Egregious Reader

Turns out there is some good poetry about octopi. I recently found a little poem I wrote about them after visiting the Chattanooga Aquarium with my son a few years ago. It is posted here, but if you like the idea of Octopi poems then check out Prairie Octopus, Awake  . Brick red, wrinkled skin    a million tiny cups. Plastic jars in the pebbles    at the bottom of the tank. "She likes to play with them,"    the guide tells us. She really looks beautiful,    in the strange world of water. I can see a fire in those cow eyes,    the midnight black alight. But then I see another one at the top,    this one almost pink. The red is pale and the skin seems    to hang, almost drip. "It's sad," says our guide.    She has laid her eggs and won't eat. This is their life cycle,    she's starving to death."

1 The world inside 2 Pennies for a beggar, Pennies sir, ma’m, Pennies for a lost soul, It doesn’t matter if they’re shiny. Stop with your polish and give me one STOP! 3 Run, run my friend down the hole, That is the place to get lost, That is the last rabbit hole on this whole planet, Run and don’t look back. 4 Look out! look out! My friend! Did you see what was going on out there? I just opened the window and there were flowers in the sky Or the clouds had formed in iris purple and the birds were all holding white in their teeth. It all meant one thing, can only mean one thing, Someday it will be alright. It all meant that someday we will find out that its alright. My God, He is some boy, a beautiful boy.   

Lambs racing in desperation running and running in a stampede induced coma A flock of birds evacuates at gunshot Ants erupt and swarm as tunnels collapse pronghorn scattering as the lion pounces Sometimes "my best, just ain't good enough."

Underwhelming syntax      of my narrow expressions Hollow-hearted words      from liminoid spaces Border lands make for brave faces      or indecisive ones. Broken hand gone jellyfish      waiting for depth, but,                  lacking a solid floor. Pretty ok means sub par       and pretty good means               awesome or simply ok. Impoverished expression       made for stoic abstractions that seem to portray       sober self-control but to those who are heart-close       it looks like self-doubt              and lack of commitment.

Go gather by the humming sea Some twisted, echo-harbouring shell, And to its lips thy story tell, And they thy comforters will be, Rewording in melodious guile Thy fretful words a little while, Till they shall singing fade in ruth And die a pearly brotherhood                 W.B. Yeats ...... Male as I am, my place, perhaps, is to sit down in a mysterious presence, leaving the vocabularies to toil, the machine to eviscerate its resources; learning we are here not necessarily to read on , but to explore with blind fingers the word in the cold, until the snow turns to feathers and somewhere far down we come upon warmth and a heart beating.                            R.S. Thomas

Now burn, new born to the world, Doubled-naturèd name,  The heaven-flung, heart-fleshed, maiden-furled Miracle-in-Mary-of-flame, Mid-numbered He in three of the thunder-throne! Not a dooms-day dazzle in his coming nor dark as he came; Kind, but royally reclaiming his own; A released shower, let flash to the shire, not a lightning of fire hard-hurled. From Wreck of the Deutschland by GM Hopkins

From Prayers by Michel Quoist XIV Jesus is Laid In The Tomb ... Men tread in relays the Way of the Cross. The resurrection will only be completed when they have reached the end of the Way. I am on the road; I have a small share of your suffering and the others have theirs. Together we help you to carry the burden that you have as- sumed and made divine. There lies my hope, Lord, and my invincible trust. There is not a fraction of my little suffering that you have not already lived and transformed into infinite redemption. When the road is hard and monotonous, When it leads to the grave, I know that beyond the grave you are waiting for me in your glory. Lord, help me faithfully to travel along my road, at my proper place in the vastness of humanity. Help me above all to recognize you and to help you in all my pilgrim brothers. For it would be a lie to weep before your lifeless image if I did not follow you, living, on the road that ...

from the book Prayers by Michel Quoist: Its from a section called "All life would become a sign" saying "The father has put us into the world, not to walk through it with lowered eyes, but to search for him through all things, events, people ... Long prayers are not needed in order to smile at Christ in the smallest details of daily life." THE BABY The mother left the carriage for a minute, and I went over to meet the Holy Trinity living in the baby's pure soul. It was asleep, its arms carelessly laid on the embroidered sheet. Its closed eyes looked inward and its chest gently rose and fell As if to murmur: This dwelling is inhabited. Lord, you are there. I adore you in this little one who has not yet disfigured you. Help me to become like him once more, To recapture your likeness and your life now so deeply buried in my heart. ******** I think it is that last verse that I like so much. It reminds me of a poem by Matthew Arnold called t...

A Playful Scripture Poem (for Tara's birthday) "as in fact there are many gods and many lords --- yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist."             1 Corinthians 8 When we were small we looked about and there were giants in our land lords lorded and we cowered or escaped. Sometimes we saw the giants were creatures. Like the old fairy tale, sometimes we opened a kitchen drawer or a box in the garage and our eyes beheld the fragile crying giant heart tucked away from all the little ones looking little inside a box. St. Paul says there are many gods and many lords and I add, in my mind, there are many worlds. There is creation there is history there is work and play there is childhood there is maturity (and immaturity) there is school ...

A dead thought has been compared to a stone which one may plant in the soil. Nothing will come out. A living thought is like a seed.  ---Abraham Joshua Heschel all around lay quiet at first light, gray of lidded sky winter trees and swelling black birds eager for scarecrow pie flash of lightening and onion peels the sky makes me cry but I sit and wait fear is coiled but steadfast (braced) is this little light o mine the ground is shaking and into a hole my legs scramble beaks all around, but I was buried deep time to wait full of earth and water a wet fire burns and swells until I burst and limbs tumble forth in all directions

The past      pesters like a moan   in the city. Worlds gone by      yields packed earth      cow path    through       barbed wire. At night     or quiet you feel   like packed        earth, from pain       paths. And the animal    fence           becomes       razor wire    prison        trap.    The swallowed    sadness screams      to topple         towers. Heart       refuses.    Cuts wires   to          black earth              and green               grass.

My hands have an awful smell, like clothes left in the washing machine overnight. And my soul feels sour. What is it that causes such a stink in your invisible organs? When your heart feels so dull it hurts and your mouth curls in a scowl and you feel like if there was an open grave somewhere you might take a nap. And you see life and lovely people all around you but you feel yourself to be vapid with noxious gas. This overtakes me some days, like mildewed hands. And then I find myself unloading the dishes and putting away the pots. I see the bright green leaves of a cloudy day and I feel something free inside. I feel some energy in my stomach pit and my limbs move like they haven’t all day. Why such menial tasks could lift up a soul, I’ll never know. But they do. Sometimes.

"Put your hands into the mire. They will learn the kinship of the shaped and unshapen, the living and the dead." Wendell Berry Put your hands into the mire, reach into the bright spirit and bloody tissues inside your ribs, feel the diving spirit and grasp at the bright blood, the wise blood and the cold head, the knowing brain and the stony heart and when you have found your kinship with the red clay and the stony loam, then find a place to wait. Get up and run like hell. Lie down and die. Go out find the biggest giant and remove his head. Hold all those close dear and hold all those dear close. Let them go when they turn away and let them return when they turn toward. Leap and lie. Bound and bounden. The Mad Farmer also tells us: "Don't worry and fret about the crops. After you have done all you can for them, let them stand in the weather on their own. If the crop of any one year was all, a man would have to cut his throat every time it hailed. But the real...

like loose leaf paper scattered by the wind went my life         and my soul Log after log of solid                 living wood         falling finally landed on         my rotted heart and splintered it irreconcilably. 

A HAWK We will never conquer God's creation ... don't get me wrong, I know that we have doom upon our shoulder (whispering to be done with everything) But here I sit in Atlanta in the upper floor of a Starbucks looking upon asphalt and builder trees with a clever brick Verizonwireless neat and prefab across the street and direclty behind that in my view is the new Piedmont in beautiful glass and concrete and then the open sky above them both and there floats a HAWK ABOVE US ALL eagle eyeing what prey scurries gutters and dumsters ... or perhaps yipping on a leash Jesus, I love your birds. All those fifth day creations those manifold flyers who beat us by 10,000 years and continue to astound silver laptop poets with broken coffee pot brains wearing headphones and writing about relationships and thinking about the natives of old who knew the somber meaning of A HAWK

ITs from a poem I wrote called childhood ... I will post it all for something new to post: waken, quicken, open and crack the gulf divides and out of earthy black comes a new sprout a dead baby fell upon that ground once long ago ... there it laid covered a body in peat moss preserved and ignored for thousands of days. snakes shed their skin, children their insides. The shell remains and walks on, the heart is laid to rest. the body is heavy from new rain, swollen in the grave. maybe the time is now. when it will rise to the top not resurrection just to finally be uncovered. A choice will be yours, will you look upon this death? Will you weep? Will you take this little one into your arms cradling loss? Christ have mercy on us. You must become like one of these little ones ... You must become like one of these little ones ... His kingdom come, will open dead eyes. Your shell will find the past unchanged, but the child alive again like a new sprout from the dirty old ground of personal h...

Home is probably one of my favorite words. ... I found this in a notebook (I usually try and rip out the pages of my little yellow pad so I can file the keepers and throw the rest away): Homeless in America I have prayed and been in prayer and seen my fears entombed in the image of homelessness, without place in the world. I am going home. OPEN Open a door, that I might come in. Any door? No, no, no ... No hole in the wall, no luxury of experience no fine dining just laundry, labor and love ... A home.

"It used to be that I could think of art as a refuge from such troubles. From the imperfections of life, one could take refuge in the perfections of art. On could read a good poem--or better, write one. Art was what was truly permanent, therefore what truly mattered. I know longer think that way. That is because I now live in my subject. My subject is my place in the world, and I live in my place." ---- Wendell Berry Damage This is some of what I was trying to get at in my last post. I want to live in my subject and be writing about what I am living. My subject is my place in the world, and I live in my place. Abraham Heschel said that right living is like a work of art, the product of a vision and the wrestling of concrete situations. That is also some of what I am getting at.

There is a great danger in art ... it is the same dehumanizing danger in science and an unusual connection between art and science. It is a danger that some artists, like Wendell Berry, are much aware of and others, like Nick Cave whom I reference, are not. I developed a dislike for the transient, yet permanency, of love poetry when I listened to Nick Cave's spoken word essay called the Secret Life of a Love Song. It is really good, he makes the bold statement that a love song is trying to through a sheet over the invisible God so we can see him for a moment. However, the part I didn't like is when he talked about the transience of the relationship and the permanence of a love song. He said that women come and go, but the love song endures. When he said that it turns something in my stomach toward love songs and all writers in a sense. It made me bound and determined (though I regularly fail) to only write what I was living and to never think that something I write is more impo...

This is one of those bits of poetry that is so random it could be open for much interpretation. I still kind of like it though. Sometimes I just try and write a poem to write one ... so a lot of time they come to nothing. It's ok if you think this is an example of nothing, but I kind of liked it upon re-reading: Broaken bakcs undr ground dove hight dropping speed of light orbit still moonshine drinkin' fall away again fall apart.