Bridging the Chasm

·          Art is a struggle to communicate.  And I don't mean that in a negative way.  The poem below perhaps explains what I am trying to say better than I can say it in prose.  Note:  Broca's aphasia, also known as expressive aphasia, is caused by damage to the anterior regions of the brain.  Sufferers of this type of aphasia have difficulty initiating speech and writing.  Both are often labored and halting.  This poem was inspired by the trash truck that wakes me up every weekday morning as it empties the dumpster across the street at the school, proving that poetic inspiration can come from anywhere!

AS THOUGH SUFFERING FROM BROCA'S APHASIA

Five a.m. brings the roar, the bump,

the backing up of the truck

that dumps the trash across the street

as I slip from sleep to memory

and catalogue events since

yesterday's waking.

Silently I call to you as all around us

bodies fall through the dark

hoping to be caught by another's surprise.

I imagine collective shadows as they

dive--choreographed, practiced, perfected.

Joined by mystery, they strive for divinity

and struggle to speak without words.

Because I cannot say, I stumble through the day

refusing to take sacred images at face value,

and I strain to remember, when

as plentiful as pain,

as coincidental as night bugs

smeared on glass,

the ties between future and past

were most clear in that sharp intake of breath--

when I was severed from my wings.

Words fail, systems fail, 

still we are soundlessly bound

by these golden connections.

Compulsively examining each link of the chain,

ever hungry for the comfort of noise,

we need an endless stream of illusion,

a believable dream of grace

and the certainty of imaginable sequels.

“Bridging the Chasm” the painting that accompanies today's blog, has a story behind it.  My studio is located in a century old building a block off the town square.  A couple of years ago, one of the old drug stores on the square was demolished to make way for a new coffee house.  I observed the renovation process and was intrigued when the original brick walls were uncovered and the cigarette ads that had been painted on them several generations earlier were revealed.  Before the new construction began, I assisted a photographer friend of mine with a fashion shoot set inside the shell of the old drug store.  The model was a young woman who had designed her own line of clothing.  The canvas, which was inspired by the photos taken that day, shows the model looking back into the past as she launches herself into what she hopes will be a bright future.  The irony of the piece is that she turns her back on the observer instead of turning her back on the past.  The resulting pose is indeed one of confidence bordering on arrogance.  Set against the backdrop of the turn-of-the-century cigarette ads, the modern iconic model is seen potentially as an all-conquering giantess.  Due to the viewer’s angles, however, the female figure is also simultaneously objectified.  Note:  The dimensions of this painting are 72"x48", making it a bit bigger than life.

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Off Route 66

These three short pieces were written for a journal called Route 66 (unfortunately now defunct) in which every piece was exactly 66 words.  It is an interesting challenge to set a scene, create a voice, or tell a story under such strict limitations.  It also reminds me how important a title can be in preparing the reader.  Try it.  And post your results in the comments.

 

OR WE COULD PUT TINFOIL ON THE WINDOWS…

            Mamma wasn’t listening.

“Or maybe I need one of those satin sleep masks like the movie stars wear…”

            I stretched out on Mamma’s bed, corpselike, and began to snore like a stooge.

            “Of course, there’s always the danger that I could forget to take if off, and wander out of my room, out of the house, into the street, and…”

            “Okay!” she snapped.  “Forget the nap!”

 

 

BACK ON THE SHELF 

Raindrops reconfigured and lurched toward the clouds.  Modern poetry leapt from the parking lot’s neatly end-stopped, asphalt spaces back into Clara’s bag as the lengthy rip mended itself like a closing zipper.  Her car doors locked and she shouldered backwards through the double doors of the bookstore where the bored clerk accurately returned her money.  Seeing Sam so unexpectedly was crushing.  Clara systematically returned the books.

           

 

STREETLIGHT BLINDNESS

Later, in my street-lit white room, I pulled the sheet over my head, and very still, wondered what it was like to die, whether people would line up and look at me some day, a motionless mound held down by a clinging sheet.  I tried to imagine the people who had died that night, but I could only imagine their tiredness… their sudden willingness to sleep.

Jettatura

This is a link to an interesting writing assignment.  It is really helpful for writers who are blocked.  If it helps you break through, I would love to see the resulting poem.

 

http://mypage.siu.edu/puglove/twenty.htm

 

I am pasting below a poem I wrote using this process.  You would never guess that from looking at the final draft because it underwent lots and lots and lots of revision.  Still, it is a great tool.   Very useful for stirring up the gray matter.  

Thanks Jim Simmerman.

 

JETTATURA

(published in Ginosko Literary Journal, February 2008)

 

If I could watch you with my eyes closed,

I would know more how you move.  But I am

blinded by your sweep of arm, my good

intentions falter, and I forget

the words.  As though balanced on toe

on a rickety white chair,

I posture and prance, then

dive,

knowing this

is my last possible chance

to keep

from

falling.

 

Behind this desperation in my eyes,

I am learning to fly.

Great Mistakes

GREAT MISTAKES

            I am always amazed when I see how often writers tap into the same images, themes, motifs, episodes, etc., in several of their stories or poems.  I do it myself without realizing it at the time.  For example, I noticed yesterday that I had included a reference in two stories to a habit I had as a young child of reading inside a closed cabinet in our family room.  (One of these is  The Goat Story from yesterday’s blog.)  And this was after I had already written a failed poem about my cabinet obsession.  I guess when you do something everyday for a couple of years, it can’t help but impact your subconscious mind.  (Please note that while such behavior admittedly hints at OCD, I prefer to think of it as ritualism.)

            Perhaps we keep going back to the same moments in our life until we deal with them satisfactorily.  They become, in a sense, wormholes that can expand into an infinite number of directions.  I think this is why I tend to write stories and poems in series.  The story I posted yesterday is from a series of creative nonfiction pieces titled as a whole, Closet Dramas.  I chose this title because a closet drama is a play that is meant to be read and never performed.  Anyone who knows me at all knows that I am not a performer!  I don’t really even like to give readings.  The whole thing creates conflicting feelings in me, however, because I truly think that reading one’s work aloud to an audience is the absolute best way to revise a piece.  You get to hear it and see how an audience reacts to it.  But I have discovered from experience that I may read the piece differently from the way it is written. 

I have come to think that such “mistakes” are often subconscious revision in process.  Once I was reading a poem titled “Designated Readymade” aloud at a workshop.  It was the first time I had ever read it aloud.  The first line of the fourth stanza originally read, “I would like to give you that full feeling…” and I changed it to read, “I would lie to give you that full feeling.”  The first version is completely passive and is obviously a throw away line wherein I am not really saying what I want to say.  Not really saying anything at all.  The “mistake” is much more powerful and turns the poem in an entirely different direction, bordering on desperation.

 

DESIGATED READYMADE

(from the series titled Falling Bodies: A Pseudo-Scientific Approach to Love)

I would take the thickness of an eager kiss,

take my heart’s crankshaft clatter

and the narrow width of that brilliant flare

that flashes between day and night,

take the texture of a smooth bright

red pencil on a blue-lined yellow pad,

to make satisfaction,

pour it into a white foam cup

and drink it

just as cool.

 

I would measure your mouth,

define immeasurable quantities,

like enough and too much,

and paint that fascinating fullness

in between.

 

I would write of want,

and recognition of want,

of all the steps from touch to bend,

through each retreat,

to the surging delight

that repeatedly drifts to the side

like snow packed on the toe of a booted foot

slipping through and through and through

picking up frozen residue on the run.

And I would not run.

 

I would lie to give you that full feeling,

as heavy and sure as a pink hydrangea,

as insistent as a swinging noose,

but without distrust,

without aggression,

without that yellow pulling back.

 

These parted lips, this shallow breath,

this effortless dispersal toward the gullet—

beneath this wanting

lies the secret of desire

perfected by its lack of rules.

 

Sometimes fortuitous mistakes come about in the written form as well.  I once mistyped the title of the poem above as “Designated Ready Maid.”

It puts a completely different set of filters in place as the reader begins the poem and more honestly acknowledges where the poem is going to begin with.  Whereas a “readymade” is a work of art created from found objects (which most poems are…), a “ready maid” is an entirely different creature!

            (Since I usually give credit to a journal or magazine for publishing a poem or piece of fiction, I will say that this poem was rejected by Copper Nickel, Alimentum: The Literature of Food,  the delinquent, Umbrella and Best Poem, before being accepted by Literal Translations and Clockwise Cat in March 2008.  Sometimes it is just a long process to find a good home for a poem.  And sometimes they remain homeless…)