Slip shod past The Wimplebee…Schloop was shloshed at Schniffery’s
Author: robertalanrife
I have spent the better part of my life as a professional musician. Primarily, that has meant the fun and challenging world of church music. Most recently, I have transitioned out of my role as worship and music director for Yakima Covenant Church, Yakima, Washington to global service in Edinburgh, Scotland. I'm a singer-songwriter, liturgist, poet, and writer. I love words. I love to read them. I love to write them. Most of all, I love the many intersections, like a sacramental tapestry, of life, liturgy, literature, the arts, and spiritual formation...oh, and I love haggis.
Maybe
Stop. I hear the running colors,
bleeding their way into staves of
yesterday’s piecemeal hide and seek.
They have a way about them, stoic and
unyielding in their passion.
Maybe it’s the seagull songs,
where nobody knows the words?
But the shear intensity of
competing voices marks territory
for newcomers and ne’er do wells.
Maybe it’s the ease with which
lyrics come back from high school sweet
heart songs? Backseat strolls, stretching
out winding fingers, unseen aches;
the Marco Polo jaunts of un-easy un-initiates.
Maybe there’s blood in the notes
that tease from privileged places,
hung high upon their low lying lines,
the wide open spaces where old things ease
and new things grow? The music of veins.
Maybe clapping these rhythms merely
confuses our steps to a dance, unfrozen,
that teams with uncertainty, like deer on the highway?
This dance, best left alone, makes off
with all remaining reticence, leaving behind
only tired partners.
Maybe, like the salmon choir, we submerge in
subversive harmonies, fit only to glide
through effortless musings on riddles of
the underworld? Faint words and muffled sounds
force us to listen more closely.
Maybe, instead of the insistence of virtuosity,
primping and perfectly postur’d, we should let
our barstool voices take us where
only friends can go. Sometimes,
there are better tales told under tables,
than solos sung from spotlights.
Maybe, the worried demeanor of
our shaky performances stalls itself,
out among the cocain’d critics and shadow-puppet
friends? Would that we only pursued
what’s dangerous, dying in the process, than
soil ourselves waiting for graceless applause.
Stop. I hear the running colors,
taking up their places, im-prism’d.
Reinstituted truths of tales best left
un-sung, songs best left un-painted,
casting long shadows on the longer land.
Image found here
Where the real things are
There is wonder in the weeds,
stallions in chicken coops where
the tame things are –
waiting, transfixed beyond the scale of our
misconceptions. Only the breathing green-
sleeves of jacketed noon ever make it
past the sifting of a targeted light.
Not everyone fears what everyone fears.
Sometimes all the berries congregate at the
bottom of the bowl, past the necessary stuff.
Sometimes we self-gift with what matters least,
except for whomever owns the mirror.
Could it be that someone pushed too
hard and a cart pulled a horse? Would that
be so bad, given the size of a cart,
the nature of a horse? Down-trodden
are the nightmares of the demure ones.
Instead, let the hunger feed its own will.
We’ll take our tea in bed.
It gets into you, like blood on cotton,
thorns in feet. They only pull when we’re not
watching. Waiting their turn to
preen the pastiche until
its awake enough to turn and
face another cautious page, inked and
waiting – where the real things are.
One Stop Shop Blog Hop
So, this is part of a fun blogger’s initiative called a “Blog Hop.” Here’s how it works. I was invited by writer/poet friend, Lesley-Anne Evans, to join what amounts to a writer’s pyramid scheme. The rules of the game? Tag three other bloggers, all of whom will answer four questions about writing and the writing process. We post two weeks after the previous crew. Therefore, every two weeks, the number of bloggers posting grows exponentially!
The goal is simple – to connect writers who blog in a tighter community and hopefully, enrich others looking for answers to their own writing questions. Lesley-Anne is a gifted writer and poet who spends much of her time beautifying neighborhoods, cafes, street corners…wherever really, with poetry “installations.” She also does a fun thing called “Pop-up Poetry.” To see her contribution, click here.
We begin:
1) What am I working on?
These days, apparently, poetry is the language I speak. I’m learning to speak this language with more weight (as Lesley-Anne would say!), clarity, and authenticity. But also, simplicity. The degree to which my language learning translates into quality production remains to be seen. But, like my poetry, I’m a work in progress.
I’m pleased and proud to be an active participant in the process of broadening the literary/artistic voice in the Yakima Valley. This is a valley of varied, often harsh, beauty. Many poets, writers, artists, and musicians have stepped up to sing her praises. Recently I was chosen as one of thirty-four poets to contribute poetry for a mixed media art show featuring the work of local photographers. The event? Light Write. Read more about it here.
A snapshot of my work and process will soon be available on an exciting new Facebook chat room, Altarwork. Alongside finishing a new EP with my son, Calum as producer, I’m working on a book of sacred prayers, poetry and liturgy, listening for a book of poetry to emerge with the working title, The Beauty of Wasted Space and helping my wife in her own process of writing a novel.
2) How does my work differ from others of its genre?
On one level, I’m not so sure it does. However, as a poet, I am deeply influenced by old school poets. But, I seek to bring their influence to my own emerging voice, all the while writing in more contemporary genres. It gives a certain “traditional non-conventionality” to it.
I am an advocate of language for its own sake. The beauty of the words themselves brings a joy that predates the images and meanings derived from those meanings. But I also love the challenges offered poets from adapting ideas and thoughts to preexisting forms. It’s my tip of the hat to iambic pentameter, triangle poetry, Haiku or sonnets!
3) Why do I write what I do?
My words here will echo every other writer I’ve ever heard who’ve answered this question. I write because it is a compulsion. That compulsion might be out of anger or frustration surrounding some issue about which I need to weigh in, usually for my own conscience! More often than not I write because I’m inspired to ‘word up’ what I see in the world around me. My experience of that world yields a seemingly endless supply of emotional detritus needing to find its way out. When it does, I’m either writing and/or composing.
For me, poetry is contemplative prayer. It is as much a spiritual exercise as it is literary, and one of the primary ways by which I connect to my center and to the Sacred Center of all things. What is most freeing about this arrangement is how seriously and, at the same time, laissez faire, I can take my approach to the art. At least right now, it grows from much that is yet un-mined in my spirit. If you’re okay with it, I am too.
4) How does my writing process work?
Assuming the process actually does “work”, it differs depending upon what I write. It has also changed. In terms of poetry, it is becoming more about less. It was at one time a game of output. Now, it’s more about input. I read much more poetry than I ever write.
Composing prose is more an act of ‘pin the tail on the donkey.’ I chase around an elusive gem that needs to be caught, tamed just enough to stay on the page, and released back into the world for the consumption of other hungry readers. I have discovered that writing works best for me when I simply barf up whatever is bubbling in my literary stomach and then ‘read the leavings’ for anything substantial, worthy of further consideration. I’m not generally an outline kinda guy!
Well, that’s it for now. Thanks for listening! For the next stop on the blog hop, I’ve tagged the following stellar individuals.
Seymour Jacklin is one of those delightful serendipities. A fellow ex-pat, he is becoming my friend alongside his considerable skill as a poet, blogger, editor, educator, and story-teller. We’re also mutual fans and players of Celtic music! Hear him play right…here.
Kelly Belmonte is a recent friend, having met online as mutual admirer’s of one another’s work. She’s a wonderful writer and a deep soul. But, rather than just tell you, you need to go and discover more about her right…here.
Paul Bowman and I began a friendship journey in 2008 when sharing a cohort in an MA in Spiritual Formation and Leadership from Spring Arbor University. We’ve since graduated from that program and are supportive of each other’s quest to spread salt and light through words to a thirsty world. Find out more about him, his writer-wife and gorgeous kids right…here.
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If the next blog hop posts aren’t up by July 14, please check again in a few days. Thanks for playing along and your support of online writing!
Listen for what finds you
Listen loudly for the stirring glass
of day, unknowing. Her constancy
rewards your swelling incontinence
of spirit, grey and unraveled. She lowers
her eyes in hithering glance.
Listen for stolen subterfuge and
let your wings unstretch and prepare for flight
to the forgotten address, that place without
doors. Only windows looking out like
grassland sonnets, playing their words
for rusty ears, still ringing.
Listen for the ache, for those moments
when the pregnancy of pause reminded you
of anxiety gone bad, replaced by the
hearing of silent songs, brightly sonorous.
Even in your absence,
they sang for you.
Listen for the memory of color,
the liquidity of mind, dressed in its own
repast. This is the ocean floor, unmitigated
and confident in its vast demeanor. In these
hands, you are again – and playfully small.
Listen, unexpecting and directionless, for
Heaven’s mapping of your vine-choaked heart.
Something strangely reminiscent of good, acceptable,
perfect tunnels down to brooklets of diamond
water, tickling your subterranean way.
Listen for the intuited climax of
nothing special, wrapped in candy of evermore.
Blatent in repose, the jacketed wonder of a
good day, surprising you in presence. Listen here.
You have found the nothing
you didn’t know you were looking for.
Your valley-scented breath
Last evening I had the honor of participating in a local effort, here in Yakima, featuring the work of 30 poets of which I was one. We each were assigned a photograph, also by local artists, and tasked to produce a piece that was representative of that photo. It was a fun affair and drew many poetry/photography/art enthusiasts who drank local wine and beer and otherwise supported a great cause: The Yakima Light Gallery. The name of the event was Light Write.
The following was my offering (image not included for copyright reasons, and so as not to infringe upon the Gallery’s intention to gain physical viewers…at least until after September!).
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Your valley-scented breath
Your valley-scented breath, raspy, wind-dried and whiskered,
blusters loudly, secrets untethered from your mountain mistress,
haughty and aloof. Your nose, veiled and distant,
thrust shamelessly into the virgin air,
undrapes an impish, powdered face,
intruding on the lesser ones.
Lacking restraint, you choose to hold back nothing.
Instead, winking impudently, you shrug in brazen withdrawal
and tilt the globe to burnish your burnt, brown breast –
glacial bosom, alive, rising above the depths
of the hot belching earth, quivering in silence but
creased with ten thousand yesterdays. Dug deep
into your dark maw, full of old light and new promises,
there boasts a hardscrabble domain. You wear pitted patterns
like a tiara, dousing noon-day heat in cowboy spittle.
There’s a mischievous glint in eyes drawn tight against
a yawning sky where your introspections crouch,
petitioning their release from dusty shelves.
As the choir of stones sings the well-worn songs,
a valley coos, relaxing on your grizzled lap.
An untidy blouse of wayward blue
billows out willing, mottled, stretched across
the scarred loom of your ancient back.
There, there it is we shall walk.
There, where sallow cheeks of star-burnt faces
hide themselves behind the paint of the green years.
Silly fool! What lips have you to kiss these wandering feet,
still too soft, that bleed at your touch?
So, cough up your tumbleweed tales of
desperado dances and roughneck rambles.
Let your thin, dry tongue trace lightly in meandering lines,
the long-forgotten stories of mound-bellied earth,
unaccustomed to such attention. Only then would you
blush and turn the other cheek.
©Robert Alan Rife, May, 2014
The Poets
What happens after,
There is a laziness in the light
while evening shadows crouch in fear
behind too much sun, still breathing heavily,
pushing their way, like pain.
________
Windows marble and cut the
dusk, more raw for her energy.
She pants, lurching over a tired prow,
pinching the hours before a Marco Polo
entrance. An ache of greying green sprawls
out on the dirty floor, like boredom.
________
What dalliances lay their grievous joie de misère
under tables of discontent? What mis-
matched lyrics to over-sung songs
ever find their way back to tired voices?
They strain through candied throats the coughed up
suggestions of music more real for its yearning, like lust.
________
Perhaps if Hemingway’s whiskey’d voice, husky
in remonstrance, bellowed his last lines
first of the last first tale?
Told last, would it matter less?
Through Tequilla’d sight, he climbed to heights sufficient to
claim a boastful repast and only good came.
Let’s invoke a simpler meaning to all that hides. Conveying
messages in the unbidden shivers of quilted days, like drunk.
________
“Steady on,” the curtains answer, chilled in
the gossip of an impatient midnight. “Nothing is
yet. Just memorize what couldn’t be found
among the bones.” There will be
another branch to add to another tree,
that only cares to know
what happens afterward, like now.
________
Picture found here
Loving Judas
Legs dangle, arms crossed, nestled in the humming lilacs,
oblivious to all but the playful patter of unicorn hooves –
a wax doll flays a panda and steals a school bus
like the lips of Judas kissing his friend.
There is a flower, stamen intact, but anemic to incursion of lesser bees,
boasting contempt for unadorned suitors, never met.
Sweetest honey, end game of lovers and shared hives,
cannot match the preferred taste of a bloodless friend.
Pen at the ready, the steady scratch of solitary ink,
the price of life pretended, unlived living gets written instead.
Freedom, pillaged by cool tranquility, sits aloof on a park bench,
munching contentedly the bones of a dead friend.
Drifting, like the Lady of the Lake on a
fairy tale palm frond, someone catches a reflection –
a presence, vaguely recognizable, still unflinching,
puckers again the brutal kiss, in full view of no one.
Yet even Judas was brother to some, friend of one.
A silver mouth overlaid with the tarnish of deceived deceit
was still not enough to steal compassion’s face,
bearing down on the grain of a lost friend.
Image: “The Kiss of Judas” by Caravaggio
Amanuensis to a dream
Amanuensis to a dream –
a butler opening doors
with white gloves and
careless amusement.
Playing Pluto to Saturn’s
tune, the cloudless cosmos
settles in for dancing and drinks,
before retiring to deep.
All that is good drips heavy,
drunk on its own promise.
A shimmering green shrinks, succumbing
to the blue expanse, wan and
pilgriming. Empathy returns
to roost in harbor-homes,
and portraits replace selfies
gone bad. Smog gives way
to fog, sitting still, but
lifting for better songs.
Nothing more than minstrels,
casting notes like seeds on desperate
soil, pages of the best book,
written in our own history.
Image from here
Accessorizing
Accessorizing a borrowed life with faces –
no names – they’re unnecessary.
Don’t complicate the process by streamlining
a story made prettier by scar tissue, scabbing.
A fault line runs through the doubting
air, fat on it’s own labor, like lighting
cigarettes on sunburnt backs. The first one always
clouds the breathing space
like too many clouds in too little sky.
A single teabag in the bathtub where
life gets stored, wrinkled-skin shining
toward a sleeker consumption. Borderlands fold inside out.
Don’t look anything in the eye. There’s a smoke
storm coming. A cigarette exhaled in someone
else’s kitchen. Riddle-red cheeks fade back into
other-storied guests.
We’ve been here the whole time.
________________________
Image found here
Rob's Lit-Bits 