Book 3: Cover & Introduction (the perfect example) ...

(book 2 is still coming along ... slowly. But inside of that process, I managed to distract myself into throwing together a cover for the next collection -- mostly to remind myself that I'm going to do it 6"x9" this time, instead of 8.5"x11". So here's the tentative cover & introduction for the poems to come.)

Book 3:

The Perfect Example

I used to write toward the dream of “permanence.” I intended my poems to speak in “universal” terms so that unimaginable audiences, looking at the thousandth translation, 100 years post-print and galaxies away, could relate to the spirit of my writing. But I realized that languages' open-source words themselves already contained that spirit, and what I had been writing was just an echo of the dictionary: combinations of the pre-existant; derivative, redundant, bereft of me.

The beauty of poetry is not primarily in the parts that “translate well," but in the parts that stale: that which resonates in its time and place with a local life and – like all things truly alive – dies as that time breezes past.

Some hold up poetry as the pinnacle of language-in-use. So the question follows: what is that use, what is it doing, what is its effect? I thought long and hard on this (neither an act nor a phrase that I coined), and concluded that poetry localizes the universal: it points out where flesh is channeling some spirit; it mortalizes the everlasting. Poetry finds an old idea alive in some creature for an intense and passing moment. This is not a lofty goal, but a lowly one; not an axiom, but a parable; not a thought, but a feeling.

The use of writing and speaking, I think, is not to contain a Concept (that is the duty of the words themselves) but to share a moment – green and brown, living and rotting, subtle and heady (communication is the stalk-whiskered, root-webbed scalp of the soil horizon).

And the pinnacle of writing and speaking, immanent and perspectival as it may be, is to give a perfect Example: visible from a few shifting angles; tangible with the right tempered touch; dead before we hear it speak, but alive again at the moment we perk our ears to listen; a ghost that seems to smell and taste like earth, but really ever only primes us to smell and taste the earth for ourselves.

Like our anchored & radiating hearts, poetry is boundless in its simple limits, true to its nature, a perfect example: no more, no less.

Valentinus (song)

Happy Valentine's Day!
Pass on some kindness.

(inspired by reading the Wikipedia article on Saint Valentine, who according to historical testimony “was arrested and imprisoned upon being caught marrying Christian couples and otherwise aiding Christians who were at the time being persecuted by Claudius in Rome. Helping Christians at this time was considered a crime. Claudius took a liking to this prisoner – until Valentinus tried to convert the Emperor – whereupon this priest was condemned to death. He was beaten with clubs and stones; when that failed to kill him, he was beheaded outside the Flaminian Gate. Various dates are given for the martyrdom or martyrdoms: 269, 270, or 273.” Neat guy, right? So I figured, here’s a song in memory of his values-in-action.)

{melody}

Man, I'd never kill.

I’d never kill a man –

And when one tries to fight with me,

I put a puppy in his hand.

*

He said, “What you tryin’ to do?

Layin’ this dog upon me?”

I said, “Usually if a man is mean,

It’s just because he lonely.”

Even if a kid is bad,

I never strike a child.

A boy was being a brat

So I threw an octopus at him and smiled.

*

He said, “What are you doing

Giving me this gangly cephalopod?”

I said, “Usually if a kid is wild,

It’s just because they bored.”

I’d never call a girl

A ‘ho’ or a ‘bitch.’

A lady was chewin’ me out

And so I made her a ham sandwich.

*

She said, “Well, I was so mad at you,

But now I’m ingratiated.”

I said, “Usually if a girl is pissed,
She just need to be appreciated.”

I have seen all these things

And I pass them along to you.

So next time someone shows their teeth,

You just show them a love that’s true:

Just show them a love that’s true!