Snugblog

This is a lobster molt. Do you molt? I may have molted.

Tonight, among other things, I found a gentleman in a hole in a backyard. It was after dark. His breath was fog. Instead of a muddy handshake, an elbow nudge.

Within a four foot ditch (that he had dug during the livelong day) was an illuminated jar of dead rat. It was perched into the wall of the earthhole. There was a lightbulb behind it. Rat mosoleum. Shh. Don’t tell.

An extension cord ran to a house, a house of delightful things such as pearls, oils, silk scarves and tea trays.

I looked in the hole after he had left the hole – he was probably searching for better lenses with which to capture his dead rat, his own bloated, interned mummy. . .

The hole was surveyed by floodlights, tangentially highlighting the slitherings of an earthworm who came from (nowhere?) to tap at the glass and then burrow away, disinterested.

In due time, the gentleman came to cover earth worm with handful of earth.

Earlier in the night I listened to poems against a wall. It was so crowded. I would have sat in my concrete corner sooner if only my hair wasn’t caught to the door. The reading was at The Press Club and the service was comforting, as was an enormous strawberry upon the wall, above the array of periodicals. Inks and winks. The poems were pretty alright too.

There is so much. But you see, I’ve got these sniffles and my thoughts lately have been narrowed to topics as follow: ways to keep my toes warm, tea, nose maintenance – proper tissues and moisturizers, vitamin c, nap dreams.

I have been teaching. Tomorrow I teach my first poetry lesson. My list is extensive and improbable for 8th graders. But they are smart and they love to write. I’m going to let them have at. Do you have any suggestions?

This is a running list of things that most other things don’t and won’t eat. (In their respective environments). It’s cool, Pals. You can rest easy.

The Arctic Fox

The Ocelot

The Red Fox

The Giant Otter

The Orca Whale (Too soon?)

Once a week, on Thursdays, I take a lazy boy nap in a big warm room. The room is filled with other lazy boys, twinkly lights, and moon roofs on which the rain patters. Sometimes I hear the heater creak, and other times I wake up for a moment to hear Phillip Glass Piano Solos or Brian Eno Airplanes from on high. The large living room houses other nappers being punctured. Sometimes they snore, but that’s okay. We are in it together. Healing. Dreaming.

Before I go napnap a kind, gentle lady named Jen comes over and puts needles all over my face, arms, legs, hands and feet. She listens to my pulses and talks about the energy imbalances which causes me sleeplessness, nerves, back pain and jitters. After this, she spreads out a big penguin-printed blanket over me, wishes me a happy nap, and leaves me to my dreamland. My experiences have ranged from transcendence, to complete discomfort, to disorientingly deep and transformative sleep. It’s my own little meditation session. Please don’t rain on my parade. Maybe the little needles are placebo. But for me it’s been a fine precondition for healing and balance.

Oh there is a whale. A poor dejected whale who is growing old. For twelve years they have been tracking and recording him. And his whale song is that of a low tuba. Lower than any other known whale. For all of time he has wandered alone, his migratory patterns alien to that of any living whale species. He has been calling out for contact from others of his kind (who may or may not exist). He has never received a response. And they say he never will. This fills me with a longing as I add him to my list of other lonely things.

I am going to re-name this blog the following: Mind-blowing poems that my resourceful friend Haji found and showed me and I posted because she has excellent taste.

Whither Thou Goest

Bob Hicock

Fish can have mad cow disease and I have a problem
with that. Purity suffers and salmon can’t
moo can’t paw grass with the furious
strokes the essential bovine
faith that there’s something in the earth
for everyone. All along I’ve wanted
the good days to be the good days and not
good like drilling your teeth is good
when it stops but good like moonlight
on my wife’s hip with the sheets
pulled back and her hair riotous
and misconstrued. That’s one thing
and not another. That’s the best use
of a bed and two bodies working out
the most inclusive form of redemption
known in the universe this side
of black holes, which is where I want
to be considering that on the other side
of black holes fish with mad cow disease
are indistinguishable from Komodo dragons
who play power forward in the NBA. I’m not
ashamed to admit my prayers are no longer
unconscious but loud and practiced
to the skin of the mirror to the muse
of the cereal box to the road as I drive
everywhere trying to find the last 3/8″
drill this city has because I don’t
believe in god but trust that pushing
veneration through my body makes god
exist if only for a second
within the chambered nuances of breath.
In my favorite prayer I apologize for not
having shouted earlier and in public say
from the back of the subway the top
of a table in a Fort Worth bar that whither
thou goest I will follow. This should be said
every day and with no substitutions
for the archaic whither which is the tender
part the broken wheel of the phrase. This
should be repeated like the turbulence
of blood repeats harmonically or at least
until it’s understood that even
if the way things are becomes the way
they are not I’ll be there when mad cows
attack when madder fish swim back
through the streams when a black hole
shows up at the door wearing a tie
and promising to suck all dirt all evil
all manner of woe from this life
and smiling in a fashion that breaks
your knees. Whither or when thou goest,
how and why you flee, in what manner
or mode you glide or thrash
there’s the mercy of the bond,
there’s the moment you wake or refuse
to ever sleep again, there’s still
your face when the wind’s so fat it curls
in the field to lick its wounds,
and my promise to be there, conspicuously mad
in my devotion.

So. I went contra dancing at the Fulton Community Center off of Terwilliger. I brought my Dodger who was a terribly good sport about the whole ordeal. I will begin by telling you her synopsis of the night. She said that it was as if we had stepped in to Narnia. Everyone was glowing, I would say more than glowing. I would say that sunbeams were shining out of their skins. Men were wearing skirts (my guess is that a. they just like skirts. b. the flowy nature of a skirt enchances twirling 10 fold. The point of contra dancing is the following: To spin about in twirly circles, and to make tons of eye contact. I danced for 3.5 hours.

My favorite contra move is the “Gypsy.” When you do the Gypsie you walk around circles, shoulder to shoulder with someone – all while making sultry, suggestive eye contact with them. Rawr! (That’s a cat sound).

Currently my heart is a big whale. I think that we were made to dance. Everyone was really encouraging and supportive and my hair spun about like a tornado. It was a bon-a-fied nerdfest. I danced with partners of all ages and skill levels. I made sassy eyes right and left.

I was so grumpy earlier. Mirthless/ And now I’m just a little twirly gum drop.

It’s a week of delightful envelopes. Acceptance letters and poems that arrive through the mailslot. Among many others in my new neighborhood, the mailman is unfriendly. I would say that he is slightly less friendly than the cat-eating-pit-bull next door. And he is slightly more friendly then the barista down the street. He refuses to put mail in the mail slot. He finds the spring to be too difficult, too touchy. Our house is raised so that the mailslot is at shoulder lever. Today all of our mail was left in a pile in the mud. Rude. I was delighted though, to find a tiny poem written in tiny perfect handwriting, from the land of rocks!

These are coming up from the dirt. Go back in the dirt – I am not ready for you yet!