Poetry is the Music of Desperation

Poetry is a survival mechanism--that voice that appears out of the darkness to make sense of the senseless. People do not decided to write poetry, they are driven to it. There is no choice involved. It's something you find yourself doing in the middle of the night that is a better alternative to putting your fist through a mirror or pulling your teeth out. There is very little honesty left in this world, and it its getting to the point where I'd rather someone shook their fist at me rather than shake my hand. The Modern Age has turned everyone into salesmen--and everything is for sale. There are no more prophets, no more sorcerers. Instead of warriors we have soldiers as diplomats (a poor fit). We are overrun by bankers who rob with a fountain pen and legions of accountants bleeding us dry on the installment plan. The sane are turned mad, and the mad called sane. Prisons filled to capacity while psychopaths use the words of holy men as litanies for vengeance.

Meanwhile the earth beneath our feet moves; tidal pools empty and fill. The order before order continues. There will be a time when all is laid silent, when the silence of space will again rule all. As men rise and fall in the game of samsara, there will be a few moved to take up a pen and scrawl a few parting words on a wall--an epitaph, perhaps, but always a prologue as well. Beneath the screams, beneath the cries, beneath the laughter--always moving onward, always becoming. And it is from the act of continual creation that the poet and artist dips his cup, drinks it in and is revitalized. To open one's self up to the stream, especially in the darkest hour, and feel life pulsing there, just below the surface, and to give that form--that is poetry, that is spirit made word.

When Winter's Scream is Silenced

It is spring here in the city of Milwaukee, which always makes me feel like a child again. Those of you who live in the warmer climes probably do not have the appreciation for this transitory season that us northerners possess. There is something deep within the soul that stirs when the first green blade is spotted rising from the grey earth. It is difficult to put that feeling into words, as if the dried husk that had encased the spirit over those long wintry months is suddenly broken open to let the radiance of sunlight play over the forgotten fields that lay in wait for its gentle encouragement. This may seem as nothing more than a bunch of poetic nonsense to you if you reside in L.A. or Miami, but it is that you do not know what it is to outlive winter's punishing grip. And it is punishing. You do not know what winter is until you have had to scrape your car windows clean of frost in sub-zero temperatures--those merciless early mornings when you are running late for work and you emerge from the warmth of your home to discover the awful labor that awaits you. And then to feel the feeling slowly drain from your hands as the glass is vigorously cleared. That is nothing less than battle. Man vs. Nature stuff. I'm surprised Hemingway never wrote a story about it, but then again, he retreated to Key West. He let the winter win, and the knowledge of it crippled him for the rest of his days. So much so that he was relegated to playing tour guide to Castro and his buddies, lighting their cigars on command. Not even Ezra Pound would answer his letters after that.
Yes, the winter has been known to take vibrant people and cut them down in the prime of life, leaving them crippled and dumb. But that is the north for you--natural selection at its most primitive and unforgiving. It is no wonder that the northern climes have given rise to such crazed individuals as Dan Ackroyd, Vince Lombardi, and Pat Sayjak, who's violent carousing has been covered up by Griffen Enterprises for years. It is what, in no small part, turned the young Robert Zimmerman into the poet-seer of his time. Out there in the wastes of northern Minnesota strange visions come to you out of the interplay of drifting snow and sunlight. Few people realize that All Along the Watchtower is a retelling of the Native American myth of the Windego.
So when the hard winds of March start to give over to the slow trickle of green across the landscape, you will forgive us northerners if our responses should seem so brutishly emotional. We cannot help it, for this welling up of emotion is ingrained in our pagan mentality. We are children of the earth, and when the sun again showers its gifts down upon us, please forgive our brazen displays of nakedness
and animalistic howling. It is only the spirit thawing out from its cold hibernation. One could almost forget the world is insane, forget that one madman could end it all in a moment, forget that football/soccer is the second most dangerous spectator sport in the world next to religion--the world is alive and beckoning us to her. The white garments of winter have been removed--let us join her!

Foundation

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