POETICKS

     Poem’s Retreat

     The small charity of
     the imaginary summer breeze unclanking
     Poem from his tired rants against
     the undefeatable liturgy of the certified
     was enough: he retreated into the splendor
     of words mathematics had re-thundered
     a hundred colors beyond the
     repeatedly-beloved-when-required
     solutions on the walls of the academies.

Diary Entry

Thursday, 5 January 2012, 9 P.M.  I played a match in my senior men’s tennis league and was terrible–so bad, I’m close to giving up the game.  I don’t know what was wrong with me.  Well, we played at noon with an overhead sun right in my eyes when I served.  But I was otherwise bad.  I was seeing the ball double, too.  That’s happened to me a couple of times in practice; this was the first time it happened while in league play.  I don’t know what causes it.  Stress?  Easy answer.  The good news of the day is that I got a good near-final draft of my reply to Jake done.  I don’t think it’s quite right, but I don’t think it’ll take much more work to make it pretty good.  I had nothing to post for my blog entry, so took a paragraph out of the response to Jake and posted it.  Meanwhile, I got into a new game of Civilization after winning my previous one yesterday or the day before.  Whee. 

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Discount Toy Coupons

        Poem’s Alter Ego

        Bored by a long spell
        of inactivity, Poem conceived
        the idea of creating an alter ego,
        thinking the alter ego of an
        alter ego would be amusing.

        It would allow him a vent
        for some of his frustration
        as an under-used, and too
        often weak alter ego.

        At first he thought he’d call
        his alter ego “Bob,” but
        that almost at once seemed
        too clever, so
        he called him “Brick.”

        Unfortunately, Brick was
        very stupid. “Gimme a beer,”
        were his first words.
        Poem had no beer, so he
        wrote Brick into a poem set
        in a beerbar, remembering
        to give him several hundred dollars.

        Brick quickly got so drunk
        he passed out.
        Poem blamed that on the seagulls
        continually flying out of
        his keyboard.

* * *

Yes, another near-null day for me.

Diary Entry

Sunday, 25 December 2011, 8 P.M.  I touched up my reviews for Small Press Review and printed them out.  Spent most of the day at Linda’s with her and and her friends, Sandy and Joel.  Very nice Christmas dinner.

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Low Cost Travel

                    Poem Spoils a Poem

                    Poem took a break
                    from the literary magazines
                    he’d been reading,
                    tired of the lives
                    their poems were invariably about.
                    Hardly anyone builds poems anymore,
                    he thought, imposing
                    an opinion on a poem
                    which may well have become
                    rank upon rank
                    of blithe summer clouds better
                    if it could have been,
                    rather than served.

Poem’s Boringness

Poem was well-aware
how boring he was, but
how could he be otherwise,
alter-egoing for
a sickness so wholly
over-burdened with ambitions
to which it could only get close enough
to pule its futility about into texts
like this . . . for some for
ever incomprehensible reason?

.                     Poem Coughs

.                     Poem hesitated at the inter
.                     sect
.                     ion of lunch and blue eyes
.                     hard
.                     ly conscious of the thesis
.                     he had nimbled sweetpeas into
.                     while the alley wheezed toward Oz.
.                     Reminders of Hamlet
.                     made him cough.
.                     Flies.
.                     A mistaken sky, as well.
.                     Wine.

Yes, once again I throw a Poem poem together to make a blog entry, too blahhed by another day I’ve been fumbled into to put anything better in.

.                Poem, Gone

.                Leaving behind his collection
.                of unshelled stars, and an unopened who,
.                Poem left for parts unverbal.
.                He had tired of imagining vapid
.                life-evasions for his author to
.                carry out his idea of gardening in,
.                using him to scare insights away,
.                or as an attempt to disguise his
.                opinions as reasons for a sky.
.
.                Three women got off the bus before it
.                dissolved
.                the slow opera constantly audible
.                in the room next to
.                the one Poem had vacated.
.                Miles away he
.                could hear one of them laugh warmly
.                into a coherence begun as falling leaves
.                in the woods of his best autumn
.                many years before.

Yes, I had nothing worth posting today. One small bit of news, though: I saw my hip man, and will probably have hip replacement surgery in two weeks. He thinks recuperation will take three to six months. Ugh.
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