Mozart's Requiem (Part 1)

I've been stuck in 2008. I need to be able to forgive myself to move on.

I'm reading Sherwin Bitsui's FLOOD SONG and learning.

I have a ways to go, but Bitsui's language has been a joy to read.This book is strange and fluid, filled with oddly tantalizing juxtapositions. Mostly I am taking in the strong verbs which wrap themselves in layers. I made a list of some of them: splintered, wails, paint, twists, scalpel ed, carved, lick, shiver, clasp and fasten, slices, sniffed, coiling, uncoil, strung, fruit (as a verb), and so forth. After a while I want some symmetry or narrative, but I keep coming back to the poems and it is quite fulfilling. The organic mingles with the mechanical, and nature evolves and dissolves and raptures in new and unexpected ways. I like these poems.

Here's a very brief excerpt:

"Dove's eyes black as nightfall
Shiver on the foam coast of an arctic dream
where whale ribs clasp and fasten you to the language of shifting ice."


7

The whales remind me of a blowhole in one of Emmy Perez's poems, poems which I should have spent more time than I did with. I have a whale poem in my next collection, tentatively titled 7 Seven. The number of perfection biblical my aunt tells me. Seven sins, Seven charities. But it is about the losses and recoveries we breathe.

I was at a loss in 2008. I snapped. I frightened friends and good people. I was an angry sack, a mouth of bones, a reckless driver towards the dark, but today I had a bit of a breakthrough after what seems to truly be 3 years. I am stuck. I have been restless. And I seek renewal through language again in some strange way. It's a new path, the next step is a step out of the old and into the new light.


My aunt showed me a sketch of a hand, outstretched emerging from shadow to light. So simple, so elegant, And yes her religion has her seeing the light as God, but for me it is that Yin Yang that S spoke about so freely. Her laughter was lavender and sunlight and her language lanyap. I miss her terribly still.


I'm thinking today that there's nothing wrong with all the cicadas I have pulled out of poems for fear that the word was too unpopular.

In any case, breakthroughs are a relief yet painful and I recognize that I'm not quite fitting in online. The episode in 2008 was bad and I have to forgive myself for this, and let go of lost relationships, broken friendships, lost jobs and falling.

I have to write again.

*

Today I drew a nose and an eye and geometrical figures shaded and winding lines, coiling and uncoiling---very still pencil lines, and some shading around the nose. So, with encouragement I think I will draw some more. But the fact is admire Bitsui's book and encourage you to read it if you haven't done so already. Similarly, Emmy Perez's SOLSTICE is a gift I missed in some ways, a gift of language play and stars in bellies. The blowhole disturbed me, knocked me out of some comfortable expectation of softness, peace. It is still with me.


In any case, I must forgive myself and get out of 2008 since it's 2011.

'
Maybe you can help. I long to speak with people about poetry again. Send me an email. I have time to read and respond more carefully than I once did. I can send you my cell phone number and we can chat. I've already hit someone up with the idea of talking. So maybe my online time is coming to an end? I don't know. We'll have to see. Fact of the matter is that ignorance prevails and stygma stings. I understood today that I do have an illness which apparently gets worse with age. I ask my community, that loves to call itself a community for help in getting me healthy. I'd like to thank Carmen Seda for hanging in there the last 3 years when I've clearly not been well and CG. Blessings to those that give. Please also consider reading AN UNQUIET MIND.Peace