Category Archives: About Poetry

NaPoWriMo: Throwing caution to the wind four times to catch up, because I actually, somehow forgot that it was The Cruelest Month, which I think kind of gets me (finds me?) off the hook, in a way (and thereby, in a way, letting you off the hook as well) for doing anything Too Serious, so I will make a point of posting all (or, well, some, at least–ok, yeah, like not even really anywhere near all, but a bunch) of those little bits and bobs of bobbing thoughts that might have one day turned into poems but probably never will, and probably still don’t come anywhere near to making anything anywhere near or like actually ‘real’ or ‘good’ poems (pfft…whutevs [as the kids apparently say these days]), so….why not? Yeah. Here you go: NaPoWriMo #’s 1, 2, 3, (Oxford Comma, I love you) & 4. (To hell with the “Best Bitch-Slap” Award, I’m going for “Longest NaPoWriMo Post-Title” Award!)

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My mother always said, ‘Honey, life isn’t fair.’

You want the world to be an ethical place
but what does ‘the world’ mean? What 
does ‘place’ mean? What does it mean
for the one to be or become the other?

If we were not here, would ‘the world’
care if it was an ethical place or not?

Could it become anything other 
than what it already was?

Wrods

Evne wehn teh wrods dno’t maek mcuh snese, 
my thoguhts loko betetr in linse of eqaul legnth.

Yet another day goes by that I haven’t used algebra

And the mathematics of the self?
What is the sum? What is the product?
What is the difference?

Lessons

guilt is a kind of
punishment that we learn to
inflict on our( )selves

Caution, meet wind.

Keepin’ the ‘Po’ in NaPoWriMo…

This is the door

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this is not spoken word.
these are words, 
spoken.

~

this is not slam,
this is the door.

this is the window.
this is the glaze.

this is the breeze
brought across your skin.

this is the wind on the water and
the breath on the surface.

this is the ripple.

~

this is the breath of the earth
brought to the sky.

this is the surface 
where the landscape is seen.

this is the landscape 
where we all wander.

this is the place 
where we all are lost 			
and 
this is the only place 
where we will ever find each other.

~

this is living a vibrant adage.
this is living on a verdant ledge.
this is living on that vibrating edge.

~

this is not my body.
this is my voice.

this is vibration brought into being.
this is my mind pushing a column of air,
somewhere.

this is sound shaped into meaning.
this is me breathing, in you.

this is muscle and cavity, moving.
this is diaphragm, lung, larynx, tongue, lips and jaw.
 
these are my words in your mouth.		
this is my world 
in the mouth of your mind.

~

this is not performance, 
this is incantation.

~


this is where body touches mind.
this is where meaning is born
and this is where meaning dies.

this is not finding meaning in a story.
this is making a story mean something.

this is not seeking meaning. 
this is living meaning
and this is making all these things mean something.

this is not seeking, 
this is making.

this is mind making myth.
this is myth-making mind.
this is making myth mind.
this is myth making mind 
and
this is making me (into) a myth.

~

this is not ritual,
this is invocation. 

~

this is not some 
thing,
this is something lived.

this is some but not all.

this is the sum.
this is the current.
this is the slow movement of mind
and 
this movement is not mine.

this is the company of misery.
this is the beat of the beaten.
this is the brand of the new.

this is the spent cartridge,
the smell of sulphur
and a cloud of rust
in a sepia sky.

this is blood sucked 
straight from the sand.
this is the tatters 
of the temple’s torn curtain.

~

this is pure speculation.
this is mind ore.
this is the whore of the mind
doing its helical mambo.

this is me 
fucking me.

this is what it means.

this is what “it” means.

and

this is all there is.

this is all there is.

this is all there is.




~~~~~

(I began this piece sometime in 2015 and have tinkered
with it on and off ever since. As happens often with me, 
I get tired of looking at things or I don't know what else
to do with them and so I abandon them here....

“Poems are never finished – just abandoned”
—Paul Valery)

Intersections: …time does not really exist…

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I sometimes (very rarely--when I somehow, strangely am not too 
embarrassed to--when I actually feel comfortable enough to--share 
with people that I actually write poems...) tell people, 
when this, that or another topic comes up in conversation,
“You know, I’m actually working on a poem about that.”

Recently, I have come to realize that often this “poem” that I 
am working on is often just a line or two sitting in its (or their) 
own otherwise blank document, waiting for me to finish it (or 
them)--sitting there in a primordial soup of meaning (or is it 
meaninglessness? I lose track...), like dry little sticks, poking up
through that pure white nothingness of snow, waiting for spring 
to come and the thaw to begin and the juices to start flowing up, 
up from the soil from which they are growing. 

So where or what is this actual “poem” that I say that I am working on?
(Is it the twigs? Is it the snow? Is it hiding in the earth underneath?)

It’s not the grouping of words that finally finds its way onto 
the page, and it's definitely not those one or two lines, sitting there, all
by their lonesomes on that big, blank, cold and lonely page.
It’s something else, something that existed long before I even knew 
where those one or two lines were going to go or where they came 
from or where they were going to take me. It's something that spoke 
to me with something more (or was it less?) than words. It's something 
that I sometimes think of as a constellation, for lack of a better word
to describe how this thing that hasn't yet made it's appearance in the
world feels, or felt, back before it knew what it wanted to be. It's a thing
that starts as a melange--part scent, part emotion, part kinesthetic 
feeling, part logical thought or conundrum or paradox, part memory or 
missing memory that pulls at me from the dark corners. 


It's like walking into a pantry (your grandmothers, your dream grand-
mother's, your dream grandmother's dream), full of spices and herbs and 
root vegetables, dark and dusky autumnal reminiscent golden light and 
being overwhelmed, dumbfounded and found dumb and mute, being 
stopped right their in the tracks that you only just now (by virtue of this 
thing happening) realize you were riding on (when you thought you 
were in control, thought you were in the pilot's seat), by.....



...something...

...and then trying to put that something into words because words are all 
that you have and you know--you just Know--that someone, somewhere 
has had that something in their hands before, had it run between their 
legs like an obstinate feline, they've felt it brush by them, felt that very 
same thing's whispery wing push a gentle breeze across the skin of their 
upper arm and you just KNOW that you have to tell them, "I felt it too." 


The poem is a thing that exists outside of time and space. It was 
there even before I wrote those one or two lines and it is something 
that is also else and other than the final thing that eventually 
finds its way on to the page.



“A poem is nonetheless present from the conception, from the first 
germ of it crossing the mind—it must be scratched for and exhumed. 
There is an element of timelessness. The leading atomic scientist 
in Australia agreed with me the other day that time does not really 
exist. The finished poem is present before it is written and one 
corrects it. It is the final poem that dictates what is right, what 
is wrong.”
—Robert Graves (from an interview in Paris Review)



“Even the right words if ever
we come to them tell of something
the words never knew”

--W. S. Merwin (from “What the Bridges Hear”, in his brilliant book 
of poems, The Shadow of Sirius)

~~~

It is thanks to Holly Lofgreen that I have come back to this Intersection
and finally finished it and posted it after it sitting in my drafts folder for
at least a year. We have been discussing this ephemeral nature of the 
poem--where it comes from...where it goes--which has helped me to 
crystalize these thoughts. 

There is power, real power--the kind that comes 
from a vulnerable honesty--in her work.

You need to read her.