Monday, July 13, 2009

The Artist's Way, So Many Poets

After stealing saints I got all spiritual. Hmmmm. There may be something to the Divine Outlaw. I'll do a little shuffle, play some twelve bar blues. Be the back door man, honey. It's all rock and roll. Yes. Go out on the dance floor and dance incantations to ecstasy. Coyote howls right about then, a triumphant note all deep and wise. The jokes are gone at this moment. Adoration of the moon of tides. Coyote follows his tone of voice clean out of the world and me, I have achieved. This infernal itch is scratched and how I got here doesn't matter any more because the god accepts us all. We either all go or we don't. That's why it was thunder, thunder and lightning the day this poor boy was born. That's why it don't matter that all I have is trouble, your hate, your scorn. My dad he died in a train wreck and momma she died of the booze. My first name is natural born trouble and my last name, honey, it's the blues. All the way to heaven.

The Artist's Way

I've made my gesture
Dedicated to the truth,
To the real way,
Even when at sea,
In the fog of war and peace,
In love's loss and gain.

When I write, but then
When I wash clothes and dishes,
When I tend the cat,
When I send my love
To those I owe, those I don't,
I'm significant
At the cosmic scale.

January 26, 2009 7:27 PM

**********************************

And I'm hardly alone. There are so many. I love you all.

So Many Poets

The other poet
Wanders around the coppice
Deciding which tree
To trim on this day
When he hears this poet praise
Yet another one.

That's when he decides
There's more to this than being,
More identity
Than in the long form
Or the short work he does now.
The significance
Is the gesture he
Makes in trimming yet one more
Branch when it's needed.

January 26, 2009 7:52 PM

12 comments:

  1. This is perfect, my thoughts have been dwelling along the same lines today, coyote and all...

    SG

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  2. Love the way these relate and your backstory, especially Coyote's insertions (intersessions?).

    This is a great description of the work of the poets:

    "The significance
    Is the gesture he
    Makes in trimming yet one more
    Branch when it's needed."

    ReplyDelete
  3. (Howl) (chuckle)

    Hmmm, do the dishes. Why would I carry water? I turn on the tap. :)

    Yes, Karen, that getting rid of words seems more like the work. The thing that gives a poem life is that you or I get to participate, to fill in what is clearly needed but not said by the poet. One reason I have chosen to hold down the syllable count is the discipline of not saying directly anything that some reader could say for themselves.

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  4. beautiful 3x.
    As i am feeling rather insignificant these days, your poetry strenghtens me. And as i already, chopped the wood, hauled the water, did the dishes, did the laundry :) I will tend to my cats and maybe do some writing, and i might even get to out to see if there is a branch in need of trimming.
    Thanks for loving!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Jozien, If I look at myself from anywhere but really close to me, I am insignificant. If I feel that way, I have taken that viewpoint, fallen out of myself, perhaps a little too far. But it matters how I want to view things. If I don't let it crush me, then it is probably one appropriate view.

    My insignificance is just not the only appropriate view. I know I wasn't insignificant to my mother, for example. That counts. You are not insignificant to me. That also counts.

    Science says, no matter where we look, we don't find the origin, and that everywhere we look, we find traces of the origin. This means there is no center to all of it, or that center is everywhere. I have long held that belief, that center is everywhere, the doorway to the divine is everywhere, that we don't have to journey in that sense. In so many senses, this life is a journey and an exile, but not in this most significant one.

    You are the source and the source is ultimately infinite, though housed now in the play of things in a finite package. If you decide you are insignificant then you have accepted the divine game, are playing with all the other players. But to do so you have to forget this wild piece of yourself, claim it is not there, or at least not very near or clear.

    You already know this :) You have said so yourself, to me.

    It is right to feel insignificant from time to time. It is more right to remember all of the story you already know.

    Sometimes it works to give these darknesses permission and a suggested time limit, so long as the limit is reasonable. You can't get over true grief in five minutes. But you can get over the worst of it in three weeks or three months.

    Loving you

    ReplyDelete
  6. There is a saying...Buddhist I think

    "Before enlightenment, chop wood carry water, after enlightenment, chop wood carry water....."

    That's all....

    ...as for rearranging anatomy.....well...... grin.

    xxx

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  7. Michelle, that is indeed a Zen Buddhist saying. I've upgraded it from time to time to doing the dishes. I were jest teasin' about the tap.

    xoxo

    ReplyDelete
  8. I like these....and I hear the chop wood carry water:>)
    LInda

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  9. every moment of a true artist's life is art... even when they are washing the dishes and clothes...

    truth is omnipresent...


    beatuiful works!

    ReplyDelete

The chicken crossed the road. That's poultry in motion.


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