Carolyn Martin - Poet

“All my life I have tried to find the truth and make it beautiful.” – Sting

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Ode to Toilet Paper

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It happens this way …

Sometimes levity is the best reaction to today’s news. Here’s the lightest of light verse.

Ode to Toilet Paper

Oh, what enticing names:

Angel Soft, Charmin, Cottonelle,

Green Forest, Quilted Northern,

Scott, Kirkland Signature.

 

Oh, how comforting:

the feel of softly embossed

flowers and leaves during

my body’s private activities.

 

Two of your layers clean

more smoothly than paper towels

or the napkins I swiped

from now-closed restaurants.

 

But, oh, modern necessity,

how you’ve been abused.

Hoarders crushed you

into SUVs weeks ago,

 

rendering you as rare as

a sunny winter day in Oregon,

a prayer on an atheist’s lips,

the truth on any brand of media.

 

Let me assure –

in the spirit of economy –

I count out your sheets:

four for #1, nine for #2.

 

If my calculations are right,

we’ll ride this challenge out,

comforted by more absorbency

with much less use.

Sharing Sight with Monet

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It happens this way …

unnamedThanks to Jacinta, Petra, and Aimee  for publishing “Eye-minded” in the Spring 2020 issue of their glorious magazine. Snapdragon: a journal of art and healing is a subscription-based publication out of Winston-Salem, NC that has been sharing art, poetry, and prose for the past six years

To my poet friends: link up with them to receive their themed calls for submissions.

With their permission, I’d like to share my poem with you.

 

Eye-minded

…my poor eyesight makes me see everything in a complete fog.  – Monet

The only things I hear this summer night

are the rhythms of these lines

and my rambling mind wondering

how Monet would see my backyard.

 

If I slip my glasses off, his fog is mine.

Yellow daisies blur behind purple Blazing Stars.

White aster-clusters entwine.

Hydrangea pinks blemish above a dozen shapes

of shade beyond a smudged maple tree.

 

Beautiful, Monet would say:

this scene oozing through myopic haze.

I agree. Impressions have their charm.

 

Yesterday, the doctor said my eyes

are younger than my seventy-four.

Pressure good. Lenses holding strength.

Faint cataracts still faint. And yet …

what if one day I wake to colors melting

like Monet’s? Would I be content to trace

smudges of light reflecting on the backyard pool?

Would I remember the flicker’s orange tail,

the bumblebees feasting on lavender?

 

Since summer is on the run,

I’ll put my glasses on and mark memories

like Monet labeled tubes of paint.

I’ll even catalogue the hostas’ late leaf-scorch,

the moss-nibbled edges of lawn,

the ants circling crumbs on the patio.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poetry in English and Arabic

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It happens this way …

Next Saturday, March 7, from 2-4 p.m. the Ledding Library in Milwaukie, Oregon, will host its annual bilingual poetry reading. The event is a collaboration with the Al Mutanabbi Street Starts Here! Coalition and the Iraqi Society of Oregon .

Twelve poems will be read, six in English  with an Arabic translation and six in Arabic  with an English translation. Since both languages are considered to be among the most poetic, the result should be an auditory delight for the audience.

The library explains the origin of this collaboration:

These readings are part of the response to the March 5th, 2007 car bombing of Al-Mutanabbi Street in Baghdad, the ancient booksellers street. The car bomb was an attack on life and on the property, 30 people were killed and 100 wounded, but it was, as well, an attack on culture and on the free expression of ideas. Following this attack, the Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here! coalition was begun by Beau Beausoleil, a poet and bookseller in San Francisco, and has grown over the years to include over 600 works of art and an anthology of writings by poets, journalist, and novelists. These works are exhibited around the world and contribute to conversations and the creation of connections, in support of the Iraqi people. Portland is now the home to over 2,000 Iraqi refugees who have fled the ravages of war.

It’s my pleasure to join five other Oregon poets who write in English. Here’s my contribution: one of the few lyrical poems I’ve ever written. I can’t wait to hear how it sounds in Arabic!

All I need

A few skyward things:  one steady star

to guide, one constellation to bet

a myth upon, one quasar to break

the dark. The rest is ornament.

 

One mountain to announce it’s ripe

for bulbs and seeds to multiply

without a first or second thought.

Birth deserves tranquility.

 

A frenzy of birds at sleeptide’s ebb,

tornados of gnats at dusk’s flow.

Two feral cats. Two red-tailed hawks.

Days that warrant wilding up.

 

A word for grace or luck or hope

when the mountain blocks my star.

In-the-bone love for all that’s lost.

Something born to lead me home.

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone

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It happens this way …

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I just finished reading Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Lori Gottlieb. Gottlieb is a therapist who not only shares her experiences with challenging patients, but who sits on the therapy couch herself as she tries to sort out feelings about a traumatic relationship break up.

 

I’ve been to therapy several times in my life, so listening to the conversations from both sides of the couch was enlightening. I don’t think I realized the challenges for the therapist who needs to patiently build a trusting relationship in order to help a person change and grow. And, as Gottlieb illustrates, that building process could take months.

Among the many insights I gleaned from this highly readable book, I’d like to share three that touched me:

  1. Compassion is a desirable virtue, of course, but Gottlieb makes the distinction between idiot compassion versus wise compassion.

 In idiot compassion, you avoid rocking the boat to spare people’s feelings, even though the boat needs rocking and your compassion ends up being more harmful than your honesty. People do this with teenagers, spouses, addicts, even themselves. Its opposite is wise compassion, which means caring about the person but also giving him or her a loving truth bomb when needed.

 Bombs away!

  1. We marry our unfinished business. (Or, I’d add, we get into all kinds of relationships that help us discover that unfinished business.)

Rather than play the blame game when things go awry in any relationship, I need to remember to pause and ask: “What’s my part in this situation? What do I contribute to the conflict? What do I need to learn?” Sometimes it may be as simple as I didn’t communicate what I needed in the moment and it was that silence that caused misunderstanding. Or, it’s time to move on from a relationship because it no longer serves the highest good of either party. Whatever. The challenge is usually an indication of my own [Read more…] about Maybe You Should Talk to Someone

Turn every day into a Valentine!

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It happens this way …

When little irritations get in the way, I try to remember  what I wrote in this poem.

Happy Valentine’s Day –– and may you all  burst with love!

just so you know

 this morning in the rain I chased your car

halfway down the street intent on ranting

about pots and baking pans greasing up

the sink and sheets of Fed-Ex bubble wrap

obscuring piles of mail and your grey coat

invading my green chair but I wasn’t

fast enough to catch your rearview glance

so I punched your cell to sear your day

with guilt for how I felt put-upon/

crowded-out/ and all those pent-up things

I never say until they burn and how

I could forgive if you were off to work/

to shop/ to pray not out to lunch with friends

but I struck delete when I recalled

your kiss good-bye and words we vowed to say

(Let us be kind) when love’s reduced to sniping/

blaming/hurt and smallest things conspire

to ruin sunsets on a Maui beach

or walks around our autumned neighborhood

so this is just to let you know I’ve scrubbed

the pans/re-hung your coat/cleared out debris

from my morning’s discontent practicing

Let me be kind again and then again

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