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.

snuggle-puff

Look how my little babies have grown. Granted not much, but they're jus' lil' things to begin with. (Check out their baby pictures, I'll wait.) Clearly, Beans [left] has grown the most all around. Pickles [center] has gotten taller but remained skinny. Scooter [right] . . . well Scooter's a little tubbier and still the shorty of the trio. But bless his heart, he's still my favorite because he's safest to pet. Quite the snuggle-puff by comparison, actually.

Meanwhile, what have I done in two months? I love my cacti, but darn if they haven't made me feel stunted. Have I grown at all? Girth-wise, let's just say I'm like Scooter minus the shortiness.
But I'm not here to talk physiology; I'm here to talk poetry, philosophy--of life's riches and dearths. Have I made progress in my understanding of the world? No. In fact, I have been in retrograde motion in that regard since I was 25. Have I grown to know myself any better? Well, I have grown to bore myself more, if that counts. Hopefully that's just the contempt born of familiarity and not the 4D image I project on the world.
Have I learned new things--unnecessary but beautiful things? Have I chiseled any marble-nudes? Are there any tempera frescoes on my ceiling? Perhaps, I expect too much of myself. Maybe I should measure my success in ounces and millimeters. One poem at a time. Paragraph by paragraph. In doses of modest improvement. Horizons expanded by the merest thread each day.

All things considered, it may be my only choice. Which is no choice at all but one, nonetheless, I must choose. Or not. There's the philosophy. Here's the poetry: Cacti are green/ Roses aren't blue/ Both will prick flesh/ What else is new?