Ode to Megan Gibbs

not your average “she,” more the far-end tail of a lizard,

resolute, machiavellian, sometimes spiky and coy

she could dance like a magnifying glass in the sun, burning up

a bright, bright, floral red…

her pumpkin carving could have been a college level graduate course

and she would have taught, wearing some kind of Costello glasses

not needing to demand your attention… (because she already had it, of course)

she would have been strict but fair,

“estricto pero justo!” se dice

her voice could knock you out with one punch

the coup de grace viva voce

she could make the lilliputian feel significantly larger

simply by talking about it, for her voice could carve air

into words… she was a cowgirl without a ranch, she could,

after all, beat you at poker before the cards were even dealt

she made peeking at the infinitesimal

feel welcoming, a shower of love for all those who, too, were willing

to view like she did.

she could stand on her toes like a ballerina, no, just the big toe

exactly like a ballerina; she could and would cast anything aside

simply for a moment of purity, stripping away all the (bacon?)

nonsense for that one, tiny, seemingly trivial, moment.

Ode to the Dictionary Dot Com

You were right, Pablo. Poetry is the insightful evocation of words with a dictionary nearby. It is the "the luxury / of one bee" and the "splinter / of your ancient wood perfumed" muddled by our minds and expressed by our tongues, or vice versa.

Nowadays, kids write poetry on computers, so what a long strange trip it has been, but like many other foot-washing poets, I, too, believe that poetry cannot be written on the computer screen, jaded by the pallid glimmer of artificial light.

You declare: "I receive / my words / in a loud, clear voice / directly from Mt. Sinai. / I shall convert / forms to alchemy. / I am the Magus."

How bold to say that great inspiration does not lie in some invisible or abysmal mount gluttoned by Olympians, but rather in the scruffy, viscous pages of a lexicon. Students do not learn nowadays to write with the dictionary or thesaurus nearby because of the advent of the hyper-information basket, bearing immediate knowledge at one's fingertips. I think of Neftali saw our children today, he would deliver an unforgettable glare straight into their eyes and piercing their souls, and seeking or rather requesting, one last time, that someone in this lost crowd of word-swiftness will turn around, marble looking-glass in hand, and say, "I'll take on the new role as leader of the poetic gait, whittler of the momentous absurd."

That'll be something. Such is the danger in velocity, shaken up, stirred, and offered in a martini glass with broken promises and passé poesy. People do not understand rhythm anymore. Rhyme, when dragged on a leash and placed under your nose, still caries no smell; mood is what they want. Feelings! Revelations!

Take your time with it! Send it on vacation for a while.

The House

Dear Pablo Neruda,

When you wrote "The House," were you being facetious or maudlin? I read it and I don't know whether I should run away or emote some kind of dilapidated depressive countenance; either way, I'll be on the move from myself. "My house, the walls whose fresh, recently cut wood still smells... sullen scars, men without money, the mineral claw of poverty." I would say you are being scooped up into this world you do not understand yet. You are too young, too innocent, the kid in his pajamas who sits by the balcony on the stairs listening attentively and giggling to every adult word slurped during a dinner party. I, too, yearned for the sweaty brow, the pleated pants, and the G & T.

"Later I loved the smell of coal in smoke, oils, axles of frozen precision, and the solemn train crossing winter stretched over the earth, like a proud caterpillar." I get it; I take in every single, solitary coffee drop of wisdom you fling to the world with pen and ink. You longed for the passing of time, but time is like a caterpillar, proud and obstinate, and also very inscrutable. You did not make "time" any other living thing, for it could not be a cat, or a sparrow, or even a gorilla, each entity representing some element and movement of time perceived by the human eye, but in this case, in this poem, it is a caterpillar.

I love the sound of "caterpillar" when it escapes from the mouth. It makes the tongue twist and jive, only to shoot towards the teeth at the penultimate syllable and then suddenly disappear into the depths of your maw.

Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto

When someone adopts a name in order to avoid family disapproval, it is like cleaning grime out from under the fingernails of a bulldog, the going is messy, and the end result looks just the same as the beginning. How can a person see accomplishment if he can't feel it or vice versa?

Pablo Neruda is a muse. He writes: "My soul is an empty carousel at sunset." I, too, feel his pain, his longing for the buzz of everyday life, the people, the city.

From this point on, I will read a Pablo Neruda poem everyday. I will write of my incidents, be they unscrupulous or shabby, full of euphoria or full of the other stuff we step in. I will not try to wander aimlessly; however, I haven't really decided on a goal either.

How is this going to work with me working? The form of this blog will follow the function which is to be determined.

What form does Neruda follow? He speaks of the body parts of people the same way he speaks of nature. For the poet, there is no dividing line between the Chilean hills surrounding the city of Santiago and the hills of a woman, lying on her back and waiting for rapture. He loves to make love to it all.

Yet, this is what I am afraid of. I worry this attempt at some form of constant in my life will turn into an array of negligible and trite moments, that I am trying too hard to squeeze every last drop of the air we breathe into something meaningful.

Well, I will read a poem a day by the fluid Chilean bard and let my mind wander.

Jan. 30, 2010

i write to you

from here boldness doesn’t seem so brave; rather frigid

like haughty pranksters frolicking naked and backwards

in december, laughing at me with the sultriness of their smirks

and metastasizing my ambition for more or less the pace of living

my own life freely. i, too, breathe spontaneity, or simply imply

the paucity of green in winter to be breathtaking and mundane.

my fingers are transgressions when they’re not around

your corpse, a mastery of delightful Xerox copying, paper

breasts and two dimensional ecstasy.

Bicycles

While there are many different kinds of bicycles in the world, the universal two-wheeled transportation device is a manifestation of man’s compassion for a world with clean air. How hilarious yet environmentally safe would it be to see steel workers, hard hats bobbing up and down like floating Styrofoam, pedaling their way to work on a tricycle.

The getting on and off of a bicycle is an intimate act. Pre-driving teenagers gallop and leap onto their red speedsters while in motion because an urge for Taco Bell just usurped their appetite for destruction. Heading toward the lottery ticket kiosk, a polite grandmother with coffee (in a casket) in her right hand motions through the streets of Buenos Aires. She has great trouble lifting that left leg over the middle bar but makes up for it with the industrial-strength padded cushion she has for a seat. The New York businessman exits his 32-speed mountain bike in terrible fashion, tripping over the curb, smashing his priceless nose, and forgetting to lock the bike up. He wishes his ironed pants not to be soiled, but ungodliness of the trousers is inevitable. Of course, the eccentricities of getting on and off a bicycle are directly proportional to a person’s age.

A bike is a sacred possession. It carries you from Point A to Point B. An earth-ship with spokes, this mystic thing de-oils the streets with its ability to cut corners and fit through closet alleyways and holes in fences. It will not bang into others for fear of crumbling like a cheesecake on a sunny day. Plus, it doesn’t leave too much of a mess.

There are many kinds of bikes. West Coast cyclists have transformed the structure of a bike into an urban art form. High and lengthy handlebars, chrome wheels, a gold-plaited frame, and a low-riding seat are the chemical makeup of a West Coast Cycle. Mountaineers of one time zone east of California take their bikes on rugged terrain and very loose gravel. These bikes are made for spills, where the mess is principally made on the person and not the bike. These bikes require accessories that save your life. The circus has monkeys, dogs, or squirrels pawing around in circles on little yellow and red tricycles. These machines pull laughter from the audience in elephantine quantities but very little delight is delivered to those Animal Rights Activists.

The bicycle is a sacred thing. Being only one simple a thing of this gigantic world, it can easily be forgotten. However, once viewed as a tool that can save this planet from immediate pollution, and your wallet from becoming empty for purchasing petroleum, the bicycle becomes more than just a thing. The bicycle will breathe new life into the dying world of automobiles.

A Blank Disc

The inserting and ejecting of a blank disc is a sacred act. After entering the portal of a computer, everything changes. I’ve known blank discs that haven’t come out alive.

The act of inserting a blank disc is indeed the holy sanctification of creating and moving from nothingness, la tabula rasa, to the absolute inscription of the will. We choose what goes and what stays on a blank disc. I cannot fit Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall pt. 2” because its last few seconds hinge on the eighty minute regulation of the disc. I must conform to what the disk asks of me, but I am also free to author its soul. Like a confession or a prayer, a blank disc demands an answer. How many of us have inserted a blank disk only to find that its contents were not satisfying enough?

There are many kinds of blank discs. Some take the exact shape and color of old LP’s; they have fake concentric circles reflecting the days of vinyl. These are typical of the nostalgic music lovers, who proclaim that vinyl “sounds” better because of the rustic and scratchy contact the needle makes with the product. I cannot imagine a Little Bow Wow laying down the needle of a phonograph. Then there are the colorful blank discs that businessmen use to organize their files or teenagers use because they stand out. The shelf of burnable disks at Best Buy or Wal-Mart contains DVD disks, Data disks, Disks packaged with a tall ring or individually wrapped ones. The indifferent and unconfident people who stand before this shelf will stay there for a long time because they are too wrapped up in looks. Nobody remembers the days of blank tapes. However, the importance of the blank disk is its quality of being blank. A burnt disk will be loved but eventually encounters its half-life in the maybe-I’ll-listen-to-you-later library. How rare it is to make the perfect mix! I’ve done it once.

There are various ways of inserting and ejecting a blank disc. There is the violent insertion of finger and hand with which the hopeless romantic shoves in the mix CD because he must burn it now. If he doesn’t burn it now, it will be too late. There is the gentle and unknowing nudge of a disk for those who don’t quite understand yet what will become of the CD in the end. On the other hand, the ejecting of a disk can be quite sad and depressing. Sometimes the burning doesn’t go well, and a defunct disk forces itself upon the madness of our desk. I can assume that everyone has felt the agony of a disk gone awry.

The blank disk is a symbol of man’s free will. It is our expression placed firmly on a round piece of spinning funk. Anything and everything virtual can be placed on the disk if the disk warrants room. The inserting of a blank disk and the ejecting of a burnt one proves that we are what we make, even if it’s a mistake. Of course, when we introduce a blank disc into a computer, we expect the outcome to be great.