To the moon

ah
you

circle
of shining
dust

remind me
what it was
i thought

was bound
upon your
diadem

My Grandparents' TrueValue Hardware & Lumber

the seat
i found atop the 4x8 ply-
wood sheets next to the
ten-foot two by's

the sound of the
forklift engine and
cling of the bell
from the hardware
store door

the wonderful
and fascinating little
machine that shook up
can's of colored paint

the rambo style knife
in the glass
display
with matches stored
in the handle
I was promised
when I was old enough

all of these
are carried to me
in the smell of the sawdust
falling from these boards

beneath the whir of
the circular saw
which seems to demand:
how can you

love so easily
these things
that are no more?

and also
why did you cease
to want
that rambo knife?

Notes on poetry

It seems like there might be some use in comparing dreams and poetry. Or perhaps it would be more clear to compare the act of recovering or recording dreams and the act of writing poetry. (By poetry I mean simply art as she is written--well, maybe a bit more than that, too).

Is a poem like a dream? Does it function in the same way within our minds? When I say that, I mean that I think dreams function as a way of our mind's processing the stimuli of the day. It could almost be called a byproduct of the refining action the mind takes upon those stimuli. But when do we dream, when do we stop dreaming, and how do we know this? Is it possible that dreams are like the moon, nearly eclipsed by the light of the waking world, the increase of stimuli? Could poetry be like that ghostly light we see in the day's sky?

I don't mean is poetry like a "daydream." A daydream captures the conscious mind and brings it along. I mean to compare poetry to a dream--a dream, as we all know, is not understood completely, may not even be understandable, but is also deep and powerful. We understand, I think, that dreams contain within them the full range of our thoughts and emotions. This range may, in fact, be far fuller than we ever will feel in our normal conscious state except perhaps for rare moments.

But all this speculation is really only aiming toward one thought, presently. That is, however like or unlike dreams and poetry may be, what I am interested in at the moment is how they are recovered/accessed/stored by the conscious mind. We all know that there are only a tiny fraction of dreams that we will remember. We believe, perhaps from being conscious of the way in which we awake and almost always progressively forget our dreams, that there are many more dreams than those which we can remember. What if this is true of poetry? What if poetry is our constant waking companion, but we are in the almost constant act, on the one hand, of forgetting, and on the other, of ignoring its presence? What would this mean for us? To make a slight discursion, are we aware of how many of our words come to us in their present meaning purely via the forces of metaphor?

If poetry is our silent companion, and it acts, unobserved to us, in shaping the meaning and the understanding of the words and signs we use for communication--to share love, for intellectual commerce, for consolation, for ridicule--what would it mean to begin to take notice of this portion of the activity of our being? It seems like this could be developed into some sort of argument for the utility of the poetic. I won't attempt that, but I will come to my point: I have heard, and I think it is true, that those who, upon waking, immediately write down the dreams they had, will begin to become increasingly aware of and capable of remembering their dreams; I think this concept, however much it may or may not apply to dreams, is applicable to poetry. That is, to put it simply, I think that, as everyone has dreams (I suppose), everyone has poetry, and the point is simply that taking note and recording this activity of one's being begins the accumulation of new understanding.

Perhaps the greatest difficulty which we must struggle with is to be true in our recording of this activity (it is well understood that simply having more people engage in a poor sort of poetic mimicry (most of what you will find in this blog) is hardly a benefit to anyone).

As Shakespeare writes, "to thine own self be true." Well, and though that sounds rather self-centered (and beyond that is put in the mouth of Polonius), let us suggest that taken in either of its senses (telling oneself the truth or being "true" to one's essential character) it is the basis for giving what gift you have at each moment to those whose lives are linked to yours, and without the benefit of this kinship there could be neither truth nor self--that is to say, it follows that then "thou canst not be false to any[one]?"

Maybe not, but perhaps it is sufficient to say that poetry is a gift; taking note of it is to receive it, and pursuing it truly is to give it away. Sometimes it seems like the people who write the poetry you are likely to read these days are those who least believe that it could have use, particularly to someone other than oneself.

And so then there is this question as well: What is it that almost inexorably seems to suck our dreams from our minds every morning? Is this the same thing that covers all the tracks that metaphor makes and hushes an impulse to explore for a moment what it was in the air of a spring day that was starting to pull song from your lungs?

Habit

i'm stuck
momentarily
in the drug store
foyer
by the auto-
matic door"s not
responding
to the weight of my body
on this black mat

the weight of my body is
what opens this door
so i stand here
an instant more

cause
to effect effect to cause
we play our note
on a single string
a single string
a single note

is it forcing this
to say
"look up
for a minute
put your hands to this glass
door and push
feel the air all ripe
with symphony?"

Hostas

on my way inside
i saw
the hostas bravely
coming

up
into
the evening air

having held a
memory
of summer
somewhere
until
themselves only
a memory

until
the earth
should change

tell me
is patience
plus faith
bravery?

From reading the Brown Book

1.
First, let us propose
that metaphor
is the sinew of our language

that is, to ask
how does this mean that
is to ask how
in our hearts we have
affinity
how we can call both
grasping a weight
and doing math
a strain
the cement sidewalk
a cloudy sky

so, these sinews
run strong through all
our symbols, these words
but a skin
this poetry of everyday
and everyone like
dreams thrusting through the
veil of night
like this
'92 aerostar
with its aerodynamism
pulling me along
through the waves
of sunlit saturday midmorning

2.
what is more honest
to forge this as a manuscript
of, let us say, t.s. eliot
or to write these words
in the style of a new poem?

3.
why don't we know
our own dreams
nor what they mean to us
how we wake into an empty room
all full and
unsurprised
or
why don't I care
that blue floats
from my shirt
to the sky
to your eyes
all like a homeless ghost
of midnight?

4.
all these
common things
gather them up

I will try, too.

We will not sing

how can we
be silent

the world like a giant engine
rumbles benumbing us

some images

we have several images
the sky, earth,
the sea etc.

it seems like we once believed
that we came from some mixture
of the sky, the earth,
and the sea
that was long ago
if it ever was

it's not really
that important but now
here you are
tracing the outline of that tree
in the air with your finger
and telling me--

not really telling me
but we have these images--
how each branch comes up from the wet earth
and touches the sky and says
the end, the end, the end

and you point even further off
where the sky touches
the ground
over where the sun is stretched
like a patient anesthetized--
no
not like that
at all
but we have
these images--

perhaps where the sun is wide
like the lolling sea
a mother cat
licking and licking a patch of sand?

ok, you don't point either
but ages and ages ago maybe
someone pointed to the horizon and said
that must be where we were
born

but all of that doesn't
really matter, does it?
look i am
holding out my hand
fingers spread like branches of a tree

well, actually just my hand
held out
like i used to do

so why not wrap your fingers
around mine?
the sky comes
down to here too.

Leadbelly

can a voice
reach out of a song
and punch you in the gut?
Leadbelly
his can, but big-brother style
all in fun
his lungs lift lids
like a big dog
stretch out and shake themselves
watch out
there's muscle beneath that fur
all rippled in the sun

like every working man has
there is weariness
the sadness of a long row
long road, all lonesome footed
and a song rising up over the corn
just a reaching out wide
as the sky
tender like a whisper
of wind in the dull hot day

when that song finds you
if you've ever done a lick of work
or anything like it, you'll hear
that wild madness you'll know it
how it comes from your gut
and Leadbelly's guitar
fingers flying like a thresher
clacking and clanging banging
that twelve-string sound machine
folk songs pouring out
massive, this man
this one-man factory.

in my basement
i'm writing this, i'll plunk at
my guitar, listen to your voice
crackling from this copied
and copied and transfered and engineered
remastered recording

Leadbelly
there are no folk songs now
who needs to reach that wide
across the field or over the train-clack?
who needs to reach that far?

wimpy springish song

It won't be long

Singing with the kids

Twinkle, Twinkle, it's just too funny
An old Scots favorite, now one of Owen's bedtime favorites
Amelia joins us for a while on Swing Low, Sweet Chariot
Owen really likes this one for some reason: Jordan am a hard road

This for that

this is for
what
you are

not to me
but you
as held by
the strings of the moon
when they
unfelt bear
what weight they can
until one
by one
they wave free

this is words like the
lesser lights
each with its own strand
but we will do
what we
can

Conversation 5

i suppose everyone
at some point
knows that
we want this everything can feel
can feel it surprise us now and then

is it from
the air, how from our lungs
it gets into our blood?
then a calling out to
what?
emptiness
scattered with the ceaseless
wind going here and there
upon the
surface of the earch
and high up in the sky?

here
there
listen to these small words
that mean that thing
we wade through every day
impossible to define
and
the

trouble
is that there is the air
there are your lips
the jumble of these tiny
sounds mounding around
my ears
each leaving its residue
or
each rising
like balloons until i
am straining my eyes
saying
what
are you?

and what
kind of question
is that?

there, you can see
it, not exactly in the air
but in what light comes
back from his face
as he walks by our window

or these people
shopping this saturday afternoon
the mall is filled with this
not the words bouncing around the faux marble
it is another language
like footfalls unspoken
a restless thing of motion.

Guilt

its this scandinavian thing
i guess
where your kindness
is painful to us
and we feel guilty for
accepting

advanced practitioners
i've heard
can manage
(between scandinavian
persons
works best)
to do these acts of kindness
as a way to really
stick it to someone

this is
one has to admit
an ingenious way
to cover one's tracks
and leave absolutely
no air
for the conscience

that is to say
no guilt.

shaped note

Idumea
Taken from http://pilgrimproduction.org/sacredharp/antioch/antioch.html

fa la la fa so so so
time for some shape note
singing
it starts out like this
one person casting around
sounds like
maybe he just stepped out of the shower
or he's the last guy in the church
closing up

then scatter-shot
like a bag full of cats
hornets, all kinds of creatures
curling like the shrill
of a bagpipe first filled
the whole choir joins in
better keep
on your toes
this'll be
a mighty churn of holy
sacred harp artillery
a hundred hands all
threshing this field of sound
fa fa fa so la so so
ain't gonna know
how your knees
find the plank floor
but there you are now
it isn't hard
to follow
pick your line
and just holler
that'll feel about right

rhyme for the power line

in the parking lot
i slowed the car
until the unthinkable
happened
the distance
between us at motion
and at rest
mounted up as
smaller and
smaller
fractions of the space between
a beginning and an end

we know well enough
all this speculation
but, look up there
as we walk under
this power line pylon

the buzzing power
in its way
frightening as
the lines of our bodies
at rest
or
the way that you
and i will
get carried away
fractions of a larger
and larger distance

Conversation 4

i'm glad to see
you
coming up your eyes
looking like the sky

at once both far
and near

and the sun
dancing
in the window
leaves this warm shine
across the fading carpet's
patterned lines

true, there is a good chance
i will just stand here like a tree
being greeted by a spring
wind the words may not dig
into the earth
but their sound makes me crane
my head

have you seen this
up there:
a thousand new leaves shaking
each with its own whisper?

Conversation 3

he sits at the service
counter
blue cotton dress shirt
slightly rumpled sleeves
rolled over wrists

perhaps we even see
a pencil
like a skewed signpost
pointing the way from right ear
to temple

his voice
is like the wooden
edge of the countertop
worn and somehow
pleasantly grimed

it won't matter what
you ask
intractable
each sentence in answer
ends surprisingly rote
expected yet still unforeseen
like a deus
ex machine

Conversation 2

why is it always
when opened out
like a leaf-draped country
lane
a new path
is barely visible
beneath your
words

why there
exactly
must i
with horror hear
a voice rising
too loud or droning
in disgusting
pedantry

why then why
there
am i bulldozing
planting plosives
for this strident
fricative fourlane
overpass?

third person

he walked
toward the drug store
and the house
across the street seemed
full of this precious
ether, how it swept to
a peak
mingling with the man's
calling out directions
from his car window to a woman
in front of the video
vending machine
or the cashier
sorting his receipts
as he goes up to pay
finishing saying
ta-da
all this
meaning
how long
can you go on
trying
to turn
a corner?
this is where
you are

First poem to spring, 2010

in a corner
of sky
it was fluttering
almost
like a little
bird

but there was no bird

but wasn't that
just
a song
a birdsong of sun
rays?

all these things
seem possible
today.

Homer

you said you wished
you could have been back
there in the time when
art was a true trade
and songs were
for supper made
ah, yes, to feast then
when that blind bard would stand
and lift his hand over
the table spread with all its beasts
and from hexameter arise, arise,
arises heroes, gods, and mighty deeds

and how when the voice
grew soft, the song too long
spun out upon the further flights
of mythic reveries the pagan revelers
would belch and shout the poet down
to dog-like hunt humiliating scrap

oh, but how, when he comes
to tell of the true hero
the cunning word-wrangler
and his strong son fastening the doors
upon this greedy horde
and their greasy lord
and the sharp barbs flying
then how his gaze must have gleamed
bright as Ulysses' sword.

O when the night comes down

The day's words
with their faint touch
between the static
of the night
escape us

now
can you feel that
what it is to be
empty?

and then
all around you
as you senselessly lift
your hands how
the darkness all is God's

mercy and
love,
these blank things that
surround us here

blank still
than everything
full more

o when the night
comes down
how grace gathers itself
for the morning