Thursday, April 4, 2024

On reading an interview with Alice Notley and gaining deeper insight as to the purpose of poetry…

Revenge of the Smashed Green

Self melting no
name making, boom
faking not liking,
loving crushing,
dwindle tops.
Ok was the word.
When I went in
everything stopped but
that’s OK, allright.

The philosopher said
there is no why, but
I said there’s hunger
for electricity, or a force
of nature.

Bring lettuce, bring
dozens of drinks, let go
of the ants they are so
small, out of sight
mostly. But then again
they return with thoughts
of their own.

Sunsets and skyscrapers.
Death in Gaza and consciousness
knows it. The da da daddy
of us all, the Mama
swinging in for a closer look.
 

Tuesday, April 2, 2024

Rushing Through

    Want to rush through this journal,
(and finish this book) since the pages are so narrow
and short and I always seem to want the option
to write wide. Coffee is so good, but not the answer
to laying in bed, at 4 am with the ideation gun
creeping around nearby. Because I have nothing
to say. Until I start. Then everything. Then
splinters. Goodbyes. Goodbyes to failures.
Getting ready for dawn and somebody, some
long lost face. Not the apocalypse. Not this instant.
Just loneliness smoothed out into a cakey skin
around my finger, a bandaid, a word, a drip.
A scent of the first bird of a spring morning
through a cracked open window.

Recently the crows have been inventing new words,
new phrases. Impossible to describe, you have to be there,
hearing this one crow yesterday morning as I walked to
the garage, repeating this phrase:
ka keea
ka keea
ka keea

ka keea…

Can I wish for peace around the entire world today?
Why not? Even if I’m not spiritual most of the time.
Could all words be prayers thrown out against the ideation gun,
even cursing, especially cursing, and that 4 am gun
is actually a last remnant of the Dreaded God
of yore, the God you weren’t supposed to say his (its?) name.
You were supposed to fear this God. Be humble etc.
But this God has a half life like I don’t believe. If
God is dead for Nietsche, my God is half dead and I’m praying
through music and dah dah words for some Goddess I think,
like Odysseus’s Athena, the wise one, -actually she comes
and goes, and leaves him on Calypso’s island for seven years,
where he gets too much sex, -pleasure activism.

Like Oscar Wilde said, more or less, all things in good
measure, even abstinence. I’d put this into a little chapbook
I think and hand it out at our band’s shows, if I had more
courage, like the crow doesn’t even know. Guess
I’m trying to think of pick up lines for strangers,
I could use a new friend instead of doing my taxes.