{"id":30774,"date":"2017-07-31T00:45:15","date_gmt":"2017-07-31T04:45:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/?p=30774"},"modified":"2017-07-31T01:40:26","modified_gmt":"2017-07-31T05:40:26","slug":"a-first-post-and-hello","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/2017\/07\/a-first-post-and-hello\/","title":{"rendered":"A First Post, and Hello."},"content":{"rendered":"

Good evening. \u00a0It’s an interesting day for me to be making new acquaintances. \u00a0I’ve spent the afternoon bar-tending for the memorial of an old friend. \u00a0Cycle-of-life and all that, I guess. \u00a0As they leave, so do they enter.<\/p>\n

The e-mail regarding this endeavor encouraged me to make an introductory post to familiarize myself with the system. \u00a0My own blog is on Blogger so there’s certainly a learning curve but it seems pretty intuitive, so far.<\/p>\n

The aforementioned epistle also encouraged me to let you know a little about myself. \u00a0To quote Doctor Evil, “Very well. \u00a0Where do I begin?”<\/p>\n

Part of me wants to answer jokingly with something clever but I’ve been trying to crawl out of my introvert’s shell recently and I believe I’ll try being honest. \u00a0Honesty is good, yes?<\/p>\n

I’m a native of Minden, Nebraska and I’ve Iived in several places in the wonderful state. \u00a0I have a fondness for ranch country and one of my passions is the Nebraska Sandhills. \u00a0I never tire of them. \u00a0If I feel the need to reconnect with who I am or to slough off something unfortunate that has been thrust upon my psyche, a trip to the Sandhills and I’m fine. \u00a0The only place in the world that I feel as passionate about is Rio Arriba Couny, New Mexico. \u00a0Must be a desert\u00a0thing.<\/p>\n

I’ve also lived as a homeless vagabond in Paris and Heidelberg, so my life hasn’t been all tumbleweeds and branding irons. \u00a0I’m a former auto mechanic. I’ve run kitchens and fed hundreds at a time. \u00a0I ran a kitchen for the Salvation Army and fed their summer camps and day camps. \u00a0Through them, I taught children to cook. \u00a0I lived on-site and worked in a kitchen in an assisted living facility for the mentally ill. \u00a0Although not a resident, I sometimes didn’t leave for weeks at a time. \u00a0My companions being, for the most part, schizophrenic or paranoid or bi-polar. \u00a0Once upon a time I found myself bagging groceries for tips. \u00a0No wages. \u00a0Just tips. \u00a0I’ve been a Benedictine monk hopeful. \u00a0I never made the vows but I’ve lived in two monasteries and spent time attending Mass in two more. \u00a0I still go on retreat to one of my former homes. \u00a0It’s been a wild life and I’m happy to have gotten this far, still vertical and breathing.<\/p>\n

With the exception of a span of just over three years, between 2009 and 2012, and parts of 2007, 2008, and 2009, when I was living either in those monasteries or Maryland, I’ve been at home on Fort Collins, Colorado. \u00a0It’s a fascinating town that may have finally grown too big and pushy for this old farm kid. \u00a0Or maybe I’ve just grown too old for such a young and vibrant place. \u00a0My 52nd birthday was yesterday, so that may be the case. \u00a0I’m told you’re only as young as you feel and it doesn’t seem that ‘old’ has\u00a0reached all of my bones yet. \u00a0Perhaps it’s because I work with a crowd of youngsters who never let me slow down long enough to feel my age. \u00a0Or maybe it’s the knowledge that I’ve just gotten to be twice as old as my father the last age my father attained in life. \u00a0Either way, I’m still usually found in sandals and hoodies and short pants, even in three feet of snow. \u00a0I’m a kid at heart, complete with cool bicycles and toy ray guns.<\/p>\n

I’m a poet because I love to be. \u00a0I wrote as a young man but in the late 1980s I gathered everything together and slowly fed it to a smoldering barbecue grate. \u00a0I started writing again when I was wandering around Europe in the early 1990s. \u00a0Little scraps of writing happened periodically\u00a0until about 2007, when I realized that I wasn’t writing honestly. \u00a0Certain that I couldn’t and never would, I wrapped everything: bar napkins and coasters; scraps of brown grocery bags; the backs of receipts, etc.; in Hefty bags and duct tape, including my European notebooks, took the bundle to the landfill, tossed it in front of the dozer, and watched it go under the blade. \u00a0That pile of scribbles won’t be seen again until Judgment Day. \u00a0Not even then, if I can help it.<\/p>\n

I swore that I would never write again. \u00a0Not being ‘good enough’ was too much of a disappointment.<\/p>\n

In 2011, a friend who knew I enjoyed poetry and had tried my hand at it ‘once-upon-a-time’ asked if I could help him write a love poem for his girlfriend. \u00a0I gave him some pointers, which included advising him of the use of random sentences, my own example being, “With the egg money, I bought a kite.” \u00a0He asked if I could write that poem and I said that I thought I could. \u00a0When I came back to him the next day, he had decided that poetry was ‘too hard’ and he was going to try something else to impress his girl. \u00a0I, on the other hand, had this:<\/p>\n

“THE OTHER EGGS”<\/span><\/h2>\n

 <\/p>\n

With the egg money I bought a kite,<\/div>\n
strong and flat,<\/div>\n
that would stand on its tail and<\/div>\n
\n

howl at the moon.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

With gut twine and hope I flew it at night;<\/div>\n
and the strength of its heart poked holes in the
\nwhite-soft pupil of the blind lunar eye.<\/div>\n
With a thrill and a cry, I felt its tug,<\/div>\n
I knew not where,<\/div>\n
and it danced out of sight and let me believe<\/div>\n
that it was high in the wind and beyond;<\/div>\n
that it was the jewel of my wandering dreams<\/div>\n
\n

cast up from the far volcano of sleep.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

We were awake in the night, my kite and I.<\/div>\n
With a broad knife and bold I severed the twine<\/div>\n
\n

that spread between the moon and my sighs.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

As a bark high and wide my kite leapt<\/div>\n
and it flew away on the tide of the wind;<\/div>\n
\n

swinging not on gut twine but on a rope of random stars.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

And soft down we fell in the dark,<\/div>\n
my kite and me.<\/div>\n
With the dawn came the cock and the crow<\/div>\n
and the hen and the egg and the clutch<\/div>\n
\n

and I stole the hen\u2019s new eggs . . .<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

and I sold them . . .<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

And with the other egg money . . .<\/div>\n
\n

I bought a kite.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
\n

After composing it, I sat down with a pen and paper every day, for the rest of the summer, and for over seventy days, I was able to scribble at least one poem a day. \u00a0Not all of them were anything readable, but I was enjoying their composition. \u00a0For the six years since then, the poetic well has sustained me. \u00a0Sometimes to a greater degree, and sometimes to a lesser, but poetry is increasingly a real source of sustenance. \u00a0Food for the soul.<\/p>\n

– \u00a0One side note – \u00a0I recently entered ‘The Other Eggs’ in a bards battle and it placed in the top ten, out of over a hundred pieces submitted. \u00a0I’ve entered the same contest four times in five years, eight poems total, and placed six of them in the top ten. \u00a0I’ve never won but twice I’ve had both of my entries judged as Top Ten Finalists. \u00a0To my way of thinking two in the ten is better than one at the top. –<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

I discovered that the poetry that had disappointed me earlier in my life, the poetry I had destroyed, had done so because it was based in the anger and disappointment in my life. \u00a0It was very ’emo’, as the cool kids say, but I’m not ’emo’ myself. \u00a0I’m a vagabond and a happy-go-lucky wanderer. \u00a0I’m a painter with bright colors. \u00a0When I make love, it’s with great joy and reckless abandon. \u00a0Or was. \u00a0That’s something I gave up in order to be a monk and when that dream was set aside, I never took it back up again. \u00a0I’m sure you know what I mean. \u00a0It’ll come back around one of these days, almost certainly. \u00a0I love to laugh and scratch in the dirt with sticks like a child. \u00a0I play with toy trains in the middle of the night, just to watch the lights race around my house. \u00a0I build model airplanes. \u00a0I play video games. \u00a0I do things that bring me joy and I love to share joy. \u00a0My ‘now poetry’ is romance and joy and happiness, for the most part. \u00a0Back then, it wasn’t. \u00a0It was me recording misery and then using the words to inflict it back on myself. \u00a0Some people can write misery very well and in a way that doesn’t seem maudlin. \u00a0I can’t. \u00a0Or not often enough to make it a forte. \u00a0I simply thought I could. \u00a0And should. \u00a0Hence the disappointment. \u00a0It was feeding misery and it was starving me.Since the writing of ‘The Other Eggs’, though, poetry can fill me with an exultation that I don’t get from so many other things. \u00a0I also write love letters for the same reason. \u00a0Sometimes I write them anonymously and leave them in little nooks and crannies downtown, for strangers to find. \u00a0I get the same thrill from that as I do when I write a sonnet for Louise Brooks or Queen Victoria or Anais Nin, just a few of the goddesses of my idolatry. \u00a0Sometimes I write them for Dulcinea, my own ideal, not unlike she of the love of Don Quixote. \u00a0Those I share on my blog for my friends. \u00a0I will still occasionally compose something not especially happy, something ‘dark’ such as<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n

“One Day in the Clover”<\/strong><\/h2>\n

 <\/p>\n

One day,
\nfive by five abreast,
\nwe’ll walk
\nwith little steps.<\/p>\n

All of those who will
\nnot
\nbe the same,
\nhomogenized,<\/p>\n

we’ll walk.<\/p>\n

And the artists will stand
\nwith the poets
\nand the prophets
\nwho saw
\nfor themselves
\nand not for the mob.<\/p>\n

To the dim
\nbehind the paint sheds.<\/p>\n

I wonder how
\nthe dandelions
\nwill taste
\non the wind that day.<\/p>\n

I wonder if
\nthe wind will be sweet
\n. . .
\nsweet like clover jam.<\/p>\n

I hope so because
\nI know
\nI’ll be among them.<\/p>\n

I am not the mob,
\nnor of it.<\/p>\n

Perhaps I was
\nonce,
\nbut at the calling
\nand the rolling
\nof the
\nparadigm shift,
\nI stepped back
\nand I looked forward
\n. . .
\nto the paint sheds
\n. . .
\nand I chose
\nto smell
\non the wind,
\nand
\nto feel
\ndeep inside,<\/p>\n

the dandelion.
\nThe clover.
\nThe wind I cannot change.
\nOr stop.<\/p>\n

Not the paint,
\nthe benzine,
\nthe blood-honey
\ndiesel splash
\nthat will blaze
\nand smoke in cylinders,
\nflash-burn like life
\nused to
\nin true hearts.<\/p>\n

It will burn,
\nyou know,
\nbeside the roads that day.<\/p>\n

And I won’t smell the cordite<\/p>\n

that will drift calmly,
\nafter the fact,
\nbehind the paint sheds.<\/p>\n

I’ll lie down beneath it,
\namongst
\nthe dandelions
\nand the clover,
\nstaring heaven-ward<\/p>\n

just an
\nold-fashioned poet<\/p>\n

who made a choice<\/p>\n

rather than to yield to<\/p>\n

the mob.<\/p>\n

I hope that they notice that the clover
\nis sweet . . .
\nand soft . . .
\nand what it cost them.<\/p>\n

For me, it was free.<\/p>\n

I can\u00a0<\/em>do dark. \u00a0I just don’t like to. \u00a0Those poems are notable in my catalog also because they’re free form. \u00a0I prefer sonnets and sestinas. \u00a0I love to try to find the door that opens inward into a closed form, to push on it, and to see the wide world that’s in there. \u00a0I’m more confined by free form than I am by sonnets. \u00a0Strange, I know.<\/p>\n

That poem, by the way, was a response to a particularly galling day among the savages, watching what modern media does with words and with feeling. \u00a0I’m still not convinced that that won’t happen, by the way. \u00a0That we won’t all be taken out and shot one day for thinking outside of an unfortunate norm. \u00a0For meaning what we say and saying that which isn’t ‘beneficial’, whatever that may mean. \u00a0By and large though, joy is what I do.<\/p>\n

~~~<\/p>\n

And that’s an introduction to me as a poet and as a person. \u00a0One poem on a hot June day has turned into 200+ sonnets, several odes, numerous rhythmic rhyming pieces and about an acre-and-a-half of free form. \u00a0I couldn’t stop now if I tried. \u00a0And I’ve tried.<\/p>\n

It should be worth mentioning that I idolize Elizabeth Barrett Browning and ‘The Sonnets from the Portuguese’.<\/p>\n

Emily Dickinson, I would give almost anything to spend a\u00a0morning baking coconut cake in that Amherst kitchen then devouring the entire thing with her over a pot of tea. \u00a0I have the recipe for that cake and someday I’ll bake it with someone whose writing I admire. \u00a0Maybe just someone whose poetry I want to sit and listen to all day long.<\/p>\n

One of the prizes of my poetry collection is a good condition first edition of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s ‘Wine From These Grapes’, still with the dust jacket and rice paper insert. \u00a0I found it sitting on top of a stack of bad, paperback science fiction, next to a dumpster, when the college kids moved out. \u00a0What sort of savage throws something like that away?<\/p>\n

Rabindranath Tagore. \u00a0What a joy to read his ‘Gardener’.<\/p>\n

Pablo Neruda.<\/p>\n

Anna Akhmatova.<\/p>\n

Maria Tsvetaeva.<\/p>\n

Billy Collins, especially ‘Taking Off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes’. \u00a0I frequently have to explain that one.<\/p>\n

‘The Song of Solomon’ from the Old Testament is such beautiful love poetry.<\/p>\n

I adore Maggie Estep’s ‘Scab Maids on Speed’.<\/p>\n

I am crushed to the depths of my soul by Wilfred Owen, especially ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’. \u00a0Just because I don’t willing ‘do’ dark, doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy and admire it.<\/p>\n

Rudyard Kipling’s ‘Soldier an’ Sailor Too’ is why, although I have MacMillans and Bealls, Calders, Taylors, and Edmonstones in my background, I wear a Black Watch kilt. \u00a0‘But to stand and be still to the Birken \u2018ead drill. Is a damn tough bullet to chew.” \u00a0<\/em>The Birkenhead Drill. \u00a0Such nobility and sacrifice.<\/p>\n

The list goes on and on.<\/p>\n

Will I ever write anything that deserves to be on the list with those poets and their works? \u00a0I hope to. \u00a0If I have an ambition, that would be it. \u00a0I’m not there yet, that’s for certain. \u00a0But I have hope. \u00a0I have joy. \u00a0Although I may be disappointed in the end, I believe I will always have a love of poetry to keep me trying.<\/p>\n

That’s why I’ve joined this marathon, or rather ‘half-marathon’ in my case. \u00a0I work on Sunday morning so, logistically, I wouldn’t have the time to finish a 24 piece marathon and still get enough sleep to see me through work. \u00a0I’ve joined the marathon because it’s another challenge, something less competitive and therefore more enriching than a bard’s battle.. \u00a0We don’t improve by being complacent and we can’t best a challenge if we don’t face it. \u00a0I’m looking forward to facing this one with all of you. \u00a0Best of luck finishing. \u00a0I look forward to reading, and hearing, what you all have to say. \u00a0I’m grateful that you’ll let me listen.<\/p>\n

m<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Good evening. \u00a0It’s an interesting day for me to be making new acquaintances. \u00a0I’ve spent the afternoon bar-tending for the memorial of an old friend. \u00a0Cycle-of-life and all that, I guess. \u00a0As they leave, so do they enter. The e-mail regarding this endeavor encouraged me…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1052,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1052"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30774"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30774\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30784,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30774\/revisions\/30784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}