Greenhouse Christmas6*

Walk to the greenhouse,
Sit by the heater,
Enjoy the warmth.

Pull out an iPod and a notebook,
Smile at the rustling plastic,
Lean back to day-dream—

And crash into the heater.

Blackness followed by a growing awareness.

The yellow notebook is buried in mulch.
The heater is on its back.

Jump to your feet,
Lift the heater,
Trip over the chair—

Vague images of hair over eyes,
Close-up of lips.
Strip out the soundtrack and make me
Say what should’ve been said.

The iPod is face down inside a clay pot.
The screen is not cracked.

Dig out the notebook and
Write what you came out here to write.

What’s going on

My recent stuff is my best. One element of that is I wrote it on paper, with pen, in notebooks. Transcription is evil, made no less so by necessity.

In the meantime you guys are gonna be left with the dregs of poems I have in (try not to say cloud, or bits, or electronically. try not to say agh, in a digital, agh form)

We begin with whaat to include.rtf, a richtext file on my desktop. It was created Wednesday, November 2, 2011 2:02 AM, modified Tuesday, November 8, 2011 6:43 PM, and last opened now. It has no label.

The first line of the document is:
a short selection of current poems not stuck on paper

The first poem Driftwood is black helevetica 12 pt. Titles are bold. Some poems are 50% black—already posted. Some of the black ones are really really bad.

But not all, I am posting all the remaining black ones that I can bear. Maybe all of them. I am going to tag them black (until I can figure out if this calls for a new taxonomy, post-type, custom field, or series).

UPDATE: I just tagged the others grey so you can look at the whole set if you want. (that I’ve had the balls to post). The only exceptions is the Chinese Problem is tagged both black and grey because it should have made the first cut.

The Chinese Problem*

I wouldn’t be apprehensive about Chinese
if it weren’t all space invading octopuses.

(You should be imagining
a yellowing handmade sheet of paper,
its rough edges frame
a fishing village and its surrounding mountains.

There are 3 to 5 vertical lines of Chinese calligraphy.)

A segment*

Either depression, or a Buffy re-watch marathon, has kept me from posting anything in a while, so I thought I should. Here’s a segment of a scene of a collaboration I’m working on.

Poseur and the Gent peer into the darkness and slowly unclasp their hands. The air is heavy and low with despair. A distant foghorn echoes through the cavernous alleyways and explodes into the courtyard; its deep notes harmonize with the creaking of lumber, and is punctuated by the popping of moths drawn into a lamp’s mantle.

Amorphous shadows roll over pavement and shimmy up dilapidated buildings. With a hesitant well then, the Gent saunters towards the struggling beacon. It flares between his breath, ripping ragged patches out of the shadows.

A fuzzy shape streaks the periphery. Eldridge catches a breath, and with a grimace, shifts his eyes towards the disturbance. Continue reading →

The Grandaddy of Poems

Ok, I’m gonna attempt this again, only this time I am going to inform you that the Grandaddy of us all is talking directly to you:

Fine and dandy: but, so far as I am concerned, poetry and every other art was and is and forever will be strictly and distinctly a question of individuality. If poetry were anything—like dropping an atombomb—which anyone did, anyone could become a poet merely by doing the necessary anything; whatever that anything might or might not entail. But (as it happens) poetry is being, not doing. If you wish to follow, even at a distance, the poet’s calling (and here, as always, I speak from my own totally biased and entirely personal point of view) you’ve got to come out of the measurable doing universe into the immeasurable house of being. I am quite aware that, wherever our socalled civilization has slithered, there’s every reward and no punishment for unbeing. But if poetry is your goal, you’ve got to forget all about punishments and all about rewards and all about selfstyled obligations and duties and responsibilities etcetera ad infinitum and remember one thing only: that it’s you—nobody else—who determine your destiny and decide your fate. Nobody else can be alive for you; nor can you be alive for anybody else. Toms can be Dicks and Dicks can be Harrys, but none of them can ever be you. There’s the artist’s responsibility; and the most awful responsibility on earth. If you can take it, take it—and be. If you can’t, cheer up and go about other people’s business; and do (or undo) till you drop.