I’m going out dancing tonight and we will be practicing our Viennese waltz.

Viennese Waltz — natural turn

It’s like flying
or falling.
Each step a revolution.
The planet tilted
too much.
Sunlight far off.
Clouds strangely graceful
even as the storm
arrives.
She says, lean back further.
Enough to contain
the rotation.

The ballroom is wide
as a plain. I’m a sapling
and he is the wind.
Sometimes I touch the floor,
toes starved for solid ground.
Sometimes I leap.
Every other step a lock
as though leaves
can be caged.

He is vertigo.
The darkened tornado
peeling my meadow.
The sky falters but I hang on,
fingers lodged in his bones.
I am a white birch.
I am a falling
branch.

I am a spinning
leaf, spiked
with rain.

Written this past April 2011 during NaPoWriMo, this poem is part of a manuscript of ballroom poems, though one could argue they’re also love poems. Yes, I’m a sentimentalist.

photo credit: Vladimir Pervuninsky, “The Viennese Waltz.”




Edited to remove embarrassing public whining. You see, it all started with—. . . . . you know what? Never mind.
.

Warning: this post has nothing to do with poetry and everything to do with real life.

Yesterday my son and I went to the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) (aka: the seventh circle of hell) to get my son a learner’s permit (driving). It took two hours to get there because of construction traffic. Then we waited in line for two and a half hours. A person who smelled like smoked salami sat next to me for most of this time. When we finally got to the counter, Jeremy easily passed the test, BUT:

They said his birth certificate isn’t valid, even though I used it to get him an official state photo id last year with it. Even though he got a passport with it years ago. Even though I registered him for school with it. Even though it has a raised seal and all the pertinent information and was issued to me by the state of NJ.

Naturally, I argued. Demanded to see a supervisor. Three DMV workers insisted the certificate was wrong. Fine.

NJ (his birth state) requires a valid state photo id (or driver’s license) to get a valid birth certificate. Theoretically, my son could get his valid birth certificate with his existing photo id (obtained with the non-valid birth certificate), but he can’t get a driver’s permit.

*bangs head on wall*

To get a valid birth certificate online, one must upload identity documents. The system won’t upload even though I already paid. The system has no phone number so I can call a human. I sent complaint via email. No answer.

To get a valid birth certificate via writing, it will take 10 WEEKS. Yes, weeks.

*bangs head on wall harder*

We have only one option left: drive to Trenton, NJ to get it in person. I know that probably won’t go well. We’ll hit more construction. When we get there they will insist that I, his mother, present a valid birth certificate as proof of identity. That certificate will be invalid (I’d bet money on this).

We have 30 days before he has to retake the learner’s permit test. And before you ask the obvious, I already did: we can’t use his passport because it’s too old.

*bangs head on marble floor*

*floor cracks*

So far, this summer has been rather difficult. I won’t go into details but suffice to say that real life growled and smacked me upside the head. Yeah, I’m not starving, my kids are fine, et cetera, et cetera but still, it’s sucked. Anyway, I keep reading Auden’s poem, Musée des Beaux Arts, because it seems strangely appropriate given my personal life, the life of most of my friends, and the larger world’s recent horrors. Suffering is as transitory as joy. Or perhaps joy is as transitory as suffering. And there will always be someone who is unaffected or who doesn’t particularly care what is happening because everything is relative.

About suffering they were never wrong,
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;

I won’t argue that I find this comforting, because I don’t. Rather, I think I like the poem because it’s so beautifully constructed. Because it says something truthful. Because that painting is incredibly amusing to me. I mean, no one is paying any attention to Icarus. Stupid kid gives the sun the finger and then crashes into the sea while “the torturer’s horse / Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.”

Hilarious. The horse is always innocent. Life is a museum of fine things, is it not?

Clearly I have a twisted sense of humor.

Gale! I used a random number generator to pick the winner and counted down the comments on my blog. Thanks to everyone who participated in The Big Poetry Giveaway 2011!

I’m serving as the site admin again. Why not stop by? Post a poem or two for critique. Open a conversation. I’ve already set up the NaPoWriMo section for April’s poem-a-day marathon and we’re planning a great guest poet for April. Check us out! ——>

Poets.org Discussion Forum

.

First Crocus

This morning, flowers cracked open
the earth’s brown shell. Spring
leaves spilled everywhere
though winter’s stern hand
could come down again at any moment
to break the delicate yolk
of a new bloom.

The crocus don’t see this as they chatter
beneath a cheerful petal of spring sky.
They ignore the air’s brisk arm
as they peer at their fresh stems, step
on the leftover fragments
of old leaves.

When the night wind twists them to pieces,
they will die like this: laughing,
tossing their brilliant heads
in the bitter air.

I wrote this poem in February 2006 and since then, it seems to have propagated across the web like wild. 🙂 It was first published by About.com and remains on their site as part of their Spring Poems collection. The photos I took today, just a few minutes ago. Happy Spring!

.

.

I was going to submit this, but then I didn’t because the due date was an insane day for me and also because I just can’t seem to gather up the energy to submit to yet another contest. I covered that in detail in my previous post so I won’t rehash it here. Anyway, here’s a free story. I wrote it for the NPR Three Minute Fiction Round Five. In a way, I used it as a prompt because even as I was writing it I had a feeling I wouldn’t bother to send it in. The story had to be 600 words or less. It had to start with the sentence: “Some people swore that the house was haunted.” and end with the sentence: “Nothing was ever the same again after that.”

I had a blast writing it. Here it is:

Hey everyone,