Mounting Parnassus

“Write what you know” is the dictum. What if I, like Socrates have come to realize that all I know is nothing? How does a writer write about nothing without copying Jerry Seinfeld or the eight-fold path of Buddha? Is there a way to write nothing and have it make sense? Is there a formula for enlightenment that assures salvation?

Quiet words, understated lines running like mascara in the rain, these are best. The flagrant sentences of Charles Baudelaire and Bukowski; the hanged men of desperate generations seeking signs between the sheets of sin soaked turns of a phrase. That’s what made them great. Simple integrity to the art of being, not being great, only being present in the individual moment of a poem. Writing nothing.

Too often I attempt to ascribe greatness to my words when none is merited. If I could but keep it simple and direct to the point of being minimal and somehow allow any concept of ego to disappear on the page, then perhaps I would be able to write of the grand nothing. Honesty of expression, not the popular contrivance of a situation comedy or top 40 bubble gum pop song, but the brutality of an Animal Planet “Lions of the Savannah” documentary; that is poetry of the type I want to write.

Snapshots and moments strung in sequence to bring understanding of the world’s smallness. Nothingness. Did the Confessional poets like Sexton, Berryman and Plath begin what has been updated by the writers of reality television? Is this NOTHING or only the modern equivalent of spectators at the coliseum?

Some questions have no answers but only leave me with more questions. I doubt that I will ever achieve critical acclaim for my words. I don’t know if I will ever find my “voice” as a writer, but I will keep trying, and I will attempt to eliminate the personal pronouns whenever possible and replace them with others that speak to the universal stuff of lions on the Savannah. It’s a start.

Mellow dispatches from 'tiny rooms and old typewriters':

"Charles Bukowski has been dead for a decade, but you'd never know it from the fat volumes of his new poems published every other year. This latest posthumous collection, 'Slouching Toward Nirvana' -- the third of five to be edited by former Black Sparrow publisher John Martin, to whom Bukowski entrusted his literary estate -- finds Bukowski just as full of spit and vinegar as ever in his unsparing portraits of bar brawls, dead-end jobs, racetrack betting and all manner of bums, broads and riffraff. "

The book isn't scheduled for release until February but you can reserve a copy at amazon.com for about $10 off list.

Here's a Bukowski Homage I did in a series called aptly enough,
The Bukowski Papers

Dreaming Blue Dresses
And Yellow Suns 6:45am

The gently beating
thud of the typer
lulls me, moves me

with the rhythm
of a favorite
lover who I know

will be gone at
daybreak. Only
elbow dents

on the mattress &
lipstick smears on
a fallen snifter

betray.

Sunrise at the
corner of Lost Souls
and Howling Hearts

drive spikes
slowly as to take
full effect over

breakfast. Symphonies
for one. Eggs oozing
yolky stars beaten

again at another 6:45am
in another day clouded
over with ‘what could’ve

been.’

Happy birthday, dad! I am glad you quit smoking but here's a childhood memory for your present today. Hope you like it.

Father’s Pipe

The corncobs and the briarwoods,
Meerschaums, and Calabash untested for bite or plume,
Tarred and trusted friends; an adolescent’s signposts
For the unknown world of manhood

These were my father’s treasures. His pipes
Broken, bent, some taped at the knob joint
Others shoved into side pockets of Carhardt
Work jackets or the front of Dickie pants.

Little welts rising on the thigh where red hot
Chimneys still glowed. Black soot palms with
Yellow stain fingers, heat calloused and fever
Blistered after years of smoking at the mill.

He would pack his bowls with sawdust when times
Were tough, exhaling a miniature forest fire
Like a dragon taking flight, or more like the
Ragged exhaust of his ’78 GMC pick-up truck

That we loaded fat with cords of wood each weekend. Delivering readymade campfires to the tourists of
Southern Wisconsin and northern Illinois was a
Saturday ritual. A time of family bonding singed in The aroma of cherry, apple, maple and pine.

Fallen trees and Tobacco smoke rising together so that In my twelve-Year-old nose I hardly knew where one Stopped and the other began. Much like my childhood, When I stole sacred fire from my father’s

Favorite briar bowl and took that first hit for Myself. My lips felt strange touching the place where His teeth marks left anxious tracks on the stem. My Breath was a billow for the spark of a match as I Watched the gleaming

Heart of the firmly packed stash beat brighter with Every puff. The chambers of my lungs filled like one About to drown, my eyes stung seared with smoke.
I thought I was going to die but at least I thought Myself a man.

The Hope of Minds at Play

No parties here tonight but many a well worn laugh
Through years odd spent and captured in the draught.

What becomes of memory once Father Time has spent
All the currency of exchange that, lo, his scythe has rent?

We have the photos caught ere now, don’t forget the books.
We have the furrowed brow of age and babe’s expectant looks

To anchor fast the lifelong sway mounting ever higher, yet
Pictures lie and words betray; makes history out a liar.

Best to put these thoughts to bed, arise another day,
When change has come to set aright the hope of minds at play

++
New Year’s Eve of 1990 I married my second wife. It was an ad hoc ceremony performed at a small chapel in the basement of the Bexar Co. courts building used to accommodate military personnel who were too horny or impatient for government monies to kick in and pay for off-base housing or impending pregnancies.

It was a wedding of convenience after all. Though I lied to myself, thinking that I was really in love. Amee and I divorced in 1995 after a three-year separation. Yet, to this day, I think back on that night and remember the fireworks that lit the skies of San Antonio in celebration of the New Year, and I smile.

I smile for the smell of her Exclamation perfume, the taste of escargot we fed to each other during our private dinner, the early winter afternoons spent in swimming pools, and the fact that neither of us (both active duty Air Force) were sent to Saudi Arabia. I smile for the poems and the life that we shared, and for the person she was: vain, foul-mouthed, unashamed, at once both brazen and afraid. Can it be that we were too much the shadow of one another?
That happens sometimes.

Happy Anniversary, Amee. I hope life has treated you kindly!



Time

Time can play funny tricks on you
And your eyes don’t see like they used to
And your mind can play funny games on you
And your heart might miss a beat or two

I don’t know what it is that's going wrong
It all feels the same – just more far away
And I don’t know why it takes so long
It all feels the same – just more far away

And you are mine in my dreams
While our lives split at the seams
We’re alright, so we’re told
But we live our lives apart, growing old

Time can play funny tricks on you
And your eyes don’t see like they used to
And your mind can play funny games on you
And your heart might miss a beat or two

Gather Ye Rosebuds While Ye May -J.W. Waterhouse 

Robert Herrick

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today
Tomorrow will be dying.

The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
The higher he's a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he's to setting.

That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
Times still succeed the former.

Then be not coy, but use your time,
And while ye may, go marry;
For having lost but once your prime,
You may forever tarry.

I remember a conversation with my mother in which we discussed the words “good bye.” Seems that she and my father would not say this parting phrase to each other for the entire time they were together; twenty-one years. They chose only to say “bye.” Putting the ‘good’ in front of it gave a note of finality to the expression, or so my mom told me.After my parents divorced they did say, “good bye.” They have rarely spoken since and that was 14 years ago.

My own experience with “good bye” has been varied and multiplied. I have said “good bye” to one brother, two parents, three wives, four grandparents, five dollar packs of cigarettes, six-packs of beer by the score, seven years of bad luck (5 times over), eight tiny reindeer, nine lives I didn’t know I had, ten years ofdrunkenness, eleven pet dogs, twelve-packs of cheap buzz beer (more often than I can count), a baker’s dozen of careers, fourteen teeth…and now, one more year’s worth of months turned down like cool sheets on a fresh made bed.

Yes, 2004 is all but kicked in the head. I bid it a fond farewell, Godspeed, adieu. May it lick my boots and find the taste to its liking; 2005 is nipping at my heels and I must learn to say, “hello” before it is too late for “good bye.”So, here’s to looking up your old address and wishing you the best of all possible years to be all that you have never been, and to the moment that never ends but waits forever to begin.

Stranded at an exhibition

I want to find a fold of flesh,
curl up and crawl inside, move
around like a thieving raccoon
picking the gates of the Louvre.

What secret would I discover
here in this quiet hole?
What treasures locked away?

The masked guest, uninvited
unsheathes his silver pallet
knife drawing sfumato scenery
down to a smile.

Your gallery is closing
marking the end of my
welcome. I escape without
knowing or touching or
taking anything but time.

_____________________++

For Claude

His smashed yellow sun-
scorpion of understanding
shrugs off whipping post

visions.

Monet spiked acid-
fermented his soul &
blood; gave us gasoline
ghosts to call our own
tethered by starlight.

Yellow cuts-
sighs,
yawns,
fades,
becomes invisible.

Haunts someone else’s sky.

Despite the fame that some writers achieve, most pass away with little fanfare. Alan Cheuse remembers writers who died this year, with help from poet George Garrett, who reads his poem "Anthologies." Click on the link to go to the NPR page which has a real player download of the 4.5 minute airing.

I’ve thinking about the notebooks that poets read their words from at poetry gatherings. I have seen everything from a folded up piece of napkin to elaborate leather binders; marbled cover school note pads to three ring ‘trapper keepers.’ The possibilities seems as diverse as the authors themselves. Yet, I wonder if the choice of paper, the decision for style (or the lack) of same is any indication of how much value the reader/writer places upon their efforts?

My personal choice has been to use a zippered notebook to read from. The pages are typed and protected by clear plastic sleeves so even if I were to spill something on them, cleaning would be a snap and the interior paper would not be ruined. I have also read from a photo album.
The photo album instead of having any pictures tucked within the inserts held my published poems. I put all my published poetry into the photo album. Again, the pages were protected and since the poetry already was deemed worthy of publication I would take this with me to the open-mic & featured reads and typically got a good response.

What I have NEVER done is read from my spiral notebooks or marbled cover school notebooks. Not that my handwriting is illegible, it has been said that I have the “prettiest handwriting of any man I’ve known.” The thing is that these notebooks are only for me. They are where I allow myself the freedom to make mistakes in spelling and where all the edits are made. Once the poetry in these gets typed and transferred a change takes place. The poem is done, for better or worse, I rarely continue to edit it.

I went to a local office supply shop today and was admiring the leather binders for sale. I thought maybe I would buy one to place my writing into. One that “looked important” one that “had the feel of quality and that the person who reads from this must really care about their words.” It was to become a new start for a new year. I decided against it. Not b/c they cost too much or b/c they weren’t worthy of my words but on account of what I considered the “pretentiousness factor.” All the poets I have ever met who read from such were very much full of themselves. I don’t want that to be my fate. I’ll stay with what I have been doing. It works for me.
________________________________________++


The Prettiest Handwriting of Any Man I’ve Known

Your Gs look like
something Shakespear
would write-
Or the woman
who in reality
was William
-The original Avon Lady.

And just look at
the W and that B!My God, have your
entire ABCs been contrived

from the pages
of some seventeenth
century parchments?

Nope, Sr. Mary Agnes
made me write like this
after demanding a reading
of The Taming of The Shrew.

Regrettably, I succeeded
in penmanship but failed
miserably in pentameter!

Perhaps it would make you
less jealous if I revamped
my writing style to reflect
Campbell’s wonderful text
in a can of alphabet soup?

Emily Dickinson

There's a certain Slant of light,
Winter Afternoons--
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes--

Heavenly Hurt,it gives us--
We can find no scar,
But internal difference,
Where the Meanings, are--

None may teach it--Any--
'Tis the Seal Despair--
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the air--

When it comes, the Landscape listens--
Shadows--hold their breath--
When it goes, 'tis like the Distance
On the look of Death--

Hanging on the wall of my writing room are 2 collages that I have created to express the “inner me.” The one I am focusing on is entitled GHOST DANCE. It has a native American in full regalia ceremonially dancing in black and white and sepia tones. There is the snarling head of a black panther in a corner and a black-beaked albino crow in another. Completing the frame is an angelic image clipped from a magazine that featured Greek sculpture.

The total effect is otherworldly. It puts me in mind of Halloween and death. Death and life seem to be regular themes in my art. They appear in my poetry along with my collages. They come to me in dreams and in my nightmares.It makes me wonder if I wasn’t a prophet or an assassin in a past life. Not that I believe in past lives for humans. Still, it makes me wonder what influence is at work here.

Maybe I was a priest or a shaman? I seem to gravitate toward the metaphysical and religious side of life and death and what is or could be beyond this mortal coil.
Not that I think I am special or anything. Just more inclined than most to ask the ‘big questions.’ Now, if I could only get some ‘big answers!’ You know, I doubt there are any ‘BIG answers.’ Merely many little ones. Answers that come to us and make living make sense: in the smile of a stranger, the slant of morning light, the angle of rain, the dropping a coin into the charity box these are the important answers. The small answers that come from the interior feeling of accomplishing something worth being human when doing a good deed, being nice, and being the friend a friend would like to have.

As 2oo5 approaches I want to be more aware of how my life impacts those I meet. I want to dance with the living and the dead. Experience the ghostly DNA of the dancers and poets and priests and shamans who went before me and all those who will come after I have played my part and added my voice to the current chorus. A new year and a new beginning drawn from the well of all that has past and all that will ever be.

“We dance round in a ring and suppose, But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.”
-Robert Frost
____________________________++

Dances With Ghosts

Where did you go
grandfather? Why
did the buffalo
die? We all die

become smoke

a blanket

of bones.

Chasing shadows
hunting suns brandishing
feathers of fire my
name has changed

I am now

Growing With Flowers.
Smoking With Guns.
Dreaming With Daggers.
He who Dances With Ghosts.

LOS ANGELES – Arts programs are kaput, libraries are being shuttered, K-12 education has plummeted, and literacy rates are down. And California has been without a state bard for nearly two years.

Q: Who ya gonna call?
A: Somebody who can rhyme and doesn't need a dime.

_______________________________________++

So begins the article in the Christian Science Monitor by
Daniel B. Wood in the Dec. 27th edtion. It surprised me to read of the State of California's lack of artistic interest especially b/c of the association I make of it with Hollywood and the film industry. Certainly poetry and film are not synonymous but they are both artistic endeavors that in my mind would be best represented in the Golden State.

Although given the fact that the National Poet Laureate only receives a stipend of $35,000 /yr it shouldn't be too surprising to learn of the drought of interest among the states. Several of the 35 states that do have a PL position pay little or no monies to the honoree whatsoever. What does this say about us as a nation?

One of my favorite football players of all time died on Sunday. Reggie White of the Green Bay Packers & Philadelphia Eagles succumbed to a heart attack. My point being that this story made national news and that this man was widely regarded in his athletic career. He had celebrity,something that cannot be said about too many poets.

I wish I knew when the focus changed from valuing the arts to emphasizing athletes. It just seems wrong to me that million(s) dollar contracts get paid to these gamesmen & nary a living wage can be paid to our most prestigious wordsmiths.

Perhaps I can take some solace in knowing that the modern bards of top 40 music and those fortunate enough to make the big bucks in the acting industry are still out there plying their trades for the masses. Still, for every singing super-star/American Idol, and for every Academy Award winner their must me hundreds if not thousands of starving artists just waiting to be "discovered."

We artists do what we do mostly out of love for the art. Until our culture radically changes I don't foresee any watershed moments arriving. Sad.

BY TOM CONROY
Minnesota Department of Natural Resources

It's that time of year when the words of poet laureate Robert Frost come to mind. While holiday verses dance in the minds of others, I recall the words of Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening."

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

was first introduced to Frost's poem many years ago. While I wasn't much of a poetry fan then, this poem struck a chord. It wasn't until a snowy night years later, however, that the words took on a much deeper meaning.

It was late on a Christmas Eve. Circumstances had me alone. A light snow was falling as I drove into the country, listening to carols on the radio, immersed in melancholy. In the dark night, with no particular place to go, I gravitated toward the sparkling lights of various farmsteads. As I passed each lit-up farmhouse, I wondered about who was gathered inside and what they might be doing.

Then, sometime later, I found myself on a narrow road, a lane really, with woods on both sides. It was snowing harder now.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

I stopped the car and turned down the radio. For a while, I just sat there, watching. And then I got out.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sounds the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flakes.

Snowflakes melted on my cheeks and hair as I continued to watch and listen. The wind in the treetops occasionally caused limbs to rub together, creating supernatural sounds in the dark woods. I could feel the sharp eyes of the night staring at me.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep
And miles to go before I sleep.

There is something restorative in the solitude of nature. Watching those woods fill up with snow, listening to the mysterious sounds of the night, feeling eyes in the dark upon me, chased the melancholy away on that Christmas Eve night. What is it about the healing spirit of nature?

"The tradesman, the attorney, comes out of the din and craft of the street and sees the sky and the woods, and is a man again. In their eternal calm, he finds himself again," Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in 1836. Frost's poem and memories of that snowy night by the woods always come to mind this time of year.

I'm grateful we still have places where our natural resources have not yet been abused, wasted or destroyed altogether.

We've spent more than 200 years in this country doing our best to "conquer" nature. Hopefully, we'll stop before we beat it to death.

Watching a parking lot fill up with snow just isn't quite the same.

Tom Conroy is a conservation officer with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.

Emily Dickinson, Poet

I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you--Nobody--too?
Then there's a pair of us?
Don't tell! they'd advertise--you know!

How dreary--to be--Somebody!
How public--like a Frog--
To tell one's name--the livelong June--
To an admiring Bog!

-Emily Dickinson

_______________________________________++


It was 3:oo am when the words of Emily Dickinson’s poem “I’m nobody! Who are you” occurred to me. I thought, WOW, now here’s a poem that could be brought into the 2ist century! So I played around with it, turned it on its head and this is what we have to show for the effort. Happy Boxing Day!

I’m a somebody! Are you too?
Are you -- with me -- boiling
In the slue? Then we are large
-- Let our voice be raised! --
Our words be heard -- It’s the
Least that we can do!

How wondrous -- to be somebody!
Would that all were made so free--
To write and sing and shout--
How public -- like the smog!
To portray our wit -- our poetry
To the world of blog--!

To the editor:

Friday, December 24, 2004

Let me say, that I have had the privilege of being in the "House of Peace" in Ipswich on a few occasions ("Peace is the word," Sunday, Dec. 12). Carrie and John Schuchardt are true humanitarians who practice what they preach.

Here we are nearing Christmas in this great country of ours, bustling around for this occasion. Yet, there are many people in this world who are faced with dire circumstances that make Christmas in the year 2004 just another bleak day in their lives.

War, terror and mayhem are the experiences of too many human beings due to the actions of a minority of powerful, greedy humans. These inconsiderate people have been playing a chess game of geopolitics, using ordinary people as pawns and sacrificial lambs. When will this demonic, foolish scenario of activity end in recognition of the need to preserve the lives of younger generations, and the preservation of the planet Earth itself?

The following poem of mine depicts my feelings for this Christmas season, and for the year 2005. I truly believe that all human beings have an inner spirituality. This inner spirituality can be nurtured so as to understand and recognize the obligation of all adults to fulfill their duty of preserving life on earth by promoting and securing Peace on Earth.

The Eyes of Children Plead for Compassion

Who named the great Pacific Ocean?
The enormous sea an ocean of peace,
Joining small and large land masses,
With people of many nations and ethnicity
OH! Grownups of mankind.
Can we set our hearts and minds
To the children under our care
And provide them with the serenity of peace?
Let us use our united wills.
Earnestly speaking with the cry of humanity.
Please, please, peace in this life time,
Release our innocent children from terror
And quarreling and unrequited hopes
That keeps the Family of God,
Fragmented into all the unfriendly factions.
If our Mother Earth and the races of mankind
Are to be united in peace,
It must be left to the Children of God
To impose their clear, trusting wisdom
Upon their very fatigued elders.
Without the children's pleading voices
And undiminished vision for the future,
There is nothing left, but austere time
And final ruin for all mankind.

Patrick Carrette
Ledgewood Way
Peabody