"They all go into the dark."

I finally made it back to the gym today, lifted over five tons with various muscle groups, 220 crunches, countless stretches, 50 min on the treadmill for a little over two miles and 734 feet climbed, and finally a mile swim. But I'm not losing weight. I'm actually eating more because my muscle mass has increased and the hypothalamic set point tries to keep us at the same weight. In order to truly get in shape I must radically alter my indulgent diet, beginning with my infamous night grazing. After dinner and a couple of television shows is when I start to do my real damage.

My landlord suggested Dr. Phil's diet. I look at Dr. Phil and wonder what I'm missing. But just because a dude is hefty doesn't mean he hasn't discovered a good diet. As Jesus said, "The Pharisees sit in the seat of Moses, so do what they say but not what they do."

I think I mentioned the Summer Solstice ceremony where I picked "love yourself" off of the tree. What does that mean and how can you do it? I've always felt love must come from outside me unless I'm manic. Love comes from praise for achievement or because someone truly loves you, like my daughters or Kathleen. How does one generate it from within? I don't feel it, never have. One guru wannabe from my men's retreat told me to do mirror work for three weeks, repeating some ten times into the mirror every day: "Craig, I love you and I trust your decisions." This was a bad time in my depression, so I didn't follow through. But it was one of the silliest experiences of my life in retrospect. Who knows, maybe it works. But does a need for self-love justify self-hypnotism? And how deep can that be?

How I do go on. I'm still fragile, tenuous, mostly depressed despite my actions. I need my doctors to file a disability update and fear that my income will be yanked from me. I must get my medical license renewed so I have a chance of surviving without my private disability. Making myself do that is another thing, though at least I did the fingerprinting part.

Enough about me. How about a picture or two? Here's an image of Satan by William Blake:















Here's another version:



Sometimes I believe in Satan more than I believe in God. This world can be so dark. I should really stop reading the newspaper. When I saw the retarded young man in the pool with his braying mouth and short attention span today, forgetting to catch a ball from his keeper in less than five seconds, I should have rejoiced with him instead of thinking of his undeserved defects.

"Dark, dark, dark, they all go into the dark." --Eliot

The ego dystonia from the gap between what I believe and experience is sometimes nearly intolerable. But I get by.

I want Mother Teresa's rose-colored glasses, because I think they're actually lens implants from a truly spiritual nature. But when I pray I feel like I'm talking to a blank wall, an empty room, a starless night.

The most I can hope for is acceptance, acceptance of my judgmental nature and the associated guilt it brings to me. Can I find a suitably dark poem to reflect my state of mind? Let's try this one, twice published:


Demon Melancholy

His cold breath steams up my neck
like dry ice. I never see him approach.

He comes from darkness
where eyes forget they are eyes,

where speech has no conclusion
and touch is without resistance,

where music turns to noise
and selves are emptied of history

and personality like milk bottles
below the ninth circle of hell.

I hear his wild dogs carol
in the burning church of my mind.

Pass the offering plate--
Is that a medicine vial, a gun?

Jimmy crack corn and I don't care,
the light has gone away.


Hope this post doesn't get you down. I'll be better soon. Sometimes I just need to vent about the dark side, young Skywalker.


2 Kilorats,

C. E. Chaffin M.D. (M-D)

Up and Down the Down Staircase

This blog began with adventures in Mexico, segued to adventures in manic-depression, and has since oscillated between literature, especially poetry, and my mood disorder.

When my mood disorder raises its protean head, my interest in other things is effectively eclipsed, as I have no interest in them nor passion for them. This does not mean I quit acting, as in the long string of formal poetry I composed last winter as a mental exercise while depressed. I know most of those poems are forgettable, a few worth keeping, but it's the work that matters.

Since hearing back from Mellen Press that they are willing to look at my ms. on Eliot, I have been laboring daily to bring it to a higher level. Today I finished the revision of the first chapter, "Eliot: The Early Poems," and am mentally exhausted. Next I take on the revision of "The Waste Land," no small task.

Monday, when I lapsed back into depression, I began the process of re-reading the ms., but because I was depressed I thought it was irremediable. After my proper dose of medication Monday and Tuesday, I had hope on Tuesday. My editor, Kathleen, had meanwhile weighed in with, "You're wrong. It's good. What, you don't trust your editor anymore?" There's a reality check, but in depression you can't accept the judgment of others, especially when it's in your favor. Still, yesterday the tome looked more promising.

Today I am thinking less of the book, but my mood is also more tenuous. I have also been avoiding the gym for a week, a lapse in discipline. My routine presently consists of two cookies for breakfast, two or three hours work on the ms., a sandwich, physical activity in the form of gardening or housework, and then the blessed return of Kathleen from work, after which the schedule is open. Sometimes I cook dinner.

I went to my men's group for the first time in over a month last night. I was the only member we didn't have time to hear from personally. I thought it was probably for the best as my summary of the recent past and my current mood would have gone on longer than I wished. Still, it seemed no one noticed that I did not have a chance to speak about myself. Small wonder given man's self-centeredness.

In revising the first chapter of my Eliot book I trimmed almost 700 words, always a good sign, and did some fact-checking as well as running down sources for certain quotes. When I do so on Google, I am overwhelmed by the wealth of opinion and documentation on Eliot, and fear, as an amateur, I am in no way qualified to write about him. Still, I think many of my insights are new, and therein lies the value of the piece. But it also makes it a bit of a liability for an academic press, especially since I purposely avoid footnotes for the sake of readability.

What matters is that I have work to do.

I do identify with Eliot's early alienation from reality, both social and physical. I was very slow to mature to semi-adulthood, lost in my own head just like J. Alfred Prufrock.

Kenyon, btw, is doing much better, perhaps because I found a steel-reinforced splint for his left front lower leg. Two months ago he would not come up the stairs; now he goes up and down them three times a day. Amazing how his condition has improved. It may also be in part due to his daily dose of Previcox, a cyto-oxidase II inhibitor like Celebrex, which helps peripheral, especially arthritic, pain. Try it on your old dog and see what you think.

I mentioned the formal poems I wrote during the winter of my depression. Here's one I revised before I became an ex-poet:

Anxiety

You feel it in your stomach when you wake,
Almost like hunger but not quite the same,
As if you’re being hurried by a flame
Forward and forward and forward until you break
Or want to break—anxiety won’t allow
A total breakdown, it would lose its grip
On your dry tongue and almost trembling lip;
It lets you live in any time but now.
Time future runs ahead, you eat its dust;
Time past is pure regret, paralysis;
And your hard labor of self-analysis
Will never birth in you a basic trust.
You wonder if as an infant it was better—
Not if your mother raised you by the letter.

I am beset by fears, by fears of poverty and old age, feelings of inadequacy that I have no more savings and no longer own a house, guilt about not having "a regular job" and all the rest of my shortcomings. When my chemicals improve my fears will improve, not that that constitutes an excuse to ignore the reality of their challenge.

"Challenge." What a better term than "fear!"

Fools will always be in the care of God, though I have not as yet needed to depend on the kindness of strangers.

My sister-in-law has forwarded a small selection of my poems to Jane Hirschfield, whose horse she also rides. I expect at best a polite response to my imposition, the certain death knell for my former hope of being a poet.


At 2 Kilorats,

CE

Eating Crow on My Overpriced Book: Amazon Error

I wrote the seller on Amazon who was asking $398 for my first book of poems, Elementary. She informed me that Amazon had made a listing mistake, that she didn't have the book and knew nothing about it. I suspected this from the first. Too happily I embraced an illusion without proper research. Good news should be questioned, bad news is likely true.

Although the book now lists for $39.95 from Mellen Press, the home page of the publisher states that it's out of print.

I've tried this before but I tried it again: I ordered a copy through Amazon, who wrongly thinks it available. Later they will inform me that the book is out of print, which I already know, and credit me with a refund. If it is available I will be shocked. Why I care about it is obvious; it's the only tangible proof I was actually an author. I continue to resist self-publishing, although 85% of books are self-published nowadays.

My gig at the Lavender Festival went well. Though the crowds were sparse I was well-received. Here's a picture Pat Jones took of me while I was playing "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight" by Bobby Dylan:


Later I got to play on an actual raised stage. The wine and food were good, as they were yesterday when I acted as a volunteer guide for the Digging Dog Nursery tour, where I was able to answer a few questions as a "master gardener" about plants, but mainly pointed people in the direction of the wine and food.

Afterwards I started sliding into a depression, as I was trying to get by for two days on one capsule of my antidepressant again, hoping the order from Canada would arrive before I had to pay fifty dollars for ten more pills. One 60 mg. capsule is the recommended maximum dose, to be fair, but I know I require 120 mg. So I messed up. Again.
Yes, Virginia, this doctor-patient is that stupid. Luckily the medications came in the mail today, so I got my proper dose and hope the miasma of despair will soon clear and relapse will be prevented, provided the generic capsules from India are not bogus. Funny how they smell of curry...

Truly, managing my mental illness is the most important task in my life. But like other humans, if I feel well for even a little while I begin to forget why and risk foolish liberties. I should have refilled my local Rx Saturday when I was first forced to reduce the dose.

There's no fool like an old fool. There's no poet like an ex-poet.

I sent a query to the publisher of my poetry book about a second book, but they no longer publish poetry. So I sent another query about my book on Eliot and they said to send it. But in my depressive mode, upon reviewing my third draft of the book, I found it awful. They will never publish it. It is literary criticism in no man's land, somewhere between an academic treatise and an undergraduate student's hypertrophied term paper. And the prose style is much too dry; I had hoped to engage readers, but it bores me to death. Can it be fixed? Probably not. Will I try? Probably. Because it's work, and that's what I need, even if it's pointless. Consider it a basket-weaving class at a mental hospital.

Also, in signing up for a local writer's conference, in my depressive state, I had a great deal of trouble making decisions as to what to attend: Poetry? Prose? Memoirs? Publishing? Fiction? Non-Fiction? As I have unpublished books of poetry and prose, fiction and non-fiction, I don't know where to go. Mostly I just checked anything to do with agents or publishers. In my present mental state it wouldn't matter if I published a bestseller; nothing will help except improved brain chemistry. I hope the Indian medications work; if they are defective I'm screwed. No--wait--I'm not. I just have to pay for the brand name in that case. See? I can still think somewhat rationally. Let my boulder of sorrow be a grain of sand.


Suddenly at 3 Kilorats,

CE

Crash avoided...You can't afford my book!

I obtained on Tuesday, through tearful anxious phone calls, a refill on my antidepressant, Cymbalta. The substitution of Prozac for two days wasn't cutting it; I switched back to my shrink's recommended dose of Cymbalta, twice normal, of 120 mg. Tuesday afternoon.

Soon after I began to experience akisthesia, a peculiar symptom where you can't become comfortable, where your body must constantly move, twitch--where there is a supreme discomfort in stillness and you must keep moving--your feet, your legs, something. You can't watch TV or read; you can't concentrate; mostly you indulge in various irresistible writhings. Naturally this physical phenomenon drives Kathleen crazy in bed so I had to sleep downstairs. But I knew it was a sign that the antidepressant was working again, or about to work, unlike the thousands of psychiatrists who hear this symptom from their patients and think it means they can't tolerate the medication. I find this "ants in the pants" feeling in my body almost always precedes an improvement in my mood, and have observed the same in countless patients.

Although not confident Wednesday, I didn't cry. And Thursday I worked out for hours at the gym. Today I was afflicted with a little melancholy but managed to get a lot of work done despite it.

So, gentle readers, I didn't mean to leave you hanging on my decompensation--I'm doing better. The downside is that the damn Cymbalta capsules, of which I need two a day, cost about $5 apiece here until the discounted meds arrive from Canada. That's an expensive habit, especially when you combine it with Lamictal, of which I must take two a day, when each tablet costs $4, even at Costco. Until the patents expire on new medicines you need, you're truly fucked without insurance, and as I have previously blogged, I can't obtain insurance, medical or life, because I am a bipolar: bad risk).

The pharmaceutical companies have a limited window to recover their R & D money, and I don't see them as villains, more occasional saviors who must recoup R & D costs on all the drugs that didn't work from ones that do. Accusing them of malfeasance is like attacking "big oil"--wrong target. I'm no Republican; it's just so easy to blame the nearest elephant. The reality is much more complicated.

I've added another paying poetry publication to Byline and and Contrary now; I just got a check from Valerie Polichar's Grasslimb for "The Gloaming." Since I quit writing poetry and started marketing it, I'm not doing half bad.

Even more amazing, an original copy of my first and only book of poems, Elementary, which sold as a paperback at $14.95 in 1997, is listed by one seller at Amazon.com for $398. My eldest daughter told me this but I couldn't believe it. Go figure. Did the rumor of my death exaggerate the price? There are likely book speculators out there, some who are betting that I might be important someday. Or maybe it's just a fluke. Curioser and curioser. (I've never received a single royalty payment from the book.)

This fact gives me hope that the same concern, Mellen Press, might consider publishing a second book of mine. I should take the time to send them an actual query now that I'm a marketer and no longer a poet.

In the spirit of marketing, I'll close with a poem I wrote before I was an ex-poet:


Homo Promo

You who huddle under billboards
happy in your anonymity,
grateful to avoid the rain,
how I pity you!

You should be up there
above the freeway
in a red bikini
with a high-end tequila
in your happy fist.
Don’t you get it?

Become a commodity
hawking you 24 hours a day:
be your own infomercial!
Celebrity is the only currency
and the Dow is measured in air time!

The first human infomercial was Muhammad Ali,
who became the most recognizable man on the globe.

To become your own spin doctor,

1) Wrap yourself up so tightly nothing hurts.

2) Like Rome, let every conversation lead to you.

3) Although you were never loved the way you wanted to be loved,
there's always a chance if you please your audience!

4) Always sell the product.

5) You are the product.

If Marx and Nietszche could see us now
united in the strife which divided us
at once worker and robber baron
it's hard to find good help anymore
no longer alienated from the product
nobody told me there'd be days like these
I'd love to see the look on their bearded faces.

(unpublished)


Wish me luck as I perform solo at the Lavender Festival tomorrow. I hope the wine tasting goes quickly to loosen up my audience; I'm no James Taylor or Cat Stevens, that's for sure. But I do alright.

Thine at 1 kilorat,

CE

Dr. Chaffin Crashes-- Briefly, We Hope?

I had planned upon our return to have refills of my most needed medications in the mail from Canada, namely my antidepressant, Cymbalta, and my pain medication, Celebrex. To my horror and surprise, neither had arrived, only an old telephone message that both had been "back-ordered" from Europe. "Both?" I said, calling back. "Solly, one wasn't weady yet and dey don't like to ship dem together." Cheap bastards, I thought. I urged them to get them to me ASAP, whereupon the Hindu pharmacist said: "Den you would accept generic?" Of course, you bubble-headed booby! I thought.

I try to keep such thoughts to myself today, because uttering them doesn't help anyone. In private with Kathleen these past two-and-a-half weeks on the road, I have often sat in a motel bed and said, "I hate everyone! I hope they all die!

"Bite your tongue and ask for forgiveness," she would say, especially if I mentioned a family member by name. So I would do what she asked, but the prayer always sounded disrespectful with the lisping effect of teeth on tongue. Nevertheless I did comfort myself with the knowledge that all would die, if not soon enough to suit me.

Why these near nightly rages on the road, I don't know; they were not manic, just a feeling of general anger towards everything, cheap motels, fast food, ungrateful children and obtuse others, all the while suffering pain, emotional and physical, while on limited means on what seemed an interminable road trip to Long Beach, CA, even if no major snafus occurred.

I wouldn't have missed my baby's graduation, but I wouldn't do it again, either.

I think my anger may have been warning me about my grief, particularly over the fortunes of my eldest daughter of late, whose care on the trip exhausted me. But I'll keep her secrets for now, even if she is fond of broadcasting them. Every time I think I have come to accept her as she is, she finds some new hot buttons to push. She's gifted that way. Yes, she's the redhead in the picture at the top right of the blog.

Back to the meds. When I had no Cymbalta for two days I sank into a depressive episode, weeping for half an hour, struggling not to let any verbal equivalents enter my brain, as in "You're worthless. You suck. You've never done anything. You despise your own children." No, I didn't let the lies of the frontal cortex insinuate themselves into the vortex of my lizard brain, thus was proud I could recognize my depressive seizure as just that, an uncontrollable outpouring of emotion unrelated to any specific thing. I also had the wherewithal to call my doctor for a short-term supply until the cheaper meds from Canada arrive; I got these yesterday afternoon and then proceeded to twitch so badly I had to sleep apart from my wife. This is an early side effect of some antidepressants, but thank God, it means they are starting to work.

I sometimes think that part of manic-depression is a complete disconnect, in time, between the emotions one should naturally experience and a safe time to let them out. So, for example, I could go tight-lipped through a funeral and weep at a video arcade a month later. Once I even thought I had come closer to integrating my emotions better in regard to circumstances, but I fear for us bipolars this is a chimera. It's as if we build up mountains of rage and chasms of grief of which we are consciously unaware, and one day we smack into them and all hell breaks loose. Chemically, from the standpoint of the actual illness, this likely holds little scientific truth, but it is a useful metaphor for conceptualizing how the phenomenon sometimes feels. In the end manic-depression is really just bad genes and bad luck.

In the face of yesterday's weeping seizure, I found a poem by Fred Pluto that spoke to me of the matter:


The Fever Marches On

There can be no refund
for your parents or your children,
no jeweled compensation
for their liver-piercing defects
though your hepatic perforations
leak like Christ’s wounded side.

But if you were the Christ
would you suffer any more?
And what about the spikes
you drove into their palms
you thought justified,
now long forgotten?

Your hands are not uncontaminated.
Think what infections linger.


Now it wasn't entirely my fault that I was out of meds, but first a cautionary note: if you respond to an antidepressant and go off of it, your chances of responding to it a second time are much reduced. Since Cymbalta was the only thing I responded to after a year's misery, even missing one day was inexcusable. But that's all I missed. So whoever reads this post, remember to take your medications faithfully, especially if you suffer a mood disorder.


Thine as ever,

CE

Back from Sarah's Graduation

Beat, bedazzled, befuddled, bewildered, bamboozled, benighted, bebabbled, bylaw-exhausted, bemoteled, befastfooded, and glad to be home but too tired to clean it up...

This is what we went to see:






















Sarah, of course, had several musical numbers including a solo at her arts HS grad performance. Such stage charisma!

I could say much but will let this post belong to Sarah before I go back to my life as a manic-depressive ex-poet.


CE

My Daughter Sang for the Queen!

I see my brief foray into pop culture has resulted in little attention, but given the overwhelming presence of the Sopranos' last episode in the blogosphere, I am not surprised. But I was right about Tony, Sil and Phil. And culture accretes so quickly; in Ray Ratto's column in the S.F. Chronicle today, he opined that the Giants were "as flat as Phil Leotardo's head." That came out in print less than twelve hours after the earlier showing of the Sopranos finale.

On another front, I polished a previous blog into a respectable essay: "My Struggle with Literary Narcissism," now appearing at a fine new online journal, Umbrella, about which Norm Ball informed me (his essays have appeared in previous issues). The essay is confessional, theological, psychological and literary. (What you have come to expect from me?)

I may have mentioned it, but I also have upcoming poems in Byline and Contrary, two paying journals. I have quit writing poetry for the nonce and now introduce myself as someone into "marketing."
That is, I am marketing old chestnuts instead of harvesting new ones.

Tonight we head for my eldest daughter's, where we shall soon see our rambunctious grandson and afterwards proceed south for baby Sarah's high school graduation. Here's a picture Sarah again:



As poet Teresa White wrote me, "When I met her she looked like Alice in Wonderland; now she looks like Helen of Troy."

Sarah hopes soon to be in her own digs with friends, employed while auditioning for further roles in her acting and singing career. I just found out from my sister on Saturday that Sarah had been in an elite choir to serenade the Queen at the commemoration of Jamestown. My other daughters may be so inured to her success that they left this morsel out, but I was still a little hurt by it. No matter. I'm a proud papa, even if my last teenager doesn't think of calling me. She has a lot on her plate, and her peer group, at this stage of development, is more important.

If this sounds like the intellectual defense of rationalization, well, it is.

At least, due to my psychiatric training and modicum of honesty with myself, I know which defense I'm using!


All for today,

C. E. Chaffin

12 Questions about "The Sopranos"

1) Has it truly been TV's greatest drama or is it overrated?

2) With all the Italians in the mix, how much credit for acting and how much type casting?

3) Do Carmela and Dr. Melfi adequately counterbalance the sociopathy of the main action, or are they insignificant appendages, or foils?

4) Do you think the sensitive A.J. was the right son for Tony Soprano, or did the writers blow it?

5) Will Paulie Walnuts' hair style take over the rave/punk world, and why hasn't it started, or has it?

6) Wasn't the actual business side of the mob neglected, save for a few negotiations, references to construction and preying upon cigarette trucks? Why weren't the lawyers and accountants more prominent, so central to a modern business?

7) If you missed a couple of episodes, did it really matter that much, or did the general milieu sustain your interest without all the threads?

8) Does anyone not have "Pine Barrens" as their favorite episode?

9) Are Dr. Melfi's calves really that big or is it the camera angle? And why does she so often wear short skirts with a male patient?

10) Given the phenomenon of the show, why were there so few "name" guest stars, when no doubt many actors would have given their eye teeth to be on an episode, as in the more accommodating Simpsons?

11) Would your life be any different if there had been no Sopranos?

12) Finally, who will be whacked and who will be spared in the final episode? I say Phil goes down but Silvio and Tony survive. Then there is also the breaking of the code; you don't whack family--which may result in some surprises.

I'm not a huge fan, missed a lot of episodes while in Mexico, have rented some seasons but can't quote chapter and verse. Still, cynically, to participate in pop culture today it was a choice between Paris Hilton and the Sopranos, as "American Idol" is over for the season (but don't miss "America Has Talent" this summer which I find very amusing so far).

Who says America doesn't have culture?


No television critic, just a hack waiting on a whack,

CE

TIVO: "Only through time is time conquered."

Obviously "The Whole Thing" did not play well to my invisible audience. Not that I play for an audience. But if I did, I would suspect the great Zen-ness of my Boethian concept of the giant dough ball was above them. Or below them. Or beyond them. Or all around them.

There is no way to grasp the whole thing. I mean, multitask all you want. Your brain can't even wrap itself around the average species extinction quotient, as that has never been determined. Thus when climate prophets proclaim the rate of species extinction, you have nothing to compare it to. What if the average was nature's average? Hmmmm....

I recommend Michael Crichton's book, "State of Fear," as a contrarian riposte to Al Gore. Quite fascinating, Crichton's argument. The book is not a novel but a shill for delivering scientific/social rhetoric, much like B. F. Skinners "Walden Two" or Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged"--both books I thoroughly enjoyed. I guess that means I like my philosophy light, the way Plato did that there cave thing. Makes the whole thing more palatable. Pure philosophers, like Kant, can be boring in the extreme, since unlike current trends in poetry, they are loathe to give concrete examples. They like to build their philosophical castles from etymology and logic. Hell, I prefer a parable at least. Give me Jesus over Kant. I prefer the crucifixion of pure reason to its critique. But I cop to being lazy-brained and shiftless unless I'm cross-dressing.

Back to my topic. I'm house-sitting for my sister and she has TIVO. So after watching the first game of the NBA finals, which I had tivoed while attending a gallery opening, through which I fast-forwarded past commercials and the inevitable grind of the final outcome, I turned on Conan O'Brien. Live television! Suddenly the frustration set in: Why couldn't I fast-forward through his commercials? Why did I have to put up with all the boring bullshit?

Now I see why I must get digital recording of TV programs. If I have it all I have to do is wait for one or two hours before watching a show, and I can watch it commercial-free and pause it whenever I want.

So what?, all you TIVO experts out there say. Yet to me it feels like the Twilight Zone, where some guy has a stop watch that can stop time, and he can wander through a jewelry store of frozen mannequins and steal all the diamonds with nary a witness.

With TIVO (or its equivalent) I can master time. I am the master of time.

And if I master time, mass and energy can't be far behind!

Sorry, my brain is moving near the speed of light. Which makes its mass infinite.

I'm free, I'm free, thank heaven I'm free! (even if extremely fat-headed under the circumstances).

Still I have to figure out what Direct TV, my server, charges for this recording feature, and whether the time is worth the money. Time may be money, but only for those who are actually working and not on a fixed income like I am. ("Fixed?" Sounds like I'm a pet or an illicit gambling scam.)

I had "twice-cooked quail" tonight at an Oakland restaurant; it was so dry and stringy I didn't know whether to send it back for a third cook or ask them to go back and only cook it once. With TIVO I could have re-wound the whole process and tasted the little bird raw, once cooked, twice cooked, or thrice cooked. And no one would have noticed as I ruled them with my remote!

Ah, technology I love you! I have conquered time! And if all time is relative, whether live or recorded, whether in time past or time future, the time I conquer through TIVO is just as valid as any other time conquered or deferred, as in reading The New Yorker in your doctor's office.

It's late I'm done. Beware the blue-ringed octopus of Australia. Very venomous. Then you have to read the book.


--Ex-poet CE

"The Whole Thing": re-posted for Norman Ball

Regarding the whole thing. No one can see the whole thing.
A very few can imagine it. No one can deal with it.

I imagine the whole thing as a great ball of dirty dough rolling and bouncing over an old dirt road through a green valley. Everything it touches sticks to it and subsequently becomes part of the revolving show, much like the wheel of fortune about which Boethius wrote in his Consolation of Philosophy And everything that sticks to the dough can ride along for a spell or be plastered back on the road or thrown out to the fields.

I used to think that the reason I wasn't more successful in managing the whole thing was that I wasn't rich or famous enough to afford help with the whole thing.

Celebrities of every stripe have managers, maids, valets, lawyers, accountants, trainers and more, so I reasoned, to manage the whole thing for them with little supervision. Thus I lived in hope of becoming a celebrity to better deal with the whole thing. But each time I approached the cusp of fame I was so worn out from the swim that I missed the boat.

When I saw Whitney Houston looking like a Holocaust survivor in the tabloids, I realized that life can become unmanageable even for celebrities! Imagine that. (I do think Whitney would be well-served to hire a new drug counselor, one not afraid to slap the bitch around!).

Let us admit that not even a celebrity with support troops can manage the whole thing. The thing is--it's just too--too too too--gigantic to approach, this nightmare of a dough ball thundering through your green valley like a pale head.

Even with a personal trainer, you have to do the exercises. You have to decide what shade of white you want your teeth. Someone can shop for you, someone can dress you, but no one can sleep for you. And it's precisely in these unprotected moments that the whole thing comes to smash you and hoist you above like flattened gum on its sticky, inexhaustible surface.

There is no escaping the whole thing. The whole thing doesn't care if you have a personal trainer. The whole thing can make you fat if it wants to. We are talking about the very elemental forces of nature.

All matter, including sentient beings, is subject to the whole thing. And just when you reach the top of the spinning sphere with your beautiful wife and wonderful job and a ranch style house and 1.5 children, down you go. The whole thing will cram a Mercedes down your throat and a mortgage up your ass at the worst possible moment. As for children, there’s always leukemia. The wife? She can have an affair with your boss. If you're the boss, she can always have an affair with your secretary. The whole thing, the giant turning sphere of sticky dough that supersedes our most cherished plans is always there, ready to turn our existence inside out at a moment’s notice. It has and will.

There is no protection from the whole thing. Psychiatric medications may smooth out the gut-fluttering ride, but they can't protect you from being stuck in the dough and whirled about.

Occasionally the whole thing will drop you on the road and you feel a strange relief in getting off the randomly revolving spherical insanity without getting lost in the adjoining fields, where your inconsequentiality, as in death, will torture you and tempt you back to the unendurable ride. Trust me, this won't last: this is the whole thing psyching you up into a lack of caution before it swallows you again, plasters you to its surface, and takes you down the valley to the next dumping point, where contentment briefly threatens but ultimately eludes.

There is no escape from the whole thing.

Love Poem: Last Stop

After I met Kathleen on my bus trip back East to do a couple of poetry readings, thanks to Shann Palmer, I was absolutely smitten. I stayed with her as long as I could, then took a 36-hour express bus back to Long Beach, CA. Las Vegas was our last main stop, where I penned this one. Usually I write poetry at my computer, but on trips I resort to pen and paper. I sometimes think my penned poems better, and except for laziness and my current abdication from poet ingloriate (semi-permanently; upon reflection I am likely addicted to the art so I plan to take a year's break, as I think LKD suggested). In any case I'm on a trip south to Long Beach to see my baby graduate from HS. I would put her picture up again but fear if I did, no one would read the poem, due to her charismatic beauty. But if you go to my archives you can see my dolly-wolly. Enough Papa talk: here's the poem, written in a more contemporary manner than my usual reified "classicism."

(Remember that when I thought myself a poet, the most common criticism leveled at me was that my poetry was "inhuman." I understand that now. I must engage the reader more conversationally, as in this offering. I have dwelt too long in Eliot's formality and Yeat's Byzantium, not that I ever approached their eloquence, only that I thought in writing for the ages, as Eliot said, "And every poem is an epitaph." I thought the only poetry worthy of writing was that which deserved being carved in stone. Now I think the effect was to petrify my verse. As Sam Rasnake said, "If you have to call yourself an ex-poet, you must be a poet.")




Last Stop

In Vegas on a bar stool,
between buses, I watched
cocktail waitresses cinch halter tops
and women divers on TV
swathed in spandex, twats like vises,
balanced impossibly ten meters up
before they flipped and knifed
into their up-hurtling reflections
like cormorants, scant froth sucked
under by a slant of toes.

On all these women I imposed your face
like a mercury dime.
All I wanted was you beside me,
mocking my commentary.


Later, kiloneutral,

CE

How popular Is this blog? Love poem by a ex-poet.

Short answer: not very.

But I should add the biblical story about when David decided to number the troops of Israel; on God's part it was considered an act of pride, of trusting in someone beside the Lord by measuring one's own strength; afterwards God gave David three choices for punishment, of which he wisely chose plague, the most easily blamed on God for political reasons.

So if this post results in reduced visits, so be it. I can accept God's judgment in modern cyberspace just at easily, though I don't think it would apply, since this is no righteous enterprise endorsed by God, unlike the surety of suicide bombers.

I started a stats tracker eight months ago. We just reached 10,000 "hits." I say we for obvious reasons. In terms of universal knowledge exchange, it's very much mom-and-pop, you-and-me-baby here. This projects to 15,000 visitors a year, and I don't know how to decipher unique visits. (Maybe someone can explain to me how 23 different domains and 46% IP addresses sorts out in this regard.)

If I should ever rise to the level of a celebrity, I promise to remember everyone I stepped on to get there, and the imprint of my size 13 shoe on their dented spines. My real feeling about "unique" visitors is that most of you are retreads, because once the reader has tasted of my unique vision, he is forced to return either to confirm my insanity or marvel at it. I can be addictive.

Then there is a whole group of those misdirected by Google, as in my mention of therapy above. When therapy is combined with David's dilemma in the Bible, it guarantees I will now be visited by puzzled fundamentalists asking God's permission to see a psychologist. How the web works! (Strange how much that sounds like "wet works," a term all you Sopranos fans have long since mastered).

I won't bore you with page views. The current average is 50 visitors/day, inflated, I think, by the current debate and my recent resignation from contemporary poetry. 40/day is more realistic. I am truly grateful to you, the readers, for making my solitary existence less pointless, though naturally protected behind the gates of cyberspace, as few of you know me as a meat person. But I am open to meet anyone who reads me in meat space. That is preferable in my mind.

Except for Kathleen, none of my immediate family reads this thing. But I know if I dwelt more upon the foibles of my siblings and children, chance would have it that one would alert the others until I am roundly crucified. There are some places I dare not go. But if you are a close relative and reading this, please let me know, and I promise my Christmas card won't be late this year.

Still, 40/day is more than a standard high school classroom, and not a compulsory audience--so even if a few are entertained, I'm happy. The irony is that when I edited and published The Melic Review, with all its awards and Pulitzer winners and la di da (if I can speak of a magazine in the magisterial we), we got less hits overall--excepting the poetry board, which was, of course, instant publication for the literarily impaired. That was the big fish that pulled Melic, not the other way around. But back to life's basics.

We (Kathleen and I, not the magisterial we) hit the road on Saturday, June 2, and I played a brief gig at the Benbow Lake Festival in Humboldt County, where I was essentially ignored--due to the engineer's bad miking of my guitar and the next band's bassist playing too loudly in warming up behind.

Meanwhile Kathleen had an allergic reaction to something in the grass, we think, and I don't mean the inhaled kind--though that is always a possibility at such affairs-- so she became miserable with systemic itching. Afterwards we were ripped off by a motel posing as a hotel through Orbitz, a service I now roundly condemn for the wallet-impaired. And whether my chronic back pain, the chief reason for my disability in practicing medicine, was increased by the drive or packing or loading I don't know. Suffice it to say we were both miserable when arrived to house-sit at my sister's in Burlingame.

If I have to be in this kind of pain for the rest of my life, I am happy Kevorkian was just released from jail. Happily, pain tends to improve over time, though the waiting is often fatal.

No comments on the love poem I last posted. Oh well. As an ex-poet I will try again with another poem CE wrote when he thought he was a poet.

We need something to break the reader's granite heart; is the theory of contemporary poetry so much more interesting than the same, same, same bleating of the human heart, already known in all conditions so that it takes a miracle of style to render anything fresh?

If the human heart has not changed, and it has not, how have Homer and Dante and Shakespeare maintained their hold on us? Because they are poets.

There's the rub. Aye, if the poems I post as an ex-poet do not elicit comment, it confirms my suspicion that CE was never a poet. He's not asking for comments; their lack confirms his suspicions, thus he rejoices in his failure.

Here's today's verse, as I cannot anymore call what CE wrote "poetry," though love remains, however poorly communicated:


Handfast

If I said I would disembowel myself in public
for one last benison from your sea-green eyes

or clean the Augean stables with a toothbrush
to touch your white vase, what does it mean?

What does it mean to say, "Without you I am not,"
when I was here before you and content?

You make me a blushing boy, an adolescent
feigning diffidence while desperate for a kiss,

an old man begging forgiveness of his only daughter.
I would be closer than the lace that ivys your hips,

seal all your skin with my marauding tongue.
It is a delicious irony, this blurring of borders

in two so strong. Would you rather
we sat in citadels and sent ambassadors?


It is obvious CE thought he could write something fresh about love. The silence that follows (that is, lack of comment) reminds me of the silence in heaven in the Book of Revelation, when nothing is really happening (remember that God was the first to take a sabbatical). Ex-poet Craig Erick accepts that judgment.

If nothing is happening, not even the angels can gossip about it.


Thine,

Craig Erick

Love Poem

I posted some manic-depressive poems a year ago; now why not some love poems? I don't have to be a poet to share what I wrote when I thought I was a poet, although saying this comes close to a tautology in its obviousness, more a redundancy, actually, just like my use of "actually." How I do blather! Ignore me. Or don't. And thanks for all the lively discussion that followed my last post.

Here:


Gift

You are a fever in my blood.
You douse the sun, turn the sky violet.

All my veins flow backwards.
Swollen with love, my heart seeks its double.

Your mouth seals mine,
inhaling all my purple waste.

Love, I am riddled with glory:
light pours through bullet holes.


Tomorrow I lead my first tour at the Fort Bragg Botanical Gardens as a certified "Master Gardener," one of the first in our county (though it's kind of like a medal from the Wizard of Oz; there are so many gardeners here who know so much more than I and always will).


Bouncing between kilobunnies and kilorats in a mixed state; little things piss me off, and I'm not just speaking of my anatomy,

CE

Giving Up Poetry

I’ve been reading some very good online and print journals of late, and I am seriously entertaining giving up poetry as a genre for my talents (except for the occasional toss-off). In fact, whatever else I see when I read the best journals, I see that my verse would stick out like a sore thumb if ever published in the middle of so many elegant, painstakingly crafted pieces.

I’m not saying this in irony, nor do I say it to be contradicted by the reader’s encouragement. It is not a plea for someone to say, “Stay the course, CE,” no; it is a considered result of reason and observation, something I’ve been slouching toward for some time.

Truly, I am not good enough for current poetic standards. In retrospect, had I not married young and become a doctor, I ought to have studied under masters, perhaps gotten an MFA, attended all the seminars from all the name poets I could. Instead (given whatever opportunity I have had)—perhaps for fear of failure, perhaps for lacking the humility for instruction, perhaps out of protectiveness against having my art altered by any external, well-meaning hand, I bull-headedly pursued my own lights and muse into whatever my verse has become today. And as it is, it is inferior to the good poetry I find myself reading, with its original diction, premise, construction, scene-painting, tantalizing incompletions and often insuperable puzzles. Since it appears that this is what good editors now prize, I am, well, sunk—at least for this time and this age, the only period an artist can rationally count upon. Therefore I think I should embrace prose wholeheartedly and be done with my dream of being a poet, saver for the occasional piece, as I said above.

Now it’s true that contemporary poetry is a very large tent and has room for both the blunt and the refined, and for the most part I belong to the former category, still the best journals seem to prefer a certain refinement beyond my skill. The Journal, published by Ohio State University, has many examples of this in their new issue. Here’s the first and second stanzas of a poem by Molly Brodak, “Like Your Jesus, Only Mine”:

Wait up, bitch!” begs back the pale bus stop boy.
O molester moustache, O fake hobble—
they group up—legs of toddler proportion, whatever glamour wants,
and papery shirts, long as dresses

hung with tangles of gold—
the kind that rubs off, once finger-loved.

The poem concerns a brief dispute between wannabe white gang-bangers, or “wiggers” (= “white niggers”), as one can see from the description of the clothing (although some of the principals may actually be black; we can’t know). The only action in the poem I am sure occurs, besides the boy at the bus stop begging the other to wait, is when the other boy bangs him in the chest with a cell phone. Then the scene segues abruptly to a restaurant, and at the poem’s end the other boy (not the pale bus stop boy) gets a call from his dad on the same cell phone. All of this is very cryptically done in brief and powerful images that evoke a story line of their own—even if you have no idea where that story line leads.

Now not all the poems in this journal are quite as difficult as this, still it appears to be the prevailing style. As I said to Kathleen last night, “I want to connect the dots. They want to disconnect them.” Or better put, many of the more successful current poets want to disconnect and reconnect the dots again in a somewhat disconnected way, forcing the reader to put the pieces back together Humpty-Dumpty like, never sure the egg shell edges really fit. Or if these poets deconstruct to construct, what they construct is often more difficult to understand than their process of deconstruction.

Despite all this, with sufficient ambition and steadfastness, one can usually piece a narrative of some kind together from a poem of this type. Here’s another one from the issue in its entirety, “Cure” by Kristin Abraham. As I read it over and over, with sufficient time between my readings, I felt that I finally “got it.” Perhaps I was not versed enough in this kind of poetry to decode its substance sooner; perhaps I deceive myself into thinking there’s something to get; but my gloss makes sense to me at the least. Here’s the poem, double-spaced as in the issue:

Cure


They played

doctor.

(She was the foot of the bed / chart

marked with asterisks and daggers,

the story looking over its shoulder.)

Then the next she

was born, they

called her Ridiculous.

Ridiculous as

shh, I can hear them, as

little door in my mind

(the not-so-pleasant fairytale.)



Now the family can’t

sleep: birds

are living

in her walls, unraveling

the hem of her name.

Now she tosses crusts

to the birds, now the birds

won’t leave.


Bear with me here. I think this poem is about discovery of sexuality in childhood and its association with the primal scene, so that the child eventually discovers where she actually comes from (as in “unraveling / the hem of her name”), and how this ultimately unsettles the family dynamic as she comes to terms with her growing adult sexuality, a revelation that can’t be undone, hence the birds won’t leave. The “Cure” is in effect, the end of childhood, the cure for childish misconceptions. Once you understand you are the result of your parents having sex you can’t go back. Perhaps the birds symbolize the lost innocence of childhood, perhaps they symbolize the persistent reminder of adulthood. Regardless, things have changed, and not necessarily for the better.

Now I’m not saying that Ms. Abraham would admit that her poem is “about” anything, but I am fairly sure a determined, intelligent reader would likely unearth some of the same substance as I have.

Why poets and readers of poetry want to work this hard, I don’t know. Susan Sontag wrote that irony had been exhausted in the late 20th century. It seems as if poetry had been exhausted, too, so that the best poets dancing on the edge of the art have had to go to great lengths to put an original stamp on the art. It is not enough to tell the truth wryly as Frost did; one must provide an almost out-of-body experience for the reader. Again, not all the poems chosen by the editors in this volume are this abstruse, and I would say a word about David Moolten, an excellent poet/physician from Philadelphia, whose work I remember from long ago—I think, if I am not wrong, from some online workshop. He has matured into a fine poet whom I can still understand without banging my head against his poems. One of his three poems in the volume, “Tolerance,” is a masterpiece. In fact, to the editors’ credit, he is the only poet with three poems in the issue.

Anyone more interested in these sorts of debates can refer to my Logopoetry essays, written almost ten years ago, which now strike me as horribly outdated, since the examples I used for difficulty of substance—Dylan Thomas, for instance—now seem, in comparison to current fare, fairly easy to understand (if “understanding” in the usual sense can even be a goal of the poetry most admired today). Having said all this, here’s a piece I wrote this morning about my feelings of inferiority towards the poetry which garners more recognition in this age among the cognoscenti:


Second Fiddle

It’s not easy to be
almost good enough
understudy, journeyman
playing the chitlin circuit
on a minor label
in a middling journal
tuxedo an Armani rip-off
a few millimeters
from handsome,
two freckles from pretty,
an eyebrow from beautiful.

It’s not easy
to open the violin case
for the first fiddle,
to straighten the conductor’s
music sheets, to rehearse
lines with the lead.
For a while you think
there may be a chance
but when the lead gets sick
they import someone,
pass you over—
you are the ultimate insurance,
you are the just in case
never shooting, always
falling star.

Since I know most readers of this blog are not poetry aficionados, indeed some have told me that the only poetry they read is found here, no doubt many will prefer my simple complaint to the complex reverberations of “Cure.” If this is true, don’t pick up a literary journal. You may be disappointed.


Memorially Thine,

CE

Swimming: Prose-Poem

I was going to erase yesterday's effort but decided instead to let that rough attempt at a poem stand as evidence of the process. Here it is re-written as prose, and I think it works better. (My editor was right. Then she always is.)


Swimming

Scanning the pool’s bottom I note the aging plaster in yellowish brown patterns like pee stains. Once at a YMCA I saw a turd on the bottom slowly dispersing. I like children but I canceled my membership because of memory.

Ropes held up by donut floats divide the lanes, each lane with a royal blue stripe down its center, six tiles wide.

How many strokes in a lap? So many variables. Counting, you risk a loss of rhythm. Arithmetic is not forgetting though it prunes language down.

Pearls of exhalation dribble from my mouth. What you inhale in a moment you blow out for three strokes. How can you take all that in with one gulp?

Poetry, how Jane Hirschfield’s three years at a Zen monastery might help silence the mind in the rhythm of the sickle of the harvest, in the planting of the rice shoots, calf deep in muddy water—in the employment of the definite article or in making tea: heat water add tea let steep pour ten spondees.

Thoughts come in words, words written in lipstick on the mind’s mirror where peace might have been. I want being without thought, only water sliding by (look—she swims well in the next lane, nice ass!)

See? Even distractions are verbalized. There is no woman, only these words. But you see her, don’t you, in the black one-piece with the open back, thighs tight and churning?

Words speak only of what’s already past, can never catch up with the next stroke, useless as bus exhaust, I might as well be fart-propelled. I want to be like those apes in 2001, pre-verbal. I envy brain-injured patients who can’t speak or think in words. Then whence epistemology? From a fucking stone? It’s just a word, who needs it?

Some part of me keeps track of every lap: lap 31, chant 31—and how’s my daughter doing, single mother and all, my brain directs my limbs without my thinking, three strokes: swoosh swoosh swoosh: gulp air: breathe out, strings of bubble bath pearls, arms heavy as pewter because lead is cliché and you think you’re a writer.

K-FUCK, my brain’s only station!—all that Sisyphean gossip, all that Herculean chatter and object-association nonsense, plums and apricots and women’s asses, pinking shears and postage stamp borders, how I hate leg irons and iron horses and Lou Gehrig and iron lungs beaten red on anvils like the color of lava expanding as the big island gets bigger with eels for Easter Island and Captain Cook stewed flight steward Hawaiian Airlines need new swim trunks still too fat what kind of salad afterwards maybe Jacuzzi wait for my heart rate to slow?

Perhaps a hemisphereectomy: remove half my brain and it won’t talk to itself so much, or at least a corpus callosotomy, mama disconnect the phone one mind one thought one bliss.

Finally (was it exhaustion that clued me?) how to turn it off:

Pretend you’re asleep. You dream of a body; it’s not your body. Someone else is swimming. You float in wordless sleep. If you start to wake, say only: “not my body, not my body.” Last lap.

Poem: Swim; How I Really Look; Harry "The Robber" Reid

As soon as I put up my website, I go to check a couple of links and find that the venerable e-zine, niederngasse, no longer appears on a search and its domain name seems up for grabs. Can anyone clue me in on this?

The web is such a living thing; I must have upwards of twenty poems in their archives over the years, and now, suddenly, my link is no good? Eek. On the Net everything is so five seconds ago, soon to be nanoseconds.

Today I will post a poem I think the reader will enjoy, whether poetically experienced or not, the kind of poem I wish I could write more often. It's my favorite kind, where subject-object dualism is overcome, though not without a protracted struggle. And that's just in the content of the poem. But what I'm really referring to is the design of the poem; if possible, I like to write a poem where the reader just drops in, like those old Hertz commercials where the driver drops into the car from the air. Suddenly he is driving. Suddenly you find yourself in a poem. Fun to do if you can pull it off. The reader will judge.

And for the record, although it won't upload for my profile picture very well, this is pretty much how I really look:



****************

This Democrat-approved funding bill for Iraq makes me want to throw up from deep inside my colon. Weenies? Not strong enough. Shit-sucking maggots? "We have to be politically realistic," (Reid and Pelosi). "We have sent the President a message."

The message? "We bend over for you, King George. Please send us some pork barrel knee pads."

Oh I'm sure I don't know the half of it, all the political reasons, what Republicans have sworn to vote with the Dems on the next funding bill, yada, yada, but judging from appearances--a bad idea in life and politics--doesn't it seem the Dems blinked? Or could I be wrong? We will see with the next funding vote. Myself, I'd vote against this bill on principle no matter what the liberal leadership told me. Since Pelosi married money, I guess it's easy for her to give away, in the same way Senator Reid gives it to his sons with our taxes, generous man that he is.

Don't you think most elected representatives give in to the temptation of entitlement? "I've worked all these years in Congress and I get paid nothing like a CEO and I have a zillion constituents and I'm always raising millions I can only spend on my campaign and not myself and isn't it time I did a little something for myself and my family? It may smell but as long as it's legal, by God they'll forgive me. Besides, the voters only know what television tells them."

*****************

If I don't paste in my poem soon, no one will read it, so I'll save my political griping for another day. Have a lovely Memorial Day Weekend, and try to forget that it's these Bozos in Washington that our troops laid down their lives for. You may say "the people," but in our system, they are "the people." That's how a representative democracy works. How I lament that America does not have the superior parliamentary system. Prime Minister Reid? It would never happen, though in the analogy it would more likely be Pelosi.

Here's my damn poem, a tad long, though not as long as the swim, posted on the heels of my brief discussion of exercise from the last post. BTW, I did break a zero yesterday, weighing it at a svelte 259!


Swim

I hope to enter the Zen
of unconscious body mechanics
and escape my radio head
always tuned to KFUCK.
Scanning the pool’s bottom
I note the aging plaster
in brown patterns like pee stains.
Once at a YMCA
I saw a turd on the bottom
slowly dispersing.
Though I love children.
I canceled my membership.

Ropes held up by donut floats
divide the lanes whose centers
are marked by a royal blue
stripes on the bottom, six tiles wide.

Should I count the strokes each lap requires?
Strangely, the number changes.
Arithmetic is not forgetting
though it prunes language down.
To force uniformity of propulsion
you risk losing the rhythm
required of motion, not worth it.

I’m in bubble land, look!
Pearls of exhalation
dribble from my mouth!
While swimming it always seems
there is much more air
to exhale than inhale,
only that moment
to turn your head and gulp.

Tired of local geography
KFUCK now turns to poetry,
how Jane Hirschfield’s three years
at a Zen monastery
might help silence the mind
in the rhythm of the sickle of the harvest,
in the traditional planting of the rice shoots,
calf deep in muddy water--
in the employment of the definite article
or even in making tea:
heat water add tea let steep
pour ten spondees
(in porcelain cups).

Thoughts come in words
written in lipstick on the mirror
where peace once was.
I want being without thought,
only the water sliding by
(look—she swims well
in the next lane, nice ass!)
See? I verbalize
even my distractions.
Words speak only
of what’s already past,
can't catch the next stroke,
useless as bus exhaust.
Is there a radio channel for the deaf?
How I hate KFUCK!

I wonder if consciousness
is only material,
I think of brain-injured patients
who cannot speak or think in words--
then whence epistemology?
From a fucking stone?

Some part of me keeps track
of every lap: lap 31, chant 31
and how my daughter’s doing
single mother and all
while my brain amazingly directs my limbs
in spite of all the multitasking,
three strokes, three strokes
swoosh swoosh swoosh
gulp air, breathe out
in sibilant bubbles,
arms heavy as pewter
(because lead is cliché).

Fuck KFUCK, all
that Sisyphean gossip, all
that Herculean chatter and
object association nonsense,
plums and women’s asses,
leg irons and horseshoes
beaten bright red on anvils
like lava expanding
Hawaii getting bigger
I ate limpets there
from the rocks
saw three moray eels
need new swimming trunks
don’t deserve them
still too fat
what salad to have
afterwards
Jacuzzi or not?

Perhaps a hemisphereectomy
is the answer:
remove half my brain
and it won’t talk to itself so much:
one mind one action
one thought one bliss
one mind one action
one thought one bliss.

Finally it came to me,
how to turn it off,
though perhaps you must first
reach a certain level
of physical exhaustion.
But here it is, old as Lao Tsu:
Pretend you’re asleep.
You dream of a body--
it’s not your body.
Someone else is swimming,
someone else is breathing,
someone else is thinking in words
while you float in a wordless sleep.
If you begin to wake, say only
not my body, not my body.
Last lap.



At 1 Kilobunny (too sore to do much today),

CE

I Have a Website!

Yes, after near ten years of publishing and being published on the World Wide Web, I finally managed to construct a website. It is the result of a html course I took while severely depressed, but I did manage to complete the assignment. The site is not high tech, just a simple pathway to some writings of mine. Eventually I hope to add some musical compositions, so for now the "music" link will lead you nowhere. The site is linked to the title of today's blog, if you haven't figured that out.

In my ongoing commitment to exercise, I swam one-and-a-half miles yesterday, and on the treadmill climbed 1200 feet in three miles in an hour, as well as lifting a bunch of weights, whose tonnage I don't calculate. So far I've lost very little weight, despite my thrice weekly marathons, because the exercise increases my appetite. Despite my best intentions I find myself grazing late into the night, and once I've eaten a certain amount of victuals after dinner, I throw up my hands and say, "What's the use?" And permit myself a measured gluttony.

No matter, this is a war not a battle, and even if I don't weigh much less, maybe ten pounds at best, I look much more compact. As they say, "inches before pounds."

Since I generally go to bed around 3 AM and wake up around 10 AM, it's hard to go all those night hours without scarfing. I do try to avoid fats. Except the peanuts I gobbled last night. In any event, if I ever master the art of eating moderately while exercising immoderately I may someday look like Mr. Universe without the HGH and steroid bulges.

How did Stallone pull off "Rocky" at 60? It wasn't Jack La Lanne's Vita-Shakes, no, he was busted in Australia for HGH and testosterone. Did you know that the continued use of steroids shrinks your balls? Bodybuilders call them "raisin nuts." Sounds like cereal, doesn't it?

I don't know if I've posted this picture of my lovely wife yet, but here it is:



Another good reason not to take steroids.

Have you heard this one? My mother's maiden name was Swedish; I won't give out the name for security reasons. However, it's been said that "Swedes have short dicks but long memories." I submit that in my case it only looks as if my member is short because of the extraordinary size of my balls.

Not many comments lately. Me, I thought my take on Congressman Mike was hilarious. Especially since it was essentially all factual.

No matter. Just because you read doesn't mean you have to comment. But if you don't I will hunt you out like the vermin you are and expose your considerable defects, physical and mental, to the world, by calumny and obloquy and umbrage and flatigious laceration. Yes, for failure to comment, I vow to capture you, you hapless slugs, and dump you in a bowl of salt and watch your green lives explode into a vengeful foam.

Are we clear?


At 2 Kilobunnies


Love always,

Dr. Chaffin

New Poem; Also the Parnassian vs. the Conversational

An Apology for Bad Poems

I’ve been talking at you for years
like a deaf grandfather. I don’t mean
to lecture, that’s death for poetry.

But if poetry can’t compete
with “The Wall of Death,”
at least it can be a Ferris Wheel.

At the zenith of our revolution together,
your head jerking like a gopher sitting sentry,
I’d like to hear, “Grandpa, what’s that?”

“That’s where the A-Bomb hit in ’62.
Nothing grows there except man-eating radishes.”
“Really? And Grandpa, over there, over there!”

“That’s a whale sunning himself in a tree.
Those are sea otters flying about.
The gleaming carousel is made of abalone.”

“And there, Grandpa, what’s that?”
“That’s the Red Giant, gouty Antares
limping out to milk his Apatosaurus.”

“Really? What does the milk taste like?”
“Like vanilla ice cream smothered in caramel
and melted into a thick, sweet soup.”

We descend and dismount. Carnies bark
from booths overflowing with kitsch.
Sorry, son, the poem is over.


I penned (typed) this one first thing this morning. Notice how deafness recurs as a metaphor for me. ;-)

Incidentally I stole the title for today's poem from Robinson Jeffers.

I'm trying to loosen up my verse a little. But there’s always a catch.

The tradition of Parnassian verse, as in Homer, Virgil, Beowulf, Spenser, Shakespeare (ignoring comedies and comedic interludes), Milton, Wordsworth, Shelley, Tennyson—a type of poetry Matthew Arnold wrote of as containing "high seriousness"—seems clearly over.

Yet much of the magic of poetry depends upon such high seriousness, since we must take poetry seriously to set up heroic expectations, or even anti-heroic expectations. (See "The Hollow Men" by Eliot, "Out, Out" by Frost, or "Roan Stallion" by Jeffers. The moderns could still do high seriousness.)

What am I trying to say? There must be a point between the conversational voice of Billy Collins and the often elevated voices of Milosz, Larkin, Yeats and the like.... I think Eliot mixes the conversational with the Parnassian better than anyone:

From “Gerontion":

"The tiger springs in the new year. Us he devours. Think at last
We have not reached conclusion, when I
Stiffen in a rented house. Think at last
I have not made this show purposelessly
And it is not by any concitation
Of the backward devils
I would meet you upon this honestly.
I that was near your heart was removed therefrom."

(italics mine)

I find the conversational more effective when set up by the serious, the empyrean, or the Parnassian, but so few poets can do this—change voices in mid-stream successfully. You have to be very good to do this. Most of us can only write well employing one voice. In reading Jane lately, as good as she is, she doesn't even attempt this. Most poets don’t.

Again, without form verse libre is impotent; without seriousness the conversational becomes banal. The necessary dualisms of great writing are in the very nature of writing, just as Shakespeare relieves the political machinations of Henry IV with Falstaff.

Here’s a different example of coming from the conversational to a conclusion of high seriousness (Yeats):


CRAZY JANE TALKS WITH THE BISHOP

I met the Bishop on the road
And much said he and I.
'Those breasts are flat and fallen now,
Those veins must soon be dry;
Live in a heavenly mansion,
Not in some foul sty.'

'Fair and foul are near of kin,
And fair needs foul,' I cried.
'My friends are gone, but that's a truth
Nor grave nor bed denied,
Learned in bodily lowliness
And in the heart's pride.

'A woman can be proud and stiff
When on love intent;
But Love has pitched his mansion in
The place of excrement;
For nothing can be sole or whole
That has not been rent.'

(italics mine)

Since first being enamored of poetry, I have been enamored of poetry of power. I find Plath powerful at times but not Collins. Dylan Thomas is powerful, as Larkin can be, but Walcott rarely. Milosz can do it, though he is a bit jagged. Coleridge's "Rime" must be the most powerful poem ever written in the sense I mean.

I wrote an essay called "Power Lyrics" several years ago in which I tried to develop this theme more clearly, but I doubt I'll ever explain it properly; it's like what Blackwell said about pornography; I know it when I see it.

What is even more powerful is when the poet has the skill to interrupt serious verse with a snatch of the intimately conversational, even ridiculous, or vice-versa, which takes us completely by surprise and works despite (and because of) the momentary jarring of switching inputs.

If you are confused by these points, it is the fault of the author, not your brain. Maybe I’ll nail the concept another time.


All for today,

CE

Baby Steps

"Jealousy" by Edvard Munch:


Since coming out of my depression, now on firm ground for nearly a month, breaking into kilobunnies at times, clean and sober save for my prescribed medications, I have had a return of sanity to my art as well.

I have been guilty in the past of whining in a corner, decrying the state of contemporary poetry, jealous of the successful, feeling my "genius" ignored, yada yada piss bam boom.

I recall a moment of sanity I had once in Palm Springs, where in driving around I noted that over 25% of the cars on the road were Mercedes Benzes. A twinge of jealousy pricked me; why did they have such handsome buggys while I drove a beater? I was a practicing doctor, wasn't I? Then it occurred to me: they had worked for them, budgeted for them, else sacrificed to lease them. In a word, they had earned them. And I hadn't. I hadn't even tried.

Get real, Dr. Chaffin!

Back to poetry. In the same way I have half-heartedly sent out a few submissions now and then, completely inconsistent, the rejections either provoking me to despair at having no talent or to disdain for the editors who lacked the wisdom to perceive my gifts.

I have just completed sending out 40 submissions to paying journals both by snail and electronic mail, depending on the guidelines. To the best of my ability I seriously studied the preferences and examples of each magazine and sought to tailor my submissions to their wants.

This is so elementary that it unfailingly appears in every writer's guidebook in the very first chapters. Instead of listening, I have wasted so much time complaining about the state of poetry that I never tried to get on the bus in earnest. (This attitude did result in some good essays.)

Isn't that how most of us are? Experiencing jealousy over the possessions or accomplishments of others as if someone had waved a magic wand and dropped such things in their laps?

Get real, CE!

The Chinese pictograph for danger is also the symbol for opportunity.

It's been said that "Luck is when preparation meets opportunity."

Wish me luck. I've decided to start behaving as a grown-up when it comes to my art.


Thine in Truth and Art,

Craig Erick

How I Pissed Off Congressman Mike!

(If you just want to see the pictures, scroll to the end of the post.)


Yesterday I was awakened at 7:30 AM by a strange voice.

“Is this Craig? Craig Chaffin?”

Rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I said “Yes?”

“This is Mike Thompson, your U.S. Representative, and I want to know why you called me a ‘weenie!’”

“Huh? Oh, in that letter I sent at your site?” I tried to remember, as I write a lot of letters to people who don't know me.

“Do you know my Iraq voting record? Do you know anything about me? Why did you write me such an offensive message?”

Gathering my dream-spattered thoughts: “Well, I assumed I would only get a form letter from you, so I called you a ‘weenie’ about Iraq in case I might actually get a response. Look’s like I did. You know, it’s hard to get the attention of an institution without spraying some graffiti.”

“Huh?”

“Never mind.”

“Is it true you are a doctor, a medical doctor?”

“Yes.”

“I can’t believe that you, an educated man, would write me this.”

“What, do you want me to apologize?”

“Do you know my record on the Iraq war? I was posterized by the Republicans for visiting Iraq before the war, looking for a non-military solution. And have you heard of the recent McGovern bill for immediate re-deployment of our troops? We only have 171 votes. So it won’t get passed. But I voted for it.”

“Is Pelosi with you on this?”

“Of course.”

“That’s good to know. But why do I hear all this noise of trying to compromise with the Republicans?”

“There is no compromise.”

(On his website he prides himself for being a moderate Democrat known for his bipartisan work.) “That’s refreshing to hear,” I say, “especially with the vetoes and Democrats talking about benchmarks and all.”

“Do you know I’m a vet and I saw my buddies blown up and that I go to Walter Reed every two weeks to visit the wounded?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Well I do!”

I resisted the temptation to ask, “Are you a chaplain, too, or just a saint?” because at this point I’m wondering what he wants. A medal? An apology? Absolution? A contribution? I mean, who am I? Just some nut case from his district that occupies all of coastal Northern California.

“Uh huh.”

“And I’ve opposed the Iraq War from the beginning. I’ve always voted against funding the war.”

This I tried to check online but I couldn’t find his 2002-03 voting record.

“That’s good to know.”

“So who told you I wasn’t doing anything about Iraq?”

“Oh--when I attended the peace rallies outside your office, it was the considered opinion of all the activists that you weren’t doing enough.”

“Why don’t you tell those people to go protest at the office of someone who supports the war and leave me alone!”

“Are there any other congressman in our district?”

“Uh… no.”

“So where do you suggest we go?”

He couldn't even recommend another congressman to bother.


I suppose you could make this stuff up but I didn’t. Since he called me at 7:30 AM I assume he was in DC. For reasons I can only surmise, my e-mail must have crawled up his tightly wound ass big time. I mean, “weenie?” I’m sure he wanted to wash my mouth out with soap or rap my knuckles like a nun with a ruler, his being a Catholic and a vet and all. I’m sure in Viet Nam he never heard anything worse than, “Watch out for those darn gooks!” Oliver Stone and Stanley Kubrick must have lied to me.

Afterwards I did him the courtesy of researching his record online as much as I could in a few hours, and indeed, he should be proud of his stance on Iraq, the salmon fisheries, and other issues.

But why a relative flew with him on a junket to China in 2005 and who paid for it, I couldn’t find out, so I wrote him back to ask. And what a general partnership in “Travis Webb,” worth $100,000, might be I have no idea so I asked him about that as well. I hear he serves at the World’s Largest Salmon Barbecue in Fort Bragg every year so I told him that I hoped to see him there and meet him in person. I was tempted to sign my new letter, “Your Employer,” but I don’t think he’s ready for that yet.

Ah, the hubris. In a country of free speech my own congressman spends half an hour on the phone with me because I dared to call him a “weenie.” As my employee, how dare he wake me up early in the morning and rant about my insulting him! I have every right to insult him!

What--after all these years dealing with the press and politicians and constituents, does he expect life to be fair? Is he losing touch? Did his wife turn him down the night before so he had to sublimate some anger at an easy target? Or is he just a stuffed shirt Boy Scout type like Shakespeare's Malvolio, wearing crossed yellow garters? Heck if I know (see how he's already helped me clean up my language?).

This kind of behavior can certainly make you doubt the sanity of a politician. He took a shotgun to an ant, a very sleepy ant at that. Luckily the ant, though mistaken about the facts of the congressman’s record, did not take the assault personally—especially since Thompson belongs to the Congressional Sportsman’s Club and I assume has guns, just as our late DA up here, Norm Vroman, was discovered to have a cache of illegal weapons and a small marijuana farm when they searched his house after he died. (Norm would have been re-elected, btw, if he hadn’t croaked. In fact, up here, if we’d contacted Jonathan Edwards we might have been able to re-elect him from the beyond. Everyone's so "spiritual" up here, though I think them more spiritualist. Did Arthur Conan Doyle really have a hand in murdering Houdini? Now there's an interesting story...)

Since marijuana is the biggest cash crop in our county, I regret I didn’t ask him what he was doing about it. I assume, like most politicians around here, he opposes legalization to keep our prices high. And since we need illegals to harvest the grapes and pears, of course he voted against the seven-hundred mile fence down south. That's too bad, because everyone knows that Mexicans steal the jobs Americans are too lazy to take.

All that said, I need to ask you this question to check my own sanity: Have you ever been awakened by a congressman early in the morning who bitterly complained about you calling him a “weenie” in an e-mail message? I submit that this may be one of the strangest occurrences in my long and interesting life. Unfortunately, now I can’t help but think of Mr. Thompson as “Weenie Mike.” I mean, who but a weenie would call up a constituent to complain about being called a weenie? Tsk, tsk.


Here's the good congressman at his wine-promoting site:



Now his face does look a little florid in this one, but I wouldn't accuse him of overindulging in wine promotion--it's probably just too much sun:























1 Kilobunny,

Craig Erick