Crisis-Poem

[rowens]

 Crisis-Poem


If there is no hell, 
for what is the scratching,
this slim feat of digging 
upwards, pulling a fiction
down upon you,
you, in your desert household,
we in our theater of pages?

This is a popular pleasure,
as much a joy as a criticism;
an unwrinkling of the mind-held brow.
What a light source is this 
facsimile of the sun,
a toy car or wings 
for adult amusement.
If there is no hell,
all tears are wedding tears.

And what an arrangement.
In congenial presents,
irony has no place
beyond satire.
Stoutly explicit,
and free, freedom
itself capitulates.

Some suffer anyway,
born to scream 
a breast of healthier milk.
Find reality bitter. 
Short of eschewing a fitting
cognition, blows noneuclidian
smoke circles,
rings of many colors,
and hoarse voice.

The Chicagoeans lounge comfortable
in their knowledge of fate,
cozy in their fathers' sweater
by the warmth of the coffee
steaming french-like dreams
and autobiography, choosing
carefully word and tone
or eastern european candor
politic and concise.

The clarity will expose you
from deep within your well,
redskin plucker, show your
hollow instrument as you sound out
on their substance.
Inscrutable fanfare, any rate.

Some butter sandwiches, some butter
grits, at home where the life is written;
or out of a paper grocery bag
caught on a twig, where he just had another occasion;
the substance remains caught up in life.
It doesn't carry over into song.

What there is besides life
is ignorance battling ignorance,
one profoundly doubtful,
the other so stupidly sure.
There is no contest at all,
no lines on passionate intensity. 
They meet only in passing,
if that even.

The only bogie is failure,
frustration of getting it all
down. A sea of attempts,
and so few ships amid all
the unauthorized swimmers.
And those that can't,
sitting in houses in waking dreams
too quick to lay; 
lives too living to hold any formula.
Milk, bread, a candle for emergencies or odor.
As humdrum as it comes to be,
success is the only defense against evil.
A wash cloth here, an answer there.

Will we still impregnate our skies with heavens
and sing so loutishly in the rain
and advance on foot through rush hour traffic?
To the beach where the empty sand resembles an island.
Will we launch our voice from shore to shore?
Will Michelangelo's Adam point toward nothing,
and nothing tempt us not to try anything at all?

[billy]

some great images but i got lost by the end of the read. now i'm exhausted.

[rowens]

The crisis is me facing that to write good poetry I have to be original, but I'm just so nostalgic. I want to prove that being sentimental is as legit as any other human experience. But I have to prove that I'm not sentimental first.

[billy]

i think it is as legit, why can't it be legit and original?

[rowens]

Whoever is related to the person who created the term legit, I've never talked to.

[rowens]

Of course, what I said this poem is about has nothing to do with what it means. If I could say what it means I wouldn't need to write a poem. Like D. H. Lawrence says, Trust the poem not the poet. D. H. Lawrence, Lizzie, if you're out there. I think we both like D. H. Lawrence. . . . And, billy, it reminds me, since you are lately the only one who responds to me, like when I'm at some guy's house, and he's the only one who acknowledges me, while his wife and kids try their best to pretend like I'm not there. I'm Not There: ''shit, that sounds like an album cover, Micheal, write it down, fuck, I might forget it.'' -- I have this running joke through my writing, where I spell Michael, the archangel of fire and the south, wrong.

[Ally]

Hi rowens,

I hope you don't mind my commenting :-)

I'm not clever enough to understand this poem, but I'm interested in your crisis. I don't know whether you've been published, or what your aims are in terms of publishing your work, but I think this crisis might make a good preface. You could even have footnotes, and after that you could launch into your nostalgic musings.

Best wishes,
Ally

[rowens]

Well, I could go on and on about my crises. But I'll spare you, and start with last night. A guy came to my room and we were going to go ice fishing. Because it snowed real big yesterday. And to get ready I sat and chugged two bottles of wine, to get warm, you know? And he noticed that I had three black and white photographs on my desk. Yes, I have a desk. That's about all I have. One of Vivien Leigh, one of Hart Crane, and one of Robert Johnson. He asked me why I had that photograph of that black guy, and I said, That's Robert Johnson, he sold his soul to the Devil at the crossroads to learn to play the blues. (Not that he needed to, the blues is a pretty universal set of feelings.) And he was disturbed. He said it was a very disturbing story. I said I thought it was a beautiful story. But I didn't convince. . . . I know I didn't answer your question at all, Ally; but if you want me to be more specific, you just have to ask. I've learned my lesson about volunteering information. It rightly goes against my favor.

[Ally]

So, it's crises, plural?

There's no snow here, but there was this time last year. We gave the guineas lots of extra hay :-)

Yes, drinking to get warm'll work. I haven't been allowed alcohol since 2004 (I'm on medication), but I have a few fond memories of it, let's say.

I hadn't heard of Robert Johnson, but I've found this, https://www.thevintagenews.com/2018/01/2...t-johnson/, which is interesting.

I don't mind disturbing stories. Do you know 'The Facts in the Case of M. Valderma'? I like that. If I'm having a bad day, I'll tell myself, 'Well, at least you're not M. Valderma.' That works quite well.

I'm not sure what to ask, really, which is why I've just rambled about a few things. It's okay if you'd prefer quiet at this point!
A.

[rowens]

I'm not quiet. That's one problem. I'm the most social antisocial person anyone's ever met. I know an Edgar Poe story. The facts in the case of somebody. When the alcohol wears off all the humor goes away. And then the crises you mentioned are all I can think and feel about. I have enough for one more night. So I'm going to make the best worst of the night. Maybe the power'll go out again.

[Ally]

You're a funny chap, rowens :-)

I meant to mention yesterday, I spotted a bit of Yeats in your poem, I think, with 'passionate intensity'. Oddly enough, I'd thought of Yeats earlier on Sunday, while writing a haiku for my group. I thought I might use 'gyre' from 'Sailing to Byzantium', only to find it was the wrong word. But here it is again, in 'The Second Coming' via your 'Crisis-Poem'.

Do you like Yeats? I expect there are lots of other things I'd recognise in your poem, if I knew more poetry. Your 'wings' brings me Icarus, perhaps because it's close to 'sun' :-)

[rowens]

I love Yeats. But then again I love a lot of poets. I tend towards the magical side. Yeats, Hugo, Merrill. But, sadly, I think more towards the Crowley-Mathers-Abramelin side of the spectrum. And they were horribe poets.

---

What do you mean by your group?

---

In another poem I posted recently, Summer in Autumn, I mentioned Yeats explicitly. Very expilicitly. But I guess I can't expect you to read everything I've ever written. Though I do.

---

This poem, Crisis-Poem, as a hint. There's some Bible in it. As most western poetry has. And some Wordsworth and Wallace Stevens. Wallace Stevens, I'd kill the muthafuka if he weren't still dead already. And, he's not dead. He's more alive than most of us. Oh shit, I was alluding to my poem on here called Kill Those That Came Before. I don't mean to, but it is a rather incestuous affair, this poetry business. I'd rather be in bed with myself than my mom. My mom who doesn't understand poetry. Or my girlfriend who doesn't. Damn, I reckon I don't have anybody left. Except, of course, Wordsworth, Hugo and Yeats who are all dead. Or are they?

---

These poets come to me in my dreams. And other people. These figures. Plato comes, Groucho Marx; ever since Prince died, he's been coming. I know this all sounds weird. But I can't get away from it. I drink. But that makes it worse. . . . And it's really troubling. . . . Because if I fail as a writer, I'm not just letting down my family, who hate my writing anyway . . . I'm failing Prince and Socrates and Alexander Pope. . . . A lot of people, old people, old neighbors, compare me to Groucho Marx. In the way I talk. I think, in the way I talk, they'd much rather I'd be Harpo.

[Ally]

Magic is excellent :-) (I haven't heard of those horrible poets you mention, though, so I'll have to google them soon.)

My group is MightyPoets, of themighty.com, where people with health problems offer each other support. Comments are fairly rare, but you can give heart symbols; I appreciate that because I'm a bit soft, haha.

I think I saw your 'Summer in Autumn', but I wasn't sure whether I'd be able to comment usefully due to my lack of knowledge re. Yeats.

I don't know the Bible very well either. And I know only bits of Wordsworth and no Wallace Stevens. But I enjoyed your observation about poetry being incestuous. My mother knows poetry fairly well from her degree years, but she doesn't write any. Well, she wrote a poem one Christmas, about walking up a hill, but on the whole she prefers criticising to creating. Wordsworth et al. are physically dead, yes, but not dead in other ways. I'll try to find your poem about killing people!

You don't sound weird to me, but that might not be reassuring :-)

[rowens]

When a writer's dead you can read everything they wrote as a whole. As one poem. But when their ghosts haunt you, you feel a need to engage with them. I think you can engage with tradition, or try to start over from scratch and just hope you're not writing something that's already been said better a hundred times. I like to have books and pens and notebooks and maps and pictures and scrolls and note cards all around me to give the impression that I'm actually doing some form of work.

[Ally]

Yes, engage versus start over; I think you explain it very well, rowens, as I recognise the two approaches from a site for professional poets where a friend used to post. (I was just lurking, hehe.)

Your work station sounds lively. I particularly like the maps. I got a bit lost in the Seychelles today (just copywriting, not actually there), but I enjoyed looking at photos of giant tortoises.

Tomorrow I have to go to hospital, so I'll wish you well for the weekend,
A.

[rowens]

Well, another thing I've discovered, if you can keep your wits about you while you're drinking heavily, when you wake up the next morning, and have forgotten what you wrote, it's like reading what someone else wrote. And it's easier reading what someone else wrote. You trust it more. It's easier to see the flaws in what you yourself write. Because you were there.

[Ally]

In 2011 I wrote a lot of poetry while heavily drugged, but I don't think my wits were about me at the time. Nowadays I'm just mildly drugged, but I'm still not allowed to drink, unfortunately. Sorry I'm a bit late coming back to this, by the way (boring ill-health stuff).

I like the 'butter sandwiches' :-)

[rowens]

I'm still just trying to master this anxiety hangover stuff. It's a weird thing I haven't thought my way around yet.

[Ally]

Well, it might be a good thing, in terms of casting a critical eye over your own poetry, if I've understood this process of course :-)

Season's Greetings for tomorrow, rowens, and people in general <(:-) (party hat)

[Xlateralus]

Rowens, interesting poem but far too long for the twitter attention span.


The stanzas i have the most issue with are:

the first and second stanza just seem redundant. Also, stanza six. Why? It seems to be that you have written about three types of people, those who find people who agree with them, you know, safe spacers, those who are argue about everything, and those who are sure about everything... then stanza six is “peole fit into these three categories and creativity/consciousness above existence is dulled” i think you cover it in the rest of the poem.


The poem reads as warning chimes, the last stanza a sirens wail. There is a lot to like.