“I am sorry to be the baron of bad news, but you seem buttered, so allow me to play doubles advocate here for a moment. For all intensive purposes I think you are wrong. In an age where false morals are a diamond dozen, true virtues are a blessing in the skies, and are more than just ice king on the cake. We often put our false morality on a petal stool like a bunch of pre-Madonnas, but you all seem to be taking something very valuable for granite.

So I ask of you to mustard up all the strength you can because it is a doggy dog world out there. Although there is some merit to what you are saying it seems like you have a huge ship on your shoulder. In your argument you seem to throw everything in but the kids Nsync, and even though you are having a feel day with this I am here to bring you back into reality.

I have a sick sense when it comes to these types of things. It is almost spooky, because I cannot turn a blonde eye to these glaring flaws in your rhetoric. I have zero taller ants when it comes to people spouting out hate in the name of moral righteousness. You just need to remember what comes around is all around, and when supply and command fails you will be the first to go.

Make my words, when you get down to brass stacks it doesn’t take rocket appliances to get two birds stoned at once. It’s clear who makes the pants in this relationship, and sometimes you just have to swallow your prize and accept the fax, instead of making a half-harded effort. You might have to come to this conclusion through denial and error but I swear on my mother’s mating name that when you put the petal to the medal you will pass with flying carpets like it’s a peach of cake.” Read more »

Are you mindful of the other driver?

Between home and work, those huge digital matrix signs loom over the interstate, the ones intended to keep you abreast of traffic situations. But, except during snowstorms, there are no real traffic situations between home and work. It’s not that kind of town. So, instead, the signs display helpful messages and driving tips. Usually somewhere between self-righteously bossy (“Texting and Driving Don’t Mix”) and winkingly practical (“DUI Patrols Tonight”), lately the DOT has turned more philosophical. The other day, all over the state, the signs asked, “Are You Mindful of the Other Driver?”

It is the word “mindful” that seems out of place in square letters above the interstate. I am used to the DOT being concerned about my driving habits and even about the more physiological aspects of my mental state (who doesn’t like rest stops with free coffee?), but this seems to enter another kind of territory, a territory that is normally the domain of poets and pastors (and—on a side note—of Dinty W. Moore’s new book). I’m not used to hearing about such existential stuff from the lower levels of state bureaucracy. Not that I mind. In fact, I kind of like the idea that they might have more to say than “Merge Left in 1500 Feet.”

But that “mindful” and the abstract “other.” The word choice suggests authorship in a venue that is normally dominated by anonymity. This is not, I think, language that could be produced by machine or by government committee. This language was created, composed. So, reading it, driving beneath this message, I imagine the DOT copywriter in his cubicle, the perfunctory fabric walls, the smell of canned air. Read more »

I’m nervous about writing, and perhaps I should be.

Growing up I never liked to read.  Neither of my parents went to college.  Neither of them took the time to peruse much more than a copy of Popular Mechanics, or maybe, the Readers Digest abridged version of Alex Haley’s Roots, which they would watch on television anyway… But I can’t blame my anxiety about reading and writing well on them.

All I can say is that I love the capacity of words to inject emotional energy into a Tuesday afternoon with the drive-through traffic at Starbucks swirling around me.  I grew to love novels, short stories and poems, but first and foremost, I was impressed with the miracle of a well-chosen word.  And sometimes, even an poorly-chosen word would suffice and set me off.  Just the sheer effort of an individual to articulate his or her experience–that’s enough to make my hair stand on end.  Hence:  my apprehension!

What if I fuck it up?

Today I heard on National Public Radio a segment with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.   It dealt with “Roots Envy,” or the inability of some folks to trace their family ancestry back generation after generation like the legendary figure of the 1970′s best-seller.  Gates, around that time, became enamored with the possibility and discovered some things about his mother and father that were remarkable.  For example, evidently one of Gates’ kin had marshaled in and out of a Revolutionary War militia between the years 1777 and 1784.  For an African-American that’s especially intriguing.  Also, during the broadcast, Neil Conan asked the author of the Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Reader to revisit what he had written about his mother’s funeral.   (The audio of this reading, available today at 6 p.m., is worth listening to.)  He actually didn’t appreciate the stale, blue-blood service that they had back in 1997.  And so, with nothing more than a few words, he described the rowdy sermon and the swaying hymn-sings and the falling-down-in-the-aisle catharsis that would have been preferred.  It would have been a funeral like they had had for this uncle or for that aunt.  It would have been hot.  It would have gone on for hours.  It would have included those paper-fans, by which the mourners move the air about in vain…

I tell you, when I heard Gates read about this re-cast episode of his life, I wept like she were my own mother.  While driving through road construction barriers on I-90, I nearly couldn’t see that I’d be losing the left lane.  And I realized, while putting my foot on the brake, that I don’t have to be so nervous, that I’m not so much searching for that perfect word as I am searching for that intuitive trigger or that trap door that allows me to plunge into humanity’s collective subconscious.  Is there such a thing… such an ocean of dreams?
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I love Twitter. If you have spoken with me and I somehow didn’t talk about video games, I may have dropped an excited/incomprehensible explanation of Twitter and how much I like it on you, and for that, I thank you for humoring me. It’s difficult to explain how to use Twitter. Using Twitter is like telling a joke at a party. The difference is that with Twitter, you can see if your audience really liked your joke, and weren’t just being polite, and, even better, you can see if they liked it enough to tell all their friends about it. In the barren wasteland of Internet-speak, these everyday actions are called “Faving” and “retweeting” respectively, but they are very much like the human behaviors they resemble. And because you can see how many people faved or retweeted you, it encourages people to say funny or insightful or strange things (or sometimes all three at once), like a no-stakes poetry contest that lasts all day and never ends. Read more »

If you can understand the me, then I can understand the you.
–Metallica, “The Unforgiven II”

Don't Get Trapped in the Yellow Dog Sentence

Back in my demolition days, I was going to a lot of Amazon parties. That was when Amazon had ads every week in the Seattle Weekly and The Stranger in an ongoing hiring spree.

While Amazon snatched up my friends, I tore down walls. I remember describing some of my misgivings about my job to a woman while sipping wine from plastic cups in an overgrown yard in Wallingford. The sledge hammer was heavy, its blows loud. I wasn’t sure I had enough “rrrr” in me to last in the field.

The woman I was talking to had probably graduated from an Ivy League school and moved to Seattle to work for this start-up. She was the type of person who still thought she was the smartest girl in the world. She said, “You need to embrace your inner balls,” and then demonstrated how I should approach my job by springing into a lunge with fists punching the air, scowling, and growling. Read more »

I’ve been working a ton lately, so I’ve got medical transcription on the brain.  I transcribe for a bunch of different doctors in a few different clinics, and at least once a day I have to stop and write down something that interests me.  Sometimes these things are funny:

CHIEF COMPLAINT:  The patient has been seen by me previously.  (The Chief Complaint is the reason the patient has come in for a visit.)

 She has a point on her back where if she touches that point it causes her to have nausea.  I indicated to her she should probably not push on that spot.

 It actually only happens when she gulps cold beer.  I told her to stop doing that.  (Docs really do say that!  Haha!)

 Sometimes they are poetic:

Six-two-nine-six Cedar Canyon Road.  Say it again:

Six-two-nine-six Cedar Canyon Road 

Pepcid utilized in place of Prilosec given the issues of Plavix.  

Counseling concerning cryotherapy.

 Sometimes the things I write down are things that make me think and sometimes make me angry/sad: Read more »

If you’re a writer looking to submit work to a literary journal, let me tell you a small story and you can take from it what you will: Often in Willow Springs selection meetings, we have an argument about whether or not a poem is accessible to a wide audience. We argue over whether the poem uses references in a way that is helpful to the meaning or if instead,  the obscure references narrow down who would enjoy what the poem is trying to do. We call the latter “Poet’s Poems” and the decision we make about accepting one varies each time but more often than not, the poem is rejected.

         I tell this story, not because I write poems with specific literary or artistic references but because I enjoy poets who do, poets like Major Jackson and Melissa Kwasny but I had to learn to enjoy them. I have to thank Christopher Howell for introducing me to Melissa Kwasny. Last year during workshop he taught us how to read her book  The Nine Senses. I’d read the book before class and had been thoroughly unimpressed, frustrated even. A year later, I know why I was unimpressed: I was an idiot. I saw a book full of prose poems that seemed to be about trees and leaves and birds and I took every phrase LITERALLY.

The Nine Senses by Melissa Kwasny

 Now, I read The Nine Senses with respect and concentration because it requires both to be appreciated. These are not poems to be read idly while also watching the television. Kwasny’s poems move so quickly and leap so deftly, it’s the reader’s responsibility to commit to her level of intensity. Here I’ll show you: Read more »

It’s not like I feel I cannot communicate, but I’m tired of standing on a layer of ice somewhere in the mist and it comforts me to know that it doesn’t care if you had a bad day.  I was in a wonderfully stimulating and inspiring group, but for those of you who have yet to stumble, it’s required for all literary bloggers.

My voice is hearse. At least that’s what I’m telling my unemployable self.  Thinking of my own history, it’s fully responsive with all the touch-patterns, like gently moaning in your sleep or the outer stretches of terrain you scarcely knew existed.

If you haven’t stopped reading allow me to make a few suggestions.  You need some ‘me’ time.  Eat some food. Create successful images. Beg forgiveness. Keep on rolling.

I’ll admit I got sucked in. I made a substantial commitment and spent a lion’s share of my time keeping up.  The prototype means artistic pursuits—spontaneous bursts of passion—are utterly elusive.  Users create stunning commentary and careen through slushy streets.

The outrage over leaving the passenger seat can be utterly liberating so don’t ask permission.  Too few are listening.  10,000 variations of nomads make a Pulitzer Prize winner look like a Billy-Goat troll amid a thousand bohemian chumps who look just like me. Like the bald eagle that flew between two clear-cut hills and disappeared, I’m in favor of being stupid in all the right ways. Read more »

Presidents Day has got me pondering, of all things, presidential verbiage.  And although we’ve missed Abraham Lincoln’s actual birthday (Feb. 12) by nine days, “Four score and seven years ago” is a pretty cool turn of phrase (although it was probably borrowed from the King James Bible).

At any rate, during one of these February dates in the year, 1864, the President who once spoke these syllables re-wrote them for the fourth time by hand.   It is worth noting that Lincoln made this effort for friends and for purposes of history, and on this fourth occasion he scribed the Gettysburg Address for colleague and former Secretary of the Navy, George Bancroft.   Bancroft had, in turn, wanted to publish the cursive writing in some manner of historical journal, but because Lincoln had scribbled this copy back to back, it couldn’t be duplicated clearly.  Following Bancroft’s fourth copy of the “few appropriate remarks,” the Secretary’s stepson, Colonel Alexander Bless, made and received the fifth and supposed final transcript of the president’s oratory.  And here’s where the now famous speech of November 19, 1863, becomes somewhat hairy (historically speaking).  That is, like so many other documents that have been recorded for posterity, the assorted versions of the prose vary in line length, vocabulary and, in one case, intertextual revisions.

None of this, of course, should surprise anyone, least of all an historian.   The historian, surrounded by boxes and boxes of supposed eye-witness accounts, and those, stacked upon even larger crates containing annals, heirlooms and artifacts, and those often ransacked by tomb raiders and archeological looters as well as the stray bedouin, looking to stay warm by tossing one or two scrolls into the fire… yes … the historian comprehends the mess.   And then, takes great pains to clean things up.   What we, the readers of history, get is this:  the redacted version of ever-devolving details.   Exactitude is lost over time, even a nanosecond.   Things may be recapitulated, but merely as a simulacrum of the real deal.   Historians, therefore, might as well admit it; before them is the most audacious poetic task, which is the re-writing of history, or of histories.

Many may recall the comments of President George W. Bush when he had been asked by Bob Woodward about how history might judge him.   He said, “History we don’t know; we’ll all be dead.”

My argument, however, is that we do know it.   We know it all too well.   History is coughed up like phlegm in our throats.  History wells up like blood-textured tears in our eyes.   History cramps our fingers and toes.   History makes our ears buzz at night as if we’re listening to Emily Dickinson’s fly “when I died.”  What’s different about this history, rather than the Bush doctrine-fatalism, is the heap of contingencies that gall us in the present.   It could have been otherwise.
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When my car stalled in the middle of MacDade Blvd, near the Nautilus Fitness Center, I saw my future.

The Plymouth Duster had been patched together for years.  Literally.   Once I found myself  epoxying chicken wire over a dent in the right passenger door and painting it with Rustoleum.  Then I lost myself again, and for years she took me to and from class, climbed the Allegheny mountains and transported kegs of beer to mythic realms where Bon Jovi and Madonna still reign as King and Queen (no one can convince them otherwise).

Anyway, it was a sad day when the tail pipe fell off and careened along the median strip, causing mayhem for the traffic coming in my rear-view mirror.  But the day that I’m recalling — that time of the infamous stalling in the midst of rush hour — is not that day…

During that particular turn of the Earth’s axis I called my father, an automobile mechanic for over forty years, and asked him for help.  I called him from the counter of the fitness center where I belonged and where the body-building guru had once taken a look at my torso and asked me if I’d left “my chest at home.”   My dear ol’ Dad could be just as calloused when it came to my feelings, but as I described for him the car’s diagonal position in the road and how we were about to make the evening news, he seemed downright cheerful and calm.  ”I’ll be there in ten minutes,” he said at 5:35 in the afternoon, and with the Fidelity Bank sign blinking the digits of 5:45 he appeared in his greasy overalls and got to work.

First on the agenda involved a problem I failed to mention over the phone.  That is, in my haste to exit the vehicle and run across the parking lot, I had locked the keys in the car.   (Don’t ask me how.)   And so, with the trusty bent-clothes-hanger technique, Mr. Fix-It opened the door.   He then popped the hood and stuck his head into the guts of the engine.  He yanked, twisted, tightened and told me to get in the driver’s seat and try to start her up.

I did and nothing happened.  Nothing…
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