walls

Done. Finished. Submitted. Wait. Whatever.

So whatever, if it's accepted or not, I figured

it out. In school I loved algebra, which isn't to say

I was good at it. Working through clauses

of Xs and Ys and stacks of parentheses was

a satisfying/frustrating endeavor. This poem

seemed like an algebraic equation. But

without a final exactly correct

only-answer-there-could-ever-be answer.

In other news, I've been playing with a panorama

thingy on my phone and it makes cool pictures,

though it freaked out when I tried to go all 360

on it in a 180-like place.

Beat back that sucking beast of a poem finally. Ready

for submission to a performance type reading series.

Hopefully it will be accepted, but for now I'm glad

the thing got made. I wrangled more with the self

than the poem. Yesterday the suck; today I'm perusing

NEA fellowship applications.

Not to mention that I found the just-purchased

salad dressing in the band-aid drawer.

So it goes usually.

Aspect of Kiefer

Anselm Kiefer's Alexandria, 1987

Ash, original and picmented photographs on treated

lead in glazed steel frame

67 X 90.5 inches

A fragment of the work

ash

It's rainy and gray and I've written the worst poem ever

and it's due tomorrow -- or not, if I can't

wrestle it into some kind of shape, so here I am after a long

time away and with no readers here (thankfully I hope, although

if there is anyone out there that's okay too) to read this.

I think the problem with the poem is I'm stuffing

too many ideas into it because I want it to contain some big

ideas but really I'm not much good with big ideas. Today

I'd rather write about the photograph of an entire beach

of sea glass, a dump really, but the tumbledness of salt water

turned the sharp fragments into these amazingly beautiful

lozenges of color.

However, there's this poem and it's in response to an Anselm Kiefer

painting/photograph collage and if you know Kiefer you know

his subject matter is big -- as in the holocaust and war and

German memory via landscape.

The work is titled Alexandria -- another biggy,

one of the most important libraries in the world, destroyed several times

over, all those papyri up in flames, though Kiefer is also referencing

other book burnings, and how collected information can be a threat.

Then I just finished Susan Sontag's book, Regarding the Pain

of Others. About war photography primarily, especially how war

has been depicted and how those depictions shape our understandings.

And so war is a topic I've been thinking about since my son

enlisted in the Army two years ago.

Being the mother of a warrior - well, that's a whole manuscript indeed.

So along comes this painting -- collage really -- and all of its

stuff. And my readings. And my son. And then there's his buddy

who nearly died, who I don't know but somehow that doesn't matter

because it feels close, even though my son hasn't yet deployed.

The poem or me wants all of this in the mix. What a stewy mess.

(I like stew.) I'm not usually intimidated by the messy

wanderings of the associative mind, by working with disparate threads.

But I don't know. What I've written -- draft number blah/blah -- sucks

for real. I know, there's suck and then there's SUCKS. This is the latter.

It's the sounds for one. There are hardly any. Maybe the ideas

have gotten in the way of sound. Also, I now see the enumeration

of the stanzas bugs me. And then there's the assignment, which

calls for several voices -- or at least the sense of that. My attempts

there seem artificial, forced. Which in turns impacts the sounds.

See what's happening is that although now I'm feeling

a bit better as I sort the poem out -- the sucky draft is right here

staring at me -- a beautiful mess. Embrace the suck.

bluebird by Charles Bukowski

there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I’m not going
to let anybody see
you.
there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pour whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
he’s
in there.

there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up?
you want to screw up the
works?
you want to blow my book sales in
Europe?
there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody’s asleep.
I say, I know that you’re there,
so don’t be
sad.
then I put him back,
but he’s singing a little
in there, I haven’t quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it’s nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don’t
weep, do
you?

new year

"Impatiently, I launched myself out of the chair, too angry, too confused, to sit

any longer; despite the heat, I stalked the floor, childishly desiring to kick

all the odd objects that cluttered it--artifacts, footstools, paintings--

out of my path-- what can you gain by showing me these photographs?"

From Alice I have Been by Melanie Benjamin

My fortune for 2012 via Radish King wonderwoman Rebecca Loudon

Prescient in that I've been writing and reading Sontag's Regarding The Pain

of Others on war photography and looking.