It was a moment, pulled taut
against an aching clock.
Oh, the smoothness of dairy speech
thrown long upon its patience, losing.
Forever in a cup, glances placed
softly on fingerprinted skin.
Eyes, twinned and pinned like
fridge magnet promises, align.
Whatever passed as ancient minutes
lumbered through their cast-iron fog
until they gave up waiting –
and removed their shoes.
Picture found here
Sometimes when the wind shifts
and the denouement of the drive
awakens us to other roads left
unexplored, a kind of sadness
descends on the journey. This one
road upon which the gravitas of
grace spreads out long and lavish,
leads to lost places;
corridors of corruption,
alleyways of dreams,
aborted or forgotten, lanes of
loneliness, streams of sadness.
In their ditches of dread we find them,
hiding from the obvious, oblivious
to all that lay before them. Some
roads only appeared once they were
needed but quickly disappeared once
taken. It is then we kick
open the passenger door, deeply
dented and dusty from the drive, and
offer sojourn-solace on
the back roads of heaven.
Photo taken by me on a back roads trip in Washington State, October 2014
I watch while the last of the summer leaves
the last of the summer leaves,
cornered by color, bullied by wind,
pushed from their tenuous
one-finger perches. Dangling
from hope, they yet cling to what was.
To what can never be again.
Buttressed now by stealth and stain,
the trees hold their breath and, in bloated hues,
leave behind what could never have been kept.
The molten days of August, now
Eastward creeping, cannot match
the closer dawn of winter’s darker agenda.
Change waits for no one.
Our frightened but fawning fraternity,
grips the once-dangling inside jokes.
But our song-sick companionship, bends
to sight and chance and change.
Beyond the clutch and ken of
drowning dreams, old stories, made young
again in the telling, sleep in
the quiet choirs of shared experience.
Love, always trumpeting her own exploits,
is writ larger against the dim and shrinking page.
Huddling for warmth against the inevitability
of inevitability crouches the promise of the new,
ripped and wrapped in golden heaps of trust.
Grasp too tightly to the branch and nothing
comes to shape what shadow left behind.
Trading form for frame, green for gold,
gone for glow, tired specters of older
days return to their places to sleep,
and dream of dreams.
The pledge of change.
What is left after un-leaving
stays bleak but for a moment.
Soon, the barren skin of dawn
must shed to bear and bare what only
death could bring.
Everything.
At this drunken shoreline, patterns return, in
quilted quiet. I can revel again in spiced hours,
deaf to the biker-ghosts, bad-mouthing
this demure, paper posture.
Thoughts are a little rumpled, like the sea,
what with these ferocious memories; un-manacled,
like cottonwood dreams, blown out into the world.
This world I am watching.
* * * * *
She walks down the street, locking
every wandering glance; stolen stares from
other hungers. Sad limbs, built for laughing strolls,
carry instead their weight in
desperation, the roll call gestures of
fragmentary magnetism. To look down is to invalidate,
the one thing that renders such creatures immobilized.
She never looks straight on. Being seen but
unknown has honed a peripheral awareness
to a hawk-like precision. It’s the hollow
look of the lonely.
* * * * *
That’s a tiny dog for such an imposing guy.
It must have something to do with an ill-
fitting black t-shirt. I still love AC/DC, too. But
the designer sunglasses match the grey goatee and flip
flops well enough to doubt the bravado, question
the impartial coarseness; his language just color-
ful enough to hide the deeper grey.
The fear of more.
* * * * *
Her weighty eyes climb his rusting frame; a gaze
made full in the weight of familiarity. His jaw-
line, thin, like his tired neck, perches on
shoulders, stooped, but unburdened by
neat and tidy, pressed, quick, or stoic. Endless pages
pass between their easiness, two souls in single,
unflinching presence. He remembers less
than the love she feels, spoken through his
wrinkled palm in hers, their fingers entwined.
The tapestry of their years.
* * * * *
The penny arcade discoveries of wide-mouthed boys –
more magic through a cheap telescope than my pretense of self-
imposed juxtapositions. Their cocky, self-
assured swagger breathes the new air, heedless of my
artless anxiety in their art of care-less play. Can voices
really be that loud? So much more gets spoken in
the repetitions of unpracticed
wisdom. Their code is a skateboard sculpture. Life
on a flat, four-wheeled universe. Soon,
when fearful complexities begin to gnaw
through the ropes that tether youth to
moments and days, will they remember
this foolish display of seaside
time, gloriously wasted?
* * * * *
This guy has no story to tell. At least
that’s what is suggested in the gymnastic
dodging of eyes and steps from
that hand. Oh, that hand, weary, upturned for
that drop of grace found in spare quarters, lost
among our Visa receipts. Well-rehearsed
well-wishing will never match the possibility of just
one good conversation. His stench, reminder of loss,
friendship’s nemesis, gift of forgottenness,
taunts him. It’s one more reason to avoid him.
He owns nothing.
Well, except a checker board. But, that’s designed
for company.
* * * * *
A tide and a thousand waves later, a laptop
overheats my knees. It reads 17%, the same possibility
I’ll remember their faces by the weekend. I am
like them – just another stigma.
Or, maybe another story waiting to be written.
Unwritten.
Rewritten.
Here at the corner of
validation and forgot.
Layers of green-backed mountains muscle their way through bruised-blue ocean. Hovering always beside us, they serve as our constant reminder to look this way, west, when lost (an hourly occurrence with me at the wheel). The air is grey, merging as one with the sky that frames it. Those, like us, whose weather experience is unyielding, unnecessarily hot, desert sun, often boast of the abundance of light. But, unlike the pushy, insistent sunlight of eastern Washington, the light here is complex, nuanced, shy and non-committal, like a teenage girl not quite ready for a boyfriend’s advances. Colors and textures are more discernible; faces, buildings, and backgrounds more sophisticated, not blanched and obvious from the brash directness of a boastful sun. This light is earned and, as such, even more deeply appreciated for its whimsical scarcity.
Rain here is currency, making this a rich place indeed. Its presence is more than just expected. Its certainty brings with it a comfort akin to the smug knowledge that umbrellas bring in clearly delineating tourists from townies. It’s dotage, over-eager but well-meaning, comes like a cleansing of the palette as it were for the hardened but friendly inhabitants who call this home. Anything more than about a ten percent chance of rain means, well, rain. Whatever ‘showers’ means elsewhere, in this place it is code for, Build ark and prepare thyself for an unforgiving shitload of vertical water and avoid umbrellas at all costs.
Tucked beneath the busy sky, layered mountains, and hungry sea lives a population reminiscent of a suburban Woodstock. Hippy loggers. Polite revolutionaries. Sidewalk artist news-junkies. Bag-ladies and street-dwellers with decent grammar. All of the above and us, the lone, traitorous Canadians living in Washington State trying to stumble our way around. That, with downtown streets twisting in corkscrew fashion in and out of side streets that double as alleyways that double as thoroughfares that smirk at our lostness. The roads, having been laid by drunken blind men in oneupmanship sprawl out like some wild, yet picturesque, game of snakes and ladders. Where the hell are those mountains anyway?
Those Canadians, famed for politeness, are the same ones who, upon noticing our Washington State license plate, find every way possible to angrily tailgate us into next week, regardless of our fifteen miles per hour over the speed limit. A worthwhile risk, apparently, to he who must teach a valuable lesson to these wayward American ne’er-do-wells. “But wait,” I inwardly screech, “I’m one of you.” To no avail. This is what Canadian “aggression” looks like. I meet the same guy at a red light and he’s all smiles and waves. Here in Canada, polite is but shorthand for passive-aggressive, a set-up for the inevitable near-clash of non-words.
The reason for this ascent into the murky badlands of Vancouver Island rainforest otherwise known as Nanaimo? To deposit (or abandon, depending on your perspective) our youngest son into the fray where he will begin Jazz Studies at Vancouver Island University (not an oxymoron, I assure you) and a new life figuring out the politics of labyrinthine Canadian niceties. He may have been born in Vancouver but he has spent fourteen of his eighteen years in America’s Pacific Northwest. He is the most American of anyone in our family, a family more Canadian than most Canadians.
The long love we’ve harbored (yes, I went there) for screeching gulls alighting on fishing boats, grumpy clouds bobbing over bouncing buoys, and a permanent smell of pulp laden damp help us navigate the darker waters of parentalisms. Small comfort indeed in the face of driving hundreds of miles away, the face of one’s youngest in the rearview mirror. Good thing I’m given neither to melodrama nor self-pity or I might find myself writing about it.
God forbid.
Photo found here
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.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________
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!
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!).
_______________________________________________________________________
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
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
Bent shoulders squeeze tight against the
seven-layer’d Sheol, curtained against
a world, upturned, and studiously
oblivious to a two-breasted sparrow,
with shark-teeth and winter’d schemes.
Words, like rainless clouds hopscotch over
solemnities, trinkets, experiments, names.
They jostle for supremacy with other shelved
things, like those good ideas, old friendships,
and Dad’s breakfast table dreams – the talk
of little boys of unwhisker’d pedigree.
Watch a man’s skin curl under
flame while doing your nails, and then shrug
away the smell before answering
your phone. It could mean playground
talk, pajama time, and networking to
stop the voices.
Still, hiding there under the clock,
breathless and stoic, that pushes only red and
black and the carbon of sweaty
palms, are the patient lines on an ambivalent
face. Come the creaks and queries and
counting petals on the tired
sidewalk. But garden variety promises, wrapped
in gum wrappers are stuck in pigeon shit, refusing
release into the Cadillac morning on a
farm truck day. So, flow down trucker
tears, leathered and unbidden,
like remembrances of the somnolent road.
Those kind of tears.
Image: Circe by Wright Baker
There is a place,
under the porch where the rattlesnakes are snoring
with one eye open, the other one hungry.
…
There is a time,
when the lush day-damp dissipates into a certain thinness
of corduroy dreams pushed up against unpainted walls.
…
There is a place,
where the shadows have darker shadows
and light is the unwelcome uncle, drunk before drinks.
…
There is a time,
after 1963, when the streetlamps meant something
more than the start of a restless evening.
…
There is a place,
where rye ‘n water and pickled herring and asparagus spears
shared secrets to little boys of parent parties.
…
There is a time,
sandwiched somewhere between lunch money and
shit wine in a coffee cup when dime-store dreams were enough.
…
There is a place,
of a certain ripe solitude, a kind of naked jamboree
when conversation stalls but silence takes over.
…
There is a place. It was not then.
There is a time. It was here.
If we are made in God’s image and God sings, then we should be singing, too.
Ancient Wisdom for Modern Seekers
Spiritual Direction for Integrated Living
From liquid courage to Sober Courage
an anamcara exploring those close encounters of the liminal kind
Collaborating with the Muses to inspire, create, and illuminate
...in such kind ways...
"That I may publish with the voice of thanksgiving, and tell of all thy wondrous works." Psalm 26:7
Blog for poet and singer-songwriter Malcolm Guite
…in the thick of things
REFLECTIONS & REVIEWS
Seeking that which is life giving.
… hope is oxygen
Homepage of Seymour Jacklin: Writer - Narrator - Facilitator
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