Category Archives: Meta

The Process

Dusk obtains and breezes shift how?
Your eyes note the adjustment but not the transition
You’re left struggling for something to say

How to paint this marriage of devolving light and insight evolving on some canvas of noise with extant oils and powdered pigments made only of the invisible machinations of your mind

Your ears perk as this babel of birds now ebbs like the slowing chorus of corn kernels popping in mother’s ancient microwave before those anticipated movie nights, those nights of ancient anticipation

“Is this not the finest onslaught of metaphor you’ve grappled to obedience?”
Your mouth is discovered smiling
The mysterious construct of your ego, pleased
“No one will ever understand but I understand and it is good.”

Night triumphs again and you commit your fingers to the dance
Drawing letters in patterns that bind us and propel us and disgust us and seduce us
Reduce us to the frail persuadable dummies we convince ourselves we shall never be but all
All fundamentally are

Your dancing continues and succumbs to your spasm of limbs
Beating at air as if pounding the tribal drums that signal something like strength
Something like the ever-moving matter seeking a place to collide and then I guess see what happens
Like you did with the dregs of your experiments in chemistry class clandestinely stowed in the back of the locker in the slowly filling test tube which one day just might end this all
Or cohere to useless sludge
Or satisfying slime
Or simply birth
A chrysalis

You dance and you bray like a jackass because somehow this liberates you and somehow it does always work
The puzzles remain before you but the familiar frenzied fever to fill in every last empty square has taken leave
And so now you seek someone to kiss and molest and hope they molest you in return in the wild jackass abandon you just displayed on the disco floor
Perhaps the flailing inspired another who will meet your pattern and ride the waves with you to the shore
You cry to them: “What’s poison for Pete may be manna for me!”
And you laugh
And they laugh too and the wave. just. does. not. want. to. end.

Well,
That’s the dream anyway in these nights you are reminded of your persistent exposure to a vastness that cares little for your rituals yet the indifference makes the rituals and reminders all the more resonant to you 

It feels awfully good to sweat through your nice clothes and to drink the cold sweet concoctions  that provide momentum for your howling

It feels awfully good to fall in a safe soft place and surrender yourself to unconsciousness muttering an echoing refrain of our  Lord’s Prayer each heartbeat further depressing  the wah-wah pedal in this fading concert of a night well spent

To know time and duration but feel none of it as it occurs
To know
O

Come morning, you cradle coffee and stare at trees

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Why I Write Poetry

I feel vulnerable and alone
Like my mom and dad didn’t love me enough.
And I’m pretty damn sure
You have no idea what that’s like.

I like things in nature.
Things like flowers and the ocean and certain animals.
And I think they are really beautiful.
Because you don’t understand how beautiful they are,
I need to show you.

I want you to think I was touched.
By God.
Or a pervert.
It doesn’t matter.
As long as I’m the victim.
And the star.

I hate poetry.
I don’t understand poetry.
So I write poetry.
See?

My wish is you will see the world through my mind and understand just how amazing I am and how hard my life has been and therefore want to smother me with kisses and money (and honey if you’re kinky)

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Two Farmers-Market-Poets’ Hastily Composed Odes To Youth

Today, I encountered topacio althaus for the first time. She regularly sets up a small table and typewriter at our local farmers market, with a sign asking for a topic and a price, promising a poem at the end of the transaction. 

topacio althaus at work

My sister-in-law approached ms. althaus with a financial offering and a suggested topic of our young children: brother and sister and cousin, one of them a newborn, one three, one four.  Here now is the poem that resulted:

 

 

 

I too took up the challenge of the topic and created the following on my phone: 

 

Three 
Three wee ones
Some whipping like warm summer wind
Through the forest of ancient wrinkled calves and knees 
Saturday’s lumbering farmers market shoppers
One sleeping, mouth gaping, chirping like a settling bird
Three  
Three!
Weeeeeee!
Bound by blood
Sister brother cousin
Georgia in her mother’s arms, three weeks old
Isaac, three plus one, so four, patiently enduring the face painter and stares from tiny cousin Merryn, three 
She who is eager to run and play more before his batman cheek is done
Three! 
Bound forevermore by this memory
The warm early autumn morn
Among those busy being old, shopping, and nearly born 

 

 

I made no money.

A good day for poetry.

And berries:

 

 

Three!