On Words And Crows

 
     The brain is a wonderful forest and it stretches out pretty much forever across the landscape of being.  Most people stick to the marked trails and wander off into the sidelines on rare occasion.  When worldviews are set, generally all thoughts thereafter follow those cleared roads throughout the underbrush.
     Listen to someone talk and you can discern from it how they think and what they believe and hear their surprise when you sometimes note the words spoken show either the fence around their truth or the antithesis of it.  A good listener can often learn more from the words used than the meanings the talker intended to convey and one can survey those brain trails into a map of destination that can be used to traverse that person's beingness.  Ask any psychic, psychiatrist or psychologist how this works.
     Words profile the speaker or writer just as they intrigue the thinker, listener, or reader.
     When I was younger, my brain raced with thousands of thoughts in layers tied in to all of the senses and catalogued by emotional or rational responses to whatever stimuli was around.  Writing then was more about slowing down that race and noticing the inter-relation of concepts and inner symbology and choosing and building the correct literary expression from the forest of the mind.  Creation and creativity was more about bouncing those relationships into new trails in the woods and exploring those locales.
     A poem in those days was like being a tree.  I would have an idea or a niggling, nagging snippet of round logic that was ticking off the mind's square holes that needed to walk around on paper before it made sense to me.  Using the tree metaphor, the idea and urge would be the roots, and the form would be the tree itself and the structure was the branches and the words would be in the branches, or leaves, or birds and things flying into and out of the tree itself.  The process was like recognizing or choosing what should and shouldn't be there in the building on the idea upwards into wood and bark and foliage.  Eventually, the truth of the poem would form and grow and transform the tree into its species, height, visual and appearance. 
     Sometimes, the finished tree was surprising and its truth not exactly what was envisioned in the beginning, and if the itching idea that caused it all was successfully scratched, well, it was a new trail winding through the forest and back again that pinged once walked through. 
     All good poems ping when you walk them in the mind and great ones glow and sing during and after the trek, while mediocre ones tend to kind of seem like an old, frequently used path.  Poor ones are just hard on the thinking feet and pong in rhythmic disarray.  Poems-like trees-shouldn't need much of a reference guide for one to know if they succeed or not.
     As a young man, my trees were either curiously young or strangely leaved, and I worked hard on my forests, sometimes having to clear-cut them into oblivion to have a nice stand.  The process of writing in those days was more about finding and curing the voice that made the trees than honing the process of trail walking.  A young poet is a naive and earnest mess of self-involvement who is in real danger of being self-indulgent or mundane-all depending on the forests and the trees and the listening and seeing of the wood.
     I found poetry was a nice training ground for writing prose.  If you can encapsulate worlds of meaning into a few words and lines, then prose becomes more of a recess for the brain and you can write with much more creativity and eventually be more entertaining if you can make the transition.  I left poetry at one point, abandoned the trees for the forest and the tales within.  I'd make a sapling here and there and prune some leaves, but songs and appreciation of music changes.  The brain also changes.
     My brain now is a different animal.  Whether it is natural age, medications, structural damage from life or a combination of all three, it has left me a ranger in an ancient forest, navigating the familiar, clean paths and sometimes finding a tangle of overgrowth on the trails and noting there is an end to its expanse and density.
     Writing poetry now is also different.  It is like sitting inside of the tree in a vacuum while feeling for my surroundings and searching amongst the old thick roots for newer, more supple roots-ones that can still grow.  Once found, I look above and see a lifetime of words circling like crows, cawing and calling to each other with crow instinct, in crow demesne, and I feel a bit like dying prey just sitting there in that vacuum...fighting for life of poem and avoiding the old crows while seeking sparrows.
     There are no more thousands of thoughts that fly about the gigabytes of layers and transits and my trails all begin on well worn ground, my files all long since in order.  I sit in the tree and gestate thoughts and imagine trails for sometimes days before I take one swing with a bush axe because I now know the forest has end.  The idea or urge speaks as strong as before, maybe stronger, but the art of tree building and cutting with my present brain is an art in itself rather than an act because there is infinite and there is finite and the need for the distinction.
     An idea rolls around, settles and grows in those small roots I find.  I listen to crows and a word or turn of phrase sits up on the branches and I'll pull it down into that vacuum.  After some time, the vacuum has eggs and nests suspended inside of it, swirling slow, then some words birth, find weight and land on the wood, forming a bit of bark or else, fly off.  The beginning forms, the ending speaks, the middle clings to either and the outline hardens and I see branches, see sparrows and finches and the crows fly off and their prey lives and begins to breathe and the poem is there.  I work on it and finish it in shade of itself while the sun streams in from the forest.
     When it is done, if it lives, it still surprises me, still turns a truth far from the original idea, but yet, it is a more mature truth, borne of crow prey, crow caws into lines and rhythms and pings and sparrows.  At my current age, if it trills, it works.  My younger self would run it through a million filters, testing it in a hundred ways and painting its place exactly so in the forest of mind.  Today, I just plant it down a new row and appreciate how it looks to me and hope someone else finds the tree appealing, see it warm or cool, and finds a nest not of crows deep inside, but something singing just right there.
     I've been in that vacuum for a bit recently, words gelling and settling and finding their bark.  There has been an itching urgency to finish since inception, but if age has taught me anything, it is that crow shit stains.  So, I'm patient.  I'm finding it has nice leaves and it rustles in the wind in my head and I'm just enjoying its sound before I move on.
     There are times I wish I were younger and fresher and whipping a forest into shape, but I find mostly it is just a wish to feel better and younger and sharper but with the brain I currently have-all crow instinct and crow demesne needing a time and grace of sparrows.
    

Risen

     It has been almost two years since my last post and almost as long since I have even checked in on this blog.  I have been surprised by its analytics that it still has visitors, most of which spend some time here...rummaging amongst the abandoned, it seems.  I wonder why. 
     I initially began this blog to reanimate the corpse of an almost forgotten literary career and attempt to move it forward.  It was always the plan to eventually settle in and once again live a life deep in the arts, establishing what I always knew to be my life's work-what I was apparently put here to do-and not die with the words and music still inside, roiling and raging against a life diverted from its truth.
     I had the past-the reams of poetry written over a space of years in what seemed to be another life...three finished novels...outlines, notes, pages and pages of beginnings and endings and visits to places all real and imagined...plus new things all tidy and shiny-all the filler I needed to bloat a blog with a sampling of good, bad, genius, and pure shit.  If not anything, I figured, it will be entertaining.
     And in the midst of it all, life happened. 
     We sudddenly became parents instead of grandparents and began helping raise two young boys with damaged hearts and heads.  Our work increased, our finances dwindled, and I found I once again had no time for the vanity of writing, or a blog, or even dreaming of it.  In all honesty, I was unsure of exactly what the hell I was even doing, and if the blog was just an exercise in ego, or even scarier, an exercise in convincing myself I had (or ever had) relevance.  I figured the audience of readers would tell me that, but no-I was registering a lot of visits and views, but little feedback-so I quit, vanished, closed it down.
     Tonight I logged in with the intention of deleting it all.  I noted Blogger had changed and upgraded and wanted to walk me through all the things I had missed over the last two years.  I saw my last unfinished post still sitting in drafts.  I clicked on recent comments and there were none.  I read over some of my posts and cringed a bit, with that old feeling of seeing what appeared to be another life creeping in again.  And I got pissed.
     So fuck it.   The truth is I am not what I wish to be.  I am nowhere near the writer I once was.  This blog is somewhat of a scrapbooking type of joke.  I spent years in a very tightly structured writing schedule that, from the sheer discipline of it, drove me to the outer reaches of my abilities and brain functions.  I lived it, I breathed it, and at the end of one day I realized I was living past the line of personal best and into quite another space.  I also realized that to continue would involve selfishness to such a degree that I could not live with the outcomes of it.  So, I reigned it all in and became responsible, raised a family, started a business, did volunteer work and just showed up-all things I could not do with a young mind in a quest for literary "greatness."  The truth is I could not reconcile the dream with the actuality of the dream, so I created success in another venue.
     Be careful what you wish for...very careful...there is a price even for successful mediocrity, for giving up one individual truth for a truth that involves others can still bring one full circle back to nothing, or at least the feeling of it, and a loss...the longing for more.
     I have reinvented myself several times in my life, but of late, the reinventing is more like a chained dog wrapping himself incessantly around a tree...that full circle back to inertia.  I was hit by a drunk driver in May of 2005 and that wreck ass-ended my life.  My back was shattered, disks lost, nerves destroyed, everything inoperable, and just like that, I was told by every neurosurgeon on the block I was done...check into wheelchairs, longterm eventual care and pay on the way out.  I was legally dropped by my insurance company on technicalities, legally bound by tort reform in the lawsuit, and not on the street, a minority, or an illegal, so no government or Social Security unless I wanted to live below poverty level in a hovel.  In a year I lost everything I spent my entire working life building.
     But in that year, I committed to physical therapy.  I learned to cope, learned to put the anger into useful things and let the rest of it go.  I re-learned how to walk, and how to keep re-learning how to keep walking.  I developed a high pain tolerance.  I became self-sufficient again and began re-building my business.  I reinvented myself that year.
     In the seven years since, my condition has worsened, but I have forced it to be gradual.  After five years of agony, I finally began pain meds in 2010, but only take the lowest dose.  I'm a lucky man.  I walk, I do and I create and am blessed to have no dysfunctions.  But every day I wake up and have to make the choice to get up and do it all over again.  Every day is varying levels of pain, sometimes indescribable.  I have neurological issues, seizures, whiteout blindness, occular migraines, the list goes on.
     But I don't give up.  Giving up is not tolerable for me-never has been.  Doctors tell me I am a miracle, but it is not so.  I'm just not a pussy, and doctors love pussies and write prescriptions to help you to be a better one.  So, the truth is I'm not the man I once was...I'm not the writer I once was...but the world and life and all their varying responsibilities are just as they have always been.  So, I don't have time for a blog, or writing, or any of it.
     So, I log on after two years to wipe it all out, but then I get pissed.  Mainly, because I don't quit, but partly because I was put on this earth to do something that I haven't done as yet.  Maybe my heart was right all of those years ago and it is indeed writing.  I won't know unless I do it.  So fuck it.
     I don't know what this blog will be.  I don't know what I will write-poetry, stories, diary-type monologues, beautiful things, hard things, all the aforementioned-I don't know.  I just know it will not be reprints of old me, tales of better days and vanity-driven bullshit with photos of headier times.  If so, just tell me to fuck off.  I'm going to write what I want to write and when I wish to.  I'll tell my own truth and be true to that and if you like it, that's nice and if you don't...well, there are 30,000 other writers that may tell you what you want to hear and more than a few doctors that like pussies.
     All I know is that I neeed to write-be it of a thousand lives lived in a deep green tangle of forest or the heart of one touched by the hand of something greater...and maybe it will all go somewhere I've never been.  

Experimental Boundaries

     I snagged my first book contract with a series of experimental writings that had the preliminary title of Human Symbol Abstraction.  The larger body of that series was a complex and surreal work on the machination of personality and subconscious in transformation during the maturity process that was called, Irrevolution.
     Irrevolution originally topped out at over 120 pages and I won my first award for this book-length paradigm of thought processes.  I was asked to edit and rework the form of the work for publication and throughout the years it has become true to its theme of transformation as it has changed and matured along with myself into an ever-changing and living piece of form.
     What began as a free-flowing and linear epic single poem has become a more reader-friendly and palatable series and sections of verse that can each stand alone or connect readily to the greater whole.  The following is the first piece and beginning of Irrevolution:

A THEODOLITE VIEW OF BEING

Stance

degrees to turn, a

                       n

                     gle and sweat

                          for subconscious measure (l e n g t h s

                                                                     and

                                                                 v         s

                                                                  o      e

                                                                    l    m

                                                                      u

                                                            per convergence)-

cognition's endless lines

                             that             t

                                             c                                        r

                                           e               perception's     i      c

                                         s                          endless c            l

                                       i                                             s    e

                                    b                                     to

                                                                  bring

                                                           one

                                            returning

                                   to

effect degrees-

a conscious measure (and sometimes

                                                   one personal level more is

                                                                 attained,

                                  but growth capacities

                                  change) of no  w   i   d   t   h , only  d

                                                                                        e

                                                                                        p

                                                                                        t

                                                                                        h

(or azimuth in the eyes

to the topography

                            of the mind).

                                   Learned things granted (inferred that way)

                                                 and

                                   charted (or forgotten away).

          Affect degrees

changing these charts-

                                 unsocial boundaries realigned,

                                   asocial portions pledged,

                                     social Fahrenheit realized-with

      all interactive motion

and force

reckoning (inner inching voices

                            to

                  outer peck noises): thought's
                                                heart move-

                                                                  ments in

                                                                              chosen

                                                                              spatial

                                                                  radius

on the response plane of active measure

(as a man believes and

          becomes

himself,

bleeding

          character.

Dark Adventure Archives 3

     We did a joint venture promo with Claypool Comics back in the late '90s for the Elvira, Mistress of the Dark comics.  You may not recognize her out of costume, but this is Cassandra Peterson, aka Elvira herself.  A bitingly funny gal and a blast to hang with.







     One very full handful is actress and model, Julie Strain, seen here during a fantastic promotional stint with Heavy Metal magazine.  She has an infectious laugh and makes the utmost of any occasion and truly has no fear.  She's currently married to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles co-creator, Kevin Eastman.




     A much too early in the morning visit with Traci Lords, actress and now, a new mom!  9am in Cali is 6am in my town and she glows while I glower.  Cast in many dramatic roles, I think her forte is comedy as she has spot-on timing.  Hi, Gunnar!

1000 Views

     I've just noticed that this blog has broken 1000 views on my analytics counter.  Thank you to the silent majority and please feel free to comment.  Sometimes Google's functions on the comment buttons are wonky, so press onward!
     Thank you, Analysa, for your in-depth analysis-your email was startling in its complexity and much enjoyed.  I will be starting up another couple of blogs soon.  I have been actively selling humor and comedic routines and I feel a walk on the bizarre side may be in order, along with a dip into screenwriting.  My time has been tight and it is my hope I can catch up here over the holidays.
     Be safe out there-

Svelte Punk Chic

     I was immersed in the early punk rock scene for a period of time and experienced firsthand the inner devastation of fringe living.  Underground love left scarred hearts from sacred youth gone all bat-shit in a revolution against culture, politics, themselves and ultimately, nothing.
     There is a trilogy of verse from my writings at that time that circled around a couple of friends and their 3am confessions to the cave wall-dirty, pretty things from an unsentimental tribe.  Light a smoke, take a third shot of Jack and listen to a few notes from the dank night.

PLUMMET INTO BUNGLE

Wearing svelte punk chic

she was tearing down things

and her things

she would erect

instead...

Her toxic "I"

reigns constant-

poisoning caution's approach

in alteration to the host

and her eyes twitter mean.

"Bitch!" "I" cries;

"Whore!" "I" tumbles;

"Slut!" "I" turns to-

oh woman,

herself

immersed into.

Yet, she is not her lover;

just a random in happenstance

sycophant

melodious in sin expressed

softly

or harshly-

hardly a bother to please

or surpass

in expectation of pleasure

to her promise splayed out

amongst her discarded

regalia.

"I" had/she

has no

rhythm

lying there,

dirtying her push

as he retracts

and readies plunge-

unworthy, un-savored, unsane-

she reels in the catch

her toxic,

toxic "I"

must

arrange.

*

HOT, SEXY (AND DEAD)

          See

     the pretty girl run like melting snow

(a man fall like the sleet).

His woman

    has the heat (of an animal).

       He breathes

           like the hissing air of ash

              (from marihuana).

                  Passion garrotes her kiss

                      (like a hangman).

                          Their sweaty eyes

                              feed thirsting (for breath).

                                  A smoking silhouette

                                      of love's withdrawal

                                          (from flesh).

                                              A pang of nothing

                                                  left (in its streaks).

                                                     The moral diaries

                                                         their heads support

                                                            wane (and freeze).

                                                               Faith bathes

                                                                  in the sweat

                                                                     on gravestones

                                                                        (its death).

                                                                           The end

                                                                               (begins)

                                                                                  again.

                                                                                     A pretty girl

                                                                                        is like

melting snow

     (a man is like the sleet).

*

HUMP DAY

Wednesday

Tries to rule

Her Saturday

attitude

As she circles his party

With latitude for breathing-

Lust coiling serpentine

In her eyes' needy visage;

A stare war arises

In jaded,

Grainy remembrance

Of love's burning gone

And heart crushed

Like cigarettes:

Soled out

Like a snake,

Her body

Entwined

Like a snake,

She did animal things

And then lay in the shade;

A rest

For the reptile

Of loneliness within

Curled comfortably

Soothed

After miking from Man-

His slivers creating the darkness,

Teach her

To feed on the darkness,

And it sleeps

At her feet

Like faithful blackness

Should-

And her Saturday

succombs

To his

Wednesday

Afternoon.

*

Blind Man's Cat

     I once assisted another poet on editing her work for publication. She was attempting to put a sense of order into what to her was a collection of disorganized and disparate poems. They were all in her voice but she was so close to them she could not see their relation to one another in context of her vision.
    
     In reading the pieces I not only heard the music coming from the pages but also saw a subtext buried inside the words. Once I became a companion to that subtext I arranged the poems in my head into what to my ears and eyes was a linear theme that told a precise tale.
    
     She then allowed me to cut and paste her babies into this thematic context. That was a remarkable level of trust (ask any writer), especially as the finished edit created quite another animal than the one she had raised. I had been talking out loud like an inspired madman about my thought processes and the subtext I was following throughout the whole procedure. When I finished I read the book aloud from the first word to the last verse.
    
     She was shocked and quiet and silent for a long time. Then came the tears.
    
     I initially thought she was crushed at what I had done. That was far from the truth. In her estimation, that edit had not only streamlined her vision but told the story she had been attempting to tell in a way she had never visualized and could never had done. She was wrong.

     Her book was all there, story and everything in completion-there was nothing missing and nothing added. I heard her music and I formatted the playlist of her album. She was thankful but I was even more appreciative because it was a beautiful experience that taught me more about trust and editing than I could ever have learned on my own.
    
     Later on, she looked at some of my work. She pulled a forth a poem I had been stuck on and commented that to her it was an experiential description of sound. That was far from what I was attempting but it forced me to look at my lines with new eyes and listen further to what they were saying. As with her, I had been so close to it I could no longer hear it, but it was there...singing low.
    
     With new ears I finished that piece and many times since I think of lessons learned and music unheard. So Jolie, wherever you may be...this one is for you:

BLIND MAN'S CAT

Her sound

     seeps syllabic meter

          haunting

               auditory images,

her paws print

     cushioned percussion

          echoing

               ear cymbals preening-

all catwalking forward,

     back,

          then rising;

               heard symbols uniting,

          meow,

     meow,

meow.

Her beat

     and talk

          anticipating tigers

               or kittens

in a steady,
     measured tone to

          make verb

               or phrase
to a felt imploding
     sound wave-

          her  v-i-b-r-a-t-i-n-g  metaphor;

               his braille purr she sings.