Another Fine Mess

No matter how they try, some guys just keep ending up in the soup.

wok courtesy of Richard Dudley
Laurel & Hardy courtesy of Wikipedia
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Regret

The future's fluid, but the past is set
in stone. You wonder why some people find
it bitter-sweet to wallow in regret

instead of making changes that would let
things turn out better next time. Undefined,
the future's fluid, but the past is set

like hard cement, an unforgiven debt
the present time has failed to leave behind.
It's bitter-sweet. To wallow in regret

may not be useful, but it's a sucker-bet
that folks will clear those memories from their mind.
The future's fluid, but the past is set

like stucco sloughing. People do forget
in self-defense. Amnesia is kind
though bitter-sweet. To wallow in regret

is difficult for lovers newly met
whom every sunrise serves but to remind:
their future's fluid, though their pasts are set
and they've no need to wallow in regret.

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Wraiths

The fog this morning wasn't veils
of gauze, or cotton-wool, or anything
so benign. It was like drowning.
Every breath inhaled aquaria
seething with their miniscule inhabitants,
translucent as a chunk of beach glass clouded
by abrading sand and restless surf. We moved
like divers through the tangled kelp.

So hard to see. It's not that clouds conspire
to hide solid objects. No, fog dissolves
us into wraiths of half-condensing drops
with boundaries equivocal as mist.
I meet you on the corner, but your gaze
passes tangential in refractive haze.

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Was it flarf?

If you don't know what flarf is, check out the Wiki and some of the sources it references. And don't feel bad: I've been roaming the poetry blogosphere for some 3-4 years, have run across the term frequently, and didn't bother to look it up until today.

So it occurs to me that under the broadest possible definition of flarf, which the Wiki gives as "a wide variety of research-software-based modes of composition", some of my poetry may qualify as flarf. For instance, "Your Karma Ran Over My Fox", which used a web-based random word generator to create the keywords. More generally, if Poefusion's Friday 5 and 3 Word Wednesday use RWGs, then I've unknowingly committed a whole lot of flarf over the last year or two. So has anyone who's written poems based on, for instance, Read Write Poem's or the old Poetry Thursday's RWG, or easystreet's RWG.

But probably this definition stretches the meaning of flarf completely out of the original intention. Certainly I don't share the goals of the flarfist collective, which Josh Corey summarized as

the daring of setting out to write deliberately bad poetry so as to put our received ideas of "the poetic" into question.

The original flarfists seem to have used Google- and otherwise internet-generated verbiage to demonstrate that esthetic and language standards at Poetry.com and similar venues were so low that they couldn't distinguish between "real poetry" and random words. It was almost a reverse Turing test-- "Which of these poems was written by a computer?"

Whereas I, and I think most of the people who share my interest in the prompt sites mentioned above, try to write the best poetry we can. For me, using RWGs serves two purposes: as a stretch of my poetic skills, like lifting weights, and as a source of ideas. Plus, occasionally I get a word I don't know and have to look up (like "cicisbeo"). But then, it's never been part of my mission to question our received ideas of the poetic.

As such, I find myself in closer agreement with what Henry Gould defines as AIEE! poetry. Although his explanation is, well, turgid, there are some things here that I strongly agree with:

Gould's poetry is founded on two very basic orientations or principles. Firstly, (1) he thinks of poetry as a distinct medium or mode or form of artistic expression, which by means of its roots in past & very ancient practice, maintains a kind of autonomous & healthy - one might say perennial - presence in the cultural-intellectual life of humanity. This distinct and autonomous mode operates as a kind of translating or transfiguring process : absorbing the events & discourses of real history & experience, & reconfiguring or transmuting them into its own distinct idiom. & here is the key corollary : this process of transfigurement is the radical activity of poetry per se, which brackets or supercedes both the ideological (political) and stylistic (aesthetic) dynamics of stylistic change.

Secondly,(2) - with (1) clearly in mind as a basis - Gould's poetry is rooted, along with all authentic poetry, in an inner telos or drive toward clarity, wholeness, and recapitulation (of experience). Poetry, in other words, aspires to simplicity-in-complexity : to the making of a clear & compelling mirror (the simple) of a differentiated and substantial reality (the complex). & this aspiration in turn is grounded in the sense of firm ontological ground itself : an Aristotelian-Aquinian-Maxi-musical notion of a holistic Cosmos consisting of Real, Integral Particulars (Individuals). Things are Real, and unmistakably Themselves (ie. they are not simply identifiable with, or reducible to, their various Descriptions or Labels). History is an Actual Record of the Real Process of the Change & Development of Things through Time. & Poetry is the Distinctive Expression of the Real Individual's Intellectual-Aesthetic Synthesis of the Real Actualities So Described. Personhood & Individuality are substantial and irreducible. So, also, are Intellectual Universals & the Process of History - the relation between the Individual & the Social-Historical (Common, Universal) Actuality.

Poetry, in other words, has a substantial intellectual grounding in Truth. But this grounding is not simply a given : it is the result of the Poet's own effort to discover & synthesize more General Truths. It is the grafting process of the unique & playful act of artistic making with its own wider contexts. Thus Great & True Poetry upholds this crown of artistic endeavor - this grafting process with the intellectual & experiential currents of the Real & Actual Larger World of Time, Space & History - as the real fruit - the ultimate aim & original source - of its own Traditions.

Gould's multifarious extended poetic Projects - all the long & short poems - can thus be viewed as forms of poetic Orientation toward a Larger World. Through the mode of art, poetry invests Experience with formulae of intellectual-emotional Meaning : the underlying structure or holistic arrangement of these discovered Meanings reveals a distinct Viewpoint, which simultaneously expresses Individual Personhood and World-Historical Reality. It becomes a "Henry" World, in other words : "Henry" cannot be exiled from his own verbal model of Truth.

(Note that the original contained a lot of italic emphases which didn't copy: I encourage you to follow the link and read the essay as written.)

No, I'm not going to begin identifying myself as an AIEE!ist. (For one thing, I can't be bothered to keep reaching over to the ! key.) All the poetic identification I need, or that you need to know about me, is over there in the sidebar. But it's fun, from time to time, to try to locate myself as a stickpin on the map of contemporary poetry. Sort of like looking up your house on GoogleEarth. But I do like a couple of things about HG's AIEE! definition.

"form of artistic expression, which by means of its roots in past & very ancient practice, maintains a kind of autonomous & healthy - one might say perennial - presence in the cultural-intellectual life of humanity"-- one of the things that disturbs me about contemporary poetic culture is how ignorant it is of its own history (and this is definitely a reflection of larger society and not a distinctive feature of poetic culture). The fact that poetry has been a nearly universal part of human culture for as far back as we can trace language, suggests that the need to generate and receive poetry is a fundamental aspect of humanity, deep-wired into the levels of the brain where biology and culture intertwine. Poetry is not going to go away, current anxieties about the future of publishing notwithstanding. Arts don't die, they just shed their skins and slither alongside us from one failing Eden to another.

"Gould's poetry is rooted, along with all authentic poetry, in an inner telos or drive toward clarity, wholeness, and recapitulation (of experience). Poetry, in other words, aspires to simplicity-in-complexity : to the making of a clear & compelling mirror (the simple) of a differentiated and substantial reality (the complex)." This too is a fundamental aspect of humanness: the ability, and need, to build abstract models to help us negotiate complex realities. In fact, the above could stand as a pretty good summary of the goals of science, except that science additionally requires that the "experience" (experimental evidence) be verifiable and repeatable. Poetry doesn't necessarily require this.

This gets back to one of my big gripes about modern poetry culture: the dogma that poetry is about and only about personal experience. Gould, I think, rejects this orientation in his last couple of paragraphs: "Poetry, in other words, has a substantial intellectual grounding in Truth. But this grounding is not simply a given : it is the result of the Poet's own effort to discover & synthesize more General Truths... Gould's multifarious extended poetic Projects - all the long & short poems - can thus be viewed as forms of poetic Orientation toward a Larger World."

The General Truth which I aspire to discover is Allah; the Larger World toward which I orient myself is the bosom of the Beloved. Whether Gould shares that particular orientation, I couldn't say: he refers to himself as having been a "Jesus freak", but doesn't specify (in my brief glancing through his blogs) anything about his current religious beliefs or any influence they may have on his poetics. But I think we share an outward-turning perspective that places us at odds with contemporary dogma.

So, was "Your Karma" flarf? Nah. It was fun to write, and I think a pretty good poem: touched on a lot of things I think are important, met some fairly demanding form criteria, and did it not too awkwardly. Might be publishable quality after revision. Is it better or worse for having used RWGenerated endwords? Irrelevant: without those endwords, it would never have been written. And that, ultimately, is how poetry works for me: God sends me words.

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Winter Forms

Reflecting nacre fog and phantom sun
the river's brighter than the sky today,
a path of ripples, luminous and gray
that's trod by winter geese in black and dun.
These sober citizens in drab attire
are surely not the birds who filled the skies
of last year's autumn with their haunting cries,
that gypsy crowd, that wanderlusting choir.

Like caterpillars cryptic to confuse
predacious eyes, I dress in winter hues
and trudge the pavement, waiting for the spring's
inevitable metamorphoses
to span my shoulderblades with vivid wings
and fill my throat with calls of wild geese.


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The Concerns of the Air-Breathing

The fish seem to have slipped away
frightened by the swirl of red mud
from banks collapsing into flood. It was
a harsh winter.

They waited patient under ice
breathing slow without bubbles, while we
cursed and shoveled snow and dodged
falling branches,

the concerns of the air-breathing, while fish
lived in stasis behind their frozen gills
trusting in the eventual thaw, betrayed at last
by too-sudden spring,

swept out to sea or suffocated in silt.
And still I find myself leaning out
over gunmetal waters and searching for
a bright reflection.

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Ruthless Erosion

For 3 Word Wednesday: Caress. Jagged. Ruthless.

gentle ocean waves
caress jagged coastal cliffs
ruthless erosion

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Your Karma Ran Over My Fox

Last night—this morning—someone speeding hit
a fox. I found him dying in the brush
where he had crawled, just inches from his dig.
I tried to get him to a vet, but he
repelled me with a sharp-toothed snarl, no quibble
but a rank defiance and good-bye.

The conference champion gets a first-round bye
and Golden Globes are granted to a hit
TV show (are they biased? Let's not quibble),
while commissions are the Fuller Brush
man's earned reward. Each man receives what he
deserves, they say—it's karma, you must dig.

So cosmic justice says that I should dig
a grave for this poor fox? And by the bye,
about that reckless driver—doesn't he
get karmic tickets for the fox he hit?
A glancing blow, it's true, a sidelong brush—
but still, the fox is dead. That's just a quibble.

And "unintentional" is also quibble.
The careless comment and the vicious dig,
the calculated cut, the casual brush-
off, both draw blood. Each long-drawn-out good-bye
begins with blindfold darts, that somehow hit
the mark. He pled his innocence, but he

knew better all along. Like lawyers, he
reduced the heart of matters to a quibble
knowing he did damage with each hit.
The deepest traps are always those we dig
ourselves; our authorship gives us no bye
and self-made pitfalls hidden in the brush

are lethal as the arsenic on the brush
that Monet, absent-minded, licked while he
recorded emerald green impressions.'Bye.
I've no time for your everlasting quibble.
Leave me here alone and let me dig
a victim's grave for the poor fox you hit.

His teeth are hard, and gleam. No quibbler, he.
I dig black dirt to hide his orange brush.
It hits me hard to say the last good-bye.

--for Read Write Poem. End words courtesy of Watchout4Snakes.

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Wordle: Inaugural address

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Painted Sky

crows courtesy of Asif Akbar
paint courtesy of Warwick Kay
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Plasma Arc Incineration

Like peat bogs, landfills relinquish treasure
by the sleigh-load. Fill the crucible
with junk and wait for the glow: a bit of sun
fish-netted in lines of magnetic force.

Atoms ripped off molecules slalom round
inside their plasma bottle like demented
flickering fire-nymphs. Syngas-powered
dynamos throb in steady synchrony.

Smitten by malign mischief, Eden aches
with coal-smoke bruises, plutonium sores
and petroleum cankers. Slag at least is inert,
scarlike, strong and ugly glass material.

more about plasma arc incineration
words courtesy of Read Write Poem

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Air and Simple Gifts

For 3 Word Wednesday: Cadence. Humble. Resolve.
And for John Williams.

simple cadences
proclaim the resolve of stone
and air's humbleness

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A New Parade

Get out the flags; let's have a new parade.
It may be pomp, it may be circumstance
and nothing more. But even so, a chance
to stand and show the world that we are made
of better stuff than we've been showing here.
Against all odds, against all prejudice
we're bound for glory! Friends, I give you this:
We stood for hope. We stood against the fear.

A job is done. Another one begins.
There's no doubt, we'll still suffer for our sins
and years of work and struggle are ahead
to rebuild liberties, to make our bread.
But that will come. Today we have a new
parade on Pennsylvania Avenue.

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Being There

I try to be unmoved and cynical
about the promises of politicians
and realistic about change. We've been sold
a bill of goods before. But still
I wish I'd been there.

I wish I'd stood out all night in the cold
clutching hope and waving tiny flags
elbow to elbow with Tuskegee veterans
and fresh-faced twenty-something kids.
I wish I'd been there

with the ghosts of Malcom X and Reverend King
with the thousands who packed the Mall
from edge to teeming edge.

I cried when Aretha sang.
I cried when they played "Simple Gifts". I cried
when he took the oath of office—you know
I feel like I was there.

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Inauguration Day, 2009

God be praised. I never thought this would come in my lifetime.

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Camellias

This morning's sun is not the honey light
of summer, thick with golden dust and slow
as syrup pouring from a jug. It's bright,
but thin and cold, and slanted steep and low
across the hillsides. Frost is blooming white,
these flowers forced by icy winds that blow
as hard this morning as they blew all night.
Too cold for rain, but far too dry for snow.

And I am restless, pacing to and fro
enduring winter's grip, that holds us tight.
But my camellias, which somehow know
what weather to expect-- they're always right--
have broken bud. Now scarlet petals show
outside the window where I sit and write.

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Pilgrims

I asked an ancient pilgrim by the river
"Why do you wait here every day
not knowing when the ferry's due?"
He said
"How am I different from you?"

I asked the hatchling albatross
"How do you dare to launch yourself across
the vast and stormy ocean
not knowing what awaits you on the other side?"
She said
"How am I different from you?"

I woke a sleeping seed to ask
"Will you sprout, not knowing
if there will be enough rain for your roots
and sun for your leaves?"
It said
"How am I different from you?"

I had a map but it vanished
leaving an enigmatic smile in my hands.
There were no signposts
and the albatross never came back
though evening was falling.
The old man had gone on ahead.
The seed in my pocket whispered "Put me back
and have courage."


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House on Fire

Strange to see a house with shadows falling
up against the roof. As if this canyon
hung in air, inverted like the tolling
reminiscent bells.
And some companion
finds me in the solitude of mountains,
draws me to this red rock, draws me under
(I forget the drip-drop sound of fountains),
shows me dust. O listen to the thunder.

What it said. It whispered. Anasazi
ghost, you show me fear in shapes of painted
stone. But we're old enemies, acquainted
far too well. The years of kamikaze
bombers and of tear-gas crowd control
have scarred the same red shadows on my soul.

Image of House on Fire ruin at Cedar Mesa: courtesy of illryion and via readwritepoem
Tolling reminiscent bells: T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land
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Ent Wine

I think I probably misinterpreted the first of this week's 3 Word Wednesday's words. But anyway: Entwine. Forfeit. Tryst.

we tryst in the wood
forfeit humanity for
a drink of Ent wine

Although a haiku is about as un-Ent-like as a poem can get...

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Cellular Automaton

A cell depends on neighbors for its fuel
but they can steal resources that it needs
to stay alive. So competition's cruel
as each automaton both grows and bleeds
like robots scavenging for rusted parts
in graveyards of machinery, antique
repositories of synthetic hearts
that might stave off a killing losing streak.

Initial states define how things will go:
the math's deterministic, though complex.
An oscillating steady-state may grow,
or chaos spring from crashing glider sex--
but don't put too much value on the name.
They call it Life. It's really just a game.

More about the game of Life

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Hard-Time Blues

We got those blues, got the hard-time blues
We got no money and there's no good news
got the hard-time blues.

Got the grocery bill and the gas bill too
got to buy me a coat and some winter shoes
got the hard-time blues.

Neighbor says they're cutting off his phone
couldn't pay down on his homeowner's loan
got the hard-time moan.

Hospitals all say if you are not insured
they won't operate and you'll end up stored
in the hard-time ward.

They evicted the old lady 'cross the street
she went down the block with slippers on her feet
on the hard-luck beat.

The corner store put up an out-of-business sign
and I heard the owner telling a story just like mine,
a hard-luck line.

Worked overtime and I didn't get my pay
'cause the boss wouldn't fill my card the right way
it's a hard-time day.

Oh, give us some help with the hard-time blues
Just give us a chance and we'll do what we can do
to shake those hard-time blues.

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Larval Queen

There's an enchanted princess sleeping
in a six-sided cell. No kiss will wake her
but in her own time she will come forth
armored and carrying a sword.
Then legions bearing black-and-gold banners
will bow to her command. Warriors perform
the Sun Dance while the princes look on,
candidates for her hand, all doomed to die.

The old queen's chambers are vacant
and attendants dust and clean them.
The princess lies under a silken shroud
dreaming of sky under her wings,
princes pursuing her into the sun
and the burning drunkenness of roses.

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Swan Quills

If you must pluck these feathers from my wing
then let them be my tongues, to cry in pain
and utter songs that live swans never sing.

I'd have you feel the wounding, and the sting
of cold on naked flesh that will remain
if you must pluck these feathers from my wing.

A flightless swan's a shamed and broken thing
like shoreline flotsam stranded by the rain
and utters songs that live swans never sing,

abandoned by the wind. You'll see me cling
to earth, a slave in gravity's cold chain.
If you must pluck these feathers from my wing

then know these stolen plumes will only bring
you soul-death. You will walk among the slain
and utter songs that live swans never sing

until the bird and poet's suffering
unite in sad, compassionate refrain.
If you must pluck these feathers from my wing
you'll learn the songs that live swans never sing.

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Fusion

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January's Children

January's vast wings are sweeping
away November leaves, December snow
blustery and warm, loud enough to wake
the violets still snuggled up and sleeping
in their tender beds of mold. Oh, shake
your children gently, January, throw
the covers back, but we need keeping
from the frost and from the heartbreak.
Give us space and warmth enough to grow.


Hold on: January's wings are sweeping
out November leaves, December snow.
The treetops dance as wild as if they're keeping
hold on January's wings. Are sweeping
changes coming to wake up the sleeping
violets and make them start to grow?
Hold on, January's wings. We're sweeping
out November leaves, December snow.

Two versions of this. The first is free rhyme on a more or less terza rima skeleton. The second is a triolet.

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More Ephemeral than Snow

What is more ephemeral than snow,
those fragile fractal hexagons of ice
that cling a little while and then let go?

A thunderstorm moves off and leaves a bow
of colors cutting through the rainy skies
to stay a little while, and then let go.

A soap and water bubble may be so
short-lived that no-one gets to see it twice,
yet scarcely more ephemeral than snow.

In spring the caterpillars hatch and grow
to metamorphose into butterflies
who cling a little while, and then let go.

I wake to hear the midnight rain, and know
the drifts will all be melted when I rise,
for what is more ephemeral than snow?

I go to God to ask this question, though
I know too well what He always replies:
that we are more ephemeral than snow—
we cling a little while, and then let go.

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Crimson Signature

Bombardment shattered
stucco off the crimson-spattered
walls and left their wire-mesh skeletons exposed.
I bat away the dust that pricks my nose.
Candy-sweet geraniums by a broken door
give their plaintive cry:
is this revolution? Transformation? Alchemy,
or just the crimson signature of war?

--for readwritepoem's Wordle prompt

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Hidden in Lightning

Beloved, come out from behind your veils,
from behind the waterfall and the night sky
the sandstone cliffs and the murmuring trees.
I know you are there. You blind me
with the beauty of the world. You hide
from me in the flash of the lightning
and the ripple of sunlight across grass.
You blind me with awe. I can see you only
with my eyes closed. I can hear you only
in silence.

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New Lessons

We're crucified on space-time axes,
trapped in monotonic old to new
progress. The only lesson
we've learned is that the cup

won't take back the spilled milk. A couple
of your co-workers got the axe?
That word "downturn" is all over the news
and there's not much we can do to lessen

the impact. That's a grim lesson.
That's an awfully bitter cup
to drink in the shadow of the axe
or the hangman's noose.

Earth rolls slowly into a new
year, and the darkness lessens
like ink pouring out of a cup
tilted along the planet's axis.

Each new year guarantees access
to a couple more lessons.

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Snowlight and Glory

Rain until midnight
snow before daylight
fear the storm's fury.
Look out the windows—
indigo shadows
snowlight and glory!

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Miswriting

In repose, her face is sad
but sunlight from the kitchen window warms it.
She writes on onionskin paper
with hands as wrinkled as orange peel.

"My dear granddaughter.
I hesitate to give you advice—"
crosses it out.
"Have you asked your mother—"
crosses it out.
"Viduity makes one no expert on marriage—"
crosses it out,

lines of black through words in black
when what she wants is red, red
debit ink to say:
blood of my blood, all choice is loss
all choice is gain.

--for Poefusion
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Weather Report

Rainy,
heavy at times
turning into partly cloudy
so why'd I wake up this morning
snowbound?

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