Stories and pieces

There's an art to it: letting go.
Or perhaps that's what art is. 
I'm a monkey, hand in jar, and craving
every candy, but I'm trapped
with full hands and an empty heart.
where every one is a child,
smiling, vested in filthy rags and hungry,
let them, too, find the world and love -
peace without me, or pieces
crushed in my unyielding clasp.
there is always a choice
there is often a goodbye
hello, mon ami, farewell.



I'm appreciating Ted Kooser more with each poem I read. He captures moments of time as exquisite pictures, as though he's frozen moments of ordinary and, by radically shifting our lens, transforms them into the extraordinary and the beautiful.  A female figure-skating into the future; an overweight fisherman becoming weightless in the moment of reverie, casting into the lake of peace; a poem within a poem on morning rushing over the hilltops.
I felt the need to cry and soak my tears into the moments of incredible joy, melding my experience into those poem-graphed. As Ted Kooser sends me skating, dreaming, trembling at the dawn soaring in like swooping hawks, and Robert Bly reminds me of the Virgin and her candles, and how a starfish is more than it seems, and how to unearth the mystery of the night. Poetry gently soothes me and I wish I could fly on these words and lift others off the earth with mine.
What a magic these poets possess - what pulchritudinous prowess.


-- I invented the word poem-graphed
-- I had to use the word pulchritudinous. It's the lumpiest word for beauty ever imagined. Like if I was writing a story from the perspective of toads, they wouldn't consider each other beautiful, but pulchritudinous.

Wind in the wings

The winds are lost, running every which way: chinook, the salmon wind, bursts by in a flicker of silver and white; boreas, boring down south like winter birds, though colder and heartless; diablo and his devil breeze, or zephyr breathing lightly over the hilltops and trees, brushing the flowers. But here, tonight, it's the doldrums for me. Nothing sings with the wind, tonight; nothing dares stir, and my heart aches for motion.

Can I climb the tallest mountain and rest in the lee of the trees, listening as the music of the rain patters all around me? May I run along the riverbed of the mighty river, or leap into the sky and lounge on the clouds over the city at night, watching it sleep and rise and dream again?

The cyclones hurtle in circles; white squalls whip the sea into meringue-pie peaks of waves; the squamish hovers over the fjords like vikings of yore, in sleek, longboat gusts; the euros, full continents lost, carry the rain ever south and east. But tonight, here, along these lamp-lit streets and beneath the evergreens, I throttle time and hold my breath, waiting on eternity.

After Years

I wanted to write a poem, tonight, as a self-portrait. Something comical, satirical, and surreal that I might read later and remember fondly. But this week has been overwhelmingly busy at work, and I'm loathing screens at the moment. I can journal just fine, but the instant I sit at this computer for writing, the words look tired and unappealing.


After Years
Today, from a distance, I saw you
walking away, and without a sound
the glittering face of a glacier
slid into the sea. An ancient oak
fell in the Cumberlands, holding only
a handful of leaves, and an old woman
scattering corn to her chickens looked up
for an instant. At the other side
of the galaxy, a star thirty-five times
the size of our own sun exploded
and vanished, leaving a small green spot
on the astronomer's retina
as he stood in the great open dome
of my heart with no one to tell
- Ted Kooser (Delights & Shadows) 

I really appreciate Ted Kooser's poetry. He started out working as a life insurance executive, similar to how I am just a computer programmer. It's difficult starting out with poetry, but it is encouraging because so many of the other famous poets seemed to get jobs as poetry translators (Bly, Simic, Bishop etc). But Ted Kooser, like Wendell Berry, seems more human, as though this poetic mastery is within my grasp, also. And his poems delicately peal open the folds of my heart and sew intricate flowers into the lining, hurting and beautifying my life at the same time.


Draw away the curtained lines,
let the petals bloom in summer light,
touch-kiss and unravel
the eyelash webs of sleeping life -
what do you see in the wells
dark and deep of my soul?
a tiny child, believing in miracles,
or superheroes, high in the skies.
but no, child, these streets are owned
by villainy.
there's no good, not here, they warn me.
but search still deeper in those pools
of mystery, and you'll know
there's fire in my eyes


yucky. not a poetry writing night, that's for certain. I guess I'll let Ted do the talking and I'll just listen as his words pour over me.

Nights reading Bly and not writing much

Today, I started reading some of Robert Bly's prose-poetics collected in: What have I ever lost by dying?The title originates from a Rumi quote (adapted by Bly) and the works inside are beautiful interactions with natural things. He has an elegant simplicity in his writing that is refreshing. I've been reading Elizabeth Bishop lately, and she tends to be deliberately ambiguous AND hesitant. Like she's putting on a shadow show behind a curtain with a weak light.

In contrast, Bly's easy naturalistic writing doesn't create a war within me as I claw at the words to understand them. (I love doing that, don't get me wrong - sometimes it's nice when poetry doesn't require such a commitment)

I love monday nights. First: it means that monday is finished, which is always a bit of a relief. Second: monday nights are often quiet nights where I have the opportunity for reading, playing guitar, writing, and avoiding electronic devices for the most part. I know some people who crave the simplicity of screens after a long day of work. Not me. After spending a full day of work at the computer (sorta. I do like to work on paper, even for coding), I eschew screens if at all possible.

Since I already spent a good portion of today editing, journaling, and discussing writing, I'm not particularly exciting tonight. Apologies.

So, to console your weeping eyes, here's possibly my favorite ee cummings poem, posted for the n-billionth: (it's the last stanza that breaks my heart)

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond

any experience,your eyes have their silence:

in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,

or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look will easily unclose me

though i have closed myself as fingers,

you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens

(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and

my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,

as when the heart of this flower imagines

the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals

the power of your intense fragility:whose texture

compels me with the color of its countries,

rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes

and opens;only something in me understands

the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)

nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands 

E. E. Cummings

Science Fiction Short

I'm not actually a science fiction writer, and it has actually been a month or two since I've written a story, but Matthew posted a link to a science fiction short-story (and I mean SHORT) competition, and I decided it would be fun to write something.

Guidelines: 500-600 words (no more or less)
Appropriate for radio reading (still working on this one)

I wrote this piece this afternoon and it has not been edited as yet, though I have shared it with a couple of people. The story has to be set in the future in the genre of "hard science" which apparently means that it has to be reasonable. (hopefully copying into this keeps the formatting, otherwise this is going to be a mess)

Comments appreciated, but be gentle. It's a rushed piece. I have 5 days to tweak it.

Augmented Holy War

The ungodly biotics, Isaak thought, and spat into the sink. Augmentation, that obscene convergence of man and machine, should never have reared its ugly head. Ever since the scientific breakthrough allowing easy integration of circuitry and flesh, everyone with affluence or influence crowded in line to upgrade their fragile humanity into something… superior.

                And humanity suffered. Poor children no longer dreamed the American dream; the advantages of the rich were too substantial. Rich children ran quicker, thought faster, and engaged with data at artificial, computerized speeds – how Isaak loathed the Augments.

                Isaak finished brushing his teeth and straightened his tie before his cracked mirror. Satisfied, he strolled towards his typewriter and collected his editorial with a self-satisfied grin. If all went well today, it was the dawn of a holy war, the beginning of the end of these self-wrought monsters. Humanity must prevail.

                Across the interwebs, a vast quantity of the populace had read his well-articulated complaints, and he’d amassed a large, devoted following. And Isaak wrote with venomous strength: what was the worth of a man, if it came from the quality of his implants? And: when did it become metal, and not mettle, which determined a person’s enduring merit?

And they swallowed every word.

                The sun shone through his dingy windows with a brittle, glassy glaze, filtered through dust and grime. Long had he molded the populace of this state, turning the weak against the powerful. They seethed, inwardly, but lacked direction, a distinct target for their indignation.

As Isaak walked out his door onto the street, the manuscript tucked beneath his arm itched with purpose and fury, a righteous call to arms. He’d typed everything on his typewriter, leaving no chance an Augment hacking his systems might leak his prized works prematurely. Everything was calculated precisely, Isaak thought. Today, they’d have their target.

The streets were empty today, a national holiday, and everyone’s eyes were affixed on screens of all sorts, hungering for stimuli. The railcars that lined the streets sat like vacant coffins and hearses, devoid of life.

As Isaak stepped gingerly onto the street, he imagined how he’d celebrate with his lover tonight:  wines, cheeses, and perhaps a relaxing walk beneath stars. He’d earned that. A day of relaxation, for a change.

Lost in his reverie, he completely missed the midnight-black railcar that slid around the corner, accelerating in his direction, and because the streets were empty, no one was around to see the accident.

Isaak woke in a dark, dimly lit room, and he was not alone. His arms and legs were cuffed to his chair, and his mangled manuscript was piled on a rusty, iron table beside him. Across the table stood two dark figures, a male and female.

“What do you want from me?” Isaak asked.

The two figures glanced at each other, and the female responded while the male approached Isaak, pulling a scalpel from his cloak.

“We want you to see with eyes unclouded,” she replied.

Isaak squirmed in his chair. “You won’t gain anything by torturing me!” He saw the gleam in her eyes: augmented, the both of them.

“We will not torture you.”

                “Traitors! Augments!” Isaak screamed as the man began his surgery on Isaak’s arm.

                “It doesn’t hurt,” the female whispered.

                Isaak continued to scream, wrenching his body in his chair, until the man forced Isaak’s head down to look at his own arm. Isaak saw the incision, bloodless, and beneath the pallid flap of exposed skin, Isaak saw glittering lights, blinking circuitry.

                Isaak yelled again, in loud anguish, and he felt nothing.

Questions without answers

You asked questions about places: countries and cities lost and found across the globe, and I have no answers. Again, you spoke of health and dancing, animals and fancy shoes, and I simply cannot fathom the depths of your oceans, nor answer your questions, dear - but I am listening. You furrow your brows, and penetrate mine with your eyes - are those questions, too? I know nothing.
In a frenzy, a flurry of effort, you direct me inquiries of people, media, drinks, and the features of the moon, of lunatics and fanatics and events of the news, but what can I tell you of these? You discover me empty.
Sighing, you fall back into your seat, at a loss, for of what worth can he be?
So what can you do?
I'm a magician, petty. I catch butterflies in a finger cage and, gently blowing on their wings, transform them into rainbows; I pick a rose from your hair and lay it beneath your feet, gingerly, with utmost care; I sing to the storm and it walks on knees of lightning across the country, blowing its lugubrious horn; I carry hearts across deserts, and where no water is found, I shed my own to share; I seize the wind by its hair, and send whispers along its length; I walk the edge of the world, balancing on the edge and dream, leaping over the rim into the sea of stars; I crave the power of wheat and see the scimitar sweep of the moon in my sleep; I leap the lilies of life alone, but you may come along, if you please; I hide the feather of the phoenix behind my ear, and it warms me there, and upon it I may wish anything; I can change the shape of the clouds, and make every carpet fly; I disappear, I'm smoke and mirrors, there's nothing dearer than a night at the ankles of trees, falling asleep to the breeze beneath the celestial winks of stars.
Can you hear it sing? If you have questions still, after listening to the mountains, the rivers, the streams, what joy will my answers truly bring?
No, I have no answers.

pt1

Inklings of Surrealism

On ponderous nights, the clock never dies.
it ticks, it tocks, in silent watch of twilight -
if you tell me your dreams, I'll tell you mine,
when I find them - I fear I've lost
the road between the folds of the skies,
the clouds, and starlight.
Flee the path... come, dear,
until you dance in the trees, you'll never feel
the
  brush
    of
      falling
leaves, imbibe the scents of pine and be
one with the wolves and the wind, again,
drink in the freedom of the springs,
leaping, running, flying -
if even the woods understand,
can love really be so hard?



I've started drawing. If you know the first thing about me, it's that I'm the worst artist in the history of everything. My stick figures look like they were hit by a stick-truck, and then were stick-mauled, and stick-mugged. But I purchased a book from Powells on drawing for idiots, and I'm sketching a couple of hours every day (during lunch hour and breaks).
Yes. After two days, I am still at least as lousy as before.
I'm finishing up the Prophet (Kahlil Gibran) tonight - it's a thirty minute read - and reading some more Neruda. The translations of Pablo Neruda were written and edited by James Wright and Robert Bly, both famous modern poets in their own right (wright, aha!), and at least one other poet whose name I do not recognize.
Discovery of the night: Neruda is a fascinating surrealist writer. (though I already knew this)

March days return with their covert light,
and huge fish swim through the sky,
vague earthly vapours progress in secret,
things slip to silence one by one.
Through fortuity, at this crisis of errant skies,
you reunite the lives of the sea to that of fire,
grey lurchings of the ship of winter
to the form that love carved in the guitar.
O love, O rose soaked by mermaids and spume,
dancing flame that climbs the invisible stairway,
to waken the blood in insomnia’s labyrinth,
so that the waves can complete themselves in the sky,
the sea forget its cargoes and rages,
and the world fall into darkness’s nets.
- Pablo Neruda


He translates so seamlessly the intangible into the picturesque, so we see, clearly, a galvanic image of reality through the lens of poetry. It's a beautiful writing that I can only imagine being all the more exquisite in its native tongue. One of the great parts about this Bly-edited book of poems is that it leaves the spanish translation on the left side, and shows the translation on the right. Unfortunately, I cannot speak spanish well (or at all), and even reading it, I know I skewer the pronunciation. Still, I feel so close to the original beauty, how can I not try reaching out with shaky, greedy hands?

You're lost in the cities of anthill life
searching the clouds, you eagerly sought to fly
and found no one in the skies -
is it lonely, seeing the world as the stars?
is their vision blurry with tears, or just mine?
come home
i'll love you ever, still

Reading Party Evening

Definitely one of those nights for reading.

Abstraction

It was a busy day, but a great one, spent with CB. Among the many things we discussed, abstraction was frequently brought up as a necessity in our chosen - of late -  ventures of creativity and thought. CB loves historical reenactment, metalworking, shop-working, and many sorts of historically re-creative craftsmanship of a most excellent sort. If you willingly lend a listening ear and ask the right questions, his quantity and quality of knowledge in the area is seemingly boundless.
(Thank you very much for this, and hopefully again)
CB was explaining how he loves walking into various shops like pet stores, radio-shack type businesses, and other assorted businesses and just glancing at everything, locking it away in his memory. When walking through the pet store, he noticed a peacock feather, and noted how usable that sort of thing is in costume recreation; or a dog-ramp, and abstracting that into a means of easily loading equipment into the truck (if suitably weighted - and he mentioned constructing his own, simply abstracting from the designs of the given ramps).
I commented how it is this sort of abstraction that displays his love and aptitude for these creative shop adventures. He sees a piece of metal, and checks its tensile strength (ductility) and its type, and can infer information about how he might reuse those estimates in other projects making similar or dissimilar things. Don't I do the same thing with words (though with less practice and understanding)?
Both CB and I tend towards rational minds, and abstraction was a trained learning process, not a natural step in our thought patterns. I see a tree, and I see a web, and the tree is under no circumstances a web. However, when I abstract, I can marvel at how the branches leap out into a net of limbs and leaves, woven and draping over me, cast like I am the fish beneath the draping web, frozen in time. I'm terrible at this abstraction as yet, but the study of poetry has opened my eyes, showing me how the peacock feather isn't just that, it is a fountain pen, a tuft in a fancy hat, fletching, rainbow eyelashes, and so on. The universe of abstraction isn't just a vast array of stars in a night sky, but their constellations, stories, coruscation, and the dreams and whispers they share on breezy summer nights.

Dreams and the like

I've had some horrific dreams these last several nights, though I struggle at remembering all of the pieces on waking. I only vaguely remember that each dream was discouraging (though not in the least bit frightening). I had one dream where I bought a house, but ended up living in the gazebo out back, because a canary wanted to live in the house; I had another dream where I was on a train, though I knew my destination didn't exist. The scenery outside the train grew more transparent by the moment, bleaching into white, though the inside of the train grew more spectacular in color, as though it were swallowing up the saturation of the external world and combusting in rainbows.
Whether or not the details themselves are terrible, each such dream arrived with a dreadful sense on waking.

for the she who was not anywhere
they can't see her there, autumn hair,
swinging through the city streets.
with hushes gath'ring round her feet.
how she sways, breathing sexuality,
they exclaim.
can't you see she's dancing, I say,
her joy paints everywhere -
they cannot.
their insipid stares are unaware,
reducing her to numbers, figures.
the heavens study the stars in her eyes,
as do I; polaris she seems to be.
but they see none of this.
women, they mutter,
delving back into drinks
woman, I breathe,
you're clever as the fox,
to the heart, the hound

Sunrise and the Kris of Interrogation

There's nothing I hear beside the butterfly's wing,
the birds, sheepish-silent, struggling to sing,
and a long line of angels, alert on a branch,
barely breathing, stilled.
every dawn unfailing save three,
their light gathers on hills and peaks,
to greet the rising sun, the resurrection
of morning - they shed their grief
on the grasses, the dewdrop tears
of heavens, and ascend: joy complete.
the grassy knoll on which I stand
hushes, and the birds nestled deep
in frosty trees, the butterflies,
asleep, and the cities far beneath
mutter no sounds, not even disbelief -
for in the morning, everything knows God
must be, and gracefully doth the silence sing



A busy and enjoyable weekend, with the best-friend-Matthew visiting me to celebrate my birthday. I'm plumb tuckered (do I sound like a cowboy, Matthew?), and haven't really done much of anything for the last several hours, though I feel content, I think. Like a natural psychiatrist, Matthew, in our moments of conversation, poked at my subconscious and asked me questions about my future, and my current emotional status.
I'm really quite horrible at answering these questions about myself. I'd rather listen and converse about someone else's joys and struggles, pains and triumphs and trials all day long rather than shed one sentence of my own heart. It isn't even because I'm hoarding all of them inside, like a volcano burbling and building up pressure until an eventual eruption (a fire in the belly), though it may have originated with a similar strategy. No. More and more I wonder whether I even know my own emotions. I don't lack self-awareness, just an awareness of how to express the emotional ebb and flow, rise and trough, or that a sense of shyness and introspective privacy once allowed me the impetus for quelling such feelings so strongly that relaying them now seems impossible.
And it seems like the words provided me are too simplistic a description for a state of being. "Happy", "Sad", "Content", "Angry"? I need words like exultant, jubilant, shipwrecked, sundered, but even these are too mono-dimensional. And it gets more and more ambiguous, naming those feelings that soar past, though I think sometimes I find the answers best engaging poetry (not writing - I'm no good at that yet). When Langston Hughes says: life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly / Hold fast to dreams or when Yeats says: But I, being poor, have only my dreams; / I have spread my dreams under your feet; / Tread softly because you tread on my dreams. Or when Frost says: The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.
These are the things I feel and dream. The determination, the submission of dreams, the feeling of failed flight and clinging to belief, and these are the tiniest reaches of the glaciers of my emotional capacity - I'm not a creature of the now and only, but of the ever and eternity, and that is what I bring to the table when you flash the scalpel at me.

Poetry and Ambition - Donald Hall

The United States invented mass quick-consumption and we are very good at it. We are not famous for making Ferraris and Rolls Royces; we are famous for the people's car, the Model T, the Model A - "transportation," as we call it: the particular abstracted into the utilitarian generality - and two in every garage. Quality is all very well but it is not democratic; if we insist on hand-building Rolls Royces most of us will walk to work. Democracy demands the interchangeable part and the worker on the production line; Thomas Jefferson may have had other notions but de Tocqueville was our prophet. Or take American cuisine: it has never added a sauce to the world's palate, but our fast food industry overruns the planet.

~Donald Hall in "Poetry and Ambition"

I've been contemplating poetry a lot recently, because I realize my works tends towards concise, dry, flavorless sentences without the Gusto! and panache of more enthusiastic artists. I can't describe a world with the brittle ice of a Morgenstern (Night Circus), or define a depth of character like a Dostoevsky, but I long for some of the beauty present in great poetry. 

And I know that I'm falling into that trap that Donald Hall presents here so exquisitely: the McDonald's of art. Granted, I'm not selling, and everything I write in journal, online, or in my practice doodles is just that: practice, and so I don't feel like a sellout. But this is the American way, isn't it? Find something that works, and mass produce it? The first movie did well; let's make six. 

One of the poets I've been enjoying this week was named Elizabeth Bishop. She told an interviewer that she was prepared to wait forty years for a finished poem, since no artist can afford to rush. Now, I've saved all of my poems (and creative works in general) so I may return and tinker with them often, tuning up the wince-worthy weaknesses and fleshing out the skeletons of unfinished works, breathing life into the dusty husks of old poetry and prose - but could I manage forty years of patience?

Actually, I believe I might be capable of just such a thing.

I understand that level of contemplating, that hunt for perfect tonality and melopoeia that rolls off the tongue like a song. Isn't that the original form of literary expression, passed from generation to generation? I think I want a return into the epics, where a minstrel prays the muse will strengthen his art, as he strums a story of heroic deeds.
It amazes me how terrible some of my work can be, but I continue knowing that if one gem appears from a field of folly and ugly stone, or if I can persevere through such a shameful valley, the other side will be the greener for it.

I abhor the concept of the McProse, the McPoem, and fear the slippery slope that concludes in such a thing. But practice calls, and I've still years of such to go, and so much still to learn. Until such time as I'm ready, I suppose I'll be flipping words like burgers, and frying lines, and I'll be doing so in a flurry. 

Ocean in the Sky

the ocean is
beautiful beyond my ordinary
too wise for fools and thieves.
will she never
triumphantly climb
the mountain and valley,
swing between the mighty trees,
or hold on to me?
together though
we sleep beneath similar stars,
and dream.


Today, I think, I learned how pretty the rain sings against the windowpane, and nothing more.

Birthday Beginnings

Beginnings are almost always endings, except one. Even that, when viewed backwards, is an ending of sorts.

I started my day reflecting on this particular piece, and though it's written regarding a Summer Day, I deemed it appropriate birthday-day material:

The Summer Day

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean-

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

~Mary Oliver

(from New and Selected Poems, 1992)

Tell me what it is you plan to do / with your one wild and precious life?Isn't this what birthdays are really about? And life?  I look back through my journals and I chronicle the year's happenings in glossy black ink along machine-made lines. What have I really accomplished this year; what wild things? I took a brief stroll beneath the melting sky, contemplating the piles of rapidly melting snow like Poe counted his golden sands and Eliot his coffee spoons. 

Fingers plucking at guitar strings

sound out the many things

the raindrops found
when they learned 

they cannot breathe.

what a life, borne of sky and falling,

falling, friends all around

I fell a raindrop,
become a river where
might this journey be bound?

If I could trade everything I am for the pearl, well, I still wouldn't have enough - can you pay the price of life, without giving more than one, and love?

Dream within a dream

So this is the new year / and I don't feel any different

The temperature rose from a wintry twenty into a rainy upper-forties. Driving back from the store, the fog was lifting from the earth and hovering at knee-height (graveyard-high) over the snow, and the pink-orange glow from the street lamps illuminated islands of crystal cloud. Between the pockets of illuminated fog, the snow was beautiful in the twilight, a hue of blue I cannot hope to describe, so beautiful I found myself sighing.
No footsteps marred the transcendent beauty of the frosted hillscape, and so the perfect blue receded into the trees and foothills on the outskirts of town like a journey of unanswered paths.
Here it is, where it all always begins, with some thread and sewing pins, and an inquisitive heart.
If you never walk where there are no tracks, is it your own life you are living?

I continued with my research into Elizabeth Bishop, today, and added Ted Kooser onto my poets list. I enjoy Ted Kooser's reminisce and the surrealist manner in which he draws together dissimilar objects into a cohesive dream. Elizabeth Bishop is also interesting, as though she's deliberately dumbed down the emotional window of her poetry so that each poem becomes a mystery, a delight in dancing shadows and light as the reader attempts to decipher what it was like being she, and what she believed, to draw such marvelous words.

Can a cloud-covered sky be so impossibly pretty, it steals your breath away? yes

I do feel different, though; I do. I feel abloom, like an Edgar Allen Poe love poem to life and being, but not this one


Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow —
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand —
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep — while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?
~Edgar Allen Poe


You cannot clasp in tighter grasp the grains of golden sand - though how beautiful they look as chaff on the golden wind? The final night of this grain - fly gently into the wind, oh dream within a dream.

Jonathan Luke

Yesterday was the day my brother died, and tomorrow is the day my grandfather died. I'm not sad - those are not the feelings clapping through my skull like tiny dwarves with hammers (or somersaulting porcupines). It's a confusing time to celebrate a birthday.
It reminds me of that one scene in Princess Mononoke (if you have not seen it, shame on you!), when Ashitaka is wounded and San brings him to the forest spirit for healing. Every step the forest spirit takes, flowers and grasses form up and bloom around its ankles, and then shrivel into death, as though each plant was born, grew, lived, and died in the space of a moment, in the time it took for the forest spirit to lift its foot from the forest floor. Life can be short as a breath or long as forever, depending on how you savor its gifts. As we celebrate new life, we witness the toll paid also for any life lived: its eventual end. Is there sorrow in this? That too depends on where and how you look at the world.

Today I spent time looking through a bunch of different poems with an emphasis on Elizabeth Bishop (whose poetry I have enjoyed quite a bit today).

I never really remembered my grandparents names on my mother's side. I don't remember them. My mother told me them, today: Bertram and Janet. Janet died when my mother was 7 from leukemia, and Bertram, my grandfather, died when I was very young.

Jonathan means the Lord gives and Luke is a latin name meaning light.


Between the ghastly fog
and the road, one lamp
pulses with a ruddy, unnatural light.
Luke, the Lord has given
Jonathan, my light -
I tried, oh, dear God, I tried
not to cry - it would only increase
the frozen stretch of street
layered beneath my feet.
the diffused glow of
orange and pink that bounces
between the shroud and snow
helplessly, I know what it is, and how
one solitary stretch of tears
the light won't mind

Huginn and Muninn

Louise Gluck was my poet of the day, brought to me by Simic's commentary. Simic is quite extreme with her writing, saying it's either brilliant or falling horribly flat: lacking in wisdom, wit, or even significant artistic merit. These are powerful words regarding a Pulitzer prize winning poet, and in the poems Simic describes as cliche and banal, I still see poetry far exceeding the quality of my own. I have no long-term desire to be a poet, but it provides a ready comparison that humbles my learning journey.

Yet it is heartening to hear that even the great poets of the last twenty years can falter and fall, writing poetry that lacks depth and direction. No one writes perfectly every time, and it leaves me wondering how many failed attempts great poets leave behind their successful endeavors. 

But Gluck writes some very interesting poetry, evoking powerful imagery in only a few concise phrases, such as this one:

It is coming back to me.

Pear tree. Apple tree. 

I used to sit there

pulling arrows out of my heart

(Louise Gluck)

It's a short poem, but it's beautiful, dreadful. 

Tomorrow (the 8th) is the day my little brother died. It's a day of Huginn and Muninn, those ravens that follow our wheel around us on our journeys through life. It is also Saturday, the Shabbat, and I hope to, if not finish, draw close to finishing the Renegade, by Simic. I'm glad it is the weekend, I'm glad the world is wrought anew in white, and I'm glad of friends.

The name of my little brother was Jonathan, which means the Lord has given. We often follow that phrase up with 'the Lord taketh away', and so God has. My parents could not conceive for years following that, and when they finally did, my little brother Samuel (God has listened) was born- appropriate in view of the story of Hannah. Good night - happy weekend. Enjoy the snow (if you have it)

Snow Day

With my child's mind, I witnessed a world
encased in ice - I ached in the sun's death,
split, sundered into smoky skies
and breathless-cold beyond belief.
ash white are the remnants of shattered glass-light,
falling ever falling...
resplendent plumage of the paradise bird -
I cried, cried for the frozen sun,
and the swirling devils of wind
brusquely bullying it about,
and each word the winter swallowed



Today, I discovered a bit more about Dada I never learned before, and gained an appreciation of the chaotic formlessness that was, in its own way, a form. I skimmed along the lives of Marcel Duchamp, Hannah Hoch, and Hans Arp, and opened my eyes unto the avant-garde of the post-world war one European art, and the rejection of everything formal.
I also read about Donald Hall, and found out he was the husband of Jane Kenyan (I did not know who her husband was). A lot more things make sense now.
I still had to work, as I work from the warm, cozy cove of my room, but the snowfall outside was beautiful all day long, and magicked the day speedily past.

Study

One of my friends that I most admired was quite adept at most anything he believed in, however shortly. He didn't believe in partially committing - when he ran, he trained with an impressive regimen; when he studied, he input his all; when learning music, he said he might practice or invest in the theory and contemplation of music for twenty hours a day, leaving only a couple for sleep or sustenance.
I admire his dedication. I asked him the last time we got together whether he still runs, and he replied that he couldn't understand the purpose of running unless it were for the olympics. Sometimes I wish I could dedicate as much of myself to studies and betterment. I started late, and my natural proclivity towards knowledge is lesser than some of the intellectual juggernauts in my life. But one of the pieces of D's training that I adopted was an immersive journey. While I cannot (currently) bodily travel to the locations of all my favorite writer's living locations and writing niches, I've started reading biographies of their lives (or autobiographies if available), as a means of grasping some of the driving force behind the motifs littering each author's famous works.
I picked up a rather fun book today by Simic (one of my favorite recent poets) with a number of essays detailing the histories of some of his inspirational poets, and how their lives meshed with their poetry. I'm not a poet yet, not the least bit, but I'm beginning to see, to hear, and to notice when all my other faculties of sense have fallen short.
Why did that poet use that particular phrasing, and how has this particular cadence evolved, or the prosody of poetry affected my interaction with the piece? That's just it, isn't it? Everything is an interaction, whether it is the expected experience designed by the author, or not. My college roommate (lifetime roommates A) had an art show consisting of psychological and dreamscape drawings encased behind shutters. In order to reveal the iconographic renderings within, you must first open the window unto heaven. On the doors, a simple labyrinth was drawn, allowing the recipient to trace their fingers along a predetermined route, receiving a visceral interaction and readying preparation for the pieces within.

Balustrade

After a week's worth of outings, I'm glad of my introvert-night. I had a fantastic week, but I needed an eventual unwind, and tonight's learning journey was worth the wait, even with much of it spent following wikipedia trails and researching the last several poet-laureates. Honestly, sometimes the greatest nights are those with candles, books, music, and blankets as soft as dream-clouds.


an anodyne reminder that life boils down
the fault-lines of souls, to a fragile
ash-wooden sacrifice, one story all-told,
whose spiritual timbres creak and groan,
filling the dark eyes of a child on barrow hill -
I see them still, frameless,
no mountains, no forests , no fields balm
the pain written in runneled lines
down the blind boy's fair face
standing before a sudden grave -
for the ocean, and the motion of waves,
how silent the mountains?
to the valleys who bow beneath,
how wise the lofty peaks
the clouds ever drown in violence?
but the mountains be valleys be dust
in the end, back where it always begins
where we begin again, anon -
I greet the rising sun over a city of glass,
and automobiles with their dumb-eyed daffodils
searing through the fog -
above and beyond all the earth, where
lovers and trees neck in the woods,
here, from the oculus of dreams
we follow the railroad ties of sunlight
struggling between grey seams,
illuminating what our ears see:
a high pitched squeal, a soughing through,
laughter
beneath a chestnut tree high as yggdrasil
in the girl-child's toffee-gaze
joy, I know thee well.
And caught between these siren-stares
I step precariously along the balustrade
one stare at a time.

February

It was a beautiful day, yesterday. Driving up scholls, with the sunlight boring holes through the winter-sparse canopy, I could almost imagine it was spring, for just a moment. I saw fifteen, twenty motorcycles, and children playing in short-sleeved apparel in the cul-de-sacs. With so many people enjoying the weather, it must have reached 10C. I wish that summer skies looked like this, with a depth of blue-violet that electrifies the sky. I visited powells, walked about outside, and then played a bunch of excellent, nerdy games.
I'm feeling, as with all Februarys, the pull of spring, the sweet swing of the earth as it spins ever faster towards equinox. A bunch of stories are churning within me, and I'm almost believing it's the season where I begin writing shorts again. Even though it's probably my least favorite season (the drawn-out portion of winter with work days that begin and end in darkness - I still love this time of year), I think there are a few things that ever draw me to February.
1. amethyst: I've always been drawn to the color purple. I don't have favorites, but I think what interests me most about purple are: the ways the color interacts with thought patterns (students who take tests in purple rooms generally do better); how we torture colors to fit our cultural stereotypes of gender (purple is female - I prefer to think of it as royal, which came because of a rare phoenician dye which was secreted by a rare snail); that the sky is purple as much as blue, but our eyes get confused
2. The lengthening of days becomes more noticeable. Sunset is already after work ends (5:22), and sunrise is nearing when work begins (7:29).
3. My birthday is in this month
4. February is the oddity of the months, being most closely related to an actual moon cycle in term
5.leap years: it jumps a bit with a bunch of strange rules
6. the sneaky 'r' after the b. I like that sneaky 'r' a lot.
7. It has Oregon's birthday in it, and groundhog day, president's day, and even Valentine's day. What an interesting collection. Try and imagine a connection between those, and I'm certain you'll have an interesting story.
8. It can be one of the most finicky of months in terms of weather. Like yesterday, we had sunlight and clear skies, and the most beautiful night of stars and a beaming, cheshire-cat moon. But we are supposed to get a hint of snow tomorrow possibly, and definitely some rain later this week.
9. The mountains are white-tipped (even the shortest, usually. Except this year), the clouds are creative, and the blue skies are the child-eyes of the azure summer and amethyst

Time for adventures, time to live.