trinkle-tinkle

for silvery lusters

 

 

 

I'm tired. I've written far too many complicated poems. Laid immature, unsuitable even unfortunate beside

too many rivers. Counted a gazillion unfledged moons. And it's ok to smell the funky asses of yesterdays

angels. Poets do. (One of my cousins would live as a woman from 89 to 2005 or until the AIDs epidemic

turned him into a seed which we quickly planted and never talked about again). So it's ok if the lotus is

arranged. I have this recurring dream that someone stops me on Woodward Ave., right in front of the Fox

theatre and says "i've heard of you". You're the one of the unguarded dreams. The one who makes allowances

for scary, hallowed spaces. The one who wears his consecration on his skin like a diamond watch. And just

like Peter denying the light, I deny all formal written requests to rise to the good level of my imcompetence.

"You're mistaken sir. It's not me". So I am the poet by default; by surrended and membrane. By pestilence

and vexation. Since I couldn't find kindness anywhere else, I make it up like a hieroglyph carving my

inscription on bad romances, in the beginning, then the end. Flop doctrine like fish, play my powerball

only to feel good when, like me, no other soul has won. And yet I read Whitman and find myself embarressed,

as he must have been in the 19th century, to talk unashamedly of emotion, to open his peduncle so the world

could see his slender stems. I salute you sir. You didn't like Black soldiers dying from musket balls/ I don't like

any war dying at all. I sir, salute our similarities. A firework

 

I am poet because my knee is sore. Exhausted. The end result of growing older in Never-Never land. My

instructor at the university would say that to hang onto adolescent interests is ok, just don't write about it.

Poetry then, like pornography, might have an adult definition. Something you pet and rub with amorous

embracing. You can kiss it, a lot of people have, only to wake up with those spots on your lips pressing

paradise.

Reviews

[Tree]

Your self depreciating tone is admirable, and God knows maybe you're even right, about all of us. I mentioned this down here before but I think it's worth mentioning again. I think it was the poet and translator Robert Bly who said that the great writer Pablo Neruda ,wrote a whole night time sky full of poems, but like all stars, some just shined in the night sky brighter, than the others.

but poetry is subjective in so many ways, but that doesn't mean one star is really brighter than any other, it just seems that way from that particular reader's perspective. You've written a lot of poems in my night time sky, d. This is one of them.

[Tree]

Gave this another read this morning, wanted to lean on these words again. I was thinking about your reference to Whitman and how much I admired the poet also, as well as that pure soul; the humanitarian. And it occurred to me that in my piece 10 Broken little poems, I made a subtle reference to him also. I believe it was little poem #4: ''I put my face to the earth/ Close one eye/And run my hand across /The blades of grass. /And how can one man teach me / The meaning of a single /blade of grass? /Now what am I to do /with all this information?'' Thing is Whitman's words were more than words it was a philosphy. And it stuck with me and I saw beyond the poem, deeper. I'm sure that is what he intended, that you and I (and others who admire his work) –––not only become better poets, but better people. I'd like to believe that that is what happend with you, and maybe even me. I think he would of enjoyed your work, D.

[h d e rushin]

great insight Diego. That Whitman wanted to write as 'just folks', absence of formality or sophistication and it wound up sounding emotional. But this was the
1800's , the age of the righteous move to romanticism, the civil war of attrition
where men lined up in columns a few yards from other men in columns and blew
large musket holes in one another. It is interesting that Whitman swore off
this movement as an artistic construct to be morally upright and good. Now
we, (me, you, everybody) write with an emotional charge without even a
second thought. We owe that to Whitman.'I salute our similarities'. Whitman also
was homosexual. Should that fact slant the jurys findings of fact, that he
laid the ground work for all of post-modernist poetry? NO!

I went back and read again your '10 broken little poems', and I did see that
subtle reference. A reference whose proclamation is not so subtle now.

You're my hero.
dana

[Tree]

All this talk of Old Gray beard, will now have me scuffling around for the Leaves of Grass...

[Shmoke-Sifted Heftlander]

well said, both of you..I'll return to the poem for multiple reads b4 I review..i desperately need a nap

[caesarkreshen]

sometimes, late at night, I compare my writing to someone else's and wonder if we are so different. Or if I am a minimalist, and if it matters...

[Corset]

yeah well at least no one has accusing you of running a love scam, since the prize is the likes of my madness. You really have to get out of my head, I am having nightmares of pestilence, I never have nightmares till I started writing in WC, but then I am not exposed much else wise. My dream, and you were in it, we were sitting (and behaving) on a bed talking about poetry as we are seldom known to do (ha) and there were spiders all over your hands! And I said Dana! Why do you have spiders all over your hands? And you said Corset you do too, and I looked and they where all over us and the bed, so you are Mr cool, right? but me, i jump up and try to get them off, and as dreams do we were instantly teleported to the table, kitchen tables are were all the real conversation happens, and there is a mouse hole and out of it a line of insects were marching out , all different types and sizes, march out into the center of the floor and on both sides of the mouse hole in the shape of a necklace or a wishbone, was a stream and center puddle of insecticide and the insects had no way to go except back in which they didn't do they just went as far as they could go to the center pool and started drinking, and then falling down all around inside, which was gross, but then a puppy came and started drinking and I wanted to save it but it seems all I could do is watch and then it was all gone....just like that, and you wanted to know if i wanted to go to Kentucky, lol, and I said sure! road trip right? there was snow outside everywhere and (I think That was Rosa stopping in to say hello, lol ) but you didn't have a car! lol, I was asking everyone in the room , which as dreams do.. supplied them for me, If I could borrow their truck! lol, what do you make of that dream sir?

[SHEEMA HUQ]

All kinds of interesting issues are being raised simultaneously here I think,

self questioning can be valuable, though I am sure that you are being hard on yourself,

a sad, revealing and self reflective write, well done, my friend