These are the things we find beautiful.
And tonight we hang them on the walls.
There is still a lot to be unpacked, but
we need to have our pictures in place,
and tonight we hang them on the walls.
Family photos, flowers, paintings:
we need to have our pictures in place.
A little to the right. Left. The other left.
Family photos, flowers, paintings:
I love looking at you looking at art.
A little to the right. Left. The other left.
Higher. Lower. There that’s perfect.
I love looking at you looking at art.
Come let me kiss you all over, love.
Higher. Lower. There that’s perfect.
This is what we need to do now.
Come let me kiss you all over, love.
There is still a lot to be unpacked, but
this is what we need to do now.
These are the things we find beautiful.
Would you like to subscribe to my April poems? I am writing a poem a day for the month of April and posting them here (if I can). The easiest way is to
click here or go to http://definitelybeautiful.posterous.com/. You can also receive them via Twitter (I am @TaylorMali).
It's been replaced with a year of Law School for 13-year-olds
because that's really what they're good at anyway:
arguing and bending and protesting and making motions.
The students all wear black robes like little judges.
The curriculum is overseen by the social studies teacher
and focuses on the history of jurisprudence,
from Hammurabi's eye for an eye to Solon and Caesar Augustus,
the wisdom of the matriarchy, the chaos of democracy.
The special guests are lawyers and judges, and students
from nearby law schools. Police officers, too, of course.
There are field trips to county courts and capitals.
Mock trials are the special projects and everyone,
in the course of the year, gets to play every part.
Science is all about forensic evidence, fibers and splatter patterns,
fingerprints, DNA matching and crime scene investigation.
In English, they study argument and persuasion.
Math is all about billing clients, time sheets,
and settlements. And the foreign language is
Basic Spanish for Law Enforcement Officers, learning
to translate the testimony of witnesses and taking depositions.
Instead of gym, everyone studies the martial arts.
Any seventh-grade teacher will tell you this is genius,
play to their strengths, let nature help you.
II. In My Middle School There Is No Sixth Grade
It's been replaced with a year of Business School for 12-year-olds.
The curriculum is overseen by the math teacher,
and her classes are all about interest rates and spread sheets.
The projects are all entrepreneurial fundraisers
for the school's scholarship fund and other worthy causes.
Car salesmen and hot dog street vendors are the visitors.
History compares capitalism to communism through the ages,
and English is about writing business plans.
The foreign language is Chinese, and science has been renamed
Research & Development. In gym, the students run,
every day, through an obstacle course.
Any sixth-grade teacher will tell you this is genius,
play to their strengths, let nature help you.
II. In My Middle School There Is No Eighth Grade
It's been replaced with a year of Medical School combined
with an MFA in Creative Writing for 14-year-olds,
and all the students wear white lab coats over black turtlenecks.
Every morning, they take the temperature of every student
as they enter the school, then squirt their hands with sanitizer.
Later they write about what it means to simply breathe.
The curriculum is overseen by the science and English teachers,
and its all about nutrition, the soul, the human body,
and desire. What is it to be alive? they ask themselves.
And the doctors, and playwrights, medical students,
and poets get bombarded with questions when they visit.
We visit hospitals and morgues, and local health clinics.
And all the whole year is one big Science Fair.
The foreign language is Latin. Gym is yoga.
Any eighth-grade teacher will tell you this is genius,
play to their strengths, let nature help you.
II. In My Middle School There Is No Fifth Grade
It's been replaced by a special mixture of School of Social Work,
International Affairs & Public Policy, Architecture School,
Drama School, and a College of Music. They do it all,
and the teachers help them by bringing the best parts of the world
to the school and laying them at the foot of the students,
which is to say, in their hearts, saying, "This is what people do,
and you can do it too. The world and the people in it are in trouble.
We still have not been saved. We were hoping you would do it."
That's how things work in my middle school.
It does not exist yet, but as any teacher who has every walked
into the middle of all that creative rebellion will tell you,
it is genius.
Would you like to subscribe to my April poems? I am writing a poem a day for the month of April and posting them here (if I can). The easiest way is to
click here or go to http://definitelybeautiful.posterous.com/. You can also receive them via Twitter (I am @TaylorMali).
I Love You But You Are Too Hot, or, Queen Size Bed
for Marie-Elizabeth
O, queen size bed, you no longer suffice
though spooning with my wife is nice
(until it's not; she gets so hot, you know,
I roll away but have nowhere to go).
For two months we've endured this situation
until we complete our renovation.
But at night we now lie close to the edges
like mountain climbers perched on vertiginous ledges.
And when it comes to love's passionate collisions—
and the breathless need to flip positions—
you just aren't big enough anymore
without one of us ending up on the floor.
We thought we could Become One with you,
but now M-E might give her wedding ring back!
O, queen size bed, we are done with you.
Next week, we finally get our king back!
Would you like to subscribe to my April poems? I am writing a poem a day for the month of April and posting them here (if I can). The easiest way is to
click here or go to http://definitelybeautiful.posterous.com/. You can also receive them via Twitter (I am @TaylorMali).
Five o'clock has me in its dark hands, still jagged
from my long time away in a place
where it is also five—only still day—
and I am drinking tea (which I guess I would be either way).
It is the Day of Fools, and I am giving thanks
and thinking of tricks and pranks I could play
as well as the girl I left my wife to love
when I needed to know where I would next go.
This was our day.
In Shanghai three weeks ago on Senior Skip Day
one hundred plastic colored clocks were set to go off
between 10 and 11 and hidden all over the school;
I found 39 in the library alone, behind books,
in the copier, the recesses for outlets, even
in the mouth of the eighth grade's paper mache dragon.
Every few minutes an alarm went off
and I followed it to its bleeping source.
And that is what I expect to hear now
and do not: some insistent calling
announcing to the world that the time is now.
Pepsi will give $50,000 to the projects that receive the most votes in February. One project that is near and dear to my heart is The Teacher Salary Project, whose goal is nothing short of making the teaching profession highly attractive to intelligent, motivated college graduates. Please watch this humorous video about the project, and then click through below to vote for it if you feel so moved.
Years ago I came up with an idea for a project called Palm Poems. With the help of Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz and Noel Jones, I created 14 self-inking stamps with poems written specifically to be read off someone's hand. As you can see from the picture below, some of them work equally well in other locations.
Now I'm thinking of creating a Facebook page where people can upload their own pictures or at least add their ideas. Got any?
The January pairing of Page Meets Stage will feature Alexandra Oliver and Chad Anderson. They are both formalists who tend to rhyme a lot so this should be interesting. Check them out below:
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All Page Meets Stage pairings start at 8 pm, cost $12 ($6 students), and take place at the Bowery Poetry Club (308 Bowery, between Houston & Bleecker, F train to Second Ave, or 6 train to Bleecker).
For children who are our second planting,
and though they grow like weeds
and the wind too soon blows them away,
may they forgive us our cultivation
and remember fondly where their roots are.
Let us give thanks:
For generous friends . . . with hearts as big as hubbards
and smiles as bright as their blossoms
For feisty friends, as tart as apples,
For continuous friends, who, like scallions and cucumbers,
keep reminding us that we've had them.
For crotchety friends, as sour as rhubarb and as indestructible,
For handsome friends, who are as gorgeous as eggplants
and as elegant as a row of corn;
And the others, as plain as potatoes and as good for you,
For funny friends, who are as silly as Brussels sprouts
and as amusing as Jerusalem artichokes,
And serious friends, as complex as cauliflowers
and as intricate as onions.
For friends as unpretentious as cabbages,
As subtle as summer squash,
As persistent as parsley,
As delightful as dill,
As endless as zucchini,
And who, like parsnips,
can be counted on to see you through the winter,
For old friends, nodding like sunflowers in the evening-time
And young friends coming on as fast as radishes,
For loving friends, who wind around us
like tendrils and hold us,
despite our blights, wilts, and witherings,
And, finally, for those friends now gone,
like gardens past that have been harvested,
but who fed us in their times that we might have life thereafter.
For all these, we give thanks.
Can't sleep tonight
Perhaps because I'm off to Germany tomorrow, I am having trouble falling asleep tonight. Or maybe it's the pot of tea I had after lunch (I used to say I needed a double-espresso just to get to sleep at night). Or maybe it's the four episodes of 24 that my wife and I watched before bed. Regardless (or "irregardless," if you speak Idiot), here I am waiting for the melatonin to do its magic. Sleep on, world. I'm coming soon.
The admission price gets you your first drink free and also a $2 discount on my book if you buy it there. I hope you can make it. The show will start promptly at 8:01 pm.
