A Turn up the Steps

If my thoughts were living things, they would long have died from abuse and neglect, having been allowed to wander on their own, unclothed, without provisions. They know where they come from but have no language to express themselves along the highway, and no sense of destination. They do not stop to exchange information, except to pause to announce themselves regardless of who might be near, if anyone - an occasional soul. What I could do for my thoughts is a long-foregone certainty: less than anyone I know is willing to do. My sense of duty toward my own thoughts expresses itself extemporaneously - but this position is a function of my heritage. I know that. I am not convinced that exchange is all it's cracked up to be. I suspect it is a form of certainty in seeking partisan support. But I like my thoughts alone. I believe that a thought worth having will better survive and in a truer state if left to itself. It would only serve to weaken or malign my thoughts if I put my hand to their surroundings. After all, they are free, here, to persist among their own kind. That is a quiet sort of life, granted, but no stranger than what we are left to amongst ourselves.

I say thoughts and may mean poems. They are one and the same to me, practically speaking.

I believe I am into a new manuscript whose challenges I want to outline. I will be fun to look back in six months or so when I expect to be completed, to see how my impressions bore out, so here are some things I see from the outset. I say "things" to indicate that I have no idea what to call what's coming next.

Since Early December of 2012 I have undergone catechism and initiation into the Roman Catholic Church, and so all I read is the sort of material you would expect. This material makes a lot of hay out of historical, revelatory, and prophetic events that occurred and are occurring, in groups and personally. The ongoing effect (and it is an intended effect, to be sure) lends a peculiarly illustrative nature to the conversation, exposition, and dialogue. This illustrative effect ranges from the sentimental to the pastoral to the pyrotechnic. It should be said that the writings of contemporary secular theologians entirely miss this effect and are, therefore, in my humble opinion, inclined toward dullness and redundancy. While I am inclined to want to capture this illustrative manner of rendering what it is I do when I write poems.

I do not mean merely writing imagey poems. That is not what I mean at all. It means that the author is required to relate fluid boundaries under the aegis of an expectation that both truth and love are realized by one reader at a time and only in the moment of choosing. That moment though is not one of crisis or difference per se. It is a moment of recognition, such as might occur when glancing up from a book on the face of a familiar landscape or friend, now mortal and incumbent. I also want to provide titles as I have not been titling lately and thought I should enjoy that for a while.

There. I think that's all I need to say for now.