A Sly Tropical Breeze of Violet, Aquamarine and Sunshine
Fuchsia, the color of being self-satisfied and over-easy. And gold, like the robe tassels of Nigist MaKeda of Sheba, empress. Sometimes eyes are dark purple like spilled wine and I tremble. Yes, that is you, an olive- drab demeanor, the yellow-plum humor of a lingering bruise. Around your head, concord-grape colored thoughts so loud you wear a hat to hold in the noise. And when you don’t, and the neighbors call the police you simply turn up the green to mute it; fingers, the bronze color of Incan spear tips, caught in the cookie jar. That is you, a sly tropical breeze of violet, aquamarine and sunshine; you, so fuchsia, you seek out birds before they seek you.
A Flash of Red
There are decades between us
now. Even echoes
quietly fade outside
to find shadows
beneath the trees,
watch strangers pass
on cracked
sidewalks.
I think of you
as I sift through a song,
but you are not
the notes that dance
in the branches with a flash
of red, or the bit of silence
that warms itself
on a leaf,
here in my hand–you are alone
in a window
on the second floor.
I can see you move the curtain
back, and there
at last, the red
sweater is visible,
just for a moment,
before you move away.
You must do something,
and I understand.
I will be you, in a few more
stanzas, and we both know
the poem ends
in red.
I Didn't Want to Say Blue by Juan Pablo Vieytez
You can blink and imagine
the motion of a belly dancer,
the executioner’s eyes,
or the haze of distance, if you like.
I didn’t want to say
blue: there is so much
we hand out anyway:
our bodies, credit card
numbers, secrets
on the telephone. Pick it up
and already your name is carried
out by the tide
to a distant country,
where bananas and camarones
are sold at the intersections.
But this was going to be a poem
about the sea,
the way the dark
shadows across the water
warm by belly
back into song.
Nothing is impossible for words.
Give a child a coin
and you can hear the “gracias”
slip in and out of you
like a knife: words
here will never be as strong
as the empty hand in the street.
Faces in the rain
pressed like wet leaves
against your window
remind you
all dreams are possible.
Language of Crystal Formations
You will never find it
if you try,
but know that if you walked out
to look around for a while
it would be happy.
This is language written in crystal
formations, icy lines, cold logic,
and when it catches light
its stanzas change:
it moves into an ode,
or gathers a new voice for a moment:
something that should not be said–
even here, with all this quiet
light–
Come over here:
it likes to see and feel
your warm breath,
but not too close,
not now, you might change it
into something else, something
darker, with another tone:
the poem you must find alone.
Still Life by Alexander Scott Mosel
for Peg Mosel
Start with the curve of his cheek
that points the way to his eyes-
two black coals that steal light
from heaven with every blink
and lead us home.
Now, he jumps and skips
in place, each step closer
to what he knows is just one bounce
from eternity, or at least enough
to make a well-trained boxer jealous.
He leans into his smile
with just the right amount
of tease: holding back a little
means he loves you a lot.
Soon, he learns to draw flowers,
his fingers holding chalk
meant for Picasso in another time.
Here, he is ours, for now,
his art like rose petals
just behind my eyes
that move slightly in the breeze
when the dream that sleeps
there, for him alone,
begins to stir.
Our Need to Be Here
They move in shadows
and voices beyond us who do not
speak or hear this language:
the silence the earth
wakes up to in whisper:
the stories of humpbacks
who call to each other
in the dark blue, luring us
softly down, where our dreams
intermingle with the shape
of the water, the pull
of the moon: our need
to be here
stronger than our need
to breathe
or understand.
While the Poem Waits
Notes of the mundane
chime in my brain
while the poem waits.
Hope is the last pick-up line
I have, dawn’s drum.
I can hear it in the house,
Salvador’s rain tapping
the rooftops of old stanzas.
Books line the shelves
unopened, little heart beats
without ears.
They won’t listen.
They have already been
where the rain is going,
and I don’t know
how to stop it.
An Aesthetic Invitation
Imagine nothing belongs in the house but white daisies
catching the autumn light
on the dining room table:
This is the reason
we are in love, she says,
as she walks over to her favorite painting:
an aesthetic invitation
to go sailing
and have lunch near the water.
Imagine there is more here than art
taking shape from her desire:
there is a room full of birds
flying in circles
near the ceiling, a forest
where the echoes of a chain saw splinter
the kitchen’s perfunctory order.
Imagine she closes the door and draws water
for her evening bath. Her husband
goes out and returns
with cold milk, white eggs:
she thanks him, they kiss–
they watch their son read
about a train chugging up a mountain
loaded with fruit and bread.
Imagine, outside, their daughter builds
mud pies and talks to dogs and toads.
Imagine that soon, only moonlight
will find them,
only darkness will know
their names.
What Does Salvation Cost?
Carefully, like giving a balloon
to a child. You can tell them
all you want: hold on tightly,
don’t let go,
but the result
is the same: someone on the way
to heaven, someone lost
in the clouds,
someone barely visible,
a dot now
in memory, someone gone.
What does salvation cost,
he thinks to himself,
how long does it take
to rise?
There are deep craters
in the eyes of some patients.
Places you do not want to go.
Call out the darkness,
he remembers, give it color.
Close your eyes tight
watch the blood swirl
out of the iris and form
a kaleidoscope of cells
in your mind. Give it a name.
Name it the last thing you remember
as true. Call this
the color of the sky.
I'm a Puddle-Lover
I’m a puddle-lover,
she said,
and I fell in love
all over again.
The day was rainy gray
as you’d expect in the
December Northwest,
but four words
and a splash and a giggle
brought back September’s sunshine
and thawed my soul,
so I jumped in
with all my years and worries
and the weight lifted
as I renewed my affair with puddles.
I giggled and she laughed
and I fell in love again.
A Miracle in Their Eyes
We can tell by their faces
there is a miracle in their eyes.
Sometimes we forget their story,
the story of parents alone
for the first time
with new life in their hands
and in their eyes.
There is no other happiness now
in the world,
and in their eyes
we see the answers to all our
hopes and dreams,
for what they see
is every prayer answered,
and what we understand
is love. For today
and always,
this is everything.
I Think I Mean It This Time, Stars
Once I finally arrived, I nodded
to the Doug Firs – hello, hello, hello –
descended to the dock, dropped a cooler
and a fishing pole next to the seat cushion
and shoved off. The high half moon meant it was late,
but I needed to be in the middle of something
without moving lips, without expensive shoes, without hands
always reaching to shaft, shake or take.
I rowed for a while and the yellow highway lines
disappeared beneath lily pads. All the cosmopolitan humans
starved for nakedness and assimilation swirled under
whirlpools oars made. Even your latest fuck you!
broke over the bow as a small-mouth bass jumped in the distance.
Have your city windowed in muslin draperies.
Have your big-dollar tabs and high-browed intimacies.
Here, singing bullfrogs
make more love and money between passing clouds
than your old-time decorative storefronts ever will.
So, I’m alone with two oars and a fishing pole –
some beer and night
not needing to be coaxed
from her clothes. Alone in a boat that floats over
what’s real and wet and alarmingly close
to what I’ve always wanted to get away from: you, so
small-town big dream, so awkward, unrefined,
disinterested and
apologetic. But now, under this sky, I think I really can
learn to love from where I’ve come. I think
I mean it
this time, stars. No shit.
He Built It Himself, with His Pen
I am not talking about Joseph Bastow, the man who now lives in a house made of stone somewhere in Michigan and frequently writes for this site. I am talking about the Writer (Actually the Poet, but that is the subject of another story), who was born in the house that you see here.
Unlike human beings, Joe had a mother who was made of the most intensely beautiful ink, and a father who was made of languge not of this earth. Shortly after their wedding, which took place on a blank page in Heaven, they bought this house. Soon, little baby Joe was born. His mother nursed him with the alphabet. They were very happy. It is a sweet house, no stones or bones, and there are lots of beautiful activities that occur inside. Come on, don’t be shy. Let’s take a peek.
If you look through one of the front-door windows, you will see Joe as he sits near the fireplace. He strokes his beard, stares at the flames, waits for the magic to come back to his pen. Occasionally he walks around and runs his hand along the wall, and then he scratches his nose and beard. When he does so, he catches the faint smell of graham cracker and candy cherries on his fingers. He smiles and sits down again, for the smell, you see, has begun to help him to write once more. He touches the pen to the paper, and he writes for an hour or so, but to him it is complete rubbish. He wants to find that voice again. It is a voice he knows well, but he is reluctant to give in to it, almost as if he is tied to a leash of his own creation.
Even for a truly ascetic monk, sometimes it is difficult to have faith, and it is no different for Joe. As he questions his faith and all of its multitudinous structures and formalities, he becomes one of the most religious people I know, especially when he writes. So after abandoning the voice for long enough, he returns to the objects of his faith and finds the neighborhood around him dripping with the sweet ink of the voice:
Angels plug in Christmas
tree lights across the street. Baby Jesus is
a cardboard cut-out in Mary’s arms
suction cupped on your front
door. Inside, carolers bleat . . .
There, in the language of object juxtaposed with veneration, he finds reason to praise. Maybe he has not recognized it himself, but in finding the voice at all, he elevates us, and gives us, the most fleeting of all, reason to praise.
Reason to praise. Maybe this is why I have frequently called him a religious man. Outward appearance, here, means nothing. Only in the infinite spaces inside the unseen, where the eternals wait to be called forth, does the writer find himself and, simultaneously, elevates the spirit of humanity. Joe does this in a house made of his own faith. He built it himself, with his pen.
Some people never begin.
Note: the most fleeting of all is a reference to poet Rainer Maria Rilke.
An Appetite for Beauty
All the neighborhood hounds
begin to howl. I swear
I was about to tell you
what happens when we see
beauty, but the notes
seemed to tame me
as I went along
framed by things.
I could stop here,
but this poem
is a dog. Lift you hand.
He won’t bite, but you may
find yourself
lifting your leg and stepping
into the canvas.
Now we are getting somewhere.
There are two squash
on the windowsill, and three leaves
falling above them
tickled by light. It’s true,
too perfect
to be real: this poem is a dog.
Someone actually says,
It’s amazing what can happen
with a brush stroke
and an appetite for beauty.
You become curious, desperate,
and step forward for a better look.
There, out in the courtyard,
below the window in this painting
of squash in sunlight,
a dog walks an obedient old man
from puddle to shadow
after a rain. The air is fresh
and cool. Steam rises
from the asphalt.
It would be nice
to call this beauty,
but the dog and the man
have disappeared,
and you’re alone
with your squash.
Spirit: The Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus
Sound enters the guts
and we call it music.
My blood begins to hiss
as the drums rise.
Somewhere there lives
an alphabet, I dare to say
not of this Earth,
that has found the time
to not care anymore,
and when it is really like this,
and it is,
you can pluck
a string of sunlight as it stands
still before your eyes.
Did you see it? It looks like rope
in a groove of daytime,
it is that cool—
and when you play it,
when you pluck that light-
string, the water molecules
in your skin
separate and drop
through your fingers,
the cells in your body crawl
like insects in the dirt,
and you are happy:
if you were told
to whisper love poems
to molecules of carbon
and make the dead
rise again,
you would do it.
Right now,
I have to turn the record over
so get off my case.
I Asked Her If She Wanted to Make Love
I found her in a place
no one is supposed to go.
She said she wanted to touch
herself, alone, on a mountain
that overlooked the world.
I asked her if she wanted to make love
to a god.
She told me if she did
I would never understand.
I said you really do want
to be out there
beyond all perception, beyond time,
and the known.
She said you can come
here, too, but you need to stop
using the river
Styx in your poems.
I said you are a only
a myth, you live
on an island and sing
sailors to their deaths.
I do not need to listen to you.
She told me to go to hell.
I told her I had already been.
She told me there are no sailors
left on the water,
and the fish in the sea
are eaten by poets.
I told her I had to
say it that way.
I know.
She said.
- Remember Me When I Was Here
Remember me when I walked on this Earth
I will remember the stars in your smile and the moon who circled your laughter
Remember me when I was here, loving you so much that we both knew we had something special
I will remember the notes I heard in your words every time you picked up the phone and heard my voice
Remember all the fun we had, the crazy things we did, said and thought
I will remember we could do no wrong-even the trees would bow to see us together
Remember how we both struggled to be “left-handed,” with all of our right brains so fully engaged
I will remember on the left side of time I will always find the right side of your soul
Remember how summer began with “Let it be so,” and so it began, and how we loved it
I will remember how a simple day of water and sun could last as long as your words in my heart
Remember my opinionated kindness with a side portion of “festering wound”
I will remember how time changed you into a work of art on a canvas made of pure spirit
Remember that angels do exist and they came in the form of two little boys
I will remember the sun rose with your heart that day and chased the dark away forever
Remember that I am always with you and only a flick away
I will remember your words in my heart are written with the ink of love
Remember me when I walked, danced, ran, clucked and loved upon this Earth
I will remember how you always changed God into a verb and never kept this secret to yourself
Lines of Italics by J. Scott Mosel
- The Fringes of Enlightenment
Dr. Quigley fell in love
with poetry
many years ago. He remembers
watching the elders cut
the ham one year, and he admired
the commitment involved,
the concentration, the way
the voices in the room rose
and fell with excitement
and criticism. He is unable to stop
the rush of ideas
that come to him on mornings
like this, the poetic hours
that live on the fringes
of enlightenment, just over there
beyond the candles
near the piano and the frost
on the window.
Now, he is aware of the nursing homes
to come, the burials,
the impossible goodbyes.
He wants to believe in the afterlife.
It is hard to remember the light
on those faces and think of them
as works of art,
but he does it anyway:
He imagines rivers to travel,
trails to hike in the hills that overlook
the river Styx,
campfires that summon the gods
and sleep, to sleep
a long night of a thousand winters
and wake up here,
watching the ham fall on his plate,
seems fitting for poetry.
He will eat it anyway.
for Joe Bastow
The Writer
I need
this weekend
to respond
more deeply
to your poems.
I have noticed great
sadness
in them.
Feelings of death
creep
upon me
when I read them,
and anger,
not because
I don’t like them,
but because I do
like
what is in them:
pure evil—
and I know the writer,
which is bad,
who is damned,
and then I know
I am damned
for liking
them,
and the it/you
that is damned
so beautifully
into the never-death
that is reserved
for you,
and very few
others,
in my heart.
I have always aspired to a more spacious form
that would be free from the claims of poetry or prose
and would let us understand each other without exposing
the author or reader to sublime agonies.
In the very essence of poetry there is something indecent:
a thing is brought forth which we didn’t know we had in us,
so we blink our eyes, as if a tiger had sprung out
and stood in the light, lashing his tail.
That’s why poetry is rightly said to be dictated by a daimonion,
though its an exaggeration to maintain that he must be an angel.
It’s hard to guess where that pride of poets comes from,
when so often they’re put to shame by the disclosure of their frailty.
What reasonable man would like to be a city of demons,
who behave as if they were at home, speak in many tongues,
and who, not satisfied with stealing his lips or hand,
work at changing his destiny for their convenience?
It’s true that what is morbid is highly valued today,
and so you may think that I am only joking
or that I’ve devised just one more means
of praising Art with the help of irony.
There was a time when only wise books were read
helping us to bear our pain and misery.
This, after all, is not quite the same
as leafing through a thousand works fresh from psychiatric clinics.
And yet the world is different from what it seems to be
and we are other than how we see ourselves in our ravings.
People therefore preserve silent integrity
thus earning the respect of their relatives and neighbors.
The purpose of poetry is to remind us
how difficult it is to remain just one person,
for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors,
and invisible guests come in and out at will.
What I’m saying here is not, I agree, poetry,
as poems should be written rarely and reluctantly,
under unbearable duress and only with the hope
that good spirits, not evil ones, choose us for their instrument.
Czeslaw Milosz
Remember Green?
The Crab in Alphabetic Heat: Three Guiding Principles for Poets
Language is the Midwife of the Unknown
Poets are in constant artistic motion, moving backward in time to go forward with words. The poet is a crustacean, a crab in heat, and is equally comfortable on both land and sea. We all need to become crabs. If you cannot accomplish this, just go catch some crabs, nurture them, and you will feel better. If you are not willing, or able, to go there, here are some guidelines to ponder when you consider crabs and poetry:
1. Consider the integrity and movement of the line.
Lines of poetry can and should be able to stand alone and hold intrinsic meaning. Certainly some lines are better than others, but it’s the same with crabs, so what the hell. For example, if you look at “Insinuating Revival,” written by Joe Bastow, you come across this line: “the chimney — you want me.” A good line of poetry moves a poem and carries some rhythmical pattern forward for both reader and writer.
A great line of poetry, like this one, stands alone, and creates intrinsic meaning of its own nature. First, you have the obvious phallic nature of the chimney, combined with the sexual overtones of “blowing smoke up” from the preceding line. However, this is then combined with a classic second movement–similar to the movements of a classical piece–“you want me,” and combined with the chimney, creates a line that resonates long after leaving it behind, especially for the patient and careful reader.
2. Use language that re-mythologizes the everyday world.
As previously noted in the post in “Myth and the Poetry of Creation,” good poetry hits the world head on and creates a new mythology of experience. A dog barking annoyingly in the distance can become something much more significant to the eye and language of the poet. In this way, all of experience is open to this re-mythologizing of the world. It is important to note that the poet is not engaged in the act of recognition and framing of the world–no, far from it. The poet, here, is engaged in actually creating a new segment of the universe. The willingness to go to this place, experience it somehow in a mindful way and then return with a means to communicate a new truth is the life-work of the artist.
3. Remain infatuated with the tangible and in love with the unknown.
The poet begins with the objects of the world. Some call it the palette, the medium. The world grabs us by the tail, to borrow slightly from Yevtushenko, and infatuation nestles in to do its work. A lot of good poetry is written at this interchange–object, infatuation, language–and there will be more incredible poetry written at this level. However, there are those who are willing to take the great leap–most do it without knowledge of it–into the unknown, into love itself: “For this momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to what is seen but to what is unseen; for what is seen is transitory, but what is unseen is eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:17-8). The act of creation is an act of love, and to create something that lasts, something eternal–something which outlives the creator–this is the real poetry. Poetry that returns to the eternals to make sense of modern living is essential right now. Infatuations are exciting, but ultimately puerile in nature. Think high school romance, and you are there.
We have had enough of this drivel in poetry lately. The unknown, the unseen, what we crave–the poet must fall in love with this other, this mystery, and be willing to fall in love with that part of the self where the unknown intrinsically lives, and waits, for language to breathe life into it. Language is the birth-mother of the unknown.
A Certain Quality of Light
Dr. Quigley is in the coffee shop
again, this time on the hunt:
he needs a cupcake for the soul.
His wondering eye notices desserts
in the glass case,
pastries like odes sit and wait for a whisper-
take me, I’m yours, they say,
everything he needs to hear-
kiss me on the river Styx,
now he is in love-
yes, there is love in Hades
and he has found it:
poets are there
working in droves
to lift the language
of what should not have been
done here
into what should be said
in Hell-
but Dr. Quigley remembers a day
that was so perfect
he could have bought vowels
by staring at stars-
or rearranged the music in his mind
just by catching a fish-
always, for him, it is light,
a certain quality of light
that inspires the language
of his alphabetic mind:
light, for vowels
shadow, for consonants
until he sees Jesus on the cross
and spells Hallelujah:
all vowels and a luminous L-
no sense in going to Hell.
The Spaces Inside Your Brain
A dangerous thing, poetry–
the occasional timeout
is proof, just listen:
you can hear the bad ones
mumbling softly, rebelliously–
I will not say bone, I will not say stone,
Until the mother-poet comes to let them out.
She always takes what she will:
misplaced syllable here, alveolar click there–
like death, she waits,
disguised as the young mother,
bringing even the old to the breast
to taste their own demise.
Look for her, at times, in the spaces
the squirrels leave inside your brain
after nesting;
yes, the soft hole is what they want,
for outside it is raining again,
and down below, well,
there are rivers to travel
with just the right orchestral feeling
to make it all seem so swell.
Have you remembered
to click for her?
The squirrels will love you for it,
and when you feel them staring
at the barely visible zipper
around your neckline,
remember to sing a carol or two
and drink a glass of wine,
remember not to touch it,
even though you need to–
so desperate is your desire–
remember not to say it,
for above you they are waiting,
they are listening closely
for any sign of weakness:
what matters
is not what goes in,
but what comes out.
No Thump in the Book for Him
He is tired of letting it all
get away from him.
He stares at his book on the shelf,
admires something in his hand,
and he lets go:
if you were a fly on the wall
you would not see the warts
on the backs of his hands,
but Dr. Quiqley believes in them,
he knows what they mean.
He is concerned about the world,
and he is tired of writing books
no one reads, not even his mother.
He walks the streets,
and the women he sees
are all beautiful to him:
if they only knew, he thinks,
I love even the fat ones
with varicose veins! I love them!
The Golden Rule is no thump
in the book for Dr. Quigley,
he is concerned about people.
When he looks in the mirror,
he sees decay,
after all, he studied it; he knows
his eyes are eggshells
stamped with cracked
scroll dust, thin lines leading
to the place where Adam lay
down on the ground,
his bloody rib
ready
for Eve
Dr. Quigley Moved Away from Hamburgers http://tinyurl.com/5rcj4k via @ShareThis
Whimpy Had It Right
Dr. Quigley moved away
from hamburgers.
Lately, he decided to eat
Indian food:
Korma, Vandalu, and Naan
have a way of lifting the soul
of a man and then some:
warmth enters the room
to illuminate figures
dancing together near the kitchen
window: their bodies
painted blue, almost a ripe
nudity, eyes swollen
with faith
toes pressed
with blood,
but Neruda
baking Odes
and Rilke
sifting angel dust
caught his attention
in the end,
a translucent layer just enough
to spell heaven
with his finger,
or at least a place
where he could believe
in the eschatology of things:
he had never had a view
of the universe
that was entirely satisfying.
The Viridian Glow of Foliage and Sky
A flummoxed Dr. Quigley
crawls inside a smell.
Vanilla, he believes,
is a good place to begin,
the long dark bean
reminds him of the trails
he walked when young,
cool and dark
beneath the viridian
glow of foliage and sky.
He believes he can find God
if he can cross the rivers
inside his mind:
there are answers
there, he knows,
and crawdaddies
in the slow water
near the sandbanks.
If you could see him there,
he just scratched
his head, his finger
just a centimeter away
from the water
that covers his brain:
questions left
unanswered
and a smell
he cannot name.
Myth and the Poetry of Creation: A Critique of Joseph Bastow’s “Leash”
Distant, Impossible Nebulae
Leash. A dog reacts to a beacon near Jupiter that directs souls into the afterlife. This is the poetry of the creation-myth, the longing to explain the life-death cycle in words. Imagine centuries from now a book being sold in almost every store called Dog Beacon. In some cases, Dog Beacon would be used to form liturgical rites of worship and prayer. You can hear believers singing in unison:
He’s synchronizing again
with some distant, impossible nebulae as a dog-beacon
for those who have just met their end
and can’t find the window to the Great Passing Through.
Not again, dog. I bark at it to stop. Not again.
This would be sung in a high Gregorian chant, and then silence: worshipers bow their heads to contemplate their own mortality. The sermon, of course, would follow: “I bark at it to stop. Not again. How do we respond to death? We bark. We deliver the Miloszian version of canine theology, and we bark at all of creation. . .” They come in for answers, these believers, church-goers, and instead they find this poem. Leash.
Leash, posted on this site by Joseph Bastow, is language that re-mythologizes our everyday world, and in the end, existence itself. The hot, almost unbearable heat of summer is something quite ordinary for all of us. The need for water. The barking dog. Why the incessant barking? The weight of a day like this showers this poem with a temporal heaviness that cries out for transcendence, and it delivers.
What you have is a new way to experience the world, and for the world to give back experience. Now, a barking dog is more than a sound that annoys: It is the gyres of creation creaking together in the heat of summer, the sound that souls make as they separate from the flesh and begin to travel at the speed of light out past the known reaches of existence itself.
When in doubt over the existential, I will read Leash. There are other ways to contemplate and remember a summer afternoon, but if forced to choose between a glass of water and this poem, I will take the trip to Jupiter every time.
There is the Salvadorean sky on my computer screen. I can enlarge the image to look at the waves on the beach, and see strips of cloud move across the undulating sea. The images are made of pixels. They can be adjusted for size, for memory, and for quality. However, the world remains elusive. As the Russian poet Yevtushenko wrote, “If you grab life’s mystery by the tail/it slips through your hands so smoothly.” How we strive to hold on, more tightly each time, and again the same slipping away.
We love photographs. We try to hold these pictures in our minds, and the pixels help, but how to hold on to the spirit of a place remains a mystery. If we could really feel a memory, feel it cold or burning in our hands, something which affects our flesh, maybe then we could be time travelers or call death’s bluff.
The role of the poet is to create a place in the palm of the reader’s hand where the improbable is true, tangible, transparent. Can you feel the smell from the first time you walked inside a dairy barn? Do you remember finding a day’s worth of adventure in a small patch of grass? Do you still feel your first kiss on your lips, and do you wonder if the same stars you watched as a child are still burning somewhere in the galaxy’s cradle? The poet must remain in infatuated with the tangible and in love with the unknown. There is no other way to hold in your hand the invisible, the love that sustains and creates art.
Glowing with Thought Itself: Linguistic Neurons
They are tired. The day was meaningless, full of thoughtless transactions, stolen newspapers and wasted smiles. The police were called and people were taken away. Coffee was consumed in quiet corners.
November. A perfect day. Staring at the swollen sky, the poets dreamt of stoplights in space. It was time to hope for one and to believe with reverent abandon. Intelligence in a vacuum. Everything depended on the ability of a thought inside the skull to exist at the same time as a beam of light in another galaxy from another sun, in a future so distant even the breath our children, passed through unborn lips to unborn lips, may not reach. Probably should not. Really, should not.
Well, it must reach this infinite place and then go on past the infinite to come back to us again as light and touch this coneflower in the poet’s hands. Imagine a true appreciation so great that a petal is suddenly glowing not with sunlight, but with thought itself: linguistic neurons.
Well, here you are, if you are there. They, the ones who go here, just came back. Now go write down what they say. A perfect day. The way. . .
Language as the Spleen of Experience
Antiquity as Birthright Juxtaposed by Experience
. . . And there is whale song in your ears. Unlikely as it may seem, we should study their songs and learn not to take from them but give in to this music, add meaningful notes, and discover how to think of language as something beyond the cerebral, the communicative, the citation on experience. The ancient act of symbol, movement of stars and the act of creation, even procreation, speak beyond the limits of perception. Language can be the spleen of experience, our minds sifting through the images we take and create, antiquity itself juxtaposed with our present lives in this constant interchange. Think, antiquity my lineage, my beauty, my poem, and the spleen begins to filter: I give you the color blue, and you give me
the curved outline of earth adjusted with prayer;
I give you my anxious heartbeat, and you give me
my father’s eyes lit by green leaves and sawdust;
I give you cold whale song, and you give me
a wee word in the tide of baptismal water, the ocean, birth.
We were born for exploitation and exchange, born to art, wed to creation. A sacrament of touching pen to paper is not a taking but simply beingness, synthesis, song.
The Tattered Wall Divides the Tangible from the Unknown
Some say time is a river. I agree in part. Time is a liquid, and it flows: you can pour, drink, and be immersed by it. Time ebbs and flows, and you are filled, and emptied, by time. Like any body of water, you can drown in time. If you are lucky, you rise above time, as in prayer, your spirit set free to become light. Even for an instant, this journey replenishes and brings the mind in contact with language not of this earth. The poet remembers how to create art when scenes of distance, light and shadow give testimony to the infinite, and unconscious of breath or blood, begins to learn language for the first time.
The Smallest Detail Gives Rise to Insight and Nourishment
There are people who can turn a system upside down. They are artists really, working on the palette of the American landscape.
The concept of a free refill at a fast food joint comes to my mind. Here is how it works. The establishment offers a free refill. Only some people take them up on it. The rest are timid and lame for not even taking this simple freedom as their own. However, out on the fringes of fast food artistry, there are consumer artists who take it to a whole new level. They return weeks later with the same cup, and simply request what is theirs: A free refill, only delayed. Possibly months have passed: a new war has started, people have died, a new cancer has begun to fester and then be cured.
The poet works with the same delayed refill as a starting point. Life is lived and then memory begins to work its games with the mind. The poet, when filling the palette, is essentially asking for a refill of experience. Emotion refilled in tranquility. Take it now, they say. No, the poet says, I will be back in few months. I need to walk my dog. Welcome a new child into the world. Stare at a cloud. Catch a fish. Later, when it is time to ask for the refill, the words are charged with the flavors of time itself.