Every now and then I write a poem and I just don’t care what anyone thinks of it. I don’t care if I don’t follow the rules that make a good poem. But then in poetry there really aren’t any rules, are there? It seems like the moment someone tries to contain it or capture it, as it nears a definition; a poet comes along who bashes their too small container all to hell. And rightly so! Can you build a coffin for God? The Poetry is just too big and too full of life to ever be contained. Poets never do well with rules. They are too crazy, wild and irrepressible, and always have been, to ever follow rules. They are always on the fringe of society and often cross the line. Ovid was exiled for “the Art of Love” and for his womanizing of the wrong women, Percy Shelly left his wife and ran off with a teenage Mary Shelly, the extreme antics of Lord Byron are famous. (Pardon my gross over-generalizations here; I’m trying to make a point here, damn it!) Poets just never accept rules or limits and always have a passion and an awake-ness to living, a kind of intense, intentional desire to live, fully alert, to all the details and sensations of life. And sometimes because that flame burns so brightly and so passionately it burns all that they are, and all that they have in them, in a very short time. They will have it no other way though. They have made Achilles’ choice: it is better to have died young and gloriously.
I agree with Ezra Pound and the imagists that it is images that make good poetry. I also love rhyme, rhythm and lyricism and sounds and sensations. (One of my favorite poets is Keats for his youthful sensuality.) But sometimes I have something to say and an essay isn’t right, a story is too long, and I don’t have a pulpit to preach from anymore, so a sermon is out of the question. So I crank out a short rhetorical poem full of the much maligned use of anaphora, end stops and a deplorable lack of images. And other than the anaphora, I have no meter; neither do I use rhyme, metaphor, simile, or a host of other poetic devices. It’s didactic; it’s just preaching, but at least it is short and to the point. Heck, it isn’t even new or original. That’s the point of the anaphora. It is an echoing of all the voices from beyond time itself that urge us, merge us into life out of our slumber; or liberate us from the slumped shoulders of a life lived according to a notion of how someone else thinks we should live and according to their estimation of who we are.
The Song:
Everyone’s gotta’ song in them to sing.
If only they will listen to it.
If only they won’t compromise it.
Just sing it.
Sing it out.
Out beyond the local laughter
Of the people who know them.
‘cause only strangers can hear the greatness of
That song that is in them
That song that is in you
That song that is in me.
Thus spoke Emerson
Thus spoke Thoreau
Thus spoke Whitman
Thus spoke Ghandi,
Thus spoke Jesus
The Kingdom is in you
Let it out—sing it into the world
Give it birth.
Incarnate it.
Friday, March 28, 2008
Monday, March 24, 2008
Eulogy for a Mouse
I wrote “Eulogy for a Mouse” about three years ago and, in this case, the voice or speaker of the poem is that of my own and the event is real. In writing it, I had every intention of echoing a certain well-known poem by Robert Burns. If I have learned anything from the romantic poets, it is that I must rebel with them against a view of nature that is dominated by cold empiricism. It is a view that says that all matter is just “materials” as Mary Shelly put it in Frankenstein. There is nothing sacred in anything. But Romaticism sees a mysterious sacredness that is present in nature. In Coleridge, for instance, one should note that the Albatross dropped from the ancient mariner’s neck precisely on his epiphany regarding his view nature—when the slimy things of the sea were no longer just slimy things, but beautiful fellow creatures sharing with us in the experience of life itself:
O happy living things! no tongue
Their beauty might declare:
A spring of love gusht from my heart,
And I bless'd them unaware!
Sure my kind saint took pity on me,
And I bless'd them unaware.
The self-same moment I could pray;
And from my neck so free
The Albatross fell off, and sank
Like lead into the sea.
Being a Black Elk fan, I recall him talking about thanking the animals that were killed for providing food for him. The deer, the bison and all living things are brothers who gave up their lives to provide food for the humans who kill them. And, in a completion of the cycle, when humans die, they also gave life back by returning to the soil, which fertilizes the grass that feeds the bison and the deer. The animal and the material that he is made of are as sacred as the material of our own human composition. We are all cut and carved of the same stuff, and we are all connected, "mitak oyasin" say the Lakota: we are all related.
Eulogy for a Mouse
Overrun with vermin
and their little turds left all over the stove top,
and the holes they would bore in the bread and boxes of cereal,
I started killing them in those little traps that snap,
Hoping that it is a quick and humane death they bring.
I flushed their remains down the toilet without a ceremony
And with about as much remorse as a sociopathic killer,
until I got up early one day and startled one
on the stove coils.
With a wooden spoon in my hand,
I hit her before I really saw her.
Two quick reflexive smacks
terminated all that she was.
No more would she sniff for the bits of bacon
my son left on the table,
or nibble the dried romano cheese crumbs
my wife missed when she cleaned
off the counter from last night’s pasta dish,
nor see, with those dark beads she had for eyes,
the nocturnal visions so familiar to her
along her route behind the back of the refrigerator,
under the cabinets and in the oven.
Vanished were anything resembling thoughts she might have had
of mates, children, or those fearful shadows that pass at night when she was at her most alert.
All that was invisible to me and known only to her kind, all that she knew, sensed, took pleasure in, dissolved.
Her creamy coffee-colored carcass lying still and limber
on the stove top.
Her underside was eggshell white
and complimented the pink of her feet,
The others had been gray or brown or a vulgar color
but she was uncommon in color and form,
In a quick review of my actions
I realized that in her last moment she had looked at me,
had hesitated,
stopped,
stood on her hind legs as if to say,
you took my children
take me too.
Pure anthropomorphic projection on my part and
I should rest in the science that says mice do not think.
But I do not rest,
and I do feel guilt,
and I cannot account for why will not forget her.
O happy living things! no tongue
Their beauty might declare:
A spring of love gusht from my heart,
And I bless'd them unaware!
Sure my kind saint took pity on me,
And I bless'd them unaware.
The self-same moment I could pray;
And from my neck so free
The Albatross fell off, and sank
Like lead into the sea.
Being a Black Elk fan, I recall him talking about thanking the animals that were killed for providing food for him. The deer, the bison and all living things are brothers who gave up their lives to provide food for the humans who kill them. And, in a completion of the cycle, when humans die, they also gave life back by returning to the soil, which fertilizes the grass that feeds the bison and the deer. The animal and the material that he is made of are as sacred as the material of our own human composition. We are all cut and carved of the same stuff, and we are all connected, "mitak oyasin" say the Lakota: we are all related.
Eulogy for a Mouse
Overrun with vermin
and their little turds left all over the stove top,
and the holes they would bore in the bread and boxes of cereal,
I started killing them in those little traps that snap,
Hoping that it is a quick and humane death they bring.
I flushed their remains down the toilet without a ceremony
And with about as much remorse as a sociopathic killer,
until I got up early one day and startled one
on the stove coils.
With a wooden spoon in my hand,
I hit her before I really saw her.
Two quick reflexive smacks
terminated all that she was.
No more would she sniff for the bits of bacon
my son left on the table,
or nibble the dried romano cheese crumbs
my wife missed when she cleaned
off the counter from last night’s pasta dish,
nor see, with those dark beads she had for eyes,
the nocturnal visions so familiar to her
along her route behind the back of the refrigerator,
under the cabinets and in the oven.
Vanished were anything resembling thoughts she might have had
of mates, children, or those fearful shadows that pass at night when she was at her most alert.
All that was invisible to me and known only to her kind, all that she knew, sensed, took pleasure in, dissolved.
Her creamy coffee-colored carcass lying still and limber
on the stove top.
Her underside was eggshell white
and complimented the pink of her feet,
The others had been gray or brown or a vulgar color
but she was uncommon in color and form,
In a quick review of my actions
I realized that in her last moment she had looked at me,
had hesitated,
stopped,
stood on her hind legs as if to say,
you took my children
take me too.
Pure anthropomorphic projection on my part and
I should rest in the science that says mice do not think.
But I do not rest,
and I do feel guilt,
and I cannot account for why will not forget her.
Monday, March 17, 2008
Letter to Penelope
The Ides of March have passed, and now we come to the day the world first glimpsed your radiant face! O face more lovely to me than that of Helen to her Paris! O face that sweetly haunts me and compels me to go on in spite of all that I have suffered. Home to Ithica! Home to Penelope! And so I write and cast this letter to Poseidon my enemy who will deliver it. Aye, will sink it to the very depths, as lost and dissolved parchment, but write it I must! What else is my heart to do?
My Dearest Penelope,
For ten long, hard years I battled at Troy, witnessed the heroics of Achilles, and his death by the coward, Paris. I saw, with my own eyes, the deeds and death of Hector, the burning of Troy, the lamenting of Cassandra and the crazed Helen carried off in tears. Nothing but grief! Grief! Grief! And death! Death! Death! And for what? The trysts of a woman?
I was so glad to have started the journey home at long last and I looked forward to nothing more than your fair face and loving arms! Things were going well. The contrary winds were contained in a great bag given to me by the god of the winds, and, in spite of Poseidon’s raging, we made fair sail.
Ithica was in site! And I thought I was safe and could take a moment's rest from guarding that damn bag of wind. But as I slept, curiosity got the better of my men who found a way to open the bag only to find that the winds escaped! And the captive, contrary, angry winds, fed on the milk of Poseidon’s wrath and blew and raged till Ithaca was lost to us and we were driven back, so far back, that I fear it may be another ten years just to find you again.
The Fates are cruel—the hags! I wonder…is there purpose in their spinning, measuring and cutting? Do they think about a man’s life? Or is it whimsy? Do they laugh, light heartedly, as the thread is snipped—unconcerned that the slightest palsy or slip of the hand could rob a man of years from his lifespan? What is it to them? O, to have Ithica in site! The prize and meaning of my life at my very finger tips and to have it snatched away suddenly with such seeming spite!
They say that a man cannot fight the fates! Perhaps it is so. And Yet I will fight them, Penelope, with every last breath that I breathe, my dear heart, that I may return to you. Because you are Ithica to me. You are the land to which I will return. I am no king but for your love. Aye it is your heart for me that makes me king of that land! It is your heart for me that makes me long for Ithica!
Care for Telemacus! I should be there for him. Do you see me in him? He is the promise of my return. Give him my love. Did I say wait for me only until he is man enough to grow a beard? All the more urgency to fight my fate! O Penelope, wait and engage no suitor, for your lord, Odysseus will return!
My Dearest Penelope,
For ten long, hard years I battled at Troy, witnessed the heroics of Achilles, and his death by the coward, Paris. I saw, with my own eyes, the deeds and death of Hector, the burning of Troy, the lamenting of Cassandra and the crazed Helen carried off in tears. Nothing but grief! Grief! Grief! And death! Death! Death! And for what? The trysts of a woman?
I was so glad to have started the journey home at long last and I looked forward to nothing more than your fair face and loving arms! Things were going well. The contrary winds were contained in a great bag given to me by the god of the winds, and, in spite of Poseidon’s raging, we made fair sail.
Ithica was in site! And I thought I was safe and could take a moment's rest from guarding that damn bag of wind. But as I slept, curiosity got the better of my men who found a way to open the bag only to find that the winds escaped! And the captive, contrary, angry winds, fed on the milk of Poseidon’s wrath and blew and raged till Ithaca was lost to us and we were driven back, so far back, that I fear it may be another ten years just to find you again.
The Fates are cruel—the hags! I wonder…is there purpose in their spinning, measuring and cutting? Do they think about a man’s life? Or is it whimsy? Do they laugh, light heartedly, as the thread is snipped—unconcerned that the slightest palsy or slip of the hand could rob a man of years from his lifespan? What is it to them? O, to have Ithica in site! The prize and meaning of my life at my very finger tips and to have it snatched away suddenly with such seeming spite!
They say that a man cannot fight the fates! Perhaps it is so. And Yet I will fight them, Penelope, with every last breath that I breathe, my dear heart, that I may return to you. Because you are Ithica to me. You are the land to which I will return. I am no king but for your love. Aye it is your heart for me that makes me king of that land! It is your heart for me that makes me long for Ithica!
Care for Telemacus! I should be there for him. Do you see me in him? He is the promise of my return. Give him my love. Did I say wait for me only until he is man enough to grow a beard? All the more urgency to fight my fate! O Penelope, wait and engage no suitor, for your lord, Odysseus will return!
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
The Turning of the Page
“Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is a last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson—Self Reliance
Upon first reading those words, I had lots of questions. How does one know what is right and good? How should one live? What makes a thing right or wrong? Do we believe something is good, bad, right or wrong from what we read in holy books, or what preachers tell us, or from ecclesiastical tradition? Does it come from the general consensus of society? Is it simply a relative and arbitrary set of rules, customs, and mores that can be manipulated by mass media over time?
As I read Emerson, it isn’t any of the above. In his view, whatever is true and good is already there whether we bother to perceive it or not. But certainly Emerson would have contempt for anyone who thinks that the way to know what is good could be known by simply letting someone else dictate it to us. We have to look for it ourselves and perceive it on our own, and then learn to live according to our internal sense—our intuition—of what is there. And we have to trust our intuition in spite of all the flack and pressure to conform to what some book, some preacher, some social group or some tradition dictates. Emerson says in his essay on self-reliance: “What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think.” And later he adds: “For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure.” Perhaps there comes a time when the non-conformist whips back:
The Turning of the Page
March 4, 2008
I turn the page; I turn it good.
I turn the page; just like I should.
I read the words; I read them well.
I read the words; I read like hell.
I sit and think about the page.
And as I think I fill with rage!
Don’t mess with me; don’t bend my brain
Don’t preach at me; don’t threaten pain
Don’t tell me what I ought to do,
Or what to drink, or what to chew.
I think I know what works for me
I think I know how it should be.
So I write words; they are my own
I’ll strip the truth down to the bone!
It’s time for me to preach at you
And tell you off, and what to do!
Then turn THAT page, and turn it good!
And read the words, just like you should
And sit and think about that page!
Then maybe YOU will fill with rage.
Ralph Waldo Emerson—Self Reliance
Upon first reading those words, I had lots of questions. How does one know what is right and good? How should one live? What makes a thing right or wrong? Do we believe something is good, bad, right or wrong from what we read in holy books, or what preachers tell us, or from ecclesiastical tradition? Does it come from the general consensus of society? Is it simply a relative and arbitrary set of rules, customs, and mores that can be manipulated by mass media over time?
As I read Emerson, it isn’t any of the above. In his view, whatever is true and good is already there whether we bother to perceive it or not. But certainly Emerson would have contempt for anyone who thinks that the way to know what is good could be known by simply letting someone else dictate it to us. We have to look for it ourselves and perceive it on our own, and then learn to live according to our internal sense—our intuition—of what is there. And we have to trust our intuition in spite of all the flack and pressure to conform to what some book, some preacher, some social group or some tradition dictates. Emerson says in his essay on self-reliance: “What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think.” And later he adds: “For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure.” Perhaps there comes a time when the non-conformist whips back:
The Turning of the Page
March 4, 2008
I turn the page; I turn it good.
I turn the page; just like I should.
I read the words; I read them well.
I read the words; I read like hell.
I sit and think about the page.
And as I think I fill with rage!
Don’t mess with me; don’t bend my brain
Don’t preach at me; don’t threaten pain
Don’t tell me what I ought to do,
Or what to drink, or what to chew.
I think I know what works for me
I think I know how it should be.
So I write words; they are my own
I’ll strip the truth down to the bone!
It’s time for me to preach at you
And tell you off, and what to do!
Then turn THAT page, and turn it good!
And read the words, just like you should
And sit and think about that page!
Then maybe YOU will fill with rage.
Sunday, March 2, 2008
Prologue to The Commodore's Journey
I have written a series of stories in ballad form that I have called the Peter the Pirate stories. I have been writing them for many years, long before Johnny Dep hit the scene. Five of these stories are short stories in ballad form, but one is becoming an epic poem called Peter the Pirate: The Commodore’s Journey. I thought I would share the prologue with you all. I should let you know that I have studied Virgil’s Aeneid a bit and couldn’t help but echo his prologue. Any one out there who had to memorize “Arma virumque cano…” will smile at the reference or groan with the horrible memory, but I loved the Aeneid and I love this most ancient means of story telling: the epic poem. Long before writing, there was poetry and story. Whoever first uttered the epic of Gilgamesh, or the book of Job long ago vanished into dust; and their name, once uttered to the winds is now long gone and blown away, but the stories and poems that sprung from their minds are still carried on the winds of time and haunt us even now. They are my teachers, these old ghosts, and they are still my inspiration.
The prologue
Peter the Pirate:Commodore’s Journey
I will sing a sea shanty
About the Mora May
And one who sailed that noble ship
To lands so far away.
And may the muses of the sea
Help me tell my tale,
Of how this pirate lost his ship
And men and mast and sail!
How he endured the mist maid’s wrath
And came to distant shores
And saved his men as best he could
In spite of wounds and sores.
And help me find the words to sing
Just why he went away.
‘Twas not for gold, nor glory gained
That he set sail that day.
‘Twas something deep inside of him
That called him out to sea—
A voice that few men dare to hear
Though it would set them free.
And if it cost him everything,
To follow that strange voice—
His men, his ship, his gold, his life
Then that would be his choice.
The prologue
Peter the Pirate:Commodore’s Journey
I will sing a sea shanty
About the Mora May
And one who sailed that noble ship
To lands so far away.
And may the muses of the sea
Help me tell my tale,
Of how this pirate lost his ship
And men and mast and sail!
How he endured the mist maid’s wrath
And came to distant shores
And saved his men as best he could
In spite of wounds and sores.
And help me find the words to sing
Just why he went away.
‘Twas not for gold, nor glory gained
That he set sail that day.
‘Twas something deep inside of him
That called him out to sea—
A voice that few men dare to hear
Though it would set them free.
And if it cost him everything,
To follow that strange voice—
His men, his ship, his gold, his life
Then that would be his choice.
Saturday, March 1, 2008
Persephone
Gentle Souls,
I thought I would share a poem this week. Being in a far away land where there is no real winter, I kind of miss the experience of spring a bit. Wordsworth felt that poetry should find inspiration from memories that are recollected in a place far from the event in time and place. He discusses this in his intro to Lyrical Ballads.
Tintern Abby is a primary example of what he means by that. I didn’t like the poem when I read it the first time through, but now I love it and consider it one of my favorites. Even so, I thought I would put one of my own poems, recollecting a memory of spring,on my blog. I realize that hardly anyone will ever read the stuff I put here, but all the same, I “send forth filament, filament, filament. Seeking the spheres to connect them.”
Regarding my rather archaic tone, Jared Carter once told me that he wanted to get me into the modern world. My poetry could have been written in the days of the Romantics. (Keats, Shelly, Byron, etc) I have tried to get into modern and postmodern poetry in writing and reading, and I do enjoy it enough, but I keep having relapses. All the same, if you happen to read these words, enjoy.
When the maple tree
Is copper green,
And mushrooms in
The wood are seen,
My soul, she comes alive.
What cruel intrigue
Of the gods,
To which the Lord
Of heaven nods,
Did steal my soul from me?
But green, she comes
From Hades’ caves,
And leaves behind
The frozen graves,
Far brighter than before.
I thought I would share a poem this week. Being in a far away land where there is no real winter, I kind of miss the experience of spring a bit. Wordsworth felt that poetry should find inspiration from memories that are recollected in a place far from the event in time and place. He discusses this in his intro to Lyrical Ballads.
Tintern Abby is a primary example of what he means by that. I didn’t like the poem when I read it the first time through, but now I love it and consider it one of my favorites. Even so, I thought I would put one of my own poems, recollecting a memory of spring,on my blog. I realize that hardly anyone will ever read the stuff I put here, but all the same, I “send forth filament, filament, filament. Seeking the spheres to connect them.”
Regarding my rather archaic tone, Jared Carter once told me that he wanted to get me into the modern world. My poetry could have been written in the days of the Romantics. (Keats, Shelly, Byron, etc) I have tried to get into modern and postmodern poetry in writing and reading, and I do enjoy it enough, but I keep having relapses. All the same, if you happen to read these words, enjoy.
When the maple tree
Is copper green,
And mushrooms in
The wood are seen,
My soul, she comes alive.
What cruel intrigue
Of the gods,
To which the Lord
Of heaven nods,
Did steal my soul from me?
But green, she comes
From Hades’ caves,
And leaves behind
The frozen graves,
Far brighter than before.
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