Proust Questionnaire Challenge--Poems

Angeline said:

15. What is your greatest regret?


Striven

Sooner than later work becomes play as in
Beth changes Dolly before she gets wet.
Sue does math tables in her head,
Frank learns how to make hospital corners
so quarters will bounce on his bed,
and as for Billy’s sweet spot at bat
top of the ninth, o and two count
he’d find it if it weren’t for the sweat.

See Dick and Jane doing their best
with a double income and picket fence
who pray that someday before they die
when there is nothing left to report
from the compartments in their minds
they will take an ocean liner
to Sydney, Hong Kong, and China,
where they will find great views from the deck.

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Angeline said:

5. On what occasion do you lie?

I lie down to sleep.

After a difficult day,
my body wants to curl
in on itself for protection

and introspection, and
sometimes I just want to be
alone.

But logicians want to pry

into who cuts my hair
or what color shirt I was wearing
given their five crafted statements,
and they want to point fingers

at me when I have been inaccurate
or emotional or factually wrong.

So, here I lie—

I am a 42 year-old, grey-eyed male
who has scaled Aconcagua
without supplemental
oxygen. I date

Charlize Theron, am
great friends with Slavoj Žižek

and I own a satellite, a Kona coffee plantation,
three obscure Warhols,
and a 1952 Delage convertible.

Now, dammit, Chloë—will you marry me?

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Angeline said:

15. What is your greatest regret?


What was...

I used to think I could open
any man’s book,
run my finger
along the lines,
hover over a word
let it sink in
slowly
like a balm
under layers of skin.
Feel how it tasted.
How it permeated.

Perhaps it is my own book
I wanted to open,
spread my pages wide,
feel his index finger
run down my spine.

I offered words
of cheap wisdom,
hoping that I could somehow
connect with the universe, with a single being,
tap into bloodstreams.

I’ve lost even that playscript,
and it me.

Now the words shimmer and dance,
a blur to be erased in time.

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GuiltyPleasure said:

Isn't that false teeth poem hilarious? Only Annie - sick as she's been - could make dentures funny so my bet's on her being the author.

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Angeline said:

12. Who are your favorite writers?


Frank

I love your crooked nose,
your glacial opaque eyes.
Your mouth is quirked
in the old photos. Maybe
you want tea and hyacinths
that teach you how to love,
maybe you want to kiss
that man smiling at you,
maybe you want a drink.

You give me the city I love,
the city of my childyears, brash
and cacophonous with humming
traffic, cracking jackhammers, filthy
rain or snow and still buildings climb
like unsettled giants, elbow to elbow,
little room and Oh! a beautiful
woman collapsed right there
on the sidewalk, a lady died!

Your words make me gasp,
they blink on and off laughing
or in the solemn hour lay
beneath a brutally beautiful
night sky that pins you
to the ground until some numberless
noon when hapless souls go riding
on trains, striding past horror,
buzzing with hope or searching
for a cheap blue plate special.

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AlwaysHungry said:

I'm guessing Angeline for this. I have no idea who the favorite author is, but the lovely poem makes me want to read him.

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Angeline said:

14. Who are your heroes in real life?

Today it is the fighters.
Long hours in heavy gear
that only a fool would choose.
Each one watchful for the wind kindled
flare-up, the lightening strike, the fallen
comrade and each has his – or her – appointed task.
Front line, face to face with an unpredictable
enemy that dies only to leap up, twice as threatening.
Aerial, sometimes flying blind through thick clouds
of shrouding smoke to drop ammunition,
water or red streams of Fosscheck, often before
the enemy’s march to retard its progress; hopefully
subdue it altogether.
Behind enemy lines a small army seems to be bent
on subterfuge, starting fires against all common sense
but these are raiders building backfires
designed to deprive the enemy.
These are my heroes in real life.
fighting to save farm, home, smallholding, business
without the loss of life.

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Angeline said:

3. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?


Charybdis and the River

Do you hear the gurgling river?
All the molecules of oxygen and hydrogen
dance their special dance, choreographed,
smoothing stones that have themselves
danced through the years,
washing memories clean,
while wearing deeper grooves into the banks.

White water foams with inquietude.
I, on the other hand, am the undertow,
placid and smooth above,
disturbing and dark beneath,
drawing down, roiling,
dangerous, unpredictable.
The soothing sound hides
the yawning maw that
swallows without trace.

All is so still above:
draws with its languor
the unsuspecting heart.

Remember me, I murmur:
I am the scar,
the brand still raw.

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Angeline said:

5. On what occasion do you lie?

1.
How they've slipped
from my nimble tongue,
the little white omissions
of early years, a lamp I didn't
break, the ring I didn't take
(then stood behind the drapes.
Great plan. What a flake.)

2.
Some years pile falsehoods
like snowflakes. I'm staying
at a friend's, I'm going
to a dance. I'm pure Mama,
still. There's no chance
I'd go, drink, smoke, fuck--
I'll say anything to keep
the spinning plates aloft,
but we crash anyway. The fall
of truth is like a noose.

3.
The biggest lie of all
hurts me to this day
and now that you're all gone
what should it matter if
I made a promise to a dying man
who now is dead? No one
is left to say our secrets
were so terrible, no one
but me holding this bag
of arcane fraud and flummery,
orphaned of all but memory.

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greenmountaineer said:

Agreed. New Yawk and Frank O'Hara, dead giveaways. I liked the poem very much too.

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Angeline said:

5. On what occasion do you lie?

I lie down to sleep.

After a difficult day,
my body wants to curl
in on itself for protection

and introspection, and
sometimes I just want to be
alone.

But logicians want to pry

into who cuts my hair
or what color shirt I was wearing
given their five crafted statements,
and they want to point fingers

at me when I have been inaccurate
or emotional or factually wrong.

So, here I lie—

I am a 42 year-old, grey-eyed male
who has scaled Aconcagua
without supplemental
oxygen. I date

Charlize Theron, am
great friends with Slavoj Žižek

and I own a satellite, a Kona coffee plantation,
three obscure Warhols,
and a 1952 Delage convertible.

Now, dammit, Chloë—will you marry me?

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greenmountaineer said:

I'm guessing Tzara wrote this. Light-hearted with smart word play, the poem comes with the "volta," "so here I lie" when lie, albeit white, is a lie as opposed to how the poem begins, because, as we all know, Mr. T is not 42 years old, however much he may want to be.

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legerdemer said:

Very much enjoyed this one, lighthearted, playful in the first two stanzas then turning somber in the last. The imagery is very vivid. Many rhymes and bear-rhymes please the ear, though the last couplet seems a little forced-- flummery somehow doesn't fit well with the rest, and seems to be there for its rhyme with memory. Now, if I were really good, I'd have a suggestion but I don't, not yet.

And too many possibilities for authors for me to venture a guess.

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Angeline said:

10. What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?


Guesswork

She knows just how to fan my flames,
And does it really matter if I play
A gray December to her budding May?
There may be risk in lovers' games.

A chance encounter brought the spark
That lit the giddy tinder in my heart.
Through blurry eyes I watch my counterpart
To read her visage in the dark.

The greatest pain is not to know:
A hint of cruelty, or feckless youth?
Emotions may not heed the rules of truth.
So is my lover friend, or foe?

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Angeline said:

15. What is your greatest regret?

I didn't look after my teeth,
my pearly whites now reside in a cup
so if you look closely beneath
just gums gleam sunny side up.

My pearly whites now reside in a cup
like stars they come out at night,
just gums gleam sunny side up
the result's not a pretty sight.

Like stars they come out at night,
there they sit with a devilish grin,
the result's not a pretty sight
and it makes for a droopy chin.

There they sit with a devilish grin
so If you look closely beneath,
and it makes for a droopy chin.
I didn't look after my teeth.

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UnderYourSpell said:

Oh ok since I've been outed several times, the Teeth Pantoum is mine

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Angeline said:

I love it as you know!

And since you've outed yourself, well of course I wrote Frank. And thank you to AH and GM for their kind words on it. I think it needs some work: there's a part of it that sort of is not factually correct. The nod to O'Hara's poem Lana Turner Has Collapsed suggests that she collapsed in NYC, but the poem tells you it happened in CA. And the poem is partly about differences between the two places. So there's that. I think I can improve that last strophe, too.

GM, I knew you and Tzara would know it was me because I've talked (and written a few poems) about O'Hara and the New York School of poets here before. AH you are very observant!


ETA: There's a great intro to O'Hara here

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greenmountaineer said:

We ought to talk about poetic license. I can't remember the poem, but I think it was one of Keats or maybe Coleridge, and most critics were very accepting of the error because the truth behind the inaccuracy was more important.

Maybe we should have a "Poetic License" Challenge sometime.

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Angeline said:

And now thanks to poem number 6 (on lies), I had to look up Slavoj Žižek (oy the accent marks!), a philosopher with no filter imho. And the guy is hilarious and clearly does not lie: most of what he says sounds brutally truthful to me.

So after reading the poem and about Slavoj all I can say is well-played poet, well-played.

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greenmountaineer said:

My guesswork is Always Hungry. I like the aha with a question mark at the end.

He's often a stickler for rhyme and beat in a line.

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