Poetic Divination: A Riddle Song

"A Riddle Song" by Walt Whitman

That which eludes this verse and any verse,
Unheard by sharpest ear, unform'd in clearest eye or cunningest mind,
Nor lore nor fame, nor happiness nor wealth,
And yet the pulse of every heart and life throughout the world
incessantly,
Which you and I and all pursuing ever ever miss,
Open but still a secret, the real of the real, an illusion,
Costless, vouchsafed to each, yet never man the owner,
Which poets vainly seek to put in rhyme, historians in prose,
Which sculptor never chisel'd yet, nor painter painted,
Which vocalist never sung, nor orator nor actor ever utter'd, 10
Invoking here and now I challenge for my song.

Indifferently, 'mid public, private haunts, in solitude,
Behind the mountain and the wood,
Companion of the city's busiest streets, through the assemblage,
It and its radiations constantly glide.

In looks of fair unconscious babes,
Or strangely in the coffin'd dead,
Or show of breaking dawn or stars by night,
As some dissolving delicate film of dreams,
Hiding yet lingering. 20

Two little breaths of words comprising it.
Two words, yet all from first to last comprised in it.

How ardently for it!
How many ships have sail'd and sunk for it!
How many travelers started from their homes and ne'er return'd!
How much of genius boldly staked and lost for it!
What countless stores of beauty, love, ventur'd for it!
How all superbest deeds since Time began are traceable to it--and
shall be to the end!
How all heroic martyrdoms to it!
How, justified by it, the horrors, evils, battles of the earth! 30
How the bright fascinating lambent flames of it, in every age and
land, have drawn men's eyes,
Rich as a sunset on the Norway coast, the sky, the islands, and the
cliffs,
Or midnight's silent glowing northern lights unreachable.

Haply God's riddle it, so vague and yet so certain,
The soul for it, and all the visible universe for it,
And heaven at last for it.

posted at 7:18 AM

Then Spoke the Thunder

I really should catch up on the past few days -- the interminable hot weather, the holiday weekend, watching X-Files with Sam, me and Keeley working our way through Deadwood Season Two, my growing certainty that I have nerve damage in my foot, teaching Julia to cook this weekend, sorting through Cerebus from start to finish, the new kid at work, planning my funeral with the kids, worrying over poor sweet Keeley's burned hands tonight -- but it's raining right now and the temperature is down to the seventies (which is saying something, given that it's only May and it was ninety degrees yesterday) . . . but I really ought to be writing, because there are only two things to do in the midst of a thunderstorm.

One, of course, is write.

The other?

Well . . . mind your own fucking business, mate. I am, despite popular gossip, a gentleman.

(We're in Gorey's house, by the way. It's raining. Wonder what happens next? Pen poised in mid-air, I wait for the moemnt...)

(There goes the lightning.)

(Counting on the thunder, waiting to take dictation...)

posted at 12:44 AM

Poetic Divination: East Side Moving Picture Theatre -- Sunday

"East Side Moving Picture Theatre -- Sunday" by: Maxwell Bodenheim

An old woman rubs her eyes
As though she were stroking children back to life.
A slender Jewish boy whose forehead
Is tall, and like a wind-marked wall,
Restlessly waits while leaping prayers
Clash their light-cymbals within his eyes.
And a little hunchbacked girl
Straightens her back with a slow-pulling smile.
(I am afraid to look at her again.)

Then the blurred, tawdry pictures rush across the scene,
And I hear a swishing intake of breath,
As though some band of shy rigid spirits
Were standing before their last heaven.

posted at 7:12 AM

May 25th -- Surf or Die

"I have received information psychically, which is corroborated by scientific data, according to which on May 25, 2006 a giant tsunami will occur in the Atlantic Ocean, brought about by the impact of a comet fragment which will provoke the eruption of under-sea volcanoes. Waves up to 200 m high will reach coastlines located above and below the Tropic of Cancer. However, all of the countries bordering the Atlantic will be affected to greater or lesser destructive and deadly levels. This site is dedicated to life, to civic responsibility and to information. There is still time to save lives. Thanks for participating in the world-wide alert!"
-- Eric Julien

And that, my friends, is why I live in the midwest.

posted at 9:22 AM

Poetic Divination: In a Dark Time

"In A Dark Time" by Theodore Roethke

In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood--
A lord of nature weeping to a tree.
I live between the heron and the wren,
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.
What's madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance? The day's on fire!
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall.
That place among the rocks--is it a cave,
Or a winding path? The edge is what I have.

A steady storm of correspondences!
A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,
And in broad day the midnight come again!
A man goes far to find out what he is--
Death of the self in a long, tearless night,
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.

Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.

posted at 7:14 AM

Poetic Divination: I threw my arms about those shoulders

"I threw my arms about those shoulders" by Joseph Brodsky

I threw my arms about those shoulders, glancing
at what emerged behind that back,
and saw a chair pushed slightly forward,
merging now with the lighted wall.
The lamp glared too bright to show
the shabby furniture to some advantage,
and that is why sofa of brown leather
shone a sort of yellow in a corner.
The table looked bare, the parquet glossy,
the stove quite dark, and in a dusty frame
a landscape did not stir. Only the sideboard
seemed to me to have some animation.
But a moth flitted round the room,
causing my arrested glance to shift;
and if at any time a ghost had lived here,
he now was gone, abandoning this house.

posted at 7:16 AM

Poetic Divination: Silence

"Silence" by Thomas Hood

There is a silence where hath been no sound,
There is a silence where no sound may be,
In the cold grave—under the deep, deep sea,
Or in wide desert where no life is found,
Which hath been mute, and still must sleep profound;
No voice is hush’d—no life treads silently,
But clouds and cloudy shadows wander free,
That never spoke, over the idle ground:
But in green ruins, in the desolate walls
Of antique palaces, where Man hath been,
Though the dun fox or wild hyæna calls,
And owls, that flit continually between,
Shriek to the echo, and the low winds moan—
There the true Silence is, self-conscious and alone.

(And today is the twenty-third of May.)

posted at 7:27 AM

On Manners

I was raised to say "please" and "thank you" and "excuse me" and "yes ma'am" and "no sir" -- it's practicaly grafted into my DNA.

So I'm generally surprised by people with bad manners. And I don't mean the normal, day-to-day lack of formality or courtesy. That's just life and there's nothing to be done about it.

But there are people who take good manners when evidenced and try to one up them with a clever comeback or even faint mockery -- as though to say "You are an idiot to speak to anyone with courtesy, your parents were fools to teach you, and I am here to remind you that it is all in vain."

I can remember being at a street fair when I was younger, making my way through a crowd of people towards something or other. At one point, there was a group of people standing in a cluster and I had to pass through in order to continue on my way. As I did so, I said "Excuse me.." as a reflex, without even thinking about it.

"Why?" One of the men replied with a snort. "Did you fart?"

I don't know what I did, I don't know how I reacted and what was visible on my face. I remember feeling vaguely embarassed of my own manners and a little disgusted with his.

The woman who was standing next to him jerked his arm and said, sharply, "Shut up, asshole. At least the kid's got some manners."

The guy kind of sheepishly nodded, suddenly humble, and mumbled "Sorry dude."

That was a long time ago, but it all came flooding back to me tonight while I was walking through a store. The aisle was narrow and I passed a man, probably in his fifties. We both had to kind of scoot out of each other's way.

"Excuse me," I murmured out of force of habit, passing.

"Is there?" He stared at me for a moment grinning.

"I'm sorry?"

"Do you have one?"

I was starting to wonder if he thought I worked there. "Uh..."

"You said 'Excuse me,'" he explained. "I was wondering if there was an excuse for you."

I don't know what my face did, but it was obviously not the reaction he was looking for. "I guess not."

"Sorry," he said, playing-at-but-not-really apologizing. "Just jerking your chain a little."

I nodded and looked back to the shelves, thinking "Whatever pal. Have your fun on someone else's time."

But he wasn't done. "Just yanking your chain. You looked like you needed it."

When I didn't say anything, he said, again in that good natured tone of voice, "You look like somebody ought take you down a peg every so often."

(For the record, I was still in my work clothes -- just a couple of notches above "Business Casual" as they call it. He was in faded, stained jeans and a flannel shirt, with three or four days growth of scrubby gray beard -- I assume, his work uniform as well.)

"I'm sure my grandfather would agree with you." Granted, it wasn't a purposeful shot at his age or a particularly powerful response, but I was slightly gratified to see him take offense as it slowly sank in.

I stood my ground, carefully studying the shelves in front of me. After a moment he moved off.

It could have been worse, I suppose. I could have suggested he yank something else.

Although, I doubt that I would have done so -- that would have been rude.

posted at 12:17 AM

Incidentally...

...the photo backdrop is one I took, just before the recent move . . . when I dropped a whole bottle of black ink and it shattered on the floor.

The soles of my feet were black for a week.

posted at 11:24 PM

Limehouse Blues on a Quiet Evening

And a bit of a sad one, really. The kids are off at their mother's, Keeley's got three days of training on the other side of the state (although it feels like the other side of the world), and so it was just me and the cats tonight, making do as best we can and moping about.

(Time was, I was alone all the time. And I got used to it. Looks like I'm un-used to it at long last, which is a very good thing to be, actually. It's good to know that there are better things than being left alone.)

It's not too bad, lest you think I'm feeling sorry for myself (which I am). The cats provide a little depth to everything, different levels to keep it all from feeling flat and flattening me.

Yes. I have turned into one of those people.

Although they did get a bit bossy at dinnertime, the cats. From their standpoint, I was possibly over-seasoning the tuna steak and almost certainly overcooking it. And they wouldn't even consider the rice.

So. I ate while they sulked and the three of us watched "Mirrormask" with Neil and Dave chattering away over top of it. Chet fell asleep halfway through, but Vincent watched most of it. I think he was impressed by the swirling black bits . . . although he showed less interest in the sphinxes than I would have guessed.

Well, I've been stalling a bit, of course. I should be writing. And I would be, of course, if only I could decide what music The Shaggy Man is playing at dinnertime.

Enough's enough. I'll say it's Django Reinhardt and hope for the best.

Wish me luck.

posted at 10:41 PM

Poetic Divination: If We Must Die

"If We Must Die" by Claude McKay

If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursèd lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!

posted at 7:14 AM

Poetic Divination: We are Going

"We Are Going" by Oodgeroo Noonuccal

They came in to the little town
A semi-naked band subdued and silent
All that remained of their tribe.
They came here to the place of their old bora ground
Where now the many white men hurry about like ants.
Notice of the estate agent reads: 'Rubbish May Be Tipped Here'.
Now it half covers the traces of the old bora ring.
'We are as strangers here now, but the white tribe are the strangers.
We belong here, we are of the old ways.
We are the corroboree and the bora ground,
We are the old ceremonies, the laws of the elders.
We are the wonder tales of Dream Time, the tribal legends told.
We are the past, the hunts and the laughing games, the wandering camp fires.
We are the lightening bolt over Gaphembah Hill
Quick and terrible,
And the Thunderer after him, that loud fellow.
We are the quiet daybreak paling the dark lagoon.
We are the shadow-ghosts creeping back as the camp fires burn low.
We are nature and the past, all the old ways
Gone now and scattered.
The scrubs are gone, the hunting and the laughter.
The eagle is gone, the emu and the kangaroo are gone from this place.
The bora ring is gone.
The corroboree is gone.
And we are going.'

posted at 6:59 AM

Poetic Divination: Confined Love

"Confined Love" by John Donne

Some man unworthy to be possessor
Of old or new love, himself being false or weak,
Thought his pain and shame would be lesser
If on womankind he might his anger wreak,
And thence a law did grow,
One might but one man know;
But are other creatures so?

Are Sun, Moon, or Stars by law forbidden
To smile where they list, or lend away their light?
Are birds divorced, or are they chidden
If they leave their mate, or lie abroad a-night?
Beasts do no jointures lose
Though they new lovers choose,
But we are made worse than those.

Who e'er rigged fair ship to lie in harbours
And not to seek new lands, or not to deal withal?
Or built fair houses, set trees, and arbors,
Only to lock up, or else to let them fall?
Good is not good unless
A thousand it possess,
But dost waste with greediness.

posted at 6:22 AM

Springtime Crushes and the Trouble with Cats

Spent a fair amount of the weekend getting ready for Mother's Day, helping the kids put something together for their mom on Saturday and then spending Sunday getting the house squared away, shopping for groceries, and making dinner for Keeley's mom and dad. All in all, not a bad way to spend a weekend if there's no time to write.

Although . . . I did manage to sneak in a couple of moments here and there where I started working my way through Dave Sim's Cerebus the Aardvark for the umpteenth time. As many times as I've read it though from cover to cover, this is the first time I've done it as a divorced man with a very different perspective on women, men, and God. I'm up to Book Nine: Reads, so there's still a long way to go.

Jolie Holland has a new album out and I have a brand new little boy crush on her all over again. That voice of hers is really quite something.

(I mean, it's not Keeley singing "Cheek to Cheek" or anything -- which is the most beautiful thing I've ever heard with my own ears -- but I really like Ms. Holland's music quite a lot and I was delighted to download her new album from iTunes just in time for springtime. So there.)

Still unpacking after the big move. Both of the kids are going to need some help getting their rooms squared away. And I've still got three or four of boxes of books to put on the shelves -- mostly film scripts and miscellaneous movie reference. You'd almost think I was somebody who knew somthing, eh?

After this last move, with almost forty boxes of books, I'm starting to think that I'm the Imeda Marcos of books -- or, at least, that I'm in the running. I've even read (most of) them, too . . . but there are lots and lots that I haven't. Maybe at some point I'll do a list of Books I Own But Have Been Too Lazy To Read.

Maybe.

Imelda was kind of a babe, come to think of it.

Anyways . . . the move took a fair amount of wind out of my creative sails, but there's a new gust now that most of the house if getting squared away and late nights now you'll find me at a big square table with a candle and some Dragon's Blood (typically with a spirit at my elbow) scratching away, glancing up every so often to check in on what's happening in the corner of my eye.

Tonight: The Shaggy Man went fishing and dropped a handful of additional hints here and there about the trouble with cats. I also got to write a smattering of lines that Gorey might have penned under one of his less-favored pseudonyms, which was fun.

Best line of the night: "At the sight of it, the cats gathered around him like stormclouds around a mountain. They watched, tails flickering like lightning, as he reeled the fish in."

We're almost to the Elephant House. I was very happy tonight to discover that the name made sense, in the context of the story. It's almost like I know what I'm doing.

(This is the third section of the novel, by the way, called "Purgatorio" and it's the last section, really -- apart from a simple epilogue that's already been written. It's all coming to an end.)

And then, of course, I checked my e-mail, wrote this, and went to bed.

posted at 12:43 AM

Poetic Divination: A Lyric Day

"A Lyric Day" by Robert W. Service

I deem that there are lyric days
So ripe with radiance and cheer,
So rich with gratitude and praise
That they enrapture all the year.
And if there is a God b\above,
(As they would tell me in the Kirk,)
How he must look with pride and love
Upon his perfect handiwork!

To-day has been a lyric day
I hope I shall remember long,
Of meadow dance and roundelay,
Of woodland glee, of glow and song.
Such joy I saw in maidens eyes,
In mother gaze such tender bliss . . .
How earth would rival paradise
If every day could be like this!

Why die, say I? Let us live on
In lyric world of song and shine,
With ecstasy from dawn to dawn,
Until we greet the dawn Devine.
For I believe, with star and sun,
With peak and plain, with sea and sod,
Inextricably we are one,
Bound in the Wholeness - God.

posted at 6:07 AM

Poetic Divination: How Pleasant to Know Mr. Lear

"How pleasant to know Mr. Lear" by Edward Lear

How pleasant to know Mr. Lear,
Who has written such volumes of stuff.
Some think him ill-tempered and queer,
But a few find him pleasant enough.

His mind is concrete and fastidious,
His nose is remarkably big;
His visage is more or less hideous,
His beard it resembles a wig.

He has ears, and two eyes, and ten fingers,
(Leastways if you reckon two thumbs);
He used to be one of the singers,
But now he is one of the dumbs.

He sits in a beautiful parlour,
With hundreds of books on the wall;
He drinks a great deal of marsala,
But never gets tipsy at all.

He has many friends, laymen and clerical,
Old Foss is the name of his cat;
His body is perfectly spherical,
He weareth a runcible hat.

When he walks in waterproof white,
The children run after him so!
Calling out, "He's gone out in his night-
Gown, that crazy old Englishman, oh!"

He weeps by the side of the ocean,
He weeps on the top of the hill;
He purchases pancakes and lotion,
And chocolate shrimps from the mill.

He reads, but he does not speak, Spanish,
He cannot abide ginger beer;
Ere the days of his pilgrimage vanish,
How pleasant to know Mr. Lear!

posted at 6:49 AM

Candlewax

After about three or four weeks of packing up one house and moving it to another, dealing with all sorts of dramas (including finicky wireless networks, failed cell phones, and broken car windows), pressing on through lots of work-related opportunities (new clients, big proposals, brochures to write, problems to solve), to say nothing of what I fear is a recurrence of what could very well be a chronic eye infection . . . well, I finally found some time tonight to write about the shaggy man in the shaggy coat. I even just scratched the surface on all those cats.

But now I'm tired and with the smell of candlewax and ink in my nostrils, I am heading upstairs to bed.

posted at 12:35 AM

Poetic Divination: To The One Upstairs

"To The One Upstairs" by Charles Simic

Boss of all bosses of the universe.
Mr. know-it-all, wheeler-dealer, wire-puller,
And whatever else you're good at.
Go ahead, shuffle your zeros tonight.
Dip in ink the comets' tails.
Staple the night with starlight.

You'd be better off reading coffee dregs,
Thumbing the pages of the Farmer's Almanac.
But no! You love to put on airs,
And cultivate your famous serenity
While you sit behind your big desk
With zilch in your in-tray, zilch
In your out-tray,
And all of eternity spread around you.

Doesn't it give you the creeps
To hear them begging you on their knees,
Sputtering endearments,
As if you were an inflatable, life-size doll?
Tell them to button up and go to bed.
Stop pretending you're too busy to take notice.

Your hands are empty and so are your eyes.
There's nothing to put your signature to,
Even if you knew your own name,
Or believed the ones I keep inventing,
As I scribble this note to you in the dark.

posted at 7:36 AM

Poetic Divination: We Wear the Mask

"We Wear the Mask" by Paul Laurence Dunbar

We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,--
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be overwise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.

We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask!

posted at 7:36 AM

Poetic Divination: Flock

"flock" by Billy Collins

"It has been calculated that each copy of the Gutenberg Bible...required the skins of 300 sheep."
-- from an article on printing

I can see them squeezed into the holding pen
behind the stone building
where the printing press is housed,

all of them squirming around
to find a little room
and looking so much alike

it would be nearly impossible
to count them,
and there is no telling

which one will carry the news
that the Lord is a shepherd,
one of the few things they already know.

posted at 7:49 AM