Sunday, June 7, 2015

Here's the thing

It's like a puzzle
All the words are interchangeable
"Chasing spoon with a butter knife"
     could just as well be
"Floating bone in a dog fish barn"
Some nice images same syllables
But they live in another dimension
Words slip in and out of themselves
Lines drop and rearrange
It's still the same
I'm plagiarizing myself
Words rehearse by feel
Filling the flow then disappear
Ride out on a trite
Some reappear only in edited reverse
"With a butter knife chasing spoon"
"In a dog fish barn floating bone"
None of it makes sense
I really don't know what to do
It's part of the game, this puzzle
I guess I'm trying to figure myself
In this deep dish template
What was metaphor don't work
Lies in obscurity
I take my breathing utensils and let them air
Wander my smorgasbord eating indigestion
Oh but there's my template
I can digest again
But I digress
The longing that's real
Where's the food?
It's like a puzzle

Denis Streeter   6/7/15


The Wind in the Willows

My father read this book aloud to me when I was nine.  I never read it on my own until now.  In this passage, Rat and Mole search down river at dawn for the lost child otter.  It make me cry every time...and captures its poetic spirit:

     "Then a change began slowly to declare itself.  The horizon became clearer, field and tree came more into sight, and somehow with a different look;  the mystery began to drop away from them.  A bird piped suddenly, and was still;  and a light breeze sprang up and set the reeds and bulrushes rustling.  Rat, who was in the stern of the boat, while Mole sculled, sat up suddenly and listened with a passionate intentness.  Mole, who with gentle stroke was just keeping the boat moving while he scanned the banks with care, looked at him with curiosity.
     'It's gone!' sighed the Rat, sinking back in his seat again.  'So beautiful and strange and new!  Since it was to end so soon, I almost wish I had never heard it.  For it has roused a longing in me that is pain, and nothing seems worth while but just to hear that sound once more and go on listening for ever.  No!  There it is again!' he cried, alert once more.  Entranced, he was silent for a long space, spellbound.
     'Now it passed on and I begin to lose it,' he said presently.  'O, Mole! the beauty of it! The merry bubble and joy, the thin, clear, happy call of the distant piping!  Such music I never dreamed of, and the call in it is stronger even than the music is sweet!  Row on, Mole, row!  For the music and the call must be for us.'" (page 123-4)

Read this classic again. 
Find your new favorite passage.

Saturday, June 6, 2015

Janqetty

One of my customers used the word jankety.  I loved the sound but had no idea of the meaning.  I told her I'd use that word in a poem.  The internet dictionary say it means something like confused or messed up.  I prefer spelling with a q, like junque.  The pseudo-French spelling lends a certain dignity to this rummage of words. 

Many a night
I dreamt of scotch tape floating
And fountain pens in the sun
In their tic tock times
With the fish tales long
Lost in the forest of sea
When the mermaids sing
Long in the slippers wake
Let the letters slip
And the drafters daft
Watching shores realign
Seen through salmon song
Teething in prime
Circles eddy drifting in space
Pitchers popping perfect blind
Moonshine in line
Janqetty.

Denis Streeter  6/6/15