Another One Of Those Questions, Why Do I Do This

Yes, indeed, how many are there?

Another One Of Those Questions

How many are there
living in the sweet calm lake
of love contented
to be so long paired
that the wedding is only
the pictures, the old
announcement, the ring
still worn if not lost somehow?

February 2, 2009 1:57 PM

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

There are the big things in my life. Even at this point, I really don't know what to make of them. I know the illusions I followed. I know what I wanted but that was never possible. Three times I tried. Instead I have the life of the possible. That is all right with me. I am all right.

Why Do I Do This

You tell me to check
so I look in all the back
rooms, in the boxes
I stashed there, looking
for motives, hidden behind
the obvious ones.

Out of the corner
of my eye something scurries
along the wall, dives
into that small hole
and refuses to come out,
not even for you.

That is, you say, the main motive.

February 2, 2009 2:42 PM

Intermission

I have needed this time for resting. I will post tomorrow. I love you guys.

The Going Out Seat, Writer's Block

Charlie taught me "the going out seat" when he gathered he was shortly to be laid off. He named his chair the going out seat. I was so impressed with the idea that I've kept it probably twenty years. This is because layoffs are normal occurences in my particular marketplace. I 've had the privilege of sitting in the going out seat close to once a year for the last decade. My latest experience in the going out seat gave me the chance to write the poems I have been posting starting dated in late December and still here dated in February. I had two weeks of work in January and was out all of February.

The Going Out Seat

If I sat on that
chair would you strap me down tight
so I could take off
faster than light speed
and break through the barrier,
the razor wire strung
around my normal
life? Would you do that for me?
I need to go now.

February 2, 2009 8:57 AM

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

Writing poetry is in part a matter of focus. What to do when there seems nothing to write about? Write about that...

Writer's Block

I can't write what I want,
have to settle for backing up
and saying I can't write
what I want.

This will have to do.

The dragons all went home.
I am left with their breath.
Dragon scat in my house
forces me to step carefully.

February 2, 2009 11:04 AM

In The Uneven Dark, How It Is

Sometimes you just have to come back down to earth.

In The Uneven Dark

I've come up shorter
than I thought I would tonight.

I was headed for
an epiphany,
some true light and angel breath
like incense wafting
left behind the moon.

Instead what I want, a cup
of hot tea, your kiss.

February 1, 2009 2:58 PM

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

Did anybody notice? I quit capitalizing every line.

How It Is

The poem adrift on the winds
anonymous, self sufficient,
gazes downward in passing
looking for the poet
who will care enough
to give it a place
to land for now.

After, it will fly
free again.

February 1, 2009 3:25 PM

Just Another Day, Ghost Story

I don't really have anything to say about Just Another Day. It speaks for itself. I actually have no idea how to knap a stone. The question asked in the poem is a real one. I have read arguments on both sides of the issue.

Just Another Day

It's been a long time
since it all started, aeons
since we got upright
and you argue did
we talk first or walk first?
I forget, don't want
to argue the past.
You touch my hairy head, stroke
me in your old way
while I squat here, knap
this new flinty blade.

February 1, 2009 10:13 AM

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

I have a blog friend by the name of Ghost Dansing. I wrote this poem. Do you think there is some connection? This particular Ghost is masculine. Ghost Dansing is enigmatic. Or is that ectoplasmic?

Ghost Story

I have a ghost friend,
a dancer once when more substantial
who now fancies himself
a bit of a conjuror.
Recently he began to assert
himself as present
just like anybody else.

He came to the house,
snuck in behind us
and began a rite to summon demons.

It worked famously, but then
the demon tried to eat him
and though you can't eat ghosts,
this disappointed him,
so he shut the spell down
and with that,
with the finish of the chant,
with the incense
burned to ash,
and the glow of demon's breath
still in the air, he turned
and wandered off.

February 1, 2009 2:24 PM

My Best Poem, Something To Do

I apologize. Something has shifted for me. I know I am not the only one. It is one of the beauties of the blogs that we can freely come and go. No one is beholden unless they wish to be or somehow their conscience won't let it be otherwise. I feel beholden a little. I simply can't get around the blogs like I feel I should. I mean this for the riches I gain when I do, not really because I am under some obligation. I look at the list I follow and yearn to go. I just don't have the time or focus for it. Often I stop by, read a little, love it and rush on.

I am also not writing poems like I did, and this because most of them are written as comments. This lack of time feels like bad news in some ways but of course it is the shift in phases, now that I have over 900 new poems or so. Perhaps in a little while poems will start again, but right now work presses, and my lack of energy takes care of the rest.

Here is one reason I don't like this.

My Best Poem

Life keeps getting me.
I try for another word
and it just won't come.
Instead it's laundry
or something else worse
that imposes on my time.
Thickets in my heart
resist me and my
indolence is natural.
Then there is the day
and all it brings me
that cuts through my obsession,
kills my best poem.

January 31, 2009 10:32 PM

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

I have no idea when I finish a poem how good it is. I am filled with it, and of course from there, as the freshest poem it is also usually the best one if it is not a clunker. What is my best poem? The next one.

Finally, that was the last January poem. This next poem could be about the blogs but I don't think that's how I wrote it. It might be about Twitter or Facebook, but I don't go there. It is about being shallow, I think. It is certainly a poem my last girlfriend would write. Having spent a couple days with her, I remember how nonstop she is. Phew. I value stopping.

Something To Do

Talk, talk, talk, I say,
all this talk and wordy clouds
billow up around
this odd gathering,
all here to chatter. Over
there the tools idle
for lack of my hands
and yours. We forget ourselves
as we huddle here.

There is something needs
doing, I think, another
poem, home repair,
feeding the children,
cleaning up after the cat,
giving love to you.

February 1, 2009 9:45 AM

I Have Pulled That Nail, Passover

A musician learns the unfortunate lesson. If you want these unnatural actions to become natural, there is only one choice. Practice. Years of practice. Devotion. Not only practice as a mechanical action pattern but with devotion. In the end, you walk away from your old self into the new self fluent in the actions you have practiced, but it turns out that you never really leave the devoted practice behind.

I Have Pulled That Nail

I was born charming.
I write this sure I was charmed
for I have pictures.
I was fresh, even
spontaneous, and then you
undertook to train
me, set my wild life
on the civilizing track.
It has taken time.
You more or less won
the game of nailing me down,
one foot to the floor.

For some sixty years
I've been turning tight circles.

Now I think I've pulled that nail,
unwinding myself.

January 31, 2009 10:56 AM

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

There are troubles coming. It is hard to deny that there are troubles coming. I guess I am in a race now between my personal demise and some much bigger turmoil. I hope they both hold off for a little while. I must say, however, toward the end of the fifties we had the specter of nuclear war, later nuclear winter as the capstone of nuclear war. I don't hear much about that now, but it is still there as near as I can understand it, that the US and Russia have sufficient to destroy us all several times over, still in place and still with procedures in place too. So, in my lifetime since the fifties, the idea that humans will destroy themselves somehow has been a constant in my life. I looked for some relief. The only relief I have ever found is somehow, in some way dishonest and ultimately costs more than it is worth. Facing these realities seems the only option that works.

Passover

The eye of the Lord
is upon the land, I shake
to know I'm so close
to Him. His call sounds
piercing my soul and I drop
down to earth, ready
for His great talons,
hoping that if I lie still
He will pass over.

If I had more time
I would paint innocent blood
on my soul's soft gate.

January 31, 2009 5:03 PM

Farewell Bend

I'm back. It's late. I like all your comments. My friend is the victim of a bad law but he also did a bad thing. Nothing as colorful as bank robbing. It was really hot.

The thing about Farewell bend, on the Snake River, it was the staging ground for the last push overland to the Willamette Valley. That push was leaving the water source behind. I guess the Columbia couldn't be the highway somehow. The Oregon Trail drifted south and ended up with the trail's end at Oregon City.

It begins to blow hard in the evening at Farewell Bend and it doesn't quit until morning. It also doesn't get below 70 because it stays well above 90 most days, even above 100. You would think the mosquitos would get blown away, but then discover that they tack the gusts and maneuver into the always present pockets of still air and can go against the wind in that way. Hungry little buggers.

We had a good tent, good stakes and things were fine. Fifteen bucks got us running water, a bathroom with shower and a place to pitch the tent - grass. A Great Horned Owl set on a dead branch just ten yards from the tent before moving on just after dark. In the middle of the night I had a good look at the Milky Way.

To visit an inmate at Snake River is to sit in a large room like a high school cafeteria, but with low tables and bad chairs. They had us sitting facing into the too bright sun in a walled and razor wired courtyard, with no plants in it at all. The windows had no curtains. Off to the back the few inmates with discipline problems that still let them have visitors talked to their visitors by intercom through glass. This is how we visited with Steve when he was in the county jail prior to his prison sentence.

We talked about many things in our two visit sessions, then rushed back so that Sunday's celebration and farewell to a man going to study engineering in Mexico can be well organized. My cat seems glad I didn't run away from home.

An Odd Vacation

I am taking a few days away. This is to visit an incarcerated friend. He is housed for another fourteen years or so in the Oregon State prison system, and currently at Snake River Correctional Institution, on Stanton Blvd, north and west of Ontario, Or. I am traveling with my former girlfriend who now lives in Vancouver, BC. She maintains her house here in Oregon City, the next town south of me. She has renters, comes down frequently to do the gardening and keeps a room of her own. The house is beautiful and she has little trouble getting renters. We will drive nearly to Oregon's eastern border with Idaho and camp in Farewell Bend State Park. I will be out of communication for a little while, back certainly on Sunday evening.

This is the women I put in a prayer cycle with the intention of ending up with a more or less simple friendship. Without that practice my natural state puts me far away from former lovers, looking rather desperately for replacements and staying generally disturbed for a long while. Instead, with the practice, I ended up peaceful, okay staying alone and not looking with urgency, and my disturbance at losing my lover subsided to an easily managed level within six months. The prayer cycle evolved naturally into a practice, part of my preventative maintenance against my tendency to trash my career.

I trust that you, my friends, will thrive without me.

What We Were Like, On Being The Right Size

This next is deeply true. I don't know about others, can't speak for you. I can be sure that I rarely actually fit in with people specifically. There seems to be always some difference difficult to swallow. I am required, I believe to overlook, rise above, find a path of coexistence. I am certain it is required. I am nearly certain it is necessary to the exact extent it seems to be.

This, I think is why the most mature spiritual walks on the planet emphasize forgiveness and mercy, compassion and love. These are the indispensible states of being precisely because we are so fractious. The Judaeo-Christian traditions viewed from the Christian perspective is in one way precisely this message, that the Jewish heritage was a working out of the Law, a clarity with God's perfect justice, and within that structure the revelation of love and mercy abides, embedded, obvious in its way, but still subservient. This is Old Testament as they say. Christ comes to fulfill the Law, to transcend it, to show how natural and in place justice is when Love ascends to its rightful position. This vision of Judaism makes sense to Christians but not to sophisticated Jews who will maintain that the ongoing Jewish experience also reveals Love. Muslims will agree. My mentor Hafiz just beams with the light of Love, Compassion, Mercy, Forgiveness. In fact he claims these are highly intoxicating and God's House is a Tavern where the Holy Drunkenness is dispensed. Herein is the Dervish Joyful Dance.

And Mahayana leads to the Buddhist Ideal of Bodhisattva. Infinite compassion embodied in Buddha to the benefit of all sentient beings deliberately and deeply present immediately and permanently. Turn and look. Then become. Hindu Tantra is the practical application of Love as manifest energy (sex is quite a small part of this).

I could go on. But the reality is different for most of us most of the time.

What We Were Like

My family was chancy,
all technicolor critters
hanging together
despite different
destinies in inner space.
"I hate them all, all!"
I've said that before.

Like a few other
places on this old planet,
here we stay even
though otherwise we
would never willingly mix,
no, would not ever.

January 30, 2009 9:56 AM

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

When I create, under certain conditions I feel closest to God, like the most deserving of His attention, the most likely to be doing His will for me. It is said in some circles that Man is made in the Image/Likeness of God. Though this phrase is Christian the vision extends far beyond Christian sentiment. What else can be the heart of it but those areas where we come closest to making something from nothing? And by bitter experience I know intimately that I cannot create, not really unless I also love, forgive, hold mercy and compassion close. This is just true.

On Being The Right Size

I took out my tools,
started building the world new,
just as you said to.
You said I make worlds
by fabricating something
and changing the old
and if I did not
then that one chance would be lost
forever. Oh my.
What a large burden.
When seen the way you say it
I feel really small.

January 30, 2009 2:56 PM

That's What He Did, Under The Bridge

You just never know who will speak to you next.

That's What He Did

The bird perched nearby,
On what I thought of as mine,
My branch, in my tree,
This brightest yellow
Goldfinch eyeing me
From the dogwood of my life.
He (they have to be)
Spoke. No, it's true, he
Spoke straight into me about
The state of my hope.
That's what he did to
Change my life. There was silence
Before that, silence
After, how I know
He spoke like that, and to me.
So I said, "Thank you."

January 29, 2009 1:40 PM

I really love it that the Gold and House Finches have accepted my feeder. There is something very small child about the glee I feel when I see them 18 inches from my kitchen window, not caring or not noticing I am there. The dogwood is just across my driveway, convenient to the feeder, as are the power lines running into my house, which run right diagonal across my parked car in the driveway. So I live with the poop, the price I pay for happiness.

Every afternoon my Hasta are home to Cabbage Butterflies. While I wish they were mated Tiger Swallowtails, I am willing to accept the Cabbages. I don't really understand why they like Hasta but I am happy.

I have Crane Flies in my bathroom. Yes.

And the Marigolds we planted once went to seed in my yard, are now like weeds, just popping up anywhere. Yes.

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

The bridge I have in mind is actually a blend of Portland Bridges. Portland is built on both sides of the Willamette River, pretty big as it nears the Columbia, taking ocean going vessels, and on the south side of the Columbia. There are thus many bridges over the Willamette and the two over the Columbia. There are only two over the Columbia because that is one huge river as it passes Portland. We are a couple hours by car from the coast, over 100 miles, but the Columbia is definitely tidal, and Portland at the rivers is not very far above sea level. The main floor of the Kraft/Nabisco bakery where I work is Elevation 47'. That is 47' above Mean Lower Low Water, the usual standard zero point of local sea level.

Under The Bridge

At the river, I sit down
near the great pillars
holding up the roar
of traffic across the bridge
higher above us
than the gull calling,
the swoop of that gray white bird.

You sit near me but
turned away. I know
you're remembering again
how it was for you
before you lost him
while I think on how we are
now.

January 30, 2009 9:21 AM

You notice this? Nearly done with January. I was laid off and not working in January. All this poetry came from idle hands :)

Stephen Dunn

I was moving around the Internet today, checking my favorite sites and ran across this poem which blew my socks off. I will often, as many of you know, work a riff on the vision I find on some site. Then if I can I leave the poem behind. Johnny Applepoem. In this case there just was no way I could do justice to the poem I found. I can’t dance with this one yet. I am not grown up enough.

I am making an exception to my usual practice. I am going to let Stephen Dunn sing. He is, after all a Pulitzer Prize winner. The poem came as displayed on the Whiskey River website. The bio info came from www.poets.org

Choosing to Think of It

Today, ten thousand people will die
and their small replacements will bring joy
and this will make sense to someone
removed from any sense of loss.
I, too, will die a little and carry on,
doing some paperwork, driving myself
home. The sky is simply overcast,
nothing is any less than it was
yesterday or the day before. In short,
there's no reason or every reason
why I'm choosing to think of this now.
The short-lived holiness
true lovers know, making them unaccountable
except to spirit and themselves - suddenly
I want to be that insufferable and selfish,
that sharpened and tuned.
I'm going to think of what it means
to be an animal crossing a highway,
to be a human without a useful prayer
setting off on one of those journeys
we humans take. I don't expect anything
to change. I just want to be filled up
a little more with what exists,
tipped toward the laughter which understands
I'm nothing and all there is.
By evening, the promised storm
will arrive. A few in small boats
will be taken by surprise.
There will be survivors, and even they will die.

- Stephen Dunn



Stephen Dunn was born in New York City in 1939. He earned a B.A. in history and English from Hofstra University, attended the New School Writing Workshops, and finished his M.A. in creative writing at Syracuse University. Dunn has worked as a professional basketball player, an advertising copywriter, and an editor, as well as a professor of creative writing.

Dunn's books of poetry include Everything Else in the World (W. W. Norton, 2006); Local Visitations (2003); Different Hours (2000), winner of the 2001 Pulitzer Prize winner for poetry; Loosestrife (1996); New and Selected Poems: 1974-1994 (1994); Landscape at the End of the Century (1991); Between Angels (1989); Local Time (1986), winner of the National Poetry Series; Not Dancing (1984); Work & Love (1981); A Circus of Needs (1978); Full of Lust and Good Usage (1976); and Looking For Holes In the Ceiling 1974. He is also the author of Walking Light: Memoirs and Essays on Poetry(BOA Editions, 2001), and Riffs & Reciprocities: Prose Pairs (1998).

Wooden Skeeters, A Day In The Life

These are lighthearted if you don't dig very deep. I recall the photo I spun off of on Robin's Motel Zero site. If Robin's watching as he sometimes does then he may be kind enough to provide a link. Heh. Like Tom gettin Huck to do the heavy lifting on that old picket fence.

Wooden Skeeters

I heard the clicking
Of tiny pointy wooden
Feet approach my head.
I looked thataway
And found a wooden skeeter
Aiming at my ear.
(I hate most ear bites)
Now what do I do? The wood
Part confuses me.

January 29, 2009 7:42 AM

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

This one too has layers and it is perhaps best just to stick with the story because when something manmade in my life comes at me without anyone to blame, well, then I guess I am driving and that just sucks. It is really convenient at that moment to find someone to blame in a hurry.

A Day In The Life

Don't you just hate it
When floating on the river
There's a boat bearing
Down on you and you
Shout and scream, risk falling out
By jumping and all
But that boat keeps on
Coming at you, nothing left
To do but jump out
And that boat takes yours,
Smashes it so completely
There's nothing left, then
You notice no one
Was in that other bad boat...

What the hell was that?

January 29, 2009 10:49 AM

Dark Thoughts, Connections

Heh. Here's a study. Both of these poems were written the same day. Neither are current, not when they were written, not today. Both are true places, places I've been.

Just for contrast, tonight I have been sitting in the grand old house that my former neighbor across the street years ago, he and his wife bought in the historic part of Oregon City. It's a historic house. I am in contact with him on his blog and we said we would get together one of these times, and now I finally got to it. So we have been spending time catching up. We were good friends as neighbors. When I moved, he bought my house. We found ourselves good friends again tonight. You can find both of his blogs here, Quantum Spirit.

Dark Thoughts

Why is it you make
Me feel like a fifth grader
Sneaking my play space
Under the desk lid
Behind the girl, sits in front
Of me, and she's good
For you when I'm not.

I'm a grown up man, by God,
And you belittle me.

I will get revenge
For this feeling you give me.
I will make you pay.

January 28, 2009 2:11 PM

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

I became convinced that Maire and I were Mage and Queen in a former life. That's what this is about. That relationship is the one where I became the Man of the Northern Wall.

Connections

Every time, girl.
Passion guides your touch,
Heart, your movements.
It's why I arrive
With my soul in flight, soaring,
Confident I will
Be received, welcomed,
Sure that with this connection
I recall another
In some other life.


January 28, 2009 9:22 PM

The relationship did end, of course, and the pain of that ending holds a special place all its own in my heart.

Nothing More To Say, When I Turned Nine

There's a challenge in this more than one poem a day. Sometimes you just run dry. I have begun to let it go if I must. I say my goal is to match poems written and poems published, two a day. That's not so much a task since my poems are so short. But this week I accepted one poem each for three days, two poems yesterday, and four today. But here is one solution. Sometimes you pull back and look at trying to write. Write a poem like that.

Nothing More To Say

There's that sticky tongue
Tells me nothing more to say
And worse, that all I've
Said is shit, and worse
That I would dare to think like
Anyone would care.

That sticky tongue comes
Round from sleeping twisted,
Twisted up with dusty words.
I turn this sideways
In my vanity's mirror
And find a poem there.

January 28, 2009 9:11 AM

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

I have the experience I share in this next poem every day. For example, I can't get past and reframe my morning experience. I always leave a little late, get to work a little late and what I say about it, what I do in the morning just should not take this much time. There is something deeply not right about that according to my spirit. This is not the only thing like this. There are many. Always my inner space says some version of see? There's something wrong with this place or with me, doesn't really matter what or where, I just don't fit! I am still a little mortified at this one example from so long ago though.

I had a friend, a boy I considered my best friend. For some reason I don't understand still, this boy was a major light in my sky. His name was Conal Boyce. I have no idea where he is now, if he is now. I would pine for time with him. I was desperate when we moved away from Berkeley and my heart broke. We moved to Oakdale in the valley beyond Modesto on the way to Sonora. A small town. My mother and father both had teaching jobs and both went to the College of the Pacific in Stocton to get teaching degrees and licenses. That's why we moved.

We moved temporarily into one house, then bought a new housing tract house. I was a field away from a canal and orchard. We had many Siamese cats, two queens and a tom and eight kittens at one point. That year for my birthday, a package came from Conal. I was beside myself, amazed. I opened it as fast as possible when given permission. I looked in to see a beautiful butterfly seemingly floating in the middle of the box. It was in fact impaled on a pin glued upright from the center of the box bottom. I didn't really notice the pin. It was magic.

When I Turned Nine

It came right before
My birthday, the box you sent.
I opened that box
And inside was, pinned
To the bottom, bright purple
Butterfly. I gasped.
I reached in, broken
Wing so sudden, so damn dumb.
Parents mortified
And me far at sea
That the world would treat me so,
That there must be rules.

I know I'll never
Really get the need for rules.

January 28, 2009 2:25 PM

Karmic Consequence, Farther West Than Solitude

I hope that I never again experience the radical powerlessness of the position I have experienced and write about here. You don't need to know what this is about. I am sure you have your own...

Karmic Consequence

It was a small stone,
Just one small action that tipped
The whole thing sideways.
Ponderous moment
Slow motion unstoppable
No damn thing to do
But get far away
From the kill zone beneath it
As it fell faster
And ever faster
Until crashing into me, it
Cratered the lost ground
Of my once grand life.

January 27, 2009 2:51 PM

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

I am not lonely. Not really. Not ever. What is really cool, I feel like this most days, all day. I hardly have a day, even a part of a day I feel lonely. I am alone quite a bit. I am alone right now. I have no idea where my cat is. Often she is on the cooler tile in the bathroom these days. She too is okay being alone.

Further West Than Solitude

I heard you say so,
Say all we have is mortal,
A loneliness west
Of solitude, what you said.
We are the very
Words we use, there's no other.
But how can I live
With that? I have to deny
The keystone moment
Of my whole entire
Life to stick with you in this.

Further west than solitude,
I found comfort there.

January 27, 2009 3:20 PM

Shining Through, The Winged Grail

What am I to do if God just shows up? What if He insists? There are those in the theology game that consider God pregnant like that, that His absence speaks far more about us than about Him. This is the attitude pretty much of the whole New Thought movement, and Eric Butterworth, for one, asserted that God loves to be used. He invited his students to use Him and suggested forms of positive and assertive prayer. My mother, a Unity minister wrote a book called the Handbook of Positive Prayer. It presents tested forms of positive prayer, ways to claim God's support and the granting of His power.

I am not one inclined to be so easy with my own inclinations. I do not trust them. As often is said in AA, my own best thinking got me to the desperate condition that put me in AA. If that is how twisted my own inclinations can be, how can I ever trust my gut to lead me to my best life? That is far better placed more radically in the hands of God. Thus, while I agree with Eric, God loves to be used, I disagree with the positive New Thought position that there are useful ways to get agreement with God at my request. I accept that there may be persons on the planet better qualified than me for that responsibility.

And yet, I am clearly in favor of the kind of spirit power exercised by magicians, by shamans, by musicians and poets...

Shining Through

You'll do anything
To get through to me, even
This torch job, burning
Through the thick cloud bank
I put up, a good smoke screen
I thought, but that's you
Shining through anyway
And I guess next you'll expect
Me to put you up.

January 27, 2009 9:48 AM

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

Okay, so God won't come to me....I can go on the hunt, right? Here's one outcome.

The Winged Grail

A question arose
Became a life work, seeking
Across the wide world
Into all the dark nooks,
The crannies where they told me
You might be hiding.

The chrysalis shell
Left behind leads me to ask
Who must I flutter
Now that you have flown?
Who will give me the drink now?
I thirst for mercy.

January 27, 2009 2:33 PM

I Am Falling Too, The Two Prayers

I am quite grateful. I am not in a troublesome relationship. In the morning on the way to work I spend my time in prayer, meditation and review of my life as I am instructed to do to protect my sobriety. I have not found any current difficult entanglements for a long time. But I remember. I am willing to face not only the experiences that I have had, but as well the experiences I am capable of having given different circumstances.

I Am Falling Too

The dark flower fell
Severed from the stalk of love,
Falling further than
The world, beyond my truth
Into the lies you left me
By the open door
And the rain that fell on me
As I climbed the steps
And walked into this
Empty house.

January 26, 2009 8:40 PM

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

I am just another bozo on the bus in most ways. The people at work well know this. So do the few members of my family still around and also my local friends. I guess I have some poetry and music that others don't have. Maybe there are some other unique things. I insist on continuing to learn. Yet I know I have no special position, at least no more special than yours. I believe my prayers are effective. I believe yours are too.

The Two Prayers

I see you among
The stones, hands aloft as you
Reach toward your God
In prayer for those
Who went before you and me.

I hold my heart, hands
Rise in my own way,
Om Namo, Bhagavate
Vasu devaya,
My deep call for you,
For me, and for all, amen.

January 26, 2009 8:58 PM
Revised, July 14, 2009 7:06 PM

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

Dumber Than A Stump, Pagan Rites

When my kitten all those years ago pounced on a wasp, I bet he felt like this looking at his stung paw. He of course never pounced on a wasp again. But we thought he might die, he got so sick from the venom. He was better the next day.

I bet I am not the only one who has felt

Dumber Than A Stump

The sign says turn right,
Hard right by the looks of it.

I'm going too fast.

Feels like I'm gonna
Be rolling this damn bucket
Of bolts I'm driving.
What am I doing
Out here in the snow and ice
Anyway, dumber
Than a stump, dumber
Than that brace of icy trees
That I would've passed

Had I made the turn.
Shit.

January 26, 2009 3:47 PM

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

My good blog friend Lucy at Box Elder published a post on old statues of saints found in the countryside in Britanny, in France. Lovely photos. I felt like I was actually looking at pagan statues even though the subject matter was Christian. I stole them. I am here to say even thieves have principles.

Pagan Rites

I'm a holy thief
Stealing little saints
When nobody looks.
I've kept them in caves,
Come and dance before the flames
I set down in front
Of the half circle
I made of them, tall to short,
But I left behind
Eugenie, not mine
To take, so strong her magic.
I have principles.

January 26, 2009 4:25 PM