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!

Drama at the Huntington

When it comes to theater, Boston cannot compete with New York. We accept this. Though we have some quite serviceable options if one doesn't feel up to the long commute to Broadway . The Huntington Theater is among our best. It also offers the economical theater goer an option that's hard not to act on (forgive the puny pun): If you're willing to be an usher you can see the show for free.

I took advantage of this exceptional deal this weekend, ushering and then watching Tom Stoppard's "Rock N Roll." I enjoy ushering. The act of greeting folks who are anticipating something enjoyable is itself enjoyable. I worked the balcony with a man named Dan, and once the patrons were seated we found unoccupied seats and settled in for our remuneration.

The play was wonderfully staged. Live theater is a wonder. To see characters in the flesh is an experience more visceral than movies or even imagining while reading. Though I have to say that Stoppard's characters often seem emotionally removed . . . I can't quite connect at that visceral level. I was handicapped even further this time by lack of sleep on the nights preceding the play; though a strong cup of coffee at intermission helped me focus better on the nuances of the second act.

The real drama of the evening actually took place in the balcony. And I was one of the principals. I've been consoling myself ever since, with the fact that I was unprepared for what happened.

It's been a long time since I was the object of someone's possible romantic intentions. And I must emphasize possible . . . for it may have simply been that Dan was a lonely soul, seeking out some companionship. That's a role I and probably everyone can relate to having played.

That I identified Dan's overture to get coffee or a drink sometime as romantic in tone, perhaps says more about my state of mind than his. How I responded . . . by not responding . . . clearly points out a social ineptitude on my part. I've thought of a number of different ways to respond since. Any response might have been better than ignoring his suggestion as though I'd suddenly lost my ability to understand the English language.

After we'd picked up the discarded programs and candy wrappers littering the balcony at the show's conclusion, Dan walked down to the basement with me while I retrieved my jacket from the coat check room. We walked out of the theater and headed up Huntington Avenue. I tried to make some amends, by asking Dan if he lived nearby. He gave me a very specific description of where his place on Mass Ave is located.

When we got to the junction of Huntington and Massachusetts Avenues, we shook hands and I told Dan a lie, "I'm sure we'll probably see each other again volunteering." Though maybe we will . . . and maybe I'll be better prepared the next time to handle another human being's feelings with even a modest degree of sensitivity.

Dilbert's Creator Miraculously Healed By Poetry

Poetry is good for what ails us

Dancer's Inspiration

On a rainy Saturday morning, when I promised myself I'd work on revisions and submissions of poems, I am roaming through photographs instead. This is from the Alvin Ailey studios in New York. It's a photo of a mosaic that I sat beneath through a winter morning a few years back, while my daughter auditioned nearby. I've always thought there might be a poem's inspiration waiting to be found in this image, but if not for me then perhaps someone else may find it. 

Actuarial Soul at Sunrise

Train travel has reestablished a position of preference for many of us who have to get from Boston to New York (and back). Living steps from Back Bay Station makes the Amtrak option even more convenient. Beyond the ease of boarding, I enjoy the route along the seashore of Rhode Island and Connecticut. I am always surprised, however, how few of my fellow passengers seem comparably enchanted.

This morning's journey began in the dark at 5:15. There was little to see beyond one's reflection in the window until we'd made Connecticut. Usually when I travel on the Acela I secure a window seat on the waterside of the train, and it's important to me that my seat be in a row where the full expanse of the window is before me. I get surly if I have to settle for a seat where the window frame can partially block the view. I also prefer to see what's ahead. Thus a backward-facing seat is also unpreferred.

This morning unfortunately I was traveling with a work colleague. Unfortunate because it meant I felt compelled to take a backward-facing seat on the non-waterside of the train, so that we might more easily discuss our company's freshly minted 10Q, while facing one another across a faux wood table. I've never read through an entire 10Q. It's difficult to imagine more stultifying, pre-dawn reading material . . . and I am pleased to say that I still have yet to make it through an entire 10Q. 

Sitting in sub-par seating and studying financial statements and management summaries, understandably, made me grumpy. I also would've really liked to nap . . . at least until light returned to the landscape passing by. Though I'm glad now that I didn't snooze. And I'm glad I was facing backwards. 

For all my travails, I was rewarded by a sunrise that painted the clouds at the horizon in an exotic blend of lavender and pink, laced with brilliant gold. The 10Q receded to its rightful position near the intersection of oblivion and the train table's edges. I was positioned perfectly (facing backwards, toward the east) to catch this brief, solar preview, in all its cinematic majesty.

I encouraged my colleague to turn to look. He did, I think . . . but it was clear he hadn't seen what I'd seen. He turned back to the 10Q without hesitation. I wasn't offended. It just struck me as curious that this funny, brilliant man, trained as an actuary, could not see something so phenomenal.

Saving Private Ryan vs. Blade Runner

With Veteran's Day (and Memorial Day) comes the Battle of the War Movies, fought on the ever-expanding battlefield of cable and satellite TV. I'm not complaining. As a child growing up in the Cold War era, I was fascinated by everything to do with the hot war that was WWII. There was a time when I knew every episode of the series "Combat." I remember "Von Ryan's Express" at the drive-in; the bug-smeared windshield fading away before harrowing train chases. "The Longest Day" and "Patton," both seen with my grandfather at the decrepit Edison Theater in Ft. Myers. When Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks revived the epic war movie with "Saving Private Ryan," I was in the line to be among the first to see it, and I continue to subscribe to HBO in tribute and gratitude for "Band Of Brothers" (and a different type of war series, "The Wire").

Thus, when a friend of mine who had never seen "Saving Private Ryan" happened to be sitting beside me on Monday evening when the channel-surfing lottery wheel stopped on TNT and found Capt. Miller (Tom Hanks) and his squad coming upon a German artillery outpost, I was unrestrained in my enthusiastic endorsement: "You have got to watch this!"

Of course, the problem with commercial television is that they show commercials. Inevitably, one eventually arrived, and we were off surfing again for something to entertain us during that 240 or so seconds of advertising. We found another film in mid-stream that my friend had never seen all the way through, "Blade Runner: The Final Cut."

Now we had a dilemma. How to choose which war to follow? Ultimately we melded the two into one odd viewing experience, and my friend has still not seen either film in its entirety. But that's probably okay . . . it's a little like dipping into a book of poems where you find a number of pieces that you enjoy, but you don't ever get around to reading through the collection front to back in its entirety.

Beyond the example we represented of the modern television viewer's incessant impatience, watching pieces of these two movies made me wonder at my fascination with cinematic representations of war. It may be a gender bias . . . something primal to do with testosterone and territoriality. In fact, that seems most likely. I can see myself much more as the terrified interpreter, Upham, in "Saving Private Ryan" than any of the Mamet-type manly warriors who fought brutally and bravely against their German counterparts.

Though it occurs to me that humans of both genders (and our animal colleagues) have this fighting instinct deeply wired into our essential selves. Darwin defined the game's setup. Each generation that comes along simply takes up its position somewhere on the game board, and then fights like hell to defend it. We want to win. Why?

The answer to that has to be a subject for another entry (or two). But it's a really interesting question, and its answer depends a lot on how one defines winning. What's it mean to win, when we all eventually die . . . both winners and losers? Winning may be mostly about postponing dying, and ensuring that extra time is spent with greater allocations of pleasurable experiences than the losers get. Or maybe the game is being fought in shadow lands (to borrow from C. S. Lewis) or in shadows against a cave wall (thanks Plato). No matter, we sure seem to be fascinated by playing, and watching . . . especially when we can step back and watch great actors and cinematographers show us replays!

Commuting Poets

Are poets lonely creatures, or are they gregarious extroverts? Is a performance poet more the latter than the poet who writes to publish? I traveled on a train today, across the aisle from another Boston poet, who might've been a carnival organizer or a nightclub hostess in a prior incarnation. He's published work, but he seems to be stimulated most by performing . . . particularly in his role as emcee of a local reading series

I see this fellow occasionally on this particular train, and, while I know who he is, he hasn't any idea that I am a fellow poet. Awhile back I even wrote "Poet's Commute," about our coincidental journeys. He always talks to the person who plops into the seat beside him. And, so, this morning I made certain to sit across the aisle in a seat beside the far window. As there was no one else nearby (I suppose), my fellow poet attempted to engage me in conversation. He asked if I knew whether or not the Pats had won yesterday, which I confirmed they had. He wondered who they had beaten. I wasn't sure, but then recalled that it was the Bills from Buffalo. He moved on to the Celtics next, and, yes, I knew they'd won yesterday as well . . . against the Pistons. 

Now, if I were not of the lonely poet tribe, I might have introduced myself. I'm certain we'd have had a fine conversation on things to do with poetry. And I could benefit by networking with other poets. Instead, I cut the budding conversation off like a gardener who doesn't really trust flowers. I tugged my headphones on, got the music going, and opened my journal to see if I'd gained any new ideas overnight on how to bring the draft of a poem to a reasonable conclusion.  

And, throughout our ride, I felt a slight gnaw of regret that I am unwilling to be more sociable. Poetry writing is a self-reflective pursuit. It might be pleasant to know another poet, who happens to commute on the same line as I do. We could be like the bankers from State Street who I also see sometimes . . . discussing LIBOR and financial options . . . the way we might discuss enjambment and metrical strategies, or even whether Doc Rivers should work Gabe Pruitt into the rotation in more games.

Dickinson vs. Graffiti

To make a prairie                                 

it takes a clover                                        

and one bee,  

One clover,                          

and a bee,

And revery, 

The revery alone

will do,

If bees are few.

The juxtaposition of Emily's poem with the modern shout-out art below might seem too contrived if created in a piece of prose . . . but in Amsterdam so many things that seem fantastic to the imagination can be found incarnate.

On Memory, Poetry, and Blogging

Everyone's got such a lot to say . . . and maybe I do, too. 

Or, more probably, I may benefit from jotting down bits from my experiences . . . so that I have a chance to remember some of what's happened later on. Somewhere along my path, I short-circuited my memory capabilities. It must've been a defensive move. Too much emotional intensity seemed to accompany memories. To get along with the moment at hand seems easier when my mind's not whipping my psyche over all that's passed. 

I've used poetry as my blog of choice. Some people keep journals . . . some people keep memories. I write poems. Many are Proustian tea cookies. When I read them again, I can sometimes conjure the places, the emotions, even a few specific details that accompanied their composition. I suspect that poems will continue to be my genre of choice to compensate for an impaired memory, but blogging may be a useful avenue, too. We'll see.