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Kindling wood

Editor's Pick, Halifax


Kindling wood
by Halifax
briskly rub cold warm
Child, don’t cross the street
it did nothing to deserve it
Tromp destruction instead
on our wayward winter yard
Do not mock fallen angels
by fluttering in snow drifts
or catch your death of cold
tonguing sharp snowflakes
Avoid intruding in birdsong
such jargon garbles thinking
Knocking trees naked of icicles
wakes up the unmentionables
While shrieking watch the fall
of angles carve lines and dots
Read no intention into shadow
only take what you can grasp
Spell out sense on the ground
collect what words find there
Bundle phrases you can carry
bring them in for our fireside
so we might make light of them
and laugh your warmth back in

0 thoughts on “Kindling wood”

  1. That is seriously good. Great opening lines. How the narrator follows the character around and supplies a visual in commentary adds a great story element. It’s strong how it doesn’t jump around. The statements made throughout the poem are genuine too, not just a bunch of empty ominousness. You drop some serious gems on this one. Great how it wraps around on itself in the end, and those last lines are the real deal. I love that new editor’s pick feature too by the way. Thanks a ton for sharing.

  2. Yeah what he said. lol. Appreciated the laundry-esque instructions at beginning then moved into advice to children. The setting seems to be a winter wonderland of sorts but by the end i get the impression that these double as metaphors. I was delighted to see some mish-mash words ‘angels’ and ‘angles’. Good sound in poem. Form of 4 line stanzas and short sentences works well thruout, i think. I’m always captivated by pieces on children. They are naive and have to be taught many things yet their innocence and idealism seems like such a great treasure to do away with totally…how do we ‘mold’ them yet keep these qualities in tact?

  3. I am exploring this idea that ideas that are not yet in a language…fuzzy abstract sort of intuit ideas, become THE fallen angels as they collapse to form in the language they become represented in. Highfalutin metaphysics, I know. Forgive me…I, seriously, know not what I do.
    Quasimofo is dead on as usual, accusing me (as he did) of dabbling in metaphor.
    Thank you both for your words I take as encouragement. I am putting together a chap from my work here on H&H. Right now, it has 26 solid (both the recto and the verso) pages of poems from me that were first featured here. Once compiled in its entirety, sketches from my one man art-show “Heavens to Betsy: The Space Between Words (Decrypted Launch Codes)” will be included. Unless someone with connections and more sense than I can manage intervenes, this will be a free-published work available to everyone I hand a copy to. Giddy fails to describe the level of enthusiasm mounting behind my motivations in this endeavor.

      1. I may do that. I thought more recently that I might publish it as a website; hyperlinking the texts to referenced poems and stories, provide a gloss that extrapolates on inferences, and a general dictionary for comparing meanings connected between poems from the work as a whole.

    2. You might want to try a journal called Infinity’s Kitchen. It’s issues are in print as well as electronic. The editor, Dylan Kinnet, is big on visual works as well as written ones. I don’t think he’s ever published a chapbook but it might be a good fit for what you’ve got.

    3. yo man let me know when that happens. on here. where else?
      i feel poetry (synonymous w. metaphors) is all about getting the drift that language is an idea as everything is a theory, let’s take advantage of it and burn our bras all post-modern. i think you would do great with word-magnet poetry, this reminds me of state of the art word magnet poetry. I THANK YOU FOR EVERYTHING YOU’VE EVER SAID HALIFAX. really, i can read a whole poem, you’ve proven this to me and a few others since i turned 18.
      you kick ass with a jam band backing you up, pages of previously unheard onomonopias. some may say father aphasia but i say fuzzy abstract intuits are a special gift of special people. let it all be subjective.
      (i have a feeling my spelling is sucking and i’m using ‘i’ statements too much).
      i wrote yesterday (or…cut up a bunch of pieces of a poem and put ’em back together) something with an angel/angle end of line match-up. dammit. intuit.

      1. The Sissy Gene
        (hung like a martyr)
        high on mineral spirits
        she teeters childlessly
        propositioning his Will
        offering head for heels
        from deep vein thrombosis
        dangles his glowing zenith
        she rubs the snake oil in
        until the sheen is shone
        shinier than all else less
        rendered in the exchange
        he bends mind over matter
        and takes both from behind
        until nobody minds
        and nobody matters
        His spirited Bride
        rearranges the furniture
        arranging marriages
        so she can get shoes
        that match the dress
        to go with the purse
        where she keeps her smile
        when her husband gets back
        from naming the animals
        THANK YOU FOR READING IT. Special people, it’s all we are.

        1. gorgeousness. YOU’RE WELCOME. i know right?
          i’ll hit you back with a battle rap poem subtract any component of competition whatsoever (on my behalf anyway) next time i’m on the internet. i am sweaty and i feel all my yoga and hiking today was useless.

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