shocked to see how bad some of my recent stuff looks, after reading a very strong poem by Till Gwinn. saw this material as still vanity-driven, trying to make you like me or something, and edited out what seemed the rotten parts. maybe made it readable. Saw that i go bad when i don’t remember that i’m writing a gift to the reader, one with no strings. especially when i forget that i’m really writing a lyric to a song, and force the music part to cover the chatty wordings.

talked with a good poet yesterday. totally opposite style, i can’t write like him. looking at my stuff, now — the new stuff i’ve mostly just written for this online poetry site, ‘poetry c.’ — it seems short and choppy and not at all as melodic as how i wrote them. maybe they’re ok. but, mostly i should just only write poetry when i should write poetry. the early stuff still works for me. but, it’s like the stuff i wrote for poetry c. is just prose with a limp. it looks like verse but it’s only about some comment about some comment — writing to show people how to write, how to open up out of writing a letter or a sermon. so what? if they can’t dance why want them to dance? it’d probably look as stupid as my disco minuets.

i’ve got to be myself, but i’m only myself when i’m actually writing something. after, i’m just a consumer looking for cookies. nothing to offer anyone but words of wisdom. words which i know are just paper shells to keep my hands busy.

here’s the crux:

as a poet i invent the concept AS the text is formed… formed into a poem object.

1. the text is the look of the clay AFTER it is shaped. the writing, the shaping, is the monologue of the poet’s LOGO into the world.

2. the need to make order. the need to make order out of a frightening chaos. the concept, the object we call a concept, is a picture of order, a ‘solution’. the concept-act is inventing a ‘solution’. a solution is an invention which orders doubt. The concept is an invention of a solution and is the solution itself. This is the reality of authors. We create our experience of chaos, like anyone — everyone’s fear or love is of their own reaction and capability to respond in reaction.

we, authors, place into the world objects — things which stay as wordings — as solutions to our doubt and fears. even when we pretend to be objective — and, isn’t irony just pushing our fear into the closet — out of sight? And isn’t ‘rationalism’ just fear reduced to, turned into, the banal…? rationalism is whatever confuses you deconstructed into its static and active threats… held to the light… for manipulation of the psyche into certainty. ( rationally, you can’t know what you don’t know. )

3. the poem is a construction for a task. the task is to re-associate the self with the body. to reconcile with external necessities, for survival. a poet’s task is different from a consumer’s task in that we invent our own visions and produce a world where our visions are real. Poets hope, but always know, that in the end a poem is a suicide note — a final thing said. Poets know that a poem must be that true to be a real poem. The task is to live with the word both as it is and how we wish it to be.

this conflict of hope and fear tears the poem in two. A MAGIC poem is when the two impulses of hope and fear are fused into a new emotion — one invented in and for the moment. A romantic fusion of death and life, fear and survival. love and hope, pain and loss.

4. the hope to make thought ‘clear’. so, the question now is ‘what is thought made of? and, is my poem a picture of my thought or the invention of a thought… ?

Mandatory Credit: Photo by Courtesy Everett Collection/REX (948135a) Couple having serious interaction Couple having serious interaction

not thinking in music these days. just prose thoughts about how to describe consciousness. but, i really don’t like the word-blug of saying, ‘but, your thoughts are ‘poetic’, and saying that just because i’m thinking of some imaginary thing. i can imagine anything. that’s part of my ‘poet’, but what i can’t imagine is cold reality, because it’s not plastic — needs actual physical manipulation to change. that’s why i like writing and thinking in ‘philosophy’. it’s worthless as a topic but it’s so comforting to write it out —  to find the words to express what i’d like to think is the case. just like this post itself. it really doesn’t do anything except reorder the wording of how i’m going to explain or understand something. it’s not poetry — it  doesn’t give anything back to nature.

you said, dear friend whom i admired,
that i’d be better if i smoked dope —
you said so, but i didn’t hear it, but
i intuited that you meant i’d stop
crushing on you.

when i was an astronaut,
you pulled the plug — i couldn’t breathe,
you cut my air.

when i was a ghost,
you sometimes shivered — i didn’t want
to frighten you, just say hello.

it is that kind of day when
the people are slower than
the street, and marshall
mcluhan had no clue.

and all the small beats
kept to their bed,
with moreen and mark and
me too under the
covers, playing time stand
still.

object and value. i react, but my reactions exist in the real, even if what i react to is an illusion.

as a poet, i try to refine my feelings into a simple, single, feeling. i want to find the object of desire. not of disgust or desire, but desire. i establish a new value. then i react out again, renew or re-identify myself as a being in control, a ‘knowing poet’ and whatever else i identify with and package for, during the writing of, that poem.

this is idealism, this is thought. i act out my thinking: my reactions to a trigger are acted out in a structured, controllable way. but, i am sharing this or even projecting this intentionally out to the other. that is, a poem is not a ‘thought’, it’s a behavior. a behavior is a studied or learned or maybe even a physical reaction which is acted out within a narrow world of our total human self world. we speak, move… that is, play out in time and space. connect with the other, the outside of ourselves. direct ourselves to some one thing — define and narrow our need for someone else to satisfy. who we are calling to defines, in poetry, by whom we trust. we trust the authority but also the reader — we’re communicators, meaning we’re expecting a response — we don’t shout into a vacuum knowing, defining it as a vacuum and expecting anything other than our own self assertion — of physically being a real person.

we make things seem real. as a poet we present ideals as physical, emotionally valid, objective reality. that’s why all poems are love poems. that we attach an image, just as i might have an image in my mind of to whom i’m wishing the poem, is secondary — their identity — to the reality that we’ve come up with a mind solution at all. poetry is a pin on the tip of a coiled spring, snapping back at us when we find the spring’s tension limit, the limit of life’s tolerance of our behavior… of how far we can go in blaming others or even our self ( if we’re charitable towards our selves at all. )

poetry can be judged. a poem is a reaction, and in any game we can watch how the player responds, and judge the adequacy of that response to the game’s reality, not just by our ( poet and reader’s ) aesthetic needs. even if we were so needy that we think that sense satisfaction from soothing words is all we asking for.

i was wondering about
avalanches giving and
emptying,
like a father who is
not, like a rain
that dries heaven.

maybe i see that
children aren’t cattle.
that our parents didn’t need us.

maybe my wondering isn’t like
wishing, like a dream might
make fathers;
like a snow makes
white rainbows.

these gray lights over casper drape
over tiny white flecks of water
thrown over the secret riverfall of
time has no place.
and, here we die,
lay and wait for the sky to open.

clown light scrub the afterday of
many sorrows. wash our
fantasies. bright smile our

dream world of
paper floors and hollow candies. make it glow.

let love go and i’ll be a
whisper in the
music on a distant clear blue sky of
many stars, infinite blue,

stars seek their wonders inside a
tide of ice and shadows. take me there.

sometimes the tide takes more
than’s on the shore. give it
your castle, and it ups and
asks for more. make me a
heaven, rockefellers
move next door.

say to me a young man’s
way too young for me.
been around the planet,
my life is what i take with
me.
your life and my song,
ocean to my sea.

love to read plato,
like to read wittgenstein.
witt loved talking,
plato just loved his
wine.
i like your groin groove,
slide down the end of
time.

had a thought flash,
that the end was the start
of things. light from dark
was a big bang, cadillac,
thing.
watch you leave,
blackness’ all the bang bang
brings.