It seems so dead, with grief at night I still walk
Down nameless streets familiar to my feet
As crowded; though detachment is complete,
They know me well. Friends? No, we don't talk.
While shoeless, hopeless, wordless, I stalk
My memories of grass returned as concrete,
With dry mouthfuls of once red, now brown meat;
Most faces stay vacant as they turn to gawk.
My youth crawled down my throat, that's where it died
As teen years passed; I waited for today
With my infant verses concealed inside.
In time, things changed: I give my thoughts away
With forlorn hope that verses will provide
This line, though dead, a place for thoughts to stay.
Wednesday, April 27, 2005
Monday, April 25, 2005
Counting at night
I put thoughts together while counting. one two three four five six seven . . .
I long for the closeness of old friends, and the contact of my greatest delusion. This is never what I wanted. I almost wish for my return. Where is the thought pattern that gave me the Void? All it does now is sort through my worst memories, turn them even more twisted and display them to me over and over again. I almost lust for the veldt in my veins; I want to reconnect with my Lion. I wouldn't even mind an occasional trip to the original Void: that place of pain where people are hands reaching for the promise of the sky to deliver manna upon their toothed knuckles. At least those images spawned poems worth reading. Now what I have is a set of bad memories lurking around my delusional thinking. I should have known from the beginning how letting someone all the way in would turn out. I want the sun rising again on my demesne. I don't want a collection of sob stories centered around a pair of dark eyes that never stays one color long enough to write a poem in praise. It doesn't matter anyway. None of this is real.
I can say things now that would never come out otherwise. Almost a year later, and I still feel, still smell, still long for the closeness of contact. The aether is back in my nostrils. I know how much to take for a lethal dose. I don't know the extent of my solitude, not yet anyway. My eyelids are a projection screen for all my worst memories. The dark is still sneaky. I walk off into the night down familiar paths to my bare feet. Eleven years is too long. My hands won't let me forget their struggle. I miss my friends and I miss the pealed verses never to be returned. Sometimes my imaginary red comfort is better than a green certainty. The only certainty left is more of this lonely grind.
My pain is self-inflicted; it's my gift to myself. Don't get too near. Spending time with me is like a death sentence, I remember hearing that for sure. Take me home. Count the weight of my crow feather of burden against the lack of water, food and sleep of people with real problems on the scales of justice. For my legion of readers you can count on one hand, know this: my torment is mine. None of you can bear it with me, so don't even try. What can I offer but pain? Just count
one two three four five six seven . . .
I long for the closeness of old friends, and the contact of my greatest delusion. This is never what I wanted. I almost wish for my return. Where is the thought pattern that gave me the Void? All it does now is sort through my worst memories, turn them even more twisted and display them to me over and over again. I almost lust for the veldt in my veins; I want to reconnect with my Lion. I wouldn't even mind an occasional trip to the original Void: that place of pain where people are hands reaching for the promise of the sky to deliver manna upon their toothed knuckles. At least those images spawned poems worth reading. Now what I have is a set of bad memories lurking around my delusional thinking. I should have known from the beginning how letting someone all the way in would turn out. I want the sun rising again on my demesne. I don't want a collection of sob stories centered around a pair of dark eyes that never stays one color long enough to write a poem in praise. It doesn't matter anyway. None of this is real.
I can say things now that would never come out otherwise. Almost a year later, and I still feel, still smell, still long for the closeness of contact. The aether is back in my nostrils. I know how much to take for a lethal dose. I don't know the extent of my solitude, not yet anyway. My eyelids are a projection screen for all my worst memories. The dark is still sneaky. I walk off into the night down familiar paths to my bare feet. Eleven years is too long. My hands won't let me forget their struggle. I miss my friends and I miss the pealed verses never to be returned. Sometimes my imaginary red comfort is better than a green certainty. The only certainty left is more of this lonely grind.
My pain is self-inflicted; it's my gift to myself. Don't get too near. Spending time with me is like a death sentence, I remember hearing that for sure. Take me home. Count the weight of my crow feather of burden against the lack of water, food and sleep of people with real problems on the scales of justice. For my legion of readers you can count on one hand, know this: my torment is mine. None of you can bear it with me, so don't even try. What can I offer but pain? Just count
one two three four five six seven . . .
Sunday, April 24, 2005
Tiny Thoughts
I'm trying to keep the little triggers in check, so the large issues stay out of the forefront of my psyche. Not much happens today; just work and a bit of verse. I rewrote a sonnet earlier last week; perhaps I'll post it here later tonight.
Wednesday, April 20, 2005
Revenance
He is alone, save us. Perhaps you share in his mistakes, and perhaps you don't. One thing is clear: no one is here, save us. Sometimes he believes his writing will change things; he will wake up, and someone will care because of his pen or its frenzied missives. However, the only thing people understand from his writing is us. The rewards from knowing us are slim. If the two hands of people that read this understand, who among them will change? Who will call? Who will care? Who will go beyond a simple "I'm ok now" answer to find more of the truth? A good question would probably be "how many doses has he missed?" The true answer would be "less than the number of people who ask." However, you already know that. Observe him. Question him. We are here. We will hide, and he will struggle. You see truth, and he will smile. A smile and a kind word might draw him back, but his stay is sure to be only temporary. Better yet, dare to feel close to him. Knowing him is like saving a drowning man: he will take you under on his way up. He doesn't mean to, he's just so used to our exclusive company he's forgotten how to behave around others. Whatever the result of his struggles, we will be waiting to drag him back into the deep water. We are revanant, like the tides. Know when we flow, and when we ebb. Speak to him when he's nearest to shore, but don't get too close; you'll have to let go. Don't be afraid for his life. We won't kill him; that's a decision that only he can make. We can start the pain, but we can't finish it. Every moment of our revenance, he will want comfort; be careful, he'll take what's offered. He wants an end like anyone else that knows our touch, but we all know that any end here means an eternity alone, save us. Besides, he's already told the two hands of people that read this he won't end his association with the here and now on his own behalf. We all know how honest he is, and even he will admit he's alone, save us.
Monday, April 11, 2005
Austin
I apologize for the lack of posting this week. I'm in Austin until the eighteenth of April, so maybe I'll post from there. I made the AIPF anthology, and I'm looking forward to meeting Naomi Nye. All in all, I'm excited and I feel pretty good. We'll see if it sticks.
Saturday, April 02, 2005
Empty
I should expect my life to be empty. The only constant companion of the past eleven years is the cast of characters in my madness; everyone else wisely stays away. When I wrote "Colors," I was severely delusional: I believed in my own ability to connect with other people through poetry, speech, and other forms of human contact. I was wrong. In the language of "Colors," I struggled to see green and black: a new day in the company of new people. All I see is white, a new red, a streak of yellow down my back, and the blue of old beatings, fresh beatings, and current anguish. Robert Johnson wrote the blues, and I take him as my guide. He left only his art behind; no family, no community, and no friend claimed his body or his legacy. Perhaps someday I'll die by the highway side, and catch the same Greyhound bus into white uncertainty that took Robert Johnson. I will sit next to him, and we'd both know the pain of art that never quite seemed to match life.
COLORS
White is the color of uncertainty
as it offers light opaquely
an absolute abstraction of value
in a world made for shades of Grey
Yellow was my color
before I switched to Black and Blue
I ran, but now I fight; I found it suited me again
for the struggle with myself in the Red sunrise:
too scared to let go
too frightened by the beauty of Red.
in hindsight, the Red was probably Yellow, too
sometimes we can’t tell the difference
my Yellow guided me to safety
away from the pain of Green,
the color of spring
new life, and sustenance under Red at dawn
Black is the color of certainty
it covers all light with the absence of color
Black steals light, and life with it.
no Red, no Green, no White
and thankfully, no Yellow
just the end result of all colors
and efforts: collapse of light
when there is no more work to be done
and no fuel for our flames
I can see Black through the Grey
while I hold on with desperation
to the White that leaves me knowing
nothing but a mix of colors
that looks like Yellow,
but I will not take safety again.
give me Black before White
give me Green without Red
I need to know the dark green of the forest in spring
before the crinkled yellow of old paper, once white
now strewn with unread Blue ink.
COLORS
White is the color of uncertainty
as it offers light opaquely
an absolute abstraction of value
in a world made for shades of Grey
Yellow was my color
before I switched to Black and Blue
I ran, but now I fight; I found it suited me again
for the struggle with myself in the Red sunrise:
too scared to let go
too frightened by the beauty of Red.
in hindsight, the Red was probably Yellow, too
sometimes we can’t tell the difference
my Yellow guided me to safety
away from the pain of Green,
the color of spring
new life, and sustenance under Red at dawn
Black is the color of certainty
it covers all light with the absence of color
Black steals light, and life with it.
no Red, no Green, no White
and thankfully, no Yellow
just the end result of all colors
and efforts: collapse of light
when there is no more work to be done
and no fuel for our flames
I can see Black through the Grey
while I hold on with desperation
to the White that leaves me knowing
nothing but a mix of colors
that looks like Yellow,
but I will not take safety again.
give me Black before White
give me Green without Red
I need to know the dark green of the forest in spring
before the crinkled yellow of old paper, once white
now strewn with unread Blue ink.
Thursday, March 31, 2005
Accumulation
I sit at my computer in silence. I am afraid of closing my eyes, and I can't look into a mirror. This is my suffering hour. I don't know who to talk to, or what to say to you, my nonexistant readers. Too often I get like this. People don't see me this way, so they assume I'm ok most of the time. I'm not. This is my state of affairs. I can barely see the screen from the worms crawling out of my pupils. I know that nobody likes to be around me in this state, but that doesn't change my madness. Every day I'm more alone than the previous. I want to go to Austin, where I can maybe steal an audience. I remain unheard, unread, and unrecognized. It's got to hurt to look at this, but imagine the pain I'm in while writing these little words. I can't give any solutions for my affliction: it seems to be with me for good this time. A year I've spent in this relapse, and I don't even want to do five more minutes. I want to cave; I want to give up. I promised my Dad I wouldn't, but the only thing on my mind is freedom. Mock me as you normally do. To most of you, I'm probably just that whiney, selfish, crybaby. I seem to be, how did Jaime say it? Crosseyed?
My capacity to take pain is huge. When I was four, I ran around my house, and tripped on a doorframe. I landed teeth-first into a brick, curbstomping myself. That was painful, but more painful was the root canal afterwards. When I was a child, I was allergic to number (novacaine and others), so I had no pain relief for the root canal. I didn't even cry. I give this anecdote as an example for my resilience. However, this thing I'm bearing now is far more painful and heavy than the worst moments of my life before it came to me. My pain never seemed to stop growing since February 2004, but my threshold is finite. I'm near the end of my rope.
My capacity to take pain is huge. When I was four, I ran around my house, and tripped on a doorframe. I landed teeth-first into a brick, curbstomping myself. That was painful, but more painful was the root canal afterwards. When I was a child, I was allergic to number (novacaine and others), so I had no pain relief for the root canal. I didn't even cry. I give this anecdote as an example for my resilience. However, this thing I'm bearing now is far more painful and heavy than the worst moments of my life before it came to me. My pain never seemed to stop growing since February 2004, but my threshold is finite. I'm near the end of my rope.
Wednesday, March 30, 2005
Dung Heap
This is where it all ends up: the refuse of my life. Somehow I always find it dribbling off the tip of my pen, making itself into letters, words, lines, stanzas, cantos. I've written enough didactic poetry to instruct ten classes in how not to write. I hate how it all turns out: I don't need any help sharing the loudmouth jerk everyone knows. I need help sharing the written parts of me: the refuse not strong enough to make the prideful cut of arrogant jackass. Somebody talk! I feel like a talentless Demosthenes, shouting into the ocean with rocks in my mouth. If this is just practice, I suppose I can't ask for anyone to pay attention or respond to this madness. The past few weeks lodged themselves in my head in a chaotic fashion. I can't tell the difference between what I hear inside my ear, and what I hear from outside my ear. Everything is a mess, and I don't know if I'm making any sense. I make more drivel than I can handle sometimes; this is one of those times. When I wake up tomorrow, another day will come, and I will shout at the ocean again. When my sword of hope is polished, I wish someday my words compel more than silence. When my sword of hope is blunted, I suspect it never will as I eye the bull of fears, unarmed.
Monday, March 28, 2005
Confusing Letters from a Friend
Sometimes, it's all I can hear
words similar to mine
but not the same
This is the handwriting in my ear:
Hello our old friend
You should know our names by now
he doesn't want your help or your love
not anymore
countless poems later,
He sees them as a profound waste of words
He wants only our mercy
Don't worry, we won't hurt him
And you'll never hear him scream
We all have been weighed, and found wanting . . .
words similar to mine
but not the same
This is the handwriting in my ear:
Hello our old friend
You should know our names by now
he doesn't want your help or your love
not anymore
countless poems later,
He sees them as a profound waste of words
He wants only our mercy
Don't worry, we won't hurt him
And you'll never hear him scream
We all have been weighed, and found wanting . . .
Sunday, March 27, 2005
Prester Bane
It's been over a week, and I've said nothing of our friend Prester Bane. He is the King in Void: the psychotic wasteland I inhabit in my darkest hours. I don't write much about him for fear of strengthening his hold on me and his realm. When I'm lucid, I can reason with myself as you do, and see Prester Bane and his Void for what they are. It might seem easy to ignore Prester Bane or deny his existence to most of you, but you must understand: I cannot. It doesn't matter how much therapy I go through, how much or what I'm taking for the psychosis, I see him. None of you have ever been in the tomb with me, keeping the Many Armed Knight barely in view as a faceless king tells me accurately how my life will turn, and why. I've heard him for eleven years last Friday. He dominates the Void, and part of the reason why I've not posted about him or written much of him is to keep his power in check. To me, when I speak of him, or let someone else in on his predictions, the result just hits me five times worse. He told me how, why, and to a month, when Jaime would discard me. He's easy to deny from the outside, but he is very real to me, especially when he's right. I wrote the poem at the end of this post in 2002 on Prester Bane. I thought I could break him. I was obviously wrong.
I'm tired of hearing lectures on how Prester Bane isn't real and how the Void doesn't exist. I'm sick of people telling me how false his predictions are, and telling me to just ignore them. If this world really wants to help me, perhaps you should all stop hurting me. I ingest your pills, I go to your therapy sessions, but in the end I'm just another crazy person worthy of pity at best. None of you have ever been inside with me; you don't know a dammned thing about how I feel, and I'm tired of hearing how much you care when all you do is hurt me repeatedly.
The worst part of it is not your fault, it's still mine. I put myself in painful situations, and expect this burden I carry to lighten with shared effort from you. We all have moments in our life that hurt. The difference between you and me is that it happens to you once. I live my moments again and again. My involuntary memories never permit me to forget my pain. If I have even one second without meaningful sensory input, the memories flood back to fill the gaps. Gaps in my memory fill with psychosis to the point of constant, dramatic change. Every time the memories replay, they change. I'm unsure of all events; my memories contradict my notes and the expressed memories of others. Still, my father didn't scourge my back with an extension cord, leaving a welt for a week once. He's done it three to five times per day every day since. I didn't win my game of russian roulette once, I win it every day. Jaime didn't prove Prester bane right once; she proves it several times per day, every day. Memory is the twin of experience, and mine won't let go or fade.
This is why schizophrenics commit suicide; I am sure of it. It isn't a cry for help, or an evaluation of depressing circumstance. It's freedom. I want to keep my good memories, and leave while I'm still a semblance of what I was eleven years ago. Fear of hell keeps me alive, and precious little else.
PILLS AND PROMISES, BOTH BROKEN
With intellect in exile
And hobbled by a dream,
The always present Madness
Is shackled to a king
Whose name is Prester Bane.
He promised so much more
Than ordinary rule
Dispensed upon a sword.
This dynasty of Void
Succumbed to decadence.
Regalia consumed
The pride the Void became.
Transfixed upon the past,
The king remains within,
Dispensing regal edicts
Upon indifferent ears.
I'm tired of hearing lectures on how Prester Bane isn't real and how the Void doesn't exist. I'm sick of people telling me how false his predictions are, and telling me to just ignore them. If this world really wants to help me, perhaps you should all stop hurting me. I ingest your pills, I go to your therapy sessions, but in the end I'm just another crazy person worthy of pity at best. None of you have ever been inside with me; you don't know a dammned thing about how I feel, and I'm tired of hearing how much you care when all you do is hurt me repeatedly.
The worst part of it is not your fault, it's still mine. I put myself in painful situations, and expect this burden I carry to lighten with shared effort from you. We all have moments in our life that hurt. The difference between you and me is that it happens to you once. I live my moments again and again. My involuntary memories never permit me to forget my pain. If I have even one second without meaningful sensory input, the memories flood back to fill the gaps. Gaps in my memory fill with psychosis to the point of constant, dramatic change. Every time the memories replay, they change. I'm unsure of all events; my memories contradict my notes and the expressed memories of others. Still, my father didn't scourge my back with an extension cord, leaving a welt for a week once. He's done it three to five times per day every day since. I didn't win my game of russian roulette once, I win it every day. Jaime didn't prove Prester bane right once; she proves it several times per day, every day. Memory is the twin of experience, and mine won't let go or fade.
This is why schizophrenics commit suicide; I am sure of it. It isn't a cry for help, or an evaluation of depressing circumstance. It's freedom. I want to keep my good memories, and leave while I'm still a semblance of what I was eleven years ago. Fear of hell keeps me alive, and precious little else.
PILLS AND PROMISES, BOTH BROKEN
With intellect in exile
And hobbled by a dream,
The always present Madness
Is shackled to a king
Whose name is Prester Bane.
He promised so much more
Than ordinary rule
Dispensed upon a sword.
This dynasty of Void
Succumbed to decadence.
Regalia consumed
The pride the Void became.
Transfixed upon the past,
The king remains within,
Dispensing regal edicts
Upon indifferent ears.
Friday, March 18, 2005
A String of Letters on a Common Theme
A friend sent me an email, and listed some stuff about her in an alphabetic acrostic. I've addressed the same issues with my own answers.
A age I got my first kiss: 24 (ugh, sad but true)
B band I'm listening to right now: Prester Bane on a bed of Alison Krauss
C crush: N/A
D dad's name: Gary
E easiest person to talk to: Prester Bane
F favorite movie: Seven Samurai or silent Ben Hur; I can't make up my mind.
G gummy bears or worms: As a kid, I lived near the Haribo factory in Germany, so bears
H hometown: Out in the sticks north of Killeen, Texas
I instruments: a deep voice
K kids: I'm not passing this on
L longest car ride: Derwood, Md to San Antonio, Texas
M mom's name: Meridel
N nicknames: I'll put anyone who calls me "TJ" in a body bag
O one wish: someone easier to talk to than Prester Bane; he's one of the few constants in my life, and I loathe him.
P phobia: I fear nothing but crocodiles
Q quote: "Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin"
R reason to smile: It's usually fake
S song you sang last: badly, but "The Lucky One" Alison Krauss & Union Station
T time you woke up today: the crack of noon
U unknown fact about me: I love my scars, all of them.
V vegetable you like: carrots, hands down
W worst habits: telling people what I really think.
X x-rays you've had: a lot, including one of the wrong ankle immediately after I tore up an ankle running track.
Y yummy food: biscuits and gravy
Z zodiac sign: I think I'm an aries, that's April 18 right?
Who is Prester Bane? I'll tell you later.
A age I got my first kiss: 24 (ugh, sad but true)
B band I'm listening to right now: Prester Bane on a bed of Alison Krauss
C crush: N/A
D dad's name: Gary
E easiest person to talk to: Prester Bane
F favorite movie: Seven Samurai or silent Ben Hur; I can't make up my mind.
G gummy bears or worms: As a kid, I lived near the Haribo factory in Germany, so bears
H hometown: Out in the sticks north of Killeen, Texas
I instruments: a deep voice
K kids: I'm not passing this on
L longest car ride: Derwood, Md to San Antonio, Texas
M mom's name: Meridel
N nicknames: I'll put anyone who calls me "TJ" in a body bag
O one wish: someone easier to talk to than Prester Bane; he's one of the few constants in my life, and I loathe him.
P phobia: I fear nothing but crocodiles
Q quote: "Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin"
R reason to smile: It's usually fake
S song you sang last: badly, but "The Lucky One" Alison Krauss & Union Station
T time you woke up today: the crack of noon
U unknown fact about me: I love my scars, all of them.
V vegetable you like: carrots, hands down
W worst habits: telling people what I really think.
X x-rays you've had: a lot, including one of the wrong ankle immediately after I tore up an ankle running track.
Y yummy food: biscuits and gravy
Z zodiac sign: I think I'm an aries, that's April 18 right?
Who is Prester Bane? I'll tell you later.
Scraps Of Me
Scraps of me make it into my poetry. Little pieces creep into the cracks between the lines from every angle. The inverted inventory segment of "Dull Five" began as a list of things important to me that I could do without.
chivalry
respect for anyone
a thousand didactic love songs
ambitions for greatness
a honey tongue
care for the world
blind faith
senseless love and admiration
the urge to get things done right the first time
time to talk about your problems
anything worth writing down
a wicked knuckle callous
a picture of the face that launched a thousand ships
how I feel about Rigoletto and Buffy the Vampire Slayer
the guts to treat others as I treat myself
a chaste disposition
the will to stay faithful
a way to make myself heard
this list
I long sometimes to see the world in numbers; words hurt too much. Beneath every face, I crave a summary. I want to insist on odds in the caption of every photo in the newspaper. I want more sense in the world before my muddied senses and ever more altered memory. I long for cold, hard logic to prevail with proof while I can still enjoy it. The scraps of me in my poetry should be hidden by a wider pattern of code; instead, I build ugly frames for the windows to my torment. Sometimes, I imagine my poetry as a well-read, regular newspaper column that chronicles my daily existence. I imagine that everything comes in cycles, that things have been worse, and that my column will be less burdensome later. Mostly, that version of the truth prevails. On rare occasions, I can put these local trends in long-term context. A picture can be worth a thousand words; I don't draw, so I work with the tools I'm given. I see a photograph of my face on page six of the metro section of the newspaper. The same picture has been published before, but without any accompaniment: no story, no caption, nothing. In this newspaper, however, the authors and editors have more to say. My poems stretch out around the picture, skipping over column breaks, folds, headlines, and into the hair of anyone stupid enough to notice the picture and stop to read what's next to it. The caption reads:
0.10%
Those are my odds, folks.
chivalry
respect for anyone
a thousand didactic love songs
ambitions for greatness
a honey tongue
care for the world
blind faith
senseless love and admiration
the urge to get things done right the first time
time to talk about your problems
anything worth writing down
a wicked knuckle callous
a picture of the face that launched a thousand ships
how I feel about Rigoletto and Buffy the Vampire Slayer
the guts to treat others as I treat myself
a chaste disposition
the will to stay faithful
a way to make myself heard
this list
I long sometimes to see the world in numbers; words hurt too much. Beneath every face, I crave a summary. I want to insist on odds in the caption of every photo in the newspaper. I want more sense in the world before my muddied senses and ever more altered memory. I long for cold, hard logic to prevail with proof while I can still enjoy it. The scraps of me in my poetry should be hidden by a wider pattern of code; instead, I build ugly frames for the windows to my torment. Sometimes, I imagine my poetry as a well-read, regular newspaper column that chronicles my daily existence. I imagine that everything comes in cycles, that things have been worse, and that my column will be less burdensome later. Mostly, that version of the truth prevails. On rare occasions, I can put these local trends in long-term context. A picture can be worth a thousand words; I don't draw, so I work with the tools I'm given. I see a photograph of my face on page six of the metro section of the newspaper. The same picture has been published before, but without any accompaniment: no story, no caption, nothing. In this newspaper, however, the authors and editors have more to say. My poems stretch out around the picture, skipping over column breaks, folds, headlines, and into the hair of anyone stupid enough to notice the picture and stop to read what's next to it. The caption reads:
0.10%
Those are my odds, folks.
Sunday, March 13, 2005
No Apologies
Yesterday's post is a little wierd. I obviously wrote it deep in the throes of my psychosis. Although I've deleted a few posts from my blog in the past which leaned in that psychotic direction, I will delete them no longer. Part of knowing me is knowing how I act and how I think while actively psychotic. If I reach out for understanding, I cannot reach out with a lie or even a scrap of shame.
Saturday, March 12, 2005
Recapitulation
I have two hearts. The first pumps blood, the other: aether. Black and oily, I put the aether pump in place myself. It seemed stark and powerful at first, but my habits avail myself to its presence. Only I seem to see the blemishes on my skin from where the aether escapes. They grow daily. You can't smell the aether, that's something only I can do. However, if you're smart, you can see the same effects I deal with in all my social situations. No matter how heavy, strong, or sharp the sword of my hope is forged, I remain out of place. You've all seen it. I don't match my environment; I have little to nothing in common with any of you. That's a reason why I write: I want the rest of you to know how unahappy I've become, and experience at least a small piece of it with me. How horrible is that? Art should serve a wider purpose than the brutish display of my unhappiness. After all, countless poems later, I have yet to meet any goals save quantity and publication. It doesn't seem to matter how often or incessantly I display my verses, the words never stick, and I am still alone. I keep hoping to wake up next to understanding and love delivered at the point of my pen, but every day, I only wake up with more poems, ever more aloof from all of you. The true air passes in and out of my lips, drips from my pen, and leaks from my skin; mutual revulsion and solitude follow closely.
Friday, March 11, 2005
News
Good News, my gentle readers: I am officially in print! I'm going down to Austin, TX in April for the Austin International Poetry Festival (AIPF). My poem, "Crow Dance" made their anthology, Di-verse-city 2005. Finally, I have some vindication for the hours, days, and weeks I've heretofore wasted in front of my computer, composing verses in my voice. I might be read yet.
Thursday, March 10, 2005
Eyes
In my poetry, I designed a world similar to mine, but probably very different from yours. The images painted and repainted in my head drive me and my characters to thoughts and actions often out of place in your world. I pace, oftentimes for hours, arguing with the factions in my head, and the animated memories of people I've lost. People appear in front of me in the appearance for which I remember them most. I see my Dad in his army uniform, staggering around drunk and demanding me to bend over. I see my brother stirred to action by a cruel word in a white t-shirt. I see Christine's uneasy smile framed by red hair, my mom cooking chili in the crock pot, and Jaime's eyes. The rest of your descriptions are too long to list here.
In my world, the eyes are literally the windows to the soul. When I look into someone's eyes, I see a whole person probably more my imagination than truth. Jaime's eyes beguiled me; I never fully found out who was behind them, or fabricated a person in my mind to match my perception. Sometimes, I wander away in my own eyes reflected in a mirror; my memories play back over and over again as I quickly lose track of time while sifting through thoughts best left alone. Sooner or later, I'll meander back out of the window and return to this world I loosely share with you. I want to forget and move on like the rest of you seem so able to do, but I cannot let go. My memories tug me back, and sometimes pull me under. It would serve me well to not dwell in my thoughts, but that becomes increasingly unfeasable as more and more memories insert themselves in the rotation.
Since I finished the first draft of Stitches, my epic, my condition has done nothing but worsen. For small periods of time, I can put on a good show of recovery, but the whole time I'm just deluding myself. I cannot trust any emotion, thought, or memory as genuine. I want to dismiss them as just a dream, just foolishness, or just a hallucination, but I cannot; I have no control.
Some people tell me to survive and hold out hope for a new drug, a new treatment, or a new anything else. I've long since known hope to be the last refuge of the foolish. Madness comes and goes as it pleases, it doesn't plop in and flush out of my system like the contents of a pill. It's unfair and impossible to ask others to help share my burden, but repeatedly I haul that unfair impossibility to the doorstep of everyone who cares about me. The journey would be less if I just bore it alone without comment or complaint, but I'm always seeking companionship. Most people just dismiss me, but some pause to chat. The chatting never lasts long; it's too painful to watch me struggle. That's why I write, you know. I can't think of a better way to make people understand than the words dispensed at the tip of my pen. Those words will bring me nothing.
The cruellest act is to give me false hope. Don't fill my thoughts with counterfeit love, or unreasonable optimism. We all know well that I am not getting better. I will fill the Void inside me with the same excrement that drives me to write these brief thoughts; more poetry will come, the burden will be heavier, and there will be another person left behind, unwilling to continue with me.
In my world, the eyes are literally the windows to the soul. When I look into someone's eyes, I see a whole person probably more my imagination than truth. Jaime's eyes beguiled me; I never fully found out who was behind them, or fabricated a person in my mind to match my perception. Sometimes, I wander away in my own eyes reflected in a mirror; my memories play back over and over again as I quickly lose track of time while sifting through thoughts best left alone. Sooner or later, I'll meander back out of the window and return to this world I loosely share with you. I want to forget and move on like the rest of you seem so able to do, but I cannot let go. My memories tug me back, and sometimes pull me under. It would serve me well to not dwell in my thoughts, but that becomes increasingly unfeasable as more and more memories insert themselves in the rotation.
Since I finished the first draft of Stitches, my epic, my condition has done nothing but worsen. For small periods of time, I can put on a good show of recovery, but the whole time I'm just deluding myself. I cannot trust any emotion, thought, or memory as genuine. I want to dismiss them as just a dream, just foolishness, or just a hallucination, but I cannot; I have no control.
Some people tell me to survive and hold out hope for a new drug, a new treatment, or a new anything else. I've long since known hope to be the last refuge of the foolish. Madness comes and goes as it pleases, it doesn't plop in and flush out of my system like the contents of a pill. It's unfair and impossible to ask others to help share my burden, but repeatedly I haul that unfair impossibility to the doorstep of everyone who cares about me. The journey would be less if I just bore it alone without comment or complaint, but I'm always seeking companionship. Most people just dismiss me, but some pause to chat. The chatting never lasts long; it's too painful to watch me struggle. That's why I write, you know. I can't think of a better way to make people understand than the words dispensed at the tip of my pen. Those words will bring me nothing.
The cruellest act is to give me false hope. Don't fill my thoughts with counterfeit love, or unreasonable optimism. We all know well that I am not getting better. I will fill the Void inside me with the same excrement that drives me to write these brief thoughts; more poetry will come, the burden will be heavier, and there will be another person left behind, unwilling to continue with me.
Tuesday, March 08, 2005
Reading
I want to be read. When I was in high school, I read poetry voraciously, especially Keats, Byron, and Shelley. I have a collection of selected works from all three entitled "The Great Romantics." I read and reread Byron and Keats until the book's spine broke. Keats' poetry to Fanny Brawne was my yardstick for my love poems since the beginning. I imagined students reading my poetry to dim lamps past their bedtime, or at least too late an hour prudent before an exam on the morrow as I did. Every little phrase was important, every word worth reading, and well worth the lost sleep. Poetry should enlighten, not beguile; I wrote with abandon to a greater understanding of my struggle, once private, now public in verses. With Keats as my guide, Byron and Shelley baiting me onward, I wrote. I wrote not just to be read; I wrote to be recited. I wrote to be shouted at the top of each lover's lungs, to be pealed from the top of every chimmeny, screamed in the streets, and passed through the lips of every wedding toast for strength, for beauty, and for love! Let me into the rhythmn of your breath, or the harmonies of empathy. Wish for words stark enough to describe me in any other way than mine. Take my verses to heart and whisper a line into your lover's ear to find the next repeated into yours. I didn't write any of it to be a secret, as the vainest poets often contend about even their most minor works; I wrote it all for you. I want eyes unlike my own to scan my pages, and find enough to remember as mine. I want to be read.
Infrequency
It's been five days since I've posted. I haven't forgotten my blog or my readers, but I have nothing new to say. I could write a post on how lonely, misunderstood, and crazy I've become, but I've said as much before. I'm going to go read some poetry; perhaps later today I'll post my thoughts on it.
Thursday, March 03, 2005
Examples
Central to this blog have been my madness poems. It's the only thing i truly know anymore. Every voice, vision, and phantom scent builds upon the last. However, they don't only build more madness; since the beginning, my romantic feelings go with verses and psychosis. I wrote much to Christine, and a lot to Jaime. These are my worst poems, as I look back on the sum of my words. I always thought that my verses were redeemed by the love that spawned them; I was wrong. My love is ugly, and its poetry is worse. Art should be strong, beautiful, and itself first. My love poems were always proxies to the real thing, and never turn out the way I want them to. My love is suffocation and pain; Jaime hated my love poetry. If you don't believe me, I've prepared some examples.
A LEAF FOR EVERY MOMENT IN A FOREST MADE FOR LOVE
With Jaime, i find happiness
In places I thought lost to me
In ways that seemed impossible
A forest grows inside my heart
I stalk those woods alone again
With open arms and lesser burdens
Accepting all the love sent me
I speak in verses, flurried, hurried
So thorns can still entangle me
And haul me down, entwinined with words
It’s good to clear the undergrowth
And let my lovetrees grow
A brush of bodies stops me
As whispers fill the air
I utter with full meaning
More words to say “I love you”
And Jaime whispers back “I know”
With smiles I see in all the lovetrees
Still beautiful and wonderful to me
I now see her and only her
Inviting every lucid moment
To stay with me in poetry,
I walk this forest made of love
That long seemed lost, but just was waiting
***
COLOR AND SHAPE
While Jaime’s out of reach,
I turn back on the pages
Spent tracing silhouettes
And chasing broken dreams.
The violence in my past
That’s absent in her arms
No longer rules my inkwell,
Now changed and for the better.
I painted vulgar colors
In blues and shining red
Imagining the sunrise
While lost without a light.
It seemed right at the time
In my infatuation
To stylize the world
Around hallucination.
Each morning before sunrise,
I saw the silhouette
And colored in the darkness
With dreams that never were
But now I have new colors
To use in writing verses
Like brown and green and purple:
Two hers, one mine, all vibrant.
In my maturity,
At last I set me free
To draw back on the curtains
And see what I’ve been tracing
I found two open arms
In unexpected places:
A friend, now something more
And shoulders, now painless, once hurt.
It’s comfort in a sense
To love, to lose, to find
That love is not a stranger:
I found it in my friend.
We both have memories
Of what life was before
In youth we can’t return to:
One dead, one gone, both painful
But now with every moment,
I color in my verses
Not with a sense of longing,
But simple satisfaction.
So now she sees my fury;
I fall in her embrace.
I wrap my arms around her
And trade my past for present:
I touch where once I saw;
I love where once I wondered;
I write from truth and beauty
Where once I wrote from pain.
Maturity proves real
Where youth became a lie:
My love is now beside me,
Not colors in the sky.
***
There are more Jaime poems, but I am so ashamed of them that I cannot post their limitless lameness. If you think my poems of Christine could be any better, I will show you only one of the missives I felt compelled to put down on paper, the rest are of approximate lameness.
WAVES
I dreamt that I could see you there
A source of light that shines on me
Reflecting light upon the waves
Your light is all that I can see
So kiss me softly, waves of gold
With hair that's red, and eyes of blue
If I could speak across the distance
I'd tell you now I love you true
The watercolor whispers here
Are telling me to reach anew
Without a flaw, my amber eye
Can't see the weak things I can't do
If I was more a lover then
And less a hate filled lion now
Perhaps the span would be much less
And I could know the where and how
Of where you went, of why you left
The Sun retreating on the beach
Towards the west, and out of sight
And like the Sun, you're out of reach
So come be near me dear Christine
Whose love, in haste, I threw away
Psychotic hubris, red and gore
I heard you tell me you won't stay
So love me now without a doubt
If only with a whisper's hue
On paper with a wetted brush
For all the days I'm loving you
***
You can see how and why I hate these damn things: sappy, didactic, dry, passionless. Unfortunately, Love remains part of my practiced craft; I can't stand myself sometimes, and it drives me to write more senseless love poems. For what possible advantage am I writing? Who will be swayed by this horrendous emotional drip? Am I going to wake up one day next to love provided at the tip of my pen? I don't think so. Perhaps I'll garnish pity in the poetic ampitheater, but not love. My verse is not as beautiful as Petrarch's, and not as cunning as the Bard's. I am not the very butcher of a silk button, or punning the golden laurel breeze. Every day, I supect more that I know only madness well enough to write it, as love seems further from my poetic grasp. Some days are longer than others.
A LEAF FOR EVERY MOMENT IN A FOREST MADE FOR LOVE
With Jaime, i find happiness
In places I thought lost to me
In ways that seemed impossible
A forest grows inside my heart
I stalk those woods alone again
With open arms and lesser burdens
Accepting all the love sent me
I speak in verses, flurried, hurried
So thorns can still entangle me
And haul me down, entwinined with words
It’s good to clear the undergrowth
And let my lovetrees grow
A brush of bodies stops me
As whispers fill the air
I utter with full meaning
More words to say “I love you”
And Jaime whispers back “I know”
With smiles I see in all the lovetrees
Still beautiful and wonderful to me
I now see her and only her
Inviting every lucid moment
To stay with me in poetry,
I walk this forest made of love
That long seemed lost, but just was waiting
***
COLOR AND SHAPE
While Jaime’s out of reach,
I turn back on the pages
Spent tracing silhouettes
And chasing broken dreams.
The violence in my past
That’s absent in her arms
No longer rules my inkwell,
Now changed and for the better.
I painted vulgar colors
In blues and shining red
Imagining the sunrise
While lost without a light.
It seemed right at the time
In my infatuation
To stylize the world
Around hallucination.
Each morning before sunrise,
I saw the silhouette
And colored in the darkness
With dreams that never were
But now I have new colors
To use in writing verses
Like brown and green and purple:
Two hers, one mine, all vibrant.
In my maturity,
At last I set me free
To draw back on the curtains
And see what I’ve been tracing
I found two open arms
In unexpected places:
A friend, now something more
And shoulders, now painless, once hurt.
It’s comfort in a sense
To love, to lose, to find
That love is not a stranger:
I found it in my friend.
We both have memories
Of what life was before
In youth we can’t return to:
One dead, one gone, both painful
But now with every moment,
I color in my verses
Not with a sense of longing,
But simple satisfaction.
So now she sees my fury;
I fall in her embrace.
I wrap my arms around her
And trade my past for present:
I touch where once I saw;
I love where once I wondered;
I write from truth and beauty
Where once I wrote from pain.
Maturity proves real
Where youth became a lie:
My love is now beside me,
Not colors in the sky.
***
There are more Jaime poems, but I am so ashamed of them that I cannot post their limitless lameness. If you think my poems of Christine could be any better, I will show you only one of the missives I felt compelled to put down on paper, the rest are of approximate lameness.
WAVES
I dreamt that I could see you there
A source of light that shines on me
Reflecting light upon the waves
Your light is all that I can see
So kiss me softly, waves of gold
With hair that's red, and eyes of blue
If I could speak across the distance
I'd tell you now I love you true
The watercolor whispers here
Are telling me to reach anew
Without a flaw, my amber eye
Can't see the weak things I can't do
If I was more a lover then
And less a hate filled lion now
Perhaps the span would be much less
And I could know the where and how
Of where you went, of why you left
The Sun retreating on the beach
Towards the west, and out of sight
And like the Sun, you're out of reach
So come be near me dear Christine
Whose love, in haste, I threw away
Psychotic hubris, red and gore
I heard you tell me you won't stay
So love me now without a doubt
If only with a whisper's hue
On paper with a wetted brush
For all the days I'm loving you
***
You can see how and why I hate these damn things: sappy, didactic, dry, passionless. Unfortunately, Love remains part of my practiced craft; I can't stand myself sometimes, and it drives me to write more senseless love poems. For what possible advantage am I writing? Who will be swayed by this horrendous emotional drip? Am I going to wake up one day next to love provided at the tip of my pen? I don't think so. Perhaps I'll garnish pity in the poetic ampitheater, but not love. My verse is not as beautiful as Petrarch's, and not as cunning as the Bard's. I am not the very butcher of a silk button, or punning the golden laurel breeze. Every day, I supect more that I know only madness well enough to write it, as love seems further from my poetic grasp. Some days are longer than others.
Wednesday, March 02, 2005
Exclusion
A former poetry professor of mine, Janet Hamer, once advised the class to only write love poetry after our fortieth birthday. Being young and stupid, I insisted the right to write love poetry should be on everyone's poetic grocery list. For a few years before receiving this advice from Prof. Hamer, and a few years after, actually, I wrote a ream on one woman. I knew her in high school, and we were good friends, that's it. Needless to say, with a young poet's vigor, I wrote her. I wrote her and rewrote her, always looking for the best possible words to describe her, to inspire her, and to admire her.
Over the years (what's 2002 - 1996 again?), I created a set of ideals and images I called "Christine." That was her name, but around 1999, she was clearly no longer a person, and became the most important character in the mental morality play that is my perception. I loved Christine so much, I took her name away, and gave it to a portion of my own psyche. It was also in 1999 that I found Petrarch, first in English translation, then in Italian. He did much the same thing to Laura as I did to Christine. We were partners in crime, stealing names, and giving them to impossibly pure and impossibly virtuous delusions. I stopped reading Shakespeare because it didn't speak to me like Petrarch did, and I thought the Bard was simply mocking Petrarch in his sonnets.
At first, when Christine left, I was heartbroken. I found my voice mute to her. I wanted desperately to tell her everything, and share this poetry with her, but I did nothing: nothing but change. I used her name, not only as a shrine to my memory, not only as a launching pad for my poetic ambitions, but also as a measure of convenience. If I was thoroughly in love with Christine, why would I need a relationship away from her? That was how I thought, lived, and wrote.
In December of 2003, things changed. I actually got the courage, with a little prodding, to ask out my friend Jaime. As you can probably tell, I fell head over heels in love with her. Verses flowed; flowers bloomed, and my love grew with them. Yeah, Jaime wasn't as pretty as Christine was, and did not have the same degree of distinguishing features of my lady-love in the sky; but she was real. I was closer to Jaime than I'd ever been to virtually anyone. She kept trying to tell me how fat she was, but I told her the beauty I saw in her with my own eyes, and confessed much of my life's previous regrets. To this day, there are things that only she knows. The best part about the relationship, to me, was the reciprocity. I loved someone, and that someone loved me back! This concept was totally foreign to my world. I wrote Jaime. I wrote her hard. I'd created two epic poems (no exaggeration) on Christine, and I wanted something at least as profound for Jaime. The epic's title was "Princess Black and Yellow," her two favorite colors. By June 2004, I produced a sizable volume of verse under the Princess Black and Yellow banner, and the rest was planned. We went out for nearly six months, then she dumped me; wah wah wah. Turns out she hated my insipid love poetry as much as the voices in my head. The soft underbelly of my existence, so guarded in times past, I always assumed to be lovable and real. It's not; it's a paincushion: I am the monster, not them: the voices in my head. I thought I knew love, and love knew me. I was wrong. The same infatuation follows me around now with Jaime as it did with Christine. I can make a lot of Christine's long, red hair (capelli lunghi rossi), and her blue eyes (occhi blue), but there's only so many things one can write about a brown-haired woman with brownish green eyes.
What does this have to do with Hamer, the Bard, and Petrarch? Professor Hamer's sentiment was right: I didn't know love, I only knew the very basics of how my mind and body reacted to the presence of the opposite sex. The Bard was right to mock Petrarch in his sonnets. Petrarch knew less than I did; his love was even more tied up in his ego than mine. About Petrarch, I still love the guy, and I love his books; I just can't have another Christine on my hands with Jaime. I am determined to stay friends with Jaime until I feel nothing for her. Seven years from now, I don't want to choke on love again because I couldn't get over an average to below-average relationship. Maybe by he time I'm forty, I'll know a little more about love.
Over the years (what's 2002 - 1996 again?), I created a set of ideals and images I called "Christine." That was her name, but around 1999, she was clearly no longer a person, and became the most important character in the mental morality play that is my perception. I loved Christine so much, I took her name away, and gave it to a portion of my own psyche. It was also in 1999 that I found Petrarch, first in English translation, then in Italian. He did much the same thing to Laura as I did to Christine. We were partners in crime, stealing names, and giving them to impossibly pure and impossibly virtuous delusions. I stopped reading Shakespeare because it didn't speak to me like Petrarch did, and I thought the Bard was simply mocking Petrarch in his sonnets.
At first, when Christine left, I was heartbroken. I found my voice mute to her. I wanted desperately to tell her everything, and share this poetry with her, but I did nothing: nothing but change. I used her name, not only as a shrine to my memory, not only as a launching pad for my poetic ambitions, but also as a measure of convenience. If I was thoroughly in love with Christine, why would I need a relationship away from her? That was how I thought, lived, and wrote.
In December of 2003, things changed. I actually got the courage, with a little prodding, to ask out my friend Jaime. As you can probably tell, I fell head over heels in love with her. Verses flowed; flowers bloomed, and my love grew with them. Yeah, Jaime wasn't as pretty as Christine was, and did not have the same degree of distinguishing features of my lady-love in the sky; but she was real. I was closer to Jaime than I'd ever been to virtually anyone. She kept trying to tell me how fat she was, but I told her the beauty I saw in her with my own eyes, and confessed much of my life's previous regrets. To this day, there are things that only she knows. The best part about the relationship, to me, was the reciprocity. I loved someone, and that someone loved me back! This concept was totally foreign to my world. I wrote Jaime. I wrote her hard. I'd created two epic poems (no exaggeration) on Christine, and I wanted something at least as profound for Jaime. The epic's title was "Princess Black and Yellow," her two favorite colors. By June 2004, I produced a sizable volume of verse under the Princess Black and Yellow banner, and the rest was planned. We went out for nearly six months, then she dumped me; wah wah wah. Turns out she hated my insipid love poetry as much as the voices in my head. The soft underbelly of my existence, so guarded in times past, I always assumed to be lovable and real. It's not; it's a paincushion: I am the monster, not them: the voices in my head. I thought I knew love, and love knew me. I was wrong. The same infatuation follows me around now with Jaime as it did with Christine. I can make a lot of Christine's long, red hair (capelli lunghi rossi), and her blue eyes (occhi blue), but there's only so many things one can write about a brown-haired woman with brownish green eyes.
What does this have to do with Hamer, the Bard, and Petrarch? Professor Hamer's sentiment was right: I didn't know love, I only knew the very basics of how my mind and body reacted to the presence of the opposite sex. The Bard was right to mock Petrarch in his sonnets. Petrarch knew less than I did; his love was even more tied up in his ego than mine. About Petrarch, I still love the guy, and I love his books; I just can't have another Christine on my hands with Jaime. I am determined to stay friends with Jaime until I feel nothing for her. Seven years from now, I don't want to choke on love again because I couldn't get over an average to below-average relationship. Maybe by he time I'm forty, I'll know a little more about love.
Monday, February 28, 2005
Sonnets, old to young
LOVE AND THE LION: A SONNET FROM THE VOID
The breath of lions fills the silent air.
I see the plains, the Sun without the sky.
And feel the grass that hides the LionÃs lie:
That art from nature canÃt be made so fair.
He hunts the prey that donÃt know he is there:
The weaker beasts who know theyÃre soon to die
When spotted by his hungry amber eye.
A thousand yards away they feel his stare.
IÃm sitting on the cold and barren floor
IÃm kept away from view, and out of light
And as I wander through the open door
A flash across the plains appears in flight
The Lion runs with claws and bony core,
Throughout the day, and gone alone, the night
***
SONS OF MIDNIGHT
I love to sleep beneath my willow tree
While black silk ribbons slink through scars and gashes
Absorbing thoughts, the dream expands and smashes
With slumber what waking I won’t bring eyes to see.
My weary bones, seduced by darkness, flee
With years passed by, the dreams remain as flashes
Of days spent writhing under willow lashes.
Each pregnant pause of sleep brings peace to me.
But sons of midnight break and challenge logic.
The bloody ribbons flow across my face
Displaying pain when demons like to frolic.
Tomorrow is today, no sleep can pace
This hunger heaving refuse dry and cholic.
I stay awake, alone in my embrace.
***
IT SEEMS DEAD TO ME
My love long dead, with grief at night I still walk
Down darkened streets familliar to my feet
When voices choose no other time to meet
Each word with poison feeds the next we talk.
Though shoeless, hopeless, wordless, I stalk
The Void my mind makes grass although it's concrete
I masticate the words my mind makes meat
To choke in silence while the neighbors gawk.
Take it from me, nobody wants to share
This legions of voices that lingers inside;
Those that know nothing have nothing to bless.
Everyone reading who knows me, beware
If you choose to listen, and in me abide,
My pain still rules my cold and clingy caress.
All uncited material on this page is copyright Thomas Jackson 2005
The breath of lions fills the silent air.
I see the plains, the Sun without the sky.
And feel the grass that hides the LionÃs lie:
That art from nature canÃt be made so fair.
He hunts the prey that donÃt know he is there:
The weaker beasts who know theyÃre soon to die
When spotted by his hungry amber eye.
A thousand yards away they feel his stare.
IÃm sitting on the cold and barren floor
IÃm kept away from view, and out of light
And as I wander through the open door
A flash across the plains appears in flight
The Lion runs with claws and bony core,
Throughout the day, and gone alone, the night
***
SONS OF MIDNIGHT
I love to sleep beneath my willow tree
While black silk ribbons slink through scars and gashes
Absorbing thoughts, the dream expands and smashes
With slumber what waking I won’t bring eyes to see.
My weary bones, seduced by darkness, flee
With years passed by, the dreams remain as flashes
Of days spent writhing under willow lashes.
Each pregnant pause of sleep brings peace to me.
But sons of midnight break and challenge logic.
The bloody ribbons flow across my face
Displaying pain when demons like to frolic.
Tomorrow is today, no sleep can pace
This hunger heaving refuse dry and cholic.
I stay awake, alone in my embrace.
***
IT SEEMS DEAD TO ME
My love long dead, with grief at night I still walk
Down darkened streets familliar to my feet
When voices choose no other time to meet
Each word with poison feeds the next we talk.
Though shoeless, hopeless, wordless, I stalk
The Void my mind makes grass although it's concrete
I masticate the words my mind makes meat
To choke in silence while the neighbors gawk.
Take it from me, nobody wants to share
This legions of voices that lingers inside;
Those that know nothing have nothing to bless.
Everyone reading who knows me, beware
If you choose to listen, and in me abide,
My pain still rules my cold and clingy caress.
All uncited material on this page is copyright Thomas Jackson 2005
Recent Technicalities
NAS
Uh, uh, uh, now let's get it all in perspective
For all y'all enjoyment, a song y'all can step wit'
Y'all appointed me to bring rap justice
But I ain't five-O, y'all know it's Nas yo
Grey goose and a whole lotta hydro
Only describe us as soldier survivors
Stay laced in the best, well dressed with finesse
In a white tee lookin for wifie
Nas, “Made You Look”
Does this sound familliar? It should; its rhythmn is timeless.
Shakespeare
To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Shakespeare, Hamlet (III.i.64-74)
Same structure, same rhythmn, read them side-by-side if you don't believe me.
Among the characteristics observable by the untrained ear are the even distribution of syllables and rhymes; together, they make flow: the anticipation of the next series of words and their cadence. Because both of these poems are designed performance pieces, it is far more important for the poem to sound regimented. In observing poetry, the ear expects slight variations on a common pattern; the best patterns make the best sounds. There are no visible line breaks in the spoken word, so poets do not have the comfort of a page to regiment poetry; white space, shape, and placement don't matter.
So, you may ask, how do we know what structures Nas and Shakespeare use? The answer is in the line and the foot. A foot is a regular series of syllables around an accent. A regular line should contain the same number of identical feet, all of which have names.
MAJOR FEET:
Iamb: - /
Trochee: / -
Anapest: - - /
MINOR FEET:
Spondee: / /
Pyrrhic: - -
Dactyl: / - -
Poems are rarely written exclusively with minor feet; major feet make up the bulk of English verse. If you've heard of iambic pentameter, you should know how to describe a line. If you haven't, it's really easy. First you state the foot name (such as iambic, trochaic, or anapestic), then the number of feet in a line:
One Foot: monometer
Two Feet: bimeter
Three Feet: trimeter
Four feet: tetrameter
Five feet: pentameter
Six feet: hexameter
As the feet get more numerous, you'll need more wind to use them. Barrel-chested bards and rappers use five and six foot lines frequently. My somewhat more limited mouth is more comfortable with tetrameter and trimeter.
There are even more complicated structures at work in most regimented verse, such as minor foot replacement and cataletic verse. It's ok to replace a major foot with a minor foot with the same number of syllables, or vise-versa. The spondee and pyrrhic both appear in the Nas and Shakepseare examples above as minor replacement feet. The name of a line with two different feet is derived from the most common foot in the line. Cataletic verse consists of lines with either a syllable missing at the end, or an added syllable at the beginning of a line; used together, they make syncopation: a pattern where a normally weak syllable is stressed.
Recitation and Examination combined with scansion tell clearly if the quantified flow that works well with itself and the human ear: it's a method used to test the poem at hand for unseen metrical errors. Scansion is the process of breaking down a poem into lines and feet. It sounds hard, but it's really quite easy; first you count the number of syllables in each line, then decide which syllables are accented and which ones aren't. After that, you can find the feet and count them up to determine the metrical measure.
The heirs to Shakespeare's throne, in my opinion, are not Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, or Maya Angelou; the heirs are DMX, Nas, and other rappers who make poetry that people actually observe. Poetry has written itself into such a small corner that the old ways are coming back around in rap. Nas may not know it, but he is using these constructions in his best work. I see them; I hear them; I feel them. To me, there is nothing better than a sonnet, Shakespeare's or Petrarch's (I've read the Petrarch in Italian, it's gorgeous). However, if denied knowlege of classical verse as so many youngsters are, I would turn to its best modern equivalent: the rap poem. Poetry is as important now as it ever was, but I believe people will go elsewhere if its sweetness is unavailable from the usual wordmongers.
Poetry differs from prose because it treats how the words are said with the same importance as what the words mean. In Rap, I find this to be especially true. Rap makes a strange ally to old-style metric poetry, but with all its flaws, it still leads the way for style over substance poetry into the forseeable future. It's a damn shame we've lost Milton and damn near lost Shakespeare, but given the state of contemporary academic poetry, I will listen to Nas before Maya Angelou every time.
I'll get off my soapbox now; perhaps I'll post a poem later.
Uh, uh, uh, now let's get it all in perspective
For all y'all enjoyment, a song y'all can step wit'
Y'all appointed me to bring rap justice
But I ain't five-O, y'all know it's Nas yo
Grey goose and a whole lotta hydro
Only describe us as soldier survivors
Stay laced in the best, well dressed with finesse
In a white tee lookin for wifie
Nas, “Made You Look”
Does this sound familliar? It should; its rhythmn is timeless.
Shakespeare
To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Shakespeare, Hamlet (III.i.64-74)
Same structure, same rhythmn, read them side-by-side if you don't believe me.
Among the characteristics observable by the untrained ear are the even distribution of syllables and rhymes; together, they make flow: the anticipation of the next series of words and their cadence. Because both of these poems are designed performance pieces, it is far more important for the poem to sound regimented. In observing poetry, the ear expects slight variations on a common pattern; the best patterns make the best sounds. There are no visible line breaks in the spoken word, so poets do not have the comfort of a page to regiment poetry; white space, shape, and placement don't matter.
So, you may ask, how do we know what structures Nas and Shakespeare use? The answer is in the line and the foot. A foot is a regular series of syllables around an accent. A regular line should contain the same number of identical feet, all of which have names.
MAJOR FEET:
Iamb: - /
Trochee: / -
Anapest: - - /
MINOR FEET:
Spondee: / /
Pyrrhic: - -
Dactyl: / - -
Poems are rarely written exclusively with minor feet; major feet make up the bulk of English verse. If you've heard of iambic pentameter, you should know how to describe a line. If you haven't, it's really easy. First you state the foot name (such as iambic, trochaic, or anapestic), then the number of feet in a line:
One Foot: monometer
Two Feet: bimeter
Three Feet: trimeter
Four feet: tetrameter
Five feet: pentameter
Six feet: hexameter
As the feet get more numerous, you'll need more wind to use them. Barrel-chested bards and rappers use five and six foot lines frequently. My somewhat more limited mouth is more comfortable with tetrameter and trimeter.
There are even more complicated structures at work in most regimented verse, such as minor foot replacement and cataletic verse. It's ok to replace a major foot with a minor foot with the same number of syllables, or vise-versa. The spondee and pyrrhic both appear in the Nas and Shakepseare examples above as minor replacement feet. The name of a line with two different feet is derived from the most common foot in the line. Cataletic verse consists of lines with either a syllable missing at the end, or an added syllable at the beginning of a line; used together, they make syncopation: a pattern where a normally weak syllable is stressed.
Recitation and Examination combined with scansion tell clearly if the quantified flow that works well with itself and the human ear: it's a method used to test the poem at hand for unseen metrical errors. Scansion is the process of breaking down a poem into lines and feet. It sounds hard, but it's really quite easy; first you count the number of syllables in each line, then decide which syllables are accented and which ones aren't. After that, you can find the feet and count them up to determine the metrical measure.
The heirs to Shakespeare's throne, in my opinion, are not Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, or Maya Angelou; the heirs are DMX, Nas, and other rappers who make poetry that people actually observe. Poetry has written itself into such a small corner that the old ways are coming back around in rap. Nas may not know it, but he is using these constructions in his best work. I see them; I hear them; I feel them. To me, there is nothing better than a sonnet, Shakespeare's or Petrarch's (I've read the Petrarch in Italian, it's gorgeous). However, if denied knowlege of classical verse as so many youngsters are, I would turn to its best modern equivalent: the rap poem. Poetry is as important now as it ever was, but I believe people will go elsewhere if its sweetness is unavailable from the usual wordmongers.
Poetry differs from prose because it treats how the words are said with the same importance as what the words mean. In Rap, I find this to be especially true. Rap makes a strange ally to old-style metric poetry, but with all its flaws, it still leads the way for style over substance poetry into the forseeable future. It's a damn shame we've lost Milton and damn near lost Shakespeare, but given the state of contemporary academic poetry, I will listen to Nas before Maya Angelou every time.
I'll get off my soapbox now; perhaps I'll post a poem later.
Thursday, February 24, 2005
calling
I feel the night beckon. I see you all in objects. I see people I hate erupting from my skin. I see people I love on soft surfaces; they leave when I try to touch them. The people for whom I wish I feel nothing swim scattered in the partially empty water bottles arrayed around this room, taunting me with their indifference. I love most in these bottles, although I hate a few. I've seen too much, but unlike Oedipus, I cannot evade my sight with blindness; you will all follow, and you'd be all I see.
I make horrible mistakes. Most of them revolve around me choosing love when I could have chosen to feel nothing. No love is worth this spiraling staircase of doubt and regret. Small voices tell me if I said something else, or acted differently, or showed less then maybe I wouldn't be alone. I am alone. It's one of life's inevitabilities. Some people, the lucky ones, have so much love they have to choose between two, or even more. Looking from the outside, I'd choose all other love over mine. The hardships I take upon myself and the extent I avail myself to this condition are not a cry for help. I seek understanding and acceptance. I know I should feel more comfort in the presence of God, but I cannot. I must be heard. I must be heard; do you understand?
In 1997, I was happy alone. It is 1997 no longer. The night beckons, but I do not come. Where once I smiled sideways, and reveled in my unique nature, I can now only look up armed with nothing but these words. This is not wallowing or needless self-torture; my pain is real, and my words are sincere. If I could choose a way of thinking, I would be strong, I would be generous with comfort, I would smile without reservation, and I would be beautiful. My thoughts are not my conscious choices: I am weak, I take more comfort than I give, my smile is always fake, and I am ugly beyond words.
As injured my voice is with Tardive Dyskinesia, I can bear to be heard. When photographed, I wear the old mask. My smile is sideways, like I know something the rest of you don't. My secret walked with Lions at night. The secret wrote poetry meant for one set of eyes in pursuit of another. Thousands of lines crept by, slowly extending out of my open arms. I thought the truth would bring acceptance. I was wrong; my youth crawled down my throat and died. The stench took hold, and remains to this day. If you don't believe me, kiss me. You will know it.
I can't stay secret. I won't live behind the old mask concealing the old wound. I must be heard. This might be hard to read, but it's harder to write. Please, just stay. Testify my waning strength. Weigh my burden's crow feather against your cluster of grapes. Let my sincere eyes show you everything my smile retracts. Watch me show you how ugly the monster lives.
I make horrible mistakes. Most of them revolve around me choosing love when I could have chosen to feel nothing. No love is worth this spiraling staircase of doubt and regret. Small voices tell me if I said something else, or acted differently, or showed less then maybe I wouldn't be alone. I am alone. It's one of life's inevitabilities. Some people, the lucky ones, have so much love they have to choose between two, or even more. Looking from the outside, I'd choose all other love over mine. The hardships I take upon myself and the extent I avail myself to this condition are not a cry for help. I seek understanding and acceptance. I know I should feel more comfort in the presence of God, but I cannot. I must be heard. I must be heard; do you understand?
In 1997, I was happy alone. It is 1997 no longer. The night beckons, but I do not come. Where once I smiled sideways, and reveled in my unique nature, I can now only look up armed with nothing but these words. This is not wallowing or needless self-torture; my pain is real, and my words are sincere. If I could choose a way of thinking, I would be strong, I would be generous with comfort, I would smile without reservation, and I would be beautiful. My thoughts are not my conscious choices: I am weak, I take more comfort than I give, my smile is always fake, and I am ugly beyond words.
As injured my voice is with Tardive Dyskinesia, I can bear to be heard. When photographed, I wear the old mask. My smile is sideways, like I know something the rest of you don't. My secret walked with Lions at night. The secret wrote poetry meant for one set of eyes in pursuit of another. Thousands of lines crept by, slowly extending out of my open arms. I thought the truth would bring acceptance. I was wrong; my youth crawled down my throat and died. The stench took hold, and remains to this day. If you don't believe me, kiss me. You will know it.
I can't stay secret. I won't live behind the old mask concealing the old wound. I must be heard. This might be hard to read, but it's harder to write. Please, just stay. Testify my waning strength. Weigh my burden's crow feather against your cluster of grapes. Let my sincere eyes show you everything my smile retracts. Watch me show you how ugly the monster lives.
Some Cheer the Bull
I'm entranced with using bullfighting as a metaphor for my mental illness. There are many who watch me struggle, a few who risk to help me, but in the end, I'm alone. I train for being alone. Many watch, but none comprehend the full experience as I do. For near eleven years, I fight the bull every day; most spectators cheer the matador, but some cheer the bull.
I've written two poems recently on the subject:
SOME CHEER THE BULL
I wait at the moment of truth
my sharp espada in one hand
a red muleta in the other
my only arms against my troubles:
the sword and cape are always close
to guard against the charging bull
the ring and crowd remain the same
as people stand and shout their cheers
some cheer the bull, but most cheer me
the bull is strong where I am weak
there's too much weight behind the horns
kept sharp despite their frequent use
each pass comes closer to my skin
as shouts for blood grow louder
the horns, near hips, get stronger
the shoulder grazes my left hip
they struck my right hip yesterday
and put me under very fast
I can't stop fate or alter it
I plunge my sword deep in the bull
my grip is lost, it charges still
my heart beats fast as horns dig in
my eyelids close as I fall down
I sleep like death now that I'm drugged
the nurses clean the ring
and dissipate the crowd
the tempo slows a beat
it won't be slow forever
my spirit never dies:
they can't take that away
my sword is in these verses
my cape is in my heart
I'm ready for tomorrow
I'll fight the bull again
***
A MATADOR OF FEARS
I am a matador of fears
for thirty years
or thirty seconds
hope will be my sword
I fight my fear of love
for peace
for vengeance
for you
for me
but not hope
hope is my sword
with mercy dispensed at its tip
I wish the same for myself
But when none is forthcoming
I wait
At the tip of hope
On the neck of desire,
Cursing beneath my breath
Because there is no ring, no bull, and no crowd
I'm alone with my demons
And they don't sleep.
I've written two poems recently on the subject:
SOME CHEER THE BULL
I wait at the moment of truth
my sharp espada in one hand
a red muleta in the other
my only arms against my troubles:
the sword and cape are always close
to guard against the charging bull
the ring and crowd remain the same
as people stand and shout their cheers
some cheer the bull, but most cheer me
the bull is strong where I am weak
there's too much weight behind the horns
kept sharp despite their frequent use
each pass comes closer to my skin
as shouts for blood grow louder
the horns, near hips, get stronger
the shoulder grazes my left hip
they struck my right hip yesterday
and put me under very fast
I can't stop fate or alter it
I plunge my sword deep in the bull
my grip is lost, it charges still
my heart beats fast as horns dig in
my eyelids close as I fall down
I sleep like death now that I'm drugged
the nurses clean the ring
and dissipate the crowd
the tempo slows a beat
it won't be slow forever
my spirit never dies:
they can't take that away
my sword is in these verses
my cape is in my heart
I'm ready for tomorrow
I'll fight the bull again
***
A MATADOR OF FEARS
I am a matador of fears
for thirty years
or thirty seconds
hope will be my sword
I fight my fear of love
for peace
for vengeance
for you
for me
but not hope
hope is my sword
with mercy dispensed at its tip
I wish the same for myself
But when none is forthcoming
I wait
At the tip of hope
On the neck of desire,
Cursing beneath my breath
Because there is no ring, no bull, and no crowd
I'm alone with my demons
And they don't sleep.
Monday, February 21, 2005
President's Day
"We will have the most ethical administration in the history of the Republic." -- President Clinton, on the PBS program "Washington Week in Review", February 25, 1994
http://www.senate.gov/~rpc/releases/1998/clinton-words.htm
Some men let their words speak for themselves, and condemn without commentary.
I love the French folk epic "The Song of Roland." In particular, I love the Ganelon character. He's a sneaky, bitter little man who betrays Charlemagne at the battle of Roncesvalles in 778 AD. I always wondered exactly how Ganelon came to treason. The epic states little, only a small look into a perceived slight by his stepson Roland against his character. Little things can become large when Honor is involved. I wrote a poem to look into Ganelon's motives; all the facts are the same as in The Song of Roland, but I put them together with a first-person narrative straight from Ganelon's thoughts as I know them. Personally, I always sympathized with Ganelon, but fell short of approving his treason. Some people never learn the meaning of the word gratitude. Roland is one of those people.
OLD GAN
I should have been among them
Laughing like the rest,
Enjoying life in full
I killed for him
I bled for him
and in return: insults
slights upon my character
Comissions to discredit
The good things I have done
I do not wish to drink
be merrry with my peers
When all they do is laugh me
An insult in the ear
Turns quickly toward the mouth
repeated in a chorus
Of course they never mean it
or so they say
It’s always in good fun
But fun at whose expense?
Roland runs men through
For less than what he throws at me
And Oliver, his lap dog
Continues with the barking
Little, short prattle
I chase him with a sneer
and he runs back to master
To cry and wet himself
Those two deserve each other
Both false, and living lies:
Two men a bit too close
I can’t beat Roland’s tongue
For he will cut mine off
If I returned in kind
Durendal should be mine!
By right, the sword is mine!
My wife, his mother, spurns me
And dreams all day of love
Her former husband’s seed
Replaced me in her eyes
Before I even met her
She had no love for others
And wanted my place for Roland
What should I do?
I can’t cry at my misfortune
I can’t strike at my obsession
I loved her
I cherished her
I gave her what I had
And that is what she wanted
A place for Roland at court
Where he can work his lies
Get ahead of me
Steal my peerage
Run with my glory
He leads my men in his name
And laughs when I am mentioned
I’m just Old Gan to him
But I am Ganelon
And was before his birth
He is no son of mine
His mother said she loved me
With pretty, batting eyes
Not suited to the truth
Once joined to me in law
Her love turned hard and cold
To match her diamond ring
I cannot take this further
Or it will be my grave
My presence will be felt
I know a man in Spain
Once friendly to my house
More friendly than my wife
My king,
My country,
My faith.
Roland, I am here
My smile is my vengeance
Your pride will be your grave.
http://www.senate.gov/~rpc/releases/1998/clinton-words.htm
Some men let their words speak for themselves, and condemn without commentary.
I love the French folk epic "The Song of Roland." In particular, I love the Ganelon character. He's a sneaky, bitter little man who betrays Charlemagne at the battle of Roncesvalles in 778 AD. I always wondered exactly how Ganelon came to treason. The epic states little, only a small look into a perceived slight by his stepson Roland against his character. Little things can become large when Honor is involved. I wrote a poem to look into Ganelon's motives; all the facts are the same as in The Song of Roland, but I put them together with a first-person narrative straight from Ganelon's thoughts as I know them. Personally, I always sympathized with Ganelon, but fell short of approving his treason. Some people never learn the meaning of the word gratitude. Roland is one of those people.
OLD GAN
I should have been among them
Laughing like the rest,
Enjoying life in full
I killed for him
I bled for him
and in return: insults
slights upon my character
Comissions to discredit
The good things I have done
I do not wish to drink
be merrry with my peers
When all they do is laugh me
An insult in the ear
Turns quickly toward the mouth
repeated in a chorus
Of course they never mean it
or so they say
It’s always in good fun
But fun at whose expense?
Roland runs men through
For less than what he throws at me
And Oliver, his lap dog
Continues with the barking
Little, short prattle
I chase him with a sneer
and he runs back to master
To cry and wet himself
Those two deserve each other
Both false, and living lies:
Two men a bit too close
I can’t beat Roland’s tongue
For he will cut mine off
If I returned in kind
Durendal should be mine!
By right, the sword is mine!
My wife, his mother, spurns me
And dreams all day of love
Her former husband’s seed
Replaced me in her eyes
Before I even met her
She had no love for others
And wanted my place for Roland
What should I do?
I can’t cry at my misfortune
I can’t strike at my obsession
I loved her
I cherished her
I gave her what I had
And that is what she wanted
A place for Roland at court
Where he can work his lies
Get ahead of me
Steal my peerage
Run with my glory
He leads my men in his name
And laughs when I am mentioned
I’m just Old Gan to him
But I am Ganelon
And was before his birth
He is no son of mine
His mother said she loved me
With pretty, batting eyes
Not suited to the truth
Once joined to me in law
Her love turned hard and cold
To match her diamond ring
I cannot take this further
Or it will be my grave
My presence will be felt
I know a man in Spain
Once friendly to my house
More friendly than my wife
My king,
My country,
My faith.
Roland, I am here
My smile is my vengeance
Your pride will be your grave.
Saturday, February 19, 2005
Concrete
A small post today, and a small poem on concrete.
ON CONCRETE
Red stains on my new pants
Still warm, bright, and growing
As the sun goes over the horizon
Far too fast this early in the day
I look east, then down, then up
As I lose my footing
And sleep deep in a pile of leaves
A smile before unconsciousness
by the way, everything on this page is copyrighted by me 2005 (except for the Rilke translation) so don't steal it.
ON CONCRETE
Red stains on my new pants
Still warm, bright, and growing
As the sun goes over the horizon
Far too fast this early in the day
I look east, then down, then up
As I lose my footing
And sleep deep in a pile of leaves
A smile before unconsciousness
by the way, everything on this page is copyrighted by me 2005 (except for the Rilke translation) so don't steal it.
Friday, February 18, 2005
Naomi Nye
I'm headed off to Austin in April to attend the Austin International Poetry Festival (AIPF), and one of my favorite contemporary poets is going to be featured! Naomi Nye writes wonderful little poems that are themselves first. That's the mantra of my poetic existence: poems should be themselves first. I hope my skills and poems will have the same quality of her work someday, and maybe even a shard of her recognition. Yes, I know she probably differs with me on politics, but those who know me also know there are precious few (probably none) that don't.
On the business of poems being themselves first, I've written a poem that summarizes my sentiments. It springs from my frustrations with poets who write about things rather than writing things. Writing about politics produced some of the lamest poems I've read or heard. Who remembers poetry about Benjamin Disraeli? Do today's poets think poems about Bush, Rumsfeld, and Ashcroft will last a century? Poems about the CIA, or "Cocaine Import Agency," according to one particular wannabe are wearing just as thin. For the most part, I can even recognize quality in their styles (well maybe not the anti-CIA poser, he was such a dork), but why should I read them? Predictable, identical cookie-cutter poems about how much so and so wants a random political officer to go to the afterlife of the poet's choosing just are not good literature; please find something else to write about! Shakespeare rode Petrarch pretty hard in his sonnets, but I have to believe that somewhere the Bard is vomiting all over today's activist poetry, and wishing, nay, begging for more sonnets written of Laura.
"cercar non so ch'Amor non venga sempre
ragionando con meco, et io con lui."
"I know not how to seek where love will not always find me
reasoning with me, and I with him."
If only we still had you, Petrarch.
WORDS
The flow of words is wonderful!
If I could only dip my cup in its bounty . . .
I would be strong
and beautiful
and maybe, just maybe
they'd all see who I am
Through the letters on the page
When I write, I’m free
Each thought emancipated
from expectations without and within
The unwritten rules are written
In passions, unbridled, taking shape
As my infamy releases
Each word to be misunderstood
Misrepresented
Marked
And mangled at the tip of a critic’s pen
Some poems are born of sentiment
Others born from inebriation
Or sweet infatuation
Set in motion by the ocean
Always blue in verses
But all too often brown, salty, and flooded
Like my eyes.
Too many words are born of common intrests
Fueled by expectations
Too easily met
By more of the same blank noise
They say:
This is a poem about love
This is a poem about peace
This is a poem about justice
This is a poem about opportunity
This is a poem about pride
This is a poem
Until the word “poem”
Means nothing at all
The bounty of words Is there for the taking
By the true
By the passionate
By the strong
By the beautiful
And rarely by the poets who write about
On the business of poems being themselves first, I've written a poem that summarizes my sentiments. It springs from my frustrations with poets who write about things rather than writing things. Writing about politics produced some of the lamest poems I've read or heard. Who remembers poetry about Benjamin Disraeli? Do today's poets think poems about Bush, Rumsfeld, and Ashcroft will last a century? Poems about the CIA, or "Cocaine Import Agency," according to one particular wannabe are wearing just as thin. For the most part, I can even recognize quality in their styles (well maybe not the anti-CIA poser, he was such a dork), but why should I read them? Predictable, identical cookie-cutter poems about how much so and so wants a random political officer to go to the afterlife of the poet's choosing just are not good literature; please find something else to write about! Shakespeare rode Petrarch pretty hard in his sonnets, but I have to believe that somewhere the Bard is vomiting all over today's activist poetry, and wishing, nay, begging for more sonnets written of Laura.
"cercar non so ch'Amor non venga sempre
ragionando con meco, et io con lui."
"I know not how to seek where love will not always find me
reasoning with me, and I with him."
If only we still had you, Petrarch.
WORDS
The flow of words is wonderful!
If I could only dip my cup in its bounty . . .
I would be strong
and beautiful
and maybe, just maybe
they'd all see who I am
Through the letters on the page
When I write, I’m free
Each thought emancipated
from expectations without and within
The unwritten rules are written
In passions, unbridled, taking shape
As my infamy releases
Each word to be misunderstood
Misrepresented
Marked
And mangled at the tip of a critic’s pen
Some poems are born of sentiment
Others born from inebriation
Or sweet infatuation
Set in motion by the ocean
Always blue in verses
But all too often brown, salty, and flooded
Like my eyes.
Too many words are born of common intrests
Fueled by expectations
Too easily met
By more of the same blank noise
They say:
This is a poem about love
This is a poem about peace
This is a poem about justice
This is a poem about opportunity
This is a poem about pride
This is a poem
Until the word “poem”
Means nothing at all
The bounty of words Is there for the taking
By the true
By the passionate
By the strong
By the beautiful
And rarely by the poets who write about
I am not alone in torture, but I am alone in mine
Solitude, for me, is pain. I spend tremendous amounts of time without human contact, but I am never truly alone. My usual companions are Legion. It would be easy for me to assert that schizophrenia did all the damage, but I can hold my brain chemistry responsible only so much. The truth of the matter is that I have never been well-socialized. I've always been a bit of a sad loner; when madness struck, I was already leaving the world most of you take for granted. I could blame the punchers and the lashers, but in the end, it was me. I didn't bother explaining myself to anyone; I thought no one would care. In the end, I still believe that to be true. It's very easy to make a monster out of my visions, voices, and phantom scents, but I have always known this sad, melancholy shadow of a memory to be my monstrous side. I never needed help to share the gregarious jackass so easily identified with me. I need to share the vulnerable parts: the poet, the thinker, the clingy paincushion. Living this way is tearing me apart. Every time I think I've found a way to speak freely or a place where my true voice is welcome, I always end up quarantined further and further into myself. People buckle and run under the extreme sheer weight of my sadness; I grab ahold of what I can, but that never helps. Of course, my disease mangles and rearranges these memories, but the proof of their general validity remains: I am always away from others. I offer myself freely to be understood in the lines of my poetry, but the totality of the verses, once read, is to usher others away from my sadness. It's all quite pointless, but I retain my quixotic quest. I will not be silent, even if I am never heard.
THE MATADOR OF FEARS
I am a matador of fears
for thirty years
or thirty seconds
hope will be my sword
I fight my fear of love
for peace
for vengeance
for you
for me
but not hope
hope is my sword
with mercy dispensed at its tip
I wish the same for myself
But when none is forthcoming
I wait
At the tip of hope
On the neck of desire,
Cursing beneath my breath
Because there is no ring, no bull, and no crowd
I'm alone with my demons
And they don't sleep.
THE MATADOR OF FEARS
I am a matador of fears
for thirty years
or thirty seconds
hope will be my sword
I fight my fear of love
for peace
for vengeance
for you
for me
but not hope
hope is my sword
with mercy dispensed at its tip
I wish the same for myself
But when none is forthcoming
I wait
At the tip of hope
On the neck of desire,
Cursing beneath my breath
Because there is no ring, no bull, and no crowd
I'm alone with my demons
And they don't sleep.
Thursday, February 17, 2005
My Brother
My brother's getting married! His sense of humor is amazing, and stunningly creative. We're forever stealing each others' jokes; I borrow more than I loan. His creative abilities are raw, but brilliant; he would protest it, but I believe he could be every bit the writer and poet I am if he so chose. However, he chose a different way of living: computer science. I programmed a bit in high school, but I never had a good handle on the more mathematical side of reason necessary for devoting myself to the study of computers. I chose language and poetry because I feel I must, the only valid reason in Rilke's eyes to write. Rilke also knew that the "half-artistic professions," as he called them, to be further from art than the honest appplication of reason to reality:
"Art too is just a way of living, and however one lives, one can, without knowing, prepare for it; in everything real one is closer to it, more its neighbor, than in the unreal half-artistic professions, which, while they pretend to be close to art, in practice deny and attack the existence of all art - as, for example, all of journalism does and almost all criticism and three quarters of what is called (and wants to be called) literature. I am glad, in a word, that you have overcome the danger of landing in one of those professions, and are solitary and courageous, somewhere in a rugged reality. May the coming year support and strengthen you in that."
-Ranier Maria Rilke
My brother and his future wife have a great future ahead of them. Both are very real in Rilke's sense of the word, and I think they are great together. I wish them only the best in life. His words and programs are very good, from what little I've seen, but I believe his greatest accomplishments will be intellectual fulfillment, and the kind of satisfaction that only home and hearth can bring.
Way to go, bro.
"Art too is just a way of living, and however one lives, one can, without knowing, prepare for it; in everything real one is closer to it, more its neighbor, than in the unreal half-artistic professions, which, while they pretend to be close to art, in practice deny and attack the existence of all art - as, for example, all of journalism does and almost all criticism and three quarters of what is called (and wants to be called) literature. I am glad, in a word, that you have overcome the danger of landing in one of those professions, and are solitary and courageous, somewhere in a rugged reality. May the coming year support and strengthen you in that."
-Ranier Maria Rilke
My brother and his future wife have a great future ahead of them. Both are very real in Rilke's sense of the word, and I think they are great together. I wish them only the best in life. His words and programs are very good, from what little I've seen, but I believe his greatest accomplishments will be intellectual fulfillment, and the kind of satisfaction that only home and hearth can bring.
Way to go, bro.
Wednesday, February 16, 2005
paincushion
Take it from a paincushion: nobody wants to be around a paincushion. There are two boundaries from which there is no return: Death and Madness. In March, it will be eleven years I've lived with schizophrenia. Too often I think of the impossible when I write; I need to learn my limits.
LIMITS
I bring the gift of pain
My problems on your doorstep
Too many problems start
With pain expressed to deafness
I lead my words with anguish
Too much, too fast, too painful
I search for understanding
But garnish only pity
You'd think I'd learn my lesson
The limits of my life
But no, I still avail
Myself to my affliction
Too often with my demons
I come to wish for Mercy
While I'm still armed with Hope
And staring down my fears
For now, I pass by Scylla:
Leave one with medication
In time I'll try Charybdis:
Risk all to find a cure
At gunpoint I'll claim truth
A bullet for the weary
The fear of hell won't stop me
From longing for the Exit
What Love can chase me down,
Put limits on my pain?
In Proverbs there are lies
In Job, I feel the truth
I know I should not falter
But everyone is weak.
Sometimes my desperation
Takes arms against my Madness
It leaves me seeking silence
And longing Love's embrace
Release won't come from violence
But pain won't show me grace.
LIMITS
I bring the gift of pain
My problems on your doorstep
Too many problems start
With pain expressed to deafness
I lead my words with anguish
Too much, too fast, too painful
I search for understanding
But garnish only pity
You'd think I'd learn my lesson
The limits of my life
But no, I still avail
Myself to my affliction
Too often with my demons
I come to wish for Mercy
While I'm still armed with Hope
And staring down my fears
For now, I pass by Scylla:
Leave one with medication
In time I'll try Charybdis:
Risk all to find a cure
At gunpoint I'll claim truth
A bullet for the weary
The fear of hell won't stop me
From longing for the Exit
What Love can chase me down,
Put limits on my pain?
In Proverbs there are lies
In Job, I feel the truth
I know I should not falter
But everyone is weak.
Sometimes my desperation
Takes arms against my Madness
It leaves me seeking silence
And longing Love's embrace
Release won't come from violence
But pain won't show me grace.
Uncertain Future
I don't quite know what to do with my blog yet. Perhaps I'll use it to display my verses; more likely, I'll just use it to complain about my life to my non-existent legion of readers. I will lead things off with a poem with a bit of insight into how I think:
Stanzas for the Morning
My claws come out at night
When no one else can see:
Beneath the shroud of darkness;
The dream begins for me.
A milky blackness covers
The tracks I leave behind.
The words that others hear,
Outnumbered In my mind,
Leave guttural distortions,
Deluding Amber Eyes.
Each sound has twenty siblings,
Nineteen of which are lies.
I struggle with the truth,
And ask too many questions.
The answers that I’m given
Take flight with my perceptions.
Too many times before
When I was offered peace,
I chose to stay tenacious,
Ignoring signs to cease.
My dreams come in with midnight,
Each born of my mistakes.
Regret and shame abounding,
This son of midnight wakes.
Stanzas for the Morning
My claws come out at night
When no one else can see:
Beneath the shroud of darkness;
The dream begins for me.
A milky blackness covers
The tracks I leave behind.
The words that others hear,
Outnumbered In my mind,
Leave guttural distortions,
Deluding Amber Eyes.
Each sound has twenty siblings,
Nineteen of which are lies.
I struggle with the truth,
And ask too many questions.
The answers that I’m given
Take flight with my perceptions.
Too many times before
When I was offered peace,
I chose to stay tenacious,
Ignoring signs to cease.
My dreams come in with midnight,
Each born of my mistakes.
Regret and shame abounding,
This son of midnight wakes.
