Some More Poems

Four poems from the last year and a half.

Eve of the Prairie
I awoke from a walking sleep
Seeing nothing but darkness deep
Feeling dirt with my naked feet
Only thing that I had, a sheet

In an instant, through parting clouds
Moonlight shined, lifting off the shrouds
Cast around by the dark, and yet
Fog so light was still strongly set

Through a cloud which still hung aloft
Streamed a beam that was firm yet soft
It alighted on something slight
Where the mist had been twisting tight

Moving closer to see the spot
Sensing something was in the lot
Then I quickly beheld a straight
Form, erect with a strength innate

She was staring into the sky
With a fear stirring in her eye
Whether cold or her nakedness
Caused her shivering, I confess

I don't know, being too surprised
By a figure so undisguised
Taking one more small step towards her
Something snapped, moving her to stir

Seeing me only trebled all
She was feeling, and with a small
Gasp she ran towards some woods afar
In a line with the morning star

I pursued, both my feet in pain
From the dirt and the stalks of grain
Closing in, I then paused before
Entering, for my feet were sore

Lunar light lit wet bark so faint
Casting silver on silver paint
It transfixed me, I stood in awe
Of this grove in a place so raw
I began to observe a glow
Humming 'round, forcing night to go
Scanning tree after tree for some
Sign of her, feeling almost numb

There she finally stood, more calm
Now, at ease; stretching out a palm,
She was beckoning me come in
Yet I paused; for right there and then

Faintest sun streams cascaded down
From afar and began to drown
All around with red-orange light
Showing all of this stunning sight

I then begged her to come with me
Offering, calmly, peacefully,
Food and rest; taking off the sheet
I revealed from my head to feet

My own body, which seemed to shock
Her. She gasped, which then caused a flock
Of birds to start, flying towards the dawn.
I myself only gave a yawn,

Tired from wand'ring this stretch of time.
Still, I called, and she moved to climb
Up, though slowly, the wooded hill
Into the sheet to escape the chill.

The sun had risen just on the edge
Of view, its warmth past a distant hedge
Overflowing, beyond which there
Lay my home in the prairie air.

Leading her, calmly, with my arm
From her garden and through a farm,
I could sense that she felt reposed,
Freed by being now unexposed.
            - 8/18/2011

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Arse Nova
A Man tossed a Chair out a Window
            and declared that it was art,
Saying: “Indeed it is, it inspires
            Thought and is also from my Heart.

From his Heart that Chair was launched
            out of his high Windowsill.
“A Martyr for Art have I become?” thought Chair,
            “’Tis much against my Will.”

O Chair! that was thrust into Oblivion
            and made a Sacrifice for the Aesthetic,
You had a Life so comfortable
            and then a Fate so pathetic.

In the Alley this grisly Tableau
            attracted the leers of a Mob.
They contemplated it, these Critics:
            a Hobo, a Kitty, and a Slob.

The Kitty hissed, dissed, and left in Disdain
            while the Slob could only vomit.
The Hobo, however, took the Sacrifice
            and made a warming Fire from it.
-finished 8/16/12

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The morning yawns a groggy dawn
A throng, the early creatures, croak out their song
What a wetness wafts from the wheaty lawn
     -and the pall of another smell as well-

The shawl of night is not fully gone, so the air-
A wall of trees, long and tall, dense and hale,
     grabs the view, blocks the vision,
     until, in movement is sensed, through the thicket,
     a flicker of sound, a snap,
     sinews of lively light,
     intimations supporting the suspicions
     of the source of that smell-

And the air-
Moving past this proof appearing from the treeline,
     set for summer,
It is seen in surrounding fullness-

The vast sky smokes purple streaks of gray
     as the black soil bleeds fire up the hill.
Such a spectrum: green grass, gilded grain-
     but all gone, as grungy ashes seed the ground,
     and roaring ribbons of red and orange writhe around and burn each other

The scene slides along, ascending the slight slope,
When, even as a thing that suddenly-
A solitary oak, slightly aside!
Flames lap and lick on almost all sides,
     and though it would continue to melt and move past,
I stop amidst the infernic maelstrom,
     my mind in heat with envious thought:

The oak, though old in years, was young in season,
     seemingly behind its brethren in the treeline I past
     for the light, even against the stronger light of the blaze,
     still shone from its leaves;
The oak, in the fore of the fire, felt that which I could not,
     I who must still glide along safely.
Yet I can say I saw this before noon could say anything.
            -finished 10/8/12

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"Ave Avocado"
A Sonnet


Tear-drop emerald of our food
Seeming fruit in the conditional mood:
If your taste were less subjunctive,
And you were more easy to denude,
I would perhaps eat you more oft.
My salads, with your meat so soft,
Would be yet more inviving,
And my health raised aloft.
As it is, you are hard at heart;
Your character tasteless; we must part.
I cannot have you fully, anyway,
As your inner-self is quite apart
From any man's nature to digest you;
Your nature, then, of charm so divests you.

"When did you become British?"

We have had AT&T U-verse for some two years, I think, and recently we upgraded to HD and added some channels. My favorite addition has been BBC America and is now my go-to channel when I feel compelled to watch TV (typically when I'm crocheting this afghan that will cost me a pretty penny). I was watching it yesterday, and my dad just burst out "When did you become British?" I didn't respond aloud, but in my head I thought "Oh, dear man, I've been British my whole life. As well as Continental, Scandinavian, what-will-you." I honestly have very little self-sense of a nationality; oh, I'm likely certainly American, but I'm also certainly not 'Mur'can. Usually, whatever nation I am reading about at the moment is the one I feel most at home in. One of my earliest fascinations was geography/social studies, and I would look through, transfixed, this National Geographic world atlas we have (from 1993); it had a section on every nation in the world, with pictures, and I would think how wonderful it would be to be there, with these people who, though they wore different clothes, spoke different languages, ate strange foods, seemed incredibly familiar, that I felt a deep kinship with (and, if you are unaware, I grew up in a well-nigh completely white farming town in the thick of the Midwest). Alas, the closest I've come to joining them is Connecticut. However, I've lately felt a very strong urge to "walk the Earth," like Jules in Pulp Fiction:

Perhaps the one thing that has really kept me from doing such is eloquence: I am afraid I will be more like Moses, slow of speech and tongue, and left wondering the dessert with people who hoard, feed, and sleep, and know not me. No language barrier lasts in the face of exuberance, but I might be too subtle and too timid. Not to mention too poor.

UPDATE: I have just become a little more British, having received an offer to study for an MA in Composition at Durham University. Now comes the hard part: financing. My options are, at the moment, take out a massive loan and just go, or delay till next year until scholarship and grant options open up again. As weak as I am with the way my life has been, I could easily give in and take out the loan, but I must have patience. Besides, in the interim, I can explore the possibility of teaching English abroad.

Love. . . Affection. . . Esteem

          Our wills and fates do so contrary run

          That our devices are overthrown:

          Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own.

          [Hamlet, III.ii. 207-209] 

"There is the great lesson of 'Beauty and the Beast,' that a thing must be loved before it is lovable." - G. K. Chesterton

"That kind of communication in Persuasion depends upon deep 'affection,' a word that Austen values over 'love.' 'Affection' between woman and man, in Austen, is the more profound and lasting emotion." - Harold Bloom, The Western Canon

"Value in Shakespeare, as Jane Austen admirably learned from him, is bestowed upon one character by or through another or others and only because of the hope of shared esteem ." - Harold Bloom, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human

 "The reason we all like to think so well of others is that we are all afraid for ourselves. The basis of optimism is sheer terror."  - Oscar Wilde

Are those who are not in relationships of passion, of romance, of love, are they the ones who theorize about it the most? Perhaps not; those who act are philosophers through action, and those who contemplate are actors through philosophy. The question builds from my current state, for I am single, and the question of love, affection, and esteem is strongly and frequently on mind. Granted, as an artist who is at work on a novel, and projecting future projects in which such a matter is important, it is necessarily in my thoughts; however, my personal life, particularly now, seizes the question forcefully and demands an answer.

Of all the people I know and have known, there are two for whom the trinity of my love, my affection, and my esteem reaches its highest and strongest state (I exclude familial relations, since the familial is a different beast). With one, the affection is stronger, and so this person is my best friend; with the other, love rings out, and I "can't help lovin' dat man of mine." This is the cause of perhaps my greatest sadness, the depths of which are so far down that its treblings are not easily felt, but yet manifest profusely. For if my feelings were switched between the two, I would be in a relationship with my best friend which would shame others, and have a friendship with the man after my heart, my soul, and my mind which would do the same. But for love! That which is the truest decimator of reality and pragmatism. That through which our most contrary imaginations thrive and hold onto the spectres of things not even much wished for, for who desires pain? My love demands the impossible, and so instead of focusing on the one person who, so far, was ready and willing to reciprocate, it sets its sights on a man who, unless he holds the secret of ages, cannot reciprocate. Sudden love is the hooking of fish: the sucker takes the bait, and is dragged into unbreathable space. I desire always after the most unavailable of men, but this one is the difference that makes a difference, and I am inspired as I feel like I expire. I should hate him, if I did not also, as I said, have the greatest affection and esteem for him, and if I had not come to a ceasefire with myself, this love would have been the prime reason for not finding love elsewhere; as it is, pride, circumstance, and timidity are what keep me from finding romance.

In the meanwhile, I can at least find comfort in having found a friendship that is really something more. We tried romance, but alas, we are better friends than lovers. The "alas" is a desire more for accurate emotions than it is that this relationship would have worked. And it is through this connection that I side with Jane Austen, and place affection over love. My affections are astoundingly correct; that is, I am made stronger by such attachments, whereas I am made stronger only by my withstanding of the misfirings of my love. Affection is the realization of a bond, while love is the formation of one, no matter how perilous the connection. To receive the love of God is frequently disastrous in the Hebrew Bible: Adam and Eve, when they cross it, are ruined unto death; it kills Abel by means of Cain's envy; Noah is made a survivor into drunkenness and shame towards his youngest son, Ham, father Canaan; it nearly drives Yahweh to senselessly murder Moses, and then Moses is denied the Promised Land after all he has done; it drives Saul, through his earnest foolishness, into great disfavor with God and also into mania; Elijah is driven into the wilderness and deadly despair; Job is ruined to the brink of the grave; and finally "for God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life," yet what kind of life is desired that must be lived in shame at having cast our such sin onto one sacrifice, so that through the shame we are saved, and who should wish to have been made that sacrifice? Yahweh is indeed a jealous god. The women fare only a little better, and that's only because God seems to feel more affection towards them. While such love makes these personages great, they seem like gulls after Malvolio, for greatness is thrust upon them. It would take many centuries before King Lear emerged and the Hebrew Bible had an equal in displaying not only the devastation that over-surpassing love engenders, but also the great aesthetic benefit the observer receives. Affection is the swerve that keeps (romantic) comedy, particularly in the strongest of Shakespeare (As You Like It and Twelfth Night), from becoming tragic, and so it is that Austen's novels are able to achieve their "happy" conclusions. It ignores the pride we have about ourselves, and lands upon the pride, no matter how hidden, that we have in the others who receive it.

So we come to esteem. Do we come to esteem through affection, or does it grow independently? Indeed, is it possible to have esteem without affection or love? The experience of history suggests yes, but it seems, in such cases, that we either respect a person as a vessel that accomplished a few approved achievements in spite of a multitude of other actions, and certainly apart from their character; or who has become something we wish to be (or already think we are), but yet we also despise them for it (I think of the movie "Kill Bill"). The "hope of shared esteem" engenders value, but can we accept it when it is born of terror for ourselves? When something is loved, it becomes lovable, but the reverse holds true, if the rest is true, of esteem: when we esteem someone, we ourselves become estimable. Those who put themselves last will become first; mankind, at least those with hearts, has a natural propensity for holding an inverse relation of given value and perceived self-value: the more modest a creature, the higher we want to think of it. Yet, the more expressively great a person is, the more we tend to be awed by them. The matter of esteem causes me much trouble, for, more than love and affection, I constantly equivocate about it.

Love. . . affection. . . esteem. . . an arbitrary order, in constant flux, despite my usual preference of affection. Yet, a life is greater when difficult pleasures, that is pain-that-creates, are met with the fullness of one's self, and an easy life can be had by resting on affections. The recognition of bonds is hardly a cause for change, and only brings about an unfolding. Love, the seeming ex nihilo creation of connections, and esteem, the invitation we send to those whose highly regarded presence itself raises the value of the party, are of the three the real progenitors of change. The former inspires us to actively and consciously remold so that we can attain the love-object, while the latter is more of an undercurrent, a subterranean stream chipping away at our crust and whose effects only later bubble to the surface. Or do I mean that the other way around?

A Report, after Exhaling

A couple years ago, my mother lost her job, and because it happened shortly before the holiday season, she more or less lost any festive spirit; for a while, it seemed she had lost any sense of purpose. There are few things more disturbing than the sudden occurrence of the long-expected, much less the long-desired, and both of them fit my mother's relation with her job. So it seems from my position. As we all knew then, this was a blessing, and being freed from a despised obligation, despite stunning her for a while, has allowed her to pursue a better way in life. I allude to this episode to point out either that proximity can breed disease, or that traits and thoughts and actions can happen along strange familial lines. That is, I write my mother's above story with a feeling of much self-recognition: nearly two years after this story, I too live a similar plot.

My friends, or at least my audience, will likely know of my pains and travails and general depression of the past several months. I shall not go into it, for it bores even me even now. Defeat is only fascinating in the moment. But we (at least we Americans) crave victory, and the ambling progress I have made in the past month is the reason for this post.

Some background points, first, in mosaic: I'm not much for making resolutions; by September of last year, my politics had become overbearing; I have a friend who likes to focus on a word for the year; there was much that I had relinquished; a deadening job; a dead love life; an undead outlook on life; cynicism is dead: long live cynicism; whatever. . .; something I can't quite remember, and another I can't quite put my finger on. I have occasional stomach cramps, and the simple relief for them is deep breathing. I have begun breathing (again). But first, I had to have one last hurrah in abject self-pity and misery; it had to be done devoid of cynicism, yet as to produce irony; it had to find the sticking place. Despite the arbitrariness of our time divisions, we revolve around them nevertheless, and in acceptance of this knowledge, I chose New Year's Eve. I had been invited to a party or two, and my best friend asked to hang out. Instead, I chose to begin a new solar revolution with tears, with the shortness of breath attendant upon the thickness of loneliness (there is nothing more suffocating than nothing), and with the rehashing of all my unglück, my faults, my failures, my vices: "after great pain a formal feeling comes." Then I went to bed, then I woke up, and then I decided, simply, that I had not wasted my New Year's Eve, that despite tossing aside all friendship the previous night, it was necessary. After rehearsing my nightmares, I could come to my dreams more willing to be prepared (or something, words fail me in this sentence).

Presently, I have had mixed success, but I don't feel despair anymore; it calls to me every now and then, and I'll never escape a natural decline towards melancholy, but it is there, and I am here, and I move and it moves, and sometimes I give it a nod, and often it will speak. I step forward right now by means of my resolution, which is my word of the year: Fundamentals. A return to what I had been before I stumbled, with the obvious differences that age requires. I have been writing more, an activity which long preceded my musical life, and indeed have started a novel (still deep in the planning stages). Stances I had given up out of social cowardice I hold again: gnosticism, aestheticism, et cetera. My former politics, which also crowded out much, I have almost completely dropped. For I have aged in a life as an artist, and dogma and cant have almost completely slipped from me; at the least, I have shown them the slide, and most have given the slip. My nutrition and activity are better, though I am still quite imperfect. I am seeking again newer lives, but again, without the flailings of despair, grasping wildly about. There are several avenues I'm exploring, but I don't feel a deadening anxiety about them as I used to: I would like to go to grad school in Britain come August (or September), but if it doesn't happen, something else I will try. I have been out and about more often, and though I wish I could see a greater variety of my friends, I know we all have our disparate lives. There is perhaps a flicker in my romantic life which may yet ignite. And finally, I have reached a paradox with my job: I have come to accept it, but for some reason, such acceptance gives me the courage to give it up, to quit. My thoughts these days aren't "I desperately hate my job and can't stand to be here" but "I'm able to live with this, and feel ready to move on." Don't ask me; but I feel myself very, very near to finally making an end of my time there. So it will be that the same employer will have done something to my mother and to myself. The one thing that comes to mind is something a writer said: "I don't enjoy writing. I enjoy having written."

Now for a thing of beauty:

I am obsessed with this song currently.