Monthly Archives: July 2008
T or F
True or false:
the more easily a point of view
can be described in terms
of answers to true or false questions,
the more evil is inherently available
to the holder.
True or false:
This is a poem.
A poem is musical truth.
Truth is detectable in any situation.
Truth is a fire that cannot be quenched.
Regrets that emerge at sunrise
can be planted and cultivated
until they become lemons.
Lemons will become lemonade. A sow’s ear
will become a silk purse.
Reform
will follow devastation.
True or false:
Holiness comes from white pine needles,
dried red muscles
from a badger, a rattle
around a fire, whistles
in a disco…
true or false:
God is in the details.
Details are overwhelming.
Big Gods need big pictures.
To draw the big pictures one needs
a broad, broad brush.
New Crazy Dog Songs, #6: Tonsure Chant
marvelous
and revealing
are my outgrowths
every nail on my picking hand
agrees with me
that they should stay long and clean
and my fretting hand’s nails
submit to the clippers
as if they were tiny monks
shorn close for discipline’s sake
but every hair on my head
is unlawful as they come
shouting at odd angles
“what you got for me
bring it dog and
i’ll fuck you up”
i offer the work of
my soft hands
self-righteously in public
as my head offers
evidence that while
what i claim to honor
is careful utility
not so secretly
i greatly admire the loose insanity
on my dear old
rat coated head
because i can tell myself
that it reminds you all
that atop this artist
lives the devil himself
Counting…
I was just working on the poetry manuscript and decided to do some checking on what’s here on the blog.
Since 2003 when I started this blog, I’ve tagged 348 entries as “poems.” 128 of those were written since this time last year.
Another 37 are tagged as poems in other categories; there is some double tagging so that probably accounts for another 20 unique poems.
I don’t tag every single poem I post; only the ones I may do more with at some point get tagged so I can find them easily. And I didn’t start tagging poems when I first joined the site, so there are probably older ones back there in the deepest archives (I’m not that energetic right now to feel like checking).
So I’d estimate that there are around 500 poems on this blog.
Add to this the number of poems that haven’t been posted here (by which I mean more or less things written prior to 2003) and we’re easily talking 1000+ poems. I can vouch for at least 500 or so in various files and notebooks I’ve been keeping since 1974, still talking about just the ones I’ve bothered hanging onto for future work. That’s probably a pretty conservative estimate.
I truly hope at least 50 of them are worth keeping and possibly making it into the manuscript at some point, but I’m not hopeful.
When will it be enough?
New Crazy Dog Songs, #5: Smoker’s Aria
to light it is to make
a bet that could always be the last
(though you will never know)
to sip from it
is to suck on
a poker chip
choke a bit as you swallow
feel the roll of it
over the back of the throat
this is your last stake
you could have saved it for
a proper gamble
but you put it on black
and let it ride
knowing the house always wins
but what the hell when
the house always wins
what’s the big deal about losing
no one ever gave you a promise
that it wouldn’t hurt a bit
when at last you’re tossed out the back door
pockets inside out
collar ripped at the points
and pants wet with your own release
until that moment
when they tell you
not to come back here ever again you deadbeat you bum
at least if you smoke
you have something to do
with your terrified hands
New Crazy Dog Songs, #4: Rejection Round
never
could this turtle
the size of a dinner plate
dancing on the manic beach before me
ever be more real
than those damn Grateful Dead
terrapins
that graced the bumper
of your car in
the summer of 1980
which is where I’m sure this one
escaped from
since something I saw on TV earlier
made me remember you
when I shut my useless lids
you’re just as real as he is
you and your strawberry sex
you and your punch to the crotch
fake devotions
your prison wife tongue a mailbox
shipping junk
which is where I’m sure
the TV
got the idea to remind me
of you and your strawberry punches
all over your face
your hair trailing brutal devotees
who followed you around and around
the woolen mill floor
you
easy as a passcode to steal
easy as summer dumb drunk
God! you were easy as a turtle to pick up
with a shell as smooth as my Riunite goggles
green and snappy cold to the touch
which is why I’m sure I remember you
unhurt by the oily men who weren’t me
even if you lied about them to me
you strawberry boxer
kid assassin with the ass of a star
tonight this turtle
keeps stepping out in my not-quite dreams
makes me think of you
in July
in my fever
which is where you moved to
right after I finally quit that stinking job
strictly because I knew you were always
going to be
dead to me
New Crazy Dog Songs, #3: Blurt Mambo
not sleeping is like the fun rock climb
of a night that holds up
the altitude in you and takes everything it’s got
to use for the purchase of something hot —
grease jewels, redacted assays, stents and shunts
drawing down the sifted juice you swim in
not stopping the thought parade
is like forgiving
the skatepark revelator folk magician
who steps on the bullsnake
and cuts its head off while the rest
thrashes home toward the grave of its past
sliding on blood over the pavement —
air below its throes and it won’t die
mad props and hosannas to the elevator eyes on high speed
mad ghost choir shadormas to the spanking of reason
mad ballistic chants to chi coursing on organs in open pipe mode
not sleeping is how it begins
the holy writ of unholy charge in the vein
and its will be done
until its will is done
its will be done
until its will be
done
New Crazy Dog Songs, #2: Schizo-Affective Bop
if a voice offers to boil you
take it for a walk
like a beloved dog
until it’s panting
begging for cool water
if a voice begs to hang you
calm it with long strokes
and a fistful of doctrine
until it curls up and makes nice
with its spiky fur bent
against your failing ankles
if a voice threatens to bean you
with a burn softball
toss it back and get steel-eyed
on its face until
it cowers behind the plate
shitting soft gold paste
you can use to paint the bleachers
where the weird spectators sit
watching you just so they can complain
all the way home
if you win
New Crazy Dog Songs, #1: Street Death Serenade
good night ladies
good night ladies
good night ladies
we’re going to leave you now
we’re visiting our graveyards
we’re opening our Sterno
we’re bleeding on our tables
we’re going to leave you now
merrily we roll along
roll along, rolling wrong
merrily we roll along
along the restive bay
street song ladies
bereft ladies
murder brides and babies
we’re going to leave you now
we leaped at damage
we drank some darkness
we ate your children
we’re going to leave you now
and verily we roll along
rob a throng, drop a bomb
merrily we roll ourselves
into the red dead bay
Of course, the BEST way to subvert the slam paradigm
is simply to be so fucking good at being your own bad self that they will have no choice but to listen to you.
This is also known as the “the path less traveled.”
(hey, it’s the best I can do right now, people; the headachy/body achy stuff continues)
Woke up this morning feeling like utter crap.
Went back to bed. Woke up again still feeling like utter crap.
It’s utterly crappy.
Quick updates for the last few days
Tuesday: GotPoetry Live was miniscule Tuesday. Three readers, no real audience. We pulled up a table and read poems round robin. Fun, but not the beginning of a trend, I hope. See you next Tuesday?
Tonight: Went into the Cantab with ocvictor to see pinata‘s excellent set. I read the tribute poem “For Shannon” in the open. Went over well; made a couple of edits on the fly which are reflected in the text here on my blog, although not the one that’s on the shannonswishes community.
We also started brainstorming some matches for the Heavyweight Words (my name for the prospective Poetry Boxing competitions I’m thinking about) series. Think I’ve got the first one set; just need to find a date, judges, and a place, and ask the first two “combatants” to participate. Really, it’s almost all done. 😉
Tomorrow night (well, tonight actually) I’m planning on attending the Ship where anselm23 is featuring. Busy week for poetry.
Got the news today that another online distribution site will be featuring Duende work in their streaming content — more news as I get it.
Full Stop
no sky is crystalline
no eyes are limpid pools
no tender glances liquefy the very ice of the alpen peaks
the world is not a human description
the sky’s molecules move independently of one another
the eyes glisten at their centers but end quickly beyond their surfaces
the snow on the mountain will melt in its own time
and love will not conquer all
as anyone can tell you
who has loved and then stopped loving
when they came to mountains that held them back
never trust a poet to tell the truth
because they lie to save their imaginations
from the inability of what is real
to bend itself to their words
if the sky ever decides to crystallize
it will fall with great sharp speed upon us
and the poets will be shredded along with everyone else
if the eyes of your beloved ever become deep water
step away from the edge
before a poem can push you in
and if the mountains ever let their burdens slide all at once
toward the places where we stand fantasizing about them
it will not be love that carries the avalanche downward
but a serene indifference to the nature of our unwillingness
to allow things to be as they are
miraculous
in and of themselves
without any need
of our embellishment
For Shannon
When the news came that the young poet had passed
I was noodling through a bad rendition
of some classic rock song on my guitar,
imagining that I was still capable of making it
in a world I never attempted to conquer until
I was too old for a realistic chance.
I was fourteen when I first pulled the pen off a page
in a lined notebook, looked down at what was there, and said:
This. This is who I am. I knew I was the tool
of words. I knew the road would be long, the pain
of walking it would be too strong to bear at times,
but I knew then there was no path beside that one for me.
These days I wonder, sometimes, what would have happened
if I had had a guitar at that time. If I’d had
the time and the passion to blunt my fingers down
to bone and callus and make myself into the image
of my idols. If I had given up the path of the word.
The guitar is superfluous to my story, of course.
All I mean to say is this: there are paths
before us all, and every one is as much the remnant
of a path not taken as it is a calling. When I learned
of the young poet’s passage, I saw the path she took
as clearly as I can see mine now: the initiating voice,
the urge to say something only I could say at the time,
the long nights writing past the stones that cracked my soles,
the luminous moments when the pen stopped
and the face of the poet I dreamed I could be was dimly visible,
a pale moon in the depth of a mirror.
We take what we are given. We walk, we run, we move through the world.
We create our selves where we find our selves. The guitar
holds my sense of regret at what could have could have been, but
as I see her now, somewhere more certain, in a place where she can say
with no doubt in her voice: This, this is who I am,
my urge to put these clumsy hands on these strings
seems as pointless as a death in summer,
on a bright day,
when the world stops
to mourn and agree:
This.
This is who she was,
and we are the better
for her certainty.
Dark Matter 