something like dread

A couple of days ago, I wrote a poem entitled “Losing Hair.” Just the fact that I had written it at all was something of a breakthrough. After all, since completing my thesis in poetry (essentially sapping the old creative juices in process), I think I have written a grand total of three poems—“Losing Hair” being the third. That’s one poem every two months! And it’s not like I’m spending the in-between time fretting over them word by word in pursuit of perfection—the writer’s elusive grail. (Vanity—like chasing the wind as old King Solomon said.) No, I just clack them out, give them the twice over, and paste them in their appropriate folder, alphabet-wise.

Every once in a while I will hear my thesis director’s voice over my shoulder like some holographic Obi Wan Kenobi—“Use the mouse, Jonathan. Find the poem’s soul and there you will find your own.” By which the bygone mentor means—trim the fat in most cases, but in other cases means explore the possibilities. When I hear that voice, my pathetic (poetic?) sensibilities suffer compunction and I revisit the toddler poem with something like dread. Something exactly like dread. (Do similes lose their likening powers when the comparison becomes exact? Help me Obi Wan, you’re my only hope.)

Point being (surprise!), I wrote “Losing Hair” and plopped it in the “F-M” folder, planning to let it marinate for the usual eternity; but yesterday I got this photograph through the Amorphilacious-Antaginons (i.e., Facebook) from my old and dear friend Billie. As you can see, fifteen years ago, of all the things I may have been worried about, hair-loss was not one of them. After the shimmer of nostalgia wore off— that deep, slow radiation half-comprised of warmth and half-comprised of grins—I realized that I needed to revisit my poem, use the mouse, trim the fat, explore the possibilities.

Because losing hair is more than a physiological phenomenon brought on, in my case, by the once-faded-now-resurgent effects of radiation these several years distant. (Funny how when I lost my hair the first time it was also the least of my worries. As in my goldilocks-youth so also at my point of crisis—other cares prevailed.) Because physiology, though pressing and crucial, only represents a portion of the significance riddling any given circumstance. And so, in this poem the fact of thinning hair is only a metaphorical stand-in for the horse-powered passage of time and the misspent worries of aging.

So here, into the Nothingworld, I fling this freshly-mown poem. I would not expect too many offerings so young as this, so savor its tenderness.

Losing Hair

It happens, as most things do, at night
When curtains are drawn against
The sure-fire sun that comes
In the morning when the discovery
Happens, as most often it will,
In the boring light of day.

At night, the elves and goblins skitter
Making things like shoes and mayhem.

Also at night, as thread by thread
The glory comes undone,
Dreams of foregone dreams
Make the waking that much balder.

from reckless flights

New favorite bird alert. Call it the bird of the week. It'll be a thing. If I remember. Help me remember.
If you remember to.

Meet the Eastern Towhee. Endearing characteristics: 1) Tri-colored body 2) They eat off the ground beneath the feeder where the squirrel dumps copious morsels in his ravenous oblivion. 3) Downright adorable when they hop around.

On the flip side of adorableness lies ghastliness. Enter the mourning dove. Don't get me wrong. Cute as cute does, these head bobbers. Peaceful if you don't mind the hoo-ing. And I don't. Actually, I do a pretty mean impression of the dove's lachrymose song. The ghastliness I refer to is the daily sight of these creatures twisted on the back porch, dead or concussed, from reckless flights into the windows. Two or three times a day I am startled from my perch at the computer by a resounding clunk. "Another dove," I say, going to survey the damage, hoping for vital signs, trying not to think of Looney Tunes when I see the floating feathers.

Speaking of doves, here's a poem. (Ether, if you're are beginning to wonder if I have a poem for every subject known to man--be assured that I do not. However . . . ) Behold the iambic tetrameter or, if prosody ain't your thang, simply enjoy.

Ankle Deep at Dusk

The lake is mottled, calicoed

By the oil-slick ooze of poplar

And pine—the spill of shadows on

The chopped and crested surface. Doves

Regret the dark in harrowing

Contralto. Walking ankle deep

With pant legs knotted at my shins,

I relish bits of shell like glass.

You thought that I was made of stone.

But now, between my sockless feet,

By glints of rare and fractured light,

I notice features of my face

That waver in the lulls and heaves.

I smile and see me smirk. I nod

And watch me disagree. So much

For being solid. See me now.

Or better yet, remember when

We waded out, up to our necks,

And spat the penny taste of mud

Into each other’s eyes? You said

You made a wish for us to stick

Forever in the leafy muck,

Then held your breath and swam below.

The final crimson lobe of sun

Is slipping underneath the blue

Horizon. See it now. And hear

The dove’s adagio refrain.

Come up for air and look above

The trees. A cuticle moon glows

As two. One hinges on a late

Arriving cloud, the other smiles

And smirks on this spilt lake of ours.

skull lull

I am watching the nether rounds of the NFL draft. Surprise, Ether. The passivist poet loves football. Specifically, I am waiting for the Redskins to pick--my team since the Virginia days. Among the hundred other heartaches in the last 20 years--those knuckleheads have contributed a fair share. Every fall, the crows have a field day from elsewhere watching me suffer the sundry slings and arrows of outrageous pass protection. (To borrow irreverently from Shakespeare.)

Meanwhile, it is storming in the southeast. I woke to thunders throughout the night, and now the rain comes in torrents. Needless to say, golf plans have been exchanged, only half-begrudgingly, for nap plans. One thing is for sure, this post is likely to be the most productive thing I do today. Unless, of course, like the lightning outside, a strike of fortuity rattles some dormant creativity in my brain during one of my nap-dreams and I wake up full of the ideas that have been AWOL since I [a]finished writing my novel and [b]started taking Lexapro. As they happened concurrently, it's hard to tell whether [a] or [b] or both is to blame for my lack of inspiration. I suspect it's both. As a matter of fact, if it was not for these occasional conversations with you, I reckon I would not be writing at all.

Here is a poem taking on both of today's themes. The storm outside my window and the lull inside my skull.

Weather

A three o’clock evening
In the afternoon. Clouds
Shoulder the half-day’s
Heat and droop
A makeshift awning.

A fox squirrel drops
His beechnut and noses
The air. The sudden wind—
Ratcheting, ratcheting—
Draws things near,
Hunched and huddled
Like the piebald cat
Against the screened back-door.

And the things to do:
The chicken dinner,
The weekly sit-com,
The bedtime read,
The clumsy career towards dementia.

Electricity muscles heavy
Air and booms, rattling
The loose window panes.
All night the muted
Xylophone of rain
Against the chimney grate
And gutters is just soft
Enough to sleep by.

In the morning--
A ten o’clock dawn.
Clouds loiter, obscuring
The already busy sun.

And what must briefly wait:
The cornflake breakfast,
The weekly trash haul,
The morning read,
The goofy trundle towards decay.

and after that

Battleground Backyard. Territorial Dispute. Mission: Apparently impossible.

His name is Legion.

Reconnaissance: He skitters through the bushes. He stomachs along the bricks. Twitch, twitch--the searching nose; itch, itch--the flea-bit hide. Behold the suspended pagoda of millet and thistle.

Action: He leaps from wall to rail, deftly lands--an artistry of sinew. He dares the skinny chain--A rodent Wallenda. Now, quick, quick, before discovery, headfirst into the spill of seeds. Engorge! HA ha! Look at me now. Silly birds, feeders are for squirrels.

Retreat: He raises his head, sniffs the air. Something clicking, someone watching. From black ball-bearing eyes, he sees a human--blond, bespectacled, burly of beard. His enemy. Erstwhile tyrant, lover of birds. He hops to the wall and feigns innocence. Nothing doing. The human fires a pellet. Ha ha! He misses. I'll just scootch behind some leaves and wait the ninny out. The human fires again. Though painless, the pellet pelts him in the haunches--more insult than injury. He bounds into the bushes. To recuperate, regroup, and re-engage.

He'll be back. And back. And back. His name is Legion.

Here is a poem from my thesis loosely based on events from my childhood. In light of the previous description of my battle with the squirrel (who for the most part is adorable and to be admired for his perseverance), the poem will seem quite humorous (and it is) but it is also a conceit for lost innocence.

And After That the Squirrels

And after that . . . and after that . . .
Who knows how far the Flume
Has meanwhile purged its silt and sediment.

My uncle gave a BB gun
To my big brother on
His thirteenth birthday. Mother pitched a fit.

She made us swear we’d only shoot
The cola cans and bull’s-
Eyed cardboard--never living, breathing souls.

We called the creek a river in
Those days. Why not? It seemed
Big enough—plenty wide and boisterous.

We gathered empty bottles—swigs
Of backwashed beer poured out—
From underneath the teenager’s tree-fort

And sent them bobbing down the stream.
My brother ran along
The red-clay banks, pump-click, pump-click, BBs

Whiz-plunking the water beside
The kayaking bottle.
I slipped and slid behind him, begging for

A turn. One more, hold on, one more,
He said, like I believed
In that. At last he lucked-out and the glass

Went under, cracked and spiraling.
When we got to the top
Of Dead-Man’s Flume again, he offered me

The gun. Don’t trip and shoot your face,
He said, like I was some
Buffoon. He flung another bottle high

Into the air but when it splashed
It went open-end first
And sunk without a fight. I pitched a fit.

Then a rustle from the brier shut
Me up and, thrilled, I drew
A bead. I pumped and clicked and the BB,

Whiz-thwuck, purchased in the darkness.
Our bare-arms pricked by thorns,
We parted the twisted thicket and gaped.

A cowbird still clinging, up-side-
Down like a sleeping bat,
Onto a sapling branch was bleeding square

Between its black body and brown
Breast. Drip-drip-dripping like
The slow, proverbial faucet at night.

To keep from going home to face
My mother’s knowing frown,
We chased another bottle down the stream.

In doing so, I noticed that
The river was a creek.
And after that the squirrels were good as dead.

regarding the periphery

Good Morning. Have I missed you, gone these three days? Seems like it but it's too soon to tell. But I will tell you this. I went to Six Flags yesterday. Not to ride anything (my mutinous brain disallows frenetic mobility. Perhaps, I will talk about my brain some day--its acts of sedition, its pill addled neurons) but to spend time with my family and watch my nieces and nephews while the grown-ups played. More fun for me than it sounds--the kids are wonderful, beautiful, and HI-larious!

However, regarding the periphery, I have contention. To wit: For the sake of Pete, heaven, and goodness and for the love of God, nature, country, decency, medium-rare rib-eye, anything sacred, I'll even accept the thoughtfully profane; but geez-loise and hells bells--put some clothes on people! If the most nauseating thing at an amusement park full of loop-the-loops, centrifugal swings, and body odor is actually the pair of shorts on the lady in front of you in line--no, not pair of shorts, call it the pair of miniscules--those bursting gourds of fabric, those flesh-enfolded fig-leaves, those mustard-stained swatches plaid-ish denim, then we have a problem. Rule of thumb, if it would be a tight fit on your three year old daughter, leave it at home. Better yet, give it to said daughter for the comfortable coverage of her dolly's derriere.

Oh Ether, how enviable your Nothingworld now.

I believe, as I try to recover, I will leave you with this soothing poem. Short though it is, by the time you finish reading it, I will be in the shower futilely scrubbing my eyes with battery acid.

Mid-Morning Well-Spent

If I tried (and I have)
To enumerate
The songs
Of the mockingbird
On the guttered eave,
He would fly (and he has)
To another house
And sing
His song of songs.
If I wait (and I will)
For him to forget
I am here, he will
(and he does)
come back.

happy pleasantness

The sweet gums and oaks are back in green garb. The warmth of the day brings summer to mind, only one should be so lucky for 80 degrees in July. Spring has a way of fooling us, Ether. Against the sparseness of winter, on the heels of freezing rains, the spring tells a story we’re all too ready to believe—life is here to stay. How eager to forget, we are. How certain the birds will never leave.

Because how slow go the dog days of summer, how molasses stuck the dying days of fall, how lumbering the trudge of wet winter, so why not how lasting the verdure April? Haven’t we earned it? Haven’t we suffered enough? Mother Nature’s entitlement plan, yes? No. Pleasantness is always on loan from hardship. Borrowed in March quadruply compounded come June. Ether, in this regard, you’ve got it good. I imagine in the Nothingworld seasons are only discernible by the preponderance of merchandise being bought and sold over the optics and waves--each quarter measured in seasonal wares. Swimsuits, Rubber masks, ear muffs, and egg coloring kits, respectively.

On terra firma, Ether, we learn our lessons sweating, shivering, and sodden. Gritting and grinding. Fitful and weary. And then comes spring. And life is here to stay. The birds won't go away. So when we dance in May, let all the children play.

Because what else is there to do? Worry over the pavement that soon will scorch our bare feet? Fretfully while the hours until ghouls and goblins prowl? Bewail the distant dearth of greenness?

Nah. Spring is here to stay. If only for today.

Happy pleasantness, Ether. I wish you could see cardinals.

just a sip

Good morning, Ether. I wanted to let you know what sort of curios i will be shelving in these pages. You may look forward to (eagerly, indifferently,or full of contempt, your choice, my E-feelings are not as sensitive as my Carbon-based feelings, anyway . . .) a variety of writing on a variety of subjects. Nothing in particular though particularly to do with nothing--so philosophy. Or perhaps, something of which I am especially fond though not in which I am especially skilled--so creative writing. Also, I suspect I will complain a lot. Ether, sorry in advance for whining; I will try to temper my melancholy with occasional exultation. At times, I will post poems that I am working on (or have given up on), other times, I will post excerpts of fiction. If I discover something interesting out in the real world, I will share it with you--trapped as you are like a Genie in the world-wide-bottle. So feel free to grant me wishes.

To prove that I am willing to share my curios--my sundries and miscellanies--I am posting below a portion of a query letter that I am working on to pitch my 1st novel to agents. If you are not familiar with the process, let me congratulate you on your probable sanity. If however, you are or have been embroiled in said process, accept my deepest condolences. Essentially, the trick is to capture the essence of 90,000 words in a jar that fits only 300. Eventually, I will have to write a longer synopsis which, given the additional leeway, you would think would be easier, but word on the street has it that composing the synopsis is almost as painstaking as composing the novel itself. Yay. Anyway, here's a sip of what I'm working on. [Perennial Author's Disclaimer (read: clause stipulating the future right of the scribbler to redact, disown, or utterly abolish any or all previous illusions that the piece in question was a paragon of deft articulation)--This is a work in progress.]

An old man dies and lives to tell about it. Unfortunately for Elijah Stenson, he is tortured by a past that he is reluctant to reveal. Psychologically wounded and desperate for a friend, he hires Justin Latterly to help him tell his story. Justin is a disillusioned graduate student and night-shift grill cook who’s own pile of problems seems to be mounting daily. In an attempt to escape this reality, Justin accepts the ghostwriting job with high hopes—too high, as it turns out.

As told from Justin’s perspective, the narrative follows a multi-corded braid of interactions with a variety of characters—each with their own crisis to ply. A lover’s betrayal, a sister’s tragedy, a mother’s illness, and a strange woman’s incessant vagaries each threaten to topple Justin into an ever-near despair. Meanwhile, the writing project is going nowhere. Over the course of six months, the old man’s reticence and penchant for distraction has Justin on the verge of madness.

The story resolves when, for the second time in his life, Elijah Stenson dies. And this time it’s for good. Although Justin never finishes Elijah’s story, the reader learns that it’s in the gist of the story that the moral is learned.

There, just a sip--until we learn to trust each other.

Well, the crows are laughing which means I should get back to real life. They think my soul is funny so mostly I keep it hidden.

for starters

Congratulations, Ether. Accept my surrender. Here are my words--the Empty flung into the Emptiness. For years you have cajoled me with your Ubiquity, taunted with your Infinite Gestures. For years, I stood my ground, evading the TransGlobal ooze of Connectivity, refusing to follow every cornflower hypertext through every looking glass, down every rabbit hole, into the Multiverse, clicking, clicking, clicking, until at last, in the Effluvium Haze, there kneels me, or a Spectral Facsimile, broken, bleary-eyed, surrendering. So tou--effing--che, Ether! Eat your heart out. And mine.

With that being said, as for the rest of you, welcome to my blog and thanks for visiting. If you have a blog of your own . . . follow me and I'll follow you. We'll pirouette the endless circles.

And now [not so much drum-roll as sickly kazoo], ladies and gentlemen, without lesser ado and despite the laughing crows, let's begin.