THE CLOUDS

Rolling in,

bringing change---

the ever constant---

Your reaction? Turn

and face the wind.

Sitting on top of a hill in the poorest city in the Midwest

Looking conversely down

porch-perched along an

asphalt ribbon wrapping

down to windowless

bricked factories and particle-

boarded storefronts, where

I used to be.

A brown and grey and black

sparrow hops to and fro on

the spotted grass and cracked

sidewalk looking for his sustenance only then

his flight. Where

and how far?

Looking conversely up

Midwest-grounded and terra

-cotta obstructed, an impulse

manifests from the back

black and urges him

forward and up---

Why him, why now?

Nothing to do but

act upon it---lost

friends and family

unknown and new

faces.

SHE WAIT

I picked her up at the front of the high school Saturday night. A glass box of plastic gold, white and grey swirled granite---a bastion of school pride---stood behind her. She sat upon a folding table, waiting for me, kicking her feet in a walking airborne rhythm. Long, curled strands of mahogany clasped naivety. We were to go out and see, each by their own, if anything fond could strike. She was pretentiously captivated in me by sight, by cherry-picking me from a crowd the week before. She was all in.

She looked at me like I was a god. And to her perhaps I was---the one to deliver her from parental constraints to my constraints in a new domestic world. It was in her smile, that smile, a young happiness that shadowed judgement. Judgement that lived in moment and young aesthetic which existed in a world turned by hindsight/foresight and old, old logic. She was lost.

It was in her eyes: Glass and sparks like a bottle rocket fixed at target not knowing that it would eventually explode, finishing in spectacular burst of spark, fire, red paper and heaped disenchantment. To her nothing could end like this.

The limestone lane met the lawn. Dusk rose, infused its rusty sky into an evening black. Only the equinox could cast a harvest shadow to make the blackest silhouettes of corn tassels, like an army of dead, dry soldiers waiting to be cut down. I was eighteen. It was the last semester. She wait like the rest of the world, stopped dead and black with yellow and violet dots swarming like fireflies off in a void. She wanted a kiss but I was gone.

ANGEL OF DEATH

Sitting on the beach,
knees up, tan legs, white
swimsuit, black hoodie,
black glasses, grey stare:

Into the waves, the wind
(cool and strong), gold
light over white sand---
sitting to bring:

Thy will, not mine

Her body transient,
like all things material;
It is a mechanism, a vase
to carry the spirit:

To him, his time.

NERVES, WORK

Any artistic work I do while neurotically stable, balanced, typically comes as merely satisfying. However, I noticed---while looking at my work as objectively as possible---that during a nervous breakdown, great or small, my artistic work (usually poems or songs) are best. I've noted this personally for the past few years and related it today with a statement by William Carlos Williams:

"The better work men do is always done under stress and at great personal cost."

In retrospect of a nervous breakdown I noticed a formula or condition of events which occur to cause the breakdown: I exert much intellectual and/or physical effort towards a positive outcome or goal which results negatively or the opposite happens to what I strove for. I experienced at least one nervous breakdown each quarter during college. For example, I would study for hours,---all weekend perhaps---cover all material and facts thoroughly only to fail or earn an above average grade point on an exam. The end result being opposite of which I could control would cause a nervous system break down and therefore tilt or skew my perception or conscious of the world. It was during these times I wrote best.

The drab or mundane in which I live the majority of my life(with a de-industrializing Midwest as backdrop) requires greater effort, perhaps the energy required to tilt my perception or conscious, causes any, if lucky, work to be elevated to a height as that of breakdown work. Even now, as I write, the work is drab. Scholarship-writing at best. Who will read it? The "elevated height" which I just spoke of needs a metaphor which is at this time inaccessible as I type comfortably on a day off, coffee, with a fire in the corner. However, W.C.W. further writes:

"Composition is in no essential an escape from life. In fact if it is so it is negligible to the point of insignificance. Whatever 'life' the artist may be forced to lead has no relation to the vitality of his compositions. Such names as Homer, the blind; Scheherzade, who lived under threat---Their compositions have as their excellence an identity with life since they are as actual, as sappy as the leaf of the tree which never moves from one spot."

Williams is talking about living in one spot while still making interesting work. He lived his entire life in Rutherford, New Jersey, and had a proliferate while significant career both as a poet and medical doctor. I relate to him by living in suburban Akron, Ohio, working as a engineering technician and poet. However, Williams took several sabbaticals to Europe, while the extent of my cultural exposure has been the Cleveland Museum of Art and the local library (both of which have been excellent, and most importantly, accessible). But Williams' major point of this second passage is that one doesn't necessarily have to be world traveler or one who "tries everything once" to make good art. It could be all right under your nose and accessible through the imagination.

T.S.

FROM THE LINTEL

Let me on through, Janus.

I’m standing at your door,

rapping my knuckles sore;

standing on your floor

is degrading,

evermore.

Let me on through, it is

my time---I hunkered down

a decade, carrying the world on

my back, pulled myself up

by the bootstraps:

work---forevermore.

Let me on through, two-face:

you see ahead and behind

but not what’s standing,

starring you in the eye:

let me on through,

or....

I’ll knock you from the lintel.

I’ll knock you

from the lintel.

***

Bang!

Bang!

Bang!

Timber from the keystone! Rise

of the unsung Titans, the grunts

in the trenches; if I’m knocked

down to carry the world on

my shoulders---no matter, I

do it anyway. Tax, tax, tax,

take what you will; ax, ax, ax,

live by what you will

---no more.

INDUSTRIAL PARK

Young black spruces, ten

feet apart, frosted by

warm (late) March snow, line

along a demised rail-

road (now overtaken by

grey brush, thickets and trash

trees); the path a snow floor

Black turning tractor tire

marks swoosh through white

parking lines---by the

     hundreds

Light posts overlook

the adjoining parking lot,

(wet black)---two four-storey

blue fluid tanks

loom

                titanic behind