Category — Odds n’ Ends

In a mess of mortar and brick
trowel and point, bucket and brush,
we lay down a level
until it is all square as it can be.

After hours of hose,
thick wires scouring red clay,
we agree: this is clean.

Dry hands crack. The cracks bleed.
Skin becomes pink and tender,
and  discrete tears puddle
just to prove the point
was not perfect.

Everyone smiles, everyone rejoices,
in this new place, that was shattered
and broken and edgeless.

I would marvel too, but I know
the impropriety of the foundation.

I smile too and wait for it to crumble.

Oh, My cousin, if I could steal away your every hurt
and let your heart beat more easily,
I would. But this is love.
Love must be felt, endured, grown and lost.

Look at a coin, imagine that it were to flip
and disappear
because it had only one side.

Love is that coin.

My Cousin, if I could tell you some truth
about healing, that would save you this suffering
I would. But this is love.
and the wounds will become more love
if you let them.

Imagine the words, “never again”
hanging on the hilt of a sword over  your heart
every time you speak them, the sword swings lower.

How hard is it to tell the sword,
“Again, swing, again. I love you?”

My Cousin, if I could show you where your true love waits
I would. Oh, yes, I would. But
this is love.
Only patience and kindness and honesty can show you that path.

Imagine a lighthouse, on rocky island,
and the light is fueled by passion and hope and dreams
lost love dims this light and all those ships that come towards you
risk the rocks. Now it is the deepest night
your light is dim, rest. Tomorrow, walk the beach,
watch the sunrise, watch the gulls fight over crabs,
read some poetry and sing sad songs until your heart overflows
and you laugh.

When the night comes again, your love will be saved.
your love will be found.

My cousin, every heart breaks
a thousand ways, a thousand times,
it is no small thing to dream again
of love.

But every love becomes us, more truly and
more truly still. Every passion, every word, every prayer to God,
defines our love, and in every love  we grow more true.

The greatest lie is about the stinger:
They do. Damn, they do, and it hurts when they do.
But first, they fly with a happy buzz.
They swoop and swim through the air.
They hide in the nectary spots,
leap forth again into the sunlight
and sing the song of wings and wisps
of clouds.

The truth is about the gold and the black,
the colors of sunlight and shadow
that define them. In the darkness they do not
exist. In the light, they are the joy of a passive
passing through a pasture, or along a garden’s edge.

In the twilight, gold is not gold, and black is not black
and they are the perhaps that might be there, unknown.

The question that hangs between the truth and the lie
is not a bumblebee or sunshine or darkness. It is the simple why
of love. The aching perfection of a moment of sunshine
before that cloud can become a shadow. Before the darkness
can be imagined there amongst those flowers and that color
and that implied threat of stinging pain.

Alleluia Bumblebee, God hears your prayers loudest of all.

I will never forgive the zebras
for the audacity of stripes
or the sound of their hooves
8,000 kilometers away, atop the dry june grass

I will never forgive them
for the cowardice of being eaten
shedding blood upon the teeth
of the powerful, when the weak would do just as well.

I will never forgive the damned Zebra
for the gutlessness of rapture
the sudden stop before heaven
and the long wait as the winter night grows cold
then colder
still.

I will never forgive them
for the orgasm of the stud
or the braying of the mare
or the want of the foal
for another summer
one more december
without my voice warning them of boomslang
of puff adder, of the sameness
of a cheetah and other cheetah
and another until it becomes clear
that all of the spots are the same
and no clause is retractable on the veldt.

Back in the day I used to write poetry as I was inspired. I’d wait and something would strike me and I’d jot it down. If I weren’t moved to deep emotion, I didn’t worry about it.

On top of that I didn’t worry all that much about editing. I wrote what I wrote, and it was what it was.

All that changed on a site called The Alsop Review. It’s a really nice poetry workshop site, and I can’t say enough positive about it. I really found some tremendous poets doing some amazing work there, so keep that context through the rest of the story.

One day, I was merrily writing a poem about growing from boyhood into manhood using a sapling and the intrusion of a bulldozer as a metaphor and I was very proud of myself. I posted the work up on the site and waited for accolades.

Instead, I received something less than a warm reception. I got comments like “There is not one redeemable, salvageable line in this entire piece” and “Wow, that was awful.”

Somewhere between 20 and 40 comments later, my ego was completely crushed. Not a single positive comment.

Honestly, it was a good thing.

For the next month or two, I didn’t write a single poem. Then after that, I realized, I needed to know much more about poetry if I were going to keep writing. It is far too painful to be the imbecile splashing words against the wall in hopes that a few stick.  So I read bunches of poetry text books, and dozens and dozens of poetry books by classic poets and modern poets and any well-respected poet I could find.

Six months or so of that, and then I started to write again. This time, I only wrote by choice. I avoided writing poetry – or anything – when i was in emotional turmoil. I started to wait and write what I wanted to write.

So, for a long time, I would sit down and say, “Today, I”m going to write <insert style here> about <insert random theme>.”

I devised bunches of little prompts and exercises to push myself. I wrote ream upon ream to give myself material to edit later. And often, now, I do edit old work until it is completely new.

My writing process works like this:

1. 5-10minutes when I first wake up. Jot notes and ideas and any key lines that pop in my head.
2. Throughout the morning, jot notes into a  google docs file as things pop in my head.  The 10-30 seconds it takes to stash a note for later is invaluable.
3. Lunch time, write a paragraph or two, or a poem or two.
4. Afternoon, continue to jot occassional notes to myself.
5. late afternoon before dinner, write a poem.
6. before bed write 1-4 poems.

The poems are usually, but not always, about the same subjects as the notes. Whatever I read, or see, or hear, I put in the notes to use later. I also copy book marks so that i can go back and review links.

If I want to locate a poem somewhere, I frequently look up that place on google maps or on atlas site. I also look up things like indigenous birds, plants and animals. I go to wolframalpha to get statistics that might help me understand life in that location or drop me thoughts on odd or interesting things i can work into my pieces.

The more information I have, the more words I have to work with. Generally, I also google key words throughout the notes and thoughts to see if I can connect things to literature, movies or pop-culture.

All of that goes into every poem. That’s my basic process.

Today, my friend Christy Wells wrote to me in a little conversation we had, ” a demanding reader is an opportunity for a writer to rise to the occasion of improvement.” This idea is truly how I hope I always look at my audience, whether it’s visual or written.

She also said, “The most engaged and appreciable reader is too (wonderfully) selfish to care about what I want as a writer. That reader is my target audience.”

Now, like I told her, I don’t know if I share her target audience precisely, but in a broad general sort of way I agree with a lot of those concepts.

I think, the addendum that I might put on that target might be that while they don’t care what I want to accomplish they are receptive to whatever is put in front of them. They are willing to try to perceive what I might be trying to do, whether they care or not is somewhat irrelevant.

It is important to me that I respect the fact that they cared enough to read what I wrote, or view what I created, and they are not so hostile to my intent that they immediately reject it without any consideration. A sort of apathy towards my intent is absolutely fine, but it shouldn’t be an active obstacle either.

I love the point that selfishness is definitely wonderful in its way, but I do want the allowance that, if I’ve written what I’ve written well, regardless the myriad ways an audience might embrace or reject it, it will have the opportunity to have effect I intended. Perhaps it succeeds, perhaps it doesn’t, but I want an audience that approaches it with an honest indifference.

In that way, I like the idea of an audience and a writer that are only aware of each other in the broadest sense. The writer is often not writing ‘for’ them and the reader is not reading ‘for’ the author. They each have their own agenda and each is perfectly legitimate and acceptable.

I guess, in my mind, the great writer allows the audience to read the work as they wish, and the audience accepts that the writer meant something whether it is relevant to them or not.

Over the years I’ve been a part of many writing communities and they’ve had varying affects on me and my writing. One of my favorite writing community experiences was “The Department of Modern Verse” it was a site built  on the pathetic.org code that I worked on with my friend Steve Podielsky. We had it going for a tiny bit more than a year and had fairly close to 1000 members when we shut it down.

In some ways I regret shutting it down, not only because so many of the members never fully forgave me after, but also because I had so much fun with it. I made tons of friends and they were all so genuinely supportive about my writing. But there was a dark under-side to that whole thing that was very difficult for me to really understand a the time.

The saddest part of it was the way it became a baby-sitting gig. Constantly being the diplomat to prevent blow-ups between different people on the site. Ensuring that the environment remained good for people to join and grow and write became a harder and harder job over time. That devolved rather quickly into a sort of resentment inside of me that made me hate the place more and more – not only the place bu the people who were making my life hellish.

The lessons I learned as I took it down really stick with me to this day, and have probably held me back in some ways, but in others they’ve really helped me maintain a high level of productivity.

I thought about this a little as I was walking about through doors open Lowell today. Whether it’s in writing or in life, our community is both a huge blessing and an invisible barrier, and we must embrace both parts of that.

To the degree that a community offers opportunity to connect and share in all of the best things in life, there is absolutely nothing more important and vibrant. As an artist, I would be nothing without those connections, the hands shaken, the smiles collected, the hugs stolen on a truly bad day – these are the things that lift me up and carry me through. They’re the brilliant and wonderful moments that inspire me to write, to paint, to imagine a better world. So yay for that.

But there is also the other part of community, the part that leads to shame and guilt. There is the shame from the people that are upset when you don’t make their event, or the guilt from the ones that look at your askance because they don’t approve what you’re doing – all of that uncomfortable awkwardness that is built by the pillars of the community that just don’t like you becomes an enormous barrier to sharing and creating work.

It’s easy to say, “Hey, if they don’t like what I’m doing, screw’em.” Easy to say, hard to do.

But then, I walk around on a day like today. I walk into buildings that have been re-claimed from the jaws of demolition and find beautiful inspiring places that were recently just the dreams of men and women at drafting tables. I bump into acquaintances and share smiles and laughs with strangers, and I feel ashamed that I ever let the little bumps and barriers hold me back at all.

I admit, I am a bit of a bull when it comes to creating things every day, so maybe I’m not the best one to go on about the problems of being blocked and uninspired. Still, I can say this, there are a lot of opportunities in any given day to connect with the world around you and it is on you to make that happen – the world won’t do anything for you.