Missing

Missing

Suddenly alone, so all these images
Flood back, the
Memories of days gone,
People gone, things gone.
Hurt can enter a moment where things are absent, gone, perhaps lost.
An empty chair or side of the bed can open a wash of sadness.
Feeling sad, a life lived full of things and people can feel a little scary because nothing stays the same:
Life gets jumbled up with changes.
Feeling sad can lead to feeling better, feeling thankful,
Feeling alive,
Feeling loved and hopeful.


(12/20/2011)

November Morning

November Morning

I heard it last night,
water coursing down tree limbs,
rooftops, gutters, roadways, cars,
and trash bins. Did the
outside of things get a good washing?

The morning sky is a damp cotton cloth, where
light seeps over the tree branches outside my window,
along with steady wetness. The season
of washing the outsides of things
has started. The tiny drops rush into
prickly tree needles and brown places: the leaves,
the fences, mossy eaves. The cotton sky keeps
the world inside warmed and contemplating,
while making the outside of things cool, wet, soft,
reflective.


(11/17/2011)

Trilobite Song (1997)

Trilobite Song


Oh, to be a trilobite in some primordial goop —
A wriggly something wiggling in the three-tone frothy soup!
I have five eighty-thousand toes, a delightsome fearful lot,
And when I stick them in my mouth, I taste the meal I've caught.

Oh, to be a trilobite in long-forgotten seas.
I hunker down a darkened hole and flex my billion knees.
And though I never see the sun, so far I swim and swam,
I pass the night with planktonite, and dinner with a clam.

Oh, to be a three-lobed shellfish in the Paleozoic,
I eat enough creapy stuff to make a person go “ick!”
But I'm never sad or lazy — I just pass the time
Resting in my briny niche from evolution’s climb.

Oh, to be a trilobite, to don my sticky bonnet
Though, you say, it’s not that way — and I had never thought it.
But if you doubt what I'm about, you can keep your money.
I'll just smile and sweetly say, “It’s in the genes, Honey.”



(3/23/97)


It had been over a month since my last contribution on here, and since I resolved to blog at least once per month I dug up this older poem from around the time I started getting interested again in writing.

I don’t always explain or comment on my poems, but this one got me thinking recently about what it was really “about.” On the surface, it’s playful and poking fun at the debate over teaching evolution in the public schools. It occurred to me the other day that as a social commentary, I probably had in mind on some deeper level how dependent we are today (even back in 1997) on digital technology. What would we really do right now if we didn’t have computers to do so much for us, with their “eighty-thousand toes” to count on? Could we make it? Maybe finding meaning in life would be more a matter of bare essentials and not chasing down life between sips of sleep while the clocks and calendars and computers keeps us running. At least we still have family and friends on our digital docks. And DVD collections of all our favorite TV shows are kind of nice.

Autumn Fridge Poetry

Autumn Fridge Poetry

Our journey to

spring was almost

so dream-like:

road in winter

above black-blue

stream trickle.

Yellowing flower

at harvest songs,

cloud is, but full.

Light-owl did make people say:

"Shell, hear!"

"Mushroom has roof!"

From woman:

wild sleep,

lunch, and eat.

Then, have let who (house)

commercial weed garden–

(mouth) between here; (stand)

I later cry.

Face she if

(fish) as

and look

dandelion breath

water- fall

know night,

how they want

early bark cicada, though

off him which–

shiver in life too,

happy thunder child

(moon).

Cat said:

"Snow there!"

Morning giver.

Come, man:

call it thought.

See his tears always smile.

Very an, an evening,

crab eye dog;

rust would freeze,

melt.

(9/17/2011)

Yes, I have a bunch of those word magnets on my fridge, and the above "poem" is what is there right now, word for word (I added the punctuation). I'm getting ready to pack the magnets up as I'm moving in about a week, but I thought it a fun "exercise" to type up what I "wrote" and share it here. I am so tempted to edit/revise, but I like how the meaning of what I came up with is loose word-play, like images in a dream perhaps.

Haiku - End of Summer

Haiku

End of summer move:
My life in boxes again,
Good use for phone books.


(9/2/2011)

Please follow this link to vote for my poem. It will help me win some money for school. Thanks!

http://t.co/D8qa5Tn

String Quartet Excerpts

Here is a new excerpt from the last two movements of my string quartet I've been finishing up this summer.

I recently got the chance to play through the final movement with some friends, and will be working on getting the full piece performed at WOU this fall.

Love's Swift Wheels

Love's Swift Wheels

Love's swift wheels rush you

safely to my arms tonight;

The darkened, cool roads smooth

your approach for my kisses.

Flee the tasks that kept you:

no more delay for us.

Your touch is all I seek to keep,

your body at my side.

Tender talk can wait for morning,

just give me warm embraces soon, for

There's no better use of wheels or words

Than to speed true loves to their loves.

(8/27/11 & 8/29/11)

Haiku: Phone Me

Haiku

Business must be good:

Another phone book is here.

Call me; show you care.

(8/18/2011)

Turning Over

Turning Over

How many hopes, wishes, loves

Have ended at the strike of a

Bullet or a bomb? Shall we

Turn over the whole surface of

The Earth for the graves

Yet to be claimed? Shall we

Bury our own lost selves now

In the debris of not caring,

Not understanding, not—?

A new way must be found.

Hopes and wishes cannot keep

Under the ground. Love cannot,

Must not look back.

(7/5/2011)

Only You

Only You

No moon,

Never dawn:

Skyless night

Alone with you.

(7/16/2011)

Sorry my blog has been so quiet the past couple of months. I've certainly been busy and this shows with my slower output. Poetry requires a lot of focus, and my focus has been elsewhere. But it's been good. I'm writing music, and enjoying the many loves in my life.

I will try to keep posting at least once per month and sometimes still share an older poem if I don't have a new one I want to post on here.

As for my music, I've been putting finishing touches on my first string quartet which I hope to get performed this fall at WOU. (Any string players out there interested in seeing my score and/or possibly playing on it with me, feel free to contact me!) I have the rondo movement on my youtube here, and am thinking of posting the third and possibly fourth movements on there as soon as I feel like they are "done."

Twitter

You can now follow me on Twitter as well: @CTKaltwasser

Feel Again

Feel Again

Isn't it good, finally, to silence all our machinations
and feel again kinship with the trees and grasses
who know only of the treble susurrations of wind as it
pushes and sways their taut bodies,
of throaty-voiced seasonal geese who pass
and punctuate the broad chords of the ground's horizon?

Love is like a hushed morning;
a euphony of silence invites
whispers of a neglected heart.


(4/25/2011)

Springtime of Love (Song Demo)

I wrote this short song a couple of years ago and recently decided to record a demo version for you here.

Passing in Hallways

Passing in Hallways

I've heard it said, life is
a journey, not a destination.
Then mine must be all about
this passing in hallways:
It is where I find myself,
where I learn so much I need
to know about.

I was not well for a long time.
I felt the pressure.
I felt the world was all too much.
The pressure stopped and suddenly
I was better, but I was not happy.
This seems like it may always be
a problem for me —
Will I find myself always poor,
always lacking if
when the going gets tough
I get stuck?

I'm asked, is this what I have
in mind for my work,
for it all to be about poetry?
I'm asked, what are the
technical themes prominent
in my work? I say,
I tend to borrow a lot
from myself. I'm very much
a self-plagiarist, repeating
themes, regurgitating the same
ideas I had, over and over.
So where are we going with this?
I'm still standing on the
outside of the door, wondering
what's going on without me
on the inside of this place.
I'm still passing in the hallways.

I find some bread and take a bite
while I reflect on what has passed.
I chew the seeds of flowers
that will never bloom.
I feel troubled; I stop dreaming.

I wake to the sense that
I am always passing through places
and never belonging. My life as such
is a process of moving on, but
never arriving. Am I enjoying the
scenery as I move along, always
passing in hallways?


(3/22/2011)

Clocks

Clocks

On a day when all the clocks are wrong

and the soaking rain and rough wind gusts

will not be tamed,

our road is littered with tossed branches,

our travels push into choppy currents,

the roaring wind's music issues changes

as soft as the thunder's crack.

Then, as quickly, change is a bird song.

The trees present their pink hopes,

and sudden memory of love rushes in,

beautiful dreams.

(3/13 & 3/14/2011)

Memory and Forgetting

Memory and Forgetting

Maybe I am forever changed, or
maybe I try too hard
to "let go" and "move on"
when it all comes down to just doing
what I want --

Issa apparently wrote:

Mother, I weep
for you as I watch the sea
each time I watch the sea.

Do we ever forget those who move our lives so?

All the things I did and wrote years ago
don't seem to help me with today's
unwritten lines.
I ask myself why did I do and write those things then, and
how did I get through the terrible feeling
I could die before I finished each one,
or was it even the same feeling?
Each task I set out again to do,
just to write a few pages,
each starting point with an almost-forgetting
my prior death-struggle, all
so dramatic.

Today I told myself,
I give my permission
not to take up this new struggle
if that is what I want. If that is
how it turns out, in the end,
I will let that be OK.
Let me remember myself
and forget the pain.

It concerns me, still.
It is so hard to trust and hope.
But I am calmer when I
remember myself
and forget the pain
for a little while at least.


(2/20/2011)

Winter Window

Winter Window

To absorb into the soft rain
and its abundances,
shaded by January sky, by
quiet tree limbs, one sees sentry
electric poles and signs of life
inside the souls of cars
parked off the street.

The percussive morning music
softly drones and the mind
flits: the fire, the warmth,
a warm thought, a draught of
memory, simple melody of
muddled, mossy colors.

Spring will have its way, in
time, but this moment, to
sit is not even to wait.


(1/18/2011)

Cracks

Cracks

We are held upright by cracks in the sidewalk,
Steady-footed and balanced on uneven turf.
We find our way through dizzy heights and rough waters.
Life is a journey, so never stay put.

We are perfected by embracing our flaws,
And faultless admitting that we can be wrong.
Eternal, our lives are as we live for each day,
Truth, beauty, and love: know these and be strong.


(1/5/2011)