Saturday, September 18, 2010

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.

13 comments:

Life As I Know It Now said...

We get third rate voting practices because we ARE third rate. Welcome to the jungle indeed!

Tengrain said...

Graves, you swine!

Clearly they are not the only people who recycle their waste on Fridays. I've read your posts.

Regards,

Tengrain

Freida Bee said...

"...even the cool, vaguely overcast stroll downtown sparked nothing."

This is the saddest line ever.

But, this beat poet line helped me to perk up and pick my mind up out of the gutter:

"I've dug the rustle of colors hustling out of boughs since I was a wee little scamp."

That's the wholesomest thing you ever wrote, love. Fall's impending doom is turning you from Randal into Randy. That's an oxymoron if ever there wasn't not one. Muah.

Randal Graves said...

liberality, our drones aren't third rate, get your Ouija board and ask an Afghan wedding party.

tengrain, I'm tired of your same synthpop band each Friday, too, Californistan.

FB, is this where I recite some of that bad verse to elicit a response of 'let's go hide in the stacks?'

susan said...

When you referred to a paper cut smile I couldn't help but remember 'Ichi'. Now there's a guy who knows how to share all sorts of perverse joy.

Demeur said...

What a frugal way for an election, just swipe some Bushville cardboard homes and a couple of Office Depot bins. Now why didn't we think of that?

Randal Graves said...

susan, maybe that's what the Browns need, hire some crazy-ass yakuza.

demeur, when the winner is going to be Yokel A or Yokel B, why not?

Tom Harper said...

Caption: "These F*ckin' instruction manuals! F*ckin' Korean English, I can't figure out what the f*ck they're talking about! 'Step 14 C, insert upper half of slot on behind Part X3, shown in Figure 27.' AAARRRGGGHHH!!!"

Mauigirl said...

Hard to avoid politics although I too have been doing my best. Enjoyed the music...feels very wintry.

Commander Zaius said...

...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

Hell, you know Karzai only buys the best for his people. And he is green friendly too

Ubermilf said...

I am freaked out that I was speaking of snow leopards just today, and here I find it your blog post title.

Of course, I was speaking of them as really old granny cougars, not whatever you're writing about here. Was it important or something?

S.W. Anderson said...

When verse comes to verse it will time to trade dealing with vast quantities of wet, funky leaves for shoveling tons of snow.

Would that I could follow politics someplace where trees don't go naked, frost is only found in freezers and they don't even sell snow shovels.

Randal Graves said...

tom, all your base are belong to us?

mauigirl, 'bout time someone commented on the music, dammit. I love these guys and highly recommend checking their stuff out.

BB, I'd much rather get a swanky, full-color map of Genghis Khan's terrible reign than a list of future minions of our terrible, albeit horseless, reign.

übermilf, everything is important in comparison to your bathroom stall scrawling.

SWA, bah, humbug. Since the dawn of time man has yearned to destroy the sun.