in advance of tomorrow

[Scene] Jonathan on a tee box with Father and a just-met-playing-partner waiting for the fairway to clear. A glorious day in early spring. Greenness on the mend. Birds, breeze, basking—the works.

Just-met-playing partner: “So, Marvin, what do you do?”

Father: “I’m in banking.”

(Jonathan turns away, practices swing, been down this road before.)

JMPP: “Oh, OK. Marketing, mortgages . . . ?”

Father: “Senior management.”

JMPP: “Oh, OK, wow. Hard times, am I right?”

Father: “Understatement.” (smiles, takes practice swing)

Jonathan: (anxiously, subject-changingly, to the group ahead, but not loud enough for them to hear) “Come on guys, drop a ball, take a stroke, this ain’t the Master’s.”

JMPP: “So, Jonathan . . .”

(Jonathan winces)

JMPP: “What is it you do?”

(Silence, stammer at best)

Father: “He’s a writer.” (proud-ish, resigned-ish)

JMPP: “Oh yeah, great. What do you write?”

Jonathan: (wishing he was dead) “Oh, lots of things . . . stories and . . . (silence, stammer at best)

(JMPP nods, smiles, as if to say ‘yes? what else?’)

(Jonathan prays for death.)

JMPP: “Anything I might know?”

Jonathan: “Extreeeeeeemely unlikely.”

(JMPP proceeds to relay anecdote about this one time he was playing golf in Florida, must have been, I don’t know ten years ago, and he asked a fellow the same question . . . had the fellow written anything he might know, and the fellow said, “I don’t know, ever heard of Along Came a Spider?)

Jonathan and Father: (duly impressed): “Oooohhhh . . .”

(Father and JMPP drive tee-shots down the screws, center-cut; Jonathan shanks one into the wilderness. Laughs at himself. Seethes.)

[End scene]

Tomorrow is the first day of National Poetry Month. Don’t check your calendars, it’s fairly esoteric as compared with, say, Black History Month or Women’s History Month; nor is it as awesome as other commemorations with which it shares the month of April—i.e. Pets Are Wonderful Month, National Soyfoods Month, Fresh Florida Tomato Month. In fact, were I not a member of the Academy of American Poets (to be read: financial contributor to the promotion of famouser people), I imagine this particular awareness would be largely un-raised in the awareness sector of my consciousness. Be that as it mayn’t . . .

Esoteric or not, at least, for a month, I can be proud of what I do. As in:

Jonathan: “I write poetry, good sir, poesy if you please. What’s that? Like Dr. Seuss? No, sir, not like Dr. Seuss. Like Shakespeeyah, good, sah. Now prithee, get gone, thou contumelious knave.”

But there’s a pressing question here, (more than half) seriously, why am I hushed or forced to stammer when someone wants to know what I write? It’s bad enough not to have written about the comings and goings of a spider or whatever that book is about (and I guess it’s not that), but the kicker is that I spend most of my time writing purrtrey . . . WHAT’S THAT, YOU SAY? . . . purrertry. . . COME AGAIN, YOU WRITE WHAT? . . . POETRY! Ok? I write poetry. Yes, sure like Dr. Seuss. Exactly like Dr. Seuss. (With a noose. Give me a boost. Now let me loose.)

Fortunately I have friends and family (somewhere along the proud/ resigned continuum) who know that I write poetry. Some even like my work, even ask for more, even comment knowingly on its merits and short-comings. But within the world at large, I operate somewhere along the freak/ fruitcake continuum. Hence, my reluctance to avow my poetry, admit my poetness. Because within the world at large, poetry has gone the way of phones with cords and pre-post-modernism, of customer-service and fresh air. Unless you are, say, Billy Collins or Maya Angelou, or, if nothing else, someone who can point to their otherwise obscure name in the New Yorker, well . . . welcome aboard the freak/ fruitcake continuum.

I know I need to get better. I need to get over myself, my shame, my silence and stammering.

Tomorrow is the first day of National Poetry Month. Whereas, I acknowledge that pets are wonderful, I have none of my own. As for soyfoods and fresh, Florida tomatoes—I am indifferent but credulous of their appreciable qualities. So tomorrow, be aware—I am a poet. Poetry still has a pulse, it still has breath; and April is its upturned wrist, its cold, befogged mirror.

of late and at last

Of late and at last, I have been holding my health (the physical limitations resulting from my parietal-pest) under the light of poetry. In the 15 years since the discovery of my glial-glommer, I have occasionally written in response to my ordeal, as an after-the-fact sort of bemoaning or an ironic sort of simpering; but recently I have decided to concentrate more roundly on my condition, more honestly. There is a tendency to hold our insufficiency at arm's length. At arm's length behind our backs. At arm's length, behind our backs, while whistling past graveyards. In my writing, I have done this most often with half-cocked poetry. So of late and at last, I am illuminating my neuro-nuisance with a commitment to an ingenuous chronicle of my case, to temper my aloof devices (I am looking at you Metaphor) with simple sincerity.

That said, here is something I wrote this past weekend. I often wake from sleep feeling quite capable, quite boundless, quite vivacious. Just as often, I roll out of bed and hobble, feeble-footed and toe-tripped, to the coffee maker, needing a boost like a child to witness a parade and a push like a child to begin to swing. Before long, I am grinding about my business, usually feeling good enough to not complain but never so well as to emulate the man of my dreams.

Reprieve in REM

In my literal dreams, I can run. Can swan-

Dive then swim then hold

My breath and drown. Can resurface

On my own. Can be

On a team, picked first for my capabilities—

Base-stealing, going long.

Can fight for myself, for my family,

Make fists

And jab.

Can launch, circle Saturn, survive

Re-entry, parachute, plummet,

Then swim, then hold

My breath and drown. Can afford

To lose hope. Can jog for fitness.

Can run.

in prep for summer

Here's a poem that first appeared in my thesis and subsequently in The White Pelican Review. Pasted here for your encouragement if it happens to be close to home.

Ratio in Drought

The reservoir recedes. The shore

Is fishing lures and mussel shells.

In sorghum muck the heron stalks

A glimmering of fish. She knees

Along her way in snapshots while

Her crook of neck uncoils to meet

The spot where she’ll be next.

With waders hitched above his gut,

A thin man floats a feathered fly

Into a cranny dimpled

By invisible mosquitoes.

A twelve-deep stack of notices

At home, a tumor in his young

Son’s head, he comes to cast and jig,

To swallow the fist in his throat.

A bass erupts through gathered froth

And pauses, still-life for a blink,

Then flops, darts for waters cool

Beneath the jutting bluffs. The man

Is happy for the miss, the chance

To try again. The bird ascends.

A bloated, tallow-bellied cloud

Slugs in the distance—steady, slow.

in the woods

Ether,

Maybe you've noticed something by now. How could you not? It concerns the ilk of poet to which I, humble blogger in your immateriosphere, belong. If, that is, I belong at all. But membership is another issue, not for today. For today, I confess the readily apparent. I am of a lowly sort of poet. Much out of favor in modernity, to say nothing (except this) of post-modernity. But there are those who remain on the outskirts--simple, rustic folk we are. We luxuriate in decay; we wallow in wet-clay. A deer in the distance through sycamore and pine: we stop and watch. And watch. And only turn away when the deer does, never for boredom or haste. A sky turns lavender in remnant light: we return to lavender associations--other sunsets, other instances of loss and deep, deep longing, other bracings for night. We are the nature poets. Untimely? Yes. Unsophisticated? Often. Unnecessary? Perhaps. But we survive. On the outskirts. In the woods. Unshowered, unshaved, unkempt. Eyes wide in wonder, peeled for fear of missing something lovely or so densely ugly only loveliness remains.

In my years of writing poetry, I have regularly tried my bulksome hand at more delicate poetry. More refined poetry. Or poetry with more chutzpah. More damn-it-all verve. And at times, I still try. I see what's being published in fancy journals and I try to emulate. To see if I can. Can I be the sort of poet who dresses in his Sunday best? Can I be the sort whose mortarboard cap and tassel seem permanently donned? My pride says yes, of course. Surely I am qualified. But in the end I fail. And for a while I am sad. Woebegone and pitiful.

Then I spot the deer's white tail--distant but indeed. And I watch and watch. Until it turns to leave. Or until the sky turns lavender and I am transported to a place where I belong. Which, fortunately, is right where I am. I am a nature poet.

I say all of that as introduction to this little number I wrote yesterday. It's still rough around the edges, but you've also probably noticed by now that that is how my poems usually remain.

Making Way

March again, again greeted warmly.

Birdfeeder rocks on its wire, nodding,

Empty. Birdsong: Halloo, it’s March again.

Knock, knock—the flame-crested pecker.

March, come in. Please do.

It brings wine and early flowers—house-

Warming. Brown-yellow grasses,

Days numbered, sulk in pear-tree shadows.

Smokewhitebloom stench. Pear trees.

Lovely and sour. March. Not quite

Spring. A petal on the lip. Tongue-tipped.

Today’s lesson is flesh.

How to greet it warmly, when

To eat it madly. Birdsong: March,

How do? How do you do? Food

For the rocking feeder. Finches

Await. The squirrel awaits. Summer

Awaits. Spring, come in. Please do.

February fronts, hot on cold,

Storm swept

Acorn and sweet-gum ball,

Lingering, last leaves.

Way-made for purple clover tufts.

Way-made for ample rain. Tomorrow’s lesson

Is flesh, continued. A lip on the petal.

Finger-tipped tongue. How and when?

March, how do? Please do

Come in. Birdsong again, house-warming.