Showing posts with label practice. Show all posts
Showing posts with label practice. Show all posts

Monday, March 9, 2020

Laundry

With a bit of care and
Prompt attention maybe
I won’t stink

Working at the stains of
Messy practice
Blood and sweat
--A smear of chocolate--
Perhaps I can
Clean up my act

If nothing else a
Bracing rinse of vinegar
A good brisk wash
Will yield a clean white slate

Tempting me to
Try again



Friday, August 12, 2016

Rumpus

Some systems focus on the arm, wrist, fingers
Synched for elegant conclusions:
Coupe, glissade, a clever bind or crafty disengage

Some bang on speed and power
Bigger, badder, faster
Training youth to send
Feet flying down the strip

Our salle’s attention lies—well, somewhere in between

Below the waist, above the knees
To be precise—the buns, butt, tooshie, tuchus, derriere

You’d be amazed to learn the
 Numbered permutations for
The angle, depth and flexibility of
Glutei—both minimus and max

Are you squatting deep enough?
Is your tailbone scooping in, or out?
Are your hips, the muscled cradles of the bum
Loose enough to sway and boogie with the best?
Limbered up to launch a proper lunge?

Now you have the key decoding
Covert coaching signals from our staff
When next you see them stripside
Throwing opaque signals
seemingly to make us
Hula, samba, sashay on the piste
You'll know they're only trying to
help us land the touch we missed















Monday, February 23, 2015

The Giving War

You gift me a
Well-considered bruise
Bestowed with grace and
Chased with chaste massage to
Mitigate the pain

I reciprocate by
Nearly taking out your knee
Formidable contusion

This pacific interchange, this
Tit-for-tat
Yields dented masks, torn socks
--but rarely ends in stitches--

We're merely swapping marks of
Tangible affection
A catalog tattooed upon the hand and arm and leg
A testament to friendships sealed with
Just a little bit of blood



Sunday, August 24, 2014

Epiphany

So much force
Ending in such
Delicate assault

Arcing over parries rendered moot
Aiming at the sky yet
Homing in on target, sight unseen

Forging a quantum blade that is both
Here
and there

Establishing the virtues of an
Indirect approach

Lessoning on this
--Suspending disbelief--
I realize that 
Flicking is as close to faith as
I may ever know




Sunday, September 29, 2013

Tutorial


Every time that something starts to work, you
Make it harder
Dangling an elegant new skill
Effective
Deadly
Just beyond my reach
An exercise in
Escalating scales

Seems like lessons are the process of
Sequential failure
Always seeking for the next thing
I can’t do
Plowing on past mastery to find where
I fall short

A blade-thin line divides
Complacent competence from
Terminal frustration

I realize, in my random motes of wisdom
However much I long for comfort
Kudos, praise
This is the learning zone:
The razored edge between
Discomfort and perfection

Thursday, July 19, 2012

Summer Practice


Sweat exceeds the common sodden quota
Even my stodgy non-electric bib
Conducts

Socks creep down
Knickers giving way to shorts (the heat
More painful than the prospect of a bruise or two)

An increase in aestival truancy
Teammates disappear and re-emerge
Skin a searing bronze against their laundered uniforms

We horse around with silly moves unlikely to
Succeed in competition
But then again…they might

Lazy nights that end in talk of
Nothing much
Conversations I will treasure, and forget

Friday, July 6, 2012

Teammates


I don't learn alone

We practice in entangled states
Each move you master
Forces me to counter, ensuring
We progress at
Somewhat equal rates

Your prodding feet push me along
Your triumphs
Buoy me up your
Setbacks add to my
Determination

As I forge ahead you
Keep me grounded in
Reality
Puncturing pretense,
With ruthless informality

When you level up my
Jealousy is tempered by my
Pride
("See, that move? She worked on that so long!")
Knowing that I I helped in
My own minor way

In this commensal state
We take turns to study & to teach
Proving what is possible
Demonstrating what's within our reach

We're all of us interdependent
Remember that, when your star is ascendant

Saturday, May 12, 2012

Induction


When fencing Otter
My feet try to
Bounce, to
Flow
Attempting speed, fluidity
That doesn't live within these
Aging bones

With Tabby
Suddenly my tip's aloft
Contemplating phantom flicks
For which my blade is
Much too thick

Facing the
Hungarian
My gait's a clumsy mimic of his
Levitating glide, his
Seamless segue to a
Disengage and lunge

And so, throughout the salle--
With Werewolf, whacks
With Dormouse,
Bouncing up & down

Why can't I simply
Fence like me?
Be true to
Badger self
Content to tease, and dance, and
Squirm

Instead, my opponents
Hypnotic, or
Magnetic
Draw me to their
Comfort zone
And out of mine

Perhaps I need a talisman of my echt self, my ur-identity
An anchor to my undiluted Badgerosity

Sunday, April 8, 2012

Sudate Profits


Sweaty clothes
Expand

This uniform that fit so
Neatly in my
Bag
At 6 o’clock, now overflows, and
Barely lets me
Zip

Just so, I hope my perspiration swells my
Repertoire
Bulks up my
Skill &
Salts my game

I find it funny that this
Sodden practice may, in time, ensure
My fencing doesn’t stink

Sunday, December 4, 2011

Instars

Convincing Caterpillar she will
Wake with wings...
A real hard sell
Even tougher?
Delivering the news that she
Will not

Some of us
Straining to transform
Rise each morning
Pretty much the same
Despite the vigor of our
Practice
Night before

Me, I take the strip with
Hopeless optimism that
This time will be different
Better
Innate flaws in execution
Magically smoothed
Stubborn intent translated into
Reformation
Hard work finally
Paid off

Instead,
I stutter step
Exhibit merely
Incremental growth
Minor tweaks in
Habits and behavior

Maybe metamorphosis is
Only for the young

And yet, (sweet Jesu, here we go again), might I feel chrysaline tonight?

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Palimpsest

I feel raw

Scraped and overwritten
Reused, Repurposed
Pumiced
Milked clean

Layered shreds of
Stratigraphic codices
Documenting
Educative eras past
Ghostly underwriting
Intermingled
Texts
New-found wisdom bleeds
Into the old
Resurfacing at
Most peculiar angles

I find this overlay
Yields
Neologic teachings
Fragmented stratums
Systems disparate yet
Synched

A caution, if you think you can erase the past
And start anew,
Indelible notations may prove tricky to redo

Friday, June 3, 2011

Interception

It's about control…
Or lack thereof

Without the confidence to
Take my game and
Shove it down your throat,
Force you to submit

I badger and I bait
Deconstructing what unfolds
Trusting I can handle
What goes down

Making the best of
My unstable game
Maybe I can commandeer your moves
Shape them to my ends

Provoking opportunities
Seeking reagents for a catalytic act

Thursday, May 26, 2011

Play Date

No score
What a great subversive twist!
A psychic liberation
No hormone-ridden clash, no angst
Just curious experiments
Empiric testing of hypotheses in
Endless permutations

We set the timer and
Proceed to frisk
Open-ended forays leading
Who knows where
Digressions, loops and ambulations
Testing a then b then c
Progressive iterations

Prototyping possible assaults, I
Coax my hand and feet to
Execute the code
And fail
But failing, find another possibility
The germ of innovation

Friday, May 6, 2011

Clarity

Each of us seeks truth
In her own way
Upon the mat, the piste
The page
Chasing metaphoric ice
Dumped down the neck
—rude awakenings are preferable
to sleep—
Losing balance
Stretching for the touch
Groping for the perfect metered word
Stumbling on
Pellucid acts
Slicing through the ambient confusion

Sometimes caught in
Preparation
Unbraced for the damage
Truth, unbound, inflicts

Saturday, April 30, 2011

CrossWord

So many clues…
The eagerness or caution of your steps
The shadow of your parry when I feint
The angle of your blade as
You prepare offense

Still, I struggle to detect the theme
Fill in the blanks
Fumbling with possibilities that
Seem to fit, but later prove
Just one letter off

You cleverly disguise the import of your acts
Throwing me
Misleading hints,
False leads,
Puns and misdirections

Surrounded by the residue of failed attempts,
Disparate answers that won’t integrate
I mutter curses as I
Regroup, reformulate my thoughts
Grope for another phrase

As I reset the score and start again, the lesson’s clear
Never write your strategy in ink
Earnestly try to make erasable mistakes