into something calmer

Why elsewhere? Why not with the crows. Because it's not safe there. It's hard to write poetry where ca-caws are guffaws. Because poetry needs a little silence to grow. It needs a morning when the rain dampens the spirits of noisome birds and precludes the horking of rock-choked lawn mowers. It needs an afternoon by a breeze-rippled lake, a sun-blazoned lake with herons pegged in algae-shallows and occasional carp nipping dancing reeds. It needs, almost more than anything else, dew-beaded grasses beneath a star-chocked night from which the poet can wring the tasteless, cloud filtered liquor of the firmament. And it needs the firmament, too. For the way it way it sounds. Firm--it sounds the way it is--yahr! firm! (Think pirate if you must.) But then, after its initial lunge, it recedes into something calmer--ament. The word has done its work. It pushed then pulled. A simple machine. And poetry needs that sort of work; and some silence to do it in. Because blurt another word over firmament, say cacophony simultaneously, and what happens? Cacophony, ca-caw, guffaw. Shoo you crows. So where do you go? Elsewhere. Find a little silence. Maybe in a darkened attic with the mice and ghosts, maybe beneath a bridge where the spray-paint cans still lie, spent, breathless after the vandals bolted and the roaches returned, and there's a smell that reminds you of something--something you can write about. Maybe any old where but here. Because here, poetry's just a joke. A bad one. A poet, a poet, and a poet walk into a bar and nobody buys them a beer. Not funny. Not here it isn't. Maybe somewhere else.

when the eyes blur

Oh Ether, how the mind reels when the eyes blur. I have been hard at work re-reading this absurd novel of mine. As you probably know from your cousin, Amorphilacious-Antaginons, I lost some revisions. Oh how the heart breaks when mind the reels. But I only have three chapters left to go over, then some formatting, then off it goes to a prospective publisher--first thing tomorrow morning with apologies for the late response. Do you have the luck to wish me, new friend? Is the Nothingworld's air even fresh enough for such a thing as luck? Is there air at all? A good question as I seem to lose my breath every time I visit its Vacuosity.

And now, despite the blur, break, and reel, here is the bird of the week. The mocking bird. A choice suited for my current state of mind because I feel as if the capricious muses have been prancing about, pointing and giggling, as I suffer through the tedium of revision after revision.

I have a poem with a mockingbird in it. It's called "Morning Beer." But i don't have the energy to hunt it down, fit it in, and suffer the laughter of crows. MAybe another time. Until then . . . see about that luck thing, though I won't hold my breath.

let me clear my throat

The grackle. Say it again--the grackle. Harsh word. Conjures hackle--as in the bristling of hair, as in the rising of temper, as in HACK,HACK,HACK. Or spackle--as in extra work, as in gloopy mess. But that's just their name. Hear their "song" . . . readle-eak, readle-eak, chack-chack-chack. So why the bird of the week? Because of beauty.

Beauty, of course, has its bevvy of cliche recommendations and axiomatic explanations. You have your "eye of the beholder" and your "rose by any other name" and your "skin deeps." All good sayings, and all relatively true, I believe. And for being true, perhaps the subject is worth revisiting--hack-hack-hackneyed as the visit has become. And we'll use the common grackle to guide us.

Look at him. (And definitely click to enlarge. Do it now. I'll wait.)

I find beauty in his purple sheen, in the glints of green and iridescent blacks. I find beauty in his yellow eyes, in his steady gaze. Also, because beauty is as rich in ugliness as elsewhere, I find it in the menace of his stance and in the severe keel of his tail. For that matter, it's in his hackling song and in the onomatopoeia of his throat-clearing name.

When I see a grackle, I am mindful of the first four lines of one of Byron's most famous poems:

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudy climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes.

I think it fits our bird well. More literally than one of Byron's beau-coup amours. But no less beautiful, I think, though certainly less romantic. Now there's a fact you should know about me, Ether. For beauty give me sensuous and sensational over the sacred or sublime. Don't take away the sacred or the sublime--dem's good too; but if given my rathers then give me the colors of a bird over the vagaries of love, give me it's simple song over the complexity of the divine.

As a poet, I take special interest in finding beauty . . . or sitting still long enough for it to find me. And invariably, I will or it will. Why? Because I take a special interest in nature. Van Gogh says that a lover of Nature cannot help but find beauty. Emerson reminds us to recognize beauty as we go about our day--"welcome it in every fair face, in every fair sky, in every flower."

But also as a poet (and even more importantly in my prose characterizations), I have to find the loveliness in hideousness. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is a triumph of this sort of discovery. The monster becomes not just sympathetic but truly beautiful despite its monstrousness--despite and perhaps in light of it, as well. On the other hand, Mary's fittingly baby-faced husband Percy Bysshe, says that poetry "lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar." While this is often true and admirably achieved, I think Mary's monster and my grackle (in as much as I have called attention to it in this blog post) attest to the merits of taking those things unfamiliar (held at bay by our distastes and prejudices) and making them familiar--beings whose "hidden" delights needed but a firm rap of the outer shell, as in egg, as in crack . . .

Crackle. As in . . .
Grackle. Grrrrr-ackle! Grrrrrr. As in . . .
beautiful.

yourself as the you

I wanted the moments of my life to follow each other and order themselves like those of a life remembered. I might as well try to catch time by the tail.--Jean Paul Sartre

So I've been undulating on the foamy swells of the Amorphilacious-Antaginons (aka Facebook) for over a week now and despite the occasional vertiginous crests and the stray stomach-sinking lulls, I feel like I might survive the scare. After all, what's a few soul-wrenching, psyche-anguishing, despair-inducing confrontations with yourself as The Other? That is, yourself as the you-that-once-was. That is, the you-that-is breaching the Nothing, reaching through stubbornly unsubstantial time, and faintly touching the you-that-was as a candle-flame might touch the fog.

Believe in ghosts, Ether, believe because they're out there. They resemble you: in the gleam of an eye or in the turn of a lip or in the cross of the legs. They remind you of you. They are you. Even when you're looking at someone-else-as-they-once-were it's just the you-as-The Other still stuck in the Nothingness of what once was but is no more--textbook case of Ghost encounter. Shiver.

To put it another way, all these old pictures of old friends and old mes gives me heebie-jeebie-willies.

Here's a sonnet--apropos of something above, I think. Or feel, rather.

Elementary

One may say that the eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.

– Albert Einstein

Remember sallow afternoons when we

Would count the passing cars and itemize

By color? Brother, I had open eyes

And gaping ears. I learned lessons for free

That you had bought by sitting in a class.

Who knew that stars were relatively still,

But you? You knew that salt would kill

A slug by shriveling it and that glass

Was made by blowing into glowing sand.

Remember pinching lightning bugs to smear

Our faces green and yellow? We would stand

At neighbors’ windows peering in like ghouls,

(Like what? I asked, secretly cramped with fear.

­Like ghosts, you said) no smarter pair of fools.

this not this

The Black-Capped Chickadee--Your Bird of the Week!
Adrienne's new favorite. So small, so darling. At first, I confused one on the feeder for a downy woodpecker but upon further inspection and consultation with my book, we determined it was this old boy.

And not this young fella.








They are both so itty, it's hard to tell at first glance which is which--especially since they flit so fast. Small birds don't spend too much time on the feeder. A little nip'll do 'em.

There is also a squirrel update. I think the battle is over. Perhaps, it's too early to tell; but Legion has been giving the feeder a wide berth these days. I can neither confirm nor deny that this turn of events might possibly correlate with a recent incident involving a low-velocity though point-getting-across-ing air-soft pellet reaching a rather abrupt, trajectory-reversing acquaintance with the knucklehead of aforementioned ravening rodent.

Neither am I at liberty to say, pending PETA's inquisition, who perpetrated this admittedly violent act. However, you can be assured that such a person regrets his or her actions, has confessed them to be mean-spirited, and gets choked up just thinking about those first confused sixty seconds when the poor gray soul flopped to the ground--confused, startled--and started bouncing around like a kitty in a catnip frenzy. Be assured also, that the squirrel is now fine--perhaps even better off because he has discovered a new source of food in a nearby flimsy tree in which he Tarzans about, limbs loping low, plucking green nuts and nibbling adorably.

All's well that ends well? No, I don't think I necessarily believe in that. Sure, ending well is better than ending poorly; but the interim intentions between start and finish have to account for something. I guess. Either way, sometimes a moment of reflection before taking aim can render the argument moot. One thing's for sure: All's well that never goes bad. It's then that things go poorly.

I think I hear PETA knocking. I mean I think some unidentified person of interest hears PETA knocking. At any rate, gotta go!

my mood tonight

Fast Falling Star

You are not who

They say you are,

But this is no fault

Of your own.

Is that why you

Flare and disintegrate?

Are you sad and now

It’s too late?

Slow Falling Leaf

You move as if you intend

To take your doubt

To the grave.

As if, absent some proof

Of breeze, you will

Meet your end

Happily whenever you happen

To reach it.

wait . . . what?

Attention Wal-Mart Shoppers.

There is a special on aisle 5. Buy one Heinz Ketchup and get the loofah beside it for regular price. And be sure to check out the beer section. Grab a case of Miller Lite and while you're at it, consider purchasing the open package of Fig Newtons sitting on top. Already done shopping for dairy but forget the cottage cheese? Look between the Burger Buns and Hoagie Rolls. Of course don't forget that last second impulse buy--Cosmo, Altoids, Bic lighter, beef jerky, Duracells, head of lettuce,wait . . . what?

Oh and by the way, while we do have clearly marked and entirely obvious corrals for your carts, please also feel free to take advantage of our other options: against the curb, in vacant parking spaces, in occupied parking spaces with a little wiggle room, or even on the grass adjacent to and flush against the clearly marked, sufficiently empty, and touchably-close corrals provided for the return of carts.

Ether? Are you there? Can you hear me? Please tell me I'm dreaming. Tell me it's just the mint jerky salad not sitting well. Oh, dag-snubbit, I knew the Pepto by the Lysol was a sign!