Category: wondering

I am the burning schlub

So either this is as funny as I think it is or I am at about a 3 degree slant to the rest of the human world.

New Yorker

I mean, not to kill a joke by analyzing it, but everything is just right here, down to the abortive sexual innuendo of “incredibly hot” (aborted by the peekaboo of its sayer’s bellybutton as much as by the campfire) and the stroked irregular royal purple edge of the sky where (oh dear visual poets in my care do take note) the cartoon reminds us its sublimity is a cartoon’s sublime.

Also I feel I have been in the burning schlub’s place more times that I can number. Eyes on the wonder of the mind field and feet in the good rough bad peace of the real. Thank you, New Yorker, to which I’ve never before looked for spiritual correction, and probably still won’t, but.

Into the life of things

Wandering on Google+ came to a brief sensitive reading of George Oppen by Anil Bawa-Cavia, of whom I haven’t heard, relayed by Miggy Angel, of whom ditto.

That’s my bad, head in Sumerian sands and all. Hope to read more of both as we seem to have some in common. It begins —

George Oppen was a poet of matter. Of stuff itself. Dealing in the opacity of things, the impenetrability of materials, the tangible complexity of the world.

Omission as an expression of the unresolved. The conflicts to be admitted in objects.

— and completes here. There’s Heidegger in there, and Merleau-Ponty, but worn lightly, thankfully.

What if thing were not a dirty word.

What if matter were, as its etymology implies, mother of us all.

Which, duh, it is, but what if we took that to heart.

That beautiful man, made light, made matter, made light —

oppenimage

Junk mail bricolage (I)

A few weeks ago I took Dumuzi – a manuscript I had thought pretty much done – back into the shop for an overhaul. Started incorporating handwritten bits, pages of journal writing, fragments of the myth stroked out on scraps torn from junk mail envelopes, and’ve been pretty pumped about where it seems to be headed.

And my feelings in the wake of Elise’s passing, which have surprised me in their intensity, though why should they really, I loved her as a true friend, far from derailing the work seem to have thrown themselves into it for fuel. (I showed her one of them, not posted here today, and true to generous form, she flared, though it was far outside her taste, gladness on my behalf.)

Here’s one. I should say, this is the part of the book that tells the story of Dumuzi’s consort’s, Inanna’s, journey to the underworld, i.e., death and metamorphosis. As she readies for her journey (as if anyone chose such a journey) she gathers her me, her powers, which are all the powers of culture, our being as civilized beings.

her-me-1-3.jpg

And the other.

her-me-2-3.jpg

You’ll see some anger in it. Okay so yeah I’m pissed. Some of it’s, I’m pissed at the world, it took my friend. Even, let’s say it, pissed at my friend, she got took. And, some of it’s anger at, well, junk mail, and a life among and as commodity, even as it’s also an effort to subvert commodification. Sounding like a lit prof now shutting up.

What am I doing here. I don’t know. Something about an elegy in motion. If blog (I first typed glob) as form lets me do something my private journal nor a public statement won’t, too, it’s to do with catching the gist of the feel of the thought on the fly.

Urgent Note for My Son Langston

A poem by Theresa Williams, one of the students in my recently done Intro to Creative Writing courses. Of all the many moving documents to come out of Ferguson and its crisis and the web of crises it belongs to this one’s moved me most. It’s so good it about annihilates the distinction between “personal” and “political.” And seems freeform but has an astonishingly clear ear — give a listen.

Urgent Note For My Son Langston

to be pinned to his collar upon age eleven

This is Langston.
He likes mutant turtles and the ghost grey
power ranger please
do not
shoot him he
is your new friend he
will jump in your arms
and ask
to be swung
in circles not
in news spin

please he
is scared of very loud
noises and he would not
respond to a shot he
might just fall in dirt
infra red and not move at

all like when we play ninjas and he is the blackest
because he say that’s the baddest

and I say no but
he say yes so
I’m the blackest

so how to make easy
topic better get meta
and none of this race shit really matters so
low I talk hawking but he waffles
and I don’t give a
fuck bout machines
stretched in time
I just need Langston man boy
demon home
in time please don’t

kill him he likes pancakes not waffles
like on Sundays when he asks for extra syrup
I pour on so much syrup
yes please
don’t fire we hymn strange hold
hands I put him on hips even
altars big
ger black
er and scary

arms scare
crow my neck brow clammy
while he mouths the words mom and god
round his tongue, spun like a fat marble.

And I know this note is a little long, but I just thought you should know that
this is Langston
and I love him he absorbs all the light
and so can you I mean yes
he’s not an angel stole once maybe twice
you learned his lesson well he

is or might be volatile please
return home safe so I can see the blue white
light from top peaks of his covers pulled tight
round his door bends blackbodies soft
sweet pulse a blue night

Student work: 80 Flowers poems

The danger on all sides with this exercise was Staying On Topic. Some of the ones below manage to get gorgeously off-topic once and again. Others stick to a putative topic but the texture and resonance of the language exceeds all topicality. In several you can see a hesitant limbering-up in the first line or two then a far more confident soar. I’m really struck, once more, typing these up, how good they are at what they do.

POTATO

The dull dust-bowl craggy-exterior couch
rotten kitchen five-pound-bag wrinkly-skin grocery
Ireland-famine Idaho-farming scarecrow rolling dry
yellow dirt ground roots economy
thin-sliced thanksgiving mashed boring lazy
cook-it boil-it bake-it fry-it mash-it
vegetable grimes lumens old-man harvest
french-fries electrical-currents round brown gun
suds buds crud grudge spud

SIPS OF WHISKEY

Carefree ciaos binding sinners dawn
hairless in feature gruesome quenched
disease be sweet with June
a cloud full as cups
streaking glasses wiggled off noses
revenge useless teeth rotted sunflower
quick slandered years opium swander
easiness night wish us eve

PLUMB

Jump man castle princess save
brick gold life die pit
plant tube bite pants small
underground black greenness gone warp
spring cloud shell wing lift
ghost browning night gap stairs
air fish bridge leap straightaway
fire spin axe fall finish

TEA

Eyeballs until milky bubbling wave
Spiced wet sun sugar thumb
Porcelain Ukraine melts heated eve
Ancient opaque petals stir temple
Black steam with heavy blink
Soothed pinky stains marriage peel
Waking garden hearth quiet pour
Tea-leaf enjoys museum whisper sip

IF NOT, WINTER

white knife winter’s home again
green blade red between lips
ardor-arbor again wet as knife
shoots green movement legs-in-ground come
bouqueted breath mist kneads moon
like-I-scent foxlog winter breathing hoarfrost
tendrils fungi frankly disputing sparrows
youth-blood sapling lusts sorrows spring

Eat coffee grounds running morning
downwind wine orchards grapes making
beans process tea leaves scatter
summer flowers foating dirty water
fallen babes hotchocolate system milk
crash liquid brakes warm throat
stove appliances cats meow food
sleepy timer Nyquil roses out

HERMIT THRUSH

Winter parks ground cup nests
Forests breed westward rare vagrants
Stock speckled dark low wings
Underwing reddish releases nature song
Well known high melody altered
Unassuming harmonic ethereal modern media
Descending spiral pitches uniquely simple
Delicate earth tailed feathered hermit

SIREN

Pearls of wisdom sea salt
green blue glass sand shimmering
wet sting bare feet black-and-brown
aimless below thirty hot disappearing
sails tossed-up stones cuts grins
angel-kisses your game gulls aquamarine
ocean push-and-pull drops chilled out
in cycles shore between toes

WIND TURBINES

Pinwheel wheat fields spinning desert
hotel room hills slow hands
discovery channel children turning sun
energy lights dry crisp miles
telephone wires tattoo distance golden
white semis rise and fall
old highway birds spinning dusk
Columbia Gorge asphalt passengers flicker.

CARTOONS

blue plum slits skin ink
clotted pulled clocks push death
tidy pray box shine we
kneel love spin wheeled wilt
eggs crumble each star reels
breaks brew dolls plotted temples
glum lots drew sticks mud
castes loamed castle knots giggle

Finally some individual lines I really admired:

bone saw reek red cross

stub cylinder opiate lounge chair

Large not purple fat water

treasure wild paper golden by

Lives green in room mountainside

roof yellow circle entrance tree

Spring-bent sprung-scent love

Split-infinity slips toes tips

☜ teaching portfolio

Student work: 101 word short story

I was struck by how well many of these came out. Their work with formal or procedural constraints in verse (anagram poem, phone number poem, found poem) seems to be paying off in their work in prose. Or that’s one way anyway of accounting for the leanness of these.

A lot of work to comment on tonight so I’ll post just a couple here. Two I find especially attentive to the shapes of their sentences. And while they are stories — they propose event — they also draw many of their flavours from the prose poem and the flash essay.

GREEN ON YELLOW

The yellow coat is missing a button — it has been for a while now. It just hangs on the rack over muddy rain boots.

Her father sews a new button back on but it doesn’t match the others. He pricks his finger; she plays doctor and dresses the wound in a pink Band-aid.

Arms slide into sleeves and she spins around in the coat like it’s brand new, save for the green button that breaks the yellow. (She picked the button out herself.)

Tugging on boots, she dashes into the rain. He’s in her footsteps, chasing her shadow.

MY NEW HOME

In the woods, around a creek, down a gravel road. I walk in to music, vibrations, occupied air.

I live with four boys. They throw apples at deer.

One is king of the trash fires. He stays up late with the trees.

One is a recluse gamer. With the deepest mind.

Another just shaved his beard and dreads. What a shame.

And then there is one that plays with his hair, while he smiles at me. Such a dangerous combination.

I think of how close I want to get, tension thickens the room. I spend my nights cold.

Struggle

Reading the post of someone kind enough to follow this blog. Someone struggling and I want to say, you’ll be okay, you’ll be okay, I know you will. Lean into anything and anyone that brings you ease. Not numbness — real true wakeful living ease. It’s there for you, it’s there, already in you.

And my students, one or another breaks my heart sometimes, how hurting they are sometimes. Want to hug them but can’t (not my place). Want to heal them but can’t (not mine to do).

Can’t do much but say, I’ve been there, or somewhere like there, consider me proof it can be got through, if that helps. Being a person is hard. That’s what I got for wisdom at 45 years. Being a person is just plain hard.