Where Does Poetry Come From? Freeways, Riverbed, Roku, Online Shopping...

Once upon a time, in Poland, there lived a humorist of great wit.  He wrote a lot and was quite popular so once a silly female fan asked him: "Master, where do your ideas come from? Like, from your head, or something?" The joker answered, "No, my dear lady, straight from my leg..."  I may have misremembered the joke, but the point is to think about the source of poetic inspiration. Where does it all come from? Why do I find it so hard to write on a prompt, assigned topic or a quote?  Yes, I can write these things, but then they feel dense, boring and lame. 

Sometimes, poems come to me (only in English) when I dream: I wake up with an almost ready poem. It is all good, if I write it down right away, but not so good, if I forget -  as was the case with "I am in love with Luo Jim" - that was complete upon waking up and then forgotten. It caused me a lot of trouble to reproduce it afterwards.  Poems also come when I'm relaxed and otherwise occupied with straightforward tasks like driving on a freeway, or on a near empty street. Swimming, gardening, going for walks, or meditating are also good places to find poems. Meditation is strange: So often, instead of clearing my mind of random thoughts, I get a poem while I train my breath to deepen, slow down and become more regular. The breath of life... prana. So, let's read some quotidian poems that came into being in such silly ways. 

Let's start from the melting moon, that I saw disappearing behind the ridge of hills while driving south on the 210 around six p.m., close to sunset. The hills were orange and purple, the moon, not quite full yet, unfinished. When I looked back in the mirror I saw the sun at the same level, getting redder as it was setting.  What does the melting moon remind one of, while driving when anything can happen any time? The passing of life, of course. So, here it is:

A Wish Upon a Moon

The snowball of a moon
Melts into brow summer hills
 at sunset.

It looks unfinished
as if a painter abandoned
the imperfect draft
before completion.

And so our lives
melt into timelessness,
leaving behind disheveled words
a stack of dreams
and scattered wishes.

“All shall be well” –
the poet confirmed.
His words bring us comfort
while we exhaust ourselves
with doubt, worry and regret.

All shall be well”
And all is well –

You know,
the melting moon
will come back. 

(c) 2022 by Maja Trochimczyk

Another "driving" poem came from a red-light stop on a Friday afternoon in downtown Los Angeles. Our dear friend, ballet master and choreographer Stefan Wenta died, and I was looking for a suitable red-and-white wreath in the colors of Polish national flag to present at his funeral.  The best place to find these is, of course, the flower district.  I stopped and looked ahead. The cross-street was named "Arcadia" for garden paradise of peace, yet right down I could see the ominous towers of the county jail. The contrast was just too stark. I used to work at the Midnight Mission on Skid Row and drove down there daily in the past, but it's been years since I saw the human misery concentrated in this strange corner of the City of Angels, full of warehouses, garbage, vacant lot and new loft developments for yuppies. The poem is a straightforward description of what I did and saw that day.

DTLA

Downtown Los Angeles.
At the corner of Alameda and  Arcadia Street
Two dying palms with shredded leaves
struggle to ornament a bleak landscape
of cement and asphalt.
Narrow vertical slits of windows
in thick walls of gray towers look like gaps
for archers in a medieval fortress
of granite and slate.

Here they keep inmates of Men’s Central Jail
from suicide or murder. Nobody can break
this glass. Nobody can jump. Thousands
pass through each year.
Bedraggled men on the next corner
dig through a heap of cardboard
looking for the best pieces to make
shelter on the sidewalk for the night.

All stores close at six pm. Gaudy rolls
of sparkling fabrics in a dance store
brighten the scene with artificial cheer.
Few tents are up. Night residents
are not back yet from the day of panhandling
and food kitchen lines. In a vacant lot,
a white balloon, smudged with dirt,
rolls along the skeletal remains of weeds.

I find the last florist open by an emptyspot.
I buy the first red and white wreath I see.
Perfect! I order a ribbon with inscription
and delivery to the funeral mass.
I leave with a bouquet of my own.
Driving home, immersed in the dense
Sweetness of stargazer lilies, I sigh
heading back to my world of gardens,
birdsong, mountains, feisty hummingbirds
and two mourning doves caressing each other
long after making love in the driveway.

The heady scent o five-petalled stars
reminds me of the broken promises
of yesteryear and the brightness
of tomorrow.

Stargazer lily from Wikimedia Commons. I cannot find my own, so there...

The next poem is a reflection on my unwillingness to turn back time. Once, a co-worker asked me, in earnest: "How much would you pay to become 20 again?"  His answer was $200,000, but I said "Nothing - I'm so happy I'm not twenty, ignorant and out of control emotionally. I'd never want to go back to being that." Not even a perfectly beautiful, young and fit body would compensate for the deficiencies of experience, the vacuous ignorance of mind and heart. It took me lots of lessons to come to the place of wisdom and I'm still learning, so I cherish every wrinkle... 

Here's what I learned from buying a sofa online. My first such experiment, justified by two points. One - to spare myself from hours wading through stores full of sofas. Two - because it looked just like my old one, so it could be put in the same place.  It turned out to be faux leather, not leather - even better, for I do not want to decorate my home with trophies from killing sentient beings. Though I still wear leather shoes and carry purses. Vanity is hard to discard... But  it is a humorous poem. The word "Sofa" is funny in itself, try saying it several times in order: sofa, sofa, sofa... 

The Sofa Dilemma

I bought a sofa
To replace an old sofa
Placing toe online order
From the old sofa full of holes
To bring a new sofa
And take the old away in a few days.

I bought a sofa
To replace another sofa
For they look the same.
It will be as if time reversed and went back
To 2005 when this shredded sofa
Was still my sparkling new sofa
In camel or cognac leather –
These names are so strange.

So did I buy this new sofa
To reverse the time flow
And find myself when I was still
Deluded with illusory hope
For life that was not meant to be?

Was it a hiccup of memory,
a sudden echo from the past?
No I just bought a new sofa
To precisely replace a zombie sofa.

That's all. I'm pleased.

Finally, my dream poem of a dream hero of manufactured dreams from a Chinese costume drama TV series. Watching Chinese and Korean fantasy dramas became my favorite past-time. They are not as vicious, cruel, mindlessly unfunny, or sentimental as American productions. They are mostly "upright" and teach obvious lessons of the love of the country, compassion for the poor, value of service and integrity, respect for parents, faithfulness to loved ones and friends, loyalty and love till death us part... 

The costumes are fantastic, the hair and robes long and flowing... Wide sleeves and black tresses float on the breeze when the heroes and heroines fly around. Who wouldn't want to fly? What's not to love? Plus, in a streaming mode, it is fairly easy to fast-forward through the scenes of war or torture, or scheming conversations of wicked villains. Alas, the English translation of subtitles is often abysmal, though it may add to fun, by becoming a puzzle to be solved. Dubbing is completely out of question. 

Luo Jin is one of the stars of the "Princess of Wei Young," a well-written series where he falls in life with the title character, played by his real wife, and their warmth is obvious on the screen. There is only one flaw - the blooms in the fields are all silk flowers, perhaps there was nothing blooming in the winter when the episodes were filmed.  So....

The whole poem will be published elsewhere, here's just a teaser, first two stanzas.... 

I Fell in Love with Luo Jin

On the screen,
his eyes are always smiling,
even when just a corner of his mouth
lifts up in a rakish smirk.
I love his bravado when saving maidens
from ancient demons.
He flies through air while shooting arrows,
suspended from steel cables
in a deceptive, engineering feat.

I am in love with Luo Jin,
tenderly plucking guzheng strings,
wistfully gazing at the stars,
or into the eyes of his on-screen lover,
his real wife. Betrayal? Never!
He gives me of what I can only dream.
Like me, billions of others love Luo Jin,
seduced by the grand illusion of the film.
His sword ballet is an aerial dance –
killing without the stench of rotting corpses.
Pure flight, joy, even – Oh, Luo Jin!

That's just one difference between oral and written poetry. It is good if there is rhythm and rhyme. I think all students should memorize the Greek patterns of rhythm, called feet: iamb (ta DA),  trochee (DA ta), anapest (ta ta DA), dactyl (DA ta ta), and spondee (DA DA). Poems, even free verse, sound more "poetic" when patterns of these rhythm are repeated and woven into a flow.  

English language and Polish langue "love" different rhythmic patterns: most words are accented on penultimate syllable in Polish, so lines tend to be longer and more flowing. I do not even dream poems in Polish, and I really do not know why. Maybe the rhythm of English fits me better. Also, as a second language, it is somewhat "artificial" - it has some characteristics of an imperfect mask - I keep my Polish accent, so the mask is flawed, so is the quotidian poetry, good for this blog.  

A POSTCRIPT ABOUT THE RIVER

In February 2023, after months of incessant rain, pouring in thick layers, as if in a cloud-burst, the Bigh Tujunga wash became a river. I filmed some muddy water flows and the links are copied below. 

https://youtu.be/RJYexVu4r5s - turbulent waves of muddy stream  in the valley

https://youtu.be/FpcaAMHF9kM - waves of muddy stream break over rocks

https://youtu.be/Hxl7XWcQaG4 - there is no road, just a river and a mini waterfall (30 sec)

https://youtu.be/lJhlNWEdmKE - waves turn back, the patterns are fascinating

Look at that massive force of flowing water. Poor trees bent out of shape, with a weight of dead branches pushing them to fall down and float away. So do our daily trouble push and push in the relentless flow of time. . . Big Tujunga flows, if it has water in it, from Los Angeles National Forest mountains down to Los Angeles river. Sometimes, there are only rocks, sometimes, just a tiny stream, but this spring it changed into a raging, muddy river, that even took away part of our usual path and moved from where we used to play in pools created by rock dams, filling that area with sand instead. In 1998, it took away two holes and surrounding land from our golf course; they built a concrete wall to protect the rest after that... We can learn so much from rivers. So alive: always changing, always breathing, moving, dancing the endless dance of flow and change.

I could write a poem about lessons learned from such mighty, transient rivers - here today, gone tomorrow - but Zbigniew Herbert already did that, and I do not want to be a plagiarist. Yes, we can learn a lot from rivers... even those ones that do not last year round.

New Year, New Moon, New Light

Let us talk about the moon, then... In the month of February, the Village Poets of Sunland-Tujunga will present a wonderful, witty and erudite poet, Mari Werner (February 27, 2011, at 4:30 p.m., Bolton Hall Museum, 10110 Commerce Avenue, Tujunga, CA 91042). For her "portrait" on the series's blog, she sent in the following poem, which is so delightful, I decided to reproduce it here as well:

Crescent Moon

by Mari Werner

A crescent moon floats above the horizon.
“You can totally see the rest of it,”
she says, as though the moon is cheating.

And the moon is cheating.
A crescent moon should be
what a crescent moon looks like
in a bedtime story illustration,
a crescent clear and simple,
no dark sphere to detract
from its perfection.

Under the smile of the crescent moon,
she sleeps in fluffy comforters,
winked upon by stars
cuddled by a curled up cat,
guarded by a sleeping dog.

That’s the bedtime story version,
but here on the surface of the planet...
you can totally see the rest of it.

In Polish children's literature, the moon is often presented as a "crescent roll" - "rogalik" - brown, well baked and tasty, neither an alien, eerie source of lunar light, casting a pall on all living things (a la "Pierrot lunaire"), nor a wasteland of rocks and dust that the astronauts have walked on. Not really a place for lunatics, either... A tamed, story-book, crescent.

On New Year's Eve 2010, over a year ago, I saw the moon differently: full, enormous, with a fuzzy halo taking over half the sky. At midnight, it crowned the horizon with its lucid glory. I saw its bluish reflections in water droplets on my rose.
________________________________________

MIDNIGHT ROSE

"...quanta è la larghezza di questa rosa ne l’estreme foglie!" ~ Dante, Paradiso, Canto XXX

A pale light appeared behind the black ridge of the mountains. The moon floated up like a white balloon losing air, whitening the night around it. The bright halo cooled the glare of electric snowflakes on a Christmas fence, sheltering the reindeer of prickly light points and wire. The moon rose higher, the halo around it grew into a solid crown. It took over half the sky, sparkled in water droplets on the rose. Straight above our heads at midnight, it was a brilliant omen for the New Year.

the moon’s new halo
dims electric glare into calm -
illumination
________________________________________

As the night wore on, the intense whiteness of the moon at midnight reflected the brightness of my rose-shaped diamond brooch that could have been a heirloom, but was not. I make up my own history here, in the land of endless possibilities, so I have amassed a whole bunch of such "could have been" heirlooms. For instance, I bought my Canadian Grandma on E-bay - a portrait of her, at least. It is a gold-framed late 19th-century daguerrotype of a stern dark-haired lady with hands folded in her lap. Elegant, strong, and confident, with a lovely cameo brooch at her neck, small lace collar, and a wide skirt of a shiny brown tafetta dress - she looks like she could have been my ancestor. I'll adopt her, I thought, and clicked "buy now."

I did not buy the brooch, though, it came from my daughter's prom dress, worn once and discarded after one glorious night. I find its shiny petals a notable addition to my festive wardrobe. Like a magpie, I admire all things shiny; since I lost that platinum bracelet of real diamonds worth a couple thousand of dollars, a gift from my parents, I prefer to dazzle without the expense. I do not think any jewelrer would have loaned me those priceless gems for the Oscars. Here it is, a diamond rose sparkling in my haibun for the full moon.
________________________________________

MIDNIGHT FIRE

"In the golden holiness of a night that will never be seen again and will never return…" ~ from a Gypsy tale

After greeting the New Year with a Chopin polonaise danced around the hall, I drove down the street of your childhood. It was drenched with the glare of the full moon in a magnificent sparkling halo. The old house was not empty and dark. On the front lawn, boys were jumping around a huge bonfire. They screamed with joy, as the flames shot up to the sky. The gold reached out to the icy blue light, when they called me to join their wild party. Sparks scattered among the stars. You were there, hidden in shadows. I sensed your sudden delight.

my rose diamond brooch
sparkles on the black velvet -
stars at midnight
_______________________________________