Art Native Means Unreal Event

Personal Biography: A Historical Poetical Look

2011-02-12T12:58:00.000-05:00

At request of associate Zac here's material- a look over a Poet's development, a history compiled under threat of duress. When a former mine diffuser/current whiskey imbiber says jump, you jump.

As for Formal Introductions…

If consciousness is sense datum and memories, both of which stretch beyond immediate body, then biography reads as: Long unbroken again/ snow edges over the snow./ My Great-Aunt, when she died in Georgia,/ found the devil sitting on a stump,/ smoking a cigar. “Woman,” he said/ “you'd better change your ways.”

Beyond and expounding on that…

At 17 I was born, falling forth fully formed from the American womb, looking around with some shock and scribbling innumerable pages of poems. They were crude, overly emotional, embarrassing and thankfully majority of them no longer exist. They were also important educational exercises. When starting a fire the first tinder burns fast and hot then soon disappears. It is an invaluable part of getting thicker branches going but once done no one rues its absence. Teenage years are much like that. Saved my first diary though, here's a few selections –

[For visual reference - Favourite picture of this era- Van Gogh's Wheat Field with Cypresses]

A wasted day Brush off the spider

A wasted life slowly crawling up your leg

In the kitchen lies a wasted wife On the tensed muscle

Tension Even the bees flee

spring loaded into a kiss when they see me

My muse has become a The only things I'm

toy monkey addicted to are books

Made of plastic smiles and girls, and sometimes

His name is Brass I go into addiction

And he can get pretty crazy withdrawals from the girls

Yeah, he's my friend

Ugh, so difficult to read, so simple, so angsty. And I saved you, the reader, from the more angsty works. But that's those teenage years, no getting around it. Even then though I realized the game going on and that time was the solution for emotions so crudely drawn and with such brute force. And it was, of course. So now - College. Thanks to the ethereal nature of the digital and my propensity for destroying computers I don't have any of my work from first two years of college. I don't even have a copy of the first poem I ever had published. But that's okay. So picture, if you will, after 2 years of college one young man getting his booze on the sly, steadily going crazy (paranoia, usually) in one small room with one small window, new school, no friends, doing nothing but reading and making first discoveries about the importance of environmental exploration (old buildings, abandoned mental hospital, empty forests, etc. A Flâneur of the old South)

[For visual reference - Favourite picture of this era- Whistler's Nocturne in Black and Gold- The Falling Rocket]

Sub-Par Gumbo Poem

If you really want to know

If you really need to know

The best wine for writing

Is cheap red wine

The mostest for the leastest

I have a liter and a half-

Only 6 dollars

Not bad for this expensive age

It promises many good words

Its bottle is an attractive green

That reminds me of sex

But then most everything does

In this modern age

Full of confessional poetry

Which really is quite a bore

This two am life

This two am life full of passed truckers when

The moon is full like security, so do

Eighty five, ninety, and pray the cops are home

While the world’s speeding and dreaming of being

Sixteen with some skinny girl in a farm truck

Losing our virginity almost alone

Ten hundred thousand miles from these abandoned

Cars dead in blurs with knocked up leaves passed in slow

Motion fueled by cups and cups of coffee to

Keep me awake from one payphone call to you

To the next, your voice distant whisperings while

I try remembering who I am because

Forgetting I find myself in gas station

Bathrooms, the cheap soap always leaves you dirty

The urinal cigarettes seeped in yellow.

International migratory bird day, plastic wrapped soap

She lives with the broken washing machines

Cracked linolium and bulimec dreams

And her costume jewlrey, it makes her a queen

She'll invite you in for something with caffeine

Laughing, she'll say she's a bit of a coffee fiend

Just watch the mangy poodles, they're snappy and mean

But no one ever goes down that way

No one visits Ms. Queen-for-a-day

And the halloween candy gets thrown away

Or the dogs will eat it, either way

Happy Day reruns with microwave dinners on a tray

Gets one down day after day

Moving on- Got a girlfriend, got a dog, changed schools, broke up with girlfriend, kept dog. Things were looking up for beloved protagonist. Took a lot of philosophy, more English classes, fell particularly head over heels for one really intelligent lady. She broke up with me, shock gasp and aww (don't worry, turned out fine but internal brokenhearted dynamo was force behind much poetry), finished college, reconnected with one really intelligent lady. Here's a short selection from those evening years of my education.

[For visual reference - Favourite picture of this era- Oddly enough poster for Hitchcock's Vertigo]

(for anyone whose read my Love Letters cycle here is my first foray into dialogue type form used there. This abandoned narrative contains some similar themes. Interesting the things one dregs up from bowels of computer)

Orpheus
The girls in our life fade from view

and having said I’d write your story

all that can be written is your face

as it’s hid by the wall, the last view of you

and we move away.

While growing up our fingers

moved over objects- pages, books and seashells,

fur and silk with

all the world and others fingers too

and sometimes the blood beneath,

the warm shadow of lovers, the

length of night and day.

But I move now and itch towards something

vague and hidden

a waiting form shifting in the dark,

a waiting form watches for my arrival.

Sarah

He’s drunk again and leers towards the girls

while they look with drinks away.

The night’s still new and still he’s spread out-

My mark for the night, my hidden friend and

I follow the motion of his arms from across the room.

He matches the picture but somehow the picture

missed his eyes as they turn glazed at the dark,

glazed at the dark hair of the girl

Orpheus

If old and asked, if ever,

about my life

I think I must say-

I lived it exactly as I had to live it.

But I think who would ask, and anyway

I would talk as if a summer flower.

Sarah

To be entangled… no

To wake in the writer’s way- hungover,

the room quite, an arm across my chest

like little girls but the hair is dark and thick, old.

In night and drugged and the music loud

there seems nothing but to

crawl over each other. Come morning though

she moves around my room getting clothes as

I stand underneath my backroof

listening to rain and the tin,

the world warming and take another drag of

a cigarette. Spring seems a bit perverse.

(Another poem, no title)

For a spell I thought love a leaf blown over ice,

caught across a blankness and skidded over

the aesthetic cracks in ice.

The ease of seeing love as a leaf, dried to a core

(and the world one pond in winter).

Love is not a leaf blown over ice.

Not also, I’ve learned

as paper folds 7 times

till unfoldable and you’re

Caught twiddling a piece of paper in your hand,

glancing absently aside.

And not…

or how with one hand against the doorframe,

slender fingers root like vines over the white and

Love is not

Love is full and

my mouth opens and words like smoke disappear,

morning and sunlight,

enamoured thoughts fading,

our lives transversing like the meeting of waves.

Well that's enough backstory for one post. At some future point you, oh vague unknown and shadowy reader, may get a poetical representation of my time since College. A period of adventure, culture, love and some tragedy. The introductory picture is a recent doodle of mine, Dream Lover #3. Self portrait of future self after I have chubby cheeks. a combover, and transplanted my head to the body of a large chicken? Who knows?

For Al Purdy

2011-01-13T14:28:00.001-05:00

Fast black forms call to each other, blurs

against the edging light. Not eyes or feathers

but shadows which spin and fret,

folding back.

Massing over cemetery they gather, loud ruckus

a teenage dance party- circle

and split apart, pair together then move apart.

Looking up I understand their instincts, desire

for each other, motivation

to mate. Crows partner for life.

Underneath I'm tracking a fox tracking a rabbit.

How far apart we three?

Hard to say, our overlapping prints implausible timepieces

representing abandoned actions.

I didn’t find the blood stains

if that’s what you mean.

In your bloodshot vision of the Dorsets

(evolution/annihilation) I remember:

Two alligator snapping turtles in a concrete basin.

They had crawled in, had a fine time

in a fish stocked pond.

But when water grew low they couldn’t climb

(though desperately, surely, they tried).

I found their decomposed bodies

together.

Beak which devoured fish

now eroded, carapace with flesh

like hanging curtains.

We should acknowledge our fleshy bodies, should acknowledge Death.

5 minutes later in a tepid stream: dead raccoon,

large body, not yet rotting, open eyes. This impossible South,

this felt dread, the vultures overhead.

Our desires, held on fragile platters,

gets shattered, slip quick away.

Notes:

Al Purdy’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave;

His soul's marching on!

In This Game Rules Are Meant To Be Broken

2011-01-07T11:50:00.001-05:00

tiny falling snow are fruit flies

against the mercy of my window,

hot coffee a warm blanket

over folds of my brain.

winter propagates reduction

back to the body, back

to that fleshy vibrating globule.

the machine is a well oiled mother

but we are fairly certain it no longer

loves us

Notes: Winter in Montreal: Attached to Computer working on grad school applications. Lots of coffee, lots of vibrating globules. That's not me in the picture, it's buddy Brendan at Parc Jean Drapeau, aka Adventure Island.

Ohpen Wide City Gates Of The Soul

2010-12-06T15:47:00.002-05:00

Ohpen Wide City Gates Of The Soul

/ignoring false tale of icarus

myth invented by ever worrying

spleen- instead attach gold pieces

to the soles of your shoes

clickety clack, the sounds from the

dance floor

clickety clack the distinguishing

perception/ in totality of dark.

When we with our sorry

bodies scatter + depleted of fuel

tendril amphetamines fruit

Alone on a desert Look Up!

and therefore will descend.

Open wide that soul city gate

and let dance rude nakedly

Upon bitterly the ashes of ancient memory

and in one's palm the blue

pomegranate and in one's thought

the eternal ever present

massive heart-

Up jump dynamo

Notes: Went to the art museum solo and thinking of my true heartfelt love picked up a postcard in the giftshop of my current favorite artist Riopelle (This is one of his later pieces). Of course a postcard by itself is a bit boring so I scribbled this poem out on the bus ride home, thinking to surprise her. She wasn't there (though she was pleased when she got it later)

To Live in Perpetual Drone

2010-12-06T15:33:00.000-05:00

To Live in Perpetual Drone

oh gawd these faces we pose,

our interests pushing us into such pretences

I mean shiut I'd rather, butcha know

I mean what our our pictures supposed to hold

and what words, what which slip out

then we rephrase. shit mayun, people used to just

dance around a fire and now

we've no fire in our lives. vast suppression,

the firemen I see daily (I mean really!)

running around with fireman's tools, saying strong words

like fuck and dayumn. it's hard to withstand

of course and that's the fuel

for every little spark,

every little spark

we try hard to build into a fire.

Notes: This really is a flash poem. Or perhaps a flash in the pan poem. Written as response to, of all things, Facebook. But really it's more than that. More like a commentary on the sort of dialogue so popular in these modern times. I also saw firemen running around with big fireman tools the day I wrote this. They have awesome looking implements. The picture is one of my ancestors . I think it looks delightfully homosexual.

I Paid the Dépanneur Clerk 25 ¢ for His Pen so I could Write This Poem

2010-12-06T15:19:00.000-05:00

I Paid the Dépanneur Clerk 25 ¢ for His Pen so I could Write This Poem

When in this our modern and airport love

our souls, no longer encumbered, leap up-

At least that is said as scene

but over such aerie loftiness

Becomes as if a screen, projected

scope-o-fonic

your voice over the telephone,

verbal tendons, tendencies, tenderness which stretch

then relax.

I know an old way, ancient repeated,

Evolving even now as it will

When in this an aged and withered occasion

our hands, tired entangle

as we take in onion scents

of a roast in stove.

Our bodies, they slip under the surface

sweat our sex over years contours

and concocts which like wine

enriches as it ages.

I dream the dream of us in every setting:

besides loons engaged in premodern dance.

In a city with constant car crashes, circling

geometry in vacuum of space

(a consistent or corroding world below)

under seething sun,

in feverish city.

I dream dream of us together

amid every such thing to exist forward

and backward, toward every side.

To joy, to hold it now

in such glad mind.

Note: Since she most strongly requested this blog, the first post is for my partner. Of course the fellow in the picture is neither her nor I but rather a real heartfelt chum, he's pretty great. I felt this picture was a good pairing with the poem which itself was inspired when I encountered another amateur's terrible terrible love poem (I mean BAD) and feeling it my duty to increase the world's quotient of good love poems by at least one, wrote this on the bus ride home. My partner was at the time sick with pneumonia and there's nothing like a surprise love poem to brighten someone's day. That's some damn good free advice I'm giving you here.

Introduction:

2010-12-06T14:58:00.000-05:00

At the bequest of my partner and friends I've started a blog. This space will be a display of some small, quick poems, almost like flash fiction, something written in a day, without the intent of being published in some wider context. Each poem will be paired with a photo and have a few lines about the poem, the photo, neither or both. Hope you enjoy