Rectitude is the uncracked egg, my darling
hypocrite. The unclouded sky that hides
the stars and moon, the everything
else we might see.

Fear not, my beloved hypocrisy,
I will hold you close and be so blind
for you. And I will embrace each hypocrite
as if they, in their murderous self-delusions,
become my kin with every desolate breath.

Oh how I love you, hypocrisy,
the pale flesh of certainty ready for my tongue
the moaned lies of eternity, where we are
always only mortal. Yes, I love you,
and dare to make you mine.

Tonight, once again, I remembered why I’m so proud to make my home in Lowell. Tonight, I had the opportunity attend a reception to say goodbye to my friend Michael Creasey as he heads off to Woodstock Vermont, and then stay from the hockey game – UMass Lowell vs. Boston University.

Of course, all the Lowelluminati were out in force, from members of the city council, the mayor, Congresswoman Tsongas, the city manager, historians, park rangers, the Chancellor of UML, deans, professors, local business owners, and many other citizens of this grand olde towne. Amidst a joyful celebration of a real friend of the city who will be greatly missed, they all talked about working together, and a shared vision moving forward. To be honest, I’m not one to be impressed with politics or politicians – an let’s face it, any event of this sort is essentially a political one – but there was enough truth that it is hard to be cynical about real success.

After the reception, I noticed another sort of miracle at the game. Thousands of people, many of them students at the university, but aso hundreds of Lowell’s youth, hundreds of parents, hundreds of hockey fans all sat down together to cheer for a great hockey team worthy of celebration. Thousands enjoyed these 20 young men who proudly wear the name of this city on their chests, that go play an exhilarating sport at the very highest level, and that represent our community in the best possible way.

The miracle was the electric atmosphere in the Tsongas Center, and watching these thousands of Lowellelians host a couple of hundred rabid Boston University fans so cordially. There we chants back and forth – there was huge cheering, but even when Lowell lost, the BU fans were treated well. As the young men of both teams shook hands on the ice, the Lowell fans were gracious in defeat.

Realizing, after a terrible week upset about the riot on Middle Street, this is the kind of night that brings us back together. 105,000 people live in this historic city on this beautiful river in the great Commonwealth of Massachusetts. 105,000 people, 100% of which are minorities. 105,000 people whose heritage comes from all over the globe. Irish and French. Cambodian and Indian. Puerto Rican and Portugese. Dominican and Nigerian. Laotion and Polish. Greek and Iraqi. Rich and Poor. Buddhists and Church of Christ, Jews and Catholics, Taoists and Atheists and Episcoples and Methodists and Baptists and Muslims and Hindus. Artists and Bankers. Insurance agents and Professors. Park Rangers and Police Officers. Restauranteurs and Mechanics.

We work together. We sing together. We dance together. We paint together. 105,000 people who live the city motto, “Art is the Handmaid of Human Good.”

No, Lowell’s not perfect. There are drugs and gangs and crime. There’s unemployment and graffiti and drunks and homelessness. It’s a city, and that’s part and parcel with having 105,000 people. But let me be clear to every person that snickers the name of this city – in the city diversity isn’t a goal, it’s a fact of life. In this city, tolerance doesn’t mean “I will put up with all the folks who are different”, it means we know, and are grateful, that “My community will put up with the ways I am different.” In Lowell, we discriminate proudly – we don’t want people who riot. We discriminate against those that refuse to treat our citizens and public servants respectfully. And in Lowell, you can be sure that we’ll be judgmental if you spit out the name of our city like it’s beneath you.

Lowell is a blue-collar town. 105,000 people work hard here. Tens of thousands spend hundreds of hours every year trying to educate themselves. Their money and time is spent in celebration and creation of art and literature, theater and dance, music and sculpture. There’s no time for pretense, no room for the inauthentic.

To the 150 rioters, I’m ashamed of you. Lowell pride is real, and it is backed up by nearly 200 years of history, and 105,000 people who treat each other with respect.

they are technology, you say,
they are the connection between
and through and in the air

your’e a liar, they’re birds,
they’re brown, they’re small,
they’re watching the winter
and chirping at me

no, you say, they are
technological marvels,
natural cellphones relaying
information from the summer
to this dead dull february morning

you’re wrong, I say,
i don’t know much about
technologicality, but I know
it is not that chickadee

Years ago, fewer years than I wish, and more in some ways, I posted this poem I wrote called “Bulldozer Prints” on a site called Alsopreview. It was a great site, and I truly admired many of the poets there. They were widely published, deep thinkers, serious about the craft, and generous with criticism. It was a hard place not to like.

I say that in all sincerity, in many ways, everything I am now I owe to them – whether that is good or bad, I leave it for everyone else to judge. When I posted the poem, I have to say, I was more proud of it than anything else I’d ever written. Which, of course, made it all the more difficult to hear from all of them that there was “Not a single line worth salvaging from this mess.”

That horror and embarrassment let me down a very difficult path of self-examination. How could I believe I had written such a great poem, when it was so bad? How could I be so clueless and foolish? How could I ever post another poem in public after such an unbelievable humiliation? Could I improve even if I wanted to? Did I want to?

For the next few months, and pretty consistently ever since, I started to read poetry, read poetry text books, and read poetry commentary and criticism. I made it my mission to try each form, and then try it again. I played with sounds, I played with thoughts, i played with forms. I emulated each poet. I tried every prompt I could find.

I took to heart a few basic concepts, the first of these is this:
1) Practice does not make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect.

Writing a thousand sonnets does not make one a master of the sonnet, writing a thousand perfect sonnets does. Since I have yet to write even one perfect sonnet, I can not claim to be an expert.

Since I will never be perfect, perfection can not be the goal. Practice is therefore an exercise in moving toward perfection, rather than a constant repetition of it. I grow as I go, but only in as much as I am willing to accept my own imperfection. I must accept it, and recognize it. I must recognize it, and be willing to change. I must change but willing to hold on to those flaws that make me most perfectly me. I must accept that the most perfect me is by nature imperfect.

2) 10,000 hours working on a craft are required before any expectation of expertise. (Something I’ve read a thousand times, but don’t seem to be able to source adequately)

Thousands of poems, and at least 10,0000 hours spent working on my craft, and I am still not sure if I would claim any level of ‘expertise.” I think I am a passable poet, and getting better. That seems to fulfill some need in me – not the poetry, the ‘getting better.’

3) There are 4 stages before mastery. Unconscious incompetence, conscious incompetence, conscious competence, and unconscious competence. (also, not mine, I read that somewhere, not sure where)

I am not sure where I am right now. Sometimes, I think I’m competent, others I fear I’m just unaware of my incompetence – the most terrifying prospect of all. I think it’s safe to say though, that my ‘epiphany’ with “Bulldozer Prints” lead me on a quest that has brought me to at least some level of competence – and there is hope of mastery some day.

4) Only a fool believes he knows everything he needs to know.

Socrates and a lot of others have gone on about ‘the wise man knows he knows nothing’ and there’s a lot of truth to it. But my take-away here is less that anyone ‘knows nothing’ and more that we all need to keep learning. We all need to accept that we NEED to know more. That we can learn more. I feel like Dubus’s talk about receptivity and open-ness strikes to this point. Humility is one of the most vital aspects to any sort of writing. But as I’m thinking about ‘humility’ and it’s relationship to writing, I think it’s important to understand it more intimately than some sort of spiritual self-deprecation.

I think that in the craft of writing, humility is a concept of internal incomplete-ness. A writer isn’t suffering the sort of humility that thinks, “I am unworthy” or “I know nothing,” but instead the kind of humility that understands the infinite value of each perspective, each spirit, each thought, each idea – right and wrong. I am no better AND no worse. My value is as infinite as each life around me – which means I must respect each thing as much as I respect myself.

If a writer can not see the value of their own ideas and self, then the very act of writing is one of futility and foolishness. Writing is, by its very nature an act of ego. An imposition of self upon the universe at large.

5) Dubus mentions Capote’s quote, “A writer must write cool and detached as a surgeon.” This is the hardest truth of all for me. It was the last wall for me to break through with my writing.

After the devastation of finding out that not only hadn’t I written a good poem, I was completely unable to discern good from bad poetry, I was right on the cusp of giving up entirely. Why didn’t I? I suspect, because some part of me believed there is something in me worth sharing with the world, and since I have no other skills of note, writing was my only hope. Which led to the question, What do I want to say?

Writing is, after all, first and foremost, the act of taking some feeling, some thought, some concept or construct and inserting into the mind of an audience – be it an external audience or a future self. What feelings, what thoughts, what concepts did I – DO I – want to insert into your mind?

Once I realized that I do, in fact, want to share certain things, the NEXT question is, “What is the most effective way to do that?”

One thing became clear immediately it is more complicated than saying, “The proper words used in the proper order with the proper punctuation.”

“Proper” words are different for each person and each word affects each member of the audience differently based on their own personal experience. This means that it is not enough to spew out words in the moment and expect them to have an impact of any particularly sort. Words must be considered, chosen with precision and attention to the most minute nuances.

Beyond simply finding the ‘right’ or perhaps, more accurately, ‘most effective’ words, one has to determine the best order. And order is not only an implement of meaning, but of impact. Rhythm, cadence, density and timing all figure in to the affect and effectiveness of the writing.

So, years later, in a 180 degree turn around, I find myself searching for the most dispassionate state of being in order to write my most passionate poetry and prose.

Detachment and silence have become necessities in my writing process.

And the final point that I learned all those years ago is this:
6) As Frank Herbert said in Dune,”Fear is the Mindkiller, the little death that brings total oblivion.” If I wish to be a writer, I must let fear roll over me and through me and around me. And let it reveal all of those thoughts, desires, images, feelings, dreams and ideas that are at the very core of my essence. To be a writer is to accept the fear, and let it reveal me – naked and completely at the mercy of the audience.

Even as I write this, I am reminded of the courage it takes to be a writer. The admiration I have for all of those that take the time to craft words and release them for my careful perusal, knowing full-well that I am looking at them and knowing them in the most intimate way two souls can be known to each other – through words.

Yes, even these words are scary to share. And that fear, and that courage, and that openness and receptivity and humility, that is what I am striving for every GOD damned day for the last decade or more.

Fly my friend, fly from those fears
that hold like tendrils to our feet
like roots to the bad cold earth
where darkness becomes so very us.

See with me the lines – painted
upon these new horizons where we dawn
like a thousand haiku whispering
louder than thunder.

Fly my friend, fly with me away
to that silver oh-mouthed moon
singing out the poetry we become.

If Mary Oliver ever read my poetry, I think she’d
puke. She’s a kind woman, a good woman, a loving woman
and a great poet – but she’s old enough
to have a sensitive stomach.

If Charles Simic ever read my poetry, I think he’d
… never mind, he’d never read my poetry.

the little boy that wished
the sharks would leave
the ocean so he
could swim
at the bottom of a pine tree
at the bottom of a mountain
at the bottom of New Hampshire
i was a little
boy once playing
north to south to north splashing
the crashing sound
portsmouth tide springing
in the spring

summer, where are you
i can not see you from this dream
from this stream
from this conscious place
atop a pine
atop a mountain
atop New Hampshire
where, I am still

i am still

still the little boy.