blog of poet, leah umansky

What I’ve Learned About Modern Life and the Deep Past

So many possible ideas;  the mined; the drives.  So tragic and timeless; even washes get diluted. You dishonored the honorable: cheap coffee and companionship. Wanting the overarching; wanting what we need to know about sociology.   There is no sheet to study; nothing conventional.  My argument still resides in Love.  The drives; the desires; the drives.  If for nothing else; then for a voyager’s return.    We are always voyaging. This cliff; this crest;                            this hilltop;                                    this green;           

                                    the cellophane kiss of a café window.

On the edge of a snowbank,Central Park is a movie. We have a bench; we have desire; we drift;                      

                                              [a moving target?]                                  but our hands stay traditionally still-locked.   We are piqued within this hotbed. What do we need to know about?           All are ideas not theories. What proof is needed when something comes from                                    nothing.                                                                       We could be on the edge

of something.                                                                                             Now… 

                                                                        Look.

© Umansky 2011

Reconsidering the Experiment

I am taking a lucky break from the tenants; the builders; the chutes and ladders of it all. I’m in the penultimate hour; it is unusually slow. I will spare the feet; I might mis-translate a word or two,          but no verse is truly protected                                                                    [is it?] 

                                                let someone else do that for you…    

No more.        

 Lay it all                     here: _____________

This is how we learn things – through absence; through reconnaissance; through piecing the parts into a:            whole.

                                                [you remember fractions, right?]

The time is:  never.                             The place:  never.                                             ::never::

Your readability is:      off.   Reductive; representative; I am being deliberate. I like to gaze.  I am doing the doing and you are     unbothered.                I don’t mean to intoxicate.   

                                    Here’s a little honesty: I know how lucky I am.

                                    Here’s more:  I like this soldiering.   

There needn’t be categories; dismiss these compliments. Scour the wound at the             center.

© Umansky 2011

Second Set

The faux- everyday is beyond the bed.                                                                                                                                 

The moment’s memory is hidden in today.

The heart of intelligence lies in bed

With that of the mind; the stare and who can say.

Acknowledge history; acknowledge facts; even the president.

Trying something on could be like papering a town or heralding a republic.

Away with the comic possibilities; up and away.

The magic of something is everywhere is everything is never sick.

*

Aren’t we all just homonyms; substituting roles for others and everything?

Let’s give this a rolling quality; a tongue curl; say,

You want repetition; Say, you want this gift; this tinged moment; not good-bye.

You can’t do everything; the shortest story in the world still points to you, but take it away.

This could’ve been vulgar; we all strive for authority and we all know what we want.

What do I supply to others; what do I emit; what star?

*

I could step back from the history; but the worst has happened. The worst is out.

I want to understand the wrong and imitate it; revise it [Are

You listening?]  This could be a song of gratitude;   I am risking a callous. I do

Recognize the accused.  I did organize my language; I do

Understand this history; this medium; but there is so much I have been and want to be.

About blushing; It is not; I didn’t mean; I didn’t know;    (no – I knew everything).

It’s terrifically realistic, the way one understands, one appropriates. It’s me.

(c ) Umansky 2010

The Fibers

Rationally planning the pre-fabrication. Not heat-resistant but torched.  In the practical spaces, I included love and made haste.  No contradictory associations – I am the permanent condition. 

Nothing has changed.  You can vanquish drudgery; you can surpass the divine; but the cartography is still driven-in.                                    

                                     All maps point north. Living between the two must hurt.

                                    [does it?]

All I want is tenderness    …  and a literary bar to climb up and over.               

 Play me

a solo. A dance.                       Again, and again.

                                                     [I don’t miss the past, just its possibles.]

Hand me a solo.                                                                                                                           Make me forget

what you are losing. Make me forget you are losing the tendered.  You are losing the tenderness .You are losing the tenders     

                                                                        ::the fibers::                                        

                                                                                                               wait

okay,

now in cantos; in tangos; in crescendos.  That’s better.          Pitch it up and give me that mouth.

Wherever you end up                                                                                                                               say,

             you’ll remember this.

©Umansky   2011

a very small life

1/

keeping the just;          real.   

                         The ball courted:          all      by        myself

Put a cap on it.                                                 

sometimes you need to be the adult

            or act adult.

2/

I’m going to really piss you off, here.

Let the soap sog.

All these strands; these semi- follicles

 all seemed so Chekhovian; so

 futile; or more Tolstoyan:      common          and aged.

Turn this into something reusable:                 

No one saves the diminishing

[continued on next page]

the wood of dreams; the wood of solitude; the wood of any man’s

                                                             l o n g i n g     

[let it hang       there.]

3/

We are particularly good at making

(particularly good at taking, too.)

Ring in the changes;  the faux-pas

There are so many great words that come out of partners;

 So many words that come out of please;       

                        and patronize.

:: yes, patronize ::

The Australian Came Into My Life and He Would Not Kiss Me

I was in the know.  Chewing the pulp.   An excuse to imagine –  so, I imagined. Self-prescribed.  There was no alternate.  I felt sorry for the pursuit; but nailed it. There were two voices: one surreal; one steadfast.

[If not now; when?]

There’d be no pretending.  Nothing should be hard and fast.  He tidied it up. Made coffee; gazed; danced; touched.  It became creamy and whole; whole and creamy. Songs were sung. Bottoms were wagged.  Re-defined.

yes       ….       but                   yes       ….       but                   yes,

yes, we confirmed edges and crossed currents. What kind will this be? Be kind to me. Be kind to me, be kind to me. Hands climbing in hair; hands lost; hands lost;  hands don’t lie.

[do they?]  But, to be glib:  someone could die.                                   In the earliest evening,

the earliest morn; one understands the being

::let history in::

and, we did and we swam messily around the honking; around the light-spread; around the breath, around the humming, and lounged-in it; all to see the comfortable.

[do you really feel this?]

All to say: my sweet. It is sweet. It is sweetest; It is sweeter                                now, tasted.

© Umansky 2011

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.

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

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

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