befitting a storm

Here's a little ditty I wrote a couple of years ago commemorating a rare snow for us Birminghamites. We had one of our"winter storms" over the weekend and I thought I'd exhume the poem and post it here for your amusement. Fellow southerners--nod; distant northerners--roll your eyes; elsewhere crows--laugh.

Middle Alabama Snow

We wake to snow

But still incredulous,

Our disbelief like sleep

In dream-deep eyes.

In outsized flakes

Like kindergartners cut

From origami folds,

The snow descends

And reunites

On roofs and shrubbery.

The window watches on

As we look through.

Our wonderment

Is tempered by distrust.

We know the heavy sigh

And shoulder-slump

That come as sure

As morning’s sun, as sure

As he will stand and stretch

His sleep-fresh rays.

Our mittens are

Mismatched and our long-johns

Don’t fit and itch, but time

Won’t stop for us.

It never does.

By afternoon, the thaw

Will break a febrile sweat

Across the knolls

Of matted grass.

With snow in blotches

Like hives-mottled flesh

On hoods of cars

And yellow lawns,

The purple pansy will

Erect its humble head,

Revivified.

So quickly we tie

Our tennis shoes and zip

Our raincoats up. We grab

The boogie-boards

And laundry bins

To sled the nearest slope

And crash and climb and crash

Again. Again.

Then not so smoothly,

Now in mostly

Mud,

But again.

dam that i am

I taught myself a writing lesson today. A lonely poet without mentor will resort to such measures, I suppose. At any rate, I thought I would share it with you, Ether, unsure as I am how much or little you might care. And even if you don't, it is conceivable that through your Eminent Diaphanousness, through your sheer veneer to the Nothingworld, some one or another might find my self-tutelage useful now or someday.

It has to do with poetry so I will whisper against discovery by the elsewhere crows. Ha-haw-haw-haw. I can hear them already. Jerks.

So . . . this morning I was reading poems by Jeremy Lespi (a poet too soon gone). While engaged with one on the left side of the page, my med-induced attention deficit had my eye wandering to the right side of the page where in the middle of a different poem, I latched on to this phrase:

"I will kneel on/ some obscure gossiping Wednesday, more/
slowly one wild goose of a year from now . . ."

I did not read the rest of the poem. Did not follow the phrase's thread back to the beginning or continue to unspool it to the end. I simply hovered there. Just above those lines. And it was enough. Enough for the osmotic nature of poetry to infiltrate my mind, to move me deeply even though I was only in the shallows, only ankle-deep and yet . . . and yet absorbed through and through.

The moment, as most will, passed. I went back to the other poem on the left side and finished reading it.

More time passes. I scroll through the Amorphilacious-Antaginons (Facebook). I eat a couple of Toast Chee Crackers, wash down with Vitamin Water, check my email. At this point in my days, I know that I am usually done with being productive creativity-wise. I begin to think of lunch. Of dinner, for that matter. Will I take a nap today or bully myself into practicing my German? Denn ich bin müde aber ich will auf deutsch sprechen.

Then something peculiar happens. Today is Wednesday, I think. I should write. No, I MUST write. But why? Because it's raining. So what? Well, because I saw the word "Wednesday" a bit ago, and for reasons unqualified I felt the whole world sog my soul, the mere hint of years spent chasing things like rumor and whimsy. All that when there are prayers to pray--genuflections to be made. Other days of the week to hold back--creaking, twiggy dam that I am.

So I wrote, without rewinding or unspooling:

I will write on raining Wednesdays

The wide world notwithstanding,

Though all else speak

More truly.

Today is Wednesday.

Cold and wet.

The gray we’ve invented

To describe the salted blue

Skies.

Eyes too can be blue,

Salted and grayed,

Mine, for instance, on days

Like today. Skies

Burdened, earthen—

An invisible clay. No,

Not invisible—

Gray.

Lies.

I will write them today.

And every Wednesday after

When it rains.

Nothing spectacular. Nothing destined for the chic, slick pages of the New Yorker. Nothing much at all. Except, and here is the lesson, an obedience to the unqualified, a readiness to skip the obvious and write from the oblique, from the opposite page, from the impertinent viscera.
Sometimes, to have hovered is enough. Despite the seeming detachment of the hovering object from the entity behovered (nonce-word), there is that osmotic force, so precious in poetry, that does not require one's absolute attention, that will, given proper gravity, draw one in, suffuse one's unthinking mind, and absorb one in the shallows.

That is all, Ether. That's the lesson I taught myself today. Spread the word in many places. You are good for that, my cosmopolitan friend.

Wait . . . one more thing. I shall call my poem "Barometer." For today, at least.

world wide laughter

Dear Ether and Friends,

The new issue of The Able Muse is online. My poem "Boy at Play" is accompanied by an audio recording. I hope you like.

I pray the site has a crow firewall. Nothing's worse than World Wide Laughter.

Regards,

Johnny the Lackluster Poet (Most of his friends know him as me.)

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 . . .

or suffer sucky poems

In the interest of partial disclosure, I have decided to give you a taste of my revision process. Call it a mini-workshop performed upon myself--an annoying necessity since graduating from a writing program and, to be honest, one not nearly stringent enough to produce the sort of quality I am aiming for. Nonetheless, here is an example. I will be using the poem from my last post, so if you have yet to read it, do so now. (Unless, of course, there are rats' asses elsewhere more worthy of your attention, then by all means . . . and don't let the browser hit you on your way out.) I will wait here . . .

still waiting so you might as well go read the silly thing . . .

OK, so you've either read it now or had read it before or, most likely, I'm sure, you have exercised your right to simply read on because you are not to be bullied by a sniveling poet who is obviously just cross-referencing his blogs to increase exposure. Whatevs or whichevs . . . here we go.

First in its entirety:

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.

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.

And this thought . . .

What should I tell her now? Now that Earth

Is as good as flat? Now in the moments

Before she naps? Maybe—

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.

***

Now with commentary:

At the Mirror Each Time

[here you'll notice I omitted the word "and" from the title. for some reason, I like the conjunction without precedent--the propulsion and amidst-ness of it, but here it just did nothing for the poem.]

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.

[ when I decided to divvy the stanzas to be more consistent with narrative structure, it became necessary to jettison some phrases. The last one in this first stanza, you'll notice, is gone. It was an actual occurrence--the mosquito discussion--and therefore not entirely worthless; but it was the heaviest/ prosiest part of the stanza, so it was a likely candidate. I am happy with the result. I should note here that it is always difficult to get rid of lines--it's like a slap in the face to an earlier self that thought it was lovely in the first place. But you get over it or suffer sucky poems--and sucky poems suck so that's no good. Get over it, then.]

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.

[ here, again, I have lopped off the last line. So it seems I have a tendency to be extraneous towards the end of thoughts and phrases. It's like I just have shove those two or three more words in to prove my vocabulary is such to suggest that I could go on and on if need be only let this much be a lesson to ye. It's a bad habit--one that I am especially addicted to in my prose fiction. Never fear, I am exorcising the demon now as I mention it--it doesn't stand a chance in the open air! So the last two adjectives were less tuneful than the first two, therefore they had to go.]

[this stanza break was added to signal a change in voice and style. The poem is about to leave the concrete world where the images are of real stuff and of actual events and enter an abstract realm of rhetoric and wonderment. It calls for its own space in this poem. Which is not to say that every such shift requires its own stanza because often the effect is more effective as physically juxtaposed to the original tone. In this case, though, the speaker (only coincidentally me and of little significance at that) , on one of his pauses at the mirror, has a vision of his connection to the child that differs from his sensational experiences up to that point. It is a shift into sentiment and reverie that I have chosen to distinguish in an obvious fashion--not as an insult to the intelligence of the audience but as device to render the poem more simple and sensible. I am not one for incomprehensibility in my poetry--I am far less modern than that!]

And this thought . . .

What should I tell her now? Now that Earth

Is as good as flat? Now in the moments

Before she naps? Maybe—

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.

[This last stanza has been tightened. Most of the "nothing"s and all of the "except"s have been removed. The "nothing"s for their repetitiveness, the "except"s for their plain old ugliness as words. I believe the result is much better--lighter on the eyes, easier on the ears.]

Well, now, there you go. A transformation made known. A poem made less sucky. A poet made less mysterious. And if you made this far, you are either a gracious reader, a writer at least moderately interested in craft and process, or a skipper-to-the-end-to-see-where-he's-going-with-this-er-er.

Whatevs or whichevs. Thanks for stopping by. Ignore the hysterical crows on your way out. They love to see me all confessional and erroneous.