Inevitable Net Progression; New Poem

I fear my blogability (borrowing a neologism from Bud commercials) has been declining. Here is the progression of net communication as I see it:

1) e-mail
2) posting boards
3) listserv, newsgroups
4) blogs
5) My Space and Facebook
6) Twitter
7) Video twitter (a prediction)

There are still intimate places on the web, small poetry boards and boards of special concern, and none of these "advances" precludes the use of a previous one.

I like e-mail best because I hate handling paper. I've been on boards, still attend one. I've been on listservs, none now. My blog is self-explanatory. I joined My Space and facebook but only pursued facebook where I now have over 500 (mainly literary) "friends." (The existence of such platforms naturally cheapens the word, "friend.") My publisher encouraged me to twitter and now I have a tweet deck. The time will come when short videos can be posted through twitter; links to videos are already possible. Then we'll have canned film snippets from personalities falling through the rafters.

What does this progression say about the Net? First, that things go from private to public quickly. Second, that associations expand exponentially if you keep playing. And third, the greater the audience, the less data shared, which results in the trivializing of life to buzz words and sound bites and branding. Don't we brand cattle?

It's a dehumanizing process that began with the telegraph. Nevertheless we can overcome it and preserve intimacy within it, for which e-mails and small boards thankfully remain.

As obtains in poetry today, where we have too many poets and not enough readers, on the web we have too many platforms and not enough players (think of the demise of Ringo). We have more people inventing platforms than people that can use them.

Speaking of poetry, here's a new poem, one of the thirty I wrote in April for National Poetry Month:


Flowers of Heraclitus

I watch the garden too much.
hoping for it to happen.
The deer could undo it all.
Last year they savaged the cabbage,
cropped the snapdragons
and beheaded the broccoli.
This year I planted only flowers
mainly of the daisy family,
deer and drought-resistant.

I watch the garden too much.
Heraclitus explained we only notice change.
As too much part of what is changing
the observer becomes oblivious.
If only I could return in two weeks
to see the changes, but who would watch
over the garden meanwhile?

I watch the garden too much.
In the late afternoon the sun
curls around the cypress,
lighting the plants a second time.
Copper daisy, heliotrope, princess flower--
their time will come, while all time
belongs to weeds, the wild radish,
nettles, mint and wild cucumber.
And in all these no real tropes
except the hands of a gardener,
the dirt beneath the nails
I poke at with a toothbrush.


I have several new interviews out at romantic blogs, emphasizing the love poems in my book. Here's one:

Kristina Knight

I also fired my web publicist for the book, as he had only pursued general web promotion and never gotten me a single reading or sold a single book. In marketing nowadays you start with the personality and then try to sell the product--at least in the arts. I want the book to speak for itself, why readings are so salutary. I have readings coming up in SF and LA and SD in June and July. If anyone reading this blog has knowledge of more west coast venues, please send them my way.

While reading my poetry to an audience I feel a wholeness, as if this was what I was meant to do. How good is that?


Bouncing between 3 Kilorats and Kiloneutral,

New Poem: Halloween 2008

This is the 499th post on my blog, begun in July of 2006, which means my next post must be triumphant, apopleptic, egregious and all-encompassing--or a mildly entertaining read.

I thought I'd use today's numerically less significant post to compose a spontaneous poem. Here goes:

Halloween 2008

I carved a cat-face shadow in a pumpkin.
Our teeth are always breaking down.
Dentists prepare the perfect crown.
After the candle the display was passable.
Protect your temporary crown
Do not chew up, do not chew down.

Light leered through lens of feline eyes,
my knife-work softened by the glow.
The cat did not appear a threat.
Dentists carve the dead stuff out,
that burning smell--you know the drill.
The pumpkin looked respectable.

I sat in an orange Volkswagen
convertible of leather and chrome
and wished the ragtop were my own.
I love the new car smell of it,
like Cinderella in her coach.
Goddamn my tooth! It hurts like shit!

Day by day the pumpkin turned
more hideous, frosted with mold
in dangling white or speckled black.
I've always driven convertibles, ah
the smell of eucalyptus groves!
Furry white fungus hung from feline eyes.

Soon its mien began to look like Satan.
The light along its ears turned into horns.
The temporary crown must be respected
Sans chew, sans gum, sans mints, sans everything.
If the gourd turned evil in my care
the candlelight would guard against despair.

Soon after I employed this course of action
the Jack-O-Lantern fell into the garden,
a Humpty-Dumpty wannabe from hell.
If it was evil I will never know.
But as for toothaches, pain is pain:
Pain writes the history of the body.


Well, that was fun! Comments appreciated.

Much to report but the poem wore me out.

Long day in court. I wore a tie for the first time since August 2007 at Rachel's memorial. I think I might have won my case. Our former landlord is a lightly gilded though not gelded asshole.


2 Kilobunnies,

CE

Lavender Boy, New Dog, and The River

I've been working on a poem for awhile, unusual for me to plan out such a narrative. It all began with a provence lavender that refused to change or bloom, unlike the lavenders I saw in everyone else's yard. Yeah, the poem is a little long for a blog, but so are my usual postings. You can ignore the poem if you wish and proceed to the next paragraph below, but I think it's a fun read.



Lavender Boy

It started as a lump out in the garden,
a mound of lavender that never changed.
I planted it in May. Transplanting it
did nothing. By September no thin shoots
had risen in violet efflorescence,
the fine hairs of its silvery leaves
speared dew for nothing. Where were all
the purple standards gardeners expect?
Seduced by vegetable melancholy,
had it turned its attention from the sky
to purely subterranean concerns?

My spade marked a wide circle
around the stunted plant.
Painstakingly I loosened earth
six inches down, when the spade
hit something solid. I substituted
fingers, pawing dirt with care,
when the outline of two shoulders
surfaced beneath.

My fingers recoiled. What could it be?
Dirt shook from a pale forehead, amethyst eyes
opened with sagacious innocence.
I freed its hands and motioned it
to help me but it wriggled them
in self-discovery, the way a baby
looks at its hands. Three-and-a-half feet down,
its bluish feet sprouted like potatoes.
Each rootlet I broke through
made the whole thing quiver.
Unearthed, it looked like a boy.

I feared to break his body like a carrot
or bruise him like a melon.
By his armpits I lifted him
gently as a slice of cake.
What stuff he was made of
was moist and pliable.
He hardened when I stood him
in the sun beside the zinnias.
I thought about Gepetto:
“What a beautiful boy! “

His lips were pale violet,
his hair was lavender that flowered.
Wherever he displaced the air
lavender filled the vacuum.
It seemed right to dress him
in a suit of silver velvet
with a frock collar.
He could gather blackberries
all day without staining his finery.
Only fires made him nervous;
I quit smoking because of it.

He drooped in the morning
before his drink restored his turgor.
When I put him in the shower
he swelled and sprouted--
beware of over-watering, I thought.
He liked the water cool.

Within a month he dressed himself
but speech took longer.
Toothless, he struggled with consonants
and diphthongs. He had a thin, melodious voice.
When he said “Chaos,” I said “Gaia.”
He grinned and said, “Uranus.”
I said “Aphrodite.” We understood each other.

Time passed and his limbs grew woody
as perennials do. It made him rough,
he didn't like it, still he eschewed return
to earth, said it would mar his sentience.
But I could see no future beyond a sachet
for the closet, nothing to accommodate
his soft, scented hands and fragile smile.
With tears I planted him again.
He asked nothing of me except to scent
all my days with lavender.


Since I put deer netting everywhere in my garden and turned up the sensitivity on my motion-activated sprayer, I've had no trouble except for gophers eating my potatoes, though I think there are potatoes left, at least judging by their above ground greenery.

We got a new dog after a year of mourning for Kenyon, and he's a fifteen-pound whippersnapper sheba inu-chihuahua mix, full of vim and vigor and bound to chew anything available down to the nub. I have begun reading dog-training books, have begun to try to think like a dog as a book by the Monks of New Skene suggests.

He can sit and stay and shake hands so far, but his staying power is less than ten feet. Kathleen and I have agreed he needs a crate for in-house training. We're trying to get him on a regular schedule but it's hard. Sorry, no picture yet.

Our cats have deserted us since the dog's acquisition. Did I tell you his name? He looks so prim and proper, like an English gentleman, so we named him "J. Alfred Prufrock," "J." for short. He likes to chase deer and points like a hunter despite his diminutive stature. He also likes to chase moths in the air, making me suspect he might have some bird dog DNA.

As I intimated, he's not a cat-friendly dog and Topaz and Jojo live outside now, coming to the porch at night for a feeding. We can't let the cat food stand outside because of the crafty raccoons. The cats look well-fed but I don't know if they'll ever make friends with the dog. He behaves just like a cartoon dog in relation to the cats.

On the literary front, besides having submitted my "Selected" to a publisher that approached me, the anthology "Crazed by the Sun" is now out. Click on the title for more information. In it I rub shoulders with e. e. cummings, Theodore Roethke, Marianne Moore, and many more contemporary poets like Sandra MacPherson. I'm honored to be included. My poem concerns attending a carnival with my youngest daughter, though that tells you virtually nothing about the poem. If you'd like to read it, here's the link:

At the Carnival

I'm still in a lot of physical pain, thank God for Celebrex but I couldn't get by without the morphine as well. My back is hurting more, a good sign that I might return to my chief chronic pain. It all takes time; some things heal, some things don't, hard to tell why. My back never has, though I have congenital defects to blame that on. My left hand remains too weak and numb to play the guitar with any authority, but if I stick to open chords I can sneak by, concentrating on my voice.

I just finished my third Mendocino Circle of Men's retreat and I must say it was magical. Every year is. It's a privilege to be associated with such great men in spiritual solidarity and intentional ritual. My chief insight this time around was that my life has always been a struggle--partly, perhaps, because I was a forceps baby trying to claw my way out. Life doesn't have to be that hard just because it began that way, but in my case it seems more like a prophecy.

The main thing is to try to stay in the river of being, to remind oneself that the hidden spiritual connection between all good men and women ultimately supersedes the daily grind we call life. Whatever your occupation, it is possible to stay in the river for periods, though we often find ourselves scattered on the shore of our own shortcomings. Have courage, the river can absorb it. The river of being is always flowing, it's our access that's impaired. So try to concentrate on the divine throughout your day and you will feel the difference. Take a deep breath and thank God for all the things you are and have, especially the love shown you by others. You can't think yourself into the river, you can only notice when you're in or out. Sometimes we enter it without thinking; other times we can't imagine it really exists. But it does. The flow of God's spirit is not constrained by any religion or viewpoint; there is no dogma to qualify you except for a willing heart and an open mind. May you dip in the river today.


Kiloneutral,

CE