Spring Offensive

Renegade bands, code-named Johnny Jump-Up, Maximilian Sunflower and Sweet William, united for a coordinated raid. Slow acting root bombs pummeled the hill. Rocks found cover, but exposed dirt took direct hits. Goats had previously infiltrated to mark targets, their motive for alliance as yet unclear to the renegades.

Parts of Speech

Fish Memories
(an adjectival poem)

Drugged by tea (tepid),
from my chair (wooden)
I leap off this porch (aging) —

to parachute by cloud,
land adrift and tossed
by currents (musical)
that tickle fish memories (jumping),
their arcs (mid-air)
traced as if —
with webs (dew-dropped)

woven by spiders (night)
between slats marking
a sun's trail (tick-tock).

Oh, Joy! (sarcasm alert)

Merry Merry, Happy Happy.
'Tis The Season To Be Sappy.

I should take myself down to the local boot-scootin', soul-soothin' dive and kick it. If only they had something funky on the juke box.

Can't hardly wait for a Harder Better Faster Stronger new year.

My Tree's Up

. . . and this is it, right here:

Boughs lift scent of spiced presentiment as
tinsel winds dance in electrical pulse
and jingle elves sing for rainbows strobing
reindeer & angels aloft on wings of
iridescent joy ~ Oh! for all life's kind.

We blink three hundred-and-sixty-five times
lest we may forget the sugar plum dreams
and season's promise a-shimmer all 'round
this arbored gift of mundane miracles
manifested in ~ Ah! evergreen air.

May all your days be holidays
and all the world a gift.

One time? In philosophy camp? I contemplated nothingness. Look over a cliff into blackness, for a start. Then remove the depth of field. Like that.

And another time? In philosophy camp? I saw this: delineate completely all the world except one particular tree on the campus of SUNY Oswego, and that delineation's logical complement is the tree, and nothing but the tree. Which means to me that all things are known in relation, including forms and language and time and so on.

::

PS. Not all of life is a nail to reason's hammer.

I entered a campy piece of writing in an agent's contest just for fun. Not that I expect it will go anywhere; it's merely a test of my own writing intentions. Other than a few poems here, my creative writing has only appeared on a couple of writers' forums, hidden behind passwords and therefore officially unpublished. It matters when people I know read me, but with strangers, the feeling is eerie. To them, I am a fiction; it feels ghostly to think of them reading my work.

Next time I read something on meta-fiction, I and my ghost may have a response, something resistant, a way to explain why Paul Auster's project intrigues but does not satisfy.

Literary Moods

In Salon's picks for the best fiction of 2008, the phrase "suave implacability" is applied to Robert Bolano's 2666, which I have not read. But, oh yes. This is interesting. I could get behind that mood, being suave, being implacable. There's a good fit with the generic philosophical stance. And it fits with a public persona that is comfortable for me. Your rough edges are welcome, warts, faux pas and all, says my implacable self. I've seen the whole gamut, says my suave self. Bring it on, get real with me; I can take it.

However, the mood that resonates most strongly, having observed my reading habits in retrospect, is more like reverence and humility. So when Wade Davis, Leif Enger and Marilynne Robinson — and, of course, James Morrow — offer a book-length meditation along these lines, I'm all ears. Reverence and humility are the moods I look for in others. I'll be suave and implacable in return, strike the match that burns a candle to your warts, if you'll only provide the wax and the wick.

::

I'm not sure what this means, except that it feels supportive of others' passions. Although at some level, I must acknowledge a vampiric frenzy. Your passion feeds a deep need.

he tells me

sing for me like this
is really your mouth

dance for me like i live
beneath your very skin

look for me behind eyes
open to stars and oceans

Speak To Me

Morrow and Dillard vs. Zizek

On his blog, James Morrow, one of my favorite authors, asks, Why is it that atheists are not willing to die for their ideas?

If an atheist were to die for any idea, it might be for capital-U Utopia. To be saved from that temptation, I think, means that the idea of Utopia must be put in its place: the minds of flawed but charming Homo sapiens sapiens. A long essay on Zizek, a follower of Lacan, at The New Republic ("The Deadly Jester," by Adam Kirsch) tempts me to feel confirmed in a previous contention, oft-stated privately, that utopianism and fascism are incestuous cousins whose offspring are religious delinquents, ranting politicians and rabid authoritarians.

It concerns me that Zizek apparently has a serious "liberal" academic-left following. Dillard's Pilgrim At Tinker Creek will be an antidote to the Zizekian poison I've ingested today, though I'd prefer that Morrow's work-in-progress, "a historical epic about the birth of the Darwinian worldview," was already in my hands.