A couple of stray poetic thoughts…
[insert photo of chickadee here] Which I would do if I had tagged my photos better. Working on it. Come back next year.
Chickadee mind grabs
seed, drops it: 'Get another!'
Lather, rinse, repeat.
Born as unblemished
marble; Life's chisel reveals
us to everyone.
I had thought to wait another day or two for the Poem Post-Mortem (which sounds pretty cool if you say it aloud). I had a lot of reactions in the final ten days or so, and I see no reason to wait. In no particular sequence, here are some reactions of this author…
I thought as I got into this a little bit that it might be fun to rework the better poems and churn out a chapbook. I still might, but I’m thinking more that I will be working some poems on the side for submission to poetry websites. There are plenty. A new blog I follow, zumpoems, has this list of more than 4000 places which will accept submissions.
About the photo: I’ve carried that book around for about 30 years (published 1996), even though by then I had given up on my dream of actually earning a living from my creative writing. I never liked it that much. Pulling it from the to-be-donated pile, I thumbed through it today and I’m much more inspired by its suggestions and insights. Like so many things in my life, poetry came to me when I quit trying to be a poet.
And the poets down here don’t write nothing at all,
they just stand back and let it all be…—from “Jungleland” by Bruce Springsteen
It’s time to find a poem again! Yay! Today’s paradigm will be…what I found over the past 50 hours.
pills once taken for entertainment
now do anything but, maintaining
dubious adherence to general
opinion. schedules provide
meaningless information to
entice us with false surety.
familiarity with annoying
situations eases moving
through them, no one's idea
of good design. security doors
which open for everyone.
here mister tee-ess-eh? will
you pass this through your
magic gate? how does he know
it won't explode? not planning
for Game Day in your bar
most assuredly epitomizes
poor planning, understaffing,
my lovely barmaid. silent
Uber drivers receiving their
instructions in Chinese,
afraid to make eye contact.
beautiful golf courses, those
green monuments to money,
grass, dominating nature.
never in one dozen years
has any hotel thermostat
delivered any temperature
near its displayed number.
until you knot your necktie
around your head like poetry's
morning Rambo to avenge this
collection of glib promises,
lame excuses, forms without
function, lies of omission.
"Reality, I'm coming...for...you!"
83/100
100 poems in 100 days
Would it help to know I’m a double-Gemini (both sun sign and ascendent)?
Dichotomy,
meet Contrary.
Loved sport—disliked
jocks, hated pep rallies.
Baptized at thirteen,
Atheist at eighteen,
Agnostic at twenty-five,
Catholic at thirty-nine.
Supported group marriage
of the "line" variety, found
monogamy difficult enough.
Voted for Carter, editorialized
supporting Reagan.
Call Washington "home,"
Can't live there—love rainy,
warm South-East. Love
spicy food, can't eat it.
Believe sobriety equals our
natural state; drink like a fish.
Studied communications,
journalism, wound up
playing scientific expert.
Planned working to seventy,
retired at sixty-five.
Believe in "live every day
as if it's your last," stand
fixated in space-time's
ambergris, pinned by
my dwindling time.
Don't believe astrology
(much) though I studied
it enough to know
ascendents from sun-signs
yet how can this Gemini
resist, confronting
all these two-faced
contradictions?
80/100
Continuing what’s becoming a theme…
One Day
Without noticing suddenly
you cannot easily pull your
sweatshirt over your head.
Each morning you perform athletic
routines getting into your pants.
Rising from chairs, your muscles
will cry out. Sleeping will bring
rest but also body-wide tightness
driving you prematurely from bed.
Every step you take becomes fraught:
you'll concentrate on each one (if
you know what's good for you),
relearning how to walk. Climbing
steps will be similar as you
wonder alternately how you
could confuse distances which
rise regularly before you, and
how you ever did it when younger.
"Lift with your legs" no longer
something preached by your
health-and-safety officer, but
your new mantra for avoiding
three days' bedrest. Concentrating,...
...you become a true zen master,
without trying—as the sutras say.
78/100
100 poems in 100 days
I asked AI to polish this up (“no you didn’t”), but it didn’t believe what I wrote. (“that’s completely untrue. we’ll believe anything you tell us.”) I guess we don’t have anything to fear about AI exterminating the humans. (“Uh….we’ll get back to you on that one.”)
Old men know. It lies in their bones,
not powdering brain's surface, but
penetrating, melding with DNA, at
times holding them upright. He hoofed
it every day from above the freeway
into his boyhood city, walking one,
two miles 'til hit by that car, already
years past eighty. One wonders if
he never accepted cars completely:
few if any dodged horses when he
would run home from tide pool
afternoons, salmon in hand
for dinner. He teetotaled his life
after being dragged into saloons
by his Klondike gold-panning father.
He watched with alumni pride as
his University of Washington grew
from only two buildings in his day to
small-city dimensions—or to one-third
of his boyhood home. He explained
what "the Denny Regrade" meant,
showed you where Lake Washington
shorelines lapped prior to when the
"Montlake Cut" joined it to Lake
Union then to salt waters. Before
he experienced TV's dawn, he played
with that new-fangled radio thing.
How many days passed until he learned
about those Wright brothers flying in
North Carolina? He must have seen
biplanes training for war while he
served as a land-based radio officer.
Then passenger planes, jets, rockets,
humans landing on Earth's moon.
Big computers took over business
before he retired to travel through
North America, to Hawai'i.
My life stretches now like those
timelines in history museums,
marking space programs, personal
computers, vinyl records through
cassettes, CD's, to zeroes-and-ones.
We hold computers in our hands,
but call them phones. Cars run on
electricity like the trolleys of my
youth, my grandfather's middle age.
My timeline lacks two decades, more,
compared to his. It teaches us
respect too late, but teaches
wonder more and more.
76/100
100 poems in 100 days.
If life resembles a rollercoaster,
with ups, downs, head-banging turns—
entered for free, no real way off—
life bests physics in several ways:
faster, ever-faster, ka-chunk,
ka-chunk, kachunkachunka chunk,
until sound blurs, sights blur,
horizons collapse to this car,
this seat, these hands gripping
this bar. Life masters sending
your ride both uphill, downhill,
simultaneously. Life's car
travels quicker but on ever-
shortening track seemingly; you
crest one climb just moments after
you started a downhill stretch.
You begin to realize this speed
increase means your ride's end
will occur sooner than you
thought. Your youthful panting to
"just get to eighteen," "once I've
got steady work," "can't wait to
have kids," "can't wait 'til those
kids leave," "geez, if only I were
retired," now seems incredibly
foolish. Mentally straining to
get older yielded to its reality.
Now no strain's required. I wish...
no...no more wishing...just
stay here, be here, live here.
Here.
74/100
100 poems in 100 days…
…and if life seems to speed up, it’s seen even here. Didn’t I just post my 60th poem? How can I be on the verge of being 75% through this challenge?
Inspired by this poem from Bridgette Kay.
Hopped a freight, saw gang in Thompson
Falls, flatcar next track over. They liked
my car better, took it by force. No, wait...
Hopped freight into someone else's car,
who pushed me out again without my
knapsack, broke my leg, or...
I remember: clinging to moving car, one
hand desperately grabbing a handle,
slipped, lost my legs while those
startled drivers waited, watched,
horrified behind barricades. Or
did the speed freak sipping Mickey's
Big Mouths not drop me off, but
instead mug me miles from home?
Eloquently, asked blond Orphan Annie
out when snow bounced like Styrofoam.
Followed her eastward to Midwest. Sat
bouncing one child after another while
she conducted services at her church.
Or did we split angrily over my lack
of faith? I can never remember.
My epileptic buddy seized while training
for his bicycle road race, hit his head,
died. Knowing he didn't take his meds,
dedicated my life to medical counseling,
patient support/advocacy. Died early,
stress from lack of success, debt.
Indulged whim to own motorcycle.
Pretending to slalom along Woods Creek,
hit gravel, slid into oncoming lane,
already occupied by one-ton pickup.
Or did I just slide right over the edge,
mangling my body, my hopes for
being energetic weekly news reporter?
Did my heart burst when I snorted
Black Beauties? Or did I die after
doing same with PCP disguised
as so-called cannabinol? How 'bout
that time "chocolate mesc" turned
out to be rat poison, not placebo?
Millions of me's live in my memories,
branched from events gone right,
events gone wrong, events gone
different. When my editor ended
my career for once again failing
to put "ly" on adverbs. When my
employer marketed my database,
fame, money, a new career following.
When I got hired in Southern
California instead of upstate
New York. When my wife died
from cancer instead of lived.
70/100
100 poems in 100 days
Every one of those branching events could have happened, the only speculative one being the one about getting fired for not using “ly” on adverbs—although an editor/publisher could have ended my teaching career before it started when upon learning I intended to teach journalism he laughed and said, “You?”
It’s interesting to me how I think about all of the ways my life could’ve gone wrong, only rarely think how it could’ve gone differently, and not at all how something could have gone right instead of how it went down. Does that make me a glass-half-full kind of guy? Or do some of us innately focus on good things instead of bad ones?
My cat knows exactly how everyone
should behave. He fails to understand
his clear vision isn't clear to us.
Eleven years yet endlessly he
chastises us for our transgressions,
failing to enact his instructions,
breaking his long-established norms, rules.
* * * * *
It's ironic we watched that show on
failure of genius, then I followed
by failing to understand you. It
seems so clear to me, terms precisely
stated, precisely used. Why do I
fail constantly? Each time sound bites play
repetitiously leaving me to
analyze what went wrong, who failed whom,
oblivious to the simpler fact:
not everyone understands my rules.
Chastising them works no better for
me than it works for my cat. Now who
thinks he's a genius? My cat's quite sure.
69/100
100 poems in 100 days
A blogger I follow received a three-month sabbatical and noted while he had grand plans, he found it more grand to ease into the “mundane” activities of playing and reading with his children, taking walks, traveling, visiting his parents, and such. He seemed a little surprised by this.
Teachers pant for June more, you lovely
little monsters. Adult nerves handle one
question every few seconds poorly—three,
simultaneously uttered, become background
noise to our crumbling sense of purpose.
First day:
lie on the couch
oriented, right hand
reaching books,
water, coffee.
Sleep when it occurs.
Open door policy
for cats, who wander,
wonder at this new
couch denizen.
Ignore phone calls.
Feel the throbbing
subside in feet which
bore all for eight hours,
one hundred eighty days.
Second day:
wander house
wander yard
wonder why they
look different. See
things to do. Know
their time has come.
Slide back to your
classroom, retrieve
forgotten things. Hide
if people come in.
Days three to seven:
attempt to forget each
day's name. Forget instead
all those things from Day Two.
Ease into being, doing for
its own sake. Mind ascends
to philosophy, theory, to
next-year-will-be-different,
dwells in growing visions
of daily perfection, ignores
realities learned before.
August:
Take joy in planning,
attacking a new year.
Feel like Superman
putting things back
together. Laugh.
Teachers pant for August more,
you whining recalcitrants. Our
dreams rebuilt, our minds alert,
our souls recharged—we're ready
to grapple once again. Ready to
push summer back into its closet.
67/100
“One hundred poems in one hundred days!” (but my sense of time is fluid)
two-thirds to being there
