blog of poet, leah umansky

What one delivers or de-lives

to make sure one does not go plain

This could all be accusatory – I could scorn diagonally.

All the being and the doing: five- petaled, hunger-laden; tramp-like, trampled, tramped-on

The  grand-braided everyday travail,  

This could be complimentary:

a scene for the rustic; the shine-delivered. When life sinks; go a-knucklewalking and oil it all down; 

                                                                                Be slippy.

No regrets.  Beneath my all-flexible; unfathomably deep flanks

there is a guide moved,                                                                or a guided move

a honey-stalked teetering

*

Coming for my other hand?

….a braying

–    —     –

                Then.

 Stop your mouth.

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Story

[1]

This is duty-bound or duly bound.

Only too prone are the mean and narrow; the absurdities lie in the words.

“damn .damn. damn. damn!!”

An immediate outlet – no?

Re-order damn and it is still a four-letter word.

I want to describe this the way a spinning-top wounds down. Rewounds; unwounds. Fawn over it like one of Proust’s Madeline’s                                                         &                                           wait for it            

                it is still as sweet.                    

 Ahh – the subtext is duly noted. No emotional rendering or meandering. On with it.

[2]

Let’s tell the story like Prendergast.

Fleshed-out and flushed. Blushed.

Raw Umber. Violet.  All the faceless stares; the lipless.

Now turn, let’s Renoir the story so it’s hazed or haloed:

In each girl, in each eye: a spectre of the golden past.  She has my blonde; my blonde, my blonde. Let the clock:      break.

And the catalog will read:  41609

And the subtext:  cast-ironed  and hinged; sailor knotted in cord and framed in ladles. Yes, ladles.

Let’s weird it all out like Barnes.

[ 3 ]

It was all appositives.

You never loved.

Say it for me

Say it

© Umansky 2010

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Abstraction of Wonder

Call this serrated:

a vibration of touch; a feeling of  __________. We all get swindled, just like good old Isabella, such an idiot, such a….well…girl.  What is it about the dark?

The same can be said for the others.

All senseless: the way a dampened hand can’t grip.

We heed warning but halfneck our hearts. All humped-up and lightly wedged and pretty – like a slipper shell.

Yes, the slight of hand trick gets old.  There are no magicians.

In a gentle appearing fashion, those semi-swine, double-horned, dawn-lit goats, with their striking color, are nothing more than remnants. They gnaw; they hook rubber teeth, but they are truly protected.

It is the carnivore that wounds us all.

(which we could probably trace to the bible)

The first carnivore was the modern weasel.

(like I said, it could all go back to Man)

© Umansky 2010

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Contemporary Folklore

Exaggerate the dimensions midlife

See to this nuisance

If only it meant mistress –

or what was not fully dark. It might sicken every word. The wordless. Every singsong.

(I let you dandle me)

 In plain sight -there is no question. No. No. No question. Now sigh. Now sleep. No billowing. I am just nostalgic for great secrets. All just a reminder of what is no longer.  For what is no longer 

functional.

So here: 

for glory, for beauty

thou shalt not speak of:                beauty

the beauty. 

array yourself

cast abroad the rage

enquire even,                                   lust,  even

all  beauty is departed

you set it in majesty –    I am making it, remaking it, gilding the gornisht

Now:  only I shall

be great.

© Umansky 2010

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Recall it as a fever:

something spooked or common.

I was  deskbounded.

You were an indoor creature –  I

I wanted you to walk.

I’m using infinitives,

but here:

                                                                                 walk across this page.

Could you have been convivial and not so damn concise? Satisfy my curiosity. Say you didn’t want to give me the shaft

                                                        end.

You rolled me around like an acorn.

In the heady days, you took and took and took and got tooked –

This tucked-under thing

This kept aristocracy 

 thence and thence and thence

I’ll be the docent  now;

gone is the jolie menagerie.

Hand me something new to gather in my hem.

© Umansky 2010

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The mischiefs and mistakes or (mis) takes are real

It could take years,      how real do you want it? 

*

All that leaning; the nest now muddied.          Near-slaughtered.

      (put away what rose-up)

No, not this one; this one; this closeted thing. I can learn. I can learn.

*

It might not be time;   it might not;   

it might not be time for;          or might it?

Love is strange and altered.

A second I, would look

                                                                                    *

It was big;        it was brief

However you bite or   bear it                          it’s there.

You may ask me to be formal, but get your bearings straight

I mean to burn it down.

I want to see    before the blooming

Beckon me                             

someone

                                                                                                                                    anyone?

                       *

I’m naughty; so na–aught-ty to lay this all out … and darling, my darling; my darlingest darling, I want to know moments.

See this,

it’s mine.

            (hide…….)

This, too, is tinged.

                                                                                            *

I can “oh” all on my own.

There was always the taking and giving

[ but it don’t work.]

Give me a real time

Give me real

Give

I am barely the wounded one

I am the          

blooming

© Umansky 2010

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Strands

Can’t stop stompstomp stomping on what is packed

with echoes.

            Echoes of:       the actual

                                    the contractual

                                    the factual

In the end , it was the less-flawed that won

::the less-finished::

(where I was victorious – even notorious)

*

Nonetheless,   I looked up the chances.

felt through drawers

re-scented linings all to know:            compassion  and vitality.

                                                 *

A critic would’ve seen            holes:

tears

gathers

pulls, even,

but I see against the grain.

*

It may not be my field

            making analogies                                                                     (or is it?)

but everything changes when you take soap out of it.

say goodbye to tangles

nothing is left tepid.

*

I’m writing to hooks.

to that peacoat; that hat; that scarf; that sweater; that umbrella;

*

It’s in the domesticities:

            the plastic bags

            the tissues

            the paper towels

            what’s stuck in the drain

            and yes, the top sheet

*

Play equals pleasure

I’m still interested in what lingers

Keep it / lose it/ keep it/ lose it/ keep it/ lose it /                    keep

What I’m talking about is real.

Nonsense is a close call

            (or curtain- call.)

I always wanted to                 dance.

                        _  _

Never,           

never, never, never,

never-ever, cap

the brave.

© Umansky 2010

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The Classification of Living Things

This is you fate.

This is you day

This is you un-supposing.

This is love falling                   unfalling,                                or falling-in-love.

You might do some explaining: sweetness, this is the day you want to want.

Think:  we are the shortest story ever told.

Eternal. Nocturnal. Unearthingly harmonious.

No matter.                                                                                           hush

*

From the first. From the first moment. From the first moment we are

inspired:  it is already enough.

That’s the place:  a center.

Let me tell you:  I can become anything.

I place the hour there. And there.

You:  an odd moment.

You:  make me stop.

You:  don’t even.

© Umansky 2009

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Noir

This is how memory works:

Layers. Colors. Clusters. Spots. Vibrations. Epigraphs and the dead.

We are the mother of invention:  the dream, the romance,

                                                                                                 A place alive.

*

Let’s make this subterranean:   we carpentered it all out.

Nail by nail 

I:  wanted to spend more time with it.

You:                                                   

                                                                                                            well….

*

This too then will pass – a little thing.  We will learn to understand the difference of echoes and sound.

*

                                 Did you know the word “aye” used to mean forever, as in a lifetime, as in continuous, but now it just means the singular self, a pronoun or self-sacrificing appositive.  Of course, I hitch myself to the Middle English– as I do to forever.

*

This isn’t precalculus.

© Umansky 2009

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Hymn

i.

This has all been worn-out:

an old wooden table; a glorified cushion

Close the drapes.

Everything has been partially read.

ii.

I wanted different editions;

*

Now, like the loading of scales, I cannot practice this.

there are dangers.

and you were brash.

you were.

If I say love, don’t besiege. Don’t reckon.

iii.

You’ve got to imagine.  I am in pursuit of so much that is not mine,                     yet.

You’ve got to imagine safeness

iv.

Engage my sympathies. 

I wanted risk. I wanted good. I wanted greatness.

It’s in the moment that

you preach. It’s in the

moment.It’s in the

moment where you

became near-

pornographic.

You made love tarnish.

If this were a hymn,                                           it would be a devil’s song.

© 2010

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