Rob's Poems

2008-05-05T06:39:00.000-07:00

i don’t know why i've always hated
poems about old dogs i'm not sure
if it’s because of the cheap emotions
or if it’s just because the dog
always dies in the end
but my old dog just died
and those emotions just don’t seem
all that cheap to me anymore

she was a golden retriever not quite ten
and though her face had grayed and her
health had been fading for the last year
it was still a shock to find her there
when we went to let her out
before leaving to go to dinner

she was sweet lucy gray
named for wordsworth’s tragic heroine
and she was better than your dog
and even though everyone says that about
their own dog everyone else is wrong

she was sweet lucy gray
loved very much by a little girl
who gathered up her dog's favorite
toys to take to her new home
of endless golden meadows
filled with tennis balls and joy

she was sweet lucy gray
the best friend of a little boy
who lost a bit of his boyhood today
trading it for a mass of manhood
helping his father dig her grave
fighting through the tears and blisters
for a final act of tribute and of love

2008-04-30T14:57:00.000-07:00

“This is a tremendous social crisis, greater even than the issue of slavery”
–The Rev. Hayes Wicker on a proposed Florida state constitutional ban on same sex marriage
Naples Daily News, April 17, 2008

“All right, then, I’ll go to hell”
–Huckleberry Finn on deciding to go against his society's religious beliefs and not send Jim back into slavery

i dreamt i watched fox news
broadcast the sermon on the mount
it appeared to be in an amphitheatre
like oak mountain in birmingham
but it could have been anywhere
red rocks chastain park or woodstock
jesus stood on a large stage with banners
huge speakers and jumbotron screens
but the crowd was a little disappointing
a few thousand perhaps but not the tens
of thousands one would expect at such
a monumental and historical occasion

jesus did not look anything like those haloed
representations that have been passed down
and programmed into us through the centuries
he had strong almost exaggerated jewish
features but it was hard to tell if he was
a dark-skinned white guy or a light-skinned
black guy he did have beard but it was a little
unkempt and his dreadlocks were quite radical

the text of his sermon was a fairly faithful
version of matthew’s account only slightly
modernized from the rsv but his preaching
style was unexpected he was not the calm
laid back font of gentleness you’ve seen
in the movies and stained glass windows
he was angry and animated perhaps even
a little agitated speaking in a tone somewhere
between an inspired martin luther king and
a particularly irate reverend jeremiah wright

don’t get me wrong he was good very good
in fact but you had to allow yourself to let go
a little to truly hear what he was saying
and the crowd didn’t seem to be willing
they seemed a bit agitated actually like they
were a little put off possibly even offended
by some of the things jesus was saying
there were even a couple of places where
people prominently jeered and booed

there were also some coincidental
and fateful ironies in fox’s broadcast
early in the sermon when jesus stated that
the meek are blessed and will inherit the earth
the ubiquitous news crawl at the bottom of the
screen cried out that tensions between the us
and iran were reaching a critical state and after
jesus had finished with the beatitudes and was
shouting something or other about turning
the other cheek the chyron graphic called out
boldly beneath him blessed are the peacemakers
and mere moments after the title changed
to something about calls for abolishing the law
of the prophets the crawl below announced
almost prophetically a new request for
additional funding to support our efforts in iraq

just when jesus was getting to the part about
serving two masters and the judgment of others
fox cut away to bill o’reilley back in the studio
who looked up into the camera shaking his head
and with an oh my god expression in his eyes
asked with some annoyance can you believe this guy
he then muttered something about how this country
needs to get back to traditional american family values
gathered himself and announced that we should
be sure to tune in later tonight for his inspiring
interview with the reverend hayes wicker
who has made some of the most important statements
to date on the biggest issue currently facing our society

2008-04-11T08:17:00.000-07:00

the color of azaleas
paints a sea of intense pink
a signature purplish pink
that is satiatingly splattered
against a backdrop of
nascent luminescence
against the initial greens
of the coming spring

this symphony of shades
is frequently framed by
the haggard austere reverence
of mossy mobile live oaks
that drape city streets
with a quiet and subtle
dignity and so eloquently
symbolize the timeless
character and ageless beauty
of an old city seeking new birth

the azalea trail runs aimlessly
through midtown mobile
winding through countless
picturesque old neighborhoods
linking stunningly stately mansions
with humbler nearby cottages
it curves in endless arrhythmic lines
of semiotic sensuousness exquisitely
exhibited in a haphazard hedge of
harmonious hieroglyphics bringing
renewal and repeated resurrection
and when easter comes early
the view from my front porch swing
explodes with sensual significations

yet the colorful azaleas
fleeting and ephemeral
mere momentary markers of
dying march quickly wither
to trodden mottled nothingness
yet are also a splendid signifier
of still emerging spring
a splash of celebrated sublimity
however brief bringing
sufficient sustenance and
spiritual restoration for
those subsequent and more
mundane months until march
returns and we find regeneration
in next spring’s sea of purplish pink
underneath the languid live oaks

2008-03-10T13:09:00.001-07:00

This site does some pretty cool stuff with PDF files.

2008-03-04T08:09:00.000-08:00

i wish that i were langston hughes
or even maya angelou
able to cry out for freedom
over the roofs of the world
from a position of surprising
and unaccustomed strength
but sadly i am not
for no matter how much
i read or think or discuss
no matter how enlightened i may feel
i can never fully understand
as a white poet
privileged if by nothing else
but my own whiteness
how the truth in their words
can see so well into the life of things
and so i am damned
by that same whiteness
always to be disadvantaged
always impoverished

i have always found
a fundamental difference
between white poetry
and black poetry
and i have always envied it
and while i am certainly
as guilty as anyone and
would never wish to oversimplify
it seems to me that white poetry
historically at any rate
has often tended to soar
on the ethereal wings
of imagination and philosophy
with a mission to explore
the deep and hidden meanings
of the heights of heaven
in order that poets might
as prophets or amanuenses
bring the mountaintop down
so that truth might come to be
within the reach of those
of us too blind or deaf
to write the zeitgeist of eternity
and so white poets have pontificated
throughout history on the wherefores
and whys of our existence
almost as if poets and poetry
had nothing else or better to do

african american poetry
on the other hand
has preferred to labor
with its hands in the earth
it has always done its work
in the everyday
at the dinner table
or through childhood remembrances
born out of minds too strewn
with petty cares
or while standing on
the grave of dreams
deferred from the earth’s inside
this voice of the subaltern
long subjected to the margins
has always preferred to work
down in the midst of things
where life happens
lifting truth up to the heavens
in an act of heavy praise
for there is power in pain
and strangled possibility
but there is also beauty
in the fact of blackness
just as there is poetry
in the song of a caged bird
or the lies of a mask
perhaps even more than
in the tortured thoughts
of an overly pensive prince
or an overwrought
ideological wasteland

yet while it is indeed a privilege
to ponder life’s mysteries
by deconstructing the semantics
of our social discourses
even in a vain hope that
by revealing and reversing
historical and hierarchical binaries
they might dry up or explode
it is a privilege wrought
with hidden costs and effects
that we are taught not to see
and while many might argue
that poetry should be above
the baseness of politics
and while there may well be
a richness to those arguments
there is also a whiteness
silently blinding us to the life of things

2008-03-04T08:04:00.001-08:00

it’s been over seventy years
since sinclair lewis prophetically
declared that when fascism
comes to america it will
come wrapped in a flag
and carrying a cross
i fear it is now come
i fear a time is at hand
when so-called traditional
values are forging false
consciousness through
a unifying divisiveness
of righteousness and fear
through the impious and
appalling dissemination
of supremacist discourses

a time is soon at hand
when there will be no one
left to speak for those of us
not white enough man
enough conservative christian
american enough and especially
those simply thoughtful enough
to know the difference between
our national history and our
national myth and to ardently
resist the subtle and seductive call
of these new values
the traditional fundamental
sacred christianamerican
values of the new nationalism

2008-02-08T20:02:00.000-08:00

“Black voters do not support the Republican Party
because conservatives have never supported them.
--Leonard Pitts Jr.

i.

talking politics in the south
is just like racist whispers
in the north you have to
always be wary that
someone might overhear

and that is why poems are
not supposed to be political
they should be about
bigger things less petty
things the kind of things
that matter for all time
but even when a poem achieves
those lofty goals it can never
escape its own politics

this is not because
those politics are on
the wrong side but rather
because absence of politics
is merely an illusion
politics are always invisible
when they are yours

and in our society
that tends to mean that
when something is devoid
of politics it only means
that it simply a product
of a conservative politics

ii.

we are told it’s
all because they
hate our freedoms
and so we must
go over there
to fight for them

while back at home
we silently sit back
seemingly unaware
that as we are winning
freedom for a country
that doesn’t want any
part of our version
of liberty or justice
we are not interested
in fighting for them

and all around us
the media are merging
and the schools are
standardizing and all
the messages that shape
our consciousness are
becoming progressively
increasingly homogenized

and we fail to realize that
this new figure of patriotism
is an almost systemic process
where faith and factoids
tease us out of thought

our teachers are being
taught what to think and
what to teach instead of
how to think and how to
teach students to think

our talking heads are
becoming one voice
increasingly seeming
like an american pravda
carefully constructing our
collective consciousness

iii.

a good friend once
argued that everyone
in the bush administration
had read their foucault
of course they had he said
vehemently arguing that
they were intimately
familiar with foucault’s
important work on
social discourse and
the prison-panopticon

another friend once
suggested that southerners
are very much entrenched
in an enlightenment ideology
and while i've always agreed
i'm not so sure that the same
isn’t true for most americans
when we consider the timeless
power of our jeffersonian ideals

and yet it would also seem
that the modernist constructs
of hegemony and ideology as
false consciousnesses of control
are still very much in play here
however the more subtly
sophisticated foucauldian notions
of power and the shaping forces
of discourse would not be likely
to flourish if for no other reason
than we would want to reject
their frenchness for freedom

plus i could never quite believe
that the current administration
and its outdated metaphysics
and conceptions of truth
could ever accept or employ
such a postmodern philosophy
into the design machination
and dominion of its policy

besides bush wouldn’t know
how to pronounce foucault
if it were boldly brought
before him all spelled out

iv.

there used to be a
myth of the melting pot
where all americans
of various nationalities
and cultures would
come together as one
america
but then the new
concoction began
to darken and some
groups couldn’t melt
at all so we changed
our minds and went in
search of a new metaphor

first we tried a tapestry
and then found that a quilt
seemed more democratic
and more genuinely
american
but for some reason
it just didn’t catch on
so we had to settle
on a salad bowl
a rich and diverse
combination of flavors
bound together with
a nice rich ranch dressing

but now we’ve
decided it is better
to be color blind
to fail to see or
at least deny seeing
any difference at all
which is an interesting
return to the melting pot
a brilliant attempt
at a mystical alchemy
that will bind all together
in an alloy of ideology
all in a blind hope
that if we include
the entire spectrum
all the colors combined
together will hopefully
somehow still shine white

2008-01-09T07:21:00.001-08:00

i’ve only been to the lake
a few times since
my brother drew died
but i have often wondered
if he is still there
skiing through the narrows
like he always did
a single step off
the wooden platform
at the back of
the ski nautique
barefoot
with one leg crossed
over the other
as though he were sitting
in his own church pew
in his own cathedral
holding the rope handle
in the crook of his elbow
cigarette in one hand
and a miller high life in the other

if you’re not out there
on the water now brother
i hope heaven is as good
as the lake would have been

2007-12-05T07:03:00.000-08:00

what good are poems
to a young soldier
lying dead in the sand
the victim of a random act
of ideological hatred
and callous ignorance

what good are poems
to a young black man
shot on the sidewalk
across the street
from his grandmother’s house
trapped in a crossfire
of systemic oppression
and deep-rooted hopelessness

what good are poems
to a young white man
with a black w sticker
on his new white bimmer
silently immune to his less
fortunate counterparts’ fate
and sullenly unaware
of the privilege that protects
him from sharing in it

what good is poetry
in a world where nothing
can seem to slow the violence
the senseless brutality
and the indifferent blindness that
keeps us from sharing in it

2007-10-26T19:27:00.000-07:00

poetry is music painted in black
the rhythm of consciousness
punctuated by the percussive
alliterations of tempo and touch
it is language drawn in curves and lines
a font of crystalline holiness
cast out in many colored clarity
it is melody meticulously wrought
in a harmonious dissonance of the discursive
it is fragrance emanating from image
constructed out of arbitrary significations
that are enabled by the elimination of artificial
dichotomies between logic and imagination
between feeling and touch between
form and content color and line

2007-08-20T10:51:00.000-07:00

tonight i saw jesus
in my rearview mirror
he was on the side
of the road in montgomery
and looked just like
he always did
in all those paintings
except that he was
a bit thinner on top
and a lot dirtier
which i guess was
just from all the shit
that’s been dumped
on him recently
i couldn’t really tell
if he was hitchhiking
or just walking along
it all happened too fast
but it wouldn’t have mattered
because i wasn’t looking
out for him and besides
i didn’t have room in my car

2007-05-18T14:45:00.000-07:00

i will never forget
the feelings of fear
and anger and loneliness
the vain attempts
to nudge away despair

or the shame imparted
by looks of knowing strangers
and even more so the horror
of recognizing that even
unknowing looks project
similar perceptions
strictly out of habit
a rote paranoia

nor will i soon forget
the desperate cries to heaven
plaintive wails meant
for troubling the angels
and grasping for a dying hope
out of a discourse of desolation

it’s like living on death row
when all i did was drive the car
how was i supposed to know he had a gun

Dedicated to all mothers facing life with HIV. May 2007.

2007-04-10T16:53:00.000-07:00

i grew up in the small-town south
and while for me it was more
mount pilot than mayberry
it nevertheless enjoyed some of the
characteristics of a stereotypical
romanticization of better times long past

i always believed that my town
was better than most of its kind
more cultured more diverse
more peaceful and sophisticated
and of course i’m not sure whether
it’s because i’ve overestimated
my town or underestimated others

there is one thing that is quite different
however whether good or bad
my town does not have a square
and therefore no confederate monument
which is in many small towns in the region
one of the more powerful symbols
the decaying and diminishing old south

symbols have profound power
some provide warmth and comfort
while others are intensely inspirational
and still others are chilling and sinister

in early april azaleas and dogwoods are
standard symbols of spring in the deep south
just as beautiful belles in their pastels
petticoats and parasols sashaying
on the veranda that’s vuh-rayuhn-da
are symbols of the prelapsarian south
a still longed for south

it is a south that to the extent that
it ever existed at all only did so
in a superficial glossy realm and was
in reality experienced by only a tiny few
it was undergirded by the ugly realities
of social inequity yet it is a south
memorialized by distorted dreams of decorum
and marble monuments to the many dead
most of whom lacked the social advantages
to benefit from the institution they gave
their lives in vain to preserve

and then there is that frightful underbelly
that supported the superstructure
the product of extreme racial hatred
the dehumanizing confinement
the heartless brutality and the sacrifice
of millions of people and the dreams
of countless millions more
centuries of senseless hatred
lingering still in the discourses
as well as in the remnants and remaining
vestiges of a system unique to the south
particularly in the small concentrations
of enormous wealth juxtaposed against
enduring abject poverty among both
blacks and whites perpetuating profound
age-old divisions of race and class

and still there were the countless millions
who sacrificed with their lives and deaths
and yet it’s conspicuous there aren’t
more monuments commemorating them

and the most visible remnants
of this former way of life
are flaunted by the uneducated and
unmoneyed whites those who most
clearly resemble the soldiers who died
in vain for a cause not theirs
simply because of the symbols
and ideologies that so powerfully shaped
their own thoughts and causes

symbols are the stuff that forges
consciousnesses whether false or true
ponder the power of the american flag
especially in the aftermath of 9/11
or the sea of crosses at arlington
consider also the wrenching power
of a cross or flag on fire

or worse yet contemplate the swastika
that ancient and sacred dharmic
symbol of goodness and well-being
perhaps the oldest and most recognizable
symbol in all the world yet in modern times
it has been corrupted and transformed
incorporated into the symbol of the most
unconscionable and most unimaginable evils

it is the frightful symbol
of extreme racial hatred
of dehumanizing confinement
and of heartless brutality
of genocide and the sacrifice
of millions of people and the dreams
of countless millions more
centuries of senseless hatred
concentrated into a single decade of horror

it is a shocking reminder of the perspectival
power of symbols a reminder of how
something so simple can mean
so many things so deeply to so many people
this simple image possibly predating the pyramids
can ignite a beautiful and gifted nation
through nationalistic pride and
a carefully constructed unity of hatred
can empower employ or justify any means necessary
to build future prosperity racial superiority
and ironically national greatness

and i am reminded of the south
and specifically of the confederate flag
and how that whenever i see it
whether on a pickup or along the highway
on a state building or a fraternity t-shirt
or especially on a state or university image
i am reminded of how i always think
fucking redneck when i see it
and i wonder if i should be thinking something else

2007-02-13T11:24:00.000-08:00

a poem is merely an attempt
to construct authentic beauty
out of the artifice of language
but the beauty of a poem is not
built on images of the observable
and is therefore perhaps
no different from other forms
for beauty does not reside in what is
visible but rather in insinuation
much like the difference between
inflection and innuendo
the beauty of a landscape
is not found in the brushstrokes
of the artist any more than
the splendor of a poetic line
is found in the stroke of the pen
or the arbitrary choice of a typeface
true beauty is about the response
about the consequence of perception
the romantics often wrote
of the intersection the overlap
of the sublime and the beautiful
which is surprisingly not unlike
a more recent poet’s claim that beauty
is nothing but the beginning of terror
it is as close to intense and overwhelming
fear as we can possibly endure
it is not simply a presentation
of soft symmetry or loveliness
it is the interactive juxtaposition
of a positive aesthetic response
with an overwhelming sense
of the unknown the unknowable
with what some have called the transcendent
and what others call the abyss
it is a part of the age-old belief
that there is something that is
bigger than us beyond us
and whether that something is
a warm and loving god
or a cold and empty nothingness
we can only really guess
but we can find comfort
in knowing that beauty lies
not in the lines of the artist
but in the interpretation
of their implications
so whether it is an awe-inspiring
sunset over smoky mountains
a painting of abstract water-lilies
an incomparable tenor aria or even
an especially poetic turn of phrase
beauty is in the impression
just as the beauty of a smile
lies not in the curve of the lips
but in the light of the eyes

2007-02-13T11:22:00.000-08:00

the songs of birds are common
in suburbia among
the sameness and
homogeneity which are
the defining features and
central symbol of our
contemporary culture
which confirms
something told to me long ago
that the cardinal’s song
sounds like the tapping
together of two nickels

the irony of this image
brings to mind when
wordsworth was greeted
at twilight
by a qwire of redbreasts
announcing the coming of winter
it was here at the beginning
of his trip to london that he
decided to join the birds
in winter’s service
for it was in fear of such
a winter that wordsworth
amid a sea of revolution
from the democratic
and industrial to the
spiritual and philosophic
ushered in the modern age
with his own poetic revolution
which would reach its apex
with an ode about a nightingale

i’ve never lived in the city
not for any period of time
not deep in the city where
the concrete steel and
reflective glass
where the chaos and clamor
covered with paper scraps
and a residue of grime
constitute a forest of grey
as in winter long after
the colors of autumn
have fallen to the ground
where sirens and squeaky brakes
take the place of the singing of birds

and yet there is no drowning
out of songs but rather
an incessant droning amid the din
that fills the silences left by the
conspicuous absence of song
which is likely due to the lack
of birds except of course for pigeons
whose coo can hardly count for song

it is here at the supposed center
of modern life in the mighty heart
of the city where winter takes its hold
on the weariness fever and fret
and leaves a drowsy numbness
where death pervades the shadows
a constant subtext of city life
and if there were any songs
it would seem that the nightingale
had somehow been replaced
by the blackbird
and so rather than the song
causing the poet to fall in love
with easeful death it has instead
become the pantomime
the undiscovered country
of death itself

but now we need another bird
since the blackbird’s circles
and innuendoes have come to represent
a truth we can no longer acknowledge
we could turn to rilke’s swan
but he is without song
unless you count the swan
they call the trumpeter
but then we might just as well
go with harrison’s buzzards
whose cries awoke the poet
from his dreams on keats’s early death
and yet if music is the aim
we would be better to choose
the goose whose seasonal song
sounds from overhead like
sixth grade saxophone practice

and so we’re left to go bird by bird
but it is much more likely
that each of these birds
from the nightingale to
the blackbird from the eagle
to the sparrow from the buzzard
to the swan from the parrot
to the mockingbird they
are all just lovely reminders
with their varying degrees
of beauty and of truth
of a happier time long past

2006-10-10T12:41:00.000-07:00

a word in the beginning
is the genesis of poetry
where it derives itself
out of its own becoming
it all starts with a single word
of course it does you might think
but not in any banal sense
there's more to it than that
to speak of words and how
poems can spring from words
does seem almost nonsensical
yet the finding of a word
can lead to musings that grow
into feelings emotions and
even at times evolve into
what long ago was described
as a spontaneous overflow
but now there is no tranquility
this is not a time for poets
to be mired in transcendentia
to be lost in romantic longings
for the reconciliation of our
selves and our world
which of course has long been
the realm of religion then
poets tried to fill the void
but now it would seem we're left
with politicians who offer hope
with nihilistic invocations
of the name of jesus
as just another empty word
but a word as the beginning
can be a password into
the discourse into the logos
into the primeval machinations
of language itself and the infinite
play of signifieds
the key however is the word
its genesis must be
outside of ideology
if that is even possible
and while it must be free
of unnecessary pedantry
and eschew the sesquipedalian
it must also transcend the mundanity
of the diurnal with a wisdom
a genius beyond the reach
of the initial glance
beyond mere pronunciation
it must reach into its own
resonance its innuendo
and whether it is like the song
of the nightingale
or the blackbird
whether it invokes the angels
of bethlehem or benjamin
in the end it must survive
in the ritual of its recitation
its saying its reading
its writing

2006-09-28T09:06:00.000-07:00

the reading of poetry
is a privilege unequalled
equally available to all
who dare to climb
its tender branches

it can be a frightening
undertaking venturing
into the unknown
nooks and crannies
of a shared consciousness
suspended between
the mind of the reader
and the playful animation
of the written text

surely all of us were taught
that we could never hope
to understand the sacred mysteries
of deep hidden meanings
and the hallowed secrets
of symbolism and scansion
we were taught a poetry
of alembication
an over-wrought relic
a privileged discourse
requiring a level of explication
far beyond the reach of you and me

the tragedy is that we all
then come to poems defeated
convinced from the start
that we can never understand
but all we really need to know
is that poetry is simply
the distillation of our relationship
between language and the world
it unfolds the origins
it explains our condition
in language beyond the reach
of philosophy or sociology
in language seeking sanctuary
in the loving embrace of the reader
it is among the best things we have
and might well be the best thing
we can do alone

i like to think that good poetry
makes you think or feel deeply
great poetry makes you do both
and that is all it does

it should not become a specimen
like too many critics make it
or a weapon like too many
english teachers do

it is good because
it helps us understand
ourselves and reading it
should have more to do
with understanding that
than understanding it

2006-08-04T06:32:00.000-07:00

there is a fear
that poetry is dead
and while that is not
the case entirely
it does seem under
considerable threat
from multimedia
productions that make
seemingly simple text
somehow insufficient
there is now a new type
of poetry that focuses on
the physical aspects
of the performance
voice and meter become
transformed by the theatrical
mere bombastic exhibition
an unsynthesized form
of hip-hop or hypertext
not that these new forms
should ever be undervalued
as art or denied the name
of poetry it’s just that
we must never forget that
true poetry does not exist
in the performance
of the poet or even
in the mind of the poet
nor does it live in
the pages of a book
just as this poem does
not resonate in the tones
of my voice any more
than on the page
you are now holding
or your computer screen
rather it resides only
in the intermediary
spaces between
the mind and the object
where language dwells
it comes to life only
through the animation
provided by the reader’s voice
provided by your voice

2006-04-10T07:48:00.000-07:00

someone recently asked
what in my opinion
is theory and perhaps
more importantly
what is my theory
i replied that i did not know
what it is any more than he
i guess it is not
unlike asking someone
what is the grass
only that it is more irregular
prickly and especially riddled
with gnats and noseeums
then after stumbling around
for a moment or two
i told him that i guess
for me theory is a lens
through which meaning
is filtered or even produced
i then added that
i suffered from the blessing
curse of learning poststructuralism
from poststructuralists and
marxism from marxists
i’ve studied semiotics
with semioticians and
feminism with feminists
not to mention critical race
theory and cultural studies
from provocative advocates
i’ve also been taught
somewhat against my will
the absence or avoidance
of theory by those who
were simply and blindly
in the grip of an older theory
unconsciously unwittingly
subject to the hegemonic
despite the detours and road bumps
this diversity of experience
allowed me the opportunity
of seeing each positionality
as a positionality
from within itself
through its own lens and
through the lenses of others
reflexively recognizing
the ideological presuppositions
that finally doom each to
a partiality of knowing
and ultimately to failure
nevertheless these are each
theory on a grand scale
they deal with our relation
to reality and truth
they alethiologically shape
and fundamentally determine
our notions of how
the world is constructed
and thereby deconstructed
so access to so many
world views would seem
to leave one an overwhelming
spectrum of possibilities
leaving us in a state
of brilliant ignorance
of ineffectual enlightenment
in spite of all of that however
it is necessary and it means
i neglected to tell him
however that i have also
been taught perhaps to my cost
christianity from christians
who are the same people
who taught me racism
sexism and homophobia
under the guise of what
i would now call white
privilege patriarchy
and heteronormativity
upon second thought
i wish i had told him
this last bit it’s just that
when you are from alabama
you have to be careful
about the kinds of lenses
you provide people
to see through you
which is kind of like theory
but not really

2006-04-05T20:18:00.000-07:00

the world’s a poem
that doesn’t rhyme
it lacks a certain metric
or sense of time
the nature of the world
and how we interpret it
is not what it once was
the act of perception must now
be an act of writing not reading
when conceived as text
the world is an endless string
of signifieds with infinite
possibilities of meaning
so writing is more vital
more important than reading
reading is mere reification
of course we could blather on
in grandiose phrase of how
the world is out of joint
or even how we are out of place
in our interpreted world or
lament what man has made
of man but now in the dawn
of a new century we can
no longer turn to shakespeare
or rilke or even wordsworth
to help us find our way
through the artificial constructs
of the natural world around us
two hundred years ago
wordsworth wrote the harmony
of nature as a simple ballad
a style that might be
at home in an old church hymn
or country music song
and later turned to the ode
perhaps the most contrived
of all poetic forms to explore
his most contrived intimations
of his poetic immortality
now we can no longer see
what he once saw in nature
or in poetry for that matter
a godlike harmony and beauty
and while our world has perhaps
distanced itself even further
from wordsworth’s imagined
state of nature we must
recognize that his accounts
of early spring and daffodils
were always written from
the perspective of outside
observer as though he were
writing while looking out
his window or even at a painting
we can no longer write
wordsworth’s garden
that apple has already been bitten
and we now know that
it cannot be unbitten
if it were ever bitten at all
for nature outside of the artifice
of poetry is really nothing
but the perpetual exercise
of sex and violence
as evidenced here in early spring
amid the ubiquitous pollen
and ever-present signs of easter
and not to mention the kudzu
the dormant kudzu
that covers the world
like grey cobwebs
in a haunted attic
if there is harmony
it is a brutal harmony
wrought of our own writing
like the painting of a landscape

2006-03-26T17:02:00.000-08:00

poetry is able
to sing because
it reaches inside
our collective knowing
into our cultural memory
our shared repertoire of
significations without which
metaphor symbol and allusion
would have no bearing
just as music presents
the appearance of the harmonic
its tonal and rhythmic unities
are merely a social construct
crafted not out of the
phenomena of physics but
rather from the discourses
which silently determine
the discernment of our minds
even beauty exists only
in the resonance of
how the outside world
is appropriated by consciousness
it resides in the afterthought
yet it only can resonate
in the material of the social
therefore we must delight
in the discursive in the course
of arguing metaphysics
or pondering the constitution
of reality plunging the depths
of philosophical inquiry
nitpicking the superficial
boundaries between
the material and ideal
or worse yet dickering
over the boundaries within
a slippery cartesian dualism
and while most discussions
of what constitutes the real
would seem arguably pointless
and at best academic
meaningfully confronting the real
requires another more
troubling confrontation
between what it is
we have to think
and what we are given
to think by the discourses
that not only shape but
determine our consciousness
and thus we realize that
beauty is learned
but so is truth
and that is all we need to know

2006-01-31T14:46:00.000-08:00

whenever we speak with the angels
rilke writes that we should
speak of common things
of the ordinary objects
that are truly knowable to us
however i am not often
in dialogue with angels
nor am i often concerned with things
in the age-old dichotomy
of perception versus reality
i will always side with perception
not that the other isn’t important
but rather that the portions
we can experience
free from perception
are rare indeed
as well as patently boring
it is much more fruitful
to provosculate upon those things
which are mediated by perception
therefore we can no longer let being
be the finale of seeming
rather we must recognize
that seeming gives reality to being
and that being gives birth to saying
but now is not the time for the sayable
it is the time for speaking
what is unsayable therefore
we must continue to probe
the unsayable the unknowable
for these are all that is
worth troubling ourselves to say

2006-01-26T14:25:00.000-08:00

life is nothing
but an exercise in reading
an effort to find
music in the prosaic
the alliteration of the landscape
the enjambments of daily
interactions and the metonymic
semiotics of perception
i like to dwell where
image confronts thought
where consciousness
encounters the real
as language
as poetry
or even as prose
perhaps it’s foolish but
i often wonder
if i encounter or even
inhabit the same world you do
surely we have learned different
lessons in the reading of reality
i tend to inhabit the meta-
elements of the construct
deconstructing the discursive
for me the beauty is in the
finding of the façade
the act of translating five senses
into the language of thought
and then interpreting that language
into the content of our consciousness
into the shaping of understanding
and the making of memory
not only mediates the objective
it is the objective
poets long ago wrote of how we half-create
the scenes we experience
of how we even though
we look upon the same tree
i doubt we see the same tree

2005-12-30T09:43:00.000-08:00

i am not sure when
poets lost their place
as the unacknowledged
legislators of the world
but it is unfortunate
poets were once the writers of
the zeitgeist composers of
the collective unconscious
but no more
words have been exchanged for imagery
philosophy for dogma
poets have always read
the philosophers
though i doubt
the philosophers to their cost
have as often read the poets
priests or more likely preachers
lie somewhere between
dallying in a bit of both
they along with the politicians
seem to occupy the pulpit
once held by poets
the sad part is that
politicians don't read
any of it
if they read at all
and while poetry may indeed
make nothing happen
while it cannot write
another world while
it cannot translate dreams
into the real
language is the currency
of consciousness
it is what constitutes real
and so our only hope
is that poets continue
to dream and write
those dreams

2005-12-14T14:34:00.000-08:00

we don’t need
trees and snow
angels
or even lakes or mountains
to see into the life of things
i’ve stood on the edge
of the grand canyon
in spring
breathless speechless
ridden through the alps
in summer
with yellow blooms
and waterfalls
driven through the rockies
in winter
mesmerized by snow
against a clear sunny sky
and i’ve seen
my four-year-old son
swinging
in the back yard
reaching to go high
enough to see over the bar
then returning
head tilted back
full of delight
laughing

2005-11-30T06:09:00.000-08:00

twilight is a time
of intermingling light
and dark where beauty
somehow
resides however unwelcome
and though the victor
is predestined by the diurnal
it is an internecine drama
beyond the reach
of shakespeare’s pen
or fellini’s lens

it is a time
that opens perception
inviting us to see
not in spite of the darkness
but because of it

it is at this moment that
a mockingbird behind me
impersonates the nightingale
and then the blackbird

which causes my mind to stumble
among tropes of emptiness and fear
and find itself alone
i look for god
in the pages of a book
and find comfort
in the longing of duino
and dover beach

2005-11-29T15:14:00.000-08:00

when i sing
i often feel
like a rich old woman
with a priceless steinway
in her front parlor
that she cannot play
i possess an instrument on which
i can bang out brilliant flourishes
fleeting fragments of virtuosity
that can at times approach
the heights of placido or pavarotti
or more often those of tonic or toad
like the young guitarist
who can dazzle
with a few zeppelin riffs
but cannot play an entire song
and as i sit here in virtual quietness
serenaded by the arrhythmic
almost inaudible clicks of this keyboard
i have a similar feeling as a poet
i have stashed away
somewhere in the attic
in one of the countless
boxes of books notebooks
and other sorts of literary trinkets
an antique ticket
for the train to transcendence
but i could never use it
the bridge is out near simplon pass
broken long ago
whether by the winds of time
or nietzsche’s madman
i cannot be certain
but it is more likely that its abutments
and cross supports collapsed
under the weight of their own suppositions
or were gradually deconstructed
by internal contradictions
and faulty assumptions
and so we are left with the fragments
we can mimic the masterpieces
i have myself sung handel’s messiah
haydn’s creation and bach’s b minor mass
and while
iambics often trickle off my tongue
i can only bang out fragments
on this keyboard
there is of course brief comfort
in attempts to imagine a stairway to heaven
but it is no different than the haunting rhythms
of the ocean or even the steps
of a fool in the rain