the bear and salmon show

[For a glossary of the once-nonce, now-minted words used below, refer to their context usage in: "beer foam on terra firma."  Or, skip to the next decipherable word and ignore my nonsense altogether.]

Ether,

It's been a while since our last communication.  I have been busy elsewhere from Elsewhere, namely over at Swallow, Socrates.  It's a long story but I'm sure, given your nature, your Eminent Diaphanousness, your broad-band acceleration through the whole web of Philosterous-Nonesucherol, you could scurry over there and scurry back before I know you're gone.

I'll assume you went.  I know, I know--sob story, isn't it.  But that's there, not here.

Here, Elsewhere, that is, I was updating my publications list on stage left (your right) and decided that I might as well toss some literature your way.  And, I am painfully aware, in the way of the chortlesome crows.  Let them laugh--I'm far less humiliated now by my smallish poetic efforts than when we began our correspondence back on April 12, 2010.  (We're getting old, Ether.)

Preface to the poem:  Now and then, great things surface on that predominantly insipid crust of media--Amorphilacious-Antaginons--which is to say in the parlance of Substantiopetrapopulus, Facebook.  Such a thing was gifted to me by my friend Mary Maxwell.  It was link to a site on which one can watch bears catch salmon in real time.  See for yourself @ explore.org.  

I'll assume you went.

At first, I unabashedly admit to watching this magnificent phenomenon, transfixed, for thirty minutes at a stretch 3 or 4 times a day.  Over the last two weeks, my time and frequency have diminished but I still check-in regularly.  It helps that I adore bears to the point of distraction but I can't imagine not wanting to behold such an ancient and vital display of wildness for at least a minute or two, adoration or not.

Meanwhile, other things have been going on in the world besides the bear and salmon show.  Noxious things.  A man is proven to have wreaked ruination on the lives of young children for the satiation of an aberrant urge while his compatriots abetted for the sake of convenience.  Another man meticulously plots and executes an ambush of terror on a theater full of harmless humans.

These monsters and the usual suspects, as well:  One candidate makes too much money, one candidate takes too much money.  One restauranteur disapproves of your convictions and capitalizes, one restauranteur approves of your convictions and capitalizes.  Oh, and Kristen stepped-out on Robert to hook-up with Rupert and now the whole thing's gone south--lachrymose teens and inappropriately concerned adult women are incredulous, distraught.

The handbasket is woven, the brimstone is molten, and all passengers are boarding at this time.

Out of these conditions and due to my obsession with bears, I wrote the following poem which, in reality, has very little to do with either.  Its about bears and salmon.  And a gull in cameo support.

In Lieu of Human Scandal: Live-Cam at Brooks Falls

Harvest season for the brown bear—

Pink salmon hurtling upstream.

One atop the falls, eyes locked

On the foam; a flying circus,

An urgency of fins, pelt the heron-

Patient beast—portrait of awkward

Majesty.  When now and then

Lucky maws clamp in purchase,

The bear shoulders into the plunge

To eat her catch on the banks,

Trailed by a covetous gull.

beer foam on terra firma

There was nothing particularly striking about them except they were artists of the kind that talk. Everyone knows of the talking artists. Throughout all of the known history of the world they have gathered in rooms and talked. They talk of art and are passionately, almost feverisly, in earnest about it. They think it matters much more than it does. -- Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio.

So, let's talk about that.

First of all . . . ouch. Second of all . . . AW-kward. Third of all . . .

I am glad to have these reminders from time to time. Especially since I started this blog which is essentially devoted to my art, such as it is, of writing. As you know, I was wary of starting the blog in the first place--the main (and petulantly disclaimed) reason being the export of my soul to the Philosterous-Nonesucherol (Internet), flung into the Nothinworld (Domain of incorporeal Being) in conversation with your Eminent Diaphanousness (that's you, Ether) as if my difficulties with those snide, chortling crows here on Substantiopetrapopulus (Terra Firma) were not enough.

But there was another reason for my wariness at the outset: Loth am i to write of the arts/ as if some ligature imparts/ wisdom where blank pages but fart/ and spoil the air of artsy-smarts.

Which is to say, less ironically and less reliant on flatulence, that aesthetics, like most other branches of philosophy, very nearly bores me to tears after years of growing hoarse in the extrapolation of its fundamental characteristics and the vituperative defense of its sublime essence.

Which is to say, less blowhardily, art, as with the Tao, is ineffable and, as with God, needs my advocacy like a nudist needs a bra.

Yet, I spend so much of my day thinking on the nature of art and discussing it over the Amorphilacious-Antaginons (Facebook) and with whosoever, in their apparent eagerness to be saturated in the driveling drool of my lifelong obsession with poetry, asks a simple question.

So I ask myself Why? [This is not one of the simple questions. Annoying, yes. Pervasive, yes. Infinitely unanswerable down to a mathematical singularity, it would seem. Simple, no.]

Not only does Poetry not need me to write poems much less explain why I do, it is also, at the end of the day, nothing near so lovely as things in themselves. Not nearly so beautiful as The Great Smokey Mountains adorned in autumn. Not nearly so gorgeous as the moss draped live oak. Not nearly so entertaining as we people in our baseball hats or with our dripping ice-cream cones or at the beach chasing frisbees with our border collies or after a hard day's work with beer foam on our lips.

Yet still I talk of art. Yet still it makes my day. Yet still my un-flung soul feeds on its morsels to fatten up for the sacrifice--knowing full well how snapply and crackly and popply the fire gets--full well how the noisome, black birds will peck its flambéed heart.

Oh art, if we break up can we still be friends? Will you still call now and then? Can we still talk? And talk and and talk and talk . . .

Which is to say . . .

been a'visiting

Ether, it's been a while. What have I been up to? Largely none of your business but a legitimate question. Actually, there are no illegitimate questions, only illegitimate people. So, I suppose you are safe on both counts. Though how your Eminent Diaphanousness is even such a thing as to qualify for safety from corporeal matters, I will never know. Perhaps, by insinuating your embodiment in this blog, this dead scroll of ones and zeros and hypertext mark-up, I have solidified your otherwise Zero-Status. I take the blame and in doing so, honor your question and legitimize your Being.

I have been a'visiting family in Mobile, Alabama, celebrating the Fourth of July. Why the Fourth of July? Well, here on earth (Substantiopetrapopulus to you, I believe) and in these United States of America we commemorate our independence as a nation on the day in which our written declaration of such was signed by our whitest and brightest. Typically events surrounding the occasion involve grilled meats and fireworks--variations are acceptable though rare. Even the unpatriotic, snide, and cynical generally take part in the festivities, unwilling as they usually are to pass up a party to prove a point.

(Ether, I confess to being all of those things at odd and slightly shameful times, but for the most part I try to curb my lack of enthusiasm for the sake of the gathering. Besides, at the end of the day, after the guilt of trespass, after the sorrow of spoils, after the tail-chasing polemics, I am glad to be an American--plenty happy, plenty free, and plenty fortunate.)

But I was saying . . . Mobile . . . family . . . my absence from Philosterous-Nonesucherol . . . well, here is a poem in progress to help you get a feel . . .


And At the Mirror Each Time

Thia Grace made out like a bandit

Selling quarter lemonade to uncles

With only paper bills. Jesse lit three-

Foot rods from the sputtering

Citronella candle and twirled

In a spangle of sparks. We all swatted

Gnats and suffered the bough-sieved

Rain to watch the amateur display

Of rockets and mortars, to comment

On how the smoke should keep

The mosquitoes at bay.

But earlier, before the burgers

And gumbo, while kids splatted

Water-balloons and pranced in the blow-

Up princess pool, Annalyn and I—

My newest niece, her wretched uncle—

Trolled the house on doldrums.

And at the mirror each time, we paused

To gurgle and grin—our reflections

So grotesque and magnificent, so full

Of promise and repulsion.

And this thought . . .

What should I tell her now? Now that Earth

Is as good as flat? Now in the moments

Before she naps? Nothing.

Nothing except this is freedom. Nothing

Except we have done a great thing,

You and I, tight-roping the gamut,

You poised, me palled, we gnarled

In this two-hearted body.

Or just nothing. Just sway, whistle

Through teeth a tinny lullaby.

Swallow the words and hum.

Guard against explosions.

Gurgle and grin.

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?