The Sneaking Suspicion

(also on Outdoor Poetry Season)

Is it really a poem,
or just some clever hoax?

If you believe
in life following death,
then the sneaking suspicion,
trailing behind

like a holy phantom,
like Smeagol,
the reflection
of all our sins,

could well be the thought
that you
are already
dead.

Best Case Scenario

or the silver lining at the end of the world

Stephen King says this:
at the end of all rationalism
the mass grave.
Science,

biology, physics, he says,
technology--
the deathtrip.
At the end of it all

the bomb, the plague--
something--
climate change
at the the end of it all.

The final genius
of our everloving, overstriding
brilliance.
He also holds this:

Technological collapse will reduce
the ambient noise that shrouds
our magic selves and
we will see

our dormant gifts awakened.
Manifest in all survivors
a certain wizardry more or less.
Hallelujah, anyway.

Occupy

Understand the wait for what
it is. There will be no great leap
forward. That debate is over.
The throng does not march toward

ordained fate. There is simply each
meandering face, longing for common
flow, and the hard places along the way.

So, it behooves us to wish
each other well, to mourn the dead,
to fight like hell
for the rest. Occupy.

Debt Ceiling Blues

But all praise to memory

While we're all trying to decide how much we hate Obama's debt ceiling deal and whether or not the man has crossed our own individual political line-in-the-sand, I offer my own reflections on memory (probably, but not certainly, irrelevant to the current fiscal crisis and equally irrelevant to the lives of all but a tiny few of the admittedly small number of readers of this blog). Got that?

Last night Marrianne and I watched the 3rd episode of Falling Skies, some cable channel's 13-episode, alien-invasion series. (And, no, I am not going to get into some side discussion on what and why we were watching.) At one point, a father tries to console his son over the son's loss of his girlfriend during the struggle against alien invaders. Into the bargain, the human population of Earth has been decimated, so everybody is essentially an individual variation on a shell-shocked survivor.

"At least you have memories of her," the father comforts.

"Mom was better at this, Dad," the kid responds, both wryly and sadly.

"Yeah, that was pretty lame," says Dad.

NOTE: Do not rely on these quotes for authenticity. They are constructed from memory.

The viewer sort of nods and agrees with Dad and Son that the comforting advice is lame. That, I suspect is what we all think; that memories of a person or a pet or a place or an event are but pale shadows of the real deal and without the power to comfort especially when the loss is recent and raw.

Most of the time it may be nearly indisputable that memory is not enough, but the truth is that sometimes memory is more than loving recall of something that cannot be recreated. Sometimes memory is vividly real and as familiar as the air. I am 64 years old (or nearly so) and past my prime in, oh, so many things. But I remember prime in those many things, and remember in detail.

I'll admit straight up that what I remember may never have happened as I remember it, but that is a mere bagatelle (French, I think, for a gossipy bagel). Memory, however flawed, is the best we got for building and maintaining individual identity, so while we need to have it, we might as well tap some of its great power, e.g., the ability to hold a lover or a pet or a great moment in our lives so close to the core of our being that they come alive, tangible as a warm breeze or cool water, releasing a flow of endorphins that cleanses us and brings us close to what we most desire.

One is favored by such moments only rarely. If they happened too often, the number of square-peg people in a round-hole world would overwhelm the capacity of our institutions. As, in fact, is happening now with the tribal fantasies of the Tea Party seriously testing our political capacity to understand each other and cooperate.

Yesterday morning, while out with my middle-sized dog, Jetta, traipsing through a dry-season wetland, I stumbled upon a series of memories of myself at 12 and the games I would play with my neighborhood friends. One game, in particular, seemed perfect for our block of brick three-flats and apartment buildings. "Ditch," as we called it, was played entirely outdoors, except for the warrens of basement tunnels running under the three-story apartment buildings that squatted on three or four lots along the street. If you could get into a basement, more power to you. Just don't get caught by your pursuers on the other team or by a building janitor.

Evolved out of the almost casual inclination of any group of two or three or four or more kids to hide from, flee or "ditch" a subset of that same group, into Ditch, in which half of us pursued the other half everywhere on the block--though tunnels, over fences, off garage roofs--until we had captured and held every member of the other team. It was an adrenalin-soaked, terror-producing, entirely exhilirating after-school and weekend activity. We played it compulsively, like rats ignoring food and water in favor of the button that releases another dose of cocaine or some such drug.

I think we played Ditch often enough and hard enough and long enough to force our bodies to adapt productively. For all that fitness has always mattered to me, I don't think that my body and its capabilities were ever again so well matched. I was a wiry, agile, relentless, Ditch-playing machine.

And now, I'm 64. I can still go hard when I have to, but I can't keep it up with the same ease I used to have, and I don't recover from going hard at anywhere near the old rate. One thing I am plainly not is twelve years old. But Saturday morning, out with Jetta, I was.

We had gotten kicked off a portion of the back acreage of the Howard University Seminary and I was morose. I knew Jetta and I would be okay out on the wetland (quite dry at this time of year), but I was feeling furtive and anxious. I sat down and wrote a poem that I'll post on Outdoor Poetry Season, but the effort did not empower or invigorate me.

Moping my way off the property, I recalled myself at 10 or 11 walking across the lawn of some 10- or 12-unit apartment building and being suddenly confronted by the building janitor, who was waving a rake and ordering me off his lawn. None of us knew his name, but he was a big guy, putting us in mind of a bear, so we called him Andy Panda; a cuddly sort of label that I suppose we applied in order to diminish the fear he inspired in us.

I ran around him and when I got a safe distance, I yelled. "I'm not afraid of you, Andy Panda."

The memory stimulated additional memories and all the sights and sounds of Ditch flooded my mind. It was definitely a WWJD-moment ("J" meaning a 12-year old Jeff). Trying to caution Jetta to stealth, I made my way along the wooded fringe of the Howard property, suddenly determined to get across the three-block landscape from which I'd previously been banned, not by Andy Panda but, by a guy with a gun and sergeant's stripes.

Jetta was having difficulty inhabiting my vision, but I was all in. I was 12 and my heart was pumping and I was alert and tingling and ready and finally confident that no guy with a gun and sergeant's stripes was a match for me. I can't say what proportion of the journey involved stealth and slinking through the shadows and what part was sprinting and dashing ahead, but it felt a good mix. I could feel the sweep of dozens of prying eyes, but I was nearly invisible. I could sense when my pursuers got close, or when I passed near a surveillance point, but I zigged and darted and sped beyond their awareness.

At the other end of property I paused and coaxed Jetta into the shadow by the trees and looked back at where I'd been. I was safe, I was victorious and looking ahead to where I was going with fresh anticipation. All praise to memory.

And what was it we were talking about?

Definitely a Midsummer's Outdoor Poetry Season

Seasoned by climate change


Went for a walk with Jetta this morning. Out for an hour, lingered in the seasonal wetland (now, very dry) behind Howard University's School of Religion. Swung by the largely unmaintained hilltop ruins around the site of an old Civil War-era fort. It really is amazing what's only a minute away on foot around here.

In any case, I was dripping sweat by the time I got home, even though it wasn't even 9 a.m. And the streets were deserted, people already hunkered down against the heat.

What ever are they going to do by the middle of the century when the average temperature will probably be 7 degrees higher than it is now, maybe 10 degrees? Imagine, 80s when it used to be 70. 90s when it used to be 80. And a day like today would be what temperature by mid-afternoon? By 2040, maybe 110 degrees.

It wasn't like I was exercising vigorously, though I was preparing to go with Marrianne to Bus Boys and Poets for open-mike night, tonight. So I was throwing myself around imaginary stages and gesturing emphatically. It is well and truly Outdoor Poetry Season.

I'm going to recite The Unfolding first. And then The Last Night.

Mary Oliver's Flare

Nourishing, rich and wise

Mary Oliver’s poem, Flare, invites us in with a modest greeting:

“Welcome to the silly, comforting poem.” Flare thus declares itself to be a particular type of poem, and one, probably, of limited virtues.

The misdirected reader can therefore be forgiven if she fails to notice right away that Oliver’s long poem, which kicks off her collection The Leaf and the Cloud (Da Capo Press, 2000), is wiser and carries a load much heavier than whimsy can bear.

In Oliver’s world “the finely hinged wings…” of the green moth, even one caught by a crow “…has trim, and feistiness, and not a drop of self-pity.”

Anything but silly, Flare rolls on:

“My mother
was the blue wisteria,
my mother
was the mossy stream out behind the house,
my mother, alas, alas,
did not always love her life,
heavier than iron it was
as she carried it in her arms, from room to room,
oh, unforgettable.”

Yet the unforgettable lies deep within the forgettable, which Oliver knows and shares with us. She writes about her father:

“Listen,
this was his life.
I bury it in the earth.
I sweep the closets.
I leave the house.”

So matter of fact. But why not? Oliver has made her peace. A proud declaration, actually, a tribute to her parents; time to move on with the business of living:

“I give them—one, two, three, four—the kiss of courtesy,
of sweet thanks,
of anger, of good luck in the deep earth.
May they sleep well. May they soften.

“But I will not give them the kiss of complicity.
I will not give them responsibility for my life.”

What parents ask for from their children is not the issue here. But what parent, seriously, could ask for more than Oliver gives here. And when she is done with her prayers for the dead, with courtesy, sweet thanks, anger and good wishes, she moves on with living, and with her poetry. The ant has a tongue, primarily, Oliver tells us, “…to gather all it can of sweetness.”

And so the poem, which is less “…than the world…” not even “…the first page of the world..." flows on, making its way in a manner that defies Oliver's modest opening declaration:

“Live with the beetle, and the wind.

“This is the dark bread of the poem.
This is the nourishing dark bread of the poem.”

I should be so silly.

Memories of What Will Matter Most

Brendan’s short sleeve school shirts...

More here on Outdoor Poetry Season

Wake-Up Call

On the way from one spot to another,
walking briskly on a fine, fine day,
I added this little loop-around...
(more at Wake-Up Call on Outdoor Poetry Season)

Outdoor Poetry Season Begins

There are rhythms to life--rhythms of effort, periods of inspiration, patterns of accident. I know mine are there. I just don't understand them as well as I'd like. But it's still a relief to know that what goes away comes back again.

It has been spring here in D.C. for awhile. There's been a lot more sun, on the average, and the days have been growing longer and warmer. I haven't noticed much of anything budding, but I might notice tomorrow. Today, at least, I noticed it was spring. It was also the first day since sometime last fall that I walked over to Otis and Georgia Ave. to pick Brendan up at school.

On the way, I'm thinking it's about time for outdoor poetry season to begin. And then, I stopped, sat down on the concrete capstone of a low brick wall and wrote my first poem since I don't know when. I don't usually post poems right after I write them, they need too much work--not that I'm claiming that my revisions actually make them passable--but I'm going to post this one here, on In and Out, now.

And then I'm going to post it on another blog I'm starting up called Outdoor Poetry Season. And after this other poems will go on Outdoor Poetry Season. Posting them here on In and Out is too confusing. I mean, what is In and Out about? Cutting military spending? Railing against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza? It doesn't matter, really. It's just that from now on I'm going to put poetry on OPS and I'm going to put everything else on I & O.

There, I'm glad that's settled.



The Rush of Life

Thinking like rivers
meander, I can say
there will be no further
stunning breakthroughs

There once were, you know,
the river, young and raving,
tumbled boulders, leapt recklessly,
pushed ahead

But there will be progress—
not so it would show—
but you could still feel it,
the rush of blood

Arteries, veins pulsing potent remains
of original intentions, or,
as Alan has put it, the rush of life
through the universe. Bang.

Khalil Gibran and the poetry that Is prayer...

...reminds us that art is also life.

In Khalil Gibran's The Prophet, I like especially that the singers and the dancers and the flute players come to town and belong because they, too, produce with the effort of farmers and fishers:

And a merchant said, Speak to us of Buying and Selling.

And he answered and said:

To you the earth yields her fruit, and you shall not want if you but know how to fill your hands.

It is in exchanging the gifts of the earth that you will find abundance and be satisfied.

Yet unless the exchange be in love and in kindly justice, it will but lead some to greed and others to hunger.

When in the marketplace you toilers of the sea and fields and vineyards meet the weavers and the potters and the gatherers of spices,--

Invoke then the master spirit of the earth, to come into your midst and sanctify the scales and the reckoning that weighs value against value.

And suffer not the barren-handed to take part in your transactions, who would sell their words for your labor.

To such men say,

"Come with us to the field, or go with our brothers to the sea and cast your net;

For the land and the sea shall be bountiful to you even as to us."

And there shall come the singers and the dancers and the flute players,--buy of their gifts also.

For they too are gatherers of fruit and frankincense, and that which they bring, though fashioned of dreams, is raiment and food for your soul.

And before you leave the marketplace, see that no one has gone his way with empty hands.

For the master spirit of the earth shall not sleep peacefully upon the wind till the least of you are satisfied.

I read this at the right moment and every word rings like a bell tone in my ear. And, maybe a little bit, in the memory of my right hand, I can feel the weight of my favorite hammer.

My feelings at those times, I imagine, are like the openness and waiting that comes to people who believe more strongly and speak in rhythms and in chants to the fountainhead of their belief. Of course, prayerfulness and mindfulness do not automatically transform believers into justice activists; sometimes, and instead, into something that seems a good bit more diabolical.

But there is a lot to be gained in reminding oneself, privately or in community, of the gifts of the world and the joy in connection and the harmony in creative and productive effort. Gibran shares this with us over and over.

"And a woman spoke, saying, Tell us of Pain." This the Prophet proceeds to do, ending with this observation:

"And the cup he brings, though it burn your lips, has been fashioned with the clay which the Potter has moistened with His own sacred tears."

The potter is an artisan, of course, and a reminder of the time when there was hardly any distance between art and craft or art and prayer. Gibran does not describe the sacred, but the mundane, and sees no distance between producers of the tangible and artists weaving dreams into "raiment and food for your soul."

The Unwritten

W.S. Merwin's Great Poem

I memorized this poem in the Fall of 2007 when I had the great privilege of teaching poetry for a bit to students at E.L. Haynes Public Charter School where Brendan goes. As far as I can tell, little miracles happen everyday at Haynes. Reciting this poem captured the attention of a lot of children (and a few adults) who hadn't previously shown any interest in poetry.

Inside this pencil
crouch words that have never been written
never been spoken
never been taught

they're hiding

they're awake in there
dark in the dark
hearing us
but they won't come out
not for love not for time not for fire

even when the dark has worn away
they'll still be there
hiding in the air
multitudes in days to come may walk through them
breathe them
be none the wiser

what script can it be
that they won't unroll
in what language
would I recognize it
would I be able to follow it
make out the real names of everything

maybe there aren't
many
it could be there's only one word
and it's all we need
it's here in this pencil

every pencil in the world
is like this

Beet Stalks In the Disposal

Bad Idea

Here's what happens when you put beet stalks in the garbage disposal: The blades of the disposal, which are actually grinders rather than cutters, strip the vegetable layers binding the fibers of the stalks. The grinders turn the vegetable matter to a swampy mush and relentlessly fold and refold the fibers and stuff the indigestible mess into the small holes that drain the grinding surface of the disposal, plugging it.

If you leave the disposal going and the water running, the sink will begin to fill. But before the water reaches a depth of, say, two inches, the disposal will fling water, vegetable matter and fiber back out of the sink drain and, sometimes, achieve something like lift off. A revenge, of sorts, for victims of food chain tyranny.

The process of clearing the disposal, which comes next, is interesting, but an account of that process would distract us from the value of the experience, what the experience teaches us: Don't put beet stalks in the disposal.


Next Week: What happens when you allow the gas bar-b-q to fill with too much propane before pushing the igniter button.

A Vine’s Life

I wrote the first draft of this poem about 18 months ago, I think. Believe me, it was a lot worse then. Read this aloud. Embrace your inner vine.


Dieing back each winter
finishes the to-do list
for a never complain
never explain sort of vine
Come spring
every bud competes
as though a part of some different vine
These are my children

Buds reach
purposefully wander
further stay
in touch please
Even urgent messages
Water more water
Will do
Out here the speedway fence
other buds raced
last sunny weather and warmth

I cramp and have
no mouth to gasp
And I grasp
Every ounce of belief
Every inch of homesteaded fence
A prayer to my roots
Reborn in soil

I am I am I am
Bud this year’s life
Next year’s dream
connection to home
where the love
comes from
Who says it’s hard

Outdoor Poetry Season

I hand washed a couple pair of jeans this morning and actually hung them outside to dry. It's only March 5, but it's also Washington, DC and our south facing back porch gets decently warm on a sunny day like today.

If it's nearing time when one can rely on good weather for drying laundry, then outdoor poetry season must be close.

I'm so excited. In anticipation, I'm listening to Jefferson Aiplane's Surrealistic Pillow.