poetry/antipoetry & exploitation movies
someone asks what i think might happen in the new year. i couldn't have predicted the past several years. as i type i hear the police chopper circling. i hear fireworks [maybe gunshots]. i'm certain of this, there will be more suffering. there will be more pain. there will be astonishing surprises. there might be another black swan event. & there will be, as always, love, again.
aw man, take a metaphysical leap after watching online the launch of the james webb telescope & how i was so glad that us, the monkeys we are, can, & do, miraculous things but then the toilet overflows & that unwanted person calls both of which take up so much precious time & i am not so young no more no more am i willing to give up the mental space it takes to deal with these things & yet i do because i've got no choice for the unwanted person is a human being just like me who fumbles in the dark too & the toilet is only a thing that needs the proper tools & skills to fix but i'm telling you i'd rather watch another youtube video about the size of the cosmos to really feal alive for in this attitude i know that i am just a speck of a speck of a speck but dammit does my frustration & anger feel like the size of several solar systems so fuck it here i go again & hope that my own frustrations redshift away the soonest the better of them all
i mean how can you when the world we live in is already so fucking strange. rimbaud didn't imagine our world & he was a fair visionary. contemporary realism flew way past the madness of eluard & breton. you might want to walk yr lobster after work but how can that fair with a world in which you can take a flat plastic rectangle from yr pocket & find not only the world's information from fast fashion to quantum physics with a few taps of a screen. nature, the world as it is, is so much stranger than is imagined. ever see a sunfish? have you watched a helicopter fly on mars? have you thought that yr dreams are commensurate to the workings of the cosmos? no. yes. whatever you can dream of the workings of nature is stranger than that. we live on the plane between yes & no.
what wag sd that all thing human reach toward the condition of music. i don't know about that but when i hear/see music that makes my heart go pitterpat & brings, i shit you not, tears to my eyes i think our human being is capable of not only of terrible horror but of such great fucking beauty. i don't know if music will cure us from our madness but when i hear harmony & musicians working in sync to make such gorgeous sound i think we are more than capable of peace amongst ourselves & we can build out into the stars
quote unquote
For that matter I also like the name of the English poet William Wordsworth
What an absolutely correct poet's name, Wordsworth.
So evocative of what it is, in the beginning or end, all about.
--david meltzer [two-way mirror: a poetry notebook (oyez; 1977)]
i was standing at the checkout line at safeway with a few items & a six pack of beer the young guy ahead of me was friendly & talkative [but wearing no mask the only one i saw in the supermarket thusly unadorned] i do what i can try to remain friendly [even tho inside i was screaming wear yr mask!] what can one do but live in this world that is created for us even as we try to help in its creation too but when it was my turn the clerk asked for my birthdate because of the beer & the friendly unmasked dude turns around & jokingly asked me they can't make up a date for you & i say i agree as i roll my eyes & say to him it was only just yesterday when i was young
i took a break from our weekly chores / made a pb&j sandwich / turned on the tv / ignored the program / daydreaming / watching / outside the backdoor window / the breeze blowing leaves from the trees / noah our cat watched me / watching the leaves / & saw my expression shift from ennui / to astonishment / when a leaf as large as my hand / was blown against the clear windowpane / i swear it / i saw / noah / turn to astonishment too / when he noticed my mind shift / & because of it / turned to the window to see what i did see / & set to / chase the leaf that was blowing away
exhausted all day but w/ nervous energy an unpleasant detail that nontheless tells me that i am still buzzing on this mortal coil
yet can't focus enuf to read well & w/ pleasure rather my attentions focused on watching a local play w/ nick live on youtube
then watched a reading also on youtube by the bay area poet dan bellm
& back to youtube to watch several short scifi films from a channel called dust
tried to take a nap but was too tired to sleep
working on a project w/ jonathan hayes [much more on that later]
wrote a few emails got a couple of excellent emails in return w/ pdfs of their poems attached
i really dig the poet/artist truong tran [hayes introduced me to tran's work]
have been dipping into tran's 2008 collection four letter words [apogee press]
--how's this for a concept the
poem as porn the porn is true
tran's lower-case unpunctuated lines & blocks of prose display a rigor of form & a sweetness of life w/ a lot of love for our troubled species
just the kind of music i need as i bump around confusedly in our fractious time
i used to consider the poet to be a holy fool now i just think of the poet who is still a fool knows no better than every other person yet knows s/he is still right as well as ridiculous
of course the poet realizes that any sort of definition of the poet changes by circumstance person mood economic class etc etc the only thing that the poet can be certain of is a love for poetry
along with having in the phrase of frost a lover's quarrel with the world
odi et ami
