a new poem

Edge of the World

If ever I’m far beyond the place I've never been -

Reepicheep paddling his boat w/ dogged courage
all the castles of Atlantis crumbling -

I will find you there, waiting & smiling, cooing like a dove,
saying, My love my love, and worrying over my flesh wounds

with such dismay, such innocent, relieved concern
my heart will actually break into halves
because I will have found you at the edge of the world
and, finding you, know my end is yet a little further, a little deeper

into the black.

convergence poems

The idea of a "convergence poem" is to place two things or ideas adjacent to one another and see how they interact. In college, we read a book of poetry by Quan Barry called Controvertibles that gave us the mould for our own experiments with convergence. Here are four of my favorite Quan Barry poem titles (and really, many are so beautiful & intriguing that they are poems in their own right):


     the seahorse as transubstantiation

     Nick Drake's "Pink Moon" as Infatuation

     Richard Nixon's 1972 Christmas Bombing Campaign as Gospel

     Doug Flutie's 1984 Orange Bowl Hail Mary as Water into Fire

To name just a few. Reading back over my notes from that time, I found my own attempts at convergence titles to be quite pitiful, but a few of them struck a chord in me still, which maybe means they're worth revisiting. Who knows? Here are two:

     the heroine addict who receives a sudden windfall of cash as nostalgia


     closing monologue in "The Shawshank Redemption" as first love


These are poems I'd definitely like to read, if not write. I'd encourage anyone who's interested to give this formula a try. It's really fun and actually quite a bit more difficult than it sounds to make a meaningful convergence. And, at the heart of the project is the magic of metaphor: which two things, when placed in close enough proximity, will tell us something new about the other?

Also, just as a shameless plug for her book, I'm going to post one of Quan Barry's poems here. Really, this whole book is worth your time.


Nick Drake's "Pink Moon" as Infatuation


What is it about movement?

On the horizon, the growing wheel like something forged.

I want that feeling---the water's eagerness to respond, to be touched
   as if stroked by feathers.

Because such a moment is a living death---borderless, the light
   its own season, & because such things can only happen
   once.

What power is: the palm of a grasping hand, & the way I secretly want you
   to name me.

Or how once far away I woke up under it & wrapped myself in a sheet, the dirt floor
   bright & skittering, the night riddled w/ satellites, w/ things
   that can't escape.

& at the same time my amazement---that I too could be lulled into dying, that this obsession
   could be written on my body
   in such dark script.

The way I feel you in my sleep---face textured, cleft.

I saw it written & I saw it say:


. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 

disparate thoughts (limbs, perhaps) conjoined to the body

After seeing pictures of diseased bodies, I rethink my mortality

My body is not a cage. It's me. I don't live inside this body, but through it, my being spread throughout it like atoms, my soul apart of every molecule.

And yet.

And yet I am not this body. Or at least, I am not the sum of its parts. My soul is a rare bird, hiding. It doesn't want to be seen, will fly at the slightest tremor of a branch. I am a bird in the element of this body; without this air, this body, I would lose my definition.

I'm not ugly. People compliment the way I look, sometimes. And I have long sought to please, found meaning in the eyes of others. What happens to that process when this body decays? Through what powers will I earn love if not through the power of my body? Will my soul shine forth, through the eyes? Will I be revealed in greater clarity? Will I finally understand Grace?

Disease, deformity, disintegration. The body tires. The body fades. The body slumps, contorts, malforms. Things lose their straightness, go crooked. No choice but to meet death as a friend, to accept it as part of life, not its enemy: the soil healing over my bones, gratefully receiving me into a new order, a new beginning.

I begin to think about what it would mean to have a faithful love

It's going to take a lot of love to get through this life in tact, as a whole person. ("Be perfect, as your heavenly father is perfect" -- Bonhoeffer says that the word Jesus uses for "perfect" here is better translated as 'wholeness'.)

And it's going to take a lot of faithfulness to support all that love. So be ready. Don't close your eyes. Keep a clear head. You'll need it to recognize her when you meet her. Something about the eyes, the way they don't look away from sadness, despair, or injury.

Where lowland is, that's where water goes /

All medicine wants, is pain to cure.

There is something about grace there, in those eyes, shining. "I knew you before I met you" is true but not in the way you thought about it before. Be ready to go beyond ideas of wrongdoing & right doing in order to meet her there. Make that your home.

If you want that kind of love then you'll have to be ready. Keep a clear head. Forgive your enemies. Ask for the forgiveness that even now is being offered, has been offered, will be offered again.

Two Thoughts, One Old, One New

First, the old: when I was on a plane some years ago, I began to hear in my mind this phrase: "Put kindness into your body." I began to think of becoming an old man, of coming down with Alzheimer's and slowly losing my mind. "But perhaps," I thought wildly and somewhat fantastically, "perhaps that doesn't mean I have to lose my ability to love and treat others with kindness."

What if we can put kindness into our bodies, imbue ourselves somehow (through Christ's love in us? maybe it's a matter of opening, receiving) with something beyond the mind. This raises questions of the Spirit and the spirit inside us, as my friend Christian reminds me. For truly, "the music that thinking is" goes beyond the grey matter housed inside our skulls. Thinking, habits -- the Aristotelian force of virtue throughout our lives -- is caught up and tangled in our spirits. It clings to us even beyond the body's (which is to say, the mind's) decay. Yes, I affirm this: that we can put kindness into our bodies. Which, perhaps, is just another way of saying that the spirit of who we are is not diminished by our body's failure.

So I say it again: "Put kindness into your body." Perhaps a truer wording would be, "Put forgiveness in my body." For, truly, to forgive is to be forgiven, to forgive is to practice the posture of receiving grace.

---

And now, the new: I often think about what separates an authentic, life-giving action from a false, life-stealing one. What makes two actions of similar appearance so different in nature? A man moves to the countryside to live closer to the land. Another man does the same. But one man is full of pride and preciousness; he observes his actions from a distance. My theory: that necessity justifies almost every action. Necessity is what gives an action credence, authenticity. The rock band that plays out of its garage and records on beat up stereos and equipment attains a certain grit, a certain quality of toughness that is magical and beautiful. But only if it remains necessary. If another group were to do the same thing, but from a place of vanity or sentimentality only, then the action loses much of its force and reality.

Jack Gilbert poems

Haunted Importantly

It was in the transept of the church, winter in
the stones, the dim light brightening on her,
when Linda said, Listen. Listen to this, she said.
When he put his ear against the massive door,
there were spirits singing inside. He hunted for it
afterward. In Madrid, he heard a bell begin somewhere
in the night rain. Worked his way through
the tangle of alleys, the sound deeper and more
powerful as he got closer. Short of the plaza,
it filled all of him and he turned back. No need,
he thought, to see the bell. It was not the bell
he was trying to find, but the angel lost
in our bodies. The music that thinking is.
He wanted to know what he heard, not to get closer.


Recovering Amid The Farms

Every morning the sad girl brings her three sheep
and two lambs laggardly to the top of the valley,
past my stone hut and onto the mountain to graze.
She turned twelve last year and it was legal
for the father to take her out of school. She knows
her life is over. The sadness makes her fine,
makes me happy. Her old red sweater makes
the whole valley ring, makes my solitude gleam.
I watch from hiding for her sake. Knowing I am
there is hard on her, but it is the focus of her days.
She always looks down or looks looks away as she passes
in the evening. Except sometimes when, just before
going out of sight behind the distant canebrake,
she looks quickly back. It is too far for me to see,
but there is a moment of white if she turns her face.

"Yeah, I'll have some coffee with you. In a minute. As a reward. That's what I like. The casual. I was wrestling with the world of people for a long time. I'd be pushing and pulling them around like they were toys. What nonsense. If you're casual, things unfold, and it's all a surprise. Human beings are the absolute home of the unexpected. But only if you're casual. The best you can hope to do, to speed along the possibilities of life, is approach another human being, be naked, and hold up a good mirror.

Omar, am I the hero of this play or what?"

-Austin, from The Big Funk by John Patrick Shanley

"Move pen move, write me a mountain, because headstones are not big enough."

-Shane Koyczan

"All men betray. All lose heart."

"I DON'T WANT TO LOSE HEART!"

-Braveheart

Spring is Sprung

Whatever your thoughts on global warming (and mine are many and various -- well, various forms of paralyzing dread is more accurate) you have to admit that an unseasonably warm March in Upstate New York is a wondrous thing. In recent years, many have been the poet and musician who've reflected on the more poetic, literary implications of Global Warming. Easily the most laudable and accredited of these is indie-rocker Ben Gibbard. In a song for Postal Service called "Sleeping In," he sings,

Again last night I had that strange dream
Where everything was exactly how it seemed
Where concerns about the world getting warmer
The people thought they were just being rewarded
For treating others as they'd like to be treated
For obeying stop signs and curing diseases
For mailing letters with the address of the sender
Now we can swim any day in November

Trust me, Ben, the environmentalists don't share your "glass half full" approach to Global Warming. But I do. On a day like today, I can actually believe that Spring is here to stay. Growing up in New York I've learned to treat Spring like an abusive lover. When these early days of "spring" arrive I've been taught to put a hand on my hip and say, "Don't play games with me, papo, or I swear I will put you out on your ass. I'll do it." Yeah, spring is an unfaithful latino lover up here.

The thing I noticed today was people. Everyone was a metaphor for stretching. Arms uncurling, toes wiggling, necks bending to the sunshine-- people discovering their bodies for the first time. Everyone walking around, discovering or remembering they exist. Remembering is closer to the truth: people remembered their actual selves today. I could see it in the skateboarders. I could see it in the girl doing her homework on the front porch with her dog at her feet. I could see it in the 50-year-old guy wearing a red bandana, driving his dodge caravan with all the windows down, dangerously tailgating me on the interstate. People seemed pretty content to be themselves today.

And beneath all of it is desire. So long dormant, spring allows us our desire again. For months now we've had to tell our hunger: no, not yet; now's not the time; don't or you'll be disappointed. But the wait is over. The time to be hungry has arrived. You can want again. You may not survive; you may not ever find the food you're looking for, but the time to find out is now. Go: climb out with a yawn and pad forth sleepily, or rage from your burrow in an explosion of muck if that's what you want. You are a creature that hungers, and there are things in this world for hunger. You want sunshine, and there is a sun. You want green things, and they are growing. You are not in the wrong place at the wrong time anymore.

the body tires

Two weekends ago, I was very sick. It was a forceful bout of illness. You probably know how it goes: one moment you're saying goodnight, shaking hands, brushing your teeth, and the next moment you're hugging the toilet and making bargains with God. That's how it went for me.

Anyway, it was a long night, followed by a very long day. I read Psalm 16 with a hunger I don't usually have for scripture.

(from the ESV translation):

Preserve me, O God, for in
you I take refuge.
I say to the Lord, "You are my
Lord;
I have no good apart from you."

As for the saints in the land, they
are the excellent ones,
in whom is all my delight.

The sorrows of those who run
after another god shall
multiply;
their drink offerings of blood I
will not pour out
or take their names on my lips.

The Lord is my chosen portion
and my cup;
you hold my lot.
The lines have fallen for me in
pleasant places;
indeed, I have a beautiful
inheritance.

I bless the Lord who gives me
counsel;
in the night also my heart
instructs me.
I have set the Lord always
before me;
because he is at my right hand,
I shall not be shaken.

Therefore my heart is glad, and
my whole being rejoices;
my flesh also dwells secure.
For you will not abandon my soul
to Sheol,
or let your holy one see
corruption.

You make known to me the path
of life;
in your presence there is
fullness of joy;
at your right hand are pleasures
forevermore.

impossible

I love to look at pictures on facebook of young friends that have chosen to marry and have families. I love it because I look at them and think: impossible. It's impossible that someone from my generation-- nay, TWO individuals from my generation-- have chosen to come together and wed their lives. And yet there it is. It is baffling exactly because it is so matter-of-fact. There they are. The two of them. Together until death do them part.

And they're smiling about it. How is this possible? Haven't they considered the odds? Don't they know the blackness in their own hearts? And yet they smile. They hold a newborn child in their arms and they laugh. They close their eyes, the emergency room and the nurses' blue smocks disappear, and they laugh together. What will we call her? What name do we give our child?

I look at these facebook pictures and I wonder about the husband's life: what does he do? He gets up, ever day, and goes to work. He works for his child and for his wife. What else?

And this, I suppose, is where politics and religion and everything else come into the picture: what does he do with his days? Is it right, is it good, that he spend his every waking day in front of a computer, a man with a knack for electronics and problem solving, only to come home a few hours a night, a few more hours on the weekends, to spend time with the ones he loves? Is it humane?

It doesn't matter. Such questions place the husband (my imagined self) at the center of the universe. We are not. We give ourselves, partially and then fully, to something we don't entirely understand but love with all our hearts. And the answers come, and come, and come.

How we spend our days is, after all, how we spend our lives.

The work is long, and hard, and the goal is an impossibility: a woman, a man, a child.

And yet.