Poetry as survival

Swiped from a book by Gregory Orr that was perched on the return shelf when I came in. I've never read it, but the title seemed a worthy starting point since even the cool, vaguely overcast stroll downtown sparked nothing. Too busy enjoying, I suppose.

I'm well aware that a welcoming, temporarily (curses!) omnipresent (I should move to Norway) chill won't be making its annual appearance until later this month (next month? November? Can't ever tell these days), but the fact that summer, the great deceiver, is being ritually slain by a series of weak, low pressure paper cuts has given me cause to slowly smile.

Ouch, that fucking hurts.

Lily of the monolith, whose acid scent plucks miniature limbs to pen crinkled, makeshift basketballs, time to wake. Bad verse is bad verse, autumn or no, & the season's a writing cliche to be sure, but I've dug the rustle of colors hustling out of boughs since I was a wee little scamp, those antediluvian eons before I uncovered the perverse joy of watching the local sports franchise alternate well-timed chokes & offseason implosions.

Improvement's been marginal at best -- check out ma poubelle, proof of deadly three-point accuracy, we're all witnesses -- but when you dig something, you best do it as often as you can, lest what digs your final resting place bleed its ink over all twenty-four hours & that stuff's a motherfucker to erase.

Hang on a sec, navel gazing's an eye strainer.

Okay, I'm back. Aw shit, the sun's out, though this pic rouses my happy:














I'm doing my damnedest to avoid politics, really I am, but chortling knows no lord. Histrionic Yankee ballotmania over hung chads, poorly aligned print jobs & Snidely Whiplash e-voting, while a nation of dead wedding parties gets one of those cool king-size National Geographic foldout maps.

And they recycle their waste, blue bins & bags on the curb every Friday. Hint hint, America. Now I feel dirty. Best go write.