Thursday, September 30, 2010

What I Will Do


Coyote makes an appearance, intent on her message. I shall be intent on mine.


"Now, my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose. I have read and heard many attempts at a systematic account of it, from materialism and theosophy to the Christian system or that of Kant, and I have always felt that they were much too simple. I suspect that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of, or can be dreamed of, in any philosophy. That is the reason why I have no philosophy myself, and must be my excuse for dreaming."
- J. B. S. Haldane

The Big Tent told me to go outside for inspiration so I wrote of the journeys I would take, willing to go to any lengths (I heard that phrase somewhere) for love, for adoration, to witness, to win. What? I'm a fool? Maybe so. Maybe I am revealed, dancing along my path toward the abyss, dancing in the open with my little dog Tige. Turns out Tige was an American Pit Bull Terrier.

Go here to learn about Tige, the first talking pet in American comics (probably) and me. Thing is, I didn't die suddenly in early middle age, and I have never lived in Amityville. OOOh. The movie about Amityville is not funny.

What I Will Do

Tell me anything.
Tell me where to go. I will
go to blazes for you.

I will crawl up steps
and through the nave just to show
how far I will go.
I will cross oceans,
walk on water. I will fly
to the sun and stars.
I will take extra
chances as I go, looking
for wild green dragons.
I will touch and soothe
the troubled souls of great beasts
and return the grail.

I might even go
outdoors, walk around out there,
take the air and sun.

September 30, 2010 8:18 PM

28 comments:

  1. I find the hyperbole so adorable. Unpretentious. Can hyperbole be unpretentious? I particularly like "looking for wild green dragons" and the last stanza ends it so simply, it's simply nice.

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  2. I have lived an uneventful life but for the heartbreaks and such likes. Nothing spectacular. However, my imagination takes me wherever I want it to go. I am a good observer, and a listener. Maybe that helps me.

    Your poetry in a way touches that very core in me. And I like that. OUr minds are what we are. And these can be as adventurous as we want the mind to be. Or not. Some never make use of it. But you know that very well.

    Here is my Haibun in 55 words!

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  3. Christopher an imaginative poem!
    I love it!
    Pamela

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  4. I am reminded of James Stewart promising to 'lasso the moon' for Donna Mills, knowing he will never have to follow through on it :)

    That's why the last stanza works so well.

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  5. Now, at least, I know where to come when the task appears too great!

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  6. Irene, I don't know if hyperbole can be unpretentious. :D

    Gautami, your comment touches me. I guess we touch each other. :)

    Pamela, thank you.

    Tilly, I did indeed go overboard and all Don Quixote in the heart of the poem, and at the last aimed a bit lower, didn't I :D

    Ummmm. Derrick, I know how to paint the roses red. I am not sure you want me to build you a real bridge. Actually I am fairly sure you don't :D

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  7. Love it love it love it! I smile and release the wings of imagination into your atmosphere. Love it!

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  8. Tumble, thank you. Little shivers of delight are creating haloes around my monitor..:D

    Annie, you are filled with passion. I have known this for a while. I will watch as you demonstrate your several flying maneuvers and I will trust that you will do them with all attention to safe flying. We don't need no crash round here.

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  9. This poem makes me want to kick my heels and yell go for it. Blaze new trails--
    Wonderful display of bravado encouraged by that unseen person who encourages you.

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  10. Blaze new trails...I am reading the story of a guy who is chasing down what ever happened to an intrepid explorer named Fawcett, how fooled around in the Amazon in 1911-26 or so. He was mapping borders and eventually looking for a lost civilization. This was no picnic. The beauty of poetry is that all the nice parts are there and none of the ugly parts, unless you want to...

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  11. I have to smile at this- I have a little green dragon on my blog HERE but he may be a little tame for you! LOL

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  12. the last stanza is so lovely... the simple and not easy call of everyday life; the sweetness of mundane challenges, and the depths.

    and the coyote was quite stark.

    i liked the whole experience of viewing and reading. a delight.

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  13. What I will do now is so much different then what I would once do. I made all those promises in your poem once.... and I tried to make them come true, but the promised was as interested in the quest as the one promising to do…
    Good poem for someone much younger with more energy.

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  14. Jinsky, I saw your dragon. It is ferocious enough, considereing it is a very small green dragon.

    Ghost, you are going to be a producer one day. Thanks for visiting once more.

    Harlequin, I am very happy to please you.

    Anthony, only for a younger man but also for a poet of any age who weaves it out of words and visions. Only the last haiku straddles the real as it lays nearby my door.

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  15. There is something terribly deja vu
    about this poem. I have heard all this before.I think I used to go out with your brothers or cousins,
    light years ago.:)Thanks for the
    giggle.

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  16. Rall, I couldn't tell you. Light years ago is across the divide, of course. We typically have zero recall. You seem to have some. That puts you in a special group.

    What I have is a certain form of recall of the last of the between times, not the fact but the sympathy. That sympathy informs my intention. I am on a mission of sorts, but it is my own, not a mission assigned by God but in spite of God, though at His permission.

    Look what I went and did. I took you serious. :D

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  17. Our piece has such a yearning in it, and a kind of wanting to give up yourself. Never a good idea...!

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  18. Christopher, I want to thank you for this one. You mentioned several things here that called me back to myself from a difficult space I have been in. And your mention of the wild green dragons was just what I needed to find what I wanted to post for this prompt. It wasn't for my readers, but for me. Thank you,

    Elizabeth

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  19. Going to such lengths for someone, even in your imagination. Someone should be pleased by your poem :)

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  20. Cynthia, it is my experience that the most important challenges of my life have never called for a reasoned response. They always contain such huge unknowns that "reason" is an insipid tool. Leaping into love is like that.

    Elizabeth, I'm here to help :D Seriously, you touch me with your words.

    BBD, When was the last time someone thanked you sufficiently for a monumental work? It is my experience that I am lost if I think I undertake those things for another, even when I write the poetry that implies it. It's all imagination. The person my lover is is not the person I hold in mind when I say I will go to the moon for her. There are four people at least in every bed: she, he, the she he dreams of, the he that she wants of him. There may very well be more, the mother and the father yearned for are a common extra pair.

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  21. From dragons to daylight... I like the simplicity of a walk outdoors.

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  22. There were two journeys...the journey to dragons and the journey to daylight.

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  23. Crawling, blazing, walking....So many images!!!Brilliant one!!

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  24. A fine representation of the passionate quest without compass. I'm reminded of the Holy Fool of the Waite tarot, eyes raised to the heavens, his foot a step from the edge of the cliff.

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  25. I have a special feeling for the Fool and not that many days ago I posted a the Fool's card as created by Kim Waters, a singer and artist. When she is not painting the Major Arcana and other things, she is a lead vocalist in a group called Rasa, where she sings devotional Persian and Indian music among other things.
    See http://northernwall.blogspot.com/2010/09/singular-fate.html

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


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