly unprepared for the real challenges of upper management, at least in marketing which was the industry that I was working in, marketing and product management.

Read the full piece.

But Only For Now (or now that i have a window)

Now that I have a window
I age faster.
I am a family member who
is already dead.
Sun sets: I watch the drop
to dirt grow faster every day.

I imagine it is me. I am the sun,
scorching orange fingernails
scratching at a dusky sky
trying to remain relevant and
sinking.

[What if, this time, there is no morning?]

Blushing hints of light. I am my great aunt reborn.
I am a promise that
the universe crackles at its tips
into yet another big bang.

Look at the man walking, cold breath rising.
Look at the trees bare to their necks.

It is winter…
but only for now.

on unemployment (revised)

I slide low down into my chair.

Looking at the phone Looking at the phone Looking at the phone …

              Out my window, rain drops jump the asphalt alive, rain
              Pours so hard my world greys into one large cloud
              Shimmer and sliding freely. Trees shake and shudder.

Phone lies so still. I am
Waiting on the call Waiting on the call Waiting on the call Waiting on the call Waiting
 

my new year’s resolutions are blue painted plates

My new years’ resolutions are like blue painted plates my grandmother
used to collect with a scene in white and the year in large swooping font,
some (the favorites) hung across the top of the kitchen for display, others
stacked in the cabinets, laden with intentions of one day making it out.

When she died, we came in to clean the house and each took a plate,
mine, 1966, now sits growing dusty on a bookshelf.
I clean it every January 2.

Scandinavian Traditions (on Christmas Eve)

Christmas waits like gift wrap glowing warm beneath welcoming arms
of pine needles hanging heavy –
inside, table set waits by candlelight, and each flame preens
in the eyes of orange and blue Dala horses.

Soon, with guided hands, we set the course of helgdad frukt soppa.
Like cinnamon and cardamom from the svenske kringlor in the oven,
knotted just how our grandmother taught us, we breathe.

{poem from last year, slightly revised … Merry Christmas poet friends!!}

Finally (the only truth)

Finally~
you say as night settles
for the progress of the day.

as soon as you’re born

 you die a little
  every day, with every scraped knee
   and every time
    someone disappoints you
     or you break another heart.

all the blood of daily pin pricks pile like so many dried leaves
tossed by a breezy blood orange moon with eyes like a wise old owl.

Finally, you say.

Wipe a finger
across a dusty bookshelf full of old photographs
to feel the only truth
known to owls, and moons.

Christmas 1945 by Alice B. Johnson

Merry Christmas week to those who celebrate it — this poem is from my great-grandmother Alice B. Johnson (from her book Where Children Live (1958))

Christmas 1945

This is the day, the Christmas day,
The world has waited for —
This is the dream men dreamed of home
For four long years and more.

This is the dream that brought them through
Bastogne and Bougainville —
Through jungle heat and frozen waste,
Beyond each numbered hill.

Hang up the holly, mistletoe,
And light the Christmas tree,
And dream tonight of Bethlehem —
Think not of Calvary.

Think not of crosses in a row
Or comrades resting there —
They sleep above the stars tonight,
Safe in a Father’s care.