spin again

from a work in progress: “process, not a journey” (44)

the ball clacks

from red to black

a cord turns

this way then that

.

they say yes they

say no as if

saying makes it so

.

it’s certainly true

he held out his hand

such a simple man

while her fingers

traced along a wall

wanting nothing

nothing at all

.

then they turn again

loops through loops

doubled and troubled

a move to the left

a move to the right

chains held them o so tight

.

this is our day

one more song

and one last wrong

(March 26, 2020)

Writing About Writing My Work in Progress

I read this morning that Hemingway said that better writers didn’t talk about their writing; I think it is often important to reflect on what one is doing as one writes: metacognition to use education jabber. So, fuck off Ernie.

I started a serial poem back at the beginning of January. The plan was to write 140 poems, each poem’s length is pre-determined by a random number generator, ranging from 3-140 syllables. It was to follow vaguely the rules of a renga, where each poem grew out of the one before it somehow, weather through theme, pun, image, or a reply. The number of poems was determined by the number of syllables in a sonnet. 

I have come to the end of the first “stanza” section—40 poems. The last poem in the section #40, ‘rhymes’ with (39), (20), and (1); as (10) and (30) ‘rhyme—in an attempt to create an overall section unity. I will now begin to move forward with the second ‘stanza’ while collecting and tightening section 1, in hopes that as I reread and work over section 1, the themes and ideas that emerged in section one will echo and grow organically in section two: a conversation between sections one and two, if you will, as section two talks to itself.

Well, it keeps me something to do, and think about if nothing else.

(March 22, 2020)

winter’s end

from a work-in-progress: process, not a journey (40)

blue bonnets bloom in the backyard

as a new plague floods the city

I fear all that has changed enough

to become a normal day yet forget

what patterns have been replaced

by emptiness reweaving a past

which should have existed like flowers

found pressed between the pages

of a favorite book marking the poem

you read to me when we were in love

instead of these tattered nets I mend

as best I can from wisps of memory

in the hope a better world will blossom

like the wild flowers in the backyard

(March 20, 2020)