havoc on the stars

[this poem has been amended, see subsequent comments]

What Seemed Like Good Ideas


Karaoke at Gabe’s for the umpteenth,
Singing country for Cowboys dribbling
Swill on shave-nicked chins and calling
For encores.

Ordering curried fish in London first
Things first, to pop off my flare for fitting
In—wincing at warm bitters and staring
Whole fish in the eyes.

Pushing all in against a sprung-eyed
Geezer with seven ways of grinning,
None of which guaranteed a sure-fire
Flush or higher.

Quarry dives at Warrior, skinny legs,
White legs wobbling, water-painted girls
Dripping mascara, quoting movies
We all liked that summer, that summer in particular.

Crash course mistakes learned hard
Against the Gulf Coast pushing in white
Breakers, feet numb, and paper-white herons
Scaring the rest of the hell out of me.

Days set aside for anticipating nights
When the kaleidoscope rattled, twisted
By unseen hands—the branches cricketing
Havoc on the stars.

full-feathered in actualness

I went to see the neurosurgeon today to discuss the weather. Not really. But in the end, ain't it all sunshine or storm? Aren't those the rubs with variations of degree and density? So yeah, we talked about the weather and like most meteorologists we could not be certain. But in the end, ain't certainty just a stalling tactic for fate? So why guess . . . cuz it'll come. It certainly will.

At any hoo, I was reminded of this poem. I wrote it several years ago and one of the motifs regards age and youth and illnesses' disregard for either. (Thus the broad brush.) The poem was written long after I first started being a regular in brain-doctor waiting rooms; but the idea had been around from the beginning. Because back then and for the longest while, there was a ninety-five percent chance that yours truly was gonna be the baby in the bunch. Sometimes it was a depressing thought, other times a hopeful one.

So today, in the waiting room, going about the usual business of pretending to read a magazine from 2005 and trying to figure if there was time to go potty before my name got called, I noticed that I was not the youngest patient there. I was not the oldest, either. Somewhere in the middle, I guess. But that was not the point. The point was that one day, I would be the oldest.

There's a lesson there and I can't quite put my finger on it. Or maybe it's not a lesson at all--just an actuality. That sounds right. Besides, ain't actuality just a lesson yet to be learned; cuz when it comes, full-feathered in actualness, don't you just know you knew it all along?

Broad Brush (Neuro-Oncology, Basement Floor)

On walkers with tennis-ball feet, the old escort the older.

A man with a mummy-wrapped head stumbles like a drunk.

People in your lap, you smell the faint, wet-wood odor

of magazines. You peel stuck pages, but you aren’t reading.

A nurse in blue scrubs calls for Joseph Stallins—mildly funny

until you see the scar on his skull, temporal to parietal,

black-blood crusted and stapled like upholstery. And the old

keep hobbling, filling the sunken seats and sofas. You all

get ten minutes older between each clipboard roll-call.

Then it’s you watching the blue scrubs shift stiffly at the nurse’s

back and rump, answering questions lobbed over her shoulder.

Weight, temperature, pressure, pulse taken and jotted, she leaves

you alone on the papered, not-quite-bed. It’s just you feeling

young again—rightly twenty-something, here for a cough

and an ahhh. Out there where the sick are just getting old,

is all, where God paints with His broadest brush, you were in line,

queued for bad news, and in your hundreds. In here, though,

where accolades are hung in gilded frames, where the wallpaper

is white with clouds against an azure sky . . . In here, you rifle

through the drawers, fiddle with the forged-steel implements

and spongy gauze, free to feel in your twenties, hell, in your single

digits, free to feel not so bad after all and sorry for Joseph Stallins.

iMbecelic iDentity

There are two kinds of people in the world--those who believe there are two kinds of people in the world and those who don't. If, like me, you are in the latter group, feel free to move along to the Nothingworld, or Amorphilacious-Antaginons, or wither-soever thou please. After all, as a member of the latter group, you are at least moderately aware of your autonomy and therefore capable of directing yourself elsewhere. (If you see any crows, tell them to bugger off . . . just not this way. . . matter of fact, leave them be--I have work to do.) If you are in the former group, stick around, because I'm only going to say this once.

First some benign examples:

There are two kinds of people in the world--those who like World Cup Soccer and those who don't. Well and good. No real harm there (outside of being fallacious on at least two levels but no harm there either because everything, including this statement, is fallacious on at least two levels--call it a push.)

I'll go local:

There are two kinds of people in Alabama--those who root for Auburn University and those who root for the University of Alabama. Now, things are getting shakier. Still no harm (outside of being annoying) but one can begin to see a problem. To wit: obviously there are people in Alabama who don't really give a care, ya'll. To those who give mucho care, such a position is inconceivable and therefore, as we treat all things beyond our scope, the position is ridiculed and pressed until one randomly picks a team or simply leaves the room.

Now national:

Democrat or Republican

Now international:

Conservative or Liberal

Now galactic:

Matter or Dark Matter

Now (and here is my tipping point) the absurd:

Mac or PC.

So there I am at Best Buy a while back, checking out computers to replace the paleolithic one at home, when, as if from a trapdoor, a guy in a blue shirt appears, leans into my personal space, and asks, in the tone of voice I assign to sexual predators in my mind, "So, you must be a Mac-Guy."

I immediately dismissed the possibility that he had mistaken me for Richard Dean Anderson, for I look nothing like him. (My loss.) But still, the statement did not register. Three awkward seconds go by. He'd recently had onions and less recently showered, that much I did know. Then, my mind caught up with my situation and I realized what was going on. I was being labeled. And to make matters worse, I was being labeled an i. As in iPhone, iPad, iPod, iCarly, etc.

I shrugged him off and left him to his diametrical view of life, the universe, and everything. (props to Mr. Adams.) So, whatevs. No big biggies, I chalked it up to my metro-sexual eye-wear and post-modern (read unkempt) hair-do and went home with a PC. Not because I AM a PC or that I was beholden to Windows 7 as it was, after all, my idea. In fact, being a PC- guy or a Mac-Guy had as little to do with the decision as being a Bama fan or not. The primary aspect of my person-hood at play in the decision was me being a Poor-Guy--an actually measurable fact.

Since that fateful day, my ears have been a'keened and my eyes have been a'widened-- full of these instances of soul-smooshing, mind-cinching cubbies into which we flop the societally-bundled but otherwise variegated aspects of our Being like so many Buzz Lightyear and Tinkerbell tennies at the neighborhood Chik-fil-A play palace.

So, what's the big deal, J. Scott? Well, Kierkegaard puts it this way: "Once you label me, you negate me." That is, I am not such a thing as can be called a thing by you because to you such a thing is X and to me such a thing is Y. Or any other algebraic unknown as long as the value of the one can never equal the other because each are devised then deciphered by independent consciousnesses that cannot, by virtue of the universal rule of subjectivity in matters of mind, communicate perfectly with each other in perfect terms. Which is to say, to label me is to take a formula of your own devising, applicable only to you and fundamentally meaningless to others, and try to plug me in where I won't fit.

Aren't you exaggerating, Jonny? It's just a computer. True, until it isn't. And it isn't when not only am I not a Mac I am also the bundle of prejudices associated with my non-Mac-essence . So now what else am I? I am unsophisticated, boorish, crude. I am a relic, a lag-behind, a nitwit. And not for being any of these things in particular but for being one thing in general.

And that's just the superficial crud--objectification of a lower order. Technology, sports, interstellar matter.

But what about . . .

Politics. You are what your party is. Straight ticket, toe the line, no deviation or find yourself aisle-less, buddy.

No thanks, Madame President.

Race. You are what racists think you are. And not just regarding one aspect of your personality. Personality? What personality? You are your race. It's one thing, one object; it is all and you are it.

I'll pass, Cracker.

And the list of irrational anathemata goes ever on. But leave me out of it, please. And take a shower, Blue Shirt, you're giving all Blue Shirts a bad name. Don't sell me you, sell me a computer . . .

Because I am iNexplicable, iNeffable, iNdeterminate, and, above all, iNdividual.

Because I'm cool like that.

Roll Tide! Go Blazers! War Eagle! Whatevs. No biggies.

debauchment and verisimilarity

Here's a little self-mockery to lighten the mood.

Champagne and Orange Juice

Let’s parody the poets for remembering us

In their blankety free verse, anonymous

Contributors to our self-worth.

Thank you.

That we effloresce without being aware

Of our ebullience is a tribute to our naked

Humility, a source of pride, really,

We should rejoice.

And how can we

Thank you for the subtle debauchment

Of our bargain souls?

Let’s parody the verisimilarity of words to things

Made up; let’s ape the mirror,

Acknowledge the gospel reflected in the glare

Of our asses.

They’re all so wry—the poets. So tongue-cheeked

And foxy. So literally figurative as selves like humans.

Sipping mimosas, mimesis as catharsis. Things come

To them in a flurry of mixed metaphors which they

Separate as all good recyclers do.

nap time

I am tired.

Tired of pretending to know myself and what I truly feel. Tired of the urge to express my beliefs. Tired of the need for certainty. It's time to surrender.
Rather, it's time again.

Because I've been down this road before. Years ago. My pursuit of knowledge, facticity, and rationally deciphered rightness was so intense, so riled and throbbing, that I almost lost my mind. For a while, madness, I decided, was a fair trade for substantial Truth; but the nearer I came to raving, the more definite, the more ultimate the madness promised to be. So, I surrendered. Sought peace and stability. Sought patience and tolerance. Forswore my need to know for sure. I swallowed the words for a while and simply hummed--a tuneful, intentional reticence. And for a while, it was enough.

But the call returned, starting softly, distantly, so as not to spook me. Then it grew louder and I succumbed. Once again, it seemed important, no, necessary to know myself. How can I write, if I don't know even myself? How to be honest in poetry or how to be inventive in fiction without a touchstone solid enough to touch, to spring from?

Or, never mind writing because a lie is as good as a truth on paper, but what of those weightier epistemological concerns? What of God and goodness and the rights of man? Now consider psyche. What of the will to live--whether in its paucity or in its surfeit? What of the temptation to quit fighting, to quit the sense of obligation to courage? Because courage why? Because it's prettier than fear? Because more books are about courageous folks than about cowards?

It takes a restructuring of the mind to come to terms with surrender. To pull it off, one needs determination and that doesn't jive well with forfeit. It seems counter-productive, but as I see it, letting go is one of the bravest acts one can commit. It's not, after all, just quitting with a humph and hunch and sliding to the floor against the wall one's up against. No, it requires grace. And if one surrenders with grace, then one survives the act. He is then free to turn his back to the wall and wander somewhere less tiring, somewhere less certain, somewhere more likely to foster peace.

So goodbye to perfect understanding, swell-riddance to certainty. I'll leave their discovery to some more stalwart soul. Perhaps this time I'll stand my ground, feet rooted in mid-air, vehicled by the breeze.

Because I am tired.

That much is true.

old friend, new friend

Occasionally, I scour the contents of my poetry catalog hunting down old ones like lichen-matted tombstones, seeing what dead thoughts warrant brief resurrection. These are interesting excursions, typically. Like looking at photographs and coming to terms with distance--pyscho and physio--from then to now. Sometimes I can hardly recognize the me I find; other times I laugh at how little I've changed.

Unfortunately, I never dated any of my poems. Which is not to say I never thought about it just that, at the end of the day, out of laziness or a romantic sense of timelessness, I have hundreds of poems divvied alphabetically with no real time stamp. So, the trick is to remember the circumstances surrounding a given poem and try to conjure a memory, howsoever whispery, and breathe it in, try to sniff out its vintage. It can be fun. It can be frustrating. But it's always enlightening. Sometimes to read old stuff is to cringe at what used to pass for good poetry. On the other hand, sometimes it is to wince at what now passes for creativity. So it can be lose/ lose, but most times I find something worth the resurrection. Maybe in the idea, maybe in the language, maybe in the very act of exhumation.

I brushed the dust of this one a little while ago. It's a little bulkier than I presently prefer and easily too talkative; but I found myself thinking specifically of you, Ether. You and the Nothingworld and your cousin Amorphilacious-Antaginons. This particular poem was written when you were just a baby and that ubiquitous cousin of yours wasn't even a sparkle in the Philosterous-Nonesucherol's eye. And I, prophet and erstwhile grillcook, descried your coming and decried its value.

We are friends now, I know. Cautious friends. But I have been keeping other friends a secret. Friends you may know and may dislike. I hope we can all get along. Meet this old friend, new friend. He could really use your help.

Interview with a Speechless Library

How, in modern clangor of cells, synthetic bells,

Furor of digitalization, electronic condensation

Of words not written with aching wrists but pounded

On keyboards ergonomic and software intuitive,

Are you still here, relic, museum of dead trees, yellowing

Testament of the gospel according to effort?

When layer by layer the odorous flavor of pages

Stained by coffee mishaps and evidence of trespass,

Whorls of Cheetos fingertips, after years of fallowing

Finally disappears with pandas and seals and Kantian

Ideals, what fashionable meteor, what Wellesian wrecking

Ball will make a dinosaur or a remnant rubble of your halls?

Where, in the surfeit of halogen and neon, will I go

To watch the stuttering flicker of dying fluorescents

Like candles fighting wind and wax, sputtering on fumes,

Or to run a finger along the spines, full spectrum of faded

Color, and hear the putter as I lose count of title and volume,

Lost in the hearkening of my child-self hiding in other aisles?

Who, amid backtracking primates relearning the robotic

Forces of primal nature disguised as a furtherance of man

In his ascendancy to the barcalounger throne, dark scepter

Keeping satellite channels enthralled while myriad dragons belch

Microwaves across his kingdom of Hollywood philosophers

And movie-going serfs, will stand and fight for your silence?

What, of all the words enseamed in your hoary, creaking tomes,

Or the pictures valued at a thousand more, in the oceanic store

Of knowledge and poetry, every alphabet that ever withstood

The tinkering hands of imagination or the meddlesome erasers

Of censorial clergy in loose robes hiding their private arousal,

Say, what, from all this, should we chisel as permanent epitaph?

in memory of Jeremy Lespi, my undeserved Keats.

Today, I honor a friend--hundreds of days too late but I fear tardiness is the least of my offenses. Because I lost him as a friend long before the world lost him for good. I made choices and I lost his trust. I made choices and I lost his voice. I made choices and I lost his words.

But recently, the words, at least, have been restored to me--delivered by the hands of his gracious sister Nicole. A gift the worth of which I could scarcely repay if she would even entertain the offer.

So, what can I say here, here in this modest forum, for what few eyes at odd times wander this way? Can I possibly say enough? Should I dare say a word? What words? Exactly, what words?

The question brings me back to Jeremy. Words. Those were the heads we banged and the bruises were no less real for being figurative. Me full of bombast and blurts, he full of meekness and subtleties. Between us in that dialectical dance, grew an ineffable intimacy comprehensible only in the viscera.

We were young poets, doing what young poets do--that is, discovering that poetry did not need us, we needed it. We needed it to excuse our penchant for looking at things through wonky glasses and to support the weight of unwieldy ideas.

And it was in those days, those two monumental years, that I was believed into being as a writer. Jeremy's belief in me turned into belief in myself. His sincerity, his devotion to the art--just as evident in his eyes as my own reflection--stood me up, dusted me off, and said get to work.

And so I wrote and blustered and spoiled my liver and along the way I made choices and lost my mentor, my nurse, my hero, my friend.

Years passed. In the meantime, he excelled as a scholar, had the soul of an explorer, and continued being what he had always been, even in the sonic-boom of my fleeting fame--he continued being the real poet. The poet with wider eyes. The poet with keener senses. The poet with more open arms. And, sadly, the one with the broken heart.

I continue to write. I've studied, I've engaged the craft, I've been tormented and delighted by the whimsy of words. But do as I can and try as I might, since the severance of our paths over ten years ago, my vision blurs when I look through those old wonky glasses and my back buckles beneath the ideas of my youth.

Three poems follow. The first was written in the days of our dance and alludes to a larger conversation between Jeremy and myself. A conversation typical of those unwieldy ones parsed beneath starry nights in Columbiana. The second was written within a week of his passing, the grief for which I rightfully suffered in silence. The third was written recently upon finishing Jeremy's posthumous collection Guard Your Speech and Letters: 30 Poems of Jeremy Lespi. [See sidebar for information on the book and regarding contributions to his legacy award.] I post these poems humbly and respectfully to honor his memory and share my heart.

To A Friend Before I Forget

Love’s tyranny is so complete that even when it’s gone

We’re scared to feel other things.

Where the sleight of hand becomes so slight

It neighbors real sorcery is where the poetry

Finally smells the animal musk of real life.

The lines that separate are dental floss thin.

Ready to cross at a moment’s indiscretion,

One fell tremor and we are in.

But being close is sometimes as good as being there

Because urgency’s more satisfying than achievement

Because as soon as you’re there--

The end zone, the championship, the heaven,

The fight is done and every purpose is wrung from the sponge of our toil,

Our stalactite patience crumbles from the ceiling and showers the ground

At our Undoer’s feet.

To a Friend, Though He’ll Never Know, but Before I Forget

Reminder: Love is blind, deaf, dumb,

Paraplegic and suffers migraines.

Suffers all in the paleness of cloudy

Days perhaps spent dancing

On the crumbling shoals.

Suffers the palpitant annoyances of its own

Decay. Like your heart,

Your real one. I loved

Your heart—your real one.

That flesh-fused, bleeding but briefly,

And eventually shit-headed, assassin

Heart of yours.

Love being what I said,

I hope mine only injured, never

Murdered. Because yours believed

Me into being. We danced the crumbling

Shoals and wetted our ankles in the creek, laughing

Because the lives we were speaking of were so

Obscene, humiliating, sacred, and deep dug down

through the heated core, down,

more deep down

Into the starry lake beneath.

Sestina for a Friend, Two Years Too Late

A melancholy comes with yellow-birds

That vanity swore we could lift with words

Accustomed more often to twisted shapes

And sentiments, more to what separates

The angles, by orders of magnitude,

At the extremes of our hypotenuse.

I call our growth apart, Hypotenuse—

The yawning of us since the yellow-birds

Came whistling of sadness’s magnitude.

With notebooks on our laps like infants, words

Like colicky complaints, we separates,

Once one, began to form our disparate shapes.

Of all that fashions and of all that shapes,

What most will lengthen the hypotenuse

Is the sobriety that separates

The wasted poets from the yellow-birds.

Such subtler creatures, unlike wasted words,

Disguise the barrenness of magnitude

With seeming praise for that same magnitude.

With their color, with their songs, with their shapes—

Each argue the case well. Funny, no words

Are called for. Funny, no hypotenuse

Can threaten the feathers of yellow-birds.

They fly unconscious of what separates,

Unbridled by the yokes we separates,

Then one, once mistook for mere magnitude—

The lachrymal bond of those yellow-birds.

Recall it was the day you showed me shapes

That poems can make, the hypotenuse

One forms by slowing the rhythm of words.

But it was not what we said (not our words

Scratched on flimsy paper) that separates

Us now. This widening hypotenuse,

Our overestimated magnitude

Propelled into eternity, now shapes

The heart-bursting song of yellow-birds

Into a magnitude of blathered words.

Hypotenuse separates mirrored shapes

and along its length are the yellow-birds.