Words.
The world words generate. Genesis.
Poesis.
I love the world I enter when I’m talking with Carol
The things Carol talks about are good things
Words are about things
Recently, Carol talked about how hard it is to practice The Principles
In the midst of arrangements for her father’s dementia
Carol talks about what makes her happy
Like the bobble-head that came with a ticket to a football game
Watching dancers two-step
The things Carol cares about are good things
Carol talks about what the good thing to do is
Like her health administrator friend, debating mandatory vaccines
Caring shapes itself into words
Words enter into conversations
I enter into conversations with words
Words I speak shape my soul into existence
I love to shape my soul through good words
In the world invoked by good words as if the genesis of Sacred Scripture
And so I love when Carol and I talk about good things
And shape the world into a place I love
I am a friend in all the world I meet
Though involvement with distasteful words strains my friendship
When I don’t love the words I speak, or hear
Words that shape me into a conversation distant from my soul
Not like the world I enter when I’m talking with Carol
The world of good things talking with Carol generates
Oh, the way I can slough through life
When there are good things I can do
Some days I have no will to do any good thing
Then I’ll start a few scales and the music seduces me
Into the fulness of hours without CNN or Facebook
Words are used in ways
Words are about things and words are active
Words do things
Intentionality generates word choice and contrives to render an effect
Rooted unmoveable in the good as who she is
Carol’s intentionality can’t but effect the good in me
Carol talks to me and tries to make me feel good
Carol makes me feel good, feel better, when I’m feeling bad
Feel better about myself when I doubtful about the good in me
Which is other than being OK with whatever
Feeling good is being brought into good regions of my soul
Those regions religion has brought me to love
Regions that fill my soul with the impulse to manifest what is good
So, I’ll be at the piano, write a sermon, compose a poem
|I love the world I enter when I talk with Carol
It is a good place to be, a place I love, a place of love
Carol and I are in love and it generates good words
For and to each other, generates the world our words make
ABOUT WORDS
13 Oct 2021 1 Comment
in Blog Tags: existence, Facebook, friendship, love, poem, poetry, religion, soul, vaccines, words
WORDS AND MUSIC BY THE POET
15 Sep 2021 Leave a comment
in Blog Tags: art, Hemingway, music, piano, poem, poetry, words
WORDS AND MUSIC BY THE POET
These words are taking me away from my piano
All art requires dedication, but music, a special dedication
Art gives grace to the human who decides to dedicate
A life, or even part of a life, to art
When I’m done with these words, I’ll be at the piano
Finding my way around the key of E
Alone, just me and the piano keys
When you make music, mind flows into body, maybe like dance,
Music involves you with inflexible laws of physics
Which become laws of the musician’s heart and soul and muscle memory
I write these words in a dive with Alternative Rock in the background
I glance at the waitress, the bartender, customers
As I manifest this poem into these words
And I am not alone—just me and these words
Hemingway wrote in La Closerie des Lilas for the same reason
None of this can happen when I am in the key of E
It is only the articulation of my fingers on certain select piano keys
No music can be in the background; the only music that is
I make
Writing poetry is closer to waking life than playing music is
We are immersed in words much of the day
Not so, the specific piano keys you must depress—and no others—in E
You must wrench yourself away from everything
When you come to the piano
That is why it is sometimes hard to practice
You don’t want to leave everything
Unless music is everything to you
And it is when you are playing
A spell overtakes you and the ecstasy
Makes you wonder later why you weren’t at the piano sooner
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
ABOUT
06 Oct 2020 Leave a comment
in Blog Tags: criticism, deconstruction, meaning, poem, poetics, poetry, words, writing
And what about content?—As when we talk
To each other and don’t deconstruct our meaning
We talk about things to each other
And don’t use artistic language
About
Time was words were about. I’m not so sure
Poetry is invested in about
About anything
I certainly have other interests
Than only words in themselves
As when I talk to others and don’t use
Artistic words
I try to use the best words to
Express meaning
And when I do it well, there is no explaining
Come to think, I guess I’m done
Writing words about words anymore
I certainly have other interests
Like writing
About
Some Cranky Aphorisms
18 Jun 2020 Leave a comment
in Blog Tags: art, deconstruction, words, writing
If you have something to say, why not say it clearly?
If you have nothing to say, why are you writing?
A sequence of words, no matter how arranged, doesn’t always justify itself.
Art isn’t the deconstruction of meaning.
Perhaps deconstruction should be applied to itself.
ETUDE
03 Sep 2019 Leave a comment
in Blog Tags: art, language, meaning, poem, poetics, poetry, reality, script, word play, words
I paint with words the colors of my moods
In language, I play the notes of my soul
With nouns and verbs, I construct structures of meaning
The script that is scene and act of my life’s issues
And if I am true, my words are yours
Poetry that is about language only
Means nothing to the ages
Word play, alliteration, assonance, rhyme and rhythm
Are scholastic toys unless vehicles of meaning
When dancing language denotes reality
Poetry is loved and lasting
LANGUAGE AND TRUTH
12 Jun 2019 Leave a comment
in Blog Tags: language, poem, poetry, truth, words, writing
Your first written impulse isn’t always
The truth
And so revisions
Paring away distracting words
Imprecise words
Replacing the vague with
Clarity
Sculpting truth
Epistemology and What Words Are
11 Sep 2018 Leave a comment
in Blog Tags: epistemology, experience, language, lies, Locke, poetry, soul, truth, words
Words are created by people;
They help us function.
Words have meaning only when
Our experience meshes with the origin
Of any given word.
Then there is the consideration
Of experience.
To Locke, experience is
Inner and outer.
The motions of our soul are inner.
The world we all share is outer.
Words created to mediate what is inner
Confront what is outer.
When they coincide,
We call it truth.
A preponderance of words from what is inner
That don’t coincide with words from what is outer
Is what we call a lie.
Linguistic processes affirm the art of epistemology.
And there is what we call truth.
For those who care.
