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Country Light
Friday, February 27, 2009 IV.2.4. Feedback from "Here and Now" readers is that load time is becoming an increasing problem. We're going to try to fix that. Currently, when your computer loads "Here and Now" the load-package includes the current issue and the two previous issues. Sometimes next week, we'll change that to just the current issue and the most recent previous issue. I don't know how any of this works, but logically, that shuld cut load time by about a third. I hope this works to help those folks who have been having a problem. Meanwhile, all previous issues, from the first one in 2006 to the most recent, are avaiable in the archives that can be accessed on the right side of the page. So, that's what we're going to do with that. This week we have, as usual, a good mix of poets. From friends of "Here and Now" Susan McDonough Teresa White Walter Durk Dan Cuddy From my library S.A. Griffin Doug Knott Bonny Finberg Ron Kolm Naomi Shihab Nye Brooke Bergan Dennis Tourbin Charles Harper Webb G.E. Pattterson E.E. Cummings Ursula K. Le Guin and me. Here we go.  I'm starting this week with several pieces from The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry, a huge anthology edited by Alan Kaufman and S.A. Griffin and published by Thunder's Mouth Press in 1999. The first poem is by S.A. Griffin, one of the book's editors. Griffin, author of Heaven Is One Long Naked Dance and A One-Legged Man Standing Casually on Hollywood Blvd. Smoking a Cigarette, has been published in many poetry ezines and anthologies. Along with partner Rafael F. J. Alvarado, he publishes and edits (Sic)Vice & Verse. There is a River there is a cheerful ignorance of chance meeting and luck like gold that cannot be mined or stolen a common atom a dance and stars that trick the water with their certain magic do not wash your wars in it take your holy rituals to the precious fountains built by your agencies of fear press your wine from the fallout and drink your bitter victory for yes there is a river a giving river that will sing you safely a river of light final fast and free where you can disrobe and leave your casual sadness walking sideways at the shore meet me there whoever your are and we will agree to swim it together The next poem is by Doug Knott, a graduate of Yale and Harvard Law School who found himself happily sidetracked into the world of written and spoken word in underground clubs and who has been at the forefront of performance poetry since 1984. His work appears in many anthologies and he is an award-winning poetry video director. Sunset Strip Self Improvement Affirmations There is always the feeling of wind even when there is no wind the coat wants to turn up young women in tight black clothes project cold blond sex slip out in gum-chewing 3's and 4's from dark fertility-cars There are fires waiting to jump fire lanes, to enter the music smog in the club owned by the famous movie actor in front of which the famous kid movie star died of too much good will and cheap thrills from his good friends; on the sidewalk stood altars from his fans like kaleidoscopic stoneware Mexican gods with flowers in their hair The take off their shirts and show their tattoos at closing time in front of the tattoo store the girls look at them with smiles like eclipsing planets all the way down in their bellies their faces turn up to the stars The religious coffee house has folded, of course - people drive more wildly on this street holding phones to their ears in their cars, feet jammed down tight close together figures on big billboards peer down like row of giants on a drawbridge who appear intimate but are secretly filing for divorce And the Whisky and the Roxy clubs feature rock bands that are named after toilets, boomerangs, and kitchenware; And I want a motorcycle I have never had a motorcycle And everybody here is a little bit behind or in front of the cameras: in the bookstore, I stood in line beside Donald Sutherland, one of my favorite actors and I almost vaulted the aisle to grab his arm and tell him how much I admired his work, particularly in Nicholas Roeg's dark Venetian drama But I held back my racing heart to give him space to breathe alone in the illusory world where he is not recognized In the gas station I pump gas next to the famous male model with the blond hair-extensions and big pectorals I knew it was him when a girl with huge sweater breasts approached and pulled his autograph while we pumped and I said, "It's you, right, you're the movie guy?" and he said, "No, not him," and I said "OK," because it was funny enough to me that he denied it, but then he stood behind me to pay at the cashier and I turned and said again, "C'mon, you're the guy, aren't you?" And he said, "Yeah...it's me, it's me, it's me" and we were both gratified And the Mesopotamians behind the payment grill also brandished their mustaches at the big-star action; I had just seen this male model as a life-sized comic cardboard cut-out in the greeting card store window up the street This is the city of movies, not films - of package, persuasion and negative pickups in the financing of all life, including executives who seek preference in restaurant seatings like packs of militant seals and this is the city that serves up its own name as part of the deal The High Holy Hype of litmus audience test Sunset Boulevard in the dog breath night: the long cars line up at the lacy brocade outside the restaurants to be loaded with people who generate international states of mind and dubious cultural symbols And it's time for the hit men, the pitch men the agents and the one-line guys and to roll the big cameras like dice and no one forgets to be seen leaving a big tip or to throw themselves with a big round of applause and chopped liver under the wheels Which roll down the street walking distance from the health club ragged with the dregs of rock and roll The traffic lights blink and car shadows move across me like a movie that kicks in when I close my eyes - it's the movie where I'm always the star waiting for the the light to change city of stars neighborhood of strangers it will happen for me it will happen for me it will happen for me Here's a short piece from the book by Bonny Finberg, a member of The Unbearables. (Looks interesting, but I'll let you look it up.) Archaeology Young sexy women, an eternal fount of sleek skin, alabaster and onyx, honeyed eyes, yielding mouths. But I prefer the avatars of elemental things. Jill, baby faced irony and iron ass to boot. Dangerous Diane, ineluctable eyes that pierce the crust of bullshit. Alice, in the wedding night blizzard of '93, short moonfaced rascal in mink coat and plastic rain hat, likes her vodka. Suzie the floozy, tripper turned chef, kept the neighborhood kids full of jello and homemade pizza. Linda, weighted down with cheap pearls and expensive taste, in paint smeared jeans, a fallen arches history of pick up porn. I will gladly lounge with them when poachers come to pick our bones and steal the tusks we brandished in our cool resolve. And an ever shorter piece by Ron Kolm, another member of The Unbearables. Factory Still Life Eduardo, my night shift partner, Shovels another load Into the blazing furnace. He cups his nuts As the flames spew out And circle around his face. His eyes glow As he tells me a dirty joke That goes on approximately forever.  I had a birthday last week, one of the big ones. Here's my poem for that day. on my 65th birthday it's a pretty good morning to have a birthday cool, with soft breezes a little damp in the air spring is in evidence, all the trees we planted three years ago along Apache Creek are showing their green buds, except for the red oaks who lose their leaves last in the fall and sprout them back after all the other trees have greened in the spring we didn't have much of a winter this year and i'm not ready for what we had to end, just like i don't think i'm ready yet to be 65 years old but no one asked me about either the greening of spring of the graying of my own life-string, so i suppose my only choice is going along with the program, the real life alternatives, continuous winter and dead in the ground, being cures worse than the disease .... i don't care what they say, no one's every ready for these inevitabilities of wound down and worn out, the approaching day when the yo yo goes down and doesn't come back up there was a golf tournament where i lived when i was a kid, "Life Begins at 40," they called it and i thought it was hilarious, this idea of a bunch of one-foot-in-the-grave 40-year-olds hitting golf balls under the delusion they weren't about dead that was the time i thought i might make it all the way to 40 before i keeled over in crickity old age, curdled up like expired milk, bound only to slip away down death's unforgiving drain not much going on after that, i thought ah, the ignorance of crass and arrogant youth, never even suspecting the golfers were right, that most of the best of my life would come in those years after i had assumed i would almost certainly be committed to ashes strewn across some irrigation canal alongside a field of winter beets not so far from home  Born in 1952, Naomi Shihab Nye is a poet, songwriter and a novelist. She was born to a Palestinian father and American mother. Although she regards herself as a "wandering poet," she refers to San Antonio as her home. Here are two of her poems from her book19 Varieties of Gazelle, Poems of the Middle East, published by HarperCollins in 2002. Holy Land Over beds wearing thick homespun cotton Sitti the Ageless floated poking straight pins into sheets to line our fevered forms "the magic," we called it, her crumpling of syllables, pitching them up and out, petals parched by sun, the names of grace, hope, in her graveled grandmother tongue. She stretched a single sound till it became two - perhaps she could have said anything, the word for peanuts, or waterfalls, and made a prayer. After telling the doctor "Go home," she rubbed our legs, pressing into my hand someone's lost basketball medal, "Look at this man reaching for God." She who could not leave town while her lemon tree held fruit, nor while it dreamed of fruit. In a land of priests, patriarchs, muezzines, a woman who couldn't read drew lines between our pain and earth, stroked our skins to make them cool, our limbs which had already traveled far beyond her world, carrying the click of distances in the smooth, untroubled soles of their shoes. Half-And-Half You can't be, says a Palestinian Christian on the first feast day after Ramadan. So, half-and-half and half-and-half. He sells glass. He knows about broken bits, chips. If you love Jesus you can't love anyone else. Says he. At his stall of blue pitchers on the Via Dolorosa, he's sweeping. The rubbed stones feel holy. Dusting of powdered sugar across faces of date-stuffed mamool. This morning we lit the slim white candles which bend over at the waist by noon. For once the priests weren't fighting in the church for the best spots to stand. As a boy, my father listened to them fight. This is partly why he prays in no language but his own. Why I press my lips to every exception. A woman opens a window - here and here and here - placing a vase of blue flowers on an orange cloth. I follow her. She is making a soup from what she had left in the bowl, the shriveled garlic and bent bean. She is leaving nothing out.  The next poem is by Susan B. McDonough who creates gardens for a living and enjoys the journey of transplanting words into poetry. She has one foot in Arizona and the other in Maine. Her poems can be found both on-line and in print. Susan is one of my house mates on the Blueline's poem-a-day forum, "House of 30." The poem is a great response to anyone who might think that the poem-a-day discipline might lead to lower quality poetry. The Irony of Faces A forest spirit whispers in capital letters his mouth making the "C" with lips pulled back and jaw held as tight as a doubled-up rubber band. The native wears many masks. Today its the Nuhlimkilaka: bringer of confusion But it only reminds me of armies of white men who crossed oceans, then plains with their own set of rules. Untied to the land and its values. neglectful of the notion that a spirit life weaves land to people. I see them as Nuhlimkilaka: wearing the skin of conquerors to hide behind the word freedom.  The next poem is by Brooke Bergan from her book Storyville, A Hidden Mirror published i n1994 by Asphodel Press. I've told the story about Storyville and Bergan's poems about Storyville and E.J. Bellocq, an everyday commercial photographer who inadvertantly became the photographer of record for Storyville's whores, several times in past issues and won't repeat it this week. It is an interesting story which, at one point, was turned into "Pretty Baby," a good movie and easily googled. Bergan has an MA and a PhD in creative writing from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She has taught writing classes and workshops for nearly twenty years in grade schools, high schools, libraries, colleges and universities to widely diverse audiences around the country. Her publications include three critically acclaimed books of poetry as well as fiction, reviews, essays, translations and a play. Plate 1: Girl Wearing A Shawl It is casual nudity that surprises, too guileless not to trust the dark shape shouldering into the corner is not an intimation of chaos or the spreading stain of evil, but only a dream of tomorrow Nipples tilt left and right, bright wildflowers tipping into a breeze - a body made not for pleasure but for forgetting, a dream without clefts or the stain of memory. Plate 2: Girl In A Picture Hat Door, walls, and dress moired by flaws in the plate itself, as the sweetness of a smile by the memory of touch, the toes of her white kid shoes by summer rain, she stands, hands curled just so. At the edge of the plate, the other one sleeps in an iron bed draped with netting, hands drawn up, self-contained, two nightshirts on the closed door, in escape. Plate 3: Girl With A Dog Feet splayed out n pantaloons preposterous as the tissue panties of a lamb chop, the dog wants to be lifted to the ground, waits with the man from the cool tips of beans snapped into her apron to fall onto damp brick. They will talk softly of this and that, stirring the heavy air with their laughter.  Now here's my story about a very pleasant evening out. Sunday night before a Monday holiday downtown Austin, a little bistro on the corner of 3rd and Lavaca, crowded inside for a Sunday night because of the marathon, but quiet on the sidewalk under an overhead heater to dull the edge of the chill a fine dinner, a bottle of wine for the three of them and iced tea for me, quiet conversation with our son and his girl, both quite grown now, but hard for mom to accept even though she tries for me each conversation a gathering of revelations  Next, I have two poems by Dennis Tourbin, from his book In Hitler's Window, published by The Tellem Press of Ottawa in 1991. Born in 1946, Tourbin was a Canadian poet, painter, performance artist, novelist and art and poetry magazine editor. He died in 1998l In Cities In books the mystery of stars, the mysterious world of stars is there in books. Not people stars like you-know-who but real big stars like way-out-there. In cities where there is traffic and noise and big steel buildings, sometimes only small pieces of sky exist and very few birds in cities. In cities at night I want to take water and lightening and re-discover electricity. Take rope, make storms, follow jetstreams downtown right to the edge of the universe. In cities my imagination explodes, sends pictures, small pieces, fragments of colour in every direction. In cities I discover new worlds in faces, watch birds crash into mirrors, see lightning crease the sky. In Hitler's Window (Close to Midnight) In his room a small party has gathered, a quiet party of people and soldiers and dogs. Outside, the darkness descends; the windows become mirrors... The people move through the room exchanging glances. Hardly a word is spoken. A fierce wind gathers outside, moving through mountains and trees, sweeping the landscape. The dogs huddle near the door, sniffing; a strange odour penetrates the room. In distant fields prisoners shovel white lime into open graves. Time seems suspended. And a slow train moves through the countryside. It is close to midnight. The guests are preparing to leave. The walls begin to close in. He opens the door. The dogs race out into the heart of a blazing fire, stars exploding. He stops, looks at his watch, the hands revolving faster than the speed of light. Time disappearing now. In his cold heart he longs for a sudden rain, the smell of wet fur, the comfort of crawling deep into the damp earth, his only escape.  I've pleased to have our good friend Teresa White with us again with two poems. Teresa has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize and has been published in numerous online and print journals. Her latest full-length collection of poems, Gardenias for a Beast received a favorable endorsement from Billy Collins. I've added a link to Teresa's website under "Links" on the right of the page where you can go for more information about her work, including her new book. A Night at the Opera Dreams are the soul's libretto, a fancy script for a play we pantomime for no one. I dream I've perished like Mimi in LaBoheme, feel the pain and kick past purgatory in a beeline to hell. There is no easy portal for you to follow. Separation comes to all, dear. In my waking, I bring nothing back from this land of the unfortunate. I saw the deformed and beautiful prance up 8th Avenue - heard them scream. I Want a Wife I would insist her waistline be larger than mine her lips thin and unexpressive, a smile that rarely blooms from its tight bud. Dishes. Of course she'd do dishes. No dishwasher here: she'll plunge her worried hands into the bubbles of Joy. She will gaze out the window at the maple proliferating so quickly, we're afraid it will buckle the patio. I would insist her laughter be crude and unmodulated, her sorrow true and forgivable. I watch as she french-corners our bed.  One of the pleasures of doing "Here and Now" is finding poets I really like that I didn't know about before. One such poet is Charles Harper Webb, a wiseacre, stand-up comic, visionary and often very funny poet. He was educated at Rice University of Washington and the University of Southern California. A rock singer and guitarist early on, he is now a licensed psychotherapist and professor of English at California State University Long Beach. The author of a novel and poetry which has appeared in many magazines and anthologies, he is also the author of Reading the Water, winner of the 1997 Morse Poetry Prize published by Northeastern University Press in 1997. The next three poems are from that book. The Temptations of Pinocchio We see Satan in Foulfellow the fox, seducing Pinocchio from school, then shipping him to Pleasure Island, where he smokes and loafs and nearly makes a jackass of himself. But behind Geppetto's smile, the beauty of the Blue Fairy, the cuteness of Figaro the cat, Cleo the fish, the singing conscience Jiminy Crickey, Old Scratch himself is cackling too. Skipping to school that first day of his wooden life, Pinocchio is skidding toward a land where boys are named Percy or Fauntleroy, and always mind their moms and never cuss or fight or get their clothes dirty or talk with their mouths full, and then one day - reading their Bibles, dabbing specks of crumpet off their little vests - their faces flatten, bodies shrink, eyes bulge, noses turn black. They drop down on all fours, long silky hair sprouting everywhere except the shin shafts of their paintbrush tails. When pudgy, perfumed demons flounce and drag them off to sell to fat ladies who hug and slobber, feed them chockies, then spank them when they poo-poo on the rug, they don't fight back; but for some reason their dog brains can't comprehend - even as Pinocchio homers through a stained-glass window, slides a dead rat under a girl's chair - they dream of wolf packs tracking deer through snowy woods, pulling one down, tasting its hot, panicked blood. This excites them so much that, on their puffy pillow beds, their legs twitch, their jaws snap; they try to howl, and wake up hearing yap, yap, yap! Evil Genius I love it when one finally breaks, and blubbers, begging for his life. Watching demented Dr. K - who slaughtered millions - scream when tap water is flung in his face (he thought it was his killer germs), I laugh. Take that Mr. Pritchard, who ran World History like a Gulag Death Camp. take that, Ms. Simpson, who read my essay to the class, then said, "This is exactly what I can't abide." Die, Mr. K: No, wait. I want to be like you: each sentence laced with lethal irony, my longish hair and low, voice seductive as a snake. I want to be a prodigy playing chess with human pawns, laughing because the fools will never understand. I want to be so smart no prison can hold me, no one contradict me with impunity. Strap me into double straitjackets, lock me in a cage, wearing a hockey mask - I'll still suck out your eyes and get away. Recaptured, composure restored, I'll let you launch me, frozen, out into deep space. In a few centuries, or weeks or days, millions will be dying of boredom, needing me to spark some drama, make external their self-hate. I don't even have to tell you, "I'll be back." How Lizzie Died I saw your amber slash by the trashcan and had to have you. Stripping off my sweater and way you shed skin, I dropped it on you, snuck you inside past my mother, and unwrapped you like a gift. "Just for a week," I told myself, awed by your daring slingshot- tongue, thin, tyrannosaurus forelegs, wand-like toes, legs in a catcher's squat. Two weeks later, I found you in your shoebox, crawled on by the crickets you wouldn't eat, your body - stiff as a stuffed alligator - curved like a fishhook, a jai alai cesta, a comma, half a heart, an Alpine horn that groaned across Houston, Texas, so loud and long I can still hear it in L.A.: Shame on Charlie Webb. Sorrow and Shame.  Another story, this one about how easy it is to get me to forgive just about anything. scary Unitarians i see them just about every Saturday morning a couple both tall and thin, he, bald, she with short, very blond hair they look so straight... so white... so clean... you know they have to be serial-killer-wife-swappers, torture chamber in the cellar and not a mattress tag untorn anywhere in their house, perfect portraits of the people the neighbors always describe as sooooo nice, such good neighbors, who could have guessed they could have ...insert the atrocity of your choice here... those kind of people, bad seeds no one suspects until the bloody harvest comes several years ago i read for a group of Unitarians - a room-full of people who looked just like these two, nice folks, as it turned out, they liked my poems, which excuses a lot  Here are two poems by G.E. Patterson from his book Tug, published in Graywolf Press in 1999. Patterson, a young poet, critic, and translator, grew up along the Mississippi River and was educated in the mid-South, the Midwest, the Northeast, and the western United States. Tug, his second book, won the Minnesota Book Award. His work has also appeared in a number of magazines and journals. His awards include fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, Cave Canem, the Djerassi Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, and the Minnesota State Arts Board. After living in the Northeast and on the West Coast for a number of years, he now makes his home in Minnesota, where he teaches. I Used to Go to Church When my doctors thought I was dying I saw my father slumped over in a painted chair in 6 A.M. sunlight wearing faded paisley boxer shorts Before I was sure if I should call out to him he got up & moved through the room looking at everything picking up photographs of my friends cupping the mug I'd sued for tea His hands ran along the edge of the dining table as if objects he touched could tell him the few things he wanted to know about my life My old man opened a window & the wind rushed in bringing birds Pigeons perched on his outstretched arms & on his head Each one cooed a single note but the sounds mingled together like a chorale of bell ringers & my father he did nothing to stop it Holiday Sapphics: Philadelphia Christmas, New Year's, even the Fourth of July - Dining table's crowded with conversation. Holidays are wild at my house. We talk loud. Shouting at people. Shouting loud enough that the neighbors, listening Quietly to albums, are forced to ask us, "Would you try to speak, uhhmm, a little less loud." Bourgeoisiest Negroes Imaginable. But in this city, quiet Bourgeois negroes can't be denied. The quiet Lasts a minute. Shouting resounds like singing, Tuneful and rhythmic. Yes, we're back to shouting. It's love that makes us Loud. The food helps, adds to the holiday cheer. There's no way my people are going to sit down, Chattering softly. Plain and simple fact is that times together Come to mean a lot to the people gathered. Seldom see this: Three generations making Family Noises.  Now here's a poem by our friend Walter Durk. Born in New York City, Walter has lived in Asia and in various cities in the United States. Like a homing pigeon Today is today and all its yesterdays. There is this quiet place with nothing but sky and trees, a few people with dogs sometimes; but my nervous basket is crowded with yesterdays reflected like mirrored images repeating themselves. A silent film rolls. Frame by flickering frame the past relives, coming into being once again and I like a cormorant devour one frame after another to seek the next. Like a homing pigeon that flies great distances to return to the coop.  I read this little "wtf" texting short form in a story in The New Republic. I don't text (stuck at the email stage and feeling pretty proud of myself to have become even that advanced in communications technology ) but knew immediately what it meant from context and even quicker imagined it out of the mouth of one of George Carlin's hipster characters. I decided I needed to to use it in a poet, then figured, wtf, i'll just use it for a title. What a handy little three letters it is. wtf it's beginning to look like winter might be over and that's too bad since around here if it's not winter it's summer and it seems like we just had one of those it is the bane of where i live, having during the course of the year no more than 1.46 seasons, that's 8 or 9 months of summer a couple of months of winter 2 and a half days of spring and 45 minutes of fall takes all the fun out of calendar-watching living someplace with 4 seasons sounds wonderful to me, including even a glorious, though short, summer, but i know the chance of me ever living someplace like that is nil when even a move across town is unlikely i yam where i yam and that's where i yam always going to be it seems and no truckload of spinach or any other form of propulsion is going to change it maybe instead of railing against the forces of domestic immobility i should look for the bright side - like living about 8 blocks from one of the largest concentration of medical services in the state, or, about a 3 minute ambulance ride from professional resuscitation at any one of a number of hospitals after my first heart attack is certainly a factor on the plus side for someone getting older by the day i mean, wtf, who needs great weather when timely resuscitation is at hand  How about a little poetry fun with, who better, E. E. Cummings, from the book Etcetera - The Unpublished Poems, published by Liveright in 1983. 3 mary green cheerful & generous flew to america (just like a dream) fearless & loyal (honest & strong) utterly irish & realer than sunlight it's lucky the man is herself will make happy (though poor he'll be rich & if old he'll grow young) 6 out of bigg est the knownun barn 's on tiptoe darkne ss boyandgirl come into a s unwor ld 2 to be blessed by floating are shadows of ove r us-you-me a n g e l s  And, here once again, we have a new poem by our friend Dan Cuddy Winter Morning the blood-orange sun rises smoke like flags wave from chimneys it was cold getting the morning paper beneath gray roofs mothers help reluctant children into jackets men, fathers or not, hurry their coffee TV sets do their small talk or frown last night's murders or blab on about macaroni a head presents itself to a mirror comb wetted rough hairs of sleep smoothed out tie, if there is a tie, straightened thoughts shoved into pockets for later scrapers shave windshield frost into flakes the glass at last like an uncovered walk metal grumbles tails of exhaust wag one by one lives leave their beds, homes, control the sun yellows keeps its size for awhile but shrinks in importance frost invisibly rolled up newspapers curled or stacked or squinched into a bag or can news becomes history most of it forgotten  Next I have five short poems by Ursula K. Le Guin who I knew well as a science fiction writer, but never, until I started "Here and Now," as a poet. The poems are from her sixth book of poetry, Incredible Good Fortune, published by Shambhala Publications in 2006. Fulfillment Tonight to be entire: the East and West, wind-driven spar and entered air, rough hollow hand and full soft breast, mouth, teeth, tongue, and juicy pear. Song Sparrow Song Hear him so sweetly start to repeat it, pause and complete it freely, freely, freely! On Hemlock Street I see broad shoulders, a silver head, and I think: John! And I think: dead. A Valentine for Krakie In the house of the sunrise hangs a lamp of white shell. In the houses of dust and darkness a woman wearing turquoise laughs. An Afternoon in England in Winter At a quarter to Edward, the late post slides out of the opening, undulant. "When are you doing?" the clock asks. "Tenzing," I answer, nervously expectorant, spitting rain across the shingle beach. A trawler on the murky sea just east of yesterday drags the dark hours in along with a few octopus, and Moira.  I do a daily poem for the Blueline's "House of 30" as an exercise of making myself look into myself to find poems. I don't expect great poetry, but see, many times more very good poems than I would ever imagine, a few from me and many from my house mates. It’s "no drama" poetry, no pulling of hair in frustration, no howling at the moon, but just sitting-down-and-doing-it poetry. Inspiration comes, if it comes, not as some bolt from the blue, but down a well-tended path, worn from days of trudging it's length. Having done it now for nearly two years (I'm on my 21st 30 days), I really don't understand why writers aren't lined up six deep to post their latest daily piece at the "House of 30" as a challenge and as a daily chance to grow as a poet. And it is fun, after all. my mark intimidated some 20 months ago when i stated this daily exercise, i've come now to look forward to it facing the blank screen waiting for the idea that will lead to the words that will lead to the poem that opens the day for me, that wakes the brain and sets me up for the rest of the day which i know will be not nearly the fun but necessary before the night that leads to another day and another blank screen i welcome it like i welcome the sun, for there is fun in the creating, even when the creation is as weak, uninspiring, and blandly ugly as this my mark on the day  And that's it. Here's hoping our speed-loading efforts are successful. In the meantime, as is always the case, all material included in this blog remains the property of its creators. The blog itself was created by and is the property of me...allen itz. |
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