I wrote it while flying cross-country at which point food and drink became more important. The clock kept ticking. By the time dinner had finished, it was nearly time for bed, and I just plain forgot the poem. (But will he post one tonight?…)
Sing, Muse!
Come, Muse! Grace these cells laden, encumbered, bracken- masked, alone Swing Inspiration's sword, cut these bonds which cruelly imprison. Sing! May these cells quiver for joys just now birthed, for new connections made, for purpose kindled, for feelings restored.
I follow few blogs (he said, cringing at the fact about 150 follow his). One that I follow, belatedly, catching up to its posts when I can, is from Ben East, until recently a member of our country’s foreign service. I’m not sure what though it might have been U. S. Aid. It’s not important. What is important is that he wrote a book about some super-notable people who started in the Peace Corps and went on to distinguished careers in foreign service.
Around the time Ben published his book, he wrote this post which really hits home to the writers among us. I urge you to read it if you consider yourself a writer, even if you’ve written little.
I’ll be shouting out a couple of other blogs in the near future. Ciao for now.
20/100 I’m writing a poem a day (sometimes two), and now I’m 20% there. It’s causing me to rethink poetry and my approach to it, when and how I’ve written it in the past.
Every major city seems to have a botanical greenhouse where tropical conditions have been created to foster the growth of orchids, bromeliads, and such—or “July” as a resident of the American South might call it. I left just past noon today for a 25-minute sojourn around the neighborhood. When I returned, our weather gauge reported a temperature of 81.1°F and a relative humidity of 88.8% (now registering an even 89.0% 30 minutes later). Lighting was poor: completely overcast, the sun approaching its zenith. That’s okay. My poetry attempts have been poor today, also. This is my second try, the first being filed in the “maybe-it-can-be-saved” bin. This really isn’t poetry, more poetic prose, artfully arranged—unless it’s true what a friend said, that poetry is what I say it is!
Every Southerner learns gradual acceptance of sweat, wears loose garments, overlooks each other's spreading stains. "Only mad dogs" indeed. Why walk now? Surely my Fitbit will multiply steps taken in such weather?
Escaping my climate- controlled cocoon, black-eyed susans cry welcome. They're sprinkled beside rattlesnake master, goldenrod, butterfly weed. Abiding our warmth, humidity humbly, they suggest I follow their lead.
Minutes later brings one patriotically-colored whirligig, neglected, spinning madly with each new breath of hot air, much like my country does these days. Inured to these new great divides, I just see [whirligig; patriotic] as I pass.
One neighbor's mailbox decoration swings madly with each puff of air. Its caretaker keeps it small: Chinese fringe flower usually towers twenty feet.
Where once I wandered scrub woods (leftover nature long subdued), newer years brought townhouses, all units clad in ubiquitous white, (accented with charcoal trim!)
Townhouses get young magnolias, crafted ever-so- perfectly by your local nursery, while everyone else nurtures what such abnormal specimens become.
Headed homeward I give friend Crow midday greetings, reflect upon our tree-bound need for vegetables in front (sunlight dictates placement), admire still-red maple leaves, register my soaked T-shirt: its limit of three-quarters mile, exceeded by my four.
I’ve heard a writer should never apologize for his work. If I didn’t feel the compulsion to put a poem up here, I would work on this more. As may be: like a little boy who’s never quite clean enough for company, “it’ll do.”
for fifty years plus five or six he carried words he wrote. they traveled in one banker's box: to everywhere he'd stay. they seldom saw much light.
he carried dreams for less than that— they died in his mid-life. he feared his will, lost hope, discerned no path. life handed him ways he found weird, brought a future bright.
throughout bright hopeless times he wrote to capture what he felt. his prose earned bread but poems' notes sustained his soul—it is what kept dull paths away.
electrons now contain his thoughts, self-published at his whim. without his dreams he found he'd bought release from what trapped him. dreams died but words found day.
One to conceptualize it, Three to interpret it (in three different ways), Five to be too busy composing, and One food-poet to cook the meal.
How many poets does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
Two to perform scansion of each turn of the bulb (and argue about it), One to comment on bringing light to the darkness, One to rail against Man's innate desire to alter reality, Five to demonstrate ignorance of basic threaded objects, and One mechanical-poet to screw it in.
How many cooks and janitors does it take to describe grief as relayed in the robin's song at dawn which promises another empty day? How many paint their pain with words, plain for all persons to see? How many read to the last line of a silly poem about cooking dinners and changing lightbulbs?
16/100
Today I discovered I had numbered two poems #9. Yay! This so-called 15th poem is the 16th!
I had thought the poems I dragged out of notebooks and polished would garner more comments and better ‘reviews’ than those dashed out on the fly, but this isn’t the case. For the record, poems 1 and 2 were openly declared as poems written in June while traveling in Scotland, Wales, and England. I just hadn’t got around to posting before I started this 100-day challenge. Poem #3, “Business Poetry 101,” was written approximately 2004 or 2005, edited moderately and posted. Poem #7, “Between the Boards,” also received moderate editing; the biggest change occurred when I moved the final lines down one to signify they occurred at the same spacing as the boldfaced ones above them, and eventually they became boldfaced as they composed a new set of boundaries. The haiku written as #9 but in reality was #10 sprang from an opening line to a haiku which I then re-wrote for lines two and three. The most recent recycle job was #11,”Dova,” which had a final, three-line stanza added to it. I’m pretty sure I’ve run out of poems worthy of being recycled, 16% of the way into this challenge, the training wheels come off, the water wings disappear, and I need to keep the plates spinning by myself now. After that my next biggest challenge will be in two weeks when I need to write a poem each day while on a two-week vacation. (I might just stockpile them.)
Nighttime scribbles. Wish I could remember what that great title goes with.
One: did words just pop into your head? Dressed for success? Silently shouting, "Look. At. Me." Well? What will you write in response?
Two: did last night's "Tah-dah!" moment, captured scribblingly, profess any worth when illuminated by morning sun? Or did beer think itself scholarly? Well?
Three: has this image squatted in your mind, vagrantly occupying your attention, its presence exciting but annoying? Evict it by describing it?
Four: if Image brings her friend, Emotion, accompanying your nighttime scribbles, party troika promising trouble plus fun— you've got poetry.
Good luck, sucker, hanging on to your sense of control. See ya after your eyeballs roll back, you forget your agenda, you forget your promises.
In my childhood we peered between [FCC: public airways belong to everyone.] slatted media-control fences, won- [We cannot allow any but market forces to] dering where these LP's we saw came [dictate who will get licenses, who will be] from, artists we'd never heard, never seen [allowed to own a broadcast station, what] over our airwaves. Sometimes these fen- [those stations will play. If young people] ces presented themselves as white, snowy [represent compelling market demogra-] static on those TV channels which deli- [phics, market dynamics will act as incentives] vered no signals. We scoured back [to serve them.] [Record exec: one cannot] pages in magazines, looking for 'just one [suppose your average teenager knows] more' to satisfy our latent curios- [good music from bad. We don't truly get] ity. Our comics straddled two worlds to sur- [this so-called music ourselves, you un-] vive. Real good ones, 'too offensive,' hid in [derstand; certain performers make] head shops near bongs, fringed [better stars than others. We help main-] leather jackets, patchouli oil. Even shows [tain morality, give kids something to do,] we liked fenced us this way, making us [keep them from getting into trouble.] endure dog acts, plate spinners, [Sure, we pay to get our records on] Borscht Belt comedians to catch [the air. Capitalism's the name of the] three minutes from "Today's Latest [game, baby, how the world works.] Greatest Group, the..." Yardbirds. [You don't mind if I light this cigar?] Troggs. Beatles. Elvis. Lovin' Spoonful. [Your local politician: Zoning laws] Car radios came with buttons, we [can be used creatively to keep this] thought, to facilitate quick-punch- [craziness in check. If you really don't] ing from 'that awful song by...' [want your child to listen to this...stuff,] only to hear it anyway on our city's only [don't let them buy it. It's how Ameri-] other pop music station. We saw fences [ca works, donchaknow? {wink}] everywhere: Midwest, small towns, the [Now remember to vote for me next month!] South, anywhere without "a scene".
We chipped at, kicked at, hammered
at, pulled at those fences. Bit by
bit those slatted boundaries fell.
[Where ya bin'? I've sang these words] Ninety-minute TV concerts at [every day. Never saw you here before.] midnight. Imports in our record stores. [Listen to me. This ain't jazz, it ain't classi-] Lyrics about living, loving, dying, in- [cal, it ain't nutthin' but music, dude!] stead of "wake up little Susie" or [Ya payin' attention? Hey! I'm talking] "Tell Laura I love her...", we heard [here! Ah, forget it. You don't get it.] Woodstock's Fish chant. We cheered
all the voices in my head 