Category: poem

poems

Poems, prompts, duality, rafts – get back to this

~ LA Fogle ~ Leave a comment

I have some things to get back to on these prompts, the longer flows they came from, and thoughts on concepts. The lub-dub of your mother’s heartbeat is probably understood, but the cooler thoughts on that could fill some pages and engage some bright conversation. But the bright interference is something to word carefully, as is the duality of excitation. I’m continuously surprised when big minds go on their attacks ass they do NOT like to share their toys, I mean the correctness of their conclusions. How many books mention choking off discovery in a stall of absolutes? Three cheers for the quantum _.

bending time – love ciphering – 061623

~ LA Fogle ~ Leave a comment

6/16/23

Today: twenty mixes for dailies, outdated subscriptions that want $500 a year to continue with them, cutting losses and purchasing basics like an LUFS meter for EBU R 128 output and a sibilance plugin that doesn’t rape your spectrum and updating noise reduction tools to work with the fucking constant OS-architecture-compatibility changes, weekly conference looming meeting where i get to show the intranet i’ve been working on to organize the continuous proposals and budget forms in a way that we can compare them over the years, fifty emails to read and automate to a spreadsheet and pull out action items for another spreadsheet that links to a reminder calendar, mapping out over 200 groups worldwide and streamlining the data to an added layer for centers of excellence in tech to compare with our network, running out in the early am to clean and prep the writing lair for a guest, tree limbs down from a storm through the roof, students with deadlines who turned in their stack of paperwork to check and forms to submit to the registrar so they can go forth with pride, and everything i pass needs attention.

I am up for the task. The tempest never knew a better friend than me. It’s magic is neither black nor white and there’s no moment of forgetting or stepping outside of code to use our sacred connection as boast for others to glean that i am worth more than either of us believe.

That said, so much drags me down to the material level. No matter how much i cut the trammel, this life of responsibility finds and overwhelms me.

Within all of today’s frackery, i looked at the faces of deadlines and retarded ten minutes of time into needed hours by writing this little exacting kite of poetry. And we fly, we fly, we always fly. Not a thing anyone can suspect or project can change this personal maxim.

This bit is about the complex language of logic compared to the clear universal language of math; ideas related by agreed upon code. Amazing. But it’s harder to explain or create with ambiguous words describing feeling. That goes especially for explaining love.

love ciphering do not speak on the problematical get in this floorless chariot stick to the walls as we’re spinning riding an ark of Greek math from a semi-ecstatic stoic poet with a heavier key than technology in the 21st century love L a F o g l e

Kenneth Patchen was a sexy beast. Dead poets make fantasy safe for the aural sapiosexual.

~ LA Fogle ~ Leave a comment

Sae true, my love.

I never outgrew talking to dead poets. Got pretty serious with Blake and a couple of others, whispering their verse deep in the woods down the path from my childhood home. Of course that got a bit unmodern once I was old enough to hear the world shouting at me. I loved Kenneth Patchen instantly and wanted to take him as my undead bride, but had superstitious need not to upset Miriam. Sure, that might be magical thinking but I will; so it is not impossible to expect that some loves are too great to upset. Who knows, if I had been in the same time as Kenny, he could have shown more of the same bullshite if a, gulp, girl expressed the need to connect in real time. Unless I was/hadbeen a nun or an overpriced courtesan. It is so good that all of that boy/girl outdated thinking is over and done in our modernity.

Anyway, I guess my convoys with Ken doll are what one might call safe fantasy. And again pretty PG-13 because I believe in great love more than any other theory of [hu]man. It is just that sometimes you need someone to address or even an audience but saying Gentle Reader doesn’t cut it, because it seems like a voice that belonged to others for many many moons.

In 2001, I cut out iron-on letters to make a tank top that said “Save it for your blog.” Who knew the blog would blow up then be reinvented with a cooler youth-conceived name then just called ‘blog’ again after that millennial batch got old really fast. I feel like our Gen X time stretched out but then we didn’t take a picture of everything or much or up the profit machine by working for free posting our lives as a blur of reality content. I only knew handfuls of freaks I saw at shows. You could still get pummeled for tats or hair color then and you’re welcome. I mean, I get it. As said previously, I thought problems might go away if the old guard left or died off. But I never poopideed on the minds that advanced freedom or discovery. And even now I realize that there is always an ungeneralized story to those who dedicate their lives to getting involved in the political world. It is a damn luxury to sit back and crap on political efforts before heading off to an overpriced music fest that just isn’t all great. The pop formula and all-chorus alt bands were an issue well before it all went robot and punks went country–those same punks, by the by, that refused any form of musical romance because it was not brutal enough. And yes, they made for lousy lovers unless you had some kind of kink to work out where you just wanted to be dominated. Would have hated to wake up from that psychosis to see the wank who worked out the bully to take his porn guts education out on a fem who was somehow convinced that this was a barter that might lead to a great release from all of this stupidity.

I can tell I’m going full Grandpa Simpson and am not even going to proofread this because who cares? No one comes here. If they did, I hope it was educational. Maybe a bit less douchery could bloom from reading these epic truths or whatever this is? If it helps, I could say I’m a man or an alien or AI. Maybe AI will save us from ourselves. Except that it is probably programmed by ERROR ERROR ERROR…

For Kenneth Patchen
It was never done,
your walk from pyre to pyre
on celestial stilts. Each step shed
its charry skeleton closer to the ground.
And money burns faster than faith
when you have no faith in money.
In the sorting of possession—
a ring, identification, unfinished words—
the poet doesn’t leave much unsaid.

Whorls of swords scrape blood
and opinions, temper the edges
of youth, make room for memories
in the widowed grip on the hilt
of a hero’s blade. Honesty is
the death of the body.

There’s no need for music,
my love. Death dances
a swansong after birth,
waiting to eat its own words
from the beak of another stranger.
But should we need
our own dance, our own music,
your lips sang lullabies
wrapped in animal instinct,
in the sensualness of holy writ.

LAFogle©2021
written for the Los Angeles Poetry Beach Festival

Happy Deathiversary

Columbus, January 8, 2022

Happy Deathiversary,

I imagine you’d like us writing poems for you. To shake the trees with the breeze of words read aloud. In this you never left. When the flowers return, I’ll pick a Tiger Lily for you. It is my favorite flower, as the symbology means “For once may pride befriend you.” Sounds sweet, but what of pride and tigers is nice? When respect teeters on arrogance, dignity on conceit; which angel became devil and how could that battle reward the meek until the winner was determined? Reeks of a propogandistic maxim to me. Behold! The tiger has no spots! Look on, Cheetah Lily. Look on, seed. You be the rain if we must cry. You be the thunder if we must roar. We be the laughter in this undead tragedy, watching trash TV, calling idealists naive and the hopeful prideful; but spare the stars not in the sky.

Ken, I like talking to you because what I just said was probably more freeing than odd. I too want to speak all the words; for the angels to be more than sightings of intrinsic phosphene firing from the mind’s magnetic sight. We ride in the hands of a godlike child flying ghost planes through a more visibly sick world. Each night, grown offspring fold their robe of slights in sackcloth palls and sheets of dread. Their causes have waned and with them go covenants, modeled foundation, with styled scarves concealing torsoless heads floating above their animal vessel. How long, father, is this tournament and when do we rest?

Hey, when I read works of your generation, my gender sticks out a lot in prehistoric moments. Growing up, this was like being a child in the room while parents speak of you like you are not there or comprehending either meanings or intonations—it’s really patronizing and disassociating. I wonder if anything hits men over the head quite so much when they grow up reading—superiority of other men? But I can close one eye and read through timely reification, so long as the women and innocents were danced with instead of dissected as syphilitic zoophilic pieces of seductive naughty bits, slain for laurelled perspective dominance. People now don’t dismiss vessels as easily by the tango of their chromosomes, though hopefully we grow more increasingly modern. Remind me to ask you if you remember first learning of anim-, herm, and their loanwords?

Her rib is a feather. My feather of roots spin ahs and guttural pauses from an eternity of
questions we’ll ask again until answered: Why. 

Sure is a doozy bartering for belonging in this collective consciousness. I guess we all have our side of the planet to gaze from at the flat line we understand to be round, while the unconventional dally with infinite walks up the glassy stairs of logic, and all the sounds hitting the ground like acorns with their hashtag caps and waggy nutbrains.

You were ahead of your timeline and I was lucky to find your seeds; seeds to which each(s)(p)age can relate: you noetic, throbbing in a larger state of grace With loose punctuations for new thoughts that seem they weren’t supposed to full stop. But I don’t know. Mine’s a perennial view. I’ll write a poem when the last one fades. Until then, Happy Deathiversary, my friend. 

Long, the joybells ring!
With energy for better things;
The contentious turn content.
The end.

[From Erik van Loon of Poetry Train] A few weeks ago I asked the poets of LAPB2021 to write a poem to commemorate the 50 death anniversary of Kenneth Patchen on Januari 8. LA Fogle wrote the letter above to Kenneth and to introduce this letter she wrote me:

I wrote a poem last month for Kenneth Patchen’s birthday, hosted by LA Beach Poetry and Poetry Train, with the theme of “Get Ready To Die.” That piece might be better served for today, the anniversary of his death. So, instead, I will write him a freeform letter of sorts. ~ LAFogle


Featured on Poetry Beach https://www.poetrybeach.com/2022/01/08/happy-deathiversary/

the sea + earth gave birth to wonder

Sae true, my love, my ain sae true
love The sea is callin you The wind
is hollerin Her cut-throat openin
in song, out o tune

Tis true, my dear, she’s callin
tae wimble her weavin loom
The boat sways in black waves
tethered frae fallow tae toom
Respicere, my dear, she’s nosin
the sand Ne’er ween, but weet
I will follow you

Transcendin thought o where we lay
sae if you must go, sae if I must stay
Carry the great & ferry the sea
narry the wait & marry to me

Poem: LAFogle©2007, music: After-Death Plan©2017

fractal: a poem on sound/ light/ cymatics/ harmony of the planets

~ LA Fogle ~ Leave a comment

fractal
A constant change and spiral
intelligence, fathomed abyss
all the noise and order breaking
and broken through
fractals frame patterns
waves hereon waves existing
consciousness
how all exist in space
one world, one sense, one
call to the vacuum for its laws
cymatic threads of atoms
imprint the tortoise
the leopard’s engraved harmony
unstructured modes of melody
sing sunflowers climactic
and freedom of new mythology
vibrating the unknown
element

LAFogle 5/30/23

writing prompts: from moon to moon

~ LA Fogle ~ Leave a comment


Spring 2022

documenting the moon has not worked

sight scythe sigh,
the cut reframed,
explained to a t.
a lee from your name
filling my skin.
an exoskeleton
dance of #sign
ature defeat
bows to the wind,
spins and sheds
its memories

I wrote that the morning of May 16, 2022 on the prompt #sign. Big time gap, right? I’ve done many prompts now. Things have gotten so busy for me that I almost have to choose between prompts and other projects during my morning writing time. And I needed space to know what daily prompt writing is accomplishing. Am I learning enough from presenting to this group in lieu of research? And is my writing style being influenced by an exchange of Likes? Or by the short nature of prompts?

I’m working on some new training in addition to adjusting to new work. Will find a balance and pop back in from time to time. I do love many of the people on there–hearts and souls of poetry. I am around many “brand” writers and often wonder what kind of spell people are under that the realm of poetry too has to be reduced to slogans. I like checking back in on Twitter and seeing growth in people’s writing and love that there seem to be deeper themes and bigger words explored. Of course, anyone can write what they please. I am not judging; I am looking for my arena.

My personal site has been filled with spammers who would like me to mark my own emails as spam or buy their product. I have shown myself that I can keep a consistent schedule and will probably move to a new platform while keeping this one as a type of backup to the backup.

3/22/22
The horse and the elephant and the monkey and me, listen to the forest for the trees. To #taboo, meaning sacred, and came to mean unclean. We #mew about while the falcon molts. Our missions, in a widening gyre, receive and emit.
#vssdaily #prompt #vss365

3/21/22
“The Prompt Master this week is @LesleyAnnFogle

This was an honor. I wish it came before I took my hiatus. I’ve done hundreds of these, mostly under vss365, and earned the respect of the community, but they did not respond to my request. I almost wonder if it was a matter of followers, judging by some of the prompt masters. I did get turned off from vss365 by the political right-wing ranting of a prompt master who put their association in their profile name, so that it appeared that the political opinions could have been ties to the group. Or at least been a platform for divisive cocoa puffs. Write a poem about it, faboo flashneck.

“The Prompt Master this week is @LesleyAnnFogle
The #vssdaily#prompt for March 22, 2022 is #mew


noun:
1-a gull
2-meow
3-an enclosure for trained hawks—usually used in plural
4-a place for hiding or retirement
verb:
1-to utter a mew; to meow
2-to shut up; confine (used with up)

I’ve done many prompts now. Things have gotten so busy for me that I almost have to choose between prompts and other projects during my morning writing time. And I needed space to know what daily prompt writing is accomplishing. Am I learning enough from presenting to this group in lieu of research? And is my writing style being influenced by an exchange of Likes? Or by the short nature of prompts?

I’m working on some new training in addition to adjusting to new work. Will find a balance and pop back in from time to time. I do love many of the people on there–hearts and souls of poetry. I am around many “brand” writers and often wonder what kind of spell people are under that the realm of poetry too has to be reduced to slogans.

2/19/22
Jon was starting to feel hangry. “What a stupid word. Do we all just pull up language by the roots and salt the earth? It’s like a destructive child making mud castles while lightening #larrups a tower and all comes crumbling down. The child can’t be bothered to look up.” #vss365

2/14/22

It was a war of attrition. Zno babies were raised as slaves. Sae could feel her child #tremble and awaken at the magic age of 7. In harmonia, she absorbed the tacit vibrations, then #thrust, from her bones and throat, dominant waves of calm resolve back to her child.

2/3/22
Lorn and forlorn are words I can get behind. Forlorn is more common nowadays: to lose, forlost to the point of completion; lost or left behind.

2/2/22

The godforsaken creature reeked of deadly sin or revelation—black sun, blood moon, and starlight stripped from the sky.

Aza, she #breathed. I will find you and set you free.

Somewhere between poem and stream: Amus Thal she/her

~ LA Fogle ~ Leave a comment

somewhere between poem and stream, for national poetry month

Amus Thal she/her 

It was you, Amus Thal, who never got
the shirted pall down over your face
so they never recognized grace

[Recognize your blame. Understand them. Don’t complain]

while it softly, coolly granted time,
met them in familiar halfways,
always arriving.

They are broken wavelengths,
nerves connecting to their own ends,
to avoid certain death and disconnect—
how brave the cold. How buried the true dead
emotions

They tastemakers never swallow
Nothing reaches past the salt lick/ prairie
dogs wait out the spitten rain in
airy angled pockets just above their level of content

You never wanted to be their dog—
rodential underminer of brutal fields—
chased out to run among heels and mown
meadows; they blink and cross a surface nurturance,
in simulations spurred by spire and spite,
for fields of rest dere served, by Thal Amus—

As inspiration thunders—
emptying buckets of dead-of-night,
preparing to treat the roots and dendrites
with what serves them just fine

A poet’s insight into word choices: witches, midnight, adders and newts. misdivision

~ LA Fogle ~ Leave a comment

I wrote this poem on a prompt of the word midnight and wanted to share some insights on the word choices. Without getting too deeply into it at this time (though I wish this was my job), I’d like to share a short key.

At midnight,
the witches gather
and abdicate their veils,
revel by the sconce
of fearless perception
on the winged misdivision
of the adder and the newt;
sing basilisk elegies and play,
then fly away when lore
gives way to darker hours.

The Witching Hour is from midnight to 1am, and the Devil’s Hour, the darker lore, is from 3am to first light. The 3am time is thought to be an inversion of the 3pm time that Christ was crucified.

Veil refers to both veiled feminine insight, personified by the goddess, and the veil of perception between worlds, most notably the mortal world and the preternatural world. Veil of perception also refers to mystical insight, studied and learned on the quest for transmutation. Females were long kept from study, science, sacral roles, healer roles; and the female alchemist was moreoften referred to as a witch. They don’t explain this well on the CW channel. Popular culture puts a lot of more work to put into fetishizing the feminine and nurturing generations to assume gender roles.

[I hope this explains to a certain friend of mine why I trailed off when he referred to my work as “witchy shit.” I study all kinds of things and have been writing a long time, so it is annoying to hear my efforts dismissed as being some kind of misunderstood mystical lunacy. Many have hemmed me into self-doubt over the years, by implying or directly saying that my work is too opaque–Dense! Confusing! Baffling! Weird for the sake of being weird! Perplexing! Cryptic! A word spell striptease! You have to slooowly arrive at a plain, relatable idea: the arrival!]

It took me many years to realize the gift of outer critics and how their energy frees up my inner critic.

Okay, it feels like a weight is lifted every time I post about the slights that have chipped away at my energy, enthusiasm, and motivation. I will get back to the short & sweet key. … And not go on about how gender is weaponized, consciously or unconsciously (please do wake the fock up), to reduce competition. The gloves fit differently but they are on.

Sconce refers to light, illumination, discovery, revelation. From Abscondere! Abracadabra!

Hello, Los 😉

Regarding nadder and ewt, the misdivision reference is about bracketing, or metanalysis. Nadder lost the ‘n’ from spoken ref to ‘an adder’ and ewt gained an ‘n’ from ref to “an ewt.” Spelling mistakenly recorded. I liked how the imagery conjures the idea of treacherous witches stirring their cauldrons and adding eye of newt or tongue of asp. There’s more on why misdivision is winged, but it is work to clarify, and basilisk is next.

Basilisk, adjective, means spellbinding, and as a noun is a lizard; and as noun in lore, a lizard known for its lethal stare.

Kinda cool, right? Cool to reflect and consider language and poetic reference. I do understand the need to give some context and always read the Norton Anthology notes, etc, especially with James Joyce. How cool! But I don’t have a whipsmart publisher. Yet. I’m standing between critics and breakthroughs to new levels. And I am hungry to spill gold.

Time still for gold to spill: the fleece, the bough, and the ratio
All those mysteries alive at your fingertips
Above as so below

(from a song I lyricized and sang years ago with a talented artist who hasn’t released it yet, probably due to the pandemic. It refers to the golden fleece, the golden bough, and the golden ratio. Did I need to say that? We’ll never know.)



Forlorn and tired of weak sauce on my word salad

~ LA Fogle ~ Leave a comment

Lorn and forlorn are words I can get behind.
____Forlorn is more common nowadays: to lose,
_________________forlost to the point of completion;
________________________________lost or left behind.

I am           solorn
lovelorn      hopelorn
sadlorn          greedlorn
thricelorn    sixpencelorn
anxlorn    neurolorn
sublorn    lostlorn
hatelorn gherlorn
deathlorn
lifelorn
alorn


A psychic messaged me on Twitter to say there were snakes posing as my friends that would like to see my downfall. How cool is that?

I don’t think so, though. Thanks to two years of Covid, I haven’t spent much time with peripheral friends. I’m at an age where loyalty is no basis for overlooking weird tensions or getting involved in pockets of social hierarchy. Many artists are looking to connect, but you can’t find simpatico vision if you’re maxing out your time/energy with the wrong people. You can tell the wrong people because they will ignore your work. If you work hard at writing, they’ll ignore it. If you sing, they’ll ignore it. If you make a video, they’ll ignore it. Whatever you accomplish, they’ll ignore it.

I had a couple of nut sandwiches barely try to conceal that I was on the menu as they were trying to show off for each other. I almost burned the gymnasium down with my mind but got out of there before my face dropped too far. Can you imagine winding up to be surly with someone the moment they appear? Being so scrambled into caricature that internal reflection is not something your icons would have done? Hawking the scene from within a bad novella? One bumbler actually told me I was not in my place: “Blah blah shiny blah, I was surprised you got that bone of recognition because we didn’t sanction it and also so and so is so much better at what you do, don’t you think?” All I could think about was how they were going to dress up such a lame story when they retold that yawner to their sycophants, while trying to insert themselves as a bold VIP in some weak game of broken thrones for The Great Hierarchy of Mediocrity. #hierarchyofmediocrity.

I had to get out of there fast as well, before my face fully morphed into the wolf-woman who feeds on outdated social roles. I had to get Hel, Baba Yaga, Kali, Keres, Eris, Nox, Scylla, Charybdis, all the Banshees, and some chimeras to talk me down. Why are these two so threatened by me? More accurately, why do so many women behave awfully toward other women?

No thanks! I’ve seen this kind of thing a hundred times and every single time it results in a loss of time. No one cool acts like that. Talent in your arena helps everyone grow to the size of the tank. It is crucial to being in an actual arena. Stand by your vision, keep on with your work, and spend thy limited free time with people who appreciate you authentically, and not because it furthers their brand. You don’t need a train of people as you work on growing and understanding your artistic talents. Artists can determine if something is subjectively good without being told it is or because it is gaining in popularity. Music-poetry-art circles, by the very nature of art, could imply an intimate or transcendent connection, not some self-aggrandizing starfuckery.

Between stars and celestial starfuckers, orbiting weak-on-weak gravity, debris attracts debris.
Don’t be shackled to any false hierarchy. Honor yourself. See clearly.