My dog is napping While I'm reading Paperbacks of poem craft. I catch myself breathing A line, out loud and low . . . "Trochee anapest, iamb, dactyl" My dog snaps awake, with his head Flopped to the side, eyes wide, wondering What wild spirit possesses me.
My neighborhood is bawdy with blossoms Their blushes witness to A soil-bound dawn In the West Michigan Monotony of Dim days Choking for light
My world building machine has shifted its operating system from money and fame to poetry and kindness. It has been a terrifying transition. I am still thinking in the old familiar terms of power and possessions, when my new systems don't support those cruel programs. Like when I transitions from PC to Mac in 2007. I kept thinking in the wild west of windows instead of the gated community of Steve's sleek leviathan. I have to actively unthink how to move in the world whenever the lazy meathead of ego starts to beat my desires over the head with expectations of Empire and cash.
I am writing pages of poems. Filling folios. I keep a notebook near me at all times. I cannot stop thinking in line, meter, and image. Sometimes, as a drift off to sleep, a bright line will cross my field of mind; I enjoy it like the presence of a wild thing, knowing it will dart away the moment dream begins or if I try to capture it, how it will run.
Here are a few fragments, bits and pieces from my journals, things not quite formed. Embryonic poems, still growing nails and teeth. Submitted for your review, comment, and curiosity.
so what if i like to imagine the experience of trees their life and fruiting? how joyous it must be for roots pushing like summer fingers into cool earth. how miraculous the sway of limbs heavy with leaves, suddenly lifted by wind. to vibrate with the sap-pump, heart-trunk, conduit of root rut and twig twitch is this wrong of me, O science? do i speak heresy, O materialist? ---- Is it worth the wonder to plunder our lands for the insane idea of growth without end? --- My head is pathetic with prophecies --- water is magic you cannot convince me otherwise even light bends to the arcane power of the triune molecule --- the weight of what we've hidden is falling on top of our five-year-old son the world is not a wonderland of friendship filled with sharing and laughter (although rainbows do shine after storms)
Whither Shall I Go? 