Inept Etude

Well! I was going to post something at Mel's Spontazity, but traffic is as moot / mute there as here, so it doesn't matter. I admit up front, my vocabulary is short.

"inept etude" came up in my head out of nowhere. I wish I could hotwire a thesaurus into my brain, but for now, dictionary on arm of chair.

inept - unskillful, absurd, silly, out of place. (ineptitude)
etude - musical composition designed to improve the technique of the player

Though my L. protests, I am tone deaf, and I could use an etude to lose my ineptitude!

I'm in the middle of a day,
padding ncr contracts
or tablets in 100s, fifties;

breaking for shrinkwrapping,
boxing, shipping.

data entry to places I've never been.

I used to think I stay here to avoid
seeing how inept
I am in a better world.

If only I had a life,
a life a big design,

giving me technique,
or a lividness in spontanaeity

that makes me game
for beyond bit-
player;

but come to thank about it,
I'd rather be a character poet

than a one-time Oscar-equivalent
composer of a poem

lying dusty in an obscure
(prevalent for a period)

composition more zine

than scene.

HER DNA (Revision of (NOT) A VILLANELLE (PROPER) FOR V. L. under Weingarten pen

Her DNA

"Painting the perfect painting is one that captivates (and) no matter how far you walk away from it, it won't let you go." – V. L. Cox

They’re in my DNA, she says of the handmade
wedding bands,
gold or silver wrought by the slammed miracle

of a hammer after the glowing
rod reaches intensity for the perfect
strike.

She translates
rings to canvas plane
almost
3-D, reds off the prism of her canvas –
a bloodline pulse hypnotized.

I trust her intuitive
mix of paint

on canvas
like moist on skin.

LEAN, CHILLY (flavor added cutting away the fat)

Lean, Chilly


I prefer goose bumps on my thighs,
globes visible before a lean,
skin more 3-D and neon red
as fingertips graze, so light no prints
are left, concentric rings identifying me

as the one who knows
you like the first person who makes
a map to you.
Happy enough to find
the first fold, I’m lucky.
The rings on my fingertips
have a life of their own,
have
a way
of expanding umbrella
to the blue sky of branches,
filters of light through thick leaves

to the love I’m feeling –
decisively switchy,
curious if I
could pass for a boy, tuxedo
shirt hips blended to waist
by cummerbund.
You hold on to your center
at the fantasy,
breasts bewitching
enough to disappear
for the sake of our movie,

in which we suspend our disbelief, suspend
our briefs,
and swan our necks and legs through loops
of skin, that
defy
what is on the screen,
small or panoramic.

2006 Vermont College Packet 1

Kinda (type cast to a closure that won't dye)

Kinda

I say "kinda" a lot, lately,
lazy for “kind of,”
like how persons or poetry
are beyond type.

I know there is an industry,
sophistication
in posing letters on a page,
giving alphabets

as many lives as their readers.

From Arial to Helvetica

(flighty to Swissy,
air of flight,
cheesy of humor,
holes in my theories
of life, love, and light;
or veteran etiquette
tickling surface of erotica –
svelte
or felt)

From Bazooka to Cezanne

(sometimes faking,
of having a blast,
or shot
at wild party –
fizz of cola, or champagne,
campaign
to get attention of her across a room,
heiress of Champs de Elysses;
or hotels of Ritz, casino
cards, die and chips
tossed and stacked –
one eye on the table,
the other across the room,
at who she’d rather
toss, stack on whim of bed
and tumble)

To Serific, or Courier New
(calligraphic pattern of short,
calculated strokes,

subtle of view
in the making,
then graphic
length on skin,
depth in soul;

until, after last breath
before sleep
from exhaustion
of dip and kiss;

her dream becomes memory,
stroke
of heart pausing

eye to eye across a room)

Vagabond to Verdana

(typography of grunge,
sophisticate of graffiti --

perhaps I’ll type cast my own,
Sophia of Loren,
Tucker of Sophie,
elegance to rib-tickling ribald

like front line

confrontation)

From Verdana to dot matrix

(the way Chuck Close
turned Polaroid portraits --
pixel rather than the pen,
the brush or the chisel
into wall-sized paintings,

dotted pattern
up close, devoid
of intimacy)

From Fortuna, a look of hand-textures,

(though probably more funds to Close
than Monet’s party scenes on a lawn,
view of river bank,
trees more alive, leaves
dabs of paint,
complexion of faces
methodical in dot placement –
embracing loveliness
from a happy life
more detailed in painting
than camera.

No illusion of chameleon
lies in a photo

in the era of manipulation,
of pixel and slant.

I vary in what I want.)

To Cuckoo, then Intrepid,

(I’m attracted to bold strokes,
or watercolors wet
enough to soak through a page –

fatten up a journal
like it had a life,

never for lack of meat
or drink –

wet dreams

sustenance of getting on,
riding a train
to the next town

or mound,

hungry all the time.)

2006 Vermont College / Melody Berning

(NOT) A VILLAINELLE (PROPER) FOR V. L.

(NOT) A VILLAINELLE (PROPER) FOR V.L.

"My idea of painting the perfect painting is one that captivates the viewer (and) no matter how far you walk away from it, it pulls you back like a magnet and won't let you go." – V. L. Cox


“They’re in my DNA,” she says of the circles.
They look like handmade wedding bands,
gold or silver wrought by the slam, miracle

of a hammer after the glow of a heated rod
reaches intensity for perfect strike, hands
for embrace of a lover, strokes given a nod

by a spirit in extraterrestrial Nebula. She translates
what can’t be explained, canvas plane
almost 3-D, reds off the prism. She waits

patiently, has the good fortune to feel her canvas,
its paints a bloodline to her. The viewer,
hypnotized by the ironically abstract, trusts

her intuitive mix of paints. If only a few stir
in the sensuality of how the color of rust
perfects a rush, she says she just can’t live without her.

Or, is it I exchange her for it, a painting’s lust-
re, her simpler truth of drawing circles as a child,
her beginnings circular, broader to embrace, just

the way it was, and is. I like the symbolic that’s wild.
Her paint on canvas like moist on skin,
I just can’t live without it. I’d walk down another aisle,

a dimension of V. L., villainelles and sestin-
as on colors for my six senses, synapses a blend,
overlap of sight, sound, touch, smell, taste, the sixth between

them all, where I step into a V. L. painting.
(Or does it step into me?) Captured, then opened,
it’s like her muse is given to generosity. There’s such a thing

as a villanelle proper. It’s not in my pen.
Colors splendid when a galaxy explodes, or stings,
like strings of lightning, only a V.L. can tell when

perfection meets, then melts, makes a painting like kin,
and a lover paint in pant, echoes to the viewer ring-
ing in her own circles, praying, "Don’t stop her!" Then,

she clicks the icon for save, ponders, "Will this be sent?"

Melody Berning (2006)

PLEXI (VCMFA PACKET 2) (ROUGH)

Plexi


After a lover leaves, a woman may talk
to her cats with more play
as if she’d left them for days. She learns
how to wad scrap paper just right for toss,
for the smaller cat to launch
her grace into the air, front paws
like human hands, catcher’s mitt and bat.
It might be a month before the cat
realizes the woman left tosses as well as her lover.

More bags are brought into the house.
Nothing seems to ever leave. The cats
sniff them down. A woman sniffs
a left-behind blazer, for scent of passion --
the perfume. Not the lover. If there were no cats,
if she’d lost custody, she’d crack the front door,
invite stray on to her couch -- the cat bold
enough to pretend she lives with her.
If there were no stray cat,
she may drink more milk hours into dawn,
from a glass from her childhood, thick enough
to survive decades of careless pour,
reckless stomp on plexi glass cover on counter.

If there were no plexi glass cover
on counter, a collage of stains might stay:
celery stalks’ juice dripping from elaborate threads
that hold the crunch, that made her cringe
as her lover chomped down. Chewed. Chomped.
The collage might be sweet tea stains,
or periodic au jus, or lemony crust of salt.
And if she’d stopped craving sour
before her lover left, would a craving
like that matter just enough to keep her?
To bring it all back?
The craving. Her lover? If there were no sour,

like lemon, or anger, would she let arguments
over misplaced books or bills or a blouse,
or mismatched socks, always her lover’s,
make a cringe inch to her face until laugh lines
are thickened to stretch for stress? If she
had no laugh lines, would that make her an actor,
or a valet, or a lady’s lady? Would a smile suffice?
If a smile sufficed, would that melt the ice?

If the ice-maker broke down, when her lover left,
would she think she didn’t deserve drinks on the rocks?
Would she miss cracks she used the quart measuring cup
for all her casserole dishes,
for the steeping of her tea,
for leftovers of soup, stew, or pasta strewn from a boil?

If she missed the orange-red pekoe blend,
was it, the sight -- or taste --
the way a slow pour makes ice in a glass crackle?
She recalls her lover the opposite.
No more than two pieces, no caffeine,
No sugar, please. Sarcasm to the please,
did it make any difference the sugar
came in packets, its patent Splenda --
as if a word brings an end to her patience,
makes her laugh for no reason?

And if she lost all patience,
would she throw up her arms,
hiss around the bedroom corner, unaware her lover
could hear an under breath whisper,
and she didn’t even lip sync?
Would the plexi glass over the sink countertop
ever be transparent, clear again?

Revision of poem formerly Dyed Hard - Packet 1 - VCMFA

There, I Said It

Flat on my back, arms
over my head,
numb to needles in leg,
aroused

at first, a memory of not
needing to fuck myself,

as
I could have you having me
anytime at all.

The first
fuck.
back against
portable fridge,
small in sense of my

five-one petite,
in flats --

skittish
at saying the word,
skittier over doing it,

horny enough
to wake you,

snatch

your angry voice
like the mythical
cat that inhales a sleeper's
soul before you gasp.

Melody Berning January 2006