A small town in Idaho.
"Loose Lips Sink Ships."
Abjuration.
Objectification.
End Scene I.

Scene II.
Abjuration.
Objectification.
You are in a pinstripe suit.
Sighing, you strip.

Ever have that feeling
like you're being thrown
down a flight of stairs
by the universe?

That's kinda what a panic attack is like...
except...with guilt that...well, like the panic attack itself, shouldn't be there.
This week I have a list of things that I need to do, and maybe all of this panicking and fear
will vanish if I finish everything on the list.
Probably not, but...it's better than sitting around complaining, doing nothing, and being terrified of some sort of cosmic vengeance.

Dreaming the Neolithic.
The caves of
What did you expect
other than a rhinoceros,
looking off to the right
on parchment that has somehow
survived centuries of war
and freak fires,
the kind that periodically trim
even the greatest collections
of masterwork after masterwork.
The deeds of Ecgtheow's son,
most noble of the Geats,
smoldering alongside
Byzantine codices.
---
Imagining a lesser victory.
I'll probably go blind,
later in life,
but not gracefully like Borges,
rather, mad like Belisarius
cursing the genetic betrayal
of my eyes
while Byzantium
is under another attack
by the Bulgars.

Material things, a wish list.

Things I wish I could afford:
a pair of wool pants that fit perfectly.
The World As It Is by Chris Hedges.
a place of my own, our own, however small.
a personal trainer.
a minstrel or two to follow me around
and play music
wherever I wander in the city,
especially when crossing bridges.
I'm not sure if this is a poem,
or just my admiration for the music of breaking things
into lines.
Peace and goodnight.
I've had a wonderful and illuminating weekend.

Reflections on Paintings by Steven Archer.

Reflections on Paintings by Steven Archer.

Tentacled beasts, thousands of eyes,
hearts splayed out on maps
for the world to see:
“Here is my aorta. Here is my soul.”
“Not Special” the sign reads,
Memento Ars: “Remember
you are art. And that you are on
the back of an old textbook.”
Bloody hands and faceless men
playing jacks, dice, cards,
or maybe just
twirling the heavenly spheres.
Monks not bothering to dodge
the rain of arrows:
“Welcome to the Garden of Delights,
heavenly, hellish, earthly.”
Bosch with neon blue hair,
dreadlocks, tattooed arms,
shorter in person than on stage.
His wife another part
of the same inked mirror:
“We heard the click again last night.
We start forgetting
to be scared of walls,
of things in the in between.”
Red flags, veve, La Sirene, Loa, wolves.
The din of crows,
mantras born from fear,
painted animals skulls:
foxes, badgers, coyote.
A wealth of antidepressants.
Everything overflowing with biology:
“I am flooding with your science,
metro nocturnes and hopeful machines,
and likenesses.
Even your serpent totems
are a homage to Crick and Watson.”

The weight of a decade of secrets is slowly being lifted from my chest, leaving brutal marks in its wake.

I am, slowly, beginning to understand the darkness within me.
Understanding it is the first step to driving it out.
I have caused so much pain, and I never want to hurt anyone again.
Not even those who have wounded me beyond description.

History

"Sing this corrosion to me."
-Sisters of Mercy.


And that is exactly what I intend to do. If nothing else, my writing will try to acknowledge the lost, forgotten, and rotting away pieces of the world. Those various beings who are either in danger of vanishing or have already gone into that great and terrifyingly unknown universe known only as history. Small 'h' history--History is something done by men with funny accents intent on killing brown people. history is...more noble, in the sense that it is common, and there is a marvelous nobility in the common man, woman, the human animal's history is largely one of toil...and that is what makes it fascinating, especially now, especially always.

A continuation.

I don't remember where I
stopped finished ended
last time I keep forgetting
places things people ideas
vanished gone lost hidden
my mind has become clouded
occulted misted fogged
thoughts replaced by serotonin
based reminders of
this is what sanity feels like
what well feels like
how normal feels

A brief, stormy verse.

Try summoning     up

a storm from the blackness below you.
Call that tempest. Blow winds! Blow!

Beg    for Boreas to unleash his fury
and Triton his wrath.

Write with    blood
on the air around you

Carve your name     into
the heart of the world.

Flat boxes. My first experiment with white space.

I hate those cardboard boxes
that you have to    build    yourself.
Taping       them together
is just   another form of
bureaucratic        Purgatory.
-The Books Slave, canto XI.

He filled the cart    with
books, and rolled         it
to the edge of the slight ramp
that traversed the narrow hallway
in the damp and partially flooded basement
of the supposedly remodeled library, the carpet
was all the same, didn't match the drapes, had a glow
to it, labyrinths more intricate than Minos in those floors
readying himself, steeling to run, chase, pursue, track, hunt,
the cart as it rolled towards the large iron door marked EXIT
in large red letters, knowing that the alarm on that door never worked
but that the noise would draw unwanted attention to his activities, decidedly
not related to his job, whatever that was, he wasn't sure, thought nobody really
knew, acknowledged his existence, a ghost in the machine, a broken machine at that,
fitting place to haunt, letting go, the cart sped away from his fingers and down, down, down
down, legs moving, lurching after this book-laden cart, this chariot of words, they crash together.

-the second one needs work. Then again, everything does.

Inspiration, in prose.

I could break this up into verses, lines, quatrains, tercets, but...I'd rather not. I write in blocks, large things that Gutenberg and Adlus Manutius might have appreciated had they survived the centuries (perhaps they have) of plague, war, famine, plague, and more war before the wars to end all wars that rocked this century and raised the body count to levels that I pray to the angel of history we never meet again, before coming into this modern era of ours. Of yours, of mine. My left hand is falling half-asleep. Which will make typing interesting. I do so love a challenge. At least I'm not writing this out by hand--though one of these days, just to give you an idea of my writing style, I might just post a photograph or two of my handwriting, a cross between runes, Early Medieval Irish, and Carolingian minuscule. For now, though, make due with the words that blossom on the page before me like those little flowers whose names I always forget. Trillium, I think it is. I have ridiculously fond memories (they should not be that fond, but I do not pick what my mind attaches itself to from my distant past) associated with that plant and walks in the Warren Woods when I would have been...eight, maybe nine, ten, and all the countless strolls (once a week) in those woods or the nearby dunes of the same name, some with an Estonian woman, her (now divorced) husband, and their kid in addition to the usual troop of the four parent academic family that somehow raised Rachel(Artist and Fairy (because fairies can turn into dolphins), Mike (PhD, Computer Science/Math Genius), Gena (world-saver extraordinaire and my sister), and myself (perpetually introduced in high school as "Gena's brother" and sometimes, "Thane of Quizbowl"). I learned something recently, well, was reminded of, I suppose I learned it four years ago and just misplaced it somewhere in the archive of my mind. There was a rumor at my high school that I carried a gun around in my greatcoat--not just any gun, mind you, but a flintlock or something equally old and antiquated yet still deadly. In reality, I carried only a slightly pointed piece of flint for protection, something that still rests on my bedside table (one of those tables, anyway), though I don't think I would have noticed if the school administration searched my locker for any such 'contraband' as I was rumored to possess. I hate guns...well, firing ones. I have an obsession with getting an old rifle stock and transforming it into a Last of the Mohicans style warclub. What can I say other than that I have weird obsessions, but you probably knew that already. At least, I hope some of you did.
I find myself writing poetry about the strangest of things. Well, perhaps not the strangest, but...things of a nature other than I'd expect to find myself writing on. Anthropology, history, sex, gods, demons, and my favorite contemporary artist, Steven Archer. I think I have five of his paintings in my room, all propped up on different shelves and half of them (only half?) with quotes or themes relating to my pale interpretation of Sufism, Zen, and other such things...the other two pieces were commissioned after quotes I sent in, and are both of a sort of futurist monastic bent. I like them, perhaps immoderately. Of course, I'm socially awkward to a horrific degree when it comes to actually meeting such luminaries of the biopunk and goth world, and if I remember to smile (the last time I saw Ego Likeness in concert, I was on a massive cocktail of antibiotics that had me hallucinating and being very allergic to the sun, amongst other side effects in an attempt to cure a case of chronic prostatitis, which still dogs me, and I imagine there was a bit of a dazed look in my eyes, dazed, crazed, something) I consider that a victory in the Victory at Sea sense of the word. I hold fucking ticker tape parades. As...where the hell was I? I scrolled up and started writing about something else, and what started as a brief prelude ended up slightly longer than expected. Poetry, yes, poetry. I write during class, just scribble words next to one another on page after page, my left hand, the one with the stigmata on the back, soaked in red ink like blood. Speaking of stigmata, it is the Feast of St. Francis today, so...go be nice to an animal, give away everything you have, and live like a respectable person should. I'm always a fan of religious organizations which say "Less is More" and then mean it. One of these days, I hope to work up the nerve to try that sort of detachment for myself. Well, it isn't something you can try much as it is something you must live and breathe--at least that is what I've learned from all my research into the subject and discussions with folks who have lived as monastics for a time. My father, actually, is one such Jesuit-refugee, though I part of him never really left the seminary of Shadowbrook, Lennox, Mass. Shadowbrook is now a Kripalu yoga retreat and Reiki center--Duke, my mother's older brother, heads up there once or twice a year for retreats and to escape the general hectic nature of his life. I've never asked if such things actually work, but I imagine that they do, and...hope they work for my lover and I, as we will probably be embarking on a short venture in the Providence Zen Center this coming summer. Especially if she decides to go to Brown for her graduate work in Art History. Poetry, poetry, poetry. Right. I think people in my various classes are starting to notice that I'm just scribbling away like a madman. I usually take notes, too, though, so the verse just kind of flows from my brain when it does, and my notebooks are a strange mixture of notes (written in verse) and poems--written either in prose form or verse depending on the way my mind is working at a particular moment. My fingers tend to lock around the pen, reminding me of the year I spent in seclusion from the very act of writing things by hand aside from personal correspondence, reminding me how very out of practice my body is, my mind is, everything about me is, to this new academic pursuit in a field (I was a medievalist, I was going to be a fucking great medievalist, tweed jacket, elbow patches, muttonchops and all...now...somehow, because it is what is necessary, required, I am getting an M.A. in English from a community college whose threshold I swore I would never cross.) that is almost entirely alien to me, discussing things that I really have no cause to be discussing. Still, I hope they'll give me a degree in a year's time and send me on my way, traveling to wherever my lover is getting her very own shiny Master's degree. And then? Doctorates for both of us. Tweed jackets, a greyhound, a mattress, minimalist furnishings and overflowing bookshelves. Most of all, us.
And now...I'd say I'm going to turn in, but that would be a lie, as my lover is still next to me, writing away furiously on Yeats. Goodnight to all, though, all the same.
With luck, I might be able to write more on this general theme (inspiration, historic muses, etc) tomorrow.

A brief thing about my writing and this blog in general.

My poetry can be pretty insane sometimes.
And I don't mean the colloquial usage as something awesome kind of insane. I mean the screaming in the night at the horror that the moon brings kind of insane. We all have our demons, darkness, black dogs, and the like...I work mine out through poetry and not-all-there rambles that I sometimes post here because I know only a select few people read this blog. Sometimes, they even leave as I put the words fill the page.
Best,
The Robinson.

The scientist, part I.

Experimenting came naturally to Mick,
first with plants, then animals,
then a few drunk test subjects,
and eventually, the formula was perfected.
We were all so sure it would change the world,
and it has.
Not for the better,
but still,
a change is a change,
and there is some beauty such shifts,
like the capsizing of a ship with no ballast,
trying to run before the wind,
taking all hands less two down with her,
into the depths, away from angry gods
and burning cities.

Fiona Lavry and the Angel of Janitors.

Ash drifting to the cobblestones as her cigarette
burned down to bite at her perfectly stained fingers,
Fiona Lavry brushed a few stray hairs from her face,
the remains of a wilting mohawk, electric blue, spiked.


She never could clean the mold of those walls,
old and pockmarked by a thousand wars,
bombings from the last few, air raid sirens,
balls of iron, stone, and oil before that.
Always the mold persisted
in devouring every little piece of the city,
of the walls the angel of janitors
had assigned her to clean.
It had said not to worry,
this angel was decidedly androgynous
in its smudged grey jumpsuit and black hat,
mop perched on one shoulder,
not to worry about this particular wall,
all walls were dirty, and few of them
were metaphors for the souls
of the afflicted and cursed.
Even the angel of janitors,
such an immortal and timeless voicebox
for the will of some absent divinity,
didn't remember anything ever being
truly clean, truly perfect.

Poem for a squid love goddess from the nth dimension.

Jed wasn't looking for a new god when Sandy popped into his life
that sweat soaked summer afternoon in that little parking lot. 
"I am your new god," said this ethereal creature from the great space
back beyond the market, back beyond the beginning of the universe.
Never being one to disagree with apparitions, especially those proclaiming divinity,
our hapless and rather greasy hero nodded and knelt
at the feet of this admittedly perfect specimen of something more than human.
Her tentacles didn't bother him in the slightest after the first week,
and he treasured the sucker marks they left
up and down his back.