The writing of a poem is like a child throwing stones into a mineshaft. You compose first, then you listen for the reverberation.

-James Fenton, poet and professor

I can’t let this New Yorker column go by without sharing it with you. You’ll be glad I did!

My Mom sent me an e-mail today, linking to a very pretty slideshow, with music, called The Interview with God. It’s uplifting.

My grandma used to have an expression, “Well, here we are, dark and it a’rainin’.” I miss her. But here we are. Feeling comfy? I hope so. We’re back from WordPress, which was really nice but started getting very unstable. Weird font problems, lost and wandering links, etc. I thought about putting the blog on my existing Web site, and that’s a possibility if things get whacky here at Blogger again. But right now, I’m just not in the mood to webmaster it.

I hope you like the new color scheme. I did it just for you.

So, what shall we talk about? Poetry? Philosophy? Potential pandemics? OK, poetry it is.

I wrote a chapbook back in the late 20th century, called Finding Oakland. And I’ve been writing ever since, so I have quite a stack of stuff stacked up. A couple hundred poems, maybe. Haven’t counted them.

A couple of years ago, I started writing prose poems – sketches of short fiction – brief scenes in prose, but with a subtle meter, and an attention to the language that one usually employs in poetry. They’re good, I’m told. I’ve got about 30 of those, I guess.

My friends tell me I should endeavor to persevere to get my stuff published again. I haven’t been since Pembroke Magazine did a couple of my pieces in Spring of 2002. Four years. I have no excuse. Except that getting your work published is hard, and it’s not much fun. It’s a little like trolling for the Loch Ness Monster in a row boat, with a fishing rod from Wal-Mart.

I need an agent.

I need another cup of coffee.

I’ve had this blog for three years. Suddenly, Blogger is making me do word verification to post. Their robot, Rusty, thinks it’s a spam blog.

No, it’s mostly useless, obtuse, sometimes annoying. But it ain’t spam.

I met a fellow Citizen this morning, arriving home from the grocery store with his provisions for St. Patrick’s Day. These he said were corned beef and cabbage and “a case of whiskey.”

Saints preserve us.

Last night I had the TV on as I was nearing sleep; just tipping over the edge like a canoe going over a waterfall in an old cartoon. They always paused to look down, you know? Anyway, it was CNN and they were talking about Bush’s presidency, and how everyone who works for him is exhausted. Then an interesting word: they said his presidency has collapsed. Oh my. It has? When? How far back up stream could we have gotten off? Because I think we’re still in the canoe, on the edge, looking way down at a boiling demise on jagged rocks.

Meanwhile, crazy old Saddam thinks he’s still president of Iraq. That’s a hoot.

“I almost think we’re all of us Ghosts. … It’s not only what we have invited from our father and mother that walks in us. It’s all sorts of dead ideas, and lifeless old beliefs, and so forth. They have no vitality, but they cling to us all the same, and we can’t get rid of them. Whenever I take up a newspaper, I seem to see Ghosts gliding between the lines. There must be Ghosts all the country over, as thick as the sand of the sea. And then we are, one and all, so pitifully afraid of the light.”

— Henrik Ibsen, from his play Ghosts, on his birthday.

Apropos of which, you’re invited to read my piece, Black Shirt with Pearl Buttons. Hemingway said that all stories end in death, and that the storyteller does the reader no good service by letting him overlook the fact. On the other hand, none of us wants to go out the way he did. The sun’s gonna shine in on this very chair, just hours hence. So maybe better to remember the awesome last lines of The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy, knowing that in time the right and godmade sun will rise, for all and without distinction.

Hey, you’ll want to have your mouse warmed up to click on this movie as soon as it hits Netflix.  Oh yes, looks like quite a film: Valley of the Wolves Iraq.  

Seems American soldiers (Billy Zane!) are killing helpless Iraqi prisoners so a Jewish American doctor (Gary Busey!)  can harvest their organs.  

The flick has a Web site.  Pretty slick, but you’ll notice the text was written by someone whose first language is not English, and was in a bit of rush to git r done.

According to John Stewart on The Daily Show, this movie is huge in Turkey, where it was made for $10 million.  The biggest Turkey of a movie ever made.  

Now, there’s no need to get offended and run amok, folks.  This is a movie, not a cartoon.  

… When did we start exporting our washed up actors to Turkey?  

Columnist Molly Ivins makes a succinct and compelling case for impeachment.

The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department issued a report Monday that found the main factor contributing to the accident was a “hunter’s judgment factor.” No other secondary factors were found to have played a role. [Link]

Well nice shooting, Mr. Vice President. I’m intrigued to see that the White House finds humor in this hunting accident. I don’t find it amusing in the least. Oh, I admit I thought it was funny at first, just because it involves “The Dick,” but now that the victim – who’s 78 years old – has bird shot in his heart, it’s no laughing matter.

I imagine the guy didn’t know what hit him. Being a long time Republican, he’s probably felt that way for several years. He’s had to watch the leadership of his party take it in a whole new direction, from fiscal conservatism to waves of massive overspending; from a philosophy of strong defense to one of preemptive war; from a small, well-defined and constrained Federal government to one run amok, grown massive by gorging on the hormonal effluence of its own hubris.

I think I know how he feels. I remember when it was safe to be a Democrat. You see, I’m not really a liberal. I’m a moderate and a populist. I used to find things to respect and admire on both sides of the aisle. I believe in states rights, clean television, that the universe was created by God, and kids should be allowed to pray in school. I believe that we should all pitch in to take care of the poor and needy. I believe that what you do in your home is none of the government’s damn business. I believe that taxes should support the arts. I believe in unionized labor.

I’ve always felt it was safe for me to lean to the left, and support a morally expansive – ok, you can call it liberal – view of public ethics, because there was a balance on the other side. There were conservatives to help keep the government from getting out of control. Where did they go? Spending has gone completely nuts under George W. Bush, and none of it for anything good. The government is growing like Godzilla on steroids and Wheaties, and we’re not innovating or inventing, not building schools or hospitals or new freeways, or jobs. I feel like some of us who’ve been leaning to the left have to lean back the other way, to keep the whole thing from crashing over. And if we don’t capsize and sink, where will we be? Outsourced, a second rate power. An emaciated weakling, hairless and shriveled, with giant fists.

Which brings us back to The Dick and his unseemly love of guns and violence. Let it go down in the history books that while America skated along like an M-1 tank on a frozen pond, our leaders had no place in their hearts for peace. Nothing was spared: not the people, the land, the air, or even the birds.

Need a little uplifting story?  Sometimes I sure do.  Here you are.  

Thanks Mom.