Shape Chat. Shape!

I see that things have a shape, but what that means I can’t say with certainty. But that is not my position. My position is shapely. I will not shape my position, but it is certainly shape-driven.

There is a shape, and here is a shape. Life takes shape, and non-life. Non-life. I do not know what that is. I am surrounded by what I do not understand.

I do not have explanations when certainly my poems would be served by better explaining myself. Is it work, family, that arrests my shape talk? No, it is not.

I am drawn to God’s announcement to Moses, not that he is, but that God says, “I am.” That distinction, or division (what defines necessarily divides) is intrinsic to belief and passion, or passionate belief. God can say “I am.” I cannot say “He is.” Logically I can, but logic does not always apply.

 

I am not trying to make some kind of butt-headed point, though I think it often appears that I am.

I cannot say much without severing a kind of thread(“-like shape,” I suppose).

I am a pathetic flute-playing lunatic. No, I am a pure amateur. This is a kind of fulfillment of the English Ideal I was suckled on. Right?

Well, I love you and I love poetry and life. So that you will not be derided for your judgment, see that I was born in the sin of shape.

People like me, we add nothing new.

But is that kind of honesty worth anything either? I have no technique for criticizing others, except to say, so what. Well, so shape. So hope. So we’ll see. So what.

I love poems that do the right thing by poetry. What is that.

That’s all for now. Thanks for reading.

Where I Respond to Anonymous

I sadly only occasionally receive comments to my posts - lots of views, though. And, I have amazingly faithful friends and a stunning wife who read, so I am happy on that score. But, more sadly, I even less occasionally think to see if there are comments. But I did see the other day this comment to one of my posts:

you are a dickhead

 

The comment was left by that friend to all creatures great and small, Anonymous. Imagine my pleasure in being so addressed. Wishing I could have responded with something like "I may be a dickhead, but at least I am not a coward," I deleted the comment and went on with my day.

 

But I have returned to this comment in thought and feeling since then, and in the grace of knowing, I am prepared to say that I think this comment was not only appropriate, but keen on insight. I agree with Anonymous that I am a dickhead, and this is why.

 

I have come to think like a dick, that is, like a penis. I use my head, my brain, like a penis. I do this because the alternative is not available to me. I think aggressively. I get excited and write, and then I am spent. After some time, and under various stimuli, I write again. Again and again. I write a lot. A fair boast for a middle-aged male. If someone reading a blog thinks me a dickhead, well, they should read my poems. My poems are penile in the extreme. They are almost all shaped like blocks, some of them quite...long. But, honestly, I am among the most penile of writers, and a veritable dickhead, to be sure.

 

By the way, the room of the bar where I sit hosts two other men and their computers. One wears overalls cut off at the knees and no shirt; the other, somewhat older, a button-down oxford and a beret. I am clad in black chinos from Cabelas (I only buy pants at Cabelas as I can rely on no one else for reasonably-priced size 32/34's), a striped pearl-snap long sleeve, and a barn jacket from LL Bean.

 

Anyway, I am a dickhead. A dickhead. I am neither ashamed nor proud. Frankly, I think everyone knows this and so I am relieved, even gratified, that it is out in the open. I want no more awkward silences. And I hope no one is inclined to respond as if to defend me. Posted by Anonymous, you would have the entire earth's living population to address, excepting only you and myself, save those who have no computer access. You have better things to do than defend me, and I have better things to do than thank you for your efforts. Oh, I am a dickhead. But, a loving one. Ick.

 

I think there is more to be written on this subject. I write like a dick (as a dick would write - and therefore am a dickhead) because I believe that one should be resolute. One is not required to always be right, but you should make an effort to give folks something to agree with or object to. Perhaps my critic simply did not like what I wrote. The term "dickhead" is after all used as a pejorative. But I notice that the context assigns to this term the ultimate meaning. Compare, "You are such a dickhead" with "Don't be a dickhead." Dickhead dwells perhaps alongside a term like Jerk, but it is somewhat more susceptible to nuance, such as I have described. I think.

 

An Anonymous (I have to assume the same one) responded to another posting that mentioned Dante, where I reaffirmed a personal commitment to shoot for the stars, so to speak, by inserting a dictionary definition of the word "pretentious." I deleted that comment too, I am sorry to say, for it was perfectly apt. I most certainly am pretentious. I pretend to greatness. I will continue to do so. I think we all will, in whatever way suits us.

 

I will continue I believe to write like a penis. Whether Anonymous is done with me, well, I suspect Anonymous is. He/she has done yeoman's work in reading my writings and assigning memorable, cogent terms to the experience. In all honesty, I can't ask for more. More. More. Oh, yeah....

Pants on Straight! Complaint and Other Terms

I am reminded constantly that I do not exist as a writer. I know this and I accept it. I am grateful for it. I am reminded when I read or hear other writers either complain or confess their lack of success. It is all the same to my ears. It is all complaint and makes me wonder how, lacking the most elementary self-knowledge, they can get food to their mouths. I mean to say that writers convey ideas. If you  complain, then that is the idea you are conveying. So, as a suggestion, you might keep quiet, or think about things, until you have something worthwhile to share with people who have taken time out of their lives to listen to you.

So I try not to complain, except with respect to complainers. And I am sorry about that. No doubt, the lives of writers who are less noted than other writers is a hard one. I should know. And yet, I am grateful I do not exist as a writer. In everything else I do I exist, often to a dizzying and provoking degree. The difference between somewhat existing in poetry (to the extent that some might know my name or say kind/provocative things about my writing, or me as a person), only to be forgotten in ten, 20, 30 years' time, and being never ever known, seems to me immaterial. If, in the other hand, the choice is between being never known and being immortal (though, that term is suspect - as who immortalizes whom and for what purposes, etc.), well, that would not be my choice to make. If my writing were so good - and it's clearly not - to immortalize my name, I would be over-flowing with admirers. It is not, and I am not.

In the sort of economy I describe the only reliable currencies are time and opportunity, being reverse sides of the coin of the realm of the invisible. I exist as others exist, open to time and opportunity, perhaps to write. I publish my own work. I move on. And I am grateful. This gratitude is not in itself remarkable or interesting. It does not seem to me any more interesting than a writer's complaint. But there is this difference, that gratitude is open-ended. It is borne out of love, and so it answers to any thought, impression, or question - or should - whereas complaint is circular, feeding on cause, again and again, until it dies on the branch.

It remains to acknowledge that gratitude can perhaps be a sort of complaint, I guess. I mean, the obvious point of this post - my lack of concern at being invisible - is a complaint, is it not? - against normative perceptions of writers or publishing. I mean, one could make that case. But then, it really doesn't go anywhere unless you can demonstrate the sort of falsity that ultimately characterizes the complainer: disregard of self. The complainer almost always is a person who has bought into a system and now for whatever reason is mad at themselves for having done so - but who (and this is key) lacks either the ingenuity to offer a meaningful alternative, or the resolve to live by one. It makes little difference whether one blames others or oneself. We're all in this together, and the scent of discourse does not carry a signature.

Well, resolved I am to live by the outlines I describe in these postings. And I certainly have no criticism to offer against other, and normative means, of living as a writer. Contests, independent publishing - whatever works for that individual, I am all for it. I am delighted (and feel relieved) by the success of friends, and I am sympathetic to their problems. But then, my friends are not complainers. They work hard and their accomplishments are well-deserved.

...and for this, I am grateful!

Next One, What One, This One

This MS I'm working on is a freak. That's all I can say with any reasonable accuracy. I have poems like this (5 or so) that seem to me to pretend at a kind of release from various obligations:

 

A thought arose like fresh

wooden shavings. A red car

arrived, its wheels wings,

the windshield flexible or

tender. Monks chorused and

strummed to a teenage moon

- life was new as life was

the same. I signed rightup

for an ordinal cruise. Hot

wires across bamboo leaves

- the incipient sparkings,

a book party. Shake it out

I am very happy with "ordinal cruise." Anyway, I have a few of these and though, quite reasonably I believe, that I was on a mission of cleansing. But, no, for a few of the following sort or variety appeared:

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 For this, I blame Litsa Spathi (and others) of Fluxus.

 

So one can have some of one thing and some of another and have a nice back and forth, presupposing two (2) points of reference. I mean to say, I know  am not simply fishing. 54 year-old Anglo poets do not fish. They plant and re-plant. But after working last night I have the constructive (3, so far):

 

It is time to write 3

poems. A shadow of my

friend the bird of my

doubt lifts a skirt 3

times in rhythm as my

poem takes form as my

tendencies No. 1 of 3

hatch or take hold my

hands carpet tacks my

interior eye called 3

 

And this sort of thing, of which I have only example, but which I fear will proliferate as somehow my mind views this assemblage as a current Acts (which another recent MS played up more  faithfully):

 

I make a point of losing my notes. Why.

Okay well I don’t take notes. Vacancies

- opportunities, okay. We come back all

the time. I’m here. You’re there. But I

am setting a table. I am establishing a

kind of platform. The one of occurrence

makes note-taking remedial, where there

is no illness to speak of. Look, happen

& heartbreak, where we want to be. Love

is not a problem, it is not a mystery –

we are the problem we are not a mystery

 

I just want to say that if you have made it this far, you are a better friend than I deserve.

 

So, okay, actually I'm glad this thing is headed this way, whatever that means for Ms. No. 22. I have learned to become a physician for my output, taking all analogies in stride. I'm not even printing this stuff out yet, or have a title anywhere near in mind, or conceiving a cover drawing - so I'd say nothing will happen to define a final product until I have 60 to 80 pages. I'm thinking to publish in December 2013. But, that could move up if I catch fire.