What is the secret
hidden behind
the veiled innuendo
that hangs
its tapestries
of heavy corded cloth
on these rotting temple walls?

I pierce your flesh with countless
arrows, yet you fail to die;
beheaded, in a pool of cloying blood
your gore-stained neck still
spouts a sermon.

Your skin reeking of the sweet
heavy sweat of gasoline, that hangs
like night jasmine in the humid air
is a reproach; and the raw furrows
there along your back
sing out a louder song than the
hiss and crack of the bullwhip
whose overture is now at end.

Shall I proceed to light the anointing oil
that to your neck you are immersed?
Will turning past their breaking point
the screws against your thumbs
release your hands
from this grasping hold on my neck?

I have burnt away your tongue
with live, red-hot coals;
Will your drawn and quartered limbs,
under the patient care of
some sister-wife,
be sewn to whole in some dark,
fetid swamp?

Look, the lions will not even
deign to touch your ruined
flesh --- it reeks of waste,
of offal, some perfume
that burns the roughest tongue.

What would you live to prove,
that in your dying cause
remains?

Give me no more martyrs;
for the aroma of seared flesh
does not provide a savor
to my senses.

29 MAY 2004

Sometimes keeping a journal can be compared to elective surgery undergone in lieu of some other action, corrective or otherwise, to remedy a more serious life-threatening condition. The act of journaling or blogging, for me, is less about getting my thoughts and creative aspirations down on paper than it is chronicling the space and time continuum in which those things arise. And really, it is less about that than it is about the interactivity of internet journaling.

To do interactive journaling right, from my perspective, is to follow where those who come to my journal come from --- their journals, websites, associations, news sources. Sadly, it ultimately turns out that most blogs are not about the self of these individual bloggers, but more about their sources of information. There is, in a lot of cases, the misguided notion that the blogger is responsible for the only intelligent filtering of information available on the web. So many blogs are filled with clipped stories extracted from newsfeeds --- that frankly, everyone else reads too --- in an attempt to define one's own political, spiritual and/or societal framework and/or agenda through some kind of William S. Burroughsesque cut-up of the reality they inhabit.

The problem, though, is that it is definition through exclusion, through the interplay of other peoples' words. Very rarely --- and this is what separates the mediocre news filter from the blog worth reading --- the aggregator describes what is essential, absolutely necessary, and ultimately the most universal aspect of the selected news clipping --- and that is its effect on them personally. In their own words. Now, these words may be disagreeable to me. They may be misspelled. They may not only disgust or amuse (and these seem to be the polar extremes, with tittilate and epiphanate floating somewhere in between) and they may cause me to shrink back in horror from the person whose self is revealed in their ramblings. But that is the REAL part of the news of that blog. That's what makes it worth bookmarking, revisiting, and clipping from, not figuring out that of the 1,979 times Donald Rumsfield, for example, said something hideous today that was repeated on the web, that my blog has tracked down and collected 1,732 of them, and duly reported my findings like an objective reporter not personally affected by the findings or the outcome of an act, or somehow not part of the very statistics deemed worthy of report.

Because information is not an end unto itself. It cannot be. That's like saying the Bible is God. As I've said before, that's a little too limiting when it's obvious that God is the entire library.

The point I'm trying to make is this: that it is not the information that is important, that is worth sharing --- although the most interesting thing about news aggregation on the web is its explicit illustration that the freedom of the press, at least the mainstream press, is limited to those who own one. What is important is that there are people attached to those blogs. And those people, those individuals, who in these troubled times may be so afraid to not only give their opinion, but form it in the first place (after all, doesn't the Bible say that to think about sinning is ultimately the same as committing the sin itself) have got to have something to say, something worth hearing, at least in their own minds, or they wouldn't be going through the troubling of establishing on-line accounts, designing blog templates, accumulating directory links and cultivating friends-via-electron. But what is it they're saying? Are we as a society claiming, boldfaced, that we are nothing more than how we are portrayed in the news? Is that all there is to it?

Sure, I've got an agenda. So does everyone else whose got a blog. It may be just a playful way to express an alternate side of yourself. It may be that you want some way to focus certain energies that affect your worldview. It may be that you're simply tired of holding pen to paper, or phone to ear as a means for communicating "what's really happening with me" to your friends, be they "real-life" or "on-line".

I wonder, though, how many express that agenda in their own words, or taking the easy way out, like Dr. Frankenstein, create the monster that is their on-line selves using spare parts from other people's bodies.

Bah. Enough ranting for today. I'm off to the Gulf of Mexico to dip my feet at the seashore.

There is something in a family that doesn't like a wall
inside the boundary it constructs, its face against the world,
that thin veneer of solidarity presented to conceal
or pander to the social mores ranking its esteem.

Behind the bastions of normalcy, its main concern
is making sure the single units pretend to conform;
and in that monitoring, it wants no separate, secret lives,
accepting only hesitantly strangers from outside.

Each strained reunion of the brood is subject of concern;
and any bricks laid on in private are quick set upon
with sledgehammers of guilt, and picks of hinting, sly reproach,
each proud attempt to isolate examined and destroyed.

Against this force of silent judgment, one who would be free,
seeking an authenticity outside accepted norms,
must toil in dark and secret, lest their labors be discovered
and hung, a warning pike along the outer fortress wall.

The separate self the enemy the hoarding family fears.
And so with subtle sabotage it works into new bricks themselves
the shale of doubt, and shunning stones to weaken each new plan
until in desperate surrender only the whole survives.

And distance, what is that to it, that reaches beyond time
across the generations, fingers clutching, like ivied vine
that resists even violent axes to grow back anew
and cover each new wound, and scar, with uniformity.

Its cry to arms is "Unity against the gathered hordes
that seek to infiltrate and then betray us from within,"
and with that xenophobic fervor fights to quell, subordinate,
the individual desire to reach outside its grasp.

There is something about family that doesn't like a wall
within its defined boundaries; it challenges the whole.
And each new member must accept their assigned sentry role
or despite years of effort, its well-maintained castle falls.

27 MAY 2004

There is a touch of madness in my blood;
but not a malady of harmful need,
more like grasping out for things that last
despite all proof that just illusion stays.

My German, Swiss and Irish stock is sound -
at least, they learned self-medicating ways
to lose the swirling doubts that trap the mind
and seek to mire the soul in endless strife.

But in the French and English strains there is
no safety net to guard against the world
that grinning wildly reaches out to fool
the willing mark that wanders the arcade.

It feeds upon the silence between words,
a shadow hidden far from prying eyes;
and yet, I feel its presence in those times -
its desperate ambition to survive.

It consumes slowly, sucking at the bones
that frame both solid world and healthy dreams
leaving a fragile and de-marrowed shell
which crumbles without warning into dust.

I fight against this great insanity
that lingered in the minds of my forebears
and turned once thoughtful paragons of wit
to sad, bent husks of life welcoming death.

Perhaps the gene is watered down enough
that it may find no purchase in my fate;
or finding others in my line to chase
that prove less argumentative, elect

to spare my later years this sapping curse.
It also may be that my madness lies
on other tangents, stronger than this thing;
The Celts have demons, too, that must be fed.

27 MAY 2004

The night is late arriving yet again;
and in the day that lingers past its time
it casts tentative shadows, brushed in hues
of lavender and faded rose and blue,

while twilight, holding back its unsure breath
as if it means to swell and burst its seams,
drops only hints its patience has an end
and seems shy and unwilling to intrude

upon the sun's last monologue, intoned
in barely whispered wisps of light.
It lets the final words slip out, then fade,
as finally, the dark blue curtain falls.

Against this backdrop, gentle mauve and pink,
the distant stars appear like bits of thread;
there is a quiet rustle in the trees,
and suddenly, the cool of evening comes.

27 MAY 2004

After having spent a number of days contemplating the connection between the Vedic and Celtic stream beds, via Indo-European language, and receiving a number of illuminating comments to my queries posted at several Celtic culture sites, I now find myself struggling upon the horns of a different, but related, dilemma.

The bottom line is this. I am a writer in English. That is the language in which my fluency and mastery can be expressed. Like Yeats, I question whether it is possible to achieve a true "literary mastery" of more than one language in a single lifetime, exceptions like Vladimir Nabokov notwithstanding. You see, learning another language at a rudimentary level is not enough --- my desire is not to pass myself as a native speaker for the purposes of travel, or even to enjoy works in their native tongues --- these obstacles can be relatively easily overcome with a modicum of study. The issue for me is to become fluent enough to write in another language. And in order for that to occur, I need to consider that in order to read a lot of what I've written in English, the reader must be pretty fluent in English. Otherwise, much of the nuance, the plays with language, the subtlely of innuendo and colloquialism, are likely to be overlooked, or even lost.

On my mother's side, English is for the most part the lingua franca. As second-generation naturalized Irish, I can only assume that any Irish language proficiency was diluted by the time of our arrival on these shores, primarily due to the British efforts before and during the time of naturalization to replace Irish with English, even to the extent of banning the use of Irish. But on my father's side, I need not go back that far to find non-English speakers, at least through my father's matrilineage. My grandmother spoke Plattdeusch (Low German, or Pennsylvania Dutch if you will) during her childhood, and was forced to learn English in American schools as a child. My father learned this language in order to speak with his grandparents, who had naturalized from Bern, Switzerland and spoke no English. As a result, I have less trouble recognizing German words (albeit not High German) than many other languages. I also tend to get at least the Low German accent right. On the German-German (opposed to Swiss-German) side, my grandfather had no German. His family had been in the United States since 1741, fought in the American Revolution and so on, and was for all intents and purposes completely Americanized.

So the result is that English is my Mother Tongue. It is the basis for my understanding of the world. While certainly I have an affinity for a number of foreign expressions and modes of understanding based on my study of those languages (Latin, Spanish, Irish, Sanskrit, German) or my exposure to them (Plattdeusch, Hawaiian, Creole) I will remain only a "literary speaker" of English. Sad that this is true, it seems to me. Perhaps that is too self-limiting.

At seven ten this morning
as the night gave way to dawn
a band of three of black druids*
gathered out on my front lawn

I heard them last night singing
in the dead calm, loud and clear;
but did not recognize their song
until they drew more near.

Drawn to my house, I might suppose
to offer me some clue,
and sip with careful wisdom
from the lawn's supply of dew

Three travelers from the Otherworld
stopped by to check the fire
beneath my recent relit forge
and kindle my desire.

"Recall your smithy lineage,"**
they spoke, and then took wing.
Against this synchronicity
I dared not say a thing.

How odd that they should now appear,
as strangers to these lands,
and offer this encouragement
to my oft idle hands.

And yet, these harbingers whose song
last night I failed to ken
have come to stay among my trees;
I count them as my friends.

05 MAY 2004

* In Welsh, the blackbird is known as "Druid Dhuhb" or the "Black Druid". While we are fortunate enough to have wrens, crows, bluejays, robins, cardinals, sparrows, starlings, pigeons and an occasional parrot among us here in New Orleans, in the five years I have been here this is the first time I have seen an actual black bird. Perhaps there is some significance to this, as the black bird is one of the totem animals for the Druid --- a communicator between this world and the Otherworld, a piercer of the veils.

** There is an area of the old city of Philadelphia that at one time was known as "Cooper's Road" or "Coopersville", in part due to the fact that my ancestor, Simon Litzenberg and his five sons set up shop along that stretch after their arrival from Europe in 1741 as blacksmiths and wheelwrights.

The beastly summer months are creeping in;
I can sense their hot breath and lolling tongues
like a pit bull lurking behind a cypress fence
waiting for the wood to rot away
so it can lunge into my peaceful spring yard.

Canto I

Next stop, the driver said, smiling through cracked wicked lips,
Pleasure City - we huddled, prenatal, wondering -
even in the suburbs the legends grew,
spread by the Party Planners,
the malcontent underbelly of the American Experience,
bastard step-children of the rotted family tree,
planted by righteous Puritan hands,
unsoiled by the burst and bloody entrails they tilled into the New Land.

A mystic angel sang guitar, played his words,
inspired by the big wheels (big wheels),
the bus across the wilderness of naked earth.
No flies on my shit, he sang,
no vultures preparing for the feast,
vomiting cold logic on the corpse of the American Dream.
Pleasure City - last stop on the long, hot road,
sun-drenched with memories long forgotten,
hands that played their songs of construction,
the leather blood-letters,
as buried in the sand as siblings of Antigone.

Ah, but Pleasure City - cool and hot, wet and parched dry!

Old lady in the back, azure-domed, triumphant,
proclaims that she has seen its better days,
the frontier of the experience.
The driver calls her forward,
gives her the crown preserved for Christian martyrs,
kicks her in the teeth and laughs.
He is not amused, for we laugh with him,
unknowingly blind and mute,
another shipment of Other-Worlders seeking to feel again,
to walk the streets of Paradise.

Samerica, we smiled and stepped from the bus platform.

Canto II

It was another long hot world away, our nesting places -
lofty crags for eagles perched on tenement windows -
waiting longing for something anything sweet release from boredom,
enemy of life itself.
The television man appeared one sunny hurt-swept Afternoon -
like maggots on the corpse of dawn we clung to this:
the dream of Pleasure City.
Escape, escape from this into God knows what else there is...
special deals free food and lodging,
the party bus to Paradise.

Am I the ninety-ninth caller?

The embodiment of Pepsodent living greets us.
We smile back,
our jaundiced grins exposing rotted Lifestyles.
This is our Destination.

Under the cold hard moon of desolation we cross the tundra,
mutant wildebeests on wheels of fire,
our gaudy polyester lives unfolded,
wrinkling in gorilla-proof encasements.
Across the lifeless plain our lifeless souls greet new days;
hopeful, hopeless wanderers,
the Happy Hunting Ground defiled by technology.
The radiation clings to our bones,
the remnants of a nuclear yard sale.

The bus driver's azure robes are caked with dust
from roads where tires collapsed.
The Conestoga, pleasure-bound, rolls into Paradise.

Canto III

The doors swung open with a burst of unexpected energy.
A thousand colored suns eliminated our shadows, our doubt -
Ezekiel's wheel had fallen, spinning,
where the fortune tellers shuffled after every deal,
the faces of divination no longer Egyptian.
The sun does not set upon the horizon,
but lingers, mocking while void of sleep,
drenched in the cool, hard sweat of Anticipation,
we rub our heads for luck (heads without a sensible hair).

Outside, in the blaring light of midnight,
a jester expelled from Caligula's court salutes us with a sneer.
He complains of pains, of hunger, of thirst -
wants we have satisfied with endless rolls of change,
while hand and foot courtiers slip us watered Scotch,
stale biscuits and gravy.
The driver laughs, throws our lingering clown a "piece of eight."
Coin of the realm, worth five dollars inside.
It is not edible, for the jester cannot enter the court.
He laughs and throws it away, cursing lady luck.

"Samerica," he cries, his throat hoarse with fervent whispers,
"Your addiction to Horatio Alger is complete,
your opium pipe is a machine,
the Tree of Knowledge where fruits are matched.
Apples or oranges,
the difference being small change to a small fortune."

Canto IV

Bridegrooms no longer hesitant, we re-enter the honeymoon suite.
The floorplan is memorized, our tour guide is unnecessary.
Stepping like ancient warriors on velvet carpets of fortune,
we weave our way through the rabble, the riff-raff.
Heads turn with frank stares, ruby eyes filled with avarice and pain.

The Holy Rollers have entered the chamber.

Foolish and reckless,
then conservative,
we take our turn at the table,
feeding on the adrenaline like baptismal liquids.
The numbers before our eyes:
first, Hymn 40, then Hymn 13.
The priest speaks gravely,
intoning ancient symbols that reveal we will not see the gates at dawn.
The azure-domed Madame from the bus swoons, star-struck.
She has come from the far pavilion.
Men in togas, she proclaims,
announce the King shall dance tonight.
The bus driver laughs.

The King is Dead,
but Long Live the King,
and cash me in.

Like Egyptian cities of the dead, the Path of Ramses,
the Suburbs of Osiris,
we will name our streets after our gods.

Canto V

In the blackened cathedral we sit huddled.
The King will speak, his emissary has taken the stage.
His mistresses,
the golden-tressed and nubile peacocks of the night
have begun the rite of initiation.
The drums have begun to sound,
the trumpets herald the coming of the New Christ.

"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for they shall be Entertained.
Blessed are the weary and forlorn, for they shall be Amused.
Blessed are the chosen ones, the Holy Rollers,
for they shall receive Complimentary Champagne."

Almost before it has begun, the stage is once again deserted.
A flash of white sequins, the smell of hot light sweat.
The sonic boom from pelvic thrusts, of gymnastic exhibitions,
is overwhelming.
Quickly, the onlookers are ushered out into the cold hard sweet wet night,
into the lighted halls and corridors.
The service is completed here, for the bells are still ringing.
Flashing lights and sirens scream their homage
to the gods we have created.

Canto VI

Two lovers bend their obsessed wills in anguish,
the Paradise of Pleasure City fuels their passions,
their deep despair.
In rooms where once The Voice
held the attention of the molls and saps,
the final moments of ecstasy seep through pale gold curtains
as daylight robs writhing forms of their dignity.

The bottle empty as their thoughts and wallets,
they wince as its shattered fragments
draw their watered blood across the cold tile.
Visions of Hitchcock's motel run with the crimson water
as it slips away.

It was to be a new beginning,
Lady Luck and Prince Valiant embarking,
heading to the New Crusade -
after cleaning out the Golden Nugget.

Canto VII

The neon hourglass fills our eyes;
there is no time remaining for us.
Our sins have not been washed away.

Like Eve and Adam thrust from the gates while forced to watch
the life within the garden, we are returned to the dust from which we came.
The desert moon mocks our retreat.

Pleasure City, the bus driver exclaims.
It is but temporary Paradise,
this golden oasis on the face of destruction.

But Pleasure City - cool and hot, wet and parched dry!

Across the painted desert we wing silent, droning miles;
the tenements and caves from which we crawled
intone their homing beacon cries.
In the back of the bus,
exhausted,
we cross the desert,
spent as useless lovers,
the emptiness of our copulation
reflected in our gaunt souls.

Summer 1990

ceiling now in staring anguish
once the eyes I found and lost
last few moments caught myself
and wound my winding sheet about it.

words are not the thing for speaking -
truth in little hardened bitters
shows itself as one with hopeless
causes, self-aversion dramas,
Lysistratic coffee conscience.

why when said it natural felt
the need to press and fold;
enfolded leipedoptera means
no beauty, pins and needles.

I hate this feeling, wanting
knowing nothing offered is worth taking; yet,
submittal anything for just two fleeting
words, both of contradiction.

given it is gone and yet while nothing
hurts its purpose still expect
you'll never see what pain is

in the place where you are not

1993

We sit & stare across the line, we stare & sit across the line
Our words drawn as sacred weapons, our symbols drawn as ancient hexes,
Ever at the ready should the need
For our defense or quick attack arise.

This worthy line the boundary marks, its cursed edge our limits,
Unblurred & razor sharp, it forms a cruel & hardened knife;
We know its breadth & height & length,
Its size & shape & form are known,
For it is ours and ours alone,
For it has kept us here.

Our palaces & cities we have built, great wondrous sites
We have placed along its separating cleft;
And many, many watchful nights we spend guarding
Lest the line, in moving, be crossed.

It clearly illustrates the limits, the boundary,
Defines & enslaves us with its reach.
There is no question that the line
Cannot resolve by its presence -
Bringing pain & sorrow.

Sometimes, we sit & wonder, staring,
Our eyes unblinking across the line,
Checking for movement,
Ever at the ready should the need
Outweigh superstitious caution, and offense arise.

This blessed line the crossing marks, its worthy form the boundary,
Its edge as straight & true as time, unblurred & razor sharp.
We know its breadth & height & length,
Its size & shape & form are known -
We have had time to measure it,
For neither we nor it have moved.

We watch each palace & great city built
Against this separating cleft,
And for many watchful years have hoped,
In vain, for the line to blur.

It clearly illustrates a boundary, our limits,
And enables us to dream beyond while defining us in its reach.
There is not question that has not been answered,
Save one:

If we should all blink at once, on one side or the other,
would it move?

05 OCT 1999

Waken, would-be martyrs seeking causes
to in an instant devote life and limb, and cling
half-drowned along the upturned raft of culture
that leaking, seeks the bottom of the quay.

The words that might be spoken now are silenced;
upon the stump the bloody axe rests, still
slick from the cloying jugular wine that pools
beneath the severed head there in the bowl.

A brotherhood of fools will find its equal
among the rushes, bent with each new wind
and whispering inanities and slogans
that pampleteers shed like oak leaves each fall.

What would you say aloud to fire this army
of malcontents who look to their own skins?
Beyond the content of their bellies, do they seem to care
for rhetoric that asks after their minds?

And those self-sacrificers dream redemption songs
that for a moment, find a tuneful ear
and are transformed beyond a pale chimera
that floats upon the stale, dry air, then fades.

Is there a cause worth half this senseless slaughter?
Behind the scenes, the tribal elders watch
and pick out young recruits that seem more likely
to run in panic; these make the best bullies.

What do the gods require from each new generation?
Are not the first-fruits destined for their hands?
To pose elsewise is suicide, beyond the help of prayer;
besides, a death unscheduled can't be used.

The rebel tools that stock the workshops of the status quo
serve best if left to rust, their edges dulled.
What good is there in martyrdom to others' causes
unless you've nothing worthwhile back at home?

Curse you to your own self-made hells, you preachers
who safe behind your pulpits can commit
your congregation, knowing they are malleable,
their self-will sapped to serve some future realm.

And those who in their natures, find the substance
of service, but are lacking steady work ---
be sure the cause you choose is your own making
and not the sad agenda of the damned.

24 MAY 2004

A conversation I had earlier brought this thought to my mind.

I am, as one who seeks to find the commonalities in things, constantly drawn to comparative religion. My view of the varying religions of humanity, their supposed differences and the lines so vehemently drawn between them is much like the Sufi who observes that each blind man, although undoubtedly wise, has only his own hand-span of elephant by which to describe the elephant as a whole. In a different metaphor, that I used this evening to describe the limitations of man-imposed impressions of an omnipotent, omnipresent God, the divine is like the ocean, and each religion is a bucket of seawater standing on a different part of the shoreline, claiming that they have the nature of the entire sea in their tiny, limited bucket --- when all they really have is the taste of salt-water --- and that everyone else's bucket cannot possibly have the essence of the sea within it. The person to whom I relayed this metaphor said, well, that's not what my Bible says. And that brought me to another metaphor entirely. For the sake of this metaphor, I will use the word God (which, as George Bernard Shaw pointed out, is the most deceptive word in the English language, for it appears to refer to something that can be defined), but I really mean the underlying energy current that I feel enlivens, informs and embodies the universe. An earlier trip to Barnes & Noble, where I noticed the organization of books into various discrete sections --- Religion, Eastern Religion, New Age, Occult, Mythology and Folklore, etc., also fueled the creation of this metaphor.

God is more than the Bible. God is more than the Koran. God is more than the Vedas. God is more than the Dhammapada. God is more than the Talmud, Torah, Kabbalah, Book of Mormon, Upanishads, Popul Vuh, Book of the Dead, Book of Common Prayer, Old Testament, New Testament, Apocrypha and Pseudo-Gospels combined.

God is more than Paul TIllich, Max Lucado, Billy Graham, Dr. Gene Scott, Pat Robertson, Ravi Zacharias, Charles Colson, Robert Schuller and Norman Vincent Peale.
God is more than John Bunyan, Thomas a Kempis, Augustine of Hippo, Francis of Assisi, Teresa of Avila, John Chrysentom, Thomas Aquinas, Hildegard von Bingen and Ignatius Loyola.
God is more than Trungpa Rinpoche, the Dalai Lama, Krishnamurti, the Marharishi, D.T. Suzuki, Alan Watts, Idries Shah, Rumi and Ram Dass.
God is more than Silver Ravenwolf, Isaac Bonewits, Ray Buckland, Aleister Crowley, A.E. Waite, MacGregor Mathers, Joseph Smith, Doreen Valiente and Sybil Leek.

That all these books fit onto a single shelf, no more than 20 feet long, says it all. The fact is that God, if it is really GOD, is more than just a bookshelf of "religious books".

God is the whole library. There can be no measure of knowledge outside the divine realm.

God is the Marquis de Sade, Henry Miller, Henry Rollins, Xavier Hollander, Kurt Vonnegut, Rush Limbaugh, Charles Dickens, J.D. Salinger, James Joyce and even Robert Anton Wilson, too.

God is the Joy of Cooking, the Joy of Sex, Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television, Brave New World, Full Frontal Snogging, The Pickwick Papers, News from Lake Wobegon, Don Quixote, Howl, Moby Dick, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Black Like Me, Mein Kampf, To Kill a Mockingbird, Notes from the Underground, Dead Souls, Doctor Zhivago, A Death in Venice, Steppenwolf and The Snows of Kilimanjaro, too.

Who cares what your book says? Look around. There is not more to Heaven and Earth than is dreamt of, only than what is written down (and as Henry Miller said, how transformed, gutted and utterly emasculated is the word when translated from the mind to the paper), in your philosophy.

Ask the trees. They are the real martyrs of ALL religions --- because they died to give you your narrow-minded viewpoint in print.

Why is that writers --- and it doesn't matter which writer you choose --- at some point in their chosen vocation end up writing about writing? And why do non-writers see that as so unusual, so self-centered and ultimately circular? You don't question a saint immersed in their version of divinity that can only talk rationally (well, can talk at any rate) about God. LIkewise, philosophers love nothing better than to talk, discourse, put to paper in thousand-page tomes, those thoughts that ellucidate their love of knowledge. Granted, in all these cases, the conversation is limited by the frame-of-reference of the listener on one side, and more importantly, by the frame-of-reference of the speaker or writer on the other side. Writers write about writing because that's who they are, that is their morphology, their modus operandi. Project managers look at things from the framework, the guidelines, of project management --- efficiency, elimination of redundant information, structure and reporting relationships --- as a tool to hone their own basis for evaluating life in terms of budget, schedule and quality. Of all the great characters of Fiction, most if not writers themselves of Poetry or Fiction to some degree, at least are prodigious letter writers. They have a need, or rather, the writer creating them, has a need to extend their own meager gitts into tangential relationship with a world that is more or less under their control. Granted, if you ascribe to the belief that all life is pre-ordained, that we choose our parents, our upbringing, our vocation and ultimately our destination, it's as if the book has already been written --- but there is no skipping ahead chapters, or skimming through to the end to see what happens, in the book of life. We are fated, if by nothing else, to the turning of pages one at a time, chapter by chapter, one single word lain in line with a countless stream of those that have come before, and those that will follow.

In that sense, I suppose, the writer, over all other occupations save for the marytr or saint, has a more distinct advantage to many others. A painter, for example, who tries to talk about painting using painting itself is likely to be swamped in a surreal, imagist, dada world that contains a dangerous degree of self-similarity. Likewise, the Musician, who tries to convey their thoughts about Music in the idiom of Music must limit themselves to communicating in this way to those who are also Musicians, and actually, that are Musicians of the same order as themselves. The saint has a more direct line of approach, in that particularly in the monotheistic traditions, there are only two goals at the outset of the path --- to become a saint, like themselves, or a minister. To do, or to preach. All other positions are like half-way houses on the road to salvation, and are not among the prescribed courses outlined so nebulously in their Great Books. There is no place in the structure of religion for those who require others to cajole them into action. The very act of salvation demands much more of the indiividual that passive participation. The writer, like the saint, relies upon something greater than themselves to prove their point for them --- and in both cases, it is the Word.

So much is determined by the words we experience during our childhood, during early education, in the books we read (or don't read). To not have a word for something is to exclude that concept from your worldview. Because to live life, you've got to read from the Book of Life --- except this book has not yet been written, so far as you know, because you are only capable of glimpsing perhaps a paragraph or two ahead. Most of the text is hidden, by the page you've just flipped past, or by the unknown vast number of pages yet to be turned.

The different between the saint and the writer, then, is that sense of co-creation. The saint waits patiently for the next page to be revealed by the Author to which they owe allegiance, devote their lives to the understanding of. The writer, on the other hand, sees the next page as a challenge that must be shaped, crafted; not reliant upon an external source to provide the entertainment, the knowledge, the insight and character development. Writing, then, is a pagan religion. It is about power-with, not power-over.

When you play the blues,
at some point,
you've got to decide.

Whether to play around the issue,
like Charlie Parker,
flitting in and out just hinting at the melody,
giving subtle suggestions
on the point you're trying to make
but usually ending up burning out
to some tangent
at the far reaches
of reality;
or like B.B. King,
solid,
making up the melody as you go along,
the result of the mere fact
that your confident fingers
are making the strings move
"a little something,"
no
"exactly" like this,
creating in the moment,
at the speed of now
the counterpoint
against which the chords themselves
are measured and never found wanting.

What it comes down to,
ultimately, is what you don't choose
to say,
the space you leave between the notes,
the way your sentences leave your lips ---
like staggering, happy drunks or
like sober fools discussing semantics or
liike a kiss that promises more
a kiss, as Satchmo sang,
to build a dream on.

Of course,
there's another decision you need to make first.
There is a juncture in your life as a Musician
(or in the Music of your living),
a crossroads to which you come
like Robert Johnson,
running from back doorstep
of one jealous cuckolding woman
to another
(lying with your eyes
while your hands are busy working
overtime)
and it's not so much that you decide
to sell your soul to the Devil,
or pick the mistress whose cooking
is better,
even if the other's goose
lays the golden egg.

When you're standing at the crossroads
if you take a step in any direction
you pick from among unknowns,
strange shadows of possibility
that can only suggest.

Because faith is inhale
and doubt is exhale
part of the same flow of
stale, cigarette- and whiskey-stained air
that creeps into your clothes
and under your fingernails
stretching out your lungs in wild gasps,
the choice is not between
heaven and hell
good and evil
black and white
sanity and madness
rich and poor.

It's about trusting yourself
even though you know you don't
know nothing.

And that's the secret
of playing the blues,
whether you want to tell the world about it,
or simply flash hints of the light
you're hiding under a barrel;

either way, you make it sound
like it's the first time
you ever played it,

but you've been listening
long enough
to know what to say.

20 MAY 2004

An hour gone past midnight;
the songbirds try out new trills:
sparrow, robin, mockingbird,
wren, finch and whip-or-whill

all whistle at their favorite tunes
now that the traffic's pace
has slowed to stopping. The pale moon
reflects in pools of fallen rain

left from the evening storm,
their mirror surfaces broken
by the floating corpses of termites
caught out during their swarm
tonight, seeking wood and water.

Across the street a houselamp shines
against a window's lattice bars;
and locked inside, these neighbors sit
illuminated by the eerie glow
of a brand new fifty-eight inch god.

That's a light you can't hide under a barrel,
I think, then listen to the birds, again.
I like not knowing what tonight's program is.

Surprise me, oh great universe
with what is yet to be
for the unknown is never worse
than dull monotony
Let loose the new, and strange and wild
I will not be depressed;
No matter how you show yourself
Likely I'll be impressed.
It's all been done, the cynics say,
there is no more unique;
but I must strongly disagree
when I hear each day speak.
The words may be the same, it's true,
strung out in well-known ways,
in sentences and paragraphs
like yesterday's displays
but each word, if you pay it mind
is different from the rest;
it lives for just a moment,
then it fades in silence, death.
Behind these brief, temporal sounds
an underlying hum
continues on; it shakes the ground
like a low-pounding drum
The heartbeat stays the same,
only the synopation varies ---
the flitting words that scat around
seeming so ordinary.

A half hour gone past one o'clock
and all the birds, asleep.
Like me, they've done their exercise
and now have jobs to keep.

The locusts and the crickets now
come out, and take their turn;
another unwrit manuscript
I think worthwhile to learn.

19 MAY 2004

Covering the poetic ground, so to speak, from the Vedas through Stevie Smith, this is a book that I picked up on a discount rack at Barnes and Noble about a year ago. Recently, I dug it off the shelf, looking perhaps for something to link myself as a poet to the ages. And I discovered something --- modern Poetry tends to the concrete, to examining the trivial as if it were somehow majestic and universally enlightening -- which it is, of course -- and treating anything that touches on greater themes, on the piercing of the veil, reaching through the "Cloud of Unknowing" as some kind of wishy-washy, meaningless search for existence outside of the existential quagmire that we have created with our technology. Most of the Poetry I read lately from modern sources seems to be like our cultural bias --- absolutely materialistic, with little or no spiritual significance to the reader. Most of it deals with our fascination with cynicism, and disregard of something more elemental.

Who has the time, most would ask, to delve into the dark night of the soul? After all, the darkness has been artificially illuminated by night-lights, television sets, street lamps and glow-in-the-dark alarm clocks. We are as a culture surrounded by the white noise of our own busyness. And that, I think, is our greatest tragedy. That regardless of the spiritual path we think we are on, we seek to remedy symptoms not recognizing the cause of our sickness.

When did we, as artists, become so useless? Where are those touchstones upon which the future can be solidly constructed? I realize that EVERY religion, regardless of its temporal might, is always only one generation from extinction. But we insist that the precepts and underpinnings of those religions can be passed from generation to generation with laws, edicts and some kind of controlling mechanism that will direct the energies of youth into suitable pursuits, with the spectre of eternal ostracism as the deterrent to aberration.

There is a sobering lesson to be learned from reading such a treasury of "mystical works". Mysticism is about absolute personal and individual interaction with something larger than yourself --- however you choose to define it. Ultimately, that is freedom and liberty --- and perhaps anarchy. But it is absolutely essential to the development of humankind. To their evolution into something more than parrots who regurgitate upon command the experience of someone else and pass it off as their own interpretation of reality.

What we as a culture suffer from is spiritual plagiarism. And rather than fight against it, advising the individual to seek their own truth, based on where their feet are actually on the path, so many of our so-called elders rely upon the convenience of control to shape the world to be. No wonder there is "nothing new under the sun." It is because we instruct our young to seek within the box that we ourselves are constricted within. So few wonder what is beyond the confines of the cardboard --- so that when the natural elements deteriorate the boundaries, there is great shock and concern that the actual SKY can be see through the remaining wisps of corrugation.

OK, so don't ask why but I was at Howard Stern's website tonight --- some link from an article on the FCC brought me there, I guess. One of the letters to the show was an anti-Bush joke that I thought I'd share with ya'll:

There's a teacher in a small Texas town. She asks her class how many of them are Bush fans. Not really knowing what a Bush fan is, but wanting to be liked by the teacher, all the kids raise their hands except one boy--Johnny. The teacher asks Johnny why he has decided to be different. Johnny says, "I'm not a Bush fan." The teacher says, "Why aren't you a Bush fan?" Johnny says, "I'm a John F. Kerry fan." The teacher asks why he's a Kerry fan. The boy says, "Well, my mom's a Kerry fan, and my Dad's a Kerry fan, so I'm a Kerry fan!" The teacher is kind of angry, because this is Texas, so she says, "What if you're Mom was a moron, and you're dad was an idiot, what would that make you?" Johnny says, "That would make me a Bush fan."

Ah, well. You get your humor where you can.

Based on an entry from my friend the juice, I've put together a few short lists, related to my earlier post on the College Board 101 Books Your Child Should be Reading.

In no particular order ...

Ten Books I Wish I'd Never Read: (the second hardest category for me - after glad not to have read; because I've learned something from everything I've read - including some things I didn't want to learn)

Masks of the Illuminati -- Robert Anton Wilson
The Satanic Bible -- Anton LaVey
Just As I Am -- Billy Graham
Helter Skelter -- Vincent Bugliosi
The 21 Lessons of Merlin -- Douglas Monroe
Juliette -- Marquis de Sade
The Siege of Troy: A Modern Retelling of the Iliad -- Greg Tobin
Magick in Theory and Practice -- Aleister Crowley
Circle of Stones -- Anna Mae Waldo
Centennial -- James Michener

Ten Books I'm Ashamed to Say I've Never Read:

Ariel -- Sylvia Plath
Finnegans Wake -- James Joyce
The Federalist Papers -- Alexander Hamilton et al
Das Kapital -- Karl Marx
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee -- Dee Brown
In His Own Write -- John Lennon
The Bonfire of the Vanities -- Tom Wolfe
The Executioner's Song -- Norman Mailer
The Sun Also Rises -- Ernest Hemingway
Les Miserables -- Victor Hugo

Ten Books I'm Glad I've Never Read: (and this was the hardest one, because frankly there aren't really any books that I would refuse to attempt to read)

Mein Kampf -- Adolf Hitler
The Way Things Ought to Be -- Rush Limbaugh
The Confesions of Aleister Crowley -- Aleister Crowley
Teen Witch -- Silver Ravenwolf
Fight Club -- Chuck Palahniuk
Summa Theologica -- St. Thomas Aquinas
Summer of My German Soldier -- Bette Green
Warlock: A Novel of Ancient Egypt -- Wilbur Smith
The World of Rod McKuen -- Rod McKuen
Wilderness: The Lost Writings of Jim Morrison -- Jim Morrison

Ten Books I've Started But Probably Will Never Finish:

Beezlebub's Tales to His Grandson -- G.I. Gurdjieff
Prometheus Rising -- Robert Anton Wilson
The Decline of the Roman Empire, Vols. 2 and 3 -- Edward Gibbon
Confessions of St. Augustine -- St. Augustine
Walden, or Life in the Woods -- Henry David Thoreau
The Republic -- Plato
Critical Path -- R. Buckminister Fuller
Dear Theo: The Autobiography of Vincent Van Gogh -- Vincent Van Gogh
Three Books of Occult Philosophy -- Cornelius Agrippa
Faust -- Johann Goethe

Found this link at The Rage Diaries.

Apparently the College Board (you know, the folks that gave us the SAT and ACT) has put together a list of 101 Great Books recommended to be read by those entering freshman year college. Well, it's actually 101 novels, 19 miscellaneous (uncategorized and non-Fictional works), and various works by 15 identified poets.

On a whim, I evaluated my own performance, reading-wise:

Novels:   71 of 101 (70%)
Miscellaneous:   14 of 19 (74%)
Poetry:    11 of 15 (73%)

Now, as I recall, the 70% range is either a C or D. That's not good. And even if any of the identified works I actually still own, 21 years out of high school, that still doesn't put me on the College Board's "Dean's List", does it?

But they have a short list (I guess, if you're only going to read a LITTLE). On that one, I got 9 out of 10 (90%). A solid B, by my reckoning. Not much room for error on a 10 item quiz, is there?

Of course, there are many, many, MANY authors and poets not represented here that I consider essential reading. But this is the College Board, after all. You can't expect them to be TOO avante garde, can you? Standardized reading lists and standardized tests go hand in hand. If you want to pass their tests, you have to read their books. Or pretend to have done so, or at least have slept with the Cliff Notes under your pillow.

But that brings up an important point. While a great many of these books I actually read in high school, I would not have had room to complete anywhere near the entire list considering my other reading. Who does the College Board suggest that I should have given up in order to accomplish their curricula? Allen Ginsberg? ee cummings? Krishnamurti? Julius Caesar? Ken Kesey? Rimbaud? Baudelaire? Henry Miller? And what if was more interested in reading "The Idiot" than "Crime and Punishment"? Do I get a point off for that one? It's strange the authors they include, versus deliberately seem to exclude. Dickens is nowhere to be found. Jack London likewise. Ambrose Bierce --- how would I have survived high school without the "Devil's Dictionary" I ask you ...

Fortunately, my reading requirements are not dictated by the College Board's vision of an educated and well-read young person. But I worry about my step-daughter, who is a high school senior (almost) looking at colleges. I know for a fact that she's not interested in reading most of this stuff. And neither are any of her friends. Sadly, reading is not one of her great pleasures. So it goes with this generation. I'm almost surprised that the College Board doesn't require some kind of minimum television show exposure. That seems more appropriate.

Anyhow...

Sleep on, new world --- your time is yet
to come; and in that pall of death, forget
what was, what is, or merely seems,
and build the future from your dreams.

Sleep on, mankind, rebuild your strength;
prostrate, laid on your bed full length,
dream of new heroes still unborn
in slumber's womb yet safe and warm.

Sleep on, green growth, in winter's hold;
for soon Spring comes to melt the cold
and bitter snow that buries deep
the germinating soul in sleep.

Sleep on, and dream of things to come,
and rest your weary, busied tongues
replete with words that bite and bruise.
When waking comes, they are no use.

Sleep on, new world, and wake evolved;
for weary, you'll no problems solve
while you sit restless, bleary-eyed,
consuming yourself from inside.

Sleep on, sleep on in stupor's gauze,
and from your labors, rest and pause;
the universe will still be here
when you awaken, fresh and clear.

Sleep on, mankind, and stay your hand
from constant schemes and endless plans;
and let what is, and was, and seems
emerge to clarify your dreams.

17 MAY 2004

After pondering Peter Beresford Ellis' introduction to Celtic Myths and Legends, where he postulates an affinity between the Celtic and Vedic cultures, based on their shared common root language, proto-Indo-European, I pulled this earlier poem out and thought of it in a purely Celtic mythos-mindset, as opposed to its original casting as a meditation on Hindu reality.

It seems to me that it can be read as if it were a Druidic meditation without violating any Celto-religious principles. There are definite resonances in my mind, which gives me insight into why the Vedas and Upanishads have always seemed such connecting threads to me, as someone of Celtic descent. I have always been drawn to what I would call Brahma/Dagda, as well as Shiva/Kernunnos (and I think it no accident that both are associated with, and familiar with, venomous snakes). And then there is the Morrigan/Kali connection - nurturing mother up close, but destroying black maelstrom from afar. Add to that the concept of sacred rivers (the Ganges versus the Danube, or River of Danu). Well, I was struck by this notion, particularly the similarity of some of the words between the two languages. And then, this evening, as I was doing a bit of meditation, I realized that "Awen" (pronounced ah-oo-en) and "Om" (pronounced ah-oo-em) are just too similar, in both purpose for recitation and pronunciation, for coincidence.

My questions are these:

Has there been any linguistic study that explores this connection?

Given the number of Celtic-oriented writers who also have an affinity for Vedic (and Upanishadic) literature (Yeats immediately springs to mind), and the similarity of the concepts contained in both Celtic mythology and Hindu mythology (take Kali and the Morrigan, for example), has there been any attempt in the Celtic pagan community to explore the commonalities in a more formal sense?

And three, just as it is complementary to study Japanese and Korean at the same time (the basic differences being vocabulary only), is there any identified benefit in studying Sanskrit as an aid to learning Gaelic, or visa versa?

Much food for thought.

Pranayama

Where am I in all of this confusion?
If I pause and take a moment to breathe,
letting go of this veil of illusion
[that separates (like two different leaves

along two slim branches that stretch their way
in opposite directions, yet never
touch, except through the trunk from which they splay)
with a soft touch easily severing

one’s sense of unity with all living]
just listening to the low, quiet breath
of an opened flower or an old tree,

I recognize myself; my misgivings
about my life’s purpose that make me fear death
fade away. I am at peace, at last free.

Am I just motion in some great chaos?
If I release this cloud from deep inside,
letting the soft flow of air slip across
my tongue and pursed lips, it does not collide

with the not-me of the universe, but
instead melts back into a single stream
of boundless energy that we each cut
and divide into our separate dreams,

imagining that these walls we construct
are so solid, so real, unbreakable.
Yet in a single breath these veils shatter,

our isolation seems to self-destruct,
and those beliefs once so unshakeable
crumble in the still space beyond matter.

04 APR 2003

Away from the bustle of the lakefront trade
across the wide expanse of clouded blue
on a small knot of land pushed out into the bay
behind a copse of trees down the gravel lane -
the house sits small and squat, not much
to look at from the outside, save for the flowerbeds,
its paint a nondescript light brown,
the doors and windows dark
their shades drawn shut to block the light
that seeks to fade and wash away the past.

And there inside, the tools and triumphs
of the man are kept, pristine,
their chronologic sense in tact
supported by small cards, with facts
giving no sense of the great expanse of sound
that must have soaked in every pore
of this house, once. Compared to that experience,
the reverent silence of the current guests

must seem so strange to these thick walls,
their very atoms once beseiged with Music,
day and night. And all the windows closed,
to cloak the rooms with graveyard pall;
the only sound the soothing hiss
of central air pushed through hidden vents.

I longed to touch the discolored keys
of the grand piano trapped behind the guide rope
aching to fill the house with raucous delight
to play so loudly that the tourists
buying chocolates in the square across the lake
crowding past the muraled walls
where Goethe sat impoverished, writing
the Sorrows of Young Werther
would look across the lake and wonder
at the sound, and stop their haggling.

When Goethe met Wagner's hero, Ludwig,
it was in Switzerland. So strange that now
the house where Richard worked his last
should sound like the world of Beethoven in the end:
filled with the dull roar of silence,
the sounds of life, shouting out across the lake,
filtered through a stifling gauze
that makes the world seem unfit
for heroes that are not dead.

14 MAY 2004

As Elba instructed Napoleon, all men ARE islands; some are just in better climates. -- John Litzenberg, from The Secret Undertown Ministry

Some things exist to turn perceptions inside out;
their presence tends to shift and rend to shreds the veils,
and introduce in even the most stable mind some doubt
by subtlety reminding pristine saints of crucifixion's nails;

Despite all valiant efforts to resist the twist of time
that folds and spindles all the distance one has come,
in just a moment's span, the truth becomes much less sublime
and the most eloquent tongues are left wordless and dumb

While back in chasms of the tortured past
the mind is thrown, like Christians to the raving beasts;
and in a fateful second, the losing die is cast
upon which the future, risked, becomes the very least

of measures that describe the scope of hope and life.
And in those frenzied fragments, when belief
has turned against the back of faith its traitor's knife,
its mad aggression finding no escape route or relief

The helplessness of childhood falls upon the soul,
and one is left to wonder how for almost forty years
the palimpsest illusion built up so well, of self-control
can vanish in a few seconds, leaving only bitter tears.

From some things that wear old, familiar masks
an energy of entropy and chaos seems to engulf and drown,
seeking to remind us, as we struggle at life's tasks,
that to see us as we used to be, some will want to bring us down.

14 MAY 2004

Picked up
set up
called up
stood up
held up
fucked up
hoping for a let up

Made over
looked over
passed over like a four-leaf clover
glanced over
once over
start again
start over

Poked at
joked at
chew the cud or chew the fat
looked at
looked past
wonder how long this will last

Looked up
hooked up
will you ever shut up
booked up
cracked up
endless lies still cooked up

Stepped on
spit on
without a leg to stand on
passed on
long gone
in the game of kings and pawns

We are fighting opposition
Victims of a preposition
Eternal question for absolution
Nothing more than noise pollution
Preposition: prostitution
to the ultimate solution.

1980

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, Farewell Address to the Nation, January 17, 1961

Well, my mom is visiting for a few days, having driven 2,500 miles on a cross-country jaunt to see not only me, but my sister in Tennessee, uncles and cousins in Cincinnati, the farm in Forest and then friends in Madison, WI and back across the country to San Diego.

She brought with her a number of interesting things, as she is in the process of sorting through everything in her house and distributing items to myself and my siblings. One of those things was a box of my writings dating back as far as 30 years, including but not limited to, song Lyrics, short stories, school essays, drawings, etc. Much of this I gave to my parents for safe-keeping when I moved to Boston in 1991 - but other parts of it were part of a much earlier trove of collected stuff. High school journals, elementary school skits, and so on. After plowing through this compendium of teen angst, I find myself more and more in agreement with Wallace Stevens on the matter of a poet's subject being bestowed congenitally. Were this not the case, I don't know how I could have touched upon certain themes, expressed in certain ways, as I find in even some of my earliest efforts. Of course, there is a great deal of schlock to be unearthed in these, and equal parts precocity and absorption with and of the culture of the times (mostly the mid to late 70s and early 80s). But there are some gems there. Some that barely require the shaping of the jeweler's tools. As I rediscover them, I'll be adding them to this site, which ultimately serves as the touchstone for all things artistic throughout my life.

I also revise my earlier comparison with W.B. Yeats. One thing that we both share is a somewhat conceited relatively unshakable belief in our own genius (LOL). One thing that I lack that certainly assisted Yeats in proving that greatness to others is the propensity and capacity for self-advertisement, for putting my name out there in whatever form possible. Or maybe these found writings of mine illustrate otherwise - because certainly there is much that I have written throughout my life for the purpose of including others in my version of reality. Hmm...

The truth is that a man's sense of the world dictates his subjects to him and that this sense is derived from his personality, his temperament, over which he has little control and possibly none, except superficially. It is not a literary problem. It is the problem of his mind and nerves. These sayings are another form of the saying that poets are born not made. A poet writes of twilight because he shrinks from noon-day. He writes about the country because he dislikes the city, and he likes the one and dislikes the other because of some trait of mind or nerves; that is to say, because of something in himself that influences his thinking and feeling. So seen, the poet and his subject are inseparable. There are stresses that he invites; there are stresses that he avoids. There are colors that have the blandest effect on him; there are others with which he can do nothing but find fault. In Music he likes the strings. But the horn shocks him. A flat landscape extending in all directions to immense distances placates him. But he shrugs his shoulders at mountains.

-- Wallace Stevens, from Effects of Analogy (1948), The Necessary Angel

If, as Stevens proposes, a poet's subject is congenital, that leads me to wonder about my own. While he states, earlier in the above-referenced essay, that "great numbers of poets come and go who have never had a subject at all," I cannot see myself in that group. Perhaps after reading Foster's biography of Yeats, I realized that I was not such a diletante, or rather a scatterbrain, at all, when it came to artistic endeavor. To be a playwright, poet, Musician, lyricist, essayist, polemicist, all in one frame-of-reference, is an achievable thing. And yet, I found in myself as compared to Yeats two things missing: one, an unerring belief in my own greatness; and two, the tenacity for self-publicizing that would drive me to have my voice heard, first, and heard in an environment that I created and/or controlled, second.

All that aside, I wonder on what my congenitally designated "poetic subject" might be. Or what, when I can avail myself of the ivory tower of solitary meditation and creative focus, is it that draws my thoughts in such a way that it is impossible NOT to write about them, or in some artistic manner, express my acknowledgment of it.

Looking back on the Poetry I've written in the past two years (probably my most consistently fruitful period in a single medium), I encounter a certain repetition of thematic elements: sound, silence, space, Music, balance and and underlying system of energy that runs through all that exists. But that seems too broad a spectrum of thought - and how it relates to the life I live, is questionable, although I can see how these things affect me, it is difficult to determine what exactly these concepts outline in my reality.

II

Perhaps the world is full of verse that fails,
inspiring none to act as heroes should;
and in frustration, lesser poets rail
against the confine and form of the good,
their self-aggrandized talents gone to waste
that they alone lament through sleepless nights
spent in a fruitless embrace of the chaste.
Would you have these sad wingless souls take flight?

These small words, you decry, may do no more
than taunt at nestlings yet to try their wings,
but to deny that role is to ignore
that first one dreams, and then one does, a thing.
The truest poet weaves philosophy
of the imagination into every phrase;
and in the face of man's catastrophes
breathes new life into dark and bitter days.

So what if critics jibe and treat with scorn
the works that such a writer may produce?
For they, unlike the poet, are not born
but made - and made to work to prove their use
comparing one illusion to the next,
and in the vacuum of the known, resigned
to observation, that at best, reflects
a too swift movement through their time.

But poets are to blame, as well, for this;
they seek outside themselves for themes and signs,
believing the self-created, wild hubris
they use to justify a state of mind
too pure for common purposes or deeds,
accepting, without question, some great cause
in which they have no role or fate or need
except to garner temporal applause.

10 MAY 2004

Here is a little food for thought (bold and italics, mine):

Democratic poets will always appear trivial and frigid if they seek to invest gods, demons, or angels with corporeal forms, and if they attempt to draw them down from heaven to dispute the supremacy of earth. But if they strive to connect the great events they commemorate with the general providential designs which govern the universe, and, without showing the finger of the Supreme Governor, reveal the thoughts of the Supreme Mind, their works will be admired and understood, for the imagination of their contemporaries takes this direction of its own accord.

It may be foreseen that in like manner, that poets living in democratic times will prefer the delineation of passions and ideas to that of persons and achievements. The language, the dress, and the daily actions of men in democracies are repugnant to conceptions of the ideal. These things are not poetical in themselves because they are too familiar to all those to whom the poet would speak of them. This forces the poet constantly to search below the external surface which is palpable to the senses, in order to read the inner soul; and nothing lends itself more to the delineation of the ideal, than the scrutiny of the hidden depths in the immaterial nature of man. I need not traverse earth and sky to discover a wondrous object woven of contrasts, of infinite greatness and littleness, of intense gloom and amazing brightness, -- capable at once of exciting pity, admiration, terror, contempt. I have only to look at myself. Man springs out of nothing, crosses time, and disappears forever in the bosom of God; he is seen but for a moment, wandering on the verge of the two abysses, and there he is lost.

If man were wholly ignorant of himself, he would have no Poetry in him; for it is impossible to describe what the mind does not conceive. If man clearly discerned his own nature, his imagination would remain idle, and would have nothing to add to the picture. But the nature of man is sufficiently disclosed for him to apprehend something of himself, and sufficiently obscure for all the rest to be plunged into thick darkness, in which he gropes forever, -- and forever in vain, -- to lay hold on some completer notion of his being.

Amongst a democratic people, Poetry will not be fed with legends or the memorials of old traditions. The poet will not attempt to people the universe with supernatural beings, in whom his readers and his own fancy have ceased to believe; nor will he coldly personify virtues and vices, which are better received under their own features. All these resources fail him; but Man remains, and the poet needs no more. The destinies of mankind - man himself, taken aloof from his country and his age, and standing in the presence of Nature and of God, with his passions, his doubts, his rare prosperities and inconceivable wretchedness -- will become the chief, if not the sole, theme of Poetry amongst these nations.

Experience may confirm this assertion, if we consider the productions of the greatest poets who have appeared since the world has been turned to democracy. The authors of our age who have so admirably delineated the features of Faust, Childe Harold, Rene, and Jocelyn, did not seek to record the actions of an individual, but to enlarge and to throw light on some of the obscurer recesses of the human heart.

Such are the poems of democracy. The principle of equality does not then destroy all the subjects of Poetry: it renders them less numerous, but more vast.

-- Alexis de Toqueville (1805-1859), from Democracy in America, Part II: Book One

With William Butler Yeats I see a striking parallel:
of politics and prosody, a marriage made in hell;
each new idea casting an elusive, mastering spell
with only moments in between for time and space to gel
and being armed with will alone, in one's own Book of Kells
to find only the missing pieces, husks and empty shells.

The tragedy of Poetry, perhaps, or an Irish Curse:
to reclaim places as your own that did not claim you first,
and seek beyond the shapes of things, to slake an inner thirst
that wrecks the lives of those you know, and your loved ones, the worst.
To know that which you think you know is only myth and verse
Composed by some like-minded fool lost in the universe.

In contradictions to define an image of a sage
who mirthless, hoards some trust of great lore, page by page
devouring through the night as restless demons, in their rage
rattle the bars that you now see, in corners of your cage.

Yet hoping, until that last breath
that as with living, so with death
a chain of endless counted days
extended, infinite, both ways.

With that vision in mind, there is no defeat.
There are countless stories to discover, tell and retell;
and somewhere on that line, that existential parallel
you actually find William Butler Yeats.

06 MAY 2004

Art for art's sake? Some mad Protestant Hell:
Give glory to gods too quick dethroned,
the crowds that crowned them, discharged early
and now, gone home.
Their purpose found too soon,
before they grew strong.

Without any message, pure art placed alone,
not impeded by method or philosophy,
no subconscious symbolist message conveyed;
has any such work ever been shown?

The portrayal of struggle, when experienced second-hand,
through books, and paintings, and endless streams
of made-for-television movies,
simulcasts of refugees,
on the scene reports
and cameras no longer hidden,
cannot help but draw an inference or two
even against the observer's better judgment.

All things serve some purpose.

Those that last, that affect real change in the world,
the few that have a chance of achieving longevity
in a world obsessed with fifteen second sound bytes
find that purpose outside themselves.

No thing that exists for its own self alone
really exists.

It has no beginning.
It has no end.
It has no time.
It has no place.

It must be God.

06 MAY 2004

Town

I would to some far-flung county go
except for the threat of winter snow
and loss of things to occupy
these tangent thoughts that fill my mind

for in some quiet, rural place
where you know every name, and face,
behind the greetings and the prayers
lurks something else, and it waits there

until you find some cause to fight
against the old, established right
and question how the world was made
and kept to just that shape and grade.

And then, the rugged space and wild
you need now more than when a child
right there in reach, or just outside
becomes a threatening divide

that separates you from what else
exists beyond your cupboard shelves,
and beckons, using memory's tools,
demanding more from kings, and fools.

There in the vast expanse that rings
you in, one morning, a bird sings
a melancholy tune of woe
and in an instant, you must go.

Country

I would to some great city fly,
save for the noise and lighted sky
and little time for the small things
that feed the soul with songs to sing,

for in some bustling, roaring throng,
the questions, whether right or wrong
get shuffled off behind the door
or left like scuff-marks on the floor

removed, in time, by faster dreams
ill-built, botched jobs split at the seams
constructed not with love, but greed
and satisfaction guaranteed.

And then, when you require a breath
the bar stools clear, a pall of death
descends, and you find you're in trouble
having pierced some happy bubble.

Far too much this, too little that:
your hair is wrong, your car. Your hat
is last year's fashion, out of style;
the line forms left, stay single file.

Safe in your homes, tucked warm and dry,
a murmured hum your lullaby,
Despite the drama, and the arts,
you've got to leave; a longing starts.

06 MAY 2004

for W.B. Yeats

Some silken strains of angst-encrusted verse
or mystic message wrapped in words to woo
designed to part the patron from their purse,
or charm one's snakes...what can these small things do?

An audience that can be misdirected
by such a simple ruse, where is their strength
and will to fight against being neglected,
their pleasures sought but found beyond arm's length,

kept quiet in their apathetic lives
with promises of wealth in thirty days
empowered by not thoughts, but things and dreams
of avarice beyond the arts of gods to grant?

What good is such a crowd in praise of art?
Their graces can be bought at no large price
and the default rate on their loans is high,
conditions changed by fickle tides of whim.

And other poets, what use will they serve?
Since Hemingway, the writer's world is filled
by just observing without much discourse
immersed in life's most raucous noise and swill

to find escape from the plane of the mind,
absorbing and reporting vibrantly
the commonness in everything you find
without exploring or a need to see

the symbolism in a glass of beer
or archetype in the mad dancing crowd -
a study for some lost cerebral mind,
now deafened, needing life both large and loud.

There is no solidarity among
these artists; they lead strange and lonely lives,
each wrapped inside themselves and their own song,
producing reams of work that won't survive

beyond even their next insipid phase.
and past their lifetimes? But then, no one cares;
the history of this time lasts just days -
a photograph, and not a flight of stairs.

And patriotic or dissenting lines
(it doesn't matter much which one you choose)
may strike a chord or seem to redefine
the culture where you've chanced to pay your dues,

but really, what are these few sparks
against the bonfire of bombarding news
that daily forces all who live to choose
and blurs the lines between the light and dark?

What source do you imagine could resist
the Siren's song of culture, breathing low
and whispering false promise of a kiss
to ease a mind engrossed with need to know.

In which new forum do you think your words
against the bread and circus, could succeed,
when books are used to line cages for birds
and seldomly for any other need?

The days for words are dead; they are no more.
Against these odds, you write and think to change
more than the channel, opening the door
to revolution of the soul. Deranged,

that's what you are to dream of goals like these.
A job, some mindless task, that's what you lack;
some visions are not blessings, but disease,
whose quest to is to consume and not give back.

06 MAY 2004

The now expectant moon, hid by
a wisp of purple clouded sky
bathes all in dappled glints of light
that stand on open ground this night.

And those whose lives are passing by,
a wisp of purple clouded sky,
imagine some great royal thread
that washes down on their foreheads.

While some, their purpose soft, diffused, like
a wisp of purple clouded sky,
see out beyond the falling shade
and grasp fast to the day's last sigh.

The past is gone now, put to bed,
a wisp of purple clouded sky;
and in the coming dark, new day
is birthed and takes its place instead.

I gazed across the roofs and trees at
a wisp of purple clouded sky;
and watched the moon, grown full and fat
sing out a soft, sweet lullaby

Now lost among dark blues and black
a wisp of purple clouded sky
much like a tear, first wet, then dried
leaves no sign to mark its track

And so, each moment seems to fly,
a wisp of purple clouded sky;
each separate color fades so soon
and leaves us staring at the moon.

06 MAY 2006

We are not lost here in these woods,
nor are they lost in us;
if you listen, still, for just a moment
the sensation of roots, searching

for moisture in this often parched land,
pushing away the organic substance
that keeps us from being grounded,
sensing which way is the center,

will slowly come upon us,

like dawn, stretching its lazy arms
to embrace the freshness
of the world.

Listen: you can hear the Earth
breathing softly with you,
laughing when you start to smile
and weeping when you walk away.

If we are to be lost, She says,
we will be lost together.

01 MAY 2001

It is difficult to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack of what is found there.
-- William Carlos Williams

Let us remember ... that in the end we go to Poetry for one reason, so that we might more fully inhabit our lives and the world in which we live them, and that if we more fully inhabit these things, we might be less apt to destroy both. -- Christian Wiman, Editor, Poetry magazine

My mother, who turns seventy next year,
four days from now is driving from LA,
alone across almost two thousand miles
(she plans between ten and twelve miles a day)

to visit us in New Orleans -- she says,
for just a day or so; and then, she's off
towards the north. Next stop is Tennessee.
My younger sister's been there just two months

and barely settled in; she moved away
to close the West Coast chapter of her life.
Of course, that book includes my brothers and my mom.
I understand her motivation well,
although to mom it's not so cut and dry.

She wonders what would cause someone to split
away from hearth and home, leaving behind
the everything your life has ever been
in search of something else - something else real.

But she and Dad did much the same thing:
they put a state, at first, between their life
and where they came from, cutting free the past.
It worked for about seven years or so.

And then they were dragged back into the fold,
or close enough to be within the web
of sibling politics and watchful eyes;
they tried to make a go of it, and failed.

Next, they tried the whole damn continent --
uprooting us from the dull, complacent life
that was in store if we stayed on the farm,
and ran three thousand miles, to Western shores.

The family back at home, in the Midwest
still wonders why they left, dissatisfied
with close-knit clan surrounding on all sides
and little opportunity for growth.

But it was dad that needed space, and change,
and his decision to break with the past.
Mom never spoke of it, but now, I think
she has regrets that they struck out alone.

And sis and I, the two like the old man,
have likewise flung ourselves out and away ---
with breathing room to reconstruct our lives
in different ways, by rules that we define.

How could mom be surprised? Our exodus
was fated from the start. There was no force
of nature, blood or even divine will
that could have keep us California-bound.

Poverty, Illiteracy, Hunger, Drugs, and ultimately what I'd like to address, Terrorism.

Does it appear to anyone but myself that our great "national" causes (that we cast as decisive "battles" since Johnson's Great Society and its War on Poverty) deal primarily with the symptoms, and not their underlying causes? Let's take Terrorism, for one. Terrorism is violent action taken to bring attention to one's issues. To me, that makes it a last resort. A final desparate parley when all other avenues have been exhausted. I can think of one absolutely sure way to eliminate Osama bin Laden as a threat: sit down at the table with him, with an open mind, willing to admit where he is right, and willing to prove where "we" are right. As Marshall McLuhan put it in his book "The Medium is the Massage", propaganda ends where dialogue begins. But the problem is that in the world political arena, there is an "adult's" table and a "kid's" table. And those that sit at the "adult" table take it for granted that because they are sitting at that table, that they are doing everything right.

There is an old saying: "There are four kinds of people in this world. Those that like you for the right reasons, those that like you for the wrong reasons, those that don't like you for the wrong reasons, and those that don't like you for the right reasons. The first three groups need not command your attention -- but you must address the last."

Part of the problem with eliiminating terrorist threats is that we have not provided terrorists with any other viable means for communication as equals. As a result, they are left desparate enough to use "whatever means necessary" to wage their own "War on Hypocrisy." Part of that hypocrisy might be, from a Muslim perspective, that so-called Christian countries, who are not interested in having anyone step into their lands and tell them how to behave or treat their subjects or interact with their neighbors, or control their national industries and elections, seem very interested in doing those very things in other places - which is a direct violation of the Christian truism "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." If you aren't willing to take advice from parties that are diametrically opposite from yourself ideologically, then stay out of their business, too.

The point is that dissidents, to become dangerous, must feel that no one is listening to what they have to say, or that any dialogue in which they participate is a farce. Having a "dialogue" on how to best address global tension, for example, without any interest in or commitment to changing your own national actions as required to resolve conflicts, is hypocrisy; just like waging a war on drugs and focusing on the ghettos is obvious hypocrisy, as the only people capable of large-scale importation of drugs typically are not ghetto residents.

With respect to the "current" war on terrorism, which seems to be focused on Islamic Terror: that is a war we, as a "Christian" nation will never WIN, so long as we deny that there are things about Islam (and every other religion other than our own) that are worth learning, and learning from. And there are things to be learned from non-democratic nations that are applicable to our dear Democracy, particularly as we see it slipping away, eroded by the very "rule of kings" that we were supposedly founded as a bulwark against.

Back briefly to the adult vs. kid table. The problem is of course that who sits at which table, globally speaking, is largely defined by military might. We as a global community seem to believe that all other ideologies aside, as long as you are well armed, you deserve attention and respect. Of course, that's part of the problem -- we are basically telling anyone disenfranchised, alienated, ignored or otherwise marginalized that if you get your armaments together (remembering that about 75% of the world's high tech weaponry is produced by the USA), and prove that you will use them, then and only then will you be worthy of notice. And then we wonder when the guns are pointed at us. Hmm...

OK, so I've been thinking quite a bit lately about knowledge, its accumulation, and how application of that acquired or accumulated knowledge can best be used to affect change in society. And here's the thing -- one of my father's favorite catch-all phrases and concepts was osmosis. Of course, he was a civil/sanitary/environmental engineer, so a lot of his work had to do with the purification and/or modification of one substance via the introduction or removal of another substance.

And reflecting on that very thing got me thinking. Any knowledge that I have gained throughout the years is largely due to osmosis. In biologic terms, osmosis refers to the passage of a solvent through a semipermeable membrane from a less concentrated to a more concentrated solution until both solutions are of the same concentration. In another sense, osmosis refers to gradual or unconscious assimilation or adoption (as of ideas). In other words, to learn French by osmosis means that rather than study it directly, or formally, you acquire the language due to immersion in that culture, or by being surrounded by French speakers.

Applying that same logic to the arts - our culture is the semi-permeable membrane. In many ways, it is rigid -- there are certain, direct actions that when taken against the culture, result in the equivalent of rejection at a brick wall. But there are more subtle ways to overcome the obstacle, getting to the other side, so to speak, that eventually will result in the ideas being so promulgated being integrated into the mainstream, almost without the mainstream even knowing it.

Religion has known about osmosis for quite some time. And most revolutionary leaders, if they are effective in the least, employ it to some degree. It was Malcolm X who said (and I paraphrase, as he ultimately was paraphrasing a much older Sufi truism) ... "When I try to convince someone that my ideas are right, I don't just come out and say their way is wrong, or that mine is so much better. That's like telling someone that the glass they're drinking from is filled with dirty water. It's the only water they know, and they're going to have accustomed themselves to that dirty, cloudy glass. No, I don't confront their wrongness. I simply stand there, holding a clean glass filled with crystal clear water, and sip slowly - and wait for them to ask me where I got it. And then, I tell them." One of the most common bits of advice that holy persons (of any stripe or conviction) tell their would-be followers is this: if you want to become holy, hang out with holy people (or at least, others who are trying to be holy). As you think you are, so you will become. You gain insight into being, into thinking, into understanding the perspective, by the process of osmosis.

How osmosis has affected my education is largely through books. Like Henry Miller talks about, each book you read that mentions other books leads you on an ever-increasing journey. One author leads to ten others, who lead to ten others each. Eventually, your house is filled with books by people who most folks would have trouble connecting to each other. It's like seven degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon ... LOL. Miller leads to Hamsun leads to Kierkegaard leads to ... you get the picture.

A lot of what I see as earth-based, pagan spirituality operates on this same wavelength. Ultimately, at its core, the casting of spells is a form of osmosis. You change the universe by changing yourself - and in that process, because you are PART of the universe, when you change, the universe has no option but to be changed. The easiest spell in the world? Smile when you walk into a room. You'd be surprised at how the energy changes, and how quickly. But of course, intent and responsibility are lying in wait for you there. In order for it to work effectively, you've not only got to smile, but you have to WANT to smile. And on top of that, you've got to take responsibility for being thought of as someone who is smiling (and is therefore, imminently approachable -- don't try this if you're trying to get in and out of the Department of Motor Vehicles in a hurry, without being chatted up by every other bored person in the waiting room).

How does this relate to art, and in specific, the arts which I practice - Poetry and Music? Well, as any observant reader can tell, my poetic style runs the gamut from traditionalist to modern to post-modern. It's all over the place. And that, to me, is how it should be. We are each a product of a myriad of forces that combines to create a unique instance of energy in a limitless field of shared energy. The question that needs to be answered is: how to return that energy; how to ultimately disprove entropy (which avers that energy systems constantly lose energy) by illustrating that energy does not grow or ebb, but merely change form. Just because you can't see it, doesn't mean it's not there. One of the strange things about a lot of religions is that they forget that if God (or god, or goddess, or what have you) is infinite, without limit, and omnipresent, it is NOT possible to avoid Him. You can pretend not to see Him, but that doesn't mean he's not there. Likewise, and this is main reason, IMHO, that there is so much contention about religion in the world - all religions pretty much posit that man is incapable of perceiving the entirety of the Divine. At the same time, they fail to acknowledge that perhaps every other spiritual path that is not theirs sees a part that they do not. It's like the Sufi story about the blind men and the elephant. Each one's got a different part - the trunk, the tail, the tusk, the belly, and they each define "elephant" based on that isolated section underneath their small, and sightless hands. To suggest that there is enough elephant, or God, to encompass every possible human interpretation ever made, and that ever will be made, without exhausting the possiblities of what encompasses the Divine, is to speak heresy against almost every major religion out there. And yet, that's what all the texts teach us. That our interpretation, this fumbling in a cloud of unknowing between what we think there is, and what really IS, is SO small. That's the Fall. That we assumed that we knew what the Gods knew; and that what we could hold in our pea-sized brains was enough to run the world with. Well, just because you can't see the ground doesn't mean you're flying. Most likely, you're in free-fall, and sooner than you think, the canyon floor's gonna catch up with you.

Anyway --- Here's my proposal. The School of Osmosis. Gathering information by lying in the stream bed of inspiration, to borrow a Celtic metaphor. And dissemination of that information by acting upon it, in the world as it is, until the world is converted, not by the sword, or by propaganda, but by example. Example wrought out of direct, personal experience with the universe, and not translated, but demonstrated. Of course, filled with error and overstepping and inconsistency and blurring of the lines between traditions, modernisms and schools of thought. Because that's what the world REALLY is. That's what makes it whole. Everything. And not a jot or tittle less. For better or worse. It's ultimately an egalitarian society. Because if you've got the skills needed at the time, you lead. If someone else has the skills required at a different time, you follow. A circle has no head, remember.

Or something like that. Any takers?

They do not call us Boomers,
born too late to wear that name,
and Generation X we're not
having slipped into life a bit too soon

Each generation bides its time
Seeking its voice and words to say
But in the waiting we seem stuck
Adrift in some self-wrought malaise

The roll of my peers, so much caught up
in decades outside our recall --

the sixties, that we barely saw

the seventies, our childhood strife

the eighties, when we came of age,
barely surviving the complaisance of greed

the nineties, that we'd lief forget

And in the absence of great cause,
we manufacture strife and angst
to disenfranchise our own selves,
disown our own, and silent, sleep

While other generations' seers
and sages, poets, pens now silent, lost
await rebirth among our ranks

I call them out and wonder why
they do not answer, are not found:

Faulkner, Cummings, Hesse, Frost
Williams, Roethke, Breton, Plath
Lewis, Huxley, Sanburg, Hughes
Cassady, Steinbeck, Fleming, White
Eliot, Cocteau, O'Connor, Maugham

must you all wait, in restless graves,
denied rebirth this time around?

01 MAY 2004

In my last few posts, I was lamenting the fact that my generation seems to be missing writer voices. Well, I just picked up Rolling Stone issue 947, that included an interview with Chris Rock. I've always appreciated his comedy on a number of levels; but something he said in this interview struck a chord with me:

[RS Interviewer, Neil Strauss]: When you were doing the Janet Jackson bit in your show, you decided to come down against her. What's the other side?

[Rock]: On one hand, you are crazy to whip out a titty on a Sunday afternoon. On the other hand, there are jet fighters flying over the stadium and people are cheering, "Hey, go murder more people." This titty, we can't have this -- but murdering jets, now that's all right.

[RS]: I'm surprised by the near-apathy of popular artists to what's going on in the world right now.

[Rock]: Can you believe there's no Rage Against the Machine? There is no Public Enemy? There's no Arrested Development? No one is talking about anything. Nobody young gives a f**k. The only people that even mention that there is a f**king war are, like, me and Al Franken? It's a f**king sad time for art. Art is dead, man.

[RS]: Especially since now the right song can make a difference before the election and maybe put a catchphrase in people's heads.

[Rock]: There is not one record on the radio that reflects anything that is going on, except for the guy, what's his name? McGraw? Chesnutt? Toby Keith, I mean. I don't agree with those guys. But I respect them, because at least they're f**king dealing with what's going on -- in their own crazy right-wing way.

We've got AIDS, SARS and all this s**t going on. All these dead dolphins rolled up on some beach the other day. We are at f**king war, people are f**king broke, mothers are killing their kids, and the welfare thing is going on. And everyone is singing, "Everybody in the club getting tipsy." It's f**king insane.

From Ann Charters' introduction to The Portable Beat Reader:

Earlier in the history of American literature, the novelist Henry James acknowledged in his biography of Nathaniel Hawthorne that "the best things come, as a general thing, from the talents that are members of a group; every man works better when he has companions working in the same line, and yielding the stimulus of suggestion, comparison, emulation." As a facet of our country's cultural history, clusters have been an outstanding feature of our literature. They can be a group of writers joined by a common geographical location who share philosophical sympathies, such as the cluster of transcendentalist writers in Concord, Massachusetts, in the mid-nineteenth century -- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Bronson Alcott. More often, given the sheer physical size of the United States, the writers share a temporal rather than a spatial proximity along with their lieratary aesthetic, for example the local-color realists Sarah Orne Jewett, Lafcadio Hearn, and Kate Chopin, all born between 1849 and 1851, or the experimental modernist poets born in the decade between 1879 and 1888 -- William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound, Hilda Dolittle, Marianne Moore, T.S. Eliot, and Wallace Stevens.

I have often found myself in groups like those described above, usually geographical rather than temporal. Which leads me to wonder: of those writers that are of my generation -- the lost years between Baby Boom and Generation X, those who arrived in this incarnation between, say, 1962 and 1968 (with myself smack in the middle at 1965), of those who potentially would have gone to high school together, what are the commonalities? the aesthetics? the influences and, since it is almost forty years since that time, the descendants, if any? In looking across the Internet, which some could say serves as an artificial sense of connectivity, since the barrier of geography has been eliminated, and the notion of "age" is muddled and clouded, particularly given the large degree of anonymity and lack of personal information about those who come in contact with each other, but to me serves as both a surrogate "coffeehouse" and pipeline for correspondence, the writers of my generation who have achieved any sense of notoriety (as determined by whether I am familiar with their work, at best an extremely subjective criterion) seem to be:

Quentin Tarantino (1963), JK Rowling (1965), Poppy Z. Brite (1967)

Whereas the writers who DIED within that time seem to be of a much greater number (and societal impact, I think):

William Faulker, e.e. cummings, Herman Hesse (1962), Robert Frost, Sylvia Plath, William Carlos Williams, Theodore Roethke, Jean Cocteau, C.S. Lewis, Aldous Huxley (1963), Flannery O'Connor, TH White, Ian Fleming (1964), W. Somerset Maugham, T.S. Eliot (1965), Andre Breton (1966), Langston Hughes, Carl Sanburg (1967), John Steinbeck, Neal Cassady (1968)

Of course, I'm sure there are countless others ... Henry Rollins (although maybe born 1961, I can't remember), for one. Chuck Palahniuk (1961, too, and perhaps in many ways the reincarnation of Hemingway, who died that year), for another. But unless I'm missing something, it looks like American literature died while we were being born, and not too many of us picked up the torch. Of course, that could be due to the fact that less than 10% of the current population of the United States reads books on a daily basis. But I think it's something more -- like the progression of population magazines mirrors our evolution from the fifties - Look (1950s) to Life (1960s) to People (1970s) to Us (1980s) to Self (1990s), I feel that there is a sense of disenfranchisement from ourselves, from our own. So many of my peers, agewise, seem to be caught up either in decades we barely experienced (the 60s), struggled through as children (the 70s), barely survived (the 80s), and would like to forget (the 90s). And where does that leave us now? We are not Boomers, so the likelihood of our relating to the power-struggles there is small. And we are not Xers - so there is something missing there for us, too. Our angst is primarily self-directed, self-aggrandizing, and self-generated. We are the ones who can remember Nixon lied to America, and the ones who are still young enough to do something about it.

So my question is this: where are my peers, where is the "cluster" to which I belong? I know I have been searching for it my whole life, and for the most part, have been sadly disappointed.

If you're out there --- speak to me. We surely have something to say to each other.

WHAT IF:
Money actually grew on trees?
You actually had more than one once-in-a-lifetime opportunity?
Your face actually stayed in the guise of some hideous scowl you made when you were six?
Things were easier done than said?
What was up never came down?
The birds and bees got together and planned the assassinations of Drs. Ruth Westheimer, Sigmund Freud and Benjamin Spock?
The lamb beat the shit out of a couple of lions?
Evolution is really de-volution?
You died, got younger, and then were born?
Apples and oranges are really the same thing?
Square pegs fit into round holes?

WHAT THEN?

Homespun and Gravity look at each other, the two sailors, the sun setting swiftly in the southern sky.

"Well," Homespun begins, "now what?"

"War Stories!" the sailors shout, lifting non-existent mugs to their dry, cracked lips in anticipation (although they were not actually in Anticipation, Pennsylvania, but in the suburbs of America, nowhere near the non-friendly skies of Philadelphia, and were not actually in Anticipation, burning in Effigy, waiting in Limbo, or doing anything else that might be construed to be happening in any other place, bated breath notwithstanding).

"Why is it," Gravity asked, "that whenever people get together to talk about their past, they call it telling war stories? Is it all that bad? Why not, for example, tell peace or love or fond memory stories, instead of war, horror, experience done taught me a lesson that I would not have learned or had taught to me but I shall drill into your head the validity of my sorrowful life by sharing it with you tales from the crypt of crap that has somehow accumulated in my pointed little worthless head of a pin understanding of what it takes to not only convey a moral message but stupid story simultaneously?"

"I say," Homespun answered, "that we share intimate stories from the pursuit of the wild and furry frubbit."

from The Secret Undertown Ministry, 1993

Split ends of clock's tick and flee
from the circle of power where union is meet
in a cooper's wheel, hard and hot like fire
from welding's arc and concentrated blue flame.

It's not so much the trip, he says, 
but the fact that you are traveling together, 
down dark and musty paths that lead
to places only memory maps can ponder.

The time, she says, the time is passing by
like blades of grass -- we see the green in toto,
but each separate tine we step upon 
like grains of sand on a beach.

He speaks of love and power and control. 

It's like this: isn't it defined as someone who is freaked out
by the fact that they might be
under the control of another?

And isn't it so: that when you ask someone
to admit they are controlling you 
that you're looking for a reason not to have control?

Love, she said, is not about control - 

it's not a question, at least, of how much
you control and mold and shape another, 
but how much control you have over Self. 

I cannot, she said, taken responsibility
for the fact that your life is unfulfilling,
that you are unhappy.

That is not my business,
and by asking me why I must control, 
asking if I do want control, 
you are making it my problem 
without giving the responsibility to change it. 

Furthermore, I cannot change it, 
even if you or I wanted me to. 
Because, she added, it is not in my power
to change anything except myself.

So, he asked, is it like that? 

Then who is it that must suffer, 
if you do not allow me to pick the lice from your head, 
and yet do nothing yourself about them, 
and so if I am to be close to you I must then be infected?

You choose, she replied, to suffer, 
rather than to ask me, to command -- 
the lice or me -- 
or accept infestation as the price you pay
for what you want. 

For that, that is your choice, 
the only thing you can control. 

If you ask me to make the choice
between cleanliness and you, 
or dirtiness and solitude, 
you are hoping to influence my decision
by controlling me, which IS control. 

Hope, she said, is control, 
if it is by hope that you want to change me. 

Your desire for change in anyone but yourself is control,
for you have externalized upon me
your need to control yourself,
your desire to have the world conform
to a pattern you perceive yourself by,
rather than changing your perception
to admit yourself into the world as it exists.

You and I, then, he answered, cannot strike a compromise?

The only compromise you make, 
that you have the power to make, 
break or negotiate,
is with yourself,
between what you truly want and desire 
(which, when considered and balanced
 with the desires of the flow of the universe, is Truth) 
and what you are afraid to face
in yourself and for yourself,
that is,
alone and tired,
destitute and cold,
you FOR and BY YOURSELF
are willing to accept
as your reality.

We need each other, you see,
not as pillars or beams to support us in our weakness,
but rather as parts of the same soul and being that share,
because of their own fullness,
the journey we all make together.

01 SEP 1995