poetry

Poetry comes from a place that no one commands and no one conquers.
Leonard Cohen

I am the greatest!

A man may be lying on his bed;
his house may be cold;
he may be covered with a torn blanket;
he may be alone in the world without a penny to his name;
and yet in his heart he may think
"I am the greatest! I am the best who ever lived!"
Rebbe Raphael of Bershad
from David Berman's blog, Menthol Mountains

Cold Cold Heart

I try so hard my dear to say
That you’re my every dream.
Yet you’re afraid each thing I do
Is just some evil scheme
Some mem’ry from your lonesome past
Keeps us so far apart.
Why can’t I free your doubtful mind
And melt your cold, cold heart
-- Harlan Howard, "Cold Cold Heart"

3/24/11

It took one I couldn't have

to make it right.

Took being shown what is out there

to know what I don't have.

Should've settled up a long time ago;

made myself aware

that it's all at my fingertips, just waiting.

I know that one day I'll get it all right,

meet the smart one

who makes me smile and makes me shy.

I've learned so much from the past ones, and for that I am grateful.

And from this one so to I have learned.

truth

All of humanity is searching for truth, justice, and beauty. We are on an emotional search for the truth because we only believe in the lies we have stored in our mind. We are searching for justice because in the belief system we have, there is no justice. We search for beauty because it doesn't matter how beautiful a person is, we don't believe that person has beauty. We keep searching and searching, when everything is already within us. There is no truth to find. Wherever we turn our heads, all we see is the truth, but with the agreements and beliefs we have stored in our mind, we have no eyes for the truth.

-- Don Miguel Ruiz

Field Notes

A wonderful photo essay on the beauty and lost art of field notes, from Wired.com http://bit.ly/oMIoBa

"I dislike schedules, and on the river the idea that I'd let myself come to count on getting to any one spot at any particular time enraged me more than the accident my ineptitude has caused."

-- John Graves, Goodbye To A River

6.22.11

It's always best

to write

when you can't

read

More appropriate

to cast grievances

when you're hoping

to

'figure it out'

I once ran the future

I made everyone cattle

The mountains loomed over the valley like a physical presence, a source and mirror of nervous influences, emotions, subtle and unlabeled aspirations; no man could ignore that presence; in an underground poker game, in the vaults of the First National Bank, in the secret chambers of the Factory, in the backroom of the realtor's office during the composition of an intricate swindle, in the heart of a sexual embrace, the emanations of mountain and sky imprinted some analogue of their nature on the evolution and shape of every soul. -- from The Brave Cowboy, by Ed Abbey

2/22/11

She couldn't let go

of that which she never had.

Couldn't comprehend

what was out of her grasp.

So often she had wondered

where she went astray,

how here intentions

proved counter

to her childhood visions

of sanctity and grace.

When she thought

it was permissible

to lament her heartache

and promote his absence

of emotion,

that emotion that seemed

almost prevalent,

that of being unaffected,

detached.

It was his only choice

not to commit himself

to another season of dread,

another round of appeasement.

He wasn't giving up

but getting free.

4/5/11

He wanted to write

a novel of songs,

of singing.

What it's like to breathe

after a year's held breath.

Seasons can change so swiftly

when we're numb,

when life's journeys are

held as obligations.

We all must be challenged

and driven by our own quests.

You can't force

a man to breathe differently,

to understand your patterns.

Each ear is affixed

to what it wants to hear.

His grandfather said,

"Any cedar will grow

where'er she damn well pleases.

You just keep an eye on

what nurses beneath 'er."

Just found this in a notebook. No recollection

12.24.10

Having ventured back a time and again, I now exist in a time which was never mine, in a situation I always saw but never knew, never dared to question or seek a part of. I'm better off not knowing or understanding, better served when I'm forced to scavenge and seek.

So much changes in the instant of a year, in the particulars and absent transgressions. What we fight and quarrel, admire and detest, is fleeting in that non-human scope, in that everlasting life.

I'm content in recognizing my actions as rude, in pursuing vistas whose ominous proclivities would be certain to a child.

For we aren't here to explain our actions or justify kind omissions. Our journey had no date of departure nor possesses a projected arrival. Because we never truly leave.

Everything experienced saturates our self to some degree; recognized or not. And we similarly never arrive at our admired grace. All existence is in flux, a climb and descent with intermittent holds and ephemeral states of feeling grounded.

Rocks, ropes, limbs and grips are nothing but molecules in separate configurations. A bleating goat and screeching brake, but wavelengths of varied compressions. As we extrapolate ourselves, as we attempt to exempt the nature of our humanness, our true existence conversely diminishes; we become less with each attempt to elevate ourselves - that self promulgation rampantly raping our true humanity, that which is the inherent glue of our kind.

Can I continue assuming so? Assuming I exist and interact beyond the norm or am stronger than the delicate Madrone or more hearty than the Ashe juniper?

My bark is thin. I must tread lightly if I'm to never stop.

Our children no longer learn how to read

the great Book of Nature

from their own direct experience or how to

interact creatively

with the seasonal transformations of the planet.

They seldom learn where their water comes from

or where it goes.

We no longer coordinate our human celebration with

the great liturgy of the heavens.

--- Wendell Berry

It is terribly difficult to say honestly, without posing or faking, what one truly and fundamentally believes. Reticence or an itch to make public confession may distort or dramatize what is really there to be said, and public expressions of belief are so closely associated with inspirational activity, and in fact so often stem from someone's desire to buck up the downhearted and raise the general morale, that belief becomes an evangelical matter.

Wallace Stegner, This I Believe

The flexibility of his insight was of the kind that comes sometimes from not owning anything or anybody and therefore not being obliged by your interests to shape your thought narrowly. People of that kind are good to be around, though they're fairly rare even among have-nots, since the quality depends on some brains and an absence of envy.

-- Goodbye To A River, John Graves

In a time that breaks

in cutting pieces all around,

when men, voiceless

against thing-ridden men,

set themselves on fire, it seems

too difficult and rare

to think of the life of a man

grown whole in the world,

at peace and in place.

But having thought of it

I am beyond the time

I might have sold my hands

or sold my voice and mind

to the arguments of power

that go blind against

what they would destroy.

-- Wendell Berry

3/6/10

Had he flown, the storms mass would have arrived sooner, with less trepidation. To be caught bare in the surge was a blessing to him, kinder than knowing in advance. When his mind was built, he was twelve. He had never possessed trouble in mind. By eighteen, he had walked in silence for six years. Occasionally wading in joy, he awaited the solitude of life's downward slope, those final decades.

Had he flown, he'd have never known. Though each step appeared heavier, he was told it only eased with time. Days, thoughts, that notion of time was common only in winter, when it actually stopped.

Had he followed the common man's central flyway, floating in assumed complacency, he'd have never loved; his hate would seem meager. Had he never loved, his hate would be meager.

Each time he conquered another, it was a different vein of the same rhythmic pulse. The hunt always elating, the kill never satiating. A jingoist, a sybarite, he would soar those first days following a kill. He would carry that affectation till they met it head-on, till he realized his own ineptitude.

It usually arrives

after the second

layover.

When time becomes

irrelevent

and the eight dollar beers

begin to remind you

of the last time

you saw her,

or even the last time

you had sex.

You can't begin again

till your perception acknowledges

the absurdity of air travel,

the world's shortcomings.

The pen and ink,

they're everything,

once everything again means

nothing.

It's hard to sleep

when your phone's

dead,

when your pits reek

of booze.

But that's when it arrives,

when you can think

of nothing else,

when only regret can loosen

your bowels,

and the pen can move itself.