Enumeration of my past, too much time spent in enumeration
Wondering when I ceased to live, yielding to my memories
Enumerating in my reflections accomplishments, the places I lived
Summing the life behind me fondly, calculus of accumulation
And, perhaps, a grim realization that I might have figured it all wrong
Those paragraphs written into my story as if the book were complete
One day I wondered what I was doing
The paragraphs I wrote, that made my story, what was I doing then
That I’m not doing now? Why did I stop writing experiences
Cave and surrender to the belief that it’s all behind me
I don’t think that the COVID lockdown explains it all
Nor my preacher’s call to articulate ontic reflections
It is not even poetry’s genesis through immersion in words’ reflexivity
Scripting echoes of the muse’s enchantment
This pause from chasing living unaware, when I built those memories
It was fun, I was having fun not knowing I was writing the book of my life
That my life would pause and I would take to reading—fondly, indeed—
In the cessation of the writing process. I realized, rather abruptly,
Like waking from sleep, I’m not done with the poesis of original text
No, I’m not done at all. I don’t think it’s just structured relaunch
And now all restrictions are eased and I’m back at it
This re-engagement with life, this spirited recovery
Living unaware, writing again and it is no time to reflect,
I’m alive again pausing only to scrawl this note
The enumeration of which I defer to some distant calculus of memory
Mimesis of life should I turn again to find myself passively reading
ALIVE
08 Aug 2021 Leave a comment
in Blog Tags: accomplishments, COVID, lockdown, memories, mimesis, poem, poetry, reading, recovery, reflection, writing
I WOULDN’T SAY REGRET
08 Jun 2021 Leave a comment
in Blog Tags: B3, blues, cult, dissonance, memories, music, pentatonic, piano, poem, poetry
Staring absently, the waitress
Demurred to evoke words
In reply to what he thought jocose
Signifying his accidental dissonance in most anything not
Music
At the piano
A good part of the day
Notes singing out a pentatonic sequence
Which were the scales’ iteration of their name
In every key
“It’s fun!” he exclaimed
While I sat on the couch that afternoon visit
Not even a song to me or most anybody
It’s why he’s so good
I mean good
Why his accidental dissonance, maybe, in most anything not
Music
He likes to check out music stores
Why wouldn’t he?
“Listen to this lick; it modulates!” he exclaimed,
After he caught my attention
Playing the baby-grand piano upon asking my permission
In the music store I worked at back then
That day we met, that time
When two roads diverged before me
And I took a different road
Than the one we were both traveling by, then
The crowd wasn’t really listening
At the Grand Hotel’s Cupola Bar on Mackinac Island
Chit-chat, chit, chatter, chitter-chatter
Where we renewed our old friendship
It looked to me like the thrill is gone
Nor, I suppose, on the cruise ships how he makes his living now
Everybody’s got to make a buck
Prone to cults, his harmonic dissonance in everything not
Music,
Almost lost him his parents when he was 20 something
Rethinking the Christian cult’s imperative to renounce his family forever
He narrowly escaped
Now I’ve lost him to Q-Anon
Fortunately, he’s not prone to violence
If we stick to music, we can still talk
He recently sent me some interesting altered blues changes
I’m learning them on my new digital B3 organ copy
I’m going to send him a recording when I’ve got the changes down
I can still talk about music with him, though I fear I’ve lost him
But I always knew him to be out there
Scherzoid in most anything not
Music
MOSES, JOE ZAWINUL, ME AND MY MEMORIES
23 Feb 2021 Leave a comment
in Blog Tags: children, church camp, Commandments, memories, Moses, music, poem, poetry, Tablets, words, Zawinul
At 6 AM, before I went to bed, music and my memories floated in my mind
My headphones rendered Joe Zawinul’s “A Remark You Made” in amazing
Ecstasy—the live, orchestral version was all clashing, brassy harmonies, sax
And Jaco’s bass didn’t exactly play a soundtrack to memories in my mind’s
Slow wandering and resting—modulating between Joe’s so right harmonies,
And an afternoon at Almont Church Camp transport of tonal modes, moving
Me to holy moods lively, living memories, placing me playing Moses, as if
He had just descended from Mount Sinai and I held aloft two ceramic Tablets
Fabricated by Eric, fired in his own kiln with real Hebrew writing on them
And he wouldn’t let me smash them like the real Moses did and in a loud voice
I proclaimed the Commandments one by one as best I could remember them
On the sandy shore straggled with grass next the pond at Almont Church Camp
Man! Those harmonies hit it! Just guiding the tonal flow into the changes
Of Jaco’s heart-rending solo with the brass and sax of “A Remark You Made”
Ending a good night, musing, music, memories, me as Moses with the Tablets
Eric made and five or so children stood in a half-circle staring at who was it
Behind the white cotton beard, robe, standing there holding up two Tablets
Out of words and one of the five or so children guessed me to be that guy
Who sits on the porch afternoons listening to his Walkman, smoking cigars
Usually joined by a teen who didn’t quite fit in and later aspired to be a poet
And I dragged my attention away from the memory, sad that I’d abandoned
The stunning harmonies in “A Remark You Made” the sax, brass, Jaco’s bass
Fading in memories, back, half aware of the pleasant 6 AM before I fell asleep
OUT THERE
29 Jul 2019 Leave a comment
in Blog Tags: broken, God, hope, isolation, memories, poetry, relationships, religion, trust
What do you do with time
We shared, when we are no longer we
Those memories of us, photos of us
Places we went together
Time when we shared when we were we
How does an individual repair trust?
Broken trust, broken heart
What does an individual do with broken love
Innocence lost, admiring, trusting innocence
Echoes of expulsion from the Garden
I can hear blues even in The Ode to Joy
Guess I won’t be happy for a while
There is redemption with God,
Peace in religious systems
If feeling better isn’t cheating
I try not to get mad at everybody
They have done nothing to me
But from this place, place of downcast dour
I can’t find equanimity, the civil speech
I must maintain with everybody
And so I wait in the darkness
Without hope, for hope would be for the wrong thing
Without will, for desire would be misplaced
There is only the waiting and the darkness
Which shall be the darkness of God
A FRIENDSHIP OF
06 Jun 2019 Leave a comment
in Blog Tags: acquaintance, friendship, lives, memories, poem, poetry, time, young
A deepening friendship of
An old acquaintance
Memories of
When we were both starting out
Life
When we were young
Shared memories of
Us starting out
Time apart, away
Much time
Our separate ways
Separate successes, accomplishments
Lives
Renewing
Friendship
Shared memories of
Our home town
Our early life
New memories of
Us in your home city
Doing the town
Visit
New memories of
Experiences, knowledge, collaborations
New friendship of
An old acquaintance
Moments that Make Us Who We Are
19 Sep 2018 Leave a comment
in Blog Tags: dance, family, memories, moments, poetry, travel
I remember that electric slow dance
As I do our trips together
Moments I remember that make us who we are:
Your anger when I left you while I explored Chichen-Itza
The mystic glowing lake we paddled on together that Puerto Rico night
All those airplanes landing in the midnight sky over Miami as we drove home from Key West
Looking up at the base and down from the cliff at Head-Smashed-In-Buffalo-Jump
Family, and the luxury resort at Saint Lucia
These are moments that make us who we are
Family dinners on holidays
My growing intelligence as I talk with you
The splash cymbal in the Blind Faith song our finger punctuates, listening to my iPod on the road
Sunday lunches out after I preach
Talk late at night
These are moments that make us what we are
An Olding Man in Key West
06 Jan 2016 1 Comment
in Blog Tags: hippies, Key West, memories, Nature, Wallace Stavens
I was a young man
Visiting Key West
When first I looked into
Stevens’ “THE IDEA OF ORDER IN KEY WEST.”
I didn’t understand a word of it.
But I was a young intellectual
Being an intellectual
In a place with a literary history
In Key West then, there were many young
Old hippies, tradesmen, college students
Partying
I came back an holding man
I re-read “THE IDEA OF ORDER IN KEY WEST”
Now I understand much
Most of it
And I am an holding man with
Intellectual inclinations
Coming back to Key West
Old memories barely triggered
But after a couple days
I remembered much
But in Key West now, there are families
A resort town
Tawdry tourist shops or high end
No local hand-crafts
I don’t see so much partying
But I am holding now,, and don’t party.
Though Stevens didn’t think much of Nature
In Key West now
There is the same lush vegetation
Palms, mangroves, tropical brush
And the blue-green sea is the same
The same
