what I think I want to do
and what I actually want to do
what I'm scheduled to do
and what I'm actually going to do
what I'm uncomfortable doing
and what I'm supposed to be doing
what I like to do
and what I want to do
at the end of the day
nothing to say
at the end of the day
nothing to say
at the end of the day
nothing to say
Take a look at this - failure? refusal? incapacity?
Atrophy of the imagination
or willful neglect of objects waiting to be generated
Sitting in heaven
on their lily pads (as we used to say)
waiting to be born
I have some vague compassion for them --
their transparent, mottled skin
and clouds of tangled hair --
but their essential passivity --
no teeth, no thumbs --
makes me hate them
after all
notebookery, by Andrew T. McCarter
(via www.impassio.com)
He began by dating the entries in his journal, then numbering them consecutively, then simply calling them "sun" or "moon."
Blogging software would not support without customization.
Year, month, day, hour, minute. . . . Those journal writers who record all such nonsense only wish to show us what restless, insomniacal souls they are, and how they conquer time by breaking free from diurnal existence.
I had to remove my sidebar calendar because I had no desire to show how diligent or lackadaisical a blog writer I am. Did I conquer time?
My journal (a notebook, really), exists, at least superficially, outside of time. Rather than chronologize, I insert entries between previous entries, as one inserts pieces in a jigsaw puzzle.
Sometimes I want to go back and put an entry in between existing entries, using a fake date.
Just as writers of free verse viewed writing sonnets, villanelles, and iambic epics as artificial and restrictive, so he, keeper of a notebook, writer of notes only, views writing poems, stories, and novels; to him they are just another set of formalists.
I'm really feeling a tyranny of "form" lately. I find myself comparing formalists to conservatives.
How many of these entries parody.
I don't know if people realize that my journal entries parody emotions.
Forget the melting of genres, even the concept of "book" is becoming passé. Thankfully, a move from the static to the dynamic. The website, available to all, everywhere, and which can be forever revised by its writer. Writing freed from the physical page.
Working in that dynamism, I also find I'm wanting to learn more about letterpress printing.
... and more but ... time's tyranny ...
resting in a slice of time
a small slice
loaded with sticky fruit and
oozing juice
She is appalling
and
appalled
Many many mercuries ago
heaven could not bear to
explain
now she is examined minutely
day after day
through star pinholes
There is nothing I need
No way to meet you
No way to receive you
revive you
retrieve you
Cast off in the desert
Heartily ashamed
Unable to quell
the results of completion
Hello beetle
I am going home now
Unless I greet you daily
I am just being foolish
a huge amount of imaginative power
has gone into building software applications
and designing the structures of data
*
saving a "sneeze" to the database
*
there are no dharma talks in civic life
transmission now so damn haphazard
monologue homily column blog
a little bit of fallow
a little bit of surfing
are individuals worthwhile, or only subjects in a dictatorship of relativism
some things are awfully hard to read
and then there's the surfeit factor
feeling like everything has been already been written
or else there's no connection
no conclusion
it takes an atheist to tell me to have faith
Stretched out for a rest
on top of Schoodic -- granite
bothers my elbows
One two one two one
two one two one two -- soon
you're down the mountain
left my bookbag with all my assorted comfort stuff at my sister's in Bangor
oh well need to pan for comfort out of this stream now
generates a sadness
When you have a home
stars wink at you less sweetly
on your long night drives
Packed:
Roethke on poetry & craft
"City Lights Anthology"
Journal with the beetle on the cover
Colored pencils
Annual report, Berkshire Hathaway
Catalog with shoes I want to order
Checkbook and calculator
Enigmatic smile
New Frida Kahlo clothing, artifacts discovered
Exciting news! But leads one to wonder - how could they lose a large collection of clothes and artifacts in a house/museum?
And in other domestic news:
Mona Lisa smiling in a new room.
Ran across Gary Mex Glazner's blog, Make a Living as a Poet.
I am not quite extroverted enough to ever hope to make a living as a poet.
But I find myself often thinking about how to make things out of poetry, as above.