A quote from Flannery O'Connor: "Nobody appreciates my work the way I do." (Letters)
Another Flannery O'Connor quote: "If the [Catholic] Church is not a divine institution it will turn into an Elks Club by and by & can be dispensed with...." (Letters)
#19
Horny Insect
I saw an osmeterium
On a caterpillar head.
He used it to create a stink
To keep from being dead.
The last poem was inspired (some would question that, of course) after I found a small box turtle in the middle of the road in front of our house. He must have been about 5 inches from nose to tail; he kept his head and feet out all the time I held him. He was a perfect turtle: red striped head, perfect little reptilian head and feet, solid, clean, patterned, uncracked shell.
Since some people think it sport to hit turtles on the road, I wanted to make him (her/it) a little safer. Mary and I used to put road turtles in the garden, but our current dog pack (Jack Russell Terrier, Dachshund, and Beagle) and cat can find anything that moves out there, so I put him way up from the road in the front yard in a wild section. When I picked him up and looked closely at him I saw his perfection.
Inspiration, such as I get, comes from my encounter with things such as the turtle and the maxim I discovered from Charles Williams: "This also is Thou; neither is this Thou." The only way one can discover the truth of this maxim is by attending to the things, for things have the first requirement of images: that is, identity. This turtle is; this turtle has being. Thus the turtle could reveal God; the turtle obviously conceals God. (The philosophical materialist would say that there is only the turtle, only matter and that mind is merely an offshoot of the way matter works.) For most of us, myself included, I see turtle, yet the beauty and perfection of this particular turtle does indeed do what images do: it points beyond itself to the idea of beauty and perfection manifested in a turtle. There is such a thing in our minds as turtleness (Plato territory, I think); if there weren't we couldn't tell a turtle from an aardvark or an aardvark from our wife. Obviously I believe mind is more real than matter but that one might move significantly from matter to mind.
Too many words. One should think and then write, and then rewrite, etc. Okay. Things are expressive. Writing about them is one way of discovering what any particular thing might mean. That is the simple version of the above.
#17
Real Life Is Meeting
I met a little turtle
In the middle of the road.
He looked a perfect turtle
In a turtle perfect mode.
I placed the little fellow
In a turtle perfect place,
Underneath some ivy
In a space he might embrace.
I placed him in the turtle patch
Before he could implode,
A plenty perfect ending
To my turtle episode.
#16
No Peek at the Peak
I missed the meteor shower
On a muggy August night;
The august night turned cloudy,
And the clouds diminished sight,
As the meteors went streaking
From their space-born comet flight.
#15
No Message
I am a bottle floating
In the middle of the sea.
It’s true to say I’ve lost my way,
Though I bob and wave so merrily.
#14
Pet Lover
I find him often by my feet,
A long dark form, asleep, discrete.
Then I lean down to stroke his side,
Filled with a grateful lover's pride.
#13
A Civet Experience
The beans ferment in the Civet's gut,
Get excreted through the Civet's butt.
Kopi Luwak, what a brew,
Coffee made from Civet poo!
#12
Feeding
Simon, the little rascal,
Lurks on the edge of the pond,
Where he snaps at the floating fish food
Of which he and the fish are fond.
#11
Accident
Last week I sprained my ankle,
Rolled it off a stair.
Now it’s swollen, black and blue—
Thank God I’ve got a spare!
#10
Panda Possibilities
Baby Panda in an L.A. Park,
Trying to make a score selling bamboo bark,
Took one look at his L.A. keeper,
Said, “Send me back to China where bark is cheaper!”
#9
Work Ethic
If you have a plank to swab,
Swab it best you can.
No matter what your task in life,
That plank is in The Plan.
#8
Moses, a Magus
Moses was a wizard;
He bore a wizard’s staff,
Given him by God above
To make the Angels laugh.
#7
Energy
Energy's not created,
Nor is Energy destroyed.
That's a law of physics;
I hope you're not annoyed.
For that's the way that Nature works;
Conversion's one of Nature's perks,
And all that's here was always here
Unless of course it wasn't.
#6
The Early Hours
In the lonely time of night
Between the hours of one and three,
I have the house all to myself,
And its silence speaks to me.
It whispers in the motors,
Burbles in the drains,
Creaks in the ancient floor boards,
Rumbles in the distant trains.
I love the lonely time of night
To read and write and think--
And peer into the darkness,
Doing dishes at the sink.
#5
Trapped
I saw a tiger swallowtail
Stuck in a high skylight.
The butterfly kept fluttering
Against the outside bright.
I took a broom to help it down,
Alleviate its plight;
But the butterfly kept fluttering
Against the outside bright.
#4
The Window
Fate of glass in a wooden frame,
Tempting target in a young boy's game.
Find a rock with a certain heft,
Hurl it hard so there's no strength left.
Feel the impact as a chill,
Consequence of an unformed will.
I have an ambivalent attitude toward electronic culture. On the one hand I love what it enables me to do: watch movies and TV shows that I've missed; create documents that are nearly professional (I wrote my doctoral dissertation on an old typewriter and then paid someone a dollar a page to make it look professional; even then I found errors after it was accepted and I am certain they are still there); communicate with others quickly; etc. The primary thing I dislike is that the electronic ease makes us sloppy and superficial. Everyone scrawls on their Facebook wall, and language ceases to matter in the way that it did when I was paying a dollar a page (and earning 8300 a year). A couple of clicks and all these words disappear, for example. Or, I could simply publish the most trivial of thoughts here (and who's to say I haven't) and they would stay till I took them down or the sun burned out.
Language matters. Language makes having a self possible if a self is defined "as that which can be an object to itself." (That may be from George Herbert Meade.) In other words, any of us can stand in the alongside and think about ourselves. Language is thus that which separates us from our fellow creatures in the animal kingdom. All our pets are distinct and individual but they are all locked into the present moment; we aren't. They have personalities but not selves. We have a language that enables us to think about the mystery of being and the mystery of being conscious in a universe filled with strangeness. Having a self means having the knowledge that death is imminent.
Language matters. If I say that three times it is true. On the other hand, our culture is the culture of the tentative where language doesn't really matter. Nothing is; everything is like. Start a revolution there.
My sons say I should "enable comments," so I have.
#3
Everybody Sleeps
Of all the movie monsters
Freddy Krueger casts a spell:
He can find you when you're sleeping
And he makes your sleeping Hell.
#2
Myth Takes
"Make haste!
Release the Kraken!"
Hades madly cried.
The Beast rose up,
Roared loud its hate,
And many people died.
Andromeda, the Maiden,
Chained naked to the Rock,
Sobbed softly for the terror
And fainted from the shock.
Perseus, the Warrior,
Sprang boldly to her side,
Held out Medusa's deadly head,
And thus the Kraken died.
