it's cold outside

i'm on my porch, wearing layers, smoking an absolutely wonderful cigar, and i can see my breath. those of you who know me at all know how special that is to me. it makes me want to write.

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can you believe i spend my time thinking about this stuff? i think i am finally and irrevocably an academic. i actually think to myself, ooh, that'd make a great paper topic.

up to date

welp, i was checking my counter the other day and noticed that some of you still check on this blog. it's rather embarrassing, then, that i haven't had the decency to update it in such a long time. so i thought i would let everyone in on what i'm up to, and what's consuming so much of my time.

1. first and foremost, i'm married, and looking for another job. i currently wait tables at the olive garden, and i'm hating every minute of it. i thus spend a lot of time missing my wife while i'm at work, and my friends who don't live nearby--which is all of them.

2. i was supposed to have an adjunct teaching position this fall, but it fell through when an emeritus professor stepped in and asked to teach. so i'm currently academically and professionally bored.

3. i'm working on a novel. i'm not sure how long it'll take since it's something i've never attempted before, but it's engaging, and i like thinking about it, at least.

4. i'm also toying with some pretty ambitious (if i do say so myself) ideas for an online poetry project that there's a good chance no one will ever see, but this project, along with some other writing projects, is primarily what has kept me from this blog. for those of you interested, and i assume that means the one or two people who still check up on this blog, if anything ever happens with it, i'll let you know immediately.

odd???

i sometimes find the sensations i experience somewhat oddly composed. for example: i am soon to be married. i find in this thought a variety of feelings: relief; a romantic easiness; sexual arousal; irresistible smileyness; and, perhaps, etc. of particular interest to me, though, is the nature of the relief (just stop your mind right there: i'm not going there. well, not really). relief that wedding planning is over, that non-stop work is coming to a break, and that i will perhaps have more luxury time on my hands, etc. now, here is where i find my feelings oddly composed. Holly and i have a rather extensive collection of books that i have hardly been able to spend any time with this summer. usually my summers are centered on reading, and this summer i've largely missed it. so along with the relief of marriage is the excitement of having more time to read. but, i suppose because that excitement falls into thinking of marriage, when i find myself thinking of reading (just reading) after the wedding, i also experience feelings of a romantic easiness; irresistible smileyness; and, perhaps, etc. . . . . . . .
is that odd????

wedding coming!

in just a little over two weeks i'll be having sex in the smoky mountains. obviously i'm pretty excited. excited enough to bring it up without any real point of having said it. i just wanted to boast.

i'll be glad, though, when all this wedding stuff is over. now, my life hasn't been as hectic as is often portrayed in movies like Father of the Bride and such, but there has been little time for pleasures like reading, and certainly almost no time for that incredibly time consuming (yet intensely pleasurable) task of writing. i haven't been so much running around trying to finalize wedding things, myself, though, as i have been trying to make up for about 2 1/2 months of not working this summer because i had a crumbled bit of wood-work for an arm.

an interesting phenomenon of having a wedding coming up is the number of puns that pop into your head, and into the heads of everyone around you. i'm sure that most of you have experienced this already, and that i don't need to go into details, but suffice it to say, my title is an example. for that very reason i left off adding "quick!"

similar, yet dissimilar

rain
fills
the yard
of faces
lapping
full mouths
and
roots
drinking
rain
through
painted
jars
in the
window

i have about as much faith in my ability to indefinitely produce somethings worth reading as i do in my ability to live forever. i struggle on an almost daily basis to say something that i like myself for having said, and that doesn't even begin to extend to my concern for readerly tastes. i've kind of been in a dry spout lately, for one reason or another, but i thought i better go ahead and say something so you all know i'm still around.

that said, let me share with you some of my pet peeves that i have discovered in the past week.

1) stories that pretend to be great when they're not (see The Illusionist, as well as Syriana)

2) criticism that pretends that there is an objective scale for good or bad art

3) people who express opinions that, at best, don't get along, at worst, are mutually negational.

but enough of that.

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painted
walls
fill
rooms of
rain
full
faces
floating
in the window

of lawns and little imperfections

how many of you are familiar with panera bread? i used to work there, but that's beside the point. for lunch today i went to panera, got half a turkey sandwich and a bowl of the best french onion soup ever, and took it to my new apartment where i ate on my porch in the sun, overlooking browning grass and a couple quiet streets. i can't say exactly why i like it here so much. it's green, but it's never so green as some other places i've been. oregon's green like something you thought only existed in exaggerated advertisements for cameras; the green in belo horizonte occasionally peeking out of city streets between buildings like a hidden thing. if there's a flaw to this place, this is it. this is lake country, and trees find all the water they need in the ground, but the grass here, and even more so home, in iowa, visibly asks for more rain than it gets. it weathers early, like age settling too soon. and sometimes the rain stops for a while, and, unless shaded, the grass dies for its shallow rootedness. a little further north and this is no concern because there are so many trees to provide shade that the grass either thrives, or dies buried in it and pine needles . . . or in water. and besides, the trees themselves comprise such a lush green that a brown undergrowth is a welcome contrast. now, don't get me wrong, i love a nice lushgreenlawn, and wouldn't care very much at all for a half-to-three-quarters dead one, but there's something in the slightlyyellow, bareblybrowninggreen of the middle of the united states that suggests a consciousness of the weight of living and the inevitability of not. and it's somehow freeing.

cigars and other oblong things

i had no idea there was such a thing as the military channel. the trouble with the current popularity of smoking cigars is that it seems to feed a certain artificial masculinity already too prevalent in american men. as one who is a fan of quality tobacco i can speak to the virtual oblivion in many smokers who have no idea what they're smoking, except that it is (they suppose) what they're supposed to be smoking. i hear a lot of "oh man, this cigar i had was so good" but not a lot of "i liked ________ about it," unless you fill in the blank with the kill all "smooth." i believe the problem is that they haven't actually liked the cigar, but they're quite aware they're supposed to have liked it. and cigar companies know this, and know that it's just as often about the masculinity of the cigar as it is about the quality of it. for what other reason would Arturo Fuente have a line of (very good) cigars bearing Hemingway's name?

but as i was saying, i had no idea there was such a thing as the military channel. i love finding a good cigar shop. the leaf in abilene is decent. metro cigars in menomonee falls, wisconsin, is better. it's also where i am right now. but the tv's on the military channel, and the conversation focuses on the WMDs on tv and on the "jokers" (and worse names) that are currently protesting the war in Iraq, just down the street. but it's ok because "we're not occupiers, we're liberators," and "this cigar is so smooth." now, far be it from me to judge people for enjoying a pastime i too enjoy, while holding opposing views on what are and are not acceptable forms of military and economic colonialism, but i do find the pairing ironic. a great big cigar, and a show about stuff that blows stuff up and complaints about the "jokers," who are "probably all women," protesting war. i don't know, maybe they are all women. and maybe that eight inch cigar is compensating for something. it's just a thought.

authorial confessions

seeing how even i did not really enjoy my latest published rant, i deleted it, post-haste. instead, i would like to share with you all some more authorial confessions.

1) in my great ignorance, i once publicly made fun of John Steinbeck. the following day a friend introduced me to Travels With Charley---may God forgive me. i am now a devoted fan of every word he has written.

2) given the opportunity i would make-out with Arundhati Roy: she is the only living author i have wanted to marry.

3) i have for a little more than a year had a secret crush (barely admitted even in whispers) on Gertrude Stein. i wish i could have met her if only to have asked "what the hell?"

4) under pressure i have admitted that J.K. Rowling isn't that bad. but the comparison of her with Tolkien is wildly unfair to her---she ought to be compared with Jonathan Swift (whom i personally care for a great deal less than Rowling).

5) i would rather write a thesis on the collective works of General Motors than ever be exposed to Nathaniel Hawthorne again. in my teaching i plan to pretend he never existed.

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flowers
watch
the fall
in envy
of autumn leaves
and land
as winter dreams
well fed
in the rain
of butterfly wings
the orange and yellow
of leaves
in their golden dresses
in the bluegray of her eyes
color of the ocean she possesses

some things

i've spent the majority of my time this week trying to figure out 3 things . . .

(1) where am i going to get a job? i basically have two skills: waiting tables and reading papers. it's been hard to do either because up until recently my thrice fractured once dislocated right arm has been bound and gagged.

(2) where am i going to live? right now i live with my fiance's parents. imagine moving back in with your parents, only this time they're very concerned with what you do with your penis.

(3) how is a story i'm working on going to work out? it's ugly right now---hideously ugly. i wouldn't even think of posting it here. but it's consuming a lot of my thought, so i thought i would mention it here and maybe it'll make me feel better and can continue moving forward with it again.

another random thing that's been pestering me: hemingway was a douche. those of you who know me well know of my long running affair with this writer, but seriously, he was a total douche. how do you continue an affair with a man who's a douche?

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the trouble with trying to get a job at a restaurant is that restaurants have very strict hours when they will discuss anything with a potential employee (2-4, most of them). if you don't know how to get where you're going, this window can prove to be really small. i missed my turn on friday trying to go in for an interview and ended up in a place i knew must exist but never wanted to really find out where---you know, "that part of the city." that place where kids think it's funny to jump in front of cars and get them to stop, then decide that playing in the street is just so much fun, they'd rather not go back to the sidewalk; the place that people strap tires on front of their cars to substitute for bumpers. i'm not stereotyping---these are things i saw in the 45 some odd minutes that i was lost there. and i might have been perfectly comfortable except that it had an odd feeling of the foreign for me. it seemed more like the streets of brazil i've driven than anything i've seen in the states. in fact, it was remarkably like it. bordering on the third world. wreckless. unsupported. it had all the ear-marks of a society in decay, and i wondered who let it get like that.

and then (after backtracking endlessly) i met the manager i was supposed to see. he was white, and had what was essentially an A.C.T. specially designed to weed out the uneducated or non-white for me to take, with questions like, "what was eleanor roosevelt's middle name?" and "what is the name of the street the white house is on?" and some other ridiculous ones about white american history and upper-echelon neighborhoods that no one could possibly be familiar with unless they lived there, none of which had anything to do with the restaurant business or waiting tables. and i'm not sure if it was just a trick of the eye, but i'm almost sure it said "vote republican" at the bottom.

making up for lost time

i just got back from vacation with holly's family. we went up to a wonderful lake near hayward, wisconsin, something like 1 1/2 hours from lake superior, and fished for a week. i, who am obsessed with the north, found this opportunity to go further north delightful. and it was not disappointing. but after a while i started to feel a little claustrophobic because i didn't have my own car, boat, cabin, or room. i'm secretly a very solitary individual. i went so far in college as to not allow anyone to enter my dorm room for two semesters. so it was a good thing that it ended when it did because i was starting to feel very crampy after 7 nights in close-quarters with people i could not get away from.

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my internal compass points to water and cold. i don't know why. but the most beautiful things i can remember seeing are (1) the Pacific coast along Oregon, which was icy cold and covered in fog, and (2) one night when i was little when we were being so helplessly buried in snow that it was clear no one would be going anywhere anytime soon (digging oneself out of one's home, buried in snow, is delightful, especially if you have a fireplace). some images of woods in fall, and one week when it was so cold outside that schools and businesses closed, are close runners up. so is the idea of seeing the redwoods.

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writing (and, i believe, all art) is the translation of experience (broadly defined) from one form into another. in order to write you first have to understand how you understand. then you have to decide how to translate what you understand and what to translate it into. but you must also be aware that whatever you have translated you have done only for yourself, and if anyone else seems to connect with it, it is very lucky. for this reason everything i have ever written has been something i've wanted very badly to read.

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on mattresses
blankets
wait
with
pillows
feather
weight
in
the
sun's
gait

"titling"; or, "a poem"

the more i try to do it the more i discover that i really don't care for titling poetry. there are a couple good reasons i can think of, ones that i usually use to explain my aversion in conversation, but honestly, i think i just don't like to name them if i can avoid it--titles are usually explanatory gestures on the part of the poet, and thus often false names, and i would prefer they find their own names with the people they interact with. that seems a little odd and parentish, but it's the best way i can think to put it.

anyway, and with that windy and wordish disclaimer out of the way, i thought and thought about it, and decided, i'm not titling this--i'm not going to do it. i prefer to let it stand on its own and see how it does.

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chimes
type
on
windows
shuttered
from
frost
on winds
whispered
greetings
rise
in waves
flakes
of winter
knocking

venturing out of doors

i'm at starbucks right now, stealing internet from a nearby panera since it costs six dollars an hour in starbucks--yeah, like i'm gonna do that. this is the first time i've gotten up the nerve to go out in public in four days, and i get the feeling i must look pretty ridiculous: bandages down my left arm, completely encased right one, scraped up all over, and slowly, meticulously attempting to type with my left hand, face close to the keys--i think i was even biting my tongue, stuck out the corner of my mouth for a while. it's not that i'm particularly vain about all this--i hadn't stayed in out of embarrassment, but pain. but you know how it is when you go out and suddenly become aware of your appearance and feel very naked? that's how i feel now.

in other news, i have recently discovered that my brother, Marshall, has started reading this blog. hi marsh! he's leaving for Tanzania soon, and pretty damn cool.

anyway, this is something new i've been working on. i hope everyone finds it enjoyable.

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walking
sticks
tap
roads
lazily
run
long
afternoons
perked
above grass
rabbit
ears
with
lion heads
in sway
gray manes
fly away

good news and bad news

good news: the forecast for this week is rain. it's going to be lovely.

bad news: unfortunately, in an effot to enjoy yesterday, memorial day, which is supposed to have been the last dry and sunny day for a little while, i went for a bike ride. i won't go into the gritty details. suffice it to say that i fell and broke my right arm and thumb. the sad part is i'm right handed. so it's going to be a little difficult posting wrting for a while, and will probably be a little slower for the time being. i'm giving myself a headache just trying to type with only my left hand.

i was considering putting some pictures up of all the little cuts and bruises that come from hitting the asphalt at about twenty miles per hour instead, but that's gross.

farm-house-coffee-shops and revisions

i don't know how many of you saw my last post about the farm house coffee shop that i have started to use as my hang-out/writing-room, but i decided the poem with it (that had already taken six years to get to that point) was horrible, after all, and in need of revision straight-away. so here's the new version.

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neath canopies of storm
trees
dressed in green
and yellow leaves
on branches
that bear them
hang
near the ground
around me
with hands
in my coat
warming fingers
set my cup
on the lawn
in the bluegray
and green
whispering
passers
breathe
in the haze
smoke
with rain
catching
dreams
in nets
it's raining
in my cup

poetry about home

well, i'm home at last! actually, i'm about 8 hours from home, but i'm in a portion of the united states that is similar to home, and it's closer to my real home both in sense and sensibility than abilene, tx, where i've been living for the past 2 years. i'm in wisconsin, and it's lovely. if you haven't ever seen wisconsin, you must! especially in the fall.

anyway, in commemoration of finding myself back where land, weather, and people's accents are familiar, i have decided to post a poem about home. it's very nostalgic, new, and it has no title yet.

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stalks of wild oats
crash
in waves
on the wood
as rains
bring weight
to fields
unheeded
drunk
in midsummer
the grass
hangs in the wet
and shaking out
its odor
from my umbrella
i watch it
washing
my legs
and steal
oaty memories
crushed in my hands

waking

some of you may have seen this in an earlier stage, but the revisions have been considerable. i like to call it "waking." i feel a bit premature posting it as it now is, but, here goes:

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in the morning
when you wake
from stillness
i walk
through garden
and wood
and ruin
i stride
by stream
flowing full
by trunks of trees
and fruit
left to slumberers
who listen
to the swinging swaying
songs of yesterdaying
wishing
of would be sailors
who would
otherwise be
dirge players
or star gazers
in the morning
when memory is clear
of moments unmeant to stay
on the rhythmic growing gongs
of the bleating waves
on the sand
with closed eye
on the ocean
from the shore
i sit
and continue my adoration
watching the sea
overtake me

to all of you regular readers out there

i'm working on some new stuff to post, but very little is at a stage i feel comfortable with sharing. it's mostly all in birthing stages, and what with my dividing my efforts between verse and prose, birthing i think takes a little longer: i don't concentrate for very long in one place. but i don't think that's a bad thing--it keeps things from getting stale--or at least, i hope it does.

but to satiate any dying thirsts, i have decided to post a little bit of what i can that it isn't totally embarrassing. and i might just keep doing this.

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The grass of the Iowan hills is worn to a dull green by the sun. In the rainy season it will achieve a dark lushness, but it is never comparable to the wetter regions of the United States. It is arguably beautiful, but it is dull. In April and May the storm clouds move over the waves of green land and bring rain, especially at night. And after, the sun shines on the clouds’ flanks, and the earth profits from the rain, and from it comes its green. And then it might rain again after the day begins to cool, and then again the sun will shine against the clouds, turning them pink and orange and red, and as it sets they will turn blue, and then gray with the hills, and then blend with the sky unless the moon offers some distinction.

In this way the years passed, in the rainy seasons, with the summer, and the long shabby fall, and the winter, in between, until the people forgot. And the land didn’t change, except for a gradual leveling through increased farming and development, and through the more gradual fated erosion of the loess. The years passed, and the hills began to grow short, crouching into old age, until the people forgot. And then they forgot who they were, and where they came from. And then they were nothing. And then maybe they were something new, but they didn’t know it, and they had no pride.

a dancer, and a fan favorite

I wouldn't say that this is the best thing I've ever written, but people seem to like it. I hope you do, too.

across icy meadow
she dances
on her stage
in her play
she steals hearts
with tiptoes
along glass
and dips into the smoothed
porcelain surface
in the crystal theater
beneath the snow
as shining eyes gaze in
shake up the globe and play it again

what should I call this? do you like it?

in autumnal rains
wind stirrings
of leaves let loose
flutter
round me
and we
kiss
in the gusts and clones
yet i am weighty
in my collar
and folds
i catch them
in my pockets
with no intent
they fall
fall
and dance round their tree
in drizzle
and blow
but i am weighty

a bit of nonfiction composed at mile-marker 69 on I-88, West, June 10, 2004

I am no lover of Illinois. This may be because of my limited experience of it, since I really only ever move through it to get somplace else. But I move spitefully. It is to me a gap of the mundane--a space of mediocrity between two beautiful lands: Wisconsin and Iowa. Of course I know that many people find my affection for Iowa as something beautiful, odd (or worse), and it may be true that I think so only because it is my home land. But I reply to them in two ways: next time you drive through Iowa, look out the window; and, it at least appears to me that Illinoisians agree with the unattrativeness of their state, since they vacation almost exclusively in the neighboring ones: Wisconsin, Minnesota, and mine. Besides, this is about my observations, and when I drive through Illinois I do it as fast as possible, scorning the flat, greenish-yellow thing.

But today I am forced to observe it a little closer: I ran out of gas on the inter-state. I had planned to continue sprinting through it to Iowa, stopping at the first Iowan rest-stop, praising my home state with the ferver of a returning victor, and congratulating myself on making it through a land that would be more appealing if it were desert.

But from this slower vantage point I can see across it. As I approached this spot I had thought that there was nothing nearby but a farm-house. Looking out my window now I can see that that farm-house is really part of a community. North of it are several more, larger silos, a water tower, even what appears to be frequented train-tracks. The surrounding area is vast spaces of corn, scattered trees, and scattered houses, and in between these spaces sit small civilizations, each one like, and yet unique from the others. And if I hadn't already taken all this into account as a given, I might have to reconsider my opinion of Illinois.

An untitled poem

This was first published by Weber State University.

the olding man
by the well
kneeling to drink
of an absent love
spins off words and rhymes
and kneels to taste another
looking for a place to stay
but finding none
he sits in this place
as the story becomes
another
throwing up leaves
and catching them before they fall
and bending to lift another
tonight he swims
in earthen ponds
tonight the night’s his brother
tonight he sings to morning dew
tonight he dreams of mother
the water splashes on his face
with no reflection
and his hair is entangled
in the dreams he slept on
and life is passing
and night is to fly
for morning comes on
say goodbye

The Union Pacific Line

I walk roads
of wood
and rock
and bone
built by beat up hands
and leveled home
smoothing hill
and breaking heart
through thickening heat
of engine start
and regular pound
of hammer chime
on steel shod stone
where life greets ground
walks Union Pacific Line

Evening Painting

"Painting" in the title of this poem is a verb.

it snows
weighty
messages
on window panes
like bad fortunes
on trees
silver
leafed
flakes
drift
in warm companies
and paint
wooden canvas
and grassen earth
and warm hearth
to glow
red
in the wheated field
a fox prints
touching painting
messages
against the
hardened ground
‘neath covers
of wooded sky
she sleeps
nested
with nut and corn
and blanket tail
hidden
from early frost
to evening contentment

a title-less short story

Two men met on the road there headed different directions. They sat apart from each other, both more interested in his own time off the road and away from the wet, fallen leaves, and the wind that broke against the door and crept in the seals, than any other man who has not the same power to bless as coffee poured from a vending machine. The cold was outside and the coffee was hot inside. It warmed the hands and fingertips through the paper cup as it did the mouth and the lips and the belly.

Wind takes from you to the point of the soul. It will take your breath, immediate memory, flesh and bone, and leave a naked soul. Warmth is redressing. This need to redress is perhaps one of the only reasons for thinking there is such a thing as the soul.

A weatherman carried on from a TV screen overhead. The broadcast predicted more wind and more rain, not here but there, and not there, but just there, though it was not just there but here, and here seemed to be everywhere. Thunderstorms are moving into here, and winds are up to so many miles an hour.

Coffee is hot, and chocolate creeps into the stomach a healer. And both men held their cups in the same loose grip, and both took everything around them with a slow, deliberate breathing.

The weather went on predictably. The trees swayed and mourned and lost their leaves to the wind and the wet road, and passing trucks tore even more from them. The pines bent and sagged at their tops, unable to shed their clothes to relieve the strain. And the sky stirred restlessly, and birds lay low in the grasses and did not fly from the timbers. The air filled with leaves one moment, and they all stuck to the ground, or on cars, where they landed, and then they were gone. And then the rain came harder in passing sheets, and the pines whined and bowed, but the others leaned, relieved. And the earth kept the water for them, and the shed was fine, and the winter would pass.

The men crinkled empty wrappers in their hands. One man rose to feed himself again. The coffee was cooling, but the warmth had been got, and there would be more to be got later. But a man got himself another cup; with this wind there would soon be no more leaves or nothing to stop it, and all a man would have was his body, and all for protection was warmth. So he would drink another before he made him face it.

And then a man was no longer hungry or cold, and this shelter was all used up against the soggy freeze, and a man had a truck and a road. So he got him up, and he stayed at the door. The wind beat against it, and it rattled in its setting. He watched it push against the trees, and the rain, in waves, against the woods and the road and the window and his truck. He was warm, and the cold waited out the door. He sighed. And it was met by an affirming groan from the other man, close to “Yep,” but cut off, and so closer to “Yet.”