Metaphorical Family: Sister

(criteria of Metaphorical Family)

Dear sister,

Out the morning window

of September,

a train horn shivers, and

the sunlit

bricks grid the

dancing verbena,

nodding pink

upon the sill.

In the photo Mom sent

of your daughter diapering

her newest brother, his

arms and eyes make a symbol

meaning:

“wanting mother”.

When the dandelions blew off their heads

this spring,

your children corralled you in a ring of

cries that echoed

the hollow statue centered in our parents' living

room, in which you shriveled

farther inward,

wrapping around your

unborn son.

The weather is turning

dimmer, fading embers

in falling leaves.

Floating upward in my morning cup

spinning husks of

chrysanthemum bloom.

Despite your inner

thunder,

the doctors injected you with lightning.

Apparitions arose,

animated your vessel, and

shuddered a wailing son

out the statue's womb that

closed again on you.

You escaped the hospital

last night and floated

above my bed. Cross-legged

in your gown you said,

“Kansas winds rattle

hollow cocoons.”

Then clover petals crawled

out your mouth and eyes,

and wound around you

leafy greenery.

Metaphorical Family: Mother

(criteria of Metaphorical Family)

Dear Mother,

Wrapped around me, your arms

pruned, dried to dust, and fell

to the ground under the yawning Oklahoma sky

The wind turned the dust

into dirty shoes, and flung

them into the trees of Brooklyn

The prayers I kiss across

your forehead are sweating

and running your mascara

Metaphorical Family (Criteria)

I don't know what I'm doing.

But, I'm going to explore metaphor through familial relations, and vice versa, as an exercise to create poetry. The metaphor will overpower truth, family will become fictional, time and place will be wrecked. The point is to write under a framework, but unlike Walking Stiff Blues and Transit Prosody, which were written at and about specific times and places in New York City (some spontaneous, some not), the framework for Metaphorical Family is . . . metaphor and familial relations (or archetypes).

To be redundant: metaphor will overpower truth. These are not autobiographical. What writer can exclude autobiography from his work? But you know what I mean. I hope.

As a part of the exercise, I'm going to sketch with blog posts. Each post may or may not stand alone as a finished work, but there will be something in it worth publishing. I will not waste your time and simply vomit here.

My ultimate goal is to come back to these posts and condense them or expand upon them to create a nice series of poems, so I may post second and third incarnations of these as I explore the archetypes.

A Note on Antonin Artaud

Always grappling with his innards he attempted to communicate by shoving everyone into his body.

Watchfiends & Rack Screams

Notes

Journal Excerpts


I'll get to know someone, talk to them frequently or semi-frequently for months/years, and then part with them for whatever circumstantial reason, never to talk to them again. Sometimes the communication fizzles out, but regardless, communications stops. I've always found this aspect of life bizarre and hard to adjust to. I still think fondly of many people, but realize I probably don't even know them now. I'm not who I was at 18, though I am.


The good thing about having a full stomach is that I'm forced to slowly savor my wine and red velvet cake.


In bar, involuntary audible sigh escapes me when The Wind Cries Mary begins.


I saw this girl today who was 20, but might as well have been 70. Somehow she was already beyond vanity or at least self consciousness of her beauty and youth. She was reading the paper on the train. Not fashionable. Worn mauve fingernail polish. Fluffy hair. She only frowned when she looked at her guy friend.


Sky is soon to be purple.

Standing on the 5 train platform at Union Square, I caught the scent of a passerby's aftershave and felt as if I were an entirely different person -- alone in New York with book while waiting on the train.


When a piece of poetry or music becomes more than that, poetry or music, it is what it was conceived to be, regardless of the author's intentions.


Write with no hope nor fear.


I'm in and entering a great highlight of my life. I was looking at photographs of my time in Spain, and I don't long for those days as much as I cherish now. Discipline is no longer the issue, it's a right frame of mind that I need. I'm there. I'm going to enjoy NYC, enjoy exercise, enjoy writing. And quit making everything so heavy. Life is now. I'm living it and I'm happy. Now are the golden days.


Woke this morning to see the perfect circle of a blood red sun floating between two buildings.


Some days I allow the slow walkers to pace me, to allow me to smell the roses. Some days I curse them.


After you become wealthy, win awards, and no longer need money or esteem, I imagine you return to the motive for creating art with which you began: it's fun and you want to.

I Had a Big Idea and Forgot It

"The soul has to find and hold its ground against hostile forces, sometimes embodied in ideas which frequently deny its very existence, and which indeed often seem to be trying to annul it altogether." --Saul Bellow

I had a good thought and marinated it till it was at it's juiciest, only to find that as I sat down to write it, it had evaporated. But it had to do with the point, if there is a "point", of being an artist today. Bellow's quotation came to mind after the thought left me, and hits close to what I wanted to explore.

The soul has little, if any, breathing room today, and I think it's the job, conscious or not, of the artist to continue to funnel oxygen to it.

Oh, man, maybe I'll come back to this.

Sentimental

There's always something to want, always something "better" to be had, but I'm grateful for the times I realize how lucky I am to listen to music and read in our heated apartment while my lovely wife navigates facebook. I'm grateful for how being in the same room with her puts me at ease, regardless of whether or not we're "interacting".

Poetry in the Air

I had a dream last night that I was standing on the steps of a building much like the Met, but instead of Fifth Avenue, I looked out onto a plaza with a fountain that led into a park. And poetry was scrolling through the air. There was a little eddie of stanzas near the fountain. Words like birds zipped across the sky. Some were dancing ribbons of syntax.

I spent the rest of the dream trying to write down what I'd read. I was constantly looking for notebooks or making sure I had my notebook with me. But, just like writing in real life, I never quite got down exactly what was in the air.

The poetry wasn't biblical, but I remember thinking that the title should be Proverbs 18:21: "Death and Life are in the power of the tongue".

okieinthecity: Top 100 NYC Blog

New York 101: The Definitive Guide to New York City listed okieinthecity.com as one of the top 100 blogs of New York.


Pretty cool to have this honor come out of the blue. I have no idea how they found me.

Okie in the City Artist's Collective: Thursday, November 10th

In need of some good soul salve? Come on down to the Nuyorican cafe tomorrow night and hear some great music and poetry from kind and goofy people alike.

Michelle-Leona Godin is kicking the evening off with her avant accordion brain smash. If you've never heard, no, experienced this, you're in for a treat.

Yours truly with the Kick Assonance crew, Steven Leyva and Christian Erickson, will follow with some toasty poetry.

And Single White Band will round the evening out with music that will slap a smile across your face and set your feet a tappin'.

$8 tickets in advance, $10 at the door. Show starts at 7pm. Hope to see you there!