sequels and consequence

the plight of the blue ball

the story extends beyond performance art
something has happened to the blue ball
while it moved in the wind and flew high
beneathe concrete arches it was weakened
something pierced the skin
a slowleak has ensued
i sit on a diminishing blue ball
and i know only
i must go to target and get another one
this one is ruined

i learned something
it is important to treat the
big blue ball with care
it is a thing easily ruined
easily compromised

let's just hope that i can
always go to target and get a new one

i will deflate the thing completely
and offer it to the trash

i can't wait to get my new blue ball
already i miss the bouyancy of the one now
dying right under my torso

once a story is begun it tends to
have a life of it's own

here's to the big blue ball

abandoning self and epistemology

my name is nothing

i came to a place of great sorrow
where every dream lay dying in pain

because i believed i had been
following carefully
i asked my lord
why have you led me to this place
where every dream lies dying?

then i said to the silence:
give me a name
give me a new name

and from deep within
i heard myself say:
my name is Nothing

and for a moment
i felt a great freedom
the burden of myself was lifted
and i saw the world directly
without the interference
of my own dreams
and i understood
why he had brought me here

when my self died
i became part of God

every once in awhile i come across these
disturbingly delightful poems
and they read like little prayers
maybe if you read this
something will happen to your mind
a light will go on and you will say
ah ha
i should hope the poet thus finds some slight satisfaction
in being anonymous here

quickly through the door it came

sometimes days are defined by a book of poems
i wonder how many people still have that experience
it doesn't happen often but when it does
it is a special day, no doubt

some years ago i set out on a writing project
one of the few i have lying around that remain
largely unfinished never it seems having come to terms
with my inner derelict

one of the pieces of the book i intended to write
centered around the presentation of local poets

i knew of a book of poems that existed that was
quintessentially local and bore pertinance to the
subject at hand which is always good if you're trying to do something

well lo and behold
yesterday a person came to my office door and handed me a packet
inside this little envelope packet was a book
and this book is entitled

THE MAN WHO MARRIED THE DEER
by
Mark McKeon

Pine Knob #8

Sometimes she stays in the hills a long time.
Once I thought i would find her, and make her come back.

And at first I thought I was lucky, there
Were tracks everywhere and they were easy to follow.
And once I saw her, slipping away through timber on another slope.
But the tracks didn't go anywhere, they just
Petered out on hard ground, and I gave up
And went home.

She showed up the next day on Pine Knob.
I started yelling, "How can I be a poet if you keep running off?"

But she was wild and naked and didn't care about poetry anyway.

gems hard one

AFTER BUYING A NEW PEN, I RECALL THE OLD CHINESE POETS


The loneliness of raindrops in a dirty puddle
Skipped over on the way to buy cigarettes at Super America.

Those old chinese poets that always see the world
Doubled in some sort of paralleled reflection.

They never need a Marlboro bad as heroin
A drug introverts take these days breathing

Its dragon smoke deep into their shy lungs
And later, after a few months, the needle

More solid than air slamming into the blood
Mixing with the very soul -- their heart

Their brain -- a needle tracing veins back
To the source. Becoming two things

The drug and the heart. The drug
And the brain. The drug against reflection

Of any puddle. The prick in flesh like a match
Lighted illuminated desire. I think, I'm glad

I never started smoking -- I mean -- because
I know I could never stop. The raindrops

In a puddle -- it must be said because I looked--
Reflect a light pole, a Buick, the curb, my shoes.

The only way to look is down. The old
Chinese poets know that puddles aren't

Reflecting anything that could possibly be
Mistaken for an answer. That's it

Just smoke curling like bus exhaust,
On seventh street, in early November.

-Larry Gavin

- this poet lives in southern minnesota
where he's lived most of his life
he teaches school and explores rivers and fields
with the continued earnestness of a young man
i'm told he's given to verse quite often

i hope he will not mind me
stealing his pome from
pemmican 2010

i typed the whole thing out
that must count for something

it's not what you know it's how you know it

i am at a point of reflection
i am looking back over the
the years and months and days of
blogging
what has come into my consciousness
because i made a decision to blog

the greatest awareness is the human factor
i have been able somehow to bridge what is
easily perceived as the purely mechanical and
purely objective quality of the medium

it is more than a place of mere information
there is a sort of conversation at work

the first blogger i knew was a person who has
ultimately become a very good friend
i knew this person before my decision to blog
but my decision and her decision were somehow
cyberactively co-ordinated in time and we began a
conversation
recently i have traveled back to older posts and
i am rather amazed at the quality of discussion
that ensued in those early heady days
of blogolallia
so i bow today to the earthling
who wonders and wanders still
who once typed the words
wrote them somehow
"o the wind blows and blows
and blows where it will..."

an old friend not so old really but someone i've know
for quite a long time and a person who has been
extremely influential in my reading and awareness
about things poetic and written and revealed through art
directed me to
silliman's blog
this has been a great find
and i stand in humble gratitude for the awareness
i have into this wave this urgency of poetic life
even without a comment stream silliman is still
putting it out there in a classy way
for my tastes he created a stage for a new rhetoric
and brought along that which preceded this new rhetoric
he blows his own horn
and let's a lot of other people blow there's '
he's a mensch in a house that is litterally warmed with books
the blog entitled philosophical investigator which
dates back to about the same time i jumped into the
silliman classroom is still a source of inspiration for me
i detest photographs in general believeing they are
an evil intrusion into human consciouness and only
to be propogated by people with evil intent
yet
whoever that guy is over there in helena who
presents the found masterpieces of 21st century visual
awareness onto the blog needs some serious recognition
i mean he has managed to say it all
in a few photos of dried paint on paint cans
and when you play with the photos on the screen
they become even more interesting
so it is a sort of transcendental experience
at ones fingtertips

at silliman's poetry shop
i bumped into a guy named kirby
he had a strange idea now didn't he
he still congs the bell of possibility for
a splendid wedding dance between two
essentially or seemingly opposed ideas
ideas that seem to exist in one mind only
and nowhere else except now in the minds
of the rest of the unsuspecting souls who have
eaten at the table of deliberate inanity
lutheran surrealism
his may in fact be the prophetic call to the future
we all need to know about
none of us who congregate there are sure
what the hell it's all about
it may just be one troubled soul
trying to make sense of the world and we're
aiding and abetting him to our own detriment
but we're willing to have fun as the ship goes down in flames
and dolphins drink mint juleps and laugh

so this has all led to other places
blog neighborhoods
and bloghomes

surfing the blog is an activity
a possible activity

places like pinnochio's theory or a compass rose or the cat blogs which proliferate to a bitchingly alarming degree

or eirene
or to various girl and family blogs and blogs and church blogs and travel blogs and art and craft blogs blogs of every idea almost i would guess

there is a powerful religious dialogue going on in the blog world i mean it is intense it is more amazing than most people are willing to recognize
and what surprises me is that most of the rhetoric is civilized
there is indecency at times to be sure
but for the most part the language and the ideas are
attended with considerable decency

i think kirby is correct in his
intuition to mandate humor
goofball zaney humor as part of the overall
temperament of discussion
his logic seems to be
it's silly to have a serious discussion
about anything so let's give it a try

there's only so much wind in the cyber sails

it may well be that i have come to the end of all that i wished to say on this medium
if that is the case
you will be the first to know

guitars

so time has been consumed by blog existence
why do i still do it?

i will have to think about that

but for now this is my reflection
my reflecting back into the blog arena
some sunlight from a well placed mirror
hand held messages from the bleachers

am i the only fortunate one to have received
such gracious displays of human expression
the blog world is by and large a civilized space

there's room for all hollywood puts out and more

i think i may one day retire from the blog world
and spend some time thinking about the why's and wherefores of
human conversation
amongst virtual strangers

i am seeking out other mediums
ones that do not entail
micro silicate chips

mediums that are more stable
more expressive and preferring the
real over the imagined
or played out in the cyberworld

time to learn french or something

anon

if you read this blog...

jh
crzymnkhsthfkkngtrjnz

late song

Pastoral October Talk

There is less daylight these days,
it is also noticeably cooler.
The leaves are almost all down
and will have to be raked
into heaps.

Somehow I can't translate my experiences
into insights
and explanations.

I'm going to be
fifty soon, and work
is getting harder.
Let me put it this way:
I need more time
before I am ready for
the long winter.

-Horst Ludwig
Minnesota Months

this is from a collection of poems that has been floating around my cell
for years
i never quite get to them but when i do i am struck
by the simplicity and straightforwardness of the words
the poems are also printed in japanese
and i would be curious to know if there is a way for me
to type in japanese even if i don't know it
could i learn japanese braille
and then write poems based on braille learned idioms

i haven't the foggiest idea who horst ludwig is
but here's one of his poems
and it is timely if a little late by the calendar