Sound + Vision

Listening to some old David Bowie. His 80's stuff is so weird, all that plastic soul.

***

Very cool email this afternoon from Crazyhorse: I have a poem forthcoming in the next issue, which has come up four pages short, so they asked for a new batch of poems to fill out the issue before it goes to press. Hopefully, they'll find something they like but, truth be told, I had precious few poems to choose from. Almost everything in my second ms. is published, or will be. A good problem to have.

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Freezing rain coming in tonight. Very cold out, misting and gusty. The world where you are?

We can work it out

My face feels crinkly, that feeling when you've been out in the sun for a while. And guess what? I spent most of the day out in the sun. It reached 66 degrees here, the finest day in months. I sunned like a lizard on a rock. A friend called out to me from two floors up, "How long are you going to wait, Paul?" "I'm not!" I guess she'd been by earlier and seen me in the very same spot. Ok, so I was really soaking it up. Too gorgeous not to.

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Today's word is poikilothermic.

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C'mon, spring....

Odin's Raven

Last night I was invoking the Hulk. Today, Thor. And I was never even that into Marvel comics when I was a kid. Anyway, the reason I'm summoning my cartoon wrath is two-fold: a., handfuls of students who send e-mails saying, "I've never felt mixed emotions about anything," in regards to a writing assignment (to which I don't reply various too harsh messages about waking up, getting real, doing actual thinking), and b., Steve. The students are generally forgiveable: they're young, they're freshmen, they've been coddled, etc. I'll get over it.

But, Steve.

Steve is the guy I hired as my personal care assistant. He comes in the evenings and mornings and helps me in/out of bed, dressing, that's about it. He's been working for me since November and has been quite reliable. Last night, however, he didn't show and never called. I waited until well after midnight and never heard from or saw him. Luckily, my family lives here in town.

Still today no word. He didn't show this morning. I have no idea what his deal is. It's frustrating. It took me three months to find this joker. I don't want to start over again just as I'm finally, in the last few weeks, getting everything in place, in a groove.

And now this.

Multiple grr's happening

I'm about to go Bill Bixby on a select few people....

Buffy database

(Purloined link from Backwards City blog)

Buffy Database

I've a demon in my pants

The Lord Works in Mysterious Ways

Fire!

So practically all of my students have revealed themselves to be past or present pyromaniacs, which I salute and endorse, but it's just funny. I'm not sure how it even came up, but apparently a good portion of them spent their childhoods burning stuff up. Many of them come from more rural backgrounds and I think it's more common to burn leaves or rubbish than, say, someone who lived within city limits where there are often ordinances against burning. I had to tell the story of one of my brothers setting the doghouse on fire years ago. My own poem, "The Pyromaniac's Eulogy," has its roots in my firebug childhood.

***

Fighting off a cold. Feeling ok.

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Saw A Very Long Engagement this weekend. A little long, I thought, but lovely.

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Today's word is ASAP. I'm using it as often as possible. It makes me happy.

10,000 hits!

Brr

A friend dared me to use the phrase "bitch-ass cold" in a poem, so I did. Not sure how good it is, but I had fun writing it:

WEATHER

Bitch-ass cold was how you described the air,

your own pluming out into the month,

and I had to smile, your forecast

four letter visceral. No more

technical a term than the staccato chatter

of teeth, the blue vibrato

of lips, the stolid stamp of booted feet.

All around us, the mad wait

to besiege the stores

for milk, for bread, for eggs

if the first flurry falls,

if the ground goes ash fine and white.

Where is what I refuse

to wear, my coat,

my mits you joke knitting for me,

where is Barbados sun

and why not here,

the tilt of the earth no good excuse

for January’s anti-social

sky. On the doorknob, on the door,

in the air are the hidden

germs on which you spend

your days and words

and in this air there’s no good medicine

for anything. It’s cold

and the shiver of the world

stops in my bed.

Writin' my will on a three dollar bill

I applied for a visiting position at the University of Central Oklahoma. Lord help me. But, as I'm in a visiting position here, in a state that has terrible financial problems right now, there's no solid guarantee the funding for me will be here again this fall. So I'm applying to other jobs as a back-up. And a poor "back-up" that is, considering I applied to over a hundred jobs before getting this one. But, I won't get anywhere sitting on my duff. Onward! I've got a pretty kick-ass CV, but so does everybody else, it seems. Alas.

***

Finished Buffy, season 3. Pretty great stuff. Season 2 is still high up there for me, with its operatic qualities. The moment when Angel kills Jenny (was that her name?) still gives me a shiver. 3 is great, though. Which I expected. "The Zeppo" was an amazing episode, one that knocked me right between the eyes.

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Well, I didn't win the Morse prize, though the letter indicates my ms. was a strong contender. Another one down. It's coming so close, so often. Patience.

a fortune inside your head

Supercool thanks to the fine folk at LIT who accepted two poems today ("Elba" and "The Cartoonist in Hell"). Which is exciting: "Elba" had hung around a while, unwanted. I was beginning to think I was wrong to place it as the lead poem in book 2. Maybe not. As for "Cartoonist," I get Jonny Quest into a poem. That makes me happy.

THE NUMBERS ARE NOT IN

The world is filled with those who want

someone else, just as the world

is split in halves, or hemispheres

if we want the word that says it

with a measure of beauty. Most times,

we do. But tonight, what

you get is halves. Tonight

what you get is another unanswered

question. Something like,

why do cyclones spin counter-clockwise

in this half of the world?

Something like my thoughts

in the shower, my body

washed by someone else,

and I’m thinking of dark matter,

not because my heart

on its haunches sits bleeding out

like last week’s pitiful possum,

its hateful mouth red raw,

but because dark matter is one more thing

I won’t ever understand.

No knowledge could I put on

that might plug the holes,

that might seal the chinks

through which my mind goes

after you. When I read

the absurd science

of how we might one day upload our minds,

it’s Ted Williams
I'm thinking of:

his severed head,

poorly cared for

in its Kelvin crypt of absolute zero,

now cracked, now

the Splendid Splinter even in death.

And it’s that wish

to come back better

or new,

to walk out onto the pliant summers

of our best years

when we knew sex to be as easy as breath

and like the next,

assured. Love, the dark

that waits holds

answers like a winning hand

and I’ve stopped

asking. Whatever I know,

I build it as a bird

builds her fragile bowl of a nest.

And in that nest a bird sings.

Of course,

of course,

she sings to the yolk white world inside each blue egg

and for a time,

for as long as I can stand,

I listen.

You still love rock and roll

It's the forseeable last of this fool's spring that has fallen about us here like a woman's hair. Tonight is the last of it. Outside the air holds onto the mist and the warmth. Tomorrow it'll be thirty degrees cooler than it has been. I've been spoiled like a child.

***

Check out the ultra-suave stylings of Backwards City Review:

Backwards City Review

Both of my poems are about breasts. But not really. Now you know you want to read for sure. ;)

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Received a cd today from Wendy! Very cool. And a card from Erica Bernheim in cold, cold Chicago. It has frogs in swim trunks singing. The card, not Chicago.

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Allison Krauss is playing right down the street from me tonight. I should try to sneak in. I did once. My senior prom night. My date and I left because, well, the theme was "Everything I Do I Do It For You," and isn't that reason enough? So we wandered around downtown till we came to the Memorial Auditorium where some kind of concert was taking place. We were by a side entrance when a man came out. I asked him to hold the door for us and he was only too happy to do so. We followed the meandering hallway until we came out backstage. It was a gospel concert. Musicians in suits stood around us and smiled at us. A giant man held his tiny wife in his arms, seated on his lap. She said we looked so pretty and we thanked her. We stayed and watched each group play, bluegrass, banjos, filled up with God. That was my prom night.

THE LIVES OF THE OPTIMISTS

So the jonquils are fooled into flaming up

though it’s January. The bricks soak

in heat like ruddy sponges.

Walking home, I hide

within whatever’s radiant.

A bird whose name I’ve never bothered

to learn sings its farewell

to winter. It’s January, tomorrow

we’ll grieve. Or the next

day, but not this thawed instant,

not in this false blush

of lilac. In my bones, the old scores

with the earth are laid to rest

and each dyspeptic grudge

blossoms into frantic, sweet, careening

love. In your bones,

the tidal hymns of blood.

This heedless smile once was yours.

So too my hands,

themselves fooled

by the tilt of the earth, the white face of a star.

Thanks to

Jennifer Drake Thornton for quoting from one of my poems at the very tip-top of her blog:

Jennifer Drake Thornton

But the funny thing is I couldn't remember which poem was being quoted. Heh. I had to open up my old Word file for my book and search for the phrase. This is not uncommon with my poems.

Hey, I just write 'em.

Let's get together before we get much older

The case of the mysterious sink: this morning I'm looking at my sink and it begins to fill with water. From the drain. Both sinks filling up with swirly, soapy water. It rises and rises until it overflows in a steady waterfall. Spreading across the floor, a bubbling tide. It continues. We throw down towels. We call the emergency numbers. Upstairs, two girls are washing dishes, their water filling my kitchen. A clear-handled plunger is produced. Maybe Adam Sandler sold it in Punchdrunk Love. I'm punchdrunk.

Thursday rain

Stormy through the night, deep dark, inky morass out. I'm not feeling slow. First day back teaching for me. The first class is so young: they're babies. But they seem nice. Begins the learning of names. Begins the "teaching."

Notebook

Joining in with the gaggle of people responding to Eduardo's challenge to reveal a page from our notebooks, here's one of mine:

SECONDHAND PORN

His laptop hums like a respirator or like a cat

it purrs as its disc drive spins up

It’s not cancer you worry about

It’s not cancer you worry about, it’s not

the carnation light of your clean

lungs you fear to see go dark in your fist

when the coughing never ends,

as you imagine seated beside someone

who smokes when you do not. No,

it isn’t that at all, you might

welcome the clouds, you might not,

I can’t say because I couldn’t

choose myself, waiting in Chicago

while one of our inland seas

would not let us fly home. Braided rain

smacked the glass, delay

was computed in a tower on computers

that voted for Nixon. Beside

me, a man could not be consoled

by his bored clatter of keystrokes,
the simple games designed

to undo time.

Universality is the divide between rust

and the sinking, soft swing sets

No one ever asks but I try to answer

road

I saw the worst thing on the way into campus this morning. In the middle of the road, a possum had been hit, just hit. It was how he sat that was so sad: on his haunches, his chin resting on his chest, little arms in his lap. Blood poured from his nose. How like a little person, sitting there, dazed and dying, I'm certain. Somehow it wouldn't have seemed as bad had he been on his side, maybe. I sat through a meeting with that image. Pitiful thing.

Say hi

to C. Dale Young, who has joined us in blogging at:

C. Dale Young

I admire anyone in poetry who works outside of academia. Bob Hicok used to (I still admire you, Bob!), and so does Mr. Young. A radiation oncologist, which means he is a lot smarter than me.

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It's the new year. New classes begin for me on Thursday, which I'm generally ready to begin. Wish me luck.

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Any one good at astrology? What does my year hold for me?

I'm waiting for the cease and desist letter from Lucasfilm. 

Read Melanie Jordan's 3 crazy poems

@ The Diagram:

Melanie Jordan