On Contribution to Public Edification

Granite markers chiseled with verse
from Asylum Hill to Westerly Terrace . . .
tribute and inspiration, along the walk

Wallace took daily. A sky filled
with blackbirds and the preamble
to other metaphors. Just a man

with pen and fury racing the dark
corridors behind attorney eyes.
A man with evergreen inclinations,

finished with the dross necessary
to satisfy creditors . . . it was his way
to split from modern demands

and eke intricacies from pedestrian
facades. Here, where traffic continues,
rests a testament torn from volcano.

Boston's New Artery

The serpentine way of asphalt and grass
lures traffic, lures wanderers on foot
through the towers that hide the harbor,
hide the river. Focused on the path,

no one would notice water nudging
the edges anyway. These are not
sailors. They're modern urbanites,
scattered in their missions, disguised

behind earnest demeanors. Their
pleasures wrapped by scarves,
they vent exhaust, and travel on.
Restless as children on a school trip,

they wait at lights only when
they must. Odd exercise
of obligations, a motivation
to drive, to rush to other places.

No one even notices
the newly transplanted trees,
the fountains, all the efforts taken
to make this place of passage
somehow beautiful.

News Overheard in a Taxi

Giddy scientists from MIT, ecstatic

over measurement of a sub-atomic

particle that wouldn't exist were it 

not for their exuberant efforts. 

Imagine the effort to manufacture

something nature sees no future

for . . . all to understand perhaps

how things began: Was it collapse

of things pre-existing things we

can detect that freed 

the initial bang? Scientists

want to know and, honestly, isn't

there some curious malady

that plagues riders in taxis

with the desire for answers?

Though, that this observed

meson oscillates three trillion times

per second, doesn't help define

the swell of anger when the light

goes red . . . as though to spite

our simple desire to get on

with the endless journey home.

Jason Shinder - New Yorker Poem

Here's a poem from The New Yorker, which I think provides an example of Jason's more searing investigation into the heart of matters, in language and structure that's more charged and affecting than most of his pre-disease poems.

On a Wonderful Remembrance of Jason Shinder

I just received the NY Times alert on Poetry, via email, and among the articles and reviews is a beautiful remembrance of Jason Shinder by Melanie Thernstrom.

While I didn't know Jason, a good friend of mine did. 

My friend and I were both taken aback by the power, by the intensity and integrity of the emotions evident in Jason's published poems after he became terminally ill. 

I don't know that Jason found his subject to be death per se . . . so much as his recognition of death coming gave him the power to cut the chains that bound his artistic spirit. 

The poems shared to date have the same intensity as Plath's last works . . . a bare knuckled brawl with the demons and issues that most matter.

I look forward to the final collection that Jason's friends (Sophie Cabot Black, Marie Howe, Lucie Brock-Broido, and Tony Hoagland) are editing. On the one hand, I am sure it will make us wish he'd lived longer, to give us more of these highly charged poems . . . on the other hand, it will be a wonderful testament to a poet who let his gifts soar through the final days he was allowed to experience.

Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah - An Amazing Version

Thanks to my brother, Walter, for finding this and sharing it with me and now you . . . it is an amazing rendition of one of the great pop songs ever written.

Robert Wrigley . . . Talking Sense (To Me)

I remember the first time I read a Robert Wrigley poem. I was amazed to find a poet working with narrative. In almost all of Wrigley's poems something happens. A story's revealed in the context of a poem. 

Not a lot of poets are interested in narrative, it seems to me. The lyric remains predominant. I'm not necessarily bemoaning this, but it's what makes someone capable as Wrigley is with narrative poems that much more intriguing. 

In an interview that Poetry Daily has from Sou'wester on its site, Wrigley also makes a case for the role of the line in poetry. The line often gets ignored. I've heard a number of wise practitioners argue that lines are to be read through, that they are in essence unimportant to the poem.

Wrigley's emphatic: "Either the lines matter or the poem doesn't. More specifically, I can say this: The line must have integrity. It must have a life of its own. The line must say something within and beyond the sentence of which it is or may be a part. The line must be integral, not just another course of bricks, another piece of lapped siding."

I concur. I'm not sure that I practice this very effectively, but I do think that lines are critical elements to a poem's success. 

And from what do effective lines arise? Wrigley offers the following, "First comes music. The sound of things. One word, one sound may bring on another word, and thus a concept, a direction, entirely unforeseen by the poet, who trusts that the ear never lies, that hearing is believing."

I've been considering the idea of the imaginative, the poetic ear that each poet spends such effort to coax and nurture. From this place comes what makes effective poems possibly transcendent: passion. Wrigley speaks to the passion he finds in Plath, which transmutes to energy for the reader . . . which perhaps allows the poem to translate something essential and universal that's buried within each of us.

Application Photo: Snow Plow Driver

Hawking's Paradox

Here's an interesting video on Stephen Hawking, who is kind of the Billy Collins of physicists. Imagine working for three decades to defend a position, when one can't speak, nor at this stage move more than a few muscles in the face. 

Whatever obstacles the rest of us may face in our endeavors must seem inconsequential in comparison. Something I need to recall, when I get testy about the speed bumps on my artistic road.

A Bit of Wisdom from Our Poet Laureate

My brother, Walter, sent me a link to an article on Kay Ryan, from the Christian Science Monitor in 2004. There's much to glean from this brief piece, but the best bit in my opinion is at the end.

Ms. Ryan offers a bit of advice, a bit of perspective, a bit of inspiration, when she observes, "If there is a [literary] game of sorts, you can win by staying home and doing the writing. Good work can make its way in this culture."

Advice I intend to heed on this snowy Sunday.

Memorial Hall in Snow

Tonight I attended the Christmas Revels at the Sanders Theater, located in Harvard's Memorial Hall. It was a quintessential New England winter eve, with nearly a foot of new snow and a biting wind hurrying along flurries and patrons. The exuberance of music and audience participation always tugs my spirits onto a higher plane. I took the photo afterwards, before scurrying through the snow lined paths to find someplace warm to eat. Memorial Hall is a treasure, don't you agree? We've neglected so many others in our haste to update. Directly to the west of Memorial Hall is an example of architecture unlikely to endure: Harvard's Science Center. No photos of that are worth posting. 

And Still It Snows, at 4 AM

Here's where the hours get interesting, 

where they step from the parade 

and scrape a chair over the floor.

They want to rest, the same 

as anyone. They're so weary

from holding the banner 

of appointments, from splicing

forty-three minutes of drama

around Charmin and Toyota's 

year-end Toyotathon. Ignored

as the intricate, tumbling gears

on an escalator, they really get that

everyone's horrified by the blinding

threat of being late.  And aren't hours

as baffled by the express that years

seem to travel on . . . the one that 

not one passenger even recognized?

They cherish this point in the night,

when the snow's still falling through

the parking lot lights, and someone

notices the vitality of their moments.

Every puff the wind takes from 

the rooftops appears cosmic white and able 

to reward this particular hour's

perseverance. And isn't it true

that the ocean has no concept 

that we measure out its coming

and going by the hours, for years

ahead? We demand such precision

to greet the days we presume will arrive.

Though it's only this hour, when the day's

snowstorm has churned on toward 

New Brunswick, that could possibly matter.

  

Nonsense in the Middle of the Night

Tribute to Language's Janitors

Blame the vowels for allowing 

granularity to sweep into 

the consonants' rock utterances. 

Messy as sleet, transient as any 

brief conversation with the acquaintances 

who fritter into the lock box orbits 

of our lives. Lubricants, the ooze 

and squirm, the viscera . . . shadowed 

makers of candles, saved 

for darker nights imagined, when 

the dinner guests have taken their fill 

and wandered back to their own alleys, 

their own small cases choked 

with insomnia's mysteries.

What could a language be without

e, without i . . . without the challenge

to stasis this minority of letters offers?

Nomads on prairies miraged with literature's

hope for permanence, eyes alone holding

the improbable confluence of birds rising

against a stand of golden trees at the base

of mountains backlit by light sifted 

through cloud . . . all that's imagined 

left in the soft hollows everyone carries.

Something simple for a catalyst . . . 

a pocket infused with something 

crystalline, something ephemeral, 

a melee of vowels. Little renegades

always on the way to a rally, to catch

the last act's echoes, to hand 

anyone who pauses a flyer. 

No thought given to the litter 

of the expressionless blank they

guide us from. We never suspect

we may be blind. Witnesses with little

to describe, or convey. To sweep 

the detritus from the halls takes

a good pair of o's bridging a br

with m. Thank you, vowels. 

We almost didn't realize 

the mess you've saved was ours. 

The World Has Gone White Tonight

Snow

The world in this place has gone 

white tonight. The waves 

on the Atlantic have given

themselves to the Arctic pulse 

that's infused our section of coast. 

Crystalline confection, lifted 

on the currents that sort themselves

around the city's towers. Finding

a brick surface, the reticent grass . . .

the frozen breath expanding 

across the lagoon's shallows.    

Even the sky has lost 

its ambition. Let the city sleep

in heaven's pale mystery, quiet 

beneath the gown, until morning.

  

Ah, Art and the City

While in Worcester and then driving back through the dark hinterlands of rural Massachusetts last night with my son, we pondered the allure of city living . . . big city living to be more precise. Worcester doesn't qualify. Boston might not either, if one's a New Yorker. 

What is it about cities that keeps those of us who prefer an urban setting so enthralled? I think Drew captured it pretty succinctly: it's the energy of all those around us. It may be akin to being in a hive, I suppose. 

The rural seems so barren to a city person, and I know that the city can seem so hostile to a rural person. It's curious how we develop our preferences. 

This photo is from the indisputably BIG city of New York . . . the Christo orange flag art event in Central Park. I like that about cities, too . . . their concrete and steel massiveness can be and so often is tempered by the deeply human, by our artistic expressions.

"Here's a Good-Bye Kiss, You Dog" (aka, President GW Bush)

What it's like to be under-reappreciated everywhere one goes. 

Some advice, Mr. President, get used to it. 

Neil Young . . . Keeping Rock and Roll Alive

I shared an inter-generational experience last night with my son and about 10,000 other people who hiked through the biting cold of downtown Worcester to see Neil Young and His Electric Band. It was worth the chattering teeth. 

At 63, Mr. Young seems as enthused (or maybe it's infused) by the music as he's ever been. He performed for two and a quarter hours without a pause, and I do think he'd have gone on for a good while longer if not circumscribed by modern arena-concert decorum. 

There are not many 60+ year old musicians who are appealing to both young and old. I think Neil is the best . . . personal preference, I know, but you have to see the man to understand why I feel this way.

And I urge anyone, who has a chance, to go see Neil Young perform. It will make you feel good. It will make you want to dance. It will make you wonder at what music can do for a roomful of souls. 

Evening Poem

Hey, Here I Am

Someone's smoking on the fire escape,

an act forbidden by condo regs . . . 

so the story slipped beneath the door 

of every unit claims. Justice wants only

an emergency to meander onto 

the building's rusty braces. Who caught

this alleged infidelity? And was there no 

opportunity to identify the one

who trespassed? We've been warned,

and next time monetary damages 

will be assessed. Hallelujah. Rules 

writhe like snakes in the pit of our

disrespect. If I had a laptop, I'd take

this piece of protest out the window. 

Barefoot, so the steel mesh could 

imprint my soles with temporary scars.

Naked maybe, too. Why not stand before

the empty offices of the Hancock Tower,

backlit by my pedestrian living quarters?

I might yell, there is no emergency . . .

beyond my imagination gnawing 

at its leash. Perhaps a neighbor would 

report such vehement maundering. 

Perhaps the gods who manage the ridiculous 

would stop to applaud . . . good work, 

vigilant neighbor . . . to be awake and able

to spy an unclothed vagabond, 

who only wanted someone 

to find him.

Evening Poem

Give It Up

What impetus to read for the blind

motivates this ragtag platoon to gather 

on a rainy night in December? Novelty

perhaps. To enter a soundproof booth

with a book one would never read

and record the author's words 

for an unknown . . . it's motivational

genius. Forget camaraderie. Each 

volunteer's sequestered securely

as a virus carrier. Just read how 

Aaron Burr's sexual escapades 

compromised what genius he was dealt.

The prose sticks in places on the tongue.

Cotton language tinged with sand.

To get through a dozen dense pages

in an hour requires focus. Mark 

the transition point to a new page

on the computer recording, and begin

with a renewed sense of inflection's 

resilient potential. Somewhere 

a listener waits to invite your voice

in for an evening's journey. 

Lunch Poem

Rush Hour

The windows' polished grit tempers 

each rider's reflection. This long missile,

with its stripe of light and faces,

never rising above the tree line and villages

it passes. Graceless hammer, urgent

as compulsion, fired down

dissolution's iron track. Meteor-bright

above the salt marsh, the wheels' 

harsh ratchet like a staccato cough.

Raw whistle that wants to summon 

the dead to witness this cabin of souls

fingering the lies that flesh encourages. 

Work Note

An interesting day . . . the CEO/Chairman and the President of our company both resigned today. I have to say that while not beyond the realm of possibilities I'd considered, I had placed this on or near the same level as the potential for The New Yorker to publish one of my poems. 

Not  a lot to add to this recording of the basic facts. Just think it might be something a year or so from now that I will be curious to recall. 

A Day Off

I took the day off from work today. It's interesting to contemplate life without the rule of necessary labor.

There are so many other pursuits I'd prefer to lasso and wrestle. I guess this is complaining, but it's meant more as affirmation . . . affirmation that what I do for money is not what I do or wish to do, necessarily.

I'm fortunate that the work I have to do for money is not debilitating intellectually or, more importantly, artistically. And it is a veritable comfort to have other work when I am so frequently doubtful about the merits of my artistic efforts.

I've been reading off and on through the day. I went to a bookstore. I haven't written a line of poetry. Nor have I revised anything.

And I did no Christmas shopping.

So it's easy to assess this found day as a squandered day, and probably that's accurate. Though any day has its redemptive aspects. Just being aware and alert is enough perhaps. I've tried to be both of those today.

I'm not sure what to make of the restless ambitions of my ego. I've been very aware of my ego's desires and demands today. It's a beast that can't be satiated, of course, but when it's on the prowl it's hard to deny its power to color a day.

The ambitious ego feels like fighting off a virus. I don't want to succumb. Lots of Vitamin C for the spirit is needed.

It occurs to me that this may just be a variation of the critical function in my being trying to assert itself, at the expense of any creative impulse generating new work.

It's almost as though, when I named the blog-posting software as a sort of muse (in an earlier post), I took its sustenance away. Or, I alerted my critical function to its exclusion from this zone of creativity.

Peculiar what triggers the ego, what stalls the motor of creation. I'll see if I can jumpstart it again before the day ends.

Things Could Always Be Worse (or Better)!

From the last "great" blizzard to hit Boston in early 2005!

Lynda Hull's Collected Poems (Thank You to Mark Doty)

In 2007 I had the good fortune to participate in a workshop led by Mark Doty. Among the poems Mark provided as examples to consider was "Shore Leave" by Lynda Hull, a poet (among so, so many) whose work I did not know. I still recall vividly feeling a surge of amazement as we read through the poem.

One of my favorite poems by Mark Doty is "White Kimono" from Sweet Machine. I never knew who the Lynda in this poem was, and so I was fascinated to learn more about her relationship and friendship with Mark.

Having introduced her in the workshop, Mark went on to explain that Lynda's poetry (which had fallen out of print) had recently been reissued as the first in a series from Graywolf Press for which he is the Series Editor. I went directly to Amherst Books and purchased my copy, which has been more or less continuously in my backpack ever since.

I tend with music and poetry to listen and read things I enjoy over and over and over. Beck's Sea Change and Pearl Jam's Riot Act . . . Source by Mark Doty and since last year Lynda Hull's Collected Poems. While I don't encourage such obsessive rereading and listening, I do encourage poetry lovers to get a copy of Lynda's (and Mark's) poems.

To get a sense of the work, the American Academy of Poets site has a representative selection of Lynda Hull's poems. Among the seven featured here, personal favorites are "Fiat Lux," "Lost Fugue for Chet" and "Ornithology." Really, though, it's hard to pick favorites . . . every poem has wonderful language, emotional intensity, crazy inventiveness, and passages of lyrical nirvana.

One poem from the Collected Poems which I've not found online but which is also among my favorites follows:

Abacus

No grand drama, only Chinatown's incendiary glow,
me returning to the old delinquent thrill of us

passing through this jimmied door, the herbalist's
shop gone broke & latticed with accordion grille.

Are these faces of ours oddly gentled, First Husband,
as evening's verge spills over bad-news gang-boys

filling vestibules with their bored sangfroid, over
old women smoothing newsprint sheets for carp steamed

to feathers of flesh? Two doors down, the gold-toothed
Cantonese lifts her tray of pastries streaming

red characters for sweet lotus, bitter melon, those
for fortune, grief, for marriage & rupture.

In my wallet, the torn wedding picture sleeps---
your brilliantine & sharkskin, my black-brimmed hat,

a cluster of glass cherries. Too young. Words roil
to calligraphy above us, cold as the dawn

your second wife wakes to, day-old rice then scorched
fluorescence through sweatshops, through bobbins

& treadles, the 6 cent piecework. When it's time,
we'll exchange a formal kiss in the whorling updraft

of burnt matches & apothecary labels, gang graffiti
slashed upon the walls. Why return to this empty shop

where I'd meet you sometimes after-hours over poker,
men chanting numbers in a sinuous grammar of 40-watt light

& smoke? Not much here now, a few drafty rooms, broken
drams of pungent White Flower Oil you'd rub my feet with,

bruised from dancing six sets a night between the star acts.
Not much, but what I choose to shape sleepless nights

far from here, when I'm diaphonous, engulfed again
by Chinatown's iron lintels, the hiss & spill of neon fog,

heliotrope & jade unrolled against the pavement I'd walk
in filmy stockings, the impossible platform shoes. As if

I might find her here again, my lost incarnation fallen
from the opulent emptiness of nightclubs, those

restaurants tuxedoed in their hunger. No one could
translate such precise Esperanto. And so we linger

tiny, surviving protagonists briefly safe here
from the crowd's ruthless press, a fanfare

of taxis polishing the avenues. Whenever next
I meet you, I'll meet you here in the harsh

auroral radiance of the squad car's liquid lights.
Things have never been so essential. I have seen

businesses fold & open like paper lilies, & men
leave for Hong Kong, then return to lie down

again in crowded rooms, the way each of us
lies down with a lacquered maze of corridors

& places where those once loved unbearably wear
strangers' faces. You run your hand through the hair

you've dyed black to hide the gray & out
on the street, sweet-faced vandals arabesque

caught in a rain of trinkets, green cards, the lucky
one-eyed jacks. Beneath my fingers, the twisted

braille fo hearts & knives incised upon
the counter works its spell until the herbalist

takes up his abacus once more to commence
the sum of unguents, of healing roots,

a measure of time, a calculation beyond all worth.

Contemplations on Generative Processes and Blogging's Role

I've been considering the generative process today. What allows us to create new work? What limits us? What process enables new work to be good work? And what is good work?

Good work, I suppose, is work that others find value in. It can also be subjective, and in my case (as well as many other artists') that's the more relevant criteria . . . since no one else is reading our work. This is not to say that the work created isn't always created with the expectation that someone will read it, and, therefore, it's important to make work that others may value, too. 

(By the way, I really love a good cup of coffee . . . and by some magical confluence my coffee maker has brewed some really fine coffee this afternoon. I should probably stop writing and go sit on the couch and enjoy sipping.)

Lately (over the past month since I embarked on blogging), I've been using the blog posting software as an odd sort of muse. It has encouraged me to "free write" . . . which I define as composing with limited pause for editorial decisions. 

I like to think that I've earned some ability to skydive like this through years and years of labor. I have toiled over, revised and rewritten, and discarded so much. It's exhilarating to just dive out of the imagination's warm fuselage and see what comes out before I hit the ground. 

I'm sure the thrills accompanying such a method of composition will be replaced in time with sheepish regrets and some embarrassment over having posted such rough work in a public place. But, for now, I have to say that it's liberating. 

I'm falling through some familiar landscapes, but I'm also finding myself turned upside down and thrown into cloud banks and electrical storms that I'd consciously steer clear of if I took the time to compose in my accustomed approach. 

What will come of all this? Some work. Whether that work has value, it's difficult to say. Though, if you don't produce work that feels innovative and charged, there's not much chance of actually accomplishing writing a poem with those characteristics.

So, I'm going with this theory, for now. Blogger has given me a means to let the imagination rip. I am going to take that chance!

Wonderful Winter

This image is from a few Decembers back. Just enough snow to transform the landscape of the Fens, and the good fortune for the skies to clear enough at sunset to give the whole scene a glow that's best described just by looking . . . so I'll be quiet now.

Urgency's Commando

Get Up

My modest passions need a switch,
a roughing red welt on the backs
of legs. They need to get bold
and bad, outsized as a solar flare,
            urgent as a wish transmuted
to a porcupine's embrace. It's hell

to stuff resolve in the coarse sack
of routine . . . the billeted effort threatens
to splinter the door that pretends
to define unity's dimensions.
            Isn't it a crass version of divinity
that rewards temerity? The fire's breath

at an ear lobe focuses the broad spectrum
of distractions . . . to find a point, to slide
the length of a sword's steel ruin
            and forage like a tornado through
my life's neighborhood. All my opening wounds
healed through the intoxicating axe-swing,
through the dodge-game on the expressway,
through a star's sizzling pop on the optic nerve
unveiled. Fantastic resolution . . . not one more
            corseted night for remorse to claim.

Loyal Fellow

Continuing to share my series of night images, and, specifically, store window images . . . this sweet and hopeful fellow "lives" in a shop on Charles Street. Charles is the boundary between Beacon Hill and the Flat of the Hill here in Boston. It's also home to a series of intriguing antique shops-- worth a visit, even if it's after shopping hours.

In Response to the Dire Warnings of Global Calamity

Mantra for Plenty

Say the world won't end.  Believe it. 

Say it again . . . the world won't end. 

Every door must not shut. The simple task 

of fixing a lunch, smiling at the good luck 

to find the elevator waiting 

at your floor . . . any bland act 

should be carried like myrrh. 

The old superstitions already howl 

off the presses . . . don't let them find 

a furrow to poison. Minister 

to many . . . give a singular dose

of the world won't end. Brave 

the walk along the river in old shoes.

Cross miles with the company

of a good bicycle thrashing 

your legs. What we do is what

we must. The world will not end. 

The honest intent to carry another

from the cold 

toward the small fire in the stove, 

where your neighbors stand,

will be enough. Something intrinsic

and easy. It's enough

to ensure the world will not end. 

Something on a Night When No Stars are Visible

Grab a Seat

I'm told there's a rodeo going

in galaxies nearby. I didn't know

we're in the audience. If that's 

what cosmic witnesses are . . . 

an audience? The cowboys have 

gravity ropes, and the horses 

are comets. The stars jab like spurs, 

and the crazed beasts are invisible 

(which might explain why

they're so furious). Oracles 

pinned to the lenses of telescopes 

report the results. Last month 

a planet was tied down 

in a cloud of interstellar dust. 

At this rate the contest will go on 

for eons, and who'll ever know 

if a binary system proves the champion? 

Let's just take our time driving 

this old pickup through the prairie

. . . it's a long shot to navigate, 

and there's not much point 

getting to town till 

the bar's open. 

Chris Hedges' Interview at Salon - American Fascists

To gain an introduction to the "other side" of Chris Hedges' argument against extremism on the right and on the left . . . under the banners of Fundamentalist Christians and New Atheists . . . here's a link to the Salon interview in which Hedges talks about his book "American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America." 

It's a scary time when so many of us are peeking out from our intellectual/social bunkers and seeing so many "others" milling around and threatening what we hold dear (whatever that has turned out to be in this turbulent first decade of a new century). 

Another Window Shot

It seems I have a lot of shots through windows or of scenes in windows. Not a novel technique certainly, but the aesthetic attraction is intriguing. 

Is it wanting new perspective? Or hiding in some way? Or maybe the scene just looks cooler to me that way. 

"My Mammogram" by J.D. McClatchy

I've been re-reading poems I like. 

I like poems that are messy, in that they are not perfectly manicured. They retain a vibrancy that excessive revision might expunge. 

Which is not to say that the poem following is not carefully crafted. It is. (Any poem with intricate end rhymes and consistent stanza structure has been worked meticulously).

But reading it again after several years, I find parts that feel less effective to me. Does that make the poem any less wonderful? No, actually, it doesn't. It makes this poem triumphantly singular . . . in that it is the poem that it is, and, for me, it is still a pleasure to engage. 

My Mammogram

I.

In the shower, at the shaving mirror or beach,

For years I'd led . . . the unexamined life?

When all along and so easily within reach

(Closer even than the nonexistent wife)

Lay the trouble---naturally enough

Lurking in a useless, overlooked

Mass of fat and old newspaper stuff

About matters I regularly mistook

As a horror story for the opposite sex,

Nothing to do with what at my downtown gym

Are furtively ogled as The Guy's Pecs.

But one side is swollen, the too tender skin

Discolored. So the doctor orders an X-

Ray, and nervously frowns at my nervous grin.

II.

Mammography's on the basement floor.

The nurse has an executioner's gentle eyes.

I start to unbutton my shirt. She shuts the door.

Fifty, male, already embarrassed by the size

Of my "breasts," I'm told to put the left one

Up on a smudged, cold, Plexiglas shelf,

Part of a robot half menacing, half glum,

Like a three-dimensional model of the Freudian self.

Angles are calculated. The computer beeps.

Saucers close on a flatness further compressed.

There's an ache near the heart neither dull nor sharp.

The room gets lethal. Casually the nurse retreats

Behind her shield. Anxiety as blithely suggests

I joke about a snapshot for my Christmas card.

III.

"No signs of cancer," the radiologist swans

In to say---with just a hint in his tone

That he's done me a personal favor---whereupon

His look darkens. "But what these pictures show . . .

Here, look, you'll notice the gland on the left's

Enlarged. See?" I see an aerial shot

Of Iraq, and nod. "We'll need further tests,

Of course, but I'd bet that what you've got

Is a liver problem. Trouble with your estrogen

Levels. It's time, my friend, to take stock.

It happens more often than you'd think to men."

Reeling from its millionth Scotch on the rocks,

In other words, my liver's sensed the end.

Why does it come as something less than a shock?

IV.

The end of life as I've known it, that is to say---

Testosterone sported like a power tie,

The matching set of drives and dreads that may

Now soon be plumped to whatever new designs

My apparently resentful, androgynous

Inner life has on me. Blind seer?

The Bearded Lady in some provincial circus?

Something that others both desire and fear.

Still, doesn't everyone long to be changed,

Transformed to, no matter, a higher or lower state,

To know the leathery D-Day hero's strange

Detachment, the queen bee's dreamy loll?

Oh, but the future each of blankly awaits

Was long ago written on the genetic wall.

V. 

So suppose the breasts fill out until I look

Like my own mother . . . ready to nurse a son,

A version of myself, the infant understood

In the end as the way my own death had come.

Or will I in a decade be back here again,

The diagnosis this time not freakish but fatal?

The changes in one's later years all tend,

Until the last one, toward the farcical,

Each of us slowly turned into something that hurts,

Someone we no longer recognize.

If soul is the final shape I shall assume,

(---A knock at the door. Time to button my shirt

And head back out into the waiting room.)

Which of my bodies will have been the best disguise?

Bingo! New Atheists and Christian Fundamentalists Drinking from Same Cup

Thanks to my well-read and always inquiring brother, Walter, for providing some helpful context for my rant on the snobbery of Richard Dawkins. 

Chris Hedges has done the heavy intellectual lifting to articulate my concerns in a pair of books he's written in the past couple years, which examine the dangers of dogmatism as practiced both by religious fundamentalists ("American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America") and the New Atheist movement ("I Don't Believe in Atheists"), of which Professor Dawkins is a leading light.

To get a sense of the arguments Mr. Hedges expounds in his books, read this interview in Salon. 

Extremism (whether it's left or right) arises from the need to defend ourselves.  And from the need to be right . . . as in, my point of view is the correct one and yours is not . . . which, of course, is the mother of all defensive positions. If you're possibly right, then I could be wrong . . . which leaves me in a vulnerable place. Well, vulnerable if I am a very insecure person.  

Most advances (scientific, artistic, intellectual, etc.) have come at the expense of being wrong repeatedly. That's the wonder of existence . . . we learn by being wrong and then trying something else. 

Both the fundamental religious and  New Atheist camps have given up that basic joy. They have found their answers. 

Though I suspect that somewhere there's an ember of doubt in each camp. No question, if found, this ember would be stamped out. But one of the amazing things about our inherent need to defend is that we're always paranoid. Even as we stamp out doubt, we're always worried that a spark has escaped . . . and a spark of doubt can always overcome any ism.

Pre-Dawn Analysis and Rambling

Awake at 4 AM. Is this an odd luxury as a result of a 4 day weekend? Certainly. 

I hope that the guards at the gates to my rational self doze off before I do. It feels like there is potential circling around and even through me. Will it manifest in keystrokes? 

Perhaps. 

I've spent a lot of time with my poems so far this weekend, and the general sense that I get is that I need some breakthrough. Perhaps exhaustion can be the catalyst.

I think it's evident (even to me) that I am not blessed with innate genius. The poems I've written seem to have no merit by any objective standards (e.g., editors or readers who find them worth reading). Over all the years, I've grown to accept this verdict with varying degrees of aplomb.  

Still, I wish to write poems that are good poems. 

I have some that I personally like. And that seems worth something. 

It seems likely that I will continue to be my only audience . . . and I seem lately to be a more discriminating and cantankerous audience, which is hard on the poet (me). 

It appears fatigue has got me chasing my tail now . . . when my artistic show appears destined to feature me as writer, reader, and critic, it's time to draw the curtain. 

I'll be back at it again, after some sleep. That's the one certainty when it comes to my poetry. 

At the Beach

When the seasons move along into their cold mode, it's nice to find a reminder of what was and will be again before we know it.

Love the Season

Seasonal Diaspora

The sidewalks might make you believe

that magic's bounty just turned the corner.

Every tree snarled in white lights, windows

exultant with merchandise. Then,

here's the African-American couple 

you saw in the bookstore an hour ago, 

washing and warming up. You won't 

help them. It's no mystery. There's a theory 

that the hell-bound habits we shelter 

grant us condolence through guilt. Imagine

this couple, holed up between dumpsters 

in the alley below, and let remorse

cradle you . . . you without courage, you

with the exhausted eyes of prosperity.

Get some sleep. Let wishes ungranted 

retreat into the silence of teeth 

that chatter six stories beneath

your pillow.  You can give no more 

haven than this bolt of empathy,  

to stalk the rest you've guarded.

Saturday 1 AM Jam

At the Microphone

A finished lyric smokes . . .

       all its potential made 

suspiciously, irrevocably incarnate. 

Outside, ornamented 

       as stained glass. 

An empty barrel inside, 

     perhaps. Pulse 

like a bass line lends 

     it coherence . . .

it's unknowable promise wants

to bubble forth . . . who will sing it 

     alive? The singer 

is stoned in the van out back. 

This singular catalyst for something 

revolutionary rests on its salver, 

     unable to resist

the flies and temptation 

     to toss what's left 

in the rubbish jumble when 

     the stage lights go out. 

From the Rooftop of My Building

Sometimes we're just lucky enough to be in an amazing place with a camera at the right moment.

Thoughts on Richard Dawkins' Ass-Ache

The Richard Dawkins' interview in the Guardian last month frustrates me for the same reason that dogmatic religious leaders frustrate me. Anyone (even someone with vast intellectual capacity) who definitively says he has the answer ironically stakes claim to a position of omniscience that I just don't think any human being has the right to assume. 

What Dawkins really seems torqued about is anti-rationalism. I appreciate and agree that a globe of religion-induced zombies is a sad prospect. Wouldn't it be amazing if more people explored possibilities . . . not limiting their imaginative intellects on the basis of beliefs handed down to them? 

I expect Richard Dawkins would agree. So why the anti-religious intolerance? Well, if he views religion as akin to a drug that offers a placebo effect for the harried masses (which this article implies he does), it's understandable why he's so stridently anti-religion. 

The critical question and concern is does this mean that Dawkins is anti-spiritual, as well? It would be easy to say, of course, it does. But I wonder. 

Quantum mechanics hints at rules that we never deduced rationally before. We didn't have the means to do so. A prior generation's Richard Dawkins could confidently have demeaned any heretic who might have wondered if there are dimensions, beyond the three or four we readily perceive, where odd and amazing stuff occurs. 

I have a friend, who wonders what to make of recent interactions with energetic phenomena that her western, rational upbringing would indicate results from some undiagnosed mental impairment. She's not alone. I've met other scientifically-trained individuals who've confronted the ubiquitous snake-oil salesmen, only to discover unexpectedly that some snake-oil seems to offer a tangible, measurable benefit.

I want to be careful not to be guilty of the very thing that I find off-putting about Professor Dawkins' position  . . . I want to acknowledge that he may, indeed, be right.

 

But what if he's not?

It's worth considering. 

I support anti-dogmatism, which is what I really think the professor is most troubled about. I hope his conversion is not a deathbed religious one so much as a tolerance for possibilities. That he seems determined to condemn what threatens his view of the world and cosmos seems such a shame. If he'd aim his intellect at considering the counterpoints to his views, we might all gain some additional wisdom.

"Dark Forest" by Robert Wrigley

Poems we cherish are among the items to be most thankful for today. Robert Wrigley captures (for me) the angst and joy of letting go in this evocative anthem on rebirth . . . when we get to that point where we dream of change that in reality we don't always pursue, a poem can be a cathartic and perhaps more emphatic way to experience and express the change.

Dark Forest

. . . and then, in dreaming,

The clouds methought would open and show riches

Ready to drop upon me, that, when I waked,

I cried to dream again.

-CALIBAN

I love the way the woods arrange themselves

for my convenience: here's the stob

I hang my pants on and here

the shrub I nestle my still warm

underwear over, out of each leg hole

a leaf like an almond eye, one black

fly strolling the vent like a big city boardwalk.

And see how my shirt flung up 

is the residue of flame,

a long smoke fading in the weeds.

I hear my boots go running,

though they will not go far down that ravine:

they miss my socks, one fist-sized stone

in the toes and thrown.

I'm ready now, dark forest.

Bring on your snakes and bears,

your coyotes singing praises

to my pink and nearly hairless flanks.

Bring on the icy night, the cocktail stars,

the flamboyant, androgynous sun going down.

Let me soles go bloody

through the puncture weeds and shards,

let my legs be slashed by thorns:

I will follow my old compass, slouching

toward the north. I will paint myself

in the mud wallows of elk and make my skin

a new brown thing. Give my eyes to the ravens,

my heart to the ungainly buzzard, its head

gone red over all the earth's

unaccountable cadavers, liberator of the dust.

I bequeath my clothes to the unraveling jays

and I will, if I should survive the night,

rise reborn, my opposable thumbs

surrendered to the palms, to find

in a snowmelt puddle, a draught

of the same old wretched light,

seeing as the water stills at last

the man I refuse to be. 

Monday Night's Dump

Carnivore Morality


A massacre hidden in my grocery bag
is not condemned. The guile with which
we reconcile our appetites demands

no hosanna. We've calculated and confirmed
the delusion of prime position we defend.
A steak cut from the hind quarter tastes

marvelous unwrapped from cellophane.
Wouldn't every beast do the same? Could
vegetarian be another name for heretic?

We want to do right . . . gracious
in our roost, with the oven cresting 400,
we feed the small leper of conscience.

Exile, you deserve solace and spinach
salad, penance in the night's gurgle . . .
antacid for the spirits ripped from

the flesh that sustains us. Tuna in
tin never swims far in the sea
of justification. This righteous

fret finds voice in the checkout line,
and dwindles at the choice of debit or credit.

Hallucinatory Semi-Dream

Lost Beast

A ridiculous leopard has climbed my fire escape,

looking for spots and the way back to wildness.

Great cat, you need to follow the quarter moon

in its descent, back to the south, to rooms

galvanized and canopied with rain. 

Never let someone like me know 

you've gone. Turn your indigo eyes

to stone. Too many like me covet

your harm. Trust the breath that risks

the journey to bring you home. Horrible

loss to let you prowl beside my bed. 

Give us each our chance. The claw

we share should never be exorcised.   

Boom-Boom-Boom

Outside my building there's a Godzilla-size jackhammer demolishing one of the entrances to the Copley T station. The city's amenable hum typically is disturbed by drunken youth at this hour of the night . . . wandering the alley below my window, pissing on the trash dumpsters, dropping bottles, proclaiming their alpha-maleness. They and other random noises generated in the melee that's a 21st century urban center can annoy, but nothing akin to what this 20 beats per minute pulverizing has achieved this evening. 

Fortunately there must be a rule requiring the work to knock off at 11 PM. The top of the hour's passed and now I just have the radiator hissing and some voices in the distance to distract me. With some luck, Chloe (the small white ruffian who lives next door) will not decide to fill the void of relative quiet with barking. I've got poems to revise before bed. Now that the metronome beating concrete has subsided, we'll see if I can avoid any other self-imposed distractions. 

When Life Was a More Brutal Affair

It is easy to forget how it was . . . this time around we're blessed with some basic remedies for afflictions that infused every day of living with insufferable threats of tragedy.

Monday . . . Mid-Day Free Stuff

When 24 Hour News Gets a Bit Much

Insular hardhat, you are the gift that
everyone has forgotten. Blinders on
a mule can’t make the beast move.
Frozen in the breaking light, no one

wants visibility. We just want to scratch
a shallow space in the hardness, to remember
the embrace only ignorance allows.
Cameras and satellites loop us in webs,

taunt us and leave us sullen as
pick-pocketed travelers who have missed
the last train. Who knew a village
obliterated could drop stones in

our morning cereal? Gratitude
for the random twitch that’s left us
nervous but unharmed. Hold this prayer
like tarnished alms: Let us forge

deeper into complacency, unmarred
by anything beyond the flashpoint
that stabs from the flat screen source
of thorns tangled in empathy’s cloak.

Never resolve to act, for only the few
are able to park the SUV and walk
down that crumbling cave’s shadow.

Free Stuff on Sunday Night, Too

Doxology of the Kindred

Phantasm, connected by the bridge 

that calls out silence . . . splits it like an atom 

into arias . . . you must want my attention. 

The overture in the window broadens 

into vibratory tentacles that reach the mind's 

well of defenses. June, I hear, and know it 

as a season for the nameless. A promise. 

Every nerve wishes you well. Though we can't 

comprehend being beyond the hope of a savior. 

Listen, you ask? We're finally attuned and yet 

distracted. So much base grit and lust . . . 

oh, the lust for being unaware still: 

To sense the breast as the slope 

of heaven's ascent, to feel the great churn 

in testicles that wraps the world in veils. 

Sex. I know how much you miss it. 

So many left in flesh endure

the restless hope for it. Tell me 

if our universe just can't exist 

without it. That would be a turn 

down a path toward the forest

that branches into hopelessness. 

But if that's where we're led, 

so be it. You seem reticent, 

sweet phantasm. Come here . . .

let's unbutton something 

together. I want to hear the breath

that transcends the vacuum we fear. 

That small rush of everything wonderful

lilting into the brief realm of the vocal. 

More Free Stuff . . . Sunday Evening

Being

Finish the moment, the tremble at the edge

beyond which an urge becomes a fist

you are simply attached to more 

than a calm night sitting on the bench 

with a bottle of Jameson. It's okay to envy

the couples who bubble past. Who doesn't

desire such obliviousness? Go, interrupt 

their conversation, if you don't

care. Or do you value the noble ideal 

that denial offers? The bold injury 

we choose to inflict remains

nothing but a pulse along our skull's 

impenetrable oddness. Really, 

it's okay. You have work in the morning.

Drama never stays long anyway. 

Another slug's a better dilemma 

to nurse. There's a show at 10

you could make, the scratch and scream 

of electrified strings a lullaby for a brain stoned 

by the idiocy of hormones. 

Trip off the bench that cradles 

a cause for regrets you'll hate.

Find your way back to the empty sheets

that want only your ink to open

to a masterpiece. Heat that pizza 

sitting in its box. Watch something

on television. You're not a ghost yet.  

Wonder

Is it any wonder that we sometimes romanticize existence?

Free Stuff on Sunday Morning

Regression Rally

You might argue that umbilicus can't define

a life. Though doesn't energy inure, 

spiral off

and siphon back? The ranges we ride over 

fall to valleys. To depend 

on friends' endurance is to call for an audience 

with a jury half-asleep and distracted 

by the spectacular flame of lives diminished 

as mine will be. Judgment's

not the point. I hear Donna pounding up 

and down the stairs and imagine her 

in black coat with scarf, out to address the world 

of her issues. There's always a knife 

to set one free, with

a mask grotesque . . . studded 

in blandness . . . to shelter 

the scarred child 

emerged. Hello, wanderer. You'll be back.

Free Writing on Saturday Night

In the Army of Wonder

I should be sleeping, coiled within 

ambition's reed boat of rest. Someplace

in the quantum mess, a funeral for striving

is winding down alleys that would erupt

into boulevards, if they could just get past 

their dumpsters and the ragged ones

who piss on graffiti and wish for ships

to sail them home to the stars. Indigo's

not a color an artist might feature . . . 

though it's the one most accessible 

to the unimaginative. My eyes glaze to buttons. 

Where has the pillow of solutions gotten?

It's a hard head that steers through

the fists of winter days, while a calm spirit 

reconnoiters halos and filters the comets.

Must twins deny their sameness? 

Lust in the gleam of a pear promises

the same decay, the same regression 

into ancient habits. Foreign adventurers

want to claim this island, and I seem unable 

not to defend this sandy foundation 

of doubts and giftless effort. Hurricane

dimensions and welded shutters welcome

the sailor I've not become. A final float

drifts down the fingers, and I am only

as lost as I was before. The wind can't touch me 

if I stay in this chair. Good night, 

gentle planets. Orbit in good cheer.

Spice Daze

Jambalaya stipples the tongue

with a kaleidoscope of spiced urgency---

enemy to the unimaginative, to the spandex blandness 

of stern diets. We indulge the infidelity

these rapacious crustaceans spike 

our stone palates with---finished 

with ferns---unsealed and closer  

to magma---who doesn't want

to order another platterful?

What Was on the "Bookshelf"

Tonight I decided to clear the horizontal bookshelf that my bed invariably becomes. It's a ritual to do with sheet washing. It always amazes how fast the books and journals collect, like snow flurries when you go to bed that coalesce into drifts against the door by morning. 

Here's the inventory of what was "on the shelf" (in the random order in which I pulled them off and stacked them on the floor, from top to bottom):

Source by Mark Doty

Scattered Chapters  by Baron Wormser

West Branch Spring/Summer 2008

Sinners Welcome by Mary Karr

The Spoon River Poetry Review 2008

The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot

Fire to Fire by Mark Doty  . . . now the NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER FOR POETRY 2008!!

The Resurrection Trade by Leslie Adrienne Miller

The Bellevue Literary Review Vol. 8 No. 1

Reign of Snakes by Robert Wrigley

Selected Poems by Derek Walcott

The Poetry Home Repair Manual  by Ted Kooser

The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

Nicholas and Alexandra by Robert Massie

Selected Poems by Robert Lowell

The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle

Wild Ducks Flying Backward by Tom Robbins

CivilWarLand in Bad Decline by George Saunders

Gulf Coast Vol. 20 No. 2

Eight American Poets  edited by Joel Conarroe

Antidote to Ranting . . .

 . . . spring will be here again before we know it! 

Peace to all editors and my fantasy readers.

Rejection Rant (On Advice to Pare Back Rhythm)

Okay, I will admit that I am possibly a couple thousand hours of practice short of Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 Hour Plane of Artistic Achievement goal. On the other hand, since I haven't been keeping track, I may be well beyond the magic mark. Wherever I may be on this continuum, I am still mired in the great dark sea of rejection that most writers swim in like some kind of artistic purgatory . . . only occasionally spotting a light on the horizon that could be a ship steaming toward the promised land of Publication Acceptance.

That light usually turns out to be a note of encouragement scrawled on a form rejection slip. But, hey, it's a light . . . and I am usually thrilled to get a glimpse.

Not today, so much, however.

I've submitted work to a certain journal off and on over the last half-dozen years. I received a nice note once and a standard form rejection another time (apparently someone forgot to turn the light on!). Today, after four months waiting, I received my latest submission back in the mail . . . the prodigal offspring of my imagination returned for recycling.

I bear no ill-feelings over the editors' decision. I understand how many of us are swimming around and hurling submissions (which must at times seem like endless crates of stinking fish) at overwhelmed editors. And I truly appreciate the time and interest an editor takes to jot any personal words on the literally countless rejection slips sent out each year. It means a lot.

So I was flattered and humbled that one of the editors jotted that  they're " . . . honored you keep giving us a chance." What a wonderful thing to say to a half-drowned poet. 

The note went on to proclaim my poems "well crafted, but need more edge . . ." Okay, that's helpful criticism. I can target this journal with some of my edgier efforts next time. 

But, it was the closing comment that put me in mind to raise the window and step out into the freezing cold on my fire escape and yell into the night, What the f*** are you talking about?

" . . . some said, less insistent rhythm?"  Wow! 

Seriously? Poetry should be less rhythmic? That the particular editor who penned the note ended this comment with a question mark gives me hope that he or she also didn't quite know what to make of this advice. I simply could not disagree with such advice more. 

It troubles me that this fine journal has editorial staff that may think unrhythmical poetry is better poetry. I've worked too many years to develop my ear to ever go back to my early days, when the music was off-key or missing in many of my poems. 

 I don't think I can send more work to this journal. For I don't think I can strip out what rhythm I've managed to coax from the language in my poetry.  I'm disheartened that an editor is out there who thinks doing so would make my efforts more worthy of sharing with readers. 

Genius Trumped by Hours of Practice

According to Malcolm Gladwell there's hope for those not apparently blessed by genius . . . or rather, if you are a genius and want to have something to show for it, you need to practice, a lot. 10,000 hours should do it!