'Searching for You' by Leonard Dabydeen -- A Review

Searching for You

By Leonard Dabydeen

A Review

I reviewed Leonard Dabydeen’s earlier collection of poetry, Watching You, a few years ago.  Watching You is the first collection of Tetractys poems; meaning the first book consisting entirely of the Tetractys form.  The Tetractys is a five-line syllabic form with the count as follows: 1-2-3-4-10.  It is based on Pythagorean number theory where the first four numbers add up to 10.  1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10, so in a way the last line syllabically gathers the first four lines.

In Dabydeen’s second book, Searching for You, the author continues with his exploration of the Tetractys form.  But in this volume Dabydeen has added Fibonacci poems as well.  The relationship between the two forms is intriguing.  The overall count for the Tetractys is 20 syllables.  Dabydeen uses the six-line form of the Fibonacci: 1-1-2-3-5-8, which also adds up to 20 syllables for the overall count.  The two forms are similar in the overall shape; both forms start with a one-count word, then they open up into longer lines, but the pacing of how they open differs.  In both forms the last line has the longest count.  The interplay between the two forms is one of the things which gives Searching some of its charm.  The book is a demonstration of how a syllabic line in English functions by using two forms with the same overall count, that share an overall shape, but with different distributions of that count.

Dabydeen’s approach to lineation is grammatical; each line forms a grammatical unit.  In overall structure, most of the poems are single sentence poems so that they flow from the opening one-count line to the end where the reader usually encounters the longest line.  (There are some exceptions where Dabydeen uses a reversed structure of the lines.)  The two forms both start with a one-count word; so they share that in common.  As in his previous book, the first line often consists of a pronoun, which makes sense.  It seems to me that in this second book, though, Dabydeen is more expansive in his choice of opening one-count words.  The opening word in forms like the Tetractys and Fibonacci carries a lot of weight; a single word of one count holds an entire line.  And Dabydeen draws us in with his opening words.

Dabydeen writes his poems based on his personal experience, often commenting on his own emotional state, current events, the plight of refugees, and landscapes, particularly at night.  There is also a strongly religious element threading through the collection.  Dabydeen’s Hinduism plays a prominent role and some of the poems are invocations or prayers to deities such as Krishna. 

Lonely as a Star

Dark

tonight

no moonlight

behind the clouds

I sit on this bench lonely as a star.

This is beautifully shaped.  The lineation is clear.  There is an elegant integration of the landscape with the author’s interior mood.  There is also a judicious use of rhyme, tonight/moonlight, which helps us to feel the sense of the form.  And there is a sonic resonance between dark/star which also helps to clarify the shape of the poem.

Here is another Tetractys:

Friendship

Each

moment

standing here

being with you

brings me closer to a wish coming true.

Again we see the well-crafted lineation and the judicious use of rhyme, you/true.  I also appreciate the way the first four lines tumble into the long closing line in a way that feels rhythmically natural.  It’s almost like you are hearing someone speaking this, pausing slightly at the end of each short line, and then opening their heart in the last, longer line.

Here is a seascape:

Sea

Now

the sea

beckons me

from the boardwalk

I watch waves rushing to shore quietly.

Not all of his Tetractys rhyme, but I admire the skillful, and natural, way that Dabydeen uses rhyme in a way that is unaffected.  Here is an unrhymed Tetractys:

My Watch

On

my watch

snowflakes dance

this cold morning

sunshine pretends to keep melting the snow.

There are 125 Tetractys poems.  These are followed by 76 Fibonacci poems.  Here are some prayers to Lord Krishna:

I

chant

your name

seek blessings

like flowers blooming

in a garden with trees of thorns.

We

live

this Age

in darkness

in Kali Yuga

free us from evil, Lord Krishna

I enjoyed reading the specifically religious poems in this collection; they add a deeper dimension to the collection.  Notice how in the second prayer to Krishna, Dabydeen starts two lines with ‘in’, while the last two lines use a mild end rhyme, Yuga/Krishna.  This gives the prayer a chant-like sound; I wonder how this prayer would sound put to music; I can almost hear the tune.

At times Dabydeen is philosophical:

So Much of Life

So

much

of life

is made up

of how we gather

all the things we do together.

Dabydeen is a major syllabic poet writing in English.  His two books are a significant contribution to the small, but growing, body of English syllabic verse.  His work is carefully constructed, wide ranging in topics, and imbued with both emotional and intellectual honesty.  His second book is a wonderful collection and I look forward to future publications.

Botany of Life

Let

me

take you

where flowers

bloom in abundance

it is the botany of life.

Searching for You:

A Collection of Tetractys & Fibonacci Poems

By Leonard Dabydeen

ISBN: 9781514409756

$19.99

Available from Amazon, Xlibris, or through Ingram Distribution.

Book Launch: Even in Winter

Book Launch: Even in Winter

I have just published my latest collection of poems.  It is called Even in Winter.  In this collection I take a new turn in how I have put the poems together.  Previous collections have been form specific: either the entire book was dedicated to a single form (such as Microcosmos which is dedicated to renga, or White Roses dedicated to haiku), or each section of the book is form specific.  An example is Lanterne Light which contains three collections of poems and all three collections are form specific; the lanterne, the tetractys, and the cinquain.

In Even in Winter I have mixed the forms, so the collection is not form specific.  All the poems are formal, but the forms are interspersed and not grouped into form specific collections.

Five forms are used: Etheree, Fibonacci, Lucas, the Even Sequence, and 100 Friends.  These forms are explained as part of the back matter in a section called ‘Afterthoughts’.  I felt that the different forms worked well with each other because all five of the forms share a similar overall shape.  All of the forms start with very short lines and then expand into longer lines.  What differs among the forms is the pace of the expansion.  Here is a quick look at the syllable counts for the five forms used in the collection:

Etheree:               1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10

Fibonacci:            1-1-2-3-5-8-13-21, etc.

Lucas:                  2-1-3-4-7-11-18-29, etc.

Even Sequence:   2-2-4-6-10-16, etc.

100 Friends:        2-4-2-4-6-4-6-8-6-8-10-8-10-12-10

I think of this collection as a kind of bouquet of forms.  Hopefully they are attractively arranged.  The collection covers a number of themes; nature and seasonality are central.  Spirituality and my commitments as a Quaker are woven into the collection, hopefully in a not too obtrusive way.  I think I would say that the overriding theme is the human relationship to eternity in an ephemeral world.

Even in Winter

ISBN: 9781514224649

118 pages

$12.00

Fibonacci Day for 2014!

Fibonacci Day – 2014

Guess what?  It’s Fibonacci Day.  I like to give a toast to Fibonacci poetry on this day because it is November 23^rd.  Numerically that is 11/23, and 1-1-2-3 is the syllable count for the first four lines of a Fibonacci poem.  Kind of neat how that works out.

The Fibonacci form has an exuberant feeling to me.  With its irregular count it communicates a kind of spontaneity.  The overall shape of the poem is to open up as each line become longer and longer.  It is a playful form.

Here is a Fibonacci I wrote recently:

Piercing the Veil

Warmth

Fall
No mist
October
Yet summer lingers
An old song on the radio
While I am having a scone and a cup of coffee
Slowly I wade into the stream of time to visit someone I danced with long ago.

Take a moment to compose a Fibonacci.  Here is the line count: 1-1-2-3-5-8-13-21-34, etc.  Most Fibonacci poems I have seen are six or seven lines; but a few have gone into the longer count lines. 

 

I like to use the opening very short lines, the first four lines with the count 1-1-2-3, to give the seasonal and/or temporal setting.  You can use words of time and words that mark the seasons; many of these are very short.  Months, for example, like ‘March’, ‘May’, and ‘June’, are good.  Some months are two syllables; April, July, and August.  Some are three count words; September through December.  You can also use terms like ‘First Month’, instead of ‘January’, so that you can set the time in the opening lines if the time is January. 

Other simple markers are things like ‘cold’, ‘hot’, ‘warm’.  Time of day is also a good topic for the opening lines; like ‘dusk’, ‘dawn’, ‘afternoon’, ‘mid-day’, ‘night’, etc.

You get the idea, which is basically to use the opening lines as seasonal and temporal designators.  With the longer lines you can then move into the more specific topic and specific focus of the poem you are writing.  In this way the poem’s focus moves from broad general strokes to the more specific.  I like the flow that such a Fibonacci produces.

Of course this is only one approach to the Fibonacci and it is in some ways linked to the esthetic I have imbibed from the Japanese poetic tradition where seasonal designation plays such a significant role.  The Fibonacci is a new form and has no weight of history behind it; there is no official Fibonacci Poetry Society or designated keeper of the Fibonacci true esthetic.  This means that when we write in the Fibonacci form we can take it whatever direction we like without feeling like we have violated an inherited tradition.  Personally, I enjoy applying some of the esthetic principles from other traditions to the Fibonacci, including the use of rhyme and seasonal or temporal placement.  Transferring these approaches from a form like haiku and tanka to the Fibonacci seem to me a viable strategy; at least it works for me.  Perhaps you might also find it efficacious. 

Just a few thoughts to share on Fibonacci Day.  

 

 

 

 

 

Fibonacci Day for 2013

Good Morning:

I've been extra busy at work so my posting pace has slowed down.  But I wanted to take a moment to celebrate the Fibonacci.  I celebrate the Fibonacci syllabic form on November 23rd because when written in numbers it is 11/23.  These are the syllabic count for the first four lines of a Fibonacci: 1-1-2-3.  Continuing, the form is 1-1-2-3-5-8-13, etc.

Take a moment to go visit the Fib Review.  Or take a moment to pen a Fibonacci on your own.  I find the Fibonacci to be an exuberant form; it starts slow and then takes off.  A friend of mine started written them and told me she found them kind of 'addicting'.  I think it is the exuberance which is so attractive.

Give it a try -- you will enjoy it.

Archaeology

Soup
Rice
Spring rolls
Sweet and sour
The Chinese rest'rant
I take a break for an hour
I turn off the cell phone so it won't have the power
To disrupt my excavating a poem from an uncarved block where it's trapped, where it glows

Embodied

Poems
Songs
Rhythms
Clapping hands
The pulse of a band
Hawking wares from a sidewalk stand
An a capella choir sings praises to the sky
At a family gathering a newborn baby sometimes giggles and sometimes cries.

Untitled

Sky
Grey
Morning
Subdued tones
Coffee and a scone
The July field littered with stones
The song of a bird blends with the ring of my cell phone

Geek and Form

Geek and Form

Yesterday I published a Fibonacci Poem called ‘Geek Poetry’.  The background of this poem consists of some conversations I recently had regarding Fibonacci poetry. 

I work at a Spiritual Book and Tea Shop.  The Book part of the shop is kind of new agey; though we strive to also have depth in each of the religious sections by including central texts of each tradition.  Still, New Age sells.  We have a section on Numerology.  Last week a customer purchased about seven books from the Numerology section, including several books that are specifically about the Fibonacci sequence and numbers.  As he was checking out we struck up a conversation; it isn’t often that someone purchases books on Fibonacci from our store and I was curious.  I mentioned that I wrote Fibonacci poems.  He was aware of Fibonacci poetry, though the customer is not himself a poet.  It turns out he is a mathematician with a focus on mathematical sequences; hence the interest in Fibonacci.  But he finds the Fibonacci poetry attractive and interesting.  Then he said, “Have you ever considered using the Lucas?”  And I got to respond, “Yes, as a matter of fact, I have written some Lucas poems.” 

The Lucas sequence is another numerical sequence generated using the same additive procedures as the Fibonacci.  The difference is that the Lucas sequence begins with the number 2 and 1, whereas the Fibonacci starts with 0 and 1.  Hence the Lucas sequence is 2 – 1 – 3 – 4 – 7 – 11 – 18, etc.  (The Fibonacci sequence is 1 – 1 – 2 – 3 – 5 – 8 – 13, etc.)  There are interesting relationships between the numbers in the Fibonacci and Lucas sequences.

Anyway, as I was saying, back to the customer, he smiled when I said I had written some Lucas poems.  Unfortunately, he had an appointment to get to, so our conversation drew to a hasty close.  But the last thing he said as he walked out the door was, “Geek poetry, I love it.”

The second conversation about Fibonacci I had was with a friend, I’ll call him George, who loves poetry and even teaches a class in poetry at a Junior College once a year.  George teaches a formless approach, or a free verse approach, to poetry because he believes introducing students to formal elements will make them feel bad about themselves.  George is a therapist by profession and views poetry as a means to a therapeutic end.  For this reason, no rules are to be introduced because it might interfere with ‘self-expression’ and the therapeutic goal. 

When I published ‘Safe Harbor’ through Createspace I gave my friend George a copy.  The second collection in the book consists of Fibonacci poems.  George asked me about them.  I told George about the Fibonacci sequence and how the numerical sequence can be applied to the syllable count to generate a formal, syllabic, structure.  George was not pleased; in fact he frowned.  He then said, “What does that do for you?”  Doesn’t that just strike you as the kind of question a therapist would ask?

My answer was general, not form specific.  I talked about how surrender to the parameters of a form focuses the mind, how it gives the poet a sense of joining a community of poets who share an interest in the form.  But from George’s point of view such a procedure is limiting; it impinges on self-expression and that is a bad thing.  As usual when it comes to poetry, George and I disagreed.

For the mathematician customer, who delights in the world of numbers, applying a numerical sequence, such as the Fibonacci or Lucas, to syllabics made immediate sense.  This is because for such a mathematician numbers are a felt presence.  Because numbers are a felt presence, and in some sense inherently esthetically attractive, it makes intuitive sense to use those numbers, and numerical sequences, for poetic purposes.  For the therapist, poetry has become completely subjective and functions as a vehicle for self-expression.  From this perspective using a specific numerical sequence, such as the Fibonacci or Lucas, subverts the therapeutic purpose because the adoption of such a sequence is not, from a therapeutic point of view, an example of self-expression; the sequence comes from ‘outside’.  This affirms what I have suspected for some years; namely that the therapeutic point of view is subversive of formal poetry in general.

The final conversation regarding Fibonacci happened just a few days ago; also at the store.  The store uses window washers who come to the store once a month.  They are a couple.  They wash most of the store windows on Main Street.  Usually the husband is the one who washes our windows.  As they have been washing our windows for over ten years I have got to know them over time.  At one point, about six years ago, I had to attend traffic school and she was also a member of the class; we got to commiserate with each other about how unfair it all was; but we also whispered funny, snarky, asides to each other during class. 

In other words, I have grown fond of both of them over the years.  This month I gave him a copy of ‘Safe Harbor’ after he washed the windows.  A few days after receiving it he dropped by to tell me how he and his wife were reading the poems to each other and enjoying them.  He mentioned specifically liking the Fibonacci group of poems.  I, of course, liked getting this kind of feedback.  I also liked that they specifically enjoyed the Fibonacci poems; not because they know about numerical sequences, but just because they liked the shape and the subject matter.  This was not a geek’s response, just the response of someone enjoying the poems as written.  And it was not a therapeutic response either; at least not in the sense that they were concerned about poetry as self-expression.

My own view, as often stated here, is that syllabic poetry is a craft; like pottery or baking or carpentry.  Composing a Fibonacci poem resembles a potter deciding to make a cup.  A cup has, broadly speaking, a form.  If a potter decides to make a cup, that decision functions to determine a large number of decisions for the potter.  Similarly, a syllabic poet crafting a poem in accordance with an objective form (a form whose parameters, or shape, are exterior to any specific poet) will yield to the shape of that form.  If a syllabic poet decides to compose a Fibonacci certain consequences follow, such as the opening very short lines.  Just as the potter accepts the limitations of what it means to shape a cup, the syllabic poet accepts the limitations of the Fibonacci (or other syllabic form).

The potter makes a cup and, hopefully, someone will be attracted to its craftsmanship and then use the cup at home, or the office, to drink from.  The syllabic poet makes a poem of a specific shape and, hopefully, others will find it attractive and enjoy reading it.  This is, I think, what keeps the syllabic poet engaged with form. 

Geek Poetry

X
Y
Counting
Conforming
It is like a game
(Ev'ry game of chess is the same?)
Some people, I suspect, think that this is kind of lame,
Counting those syllables without any sense of shame,
But it's all good, no one's to blame --

It's not about fame,
It's about
Beauty
Shape
Form

Kotodama

Frost
Dawn
Cold walk
Slow morning
A golden sunrise --
Then an unexpected surprise
When images and thoughts about my mother arise;
In particular I can recall the challenging look that would appear in her eyes
When someone would misuse a word my mother would sigh,
Lean forward and then she would try
To explain that words
Are alive,
Like thyme,
Oaks,
Grass, . . .

"Olives" by A. E. Stallings: A Review

Stumbling Upon Syllabic Verse

A Review of A. E. Stallings “Olives”

I enjoy it when I stumble upon syllabic verse in unexpected places.  In particular, when I am reading a poet who is not known for taking a syllabic approach, and then I find some syllabic verse, usually tucked away in the middle of a volume, it gives me a sense of satisfaction.  Because I am interested in English language syllabic verse, and because a syllabic approach to English language poetry is still marginal, having such verse appear in unexpected places resembles for me a prospector finding a few choice nuggets.  It also signals to me that syllabic verse is becoming more of an acceptable option in English language poetry circles.

These encounters are of two types.  The first type is when a free verse poet decides to write some syllabic verse.  The second type is when a metrical poet decides to engage with some specific syllabic form.  (Because syllabic verse is still a fringe approach for English language poetry it is extremely rare to find a poet who does not have a non-syllabic background; the only exception I know of is Elizabeth Daryush.)

I always learn something from these encounters because the poets bring to the task of writing syllabically their own background, talents, and tendencies, based on their standard approach to poetry.  For example, Hayden Carruth’s Haiku have the jagged syntax typical of his free verse.  I learned from Carruth’s Haiku how it is possible to have a very dense phrase structure; it surprised me how Carruth was able to do this and gave me an opening to a new way of looking at a Haiku line.  Another example is Mary Jo Salter’s Haiku, which have a lyrical quality to them and a sparkling sense of image and metaphor.  Richard Wilbur’s Haiku Stanzas use rhyme so skillfully, and in a way I haven’t been used to, that they also teach another way to organize Haiku lineation.  Salter and Wilbur are metrical poets and bring a strong sense of rhythm to their syllabic poems based on that affiliation.

A recent example of this kind of encounter is A. E. Stallings’ newest book, “Olives”, published in 2012.  I have read Stallings earlier book, “Hapax”; which I believe is her second collection.  I haven’t read her first collection.

Stallings already has garnered many awards and honors.  She is a metrical poet of great skill; she reminds me of Richard Wilbur, but more sardonic (see, for example her poem in “Olives” titled “The Mother’s Loathing of Balloons”).  I particularly enjoy her sonnets where her constructions are deft and enticing.  Stallings also is a master rhymester, often surprising us with the breadth of the field of rhyme she draws from.

Because of Stallings focus on the traditional metrical approach to poetry, it came as a pleasant surprise to find in “Olives” four Fibonacci poems.  She refers to them collectively as “Four Fibs”, capitalizing on the affectionate nickname for Fibonacci. 

As in previous encounters of this type, Stallings brings with her to a syllabic form the distinctive qualities of her primary focus; that is to say I can recognize the metrical background in her Fibonacci.  She also incorporates a lot of rhyme into her Fibonacci which, again, is brought over from her great skill in rhyming metrical verse.

Here is the first Fibonacci from ‘Four Fibs’:

Did

Eve

believe

or grapple

over the apple?

Eavesdropping Adam heard her say

to the snake-oil salesman she was not born yesterday.

This is a great example of a Fibonacci.  The lineation is clear, mostly due to the skillful use of rhyme.  The rhyme scheme is A-B-B-C-C-D-D.  After the initial Line 1, we have a series of rhymed couplets and even though the lines are of irregular length, it holds together because the rhyme signals to the reader where the line breaks fall.  Also worth noting is the repetition of rhyme for the initial syllable in lines 2, 3, and 6.

It’s worth noting that two of the other Fibs have rhyme schemes that are even tighter than this one, using only three rhymes.  The last Fib uses five.

Also included in “Olives” are a set of Haiku Stanzas titled, ‘Blackbird Etude’.  Like Richard Wilbur, Stallings incorporates the rhyme scheme such that the first and third lines of each stanza end-rhyme.  And like Wilbur’s stanzas there is that pleasing balance of rhyme-defined run-on lines combined with lines where the rhyme and grammatical structure coincide.  ‘Blackbird Etude’ is a nature poem; imbibing the nature centered esthetic of traditional Haiku, focusing in particular on the territorial call of blackbirds.  Here are the concluding verses:

It sounds like ardor,

it sounds like joy.  We are glad

here at the border

where he signs the air

with his invisible staves,

TRESSPASSERS BEWARE –

song as survival –

a kind of pure music which

we cannot rival.

It has been my observation that most poets who come to syllabic verse do so from free verse; that was my own route.  Because free verse has a strong tendency to avoid rhyme poets who come to syllabic verse from free verse have a tendency to mimic that avoidance of rhyme when they grapple with a syllabic form.  Again, that was my personal tendency for a number of years.  The breakthrough for me was discovering Emily Dickinson; she showed me how effective rhyme can be in short form verse and really opened me up to rhyme in a syllabic context even though Dickinson herself is a metrical poet.

Metrical poets who decide to compose in a syllabic form tend to be more open to the usage of rhyme in a syllabic context.  This is because defining lines through rhyme is standard in metrical verse; so it is, I suspect, almost instinctive for a metrical poet to bring their well-honed skill in rhyming to a syllabic context.  Both Richard Wilbur and, now, A. E. Stallings are examples of this.

The Stallings Fibonacci are all seven lines long, which is one line longer than most Fibonacci I have seen.  The syllable count for a seven line Fibonacci is: 1-1-2-3-5-8-13.  Stallings’ works contain examples of short lined and long lined poems; so I can see how she would enjoy going for the slightly longer count.

“Olives” also contains sonnets in various, and sometimes startling, configurations; my favorite is ‘Fairy-Tale Logic’. And there is a compelling Villanelle, ‘Burned’.  And, of course, there are other poems that are well honed metrical lyrics.  All the poems are carefully crafted through the skillful metrical approach that is central to her work.  The whole volume is a treat.  Get a copy; I think you will enjoy it.

(Olives, A. E. Stallings, Triquarterly Books, Northwestern University Press, ISBN: 9780810152267, $16.95, Published 2012)

Retail

Lunch
Late
Long day
Afternoon
Busy holidays
The shoppers want a lot of help
With each passing hour we empty the store shelf by shelf

Keeping Track of Time

Days
Months
Phases
Of the moon --
When I've time to look
Appointments marked in my datebook

Fibonacci Day -- Hooray!

This will have to be a short post because I've been out of town visiting my brother and his family.  But I couldn't let the day pass without reminding all of us that today is Fibonacci Day.  November 23rd is 11/23; the first four syllable counts of the first four lines of the Fibonacci.  The six line form is: 1 - 1 - 2 - 3 - 5 - 8.  The seven line form is 1 - 1 - 2 - 3 - 5 - 8 - 13.  It is an opended form, but the six line and seven line forms are the most frequent.

Fib's, as they are affectionately called, are great fun.  Write a Fib today.  Visit the Fib Review (listed at the side of this blog).  Tell friends about Fibs; they will appreciate it.

Hooray for the fascinating Fibonacci!!!

Why Friends Stay in Touch

Why Friends Stay in Touch

Herbs

Steeped

Tisanes

Peppermint

After the sun’s set

After the week’s work has ended

While reading another chatty letter from a friend

Who moved away, how many years ago? (now that I think about it, it’s more than ten);

We keep meaning to get together but life’s complicated and our schedules don’t seem to match up for a shared time and place or a shared when,

Which is completely understandable since after receiving a truly superb job offer in his field (the rise and fall of large mammals during and following the most recent ice age) he packed up and moved to England;

But I have an affection for our correspondence via the ancient practice of letters which I read and re-read on Saturday nights with my cup of tea to keep me company as I carefully reply to his observations while adding my own along with highlights from the days of my life, which I sign with my favorite pen, fold with care, stamp, and send.

On Friendship

Talk
Lunch
Chatter
Catching up
Filling in the gaps
Of the days and months that have passed,
It is amazing how the lunch hour goes by so fast.

Why They Parted

Shouts
Screams
Anger
Poisoned words
Reverberations
Rippling through the rooms of the house,
Wave after wave polluting the days that will follow,
Like a cunning plague infected rat maliciously spreading its flea-bitten sorrow

Gift River

Grace
Faith
Kindness
Compassion
Received from the source
It is the end of all remorse
Like the plum that is blossoming in the winter snow
The heart slowly opens though surrounded by sin in the presence of this endless flow

Mirages Everywhere

Dark
Light
The two
Or neither
The inbetween land
Like shapes briefly seen in the sand

As Night Begins

Dusk
Slow
Days end
At the store
I turn out the lights
I make sure that I lock the door